Crazy in Love (13 page)

“
Because you two both seem intent on marking me as your personal territory. I think as the object in the middle of your competing urine streams, I’m owed an explanation. I know I’ll never get a straight answer from Chase, so I’m going direct to the source: You.”

She stared at him, her eyes sharp and intent on their target. Jake swallowed, trying not to smile as the words
I know I’ll never get a straight answer from Chase
vibrated in his head. She’d seen right through Chase, charm, smarm, and barrel. It only confirmed what Jake already knew, that Flynn Daly was smarter than your average bear, but still. Knowing she’d seen past Chase’s money and good looks only warmed him in places that didn’t need warming at the moment.

“
It’s a long story,” he said finally. “And I know you want to get some sleep, so I’ll just—”

“
I’ve been sleeping all day,” she said. “Kind of. And as soon as I go to sleep, Esther’s gonna be there, nagging at me. I’m happy to put that off for a while.” She played with a frayed edge of her sweatshirt, then sighed and rolled her eyes. “Just humor me, okay? Distract me with your sordid tale of testosterone gone stupid.” She nibbled one corner of her lip, scuffed the toe of one Ked on the floor, then raised her eyes to his, her hair hanging loosely over one shoulder as she cocked her head to the side. “Please?”

That hair. There was so much of it. He could reac
h out and touch…

Oh, man
.
Dead kittens.

“
Look,” he said. “I need to… I’ve got a… Um.” He motioned toward the door.
Harvey Fierstein. Carol Channing. Gramma Tucker.
“I’m gonna get us something from the bar. If you really want me to give you the whole story, it’s gonna be a long night.”

Flynn
’s face lit up. “Jameson’s?”

Wow
. Had she been that pretty when she first got off the train? He knew she’d been pretty, but he didn’t remember her being
that
pretty.

“
Yeah. Sure. I’ll be right back.”

He ducked out and shut the door behind him, leaning against the door and staring up at the ceiling. On a scale of one to ten, he wondered how bad an idea it would be to tell her everything; he placed it at about a three. It wasn
’t like he was going to continue dangling her in front of Chase, anyway. He’d made that decision when he ran that last stoplight on the way to the Arms, when he thought that all his games might have gotten her hurt, or worse. He could find another way to distract Chase, and if Flynn knew how dangerous he was, then maybe she’d agree to stay away from him. Of course, there was the risk that if he told her about Chase, she’d run off and tell Chase what he was up to, but at least then Jake wouldn’t have her getting hurt on his conscience.

Then, it would be her own damn fault.

Oddly, that didn’t make him feel any better about that possibility. Since seeing Flynn passed out on the bed in Esther’s cottage, his entire being had been buzzing with a strange, stupid, and inappropriate need to touch her, to protect her, to not let anyone near her who wasn’t him. Although, unable to shake the vision of her bouncing on the edge of the bed in the hotel room, his desire to touch her had hit number one with a bullet.

He pushed away from the door and headed down the hall, untucking his shirt and working hard to drum up images of dead kittens.

***

“
So…” Flynn sat cross-legged on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, her mind whirling with all the new information Tucker had been telling her over the last hour. “Wow.”

“
Yeah.” Tucker twirled his glass in his hands. “That pretty much brings you up-to-date.”

“
I’m really sorry about your dad.”

Tucker shrugged it off.
“Yeah, me, too. But it was a long time ago.”

Flynn watched him, remembering what Mercy had said about their father
’s death being so hard on Tucker. Considering the fact that his dad wouldn’t have even been at that factory if it wasn’t for Gordon Chase’s greed, it all made sense. Suddenly the piano falling on the safety inspector didn’t seem even remotely funny anymore.

“
So,” she said, shifting conversational gears. “You really think Gordon Chase killed Esther?”

Tucker shifted in the antique tub chair he
’d pulled up next to the bed. His feet rested on the far edge of the nightstand, which was being used as a temporary cocktail table. “No. I don’t know. Something’s off. Esther was old, and she had a heart condition...” He shrugged and took a sip from his glass. “But something’s still not sitting right with me.”

“
It’s that cop’s intuition,” Flynn said, feeling as though it was a new Tucker sitting before her. A Tucker who’d
been a cop. A Tucker who cared about more than he let on. A Tucker whose eyes…

She blinked and sat up straighter. She must be drunk,
thinkin
g about eyes. She set her glass on the nightstand and then edged it a little farther away with her index finger. Just to be safe.

“
So, anyway. That’s what all that Gordon Chase stuff is about.” He smiled lightly. “By the way, feel free to light into me at any time for putting you in the middle of that. I’m waiting for that other shoe to drop.”

“
Oh, forget it. I’d have done the exact same thing.” She waved her hand in the air and attempted a casual laugh, but it came out in an awkward snort. Tucker chuckled.
This is what happens when you start thinking about eyes,
she admonished internally. She cleared her throat and asked, “So, how are we going to nab him?”

Tucker raised an eyebrow.
“Did I miss a memo? When did the ‘we’ happen?”

“
Well, you were using me to get to him anyway—”

“
Hey, there’s that shoe.”

“
I’m not dropping a shoe. I’m just saying, I don’t think it was all that bad a plan. I can totally string him along while you investigate. And I won’t even have to be all that dishonest about it. I mean, we
haven’t
made any final decisions yet about this place.” Which was true enough; Freya said it would be at least two weeks before Dad chose a buyer.

Tucker focused on his glass and ran his index finger along the rim.
“Really? You’re thinking about staying?” Flynn shrugged and felt a small shot of excitement ride through her at the thought. Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but she was starting to
feel kinda... warmly toward the place. Her eyes trailed over the room, with the canopy bed and tub chairs and antique writing desk. The roses on the wallpaper. The tall windows. Her gaze landed on Tucker sitting next to her bed, watching her with an inscrutable expression.

The bartender.

“What?” she said, rubbing self-consciously at her nose.

“
You’re thinking about staying.” It was a statement this time, as though he’d just read her mind and was merely saying it out loud for the record.

“
No,” she said, using the petulant tone of a twelve-year-old denying a crush on her science lab partner. She worked up the nerve to meet his eye, allowing the big humming ball of strange and awkward energy to intensify between them before losing the game of chicken and looking away first.

“
You know how many jobs I’ve had in the past eight years?” Flynn angled her head to look at him. Tucker shook his head. “Fourteen. I have been, in no particular order: a nanny; a cashier at a bakery; a database administrator; a slime line worker in an Alaskan fish cannery; a prostitute at a Renaissance Faire…” She trailed off and s
mil
ed gently at him. “I mean, I
played
a prostitute.”

He whistled and shook his head.
“Now you’ve
gone
and spoiled the fantasy.”

She laughed, turned her eyes back to the ceiling.
“I like animals, so I was a veterinarian’s assistant for a while, until I discovered I really only like healthy, fluffy animals. I’ve done everything, pretty much, at least once,
but
I never found it. You know, the one thing I
really wanted
to do for the rest of my life.” She spread out her arms
and
breathed in deep, then lowered her eyes to Tucker’s and, for reasons she didn’t quite understand, said, “My mother was a dancer. She taught ballet to little girls.”

Just as she was working up the energy to explain what that meant, he nodded his head and said,
“I get it.”

She blinked in surprise.
“You do?”

“
Yeah. Dancing isn’t the kind of thing you do to pay the bills. It’s the kind of thing you do because you love it. Because you can’t
not
do it. That’s what you were looking for.”

Flynn lowered her eyes, feeling suddenly overwhelmed.
“So, I mean, yeah, the thought has crossed my mind that if I’m not gonna find it at the Renaissance Faire, I might as well not find it...”

“
... here,” he finished for her. Their eyes met again, and Flynn knew that the heat in her face had nothing to do with the booze, although if asked, she would have sworn otherwise.

“
Look,” she said, “even if my father keeps this place, there’s no way he’d ever let me run it. I have no experience. No idea what I’m even doing here. He’ll put someone in here who knows what they’re doing, and I’ll go back to some desk job in Boston.”

“
I guess that makes sense.”

She leaned forward, hugging her knees to her chest.
“So let me help you.”

Tucker laughed.
“You’re gonna give a guy whiplash, you keep taking corners like that.”

“
This thing with Gordon Chase, it could be my last chance to… I don’t know. Do something that matters, I guess. And you know, I’ve got a stake in this, too. If Chase did kill Esther, then that’s probably why she’s haunting me.”

He stared at her in silence, his eyes narrowing in thought, and she was sure he could see her heart pounding even through the bulky sweatshirt. She waited for him to say something, but he just watched her with an intent gaze.

“Okay,” he said finally.

“
Okay? Okay, what?”

“
Okay. You can help.” He held up an index finger. “But we’ve gotta have ground rules. Number one is you don’t so much as look at Chase without me knowing about it. If he calls you or contacts you in any way, you let me know before jumping into anything.”

Flynn sat forward, practically bouncing in excitement.
“Okay. Deal.”

“
I’m not done. You don’t tell anyone about anything. If Chase did get to Esther, he might have someone here on the inside helping him, so keep quiet about it.”

“
You think someone here would harm Esther? It seems like everyone loved her.”

“
All it takes is one person who didn’t,” he said. “And I haven’t really wrapped my head around a solid theory yet, so, just keep it all under your hat for the time being, okay?”

“
Okay. Fine.” A sudden yawn hit her like a truck. She indulged it, then blinked away the moisture in her eyes. “So what do I do?”

Tucker chuckled
, sat forward, and put his glass down on the nightstand. “You get some sleep. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

He shifted, about to get up, and Flynn was surprised by
how powerfully she wanted him to stay. It was the smell of his skin, or maybe the kindness in his smile, or the amused tones in his voice—something about him was so innately comforting to her that she hadn’t even noticed until he made the move to leave, threatening to take her comfort away.

“
I don’t want you to go.” The words were out before she’d even had time to think them, let alone to stop herself.

He let out a rough sigh.
“You know I can’t stay.”

She stared at him for a long time, not sure what to say. She hadn
’t intended to hit on him, exactly. It wasn’t that she wanted to sleep with him—although her stomach did take flight at the thought—she just wanted him to stay. Something about him seemed to fill cracks inside her she didn’t know she had, and now that they were filled, she didn’t want to go back.

“
You can stay for a little while,” she said quietly, hoping she didn’t sound as pathetic as she felt.

“
I can’t, Flynn.” There was regret in his smile, which was only a small comfort. “You’ve been drinking. There are rules.”

“
I’m not saying… We don’t have to… That’s not what I’m asking for. I just don’t want you to go. Not yet. I…”

She groaned and put her hand over her eyes. She was the lonely, horny innkeeper, hitting on the bartender. She was a
cliché, a tired joke, a sexual harasser.

She heard him get up, and her whole body froze as she prayed that he
’d just leave and then she could keep her hand like this, covering her eyes, for the rest of her time
here. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be doable, she was sure.