Get a Clue

Chapter 23

Breanne stood up in the theater closet, and, much to Cooper's consternation, began to look around for her clothes. "I really didn't write that note just so we could… Well." She laughed a little as she bent over at the waist to snap her teddy back into place.

Cooper's body twitched. Down, boy.

She shrugged the straps of her teddy back on her shoulders, then reached for the sweater. "You sidetracked me."

Watching her toss back her hair, he thought about sidetracking her again. And again. "Who sidetracked who?"

She smiled but it didn't quite meet her eyes, and then she turned away entirely to work on her jeans.

Uh-oh. Taking her arm, he pulled her back around to face him. "What's wrong?"

She shimmied her jeans up her hips. "You mean besides my life being a shambles? Besides being stranded here, hearing mysterious humming that no one else does, and oh, yeah… finding a dead body?"

"Yeah." He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears. "Besides all that."

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes dark and unreadable. "Nothing."

He nodded, started to let it, and her, go, because really, what did it matter? But it did matter. At least to him, he was discovering, and he pulled her around again. "Did you know you wrinkle your nose when you lie?"

"Do not."

He touched the tip of her wrinkling nose. "Do so."

She clapped her hand over her nose and made a disparaging sound. "You can't know that about me-you don't know me."

Contemplating her, he pulled up his own jeans. "I might not know every little thing yet, but I'm getting a pretty good start."

"No," she said with a denying shake of her head, her eyes unhappy. "You aren't. You can't be. Don't be."

"Too late. Want to hear what I know already?"

"No-"

"You tend to jump into things heart first-"

"I'm changing that."

"You're sweet when you're tipsy-"

"I wasn't that tipsy that first night-"

"I know that you hate the dark and spiders, that you have a thing for incredibly sexy lingerie-"

"Circumstantial."

He curled his hand around the back of her neck, stroking his thumb over the soft, sweet spot of her nape. "I know that you're intelligent, funny, and incredibly passionate. You care about others, sometimes too much, and you care about me. None of that is circumstantial."

"It's too early to care."

"Yeah? Then why did you come to me last night?"

"I was scared."

"I didn't see you crawling into bed with Dante, Patrick, Lariana, or Shelly."

In a telltale gesture, she looked away. "So I care too early. Another fault."

"I think you also trust me, at least a little."

"Trust is a bad word, Cooper."

"Doesn't have to be."

"Maybe you missed some of my background," she said "Three failed engagements, remember?"

"I can't help but remember. You wield them around like a shield."

"Three engagements," she repeated. "That's a helluva lot of wielding. A lot of failures."

Which was what was getting to her, he guessed. "You didn't have your heart in at least two of those engagements, Bree. I think you wanted to, you meant to, but you didn't, not really." He kept his hands on her hips when she would have turned away. "I know that first one messed with your head, but not every serious relationship ends in pain. I promise you."

She let out a soft breath. "I don't know."

"But I do. Getting engaged was a way to make a great showing. You could hide behind it, holding back all you want, especially with the particular men you picked."

"I don't follow you."

Yes, you do. "You picked men who weren't going to love you, not the way you want to be loved."

She stared up at him.

He stroked her silky hair. "Am I close?"

"No." But she swallowed hard. "No."

"I'm different, Bree. What we could have is different."

"It's a chemical attraction. Period."

It was so much more than that, but she was standing there, arms tight around herself, breathing a little ragged, her poor bruised heart in her eyes, and he found he couldn't tell her. It was something she had to see herself.

Unfortunately for him, she wouldn't see it, because willing as she was to share her body, she wasn't willing to share mill h else. She shied away from true intimacy, and apparently that bothered him more than he would have thought possible.

"I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that this was supposed to be my honeymoon," she said, closing her eyes. "I didn't count on meeting you, Cooper."

"Yeah, well, you weren't on my calendar, either. But I'm glad it happened."

This brought a ghost of a smile to her lips. "I wanted to talk to you about Edward."

He sighed. From lovers to spies.

"They were all afraid of him."

"I know."

"I think he was rough."

"Physically?" he asked.

"I don't know, but he yelled at them. A lot."

"Even Dante and Patrick?"

"Patrick, yes," she said. "Lariana said he totally demeaned him at every turn, and he only put up with it because-"

"Because they're related."

"Yes." She sounded surprised. "How did you know?"

"Dante told me that much. What else?"

"Patrick has trouble keeping jobs. He's sweet and kind, but not all that great at what he does. Apparently he really wants to be an artist, but he needs the money from this job. He's a painter. That's how he and Lariana got together-she bought one of his paintings as a gift for her father. Shelly said that Patrick was late for work the morning before we got here because he'd been up all night painting, and he and Edward had a terrible fight about it."

"A physical fight?"

"I don't know."

"Did Shelly tell you what Edward yelled at her for that morning?" Cooper asked.

"No. That she didn't mention."

"I can picture Edward yelling at the women," Cooper said. "Possibly even Patrick. But Dante?"

"Supposedly none of them escaped the wrath."

He shook his head. "The problem is, I just can't see Dante standing for it, job or no job."

"And you know what else I can't see," Breanne said slowly, "is Dante standing idly by while Edward treated either of those women badly."

"Me, either."

She tipped her head up to his. "So what does all this mean?"

It meant that there were too many motives, and too many suspects. It meant there were going to be lots and lots of questions once the authorities got here. It meant unpleasant times ahead for all of them. Exhausted at the thought, he leaned back against the door and sighed. "We need to round everyone up and start digging."

"It's still snowing."

"I know, but we should do it now, while we have lots of daylight hours left. I don't know how long it'll take to reach town."

"You really think someone can get that far on the snowmobile without a problem?"

"I'm counting on it," he said grimly.

"Yeah." She let her arms fall to her sides and stepped close. Reaching up, she touched his face, her fingers warm now. Her touch was so unexpected and sweet, he closed his eyes to savor it.

"I'm glad we happened, too," she whispered, making him open his eyes again in surprise.

For her, it was equal to a shouted declaration of her feelings, and he felt his chest tighten, more so when she set her head against his shoulder and let him hold her.

"There's two snowmobiles," she said. "Who's going?"

"Hopefully, Dante and me. I think he'd be more capable than Patrick if we got stuck out there."

She slowly fisted her fingers in his shirt, staring at them as she said, "I dreamed about you."

"Yeah?" His hands squeezed her hips. "Tell me."

"I was running through the dark hallways here. Something was chasing me." She frowned. "Or someone."

"You should have woken me up."

"You had me wrapped up in your arms tight and snug, and I knew I was safe."

"You are safe."

She'd been watching her fingers move in little circles on his chest, but now she lifted her gaze to his, and he could see her uncertainty, her fear. "Once you leave on that snowmobile, no one left here is safe."

"Bree." He sank his fingers into her hair, leaning in, but just as his mouth touched hers, the doors slid open.

Lariana stood there with a DVD in hand, staring at them.

"Whoops," she said, and handed them the case. "Just found this and wanted to put it back. Uh… carry on." With a smile, she slid the door shut again.

Breanne winced. She knew the staff was probably used to such indiscretions, but she sure wasn't. "Well, that was… awkward."

Cooper just lifted an oh, well shoulder. His shirt was wrinkled, from her. His hair stood up on end. Also from her. And he was wearing one of those after-sex expressions that there was no hiding. He looked thoroughly debauched, and so rough-and-tumble sexy that she wanted him all over again.

Oh God, she wanted him all over again.

But that had to stop. Sex was sex, and they'd just had it. The end. But wow, he was potent. And something else… with Cooper, it never felt like just sex.

At her nod, he slid open the door, and together they stepped out.

"I'm starving," she admitted. "I need something before digging."

He followed her down the maze of hallways to the kitchen. At least she was no longer getting lost. She figured if she didn't get lost, she couldn't find another dead body.

In the kitchen, she beelined directly to the refrigerator.

Cooper grabbed a glass from a cupboard and moved to thl sink for water. Hands wet, he looked around for a towel, then finally opened the door beneath the sink. "You need to think, too," he said. "Before you get dehydrated-"

When he broke off so suddenly, Breanne turned from the drawers to look at him.

He was hunkered before the open cupboard, mouth tight, body tense. Absolutely still.

"Cooper?"

Turning only his head, he looked at her from eyes that were no longer lit with sexual prowess or good humor, but flat with concentration.

A cop's eyes.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Beneath the bathroom sink in the foyer there's a brand new pair of rubber gloves, still in their packaging. I saw them yesterday when Lariana was in there cleaning. Can you go get them for me?"

She was so startled by the odd request, not to mention his cool, calm but utterly badass expression, she simply nodded and turned on her heels to do just that.

She encountered no one in the hallway on the way there or back, and when she re-entered the kitchen, Cooper was no longer by the sink.

"Here," he said from behind her, startling her into a gasp as she whirled to face him, a hand to her chest as he took the gloves from her. "What-"

His finger went to her lips. Then he pulled a chair in from of the double doors, so no one could come in on them unannounced.

She could only stare into his extremely tense face. ”What’s going on?"

He looked at her for a long moment, and she knew she wasn’t going to like it. "Cooper, you're scaring me."

"Not as much as this is going to." He put an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the kitchen sink. "Take a deep breath, but don't scream. Promise me you're not going to scream."

"Okay." She gulped in a deep breath, then crouched down with him and looked beneath the sink. At the towel shoved behind the pile, covered in something dried a brownish color. They both stared at it for the longest moment of Breanne's life.

"Fuck," Cooper finally said on a sigh.

Yeah. Her thoughts exactly.