Mistake Me Not

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

In fact, he was nine minutes. A dark pick-up truck lumbered to the curb. He got out, but she was already running down the stoop from her communal entrance.

“You’re on the first floor,” he said, putting a hand to the small of her back to guide her to the truck.

“I would’ve thought you would drive something more inconspicuous.”

“I go for comfort over discretion in cases like this. Space to stretch out can be an advantage.”

He helped her up into the cab then rounded to his own side. In the time it took him to get in and start the engine, she looked around in wonder.

“This thing is huge.”

“Size matters,” he said, winking then pulling out of the space. “So are you ready to tell me what this guy did to you?

“It’s not like that, it’s… complicated.”

“It’s revenge or reconciliation,” he said. “They are the only two reasons a woman wants to go after an ex. Sometimes it’s compensation. Rarely. Most women let money stuff go; men chase the woman for that.”

“You must see everything in your line of work,” she said. “It’s a fascinating insight to human character.”

“Are you a psychologist or something?”

“No,” she said, pushing her head back to the headrest only to find she barely reached it.

“So what do you do?”

“I’m a sculptor,” she said.

“What?”

“I know. Most people don’t understand it. I’ve been in love with shape, and form, and proportion all my life. I like angles and curves, planes, and ridges. Watching the clay take shape is what I love; it’s what I’ve always loved.”

“You can’t make much money.”

“Money isn’t everything, Mr. Sheppard,” she said. “But I’ve been lucky enough to draw some attention to my work. I’ve had a few wealthy patrons, and I have several commissions on going at the moment.”

“So you don’t need compensation from Booth… is it revenge?”

“Are my motives significant?” she asked.

“I don’t suppose they are.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“A few years now,” he said.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“I do. I like a good puzzle.”

“Who is your typical client?”

“There isn’t such a thing,” he said. “We get all sorts. It’s one of the good things about this line of work: the variety. We get a lot of couples, one trying to catch the other out, looking for proof of infidelity.”

“Do you enjoy those cases?”

“I’m good at what I do which means I can pick and choose which cases I want to take. If I think something will go sour, I can turn it away. I’m not interested in helping damage anyone. But if you’re doing something wrong, it’s not my fault that you get caught, even if I am the one doing the catching.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“What?” he asked.

Lacie examined the dark sky around them. Their jet-black vehicle pierced the ink of night. Black chased black, perpetually enveloping and succumbing to each other.

“Being in a marriage where one party has to go to a third party to seek fault,” she said.

“You’re a romantic?”

“Oh no,” she said, her smile stretching. When he glanced in her direction, the truck swerved out and her hands leaped for stability. His grip on the wheel tightened to bring them back into the correct lane. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Are you sure?” she asked, placing her hand to his bare forearm. A static sting zapped her, and she snatched her hand away.

“You’re electric,” he said. Keeping his focus on the road, his knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. “If you’re not a romantic, what are you?”

“I believe romance exists,” she said. “Somewhere out there.”

“Bruce doesn’t romance you?”

“What about you?” she asked, deflecting his question.

“Not much time for romance in my line of work.”

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” she said. “The world we live in. Everyone’s so materialistic and practical. We ignore our instincts.”

“I believe in instinct. Instinct has kept me alive.”

“Alive?”

“Instinct is a requirement in the Marines.”

“I had no idea,” she said. “Sorcha never said anything… though I wasn’t in the country while you two were together.”

“Out of the country?”

“My family live in the UK,” she said. “I was over there for a couple of months at the start of the year.”

“But you live over here now?”

“Yes,” she said. “I went to school here. Like I said, I was lucky enough to have support here.”

“It must be difficult to be away from your family.”

“Sometimes,” she said. “But we talk regularly, and we email. I like my life. And I get my freedom over here.”

“Freedom?”

“It’s a long story,” she said. “What about you? Do you have family?”

“Not much in the traditional sense. But I have colleagues I consider family.”

“Do you miss her very much?” Lacie asked.

“Miss who?”

“I know you took the break-up hard. Sorcha is a dynamic and an alluring woman. Was it awful for you?”

“It might be best to stay off that subject,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Of course, I’m sorry. Do we have far to drive?”

“Another ten miles or so,” he said. “Not long.”

She nodded and took her attention outside again. Maybe talking wasn’t so wise. She didn’t want to like this man any more than she already did. To like him would be betraying a friend. Plus, she wasn’t exactly being honest herself. The fewer lies she told, the better.

“You didn’t tell me if it was revenge or reconciliation,” he said, taking an exit and driving back towards streetlights.

“It’s neither,” she said. “Well, I suppose…”

“You don’t sound very sure yourself,” he said. “I don’t see a man walking away from a woman such as yourself voluntarily. Did he steal something from you?”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“What?”

“That’s the second time you’ve said a ‘woman such as yourself,’ what kind of woman am I?”

He signaled onto a busy road, and they drove for a few hundred yards. “You’re beautiful.”

“I would disagree, but that’s not what you meant.”

“How do you know?”

“The first time you said it was in relation to Bruce being violent, that has nothing to do with beauty.”

“You’d disagree?” he said, wearing a frown. “You don’t think you’re beautiful.”

“What I think is not important,” she said.

Signaling again, he drove into a parking area in front of a three-story apartment block, each with its own terrace.

Pulling into a parking space, he killed the lights and engine, then brought all his attention around to her. “If you’re not beautiful, what are you?” he asked.

“You haven’t uncovered a deep seeded self-loathing. I don’t think I’m ugly, but I wouldn’t put myself anything above passable.”

He scoffed a laugh. The light in his eyes was unthreatening this time, not desire, but… some kind of disbelieving joy.

“I almost crashed the truck back there because you smiled.”

“Because I smiled?” she asked.

“Yeah, Dusty, the first time I see your smile, and I almost drove off the road. I’ve never crashed a vehicle in my life.”

“I thought you had a tick.”

“Not until I met you.”

“Well,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure what to say.”

“Bruce never told you that you were beautiful?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I can certainly say he did not.”

To process the exchange, she took her focus outward, so she hadn’t anticipated his hand touching her face. He smoothed his thumb back and forth on her cheek to soothe her startled reaction to the contact. It left a fizzing trail in its wake. Only this time neither of them were surprised, this time she was ready for it. They both were.

“Bruce is a lucky guy.”

The bubbles in her gut turned to lead. Pushing away from him, she plastered herself against the passenger door.

“Charming me won’t distress Sorcha,” Lacie said. “Men have tried it before.”

“What?”

“She’s moved on, Mr. Sheppard. I’m sorry.”

“Sheppard,” he muttered. His hand fell away, and his head hit the headrest with a thump.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Whatever,” he said. “I’m going to take a look around. Wait here.”

Shoving out of the car, he slammed the door, and the reverberation made her uneasy. Watching him stalk across the parking bays, she felt the sting of pity. Sorcha intoxicated men and Lacie had seen more than a few embarrass themselves when Sorcha ended their relationship. It was a shame for them, but it was a shame for Sorcha too.

Suitors would line up around the block yet none of them measured up and Lacie usually had to agree with Sorcha’s conclusions about potential futures with these men. Men wanted to parade her, they wanted to show her off, and eventually she would make someone the perfect trophy wife. Lacie didn’t envy her friend’s position.

Except choice had been blown out of the water for her friend. Lacie’s pity welled. Sorcha would end up with Bruce because she wouldn’t disappoint or embarrass her parents. The burden was unimaginable. A lot had been expected of Lacie too, but her parents would embrace her choices, even if they didn’t agree with them.

Her parents had been mortified when she wanted to study in the US. Her uncle had married a woman from the States. At the time she moved, Lacie hadn’t known them well. Lacie was sure to this day that her parents only consented because Aunt Elise agreed to look after her. Uncle Wilbur had died only a year after she’d moved, drawing her and Elise closer.

Sorcha’s chance to choose her own suitor had been eliminated because of one careless choice. Sorcha could be reckless, but to find yourself pregnant had to be the epitome of poor sense.

How someone could be so overcome with passion was a complete mystery. Either she’d been doing it wrong this whole time or she just wasn’t the type of woman that men lost their head over. She’d certainly never worried about being unprotected. In Lacie’s experience, the very conversation about protection served as the sum total of foreplay.

The driver’s door opened, startling her out of her reverie. “Come on.”

“What?” she asked.

“I’ve got the apartment number. Come with me.”

“You want me to come with you?” she asked.

“How else do you plan to ID this guy?”

“Oh, uh… I thought I could just look, you know, from afar.”

“You want to find this guy, but you don’t want to talk to him? What are you doing? Arranging a hit?”

“No!” she squealed. “Who knows what he’s doing in there? What if he’s with another woman?”

“Then he’s in for a shock.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered, releasing her seatbelt, and slinking out of the truck.

Sorcha had assured her that she wouldn’t need to see Bruce. But Sheppard was right, there was no good reason for her to refuse without telling him the truth, and she couldn’t do that to Sorcha or to Sheppard. Clearly, he was still hung up on Sorcha. Lacie couldn’t tell him that Sorcha was pregnant with another man’s child or that she intended to marry him.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, and she was still slinking across the parking lot. This was awful. Bruce would think that she was insane, and he would be right. Why would your ex’s friend hunt you down with a private detective who also happened to be another ex?

“What number is it?” she asked. “I’ll go up myself.”

“Like you said, this guy might not be happy to see you,” he said, taking her arm to drag her up the stairs.

“I doubt he’ll be any happier that I’m showing up with another man.”

“He doesn’t have to worry. If there was romance between us, Dusty, I wouldn’t be taking you anywhere near any of your exes. I’d be clearing up any mess for you while you were safe in my bed a dozen miles from here.”

His frown hadn’t shifted. He focused straight ahead moving with a determined gait, yet for some reason Lacie was touched by the sentiment. Though she knew it wasn’t specifically for her, it was nice to know that such fierce resolve to protect existed.

She was still going when he stopped, so she pinged back against him as though his gravity was a bungee rope connecting them. “Are you going to leave me here?” she asked when he lifted his hand to knock.

He stopped and looked down at her. “Do you want me to leave you here?” he asked. She shook her head without thinking her reaction would probably encourage more questions than she could answer. “Are you sure your ex isn’t violent?”

“We don’t even know if he’s here.”

“That wasn’t the question I asked,” he said.

That frown was still there. It read of a severe anger… and something else she couldn’t identify. Her hand ascended, but she wasn’t sure where it was going or what it was doing. There wasn’t time to find out because the door he’d been about to knock on opened.

The man, in his late fifties, looked between the pair loitering outside his doorway. “Get away from my door if you want to get all gooey eyed over each other,” he asserted. “I won’t have this in our building. This is a respectable neighborhood.”

“Do you live here?” he asked.

“No,” the guy said. “I’m just here in my bathrobe at nine p.m. for kicks.”

“The buzzer said Booth, and we—”

“That’s me,” the man said. “What is it? What do you want?”

“Sorry,” he said. “We’ve got the wrong place. Sorry for the intrusion.”

He didn’t say anything else, just grabbed hold of her arm to pull her down the stairs, and brusquely boosted her into the truck.

“Where next?” she asked when he slammed into the driver’s seat.

“Put your seatbelt on,” he said, screeching back out onto the road.

This woman had been sent to him by Satan himself, she was a test, or a punishment for the wrongs he’d done in his life. Ryder couldn’t fathom any other explanation. She just sat there stinking out the place with that fruity scent she exuded from every pore. His d**k was past the point of aching. The sharp pain worsened every time she wriggled.

“Do you have any boiled sweets?” she asked. “Hard candy?”

“What?”

“I need something to suck on.”

His knuckles cracked as he tightened his hold on the wheel and eased off the gas. His frustration made him want to speed up, but this woman had a habit of catching him off guard with the simplest maneuver. He doubted she’d want his suggestion of what she could wrap her mouth around.

“Well?” she said. “My mouth is dry. Do you have any—”

“Try the glove box.”

She reached forward with those dainty fingers and popped open the compartment. His mind was on the fall of her hair when she screamed and bounced up in her chair pulling her feet up under her.

“Jesus!” he hollered and swerved them to the next lane between a couple of screeching cars blaring their horns.

He brought them to a lurching halt on the shoulder.

“Sorry,” she said, panting with her hand against her heart. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “You don’t scream like that when a guy is driving with the b***r of the century! My mind ain’t on the ball! You get it! Don’t scream like that! What the hell happened?”

Though her hand remained over her heart, her attention was firmly on his lap. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He cursed his revelation. “What is it?” he demanded.

The pulse point in her throat hammered. “Nothing, I just—”

“What is there a snake in there or something?”

He reached over and lifted the driver’s manual to see the Beretta nestled in plain sight.

“No, I—I’m British.”

Such a simple explanation, his anger dissolved, and he smiled at her. “You’ve never seen a weapon?”

“Of course I have,” she said. “I watch movies.”

“You don’t have to worry. It’s perfectly safe.”

“I wasn’t expecting it,” she said. “I’m looking for a humbug and I come across that humdinger instead.”

“It won’t hurt you. I can show you how to use it sometime if you like. A woman should know how to defend herself.”

“I have a r**e alarm,” she said.

“That’s a good start. But chances are, if the guy is holding a g*n, you’re not going to get much of a chance to pull the pin.”

“I love living in this country. There are so many ways in which your society is virtuous but…”

“You’re not a fan of the second amendment.”

“I believe in each to their own,” she said.

Her feet slithered down from the seat; her shin made contact with his forearm because he was still holding the compartment flap. It slid across her knee to her thigh. Although she wore skinny jeans, the contact wasn’t any less potent with a denim barrier. Or rather, he had to believe that it wasn’t. The shock of awareness that bled to his every nerve had him sitting immediately upright again. Easing his hips down to try alleviating the pressure in his groin, he groaned and closed his eyes to the agony. It was all he could do to try to relieve it… baseball, burnt toast, England.

“Is that normal?” she asked.

When his eyes popped, he saw her looking at him with that tilted head innocence again. “The g*n?”

“Your discomfort,” she said. “You don’t look happy.”

“Let’s just get on the road.”

“Can I help?” she asked, and he groaned again. “I mean… do you take medication or something?”

“The kind of relief I need, you don’t get on prescription.”

He put the truck back into gear and slammed the glove box as he merged back into traffic.

“What were you looking for back there?” she asked a few minutes later. “When you left me here.”

“Back door,” Ryder said.

“What kind of back door?”

“It’s always best to get the lay of the land when you don’t know what you’re walking into. If possible, you should always have at least two exit scenarios. It’s a good idea to check for cover, which may also provide cover for others. It’s good to know what you’re walking into.”

“Did you think he was going to hurt us?”

“I would have no way of knowing that,” he said. “But it’s worth preparing for the worst. There is also the possibility that your boy might want to make his own sharp exit.”

“You think he was going to run from me?”

“I don’t know anything,” Ryder said. “I usually make more of an effort to interrogate or manipulate my clients into giving me specific information.”

“But you just accepted my refusal to?”

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Plus, I’d rather walk into the unknown than leave a woman such as yourself to walk in blind. If you’re squeamish at the sight of a g*n, I’d hate to think how you would react to someone attempting to physically hurt you.”

“You did it again.”

“Did what?”

“You said it, ‘a woman such as yourself,’ what does that mean? And it’s nothing to do with my looks because you just referred to that as a separate entity.”

“You’re… do I have to answer that? Surely if I accept your refusal, you should accept mine.”

Her laugh bred a smile and she nodded. “I suppose I should accept that as fair.”

“Thank God for that,” he said on his own smile.

Stealing glances at her, he managed to stay in lane and check out her smile. Knowing he’d put that happiness on her face made a ball of warmth form around his heart. The satisfaction at something so simple wasn’t anything he’d experienced before.

“You know you’re nothing like she said.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Sorcha,” she said, extinguishing the heat in his chest. “When she told me about you I expected… something else.”

“Every time we relax you bring up Sorcha. Maybe you and I should start afresh on our own… draw our own conclusions.”

“Our business won’t take long,” Lacie said. “And it’s nice to keep things in perspective.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re Sorcha’s ex. I don’t want to forget that.”

Great, yeah, she didn’t know who he really was. But it was worse than that. Because she thought he was her friend’s ex, she would never let herself relax in his company. That meant she wouldn’t be open to accepting him as a man making a play for her. In her view, Sorcha got there first. He could tell she was a woman of principle. And, in truth, he got it. He wouldn’t go with any of his guys’ exes.

“There’s something I should tell you,” he said ready to bite the bullet. They were in a vehicle in the middle of nowhere, which reduced the chance she would run away from him on spec… Reduced it but didn’t eliminate it.

“What’s that?” she asked apparently not hearing him because she was pointing to the stilled red lights burning the night on the road ahead.

“Traffic.”

“It’s not going very fast,” she said as they rolled to a stop behind the car in their lane.

“It’s not going anywhere at all,” he said, pulling on the parking brake. “Wait here.” Ready to leave the truck, she stalled him when her hands leaped to his forearm.

“You can’t leave me here,” she said.

“You’ll be safe. If something scares you, hit the horn and I’ll come right back,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

“What if the traffic moves?”

“The keys are in the ignition.”

“You want me to drive this?” she asked, looking around as though he’d just asked her to climb Everest.

“It’s easy,” he said. “Just like any other vehicle. I trust you… and it’s insured.”

“I’m British,” she said.

“You have your license for here though, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah but… we’re not used to… size.”

The corner of his lips curled. “You hang with me, you better get used to it.”

Maybe he was throwing her in at the deep end, but he got out and walked away. When he was on the shoulder, he glanced back to see her clambering over the center console, turning on the internal light by mistake then rubbing her head. Once settled, she looked around at all the bells and whistles. She’d be fine.