Crazy in Love (22 page)

***

The first thing Flynn noticed when her consciousness returned was that it was dark; glancing at the clock on the wall, she guessed she
’d been asleep for about an hour. Next, she took in the smell of the fire; deep, earthy, woodsy. Comforting. She took her time waking up, snuggling into the old couch, curling the blankets that had been placed over her into her fist that she tucked under her chin. When she finally opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Tucker’s back as he sat by the fire. His muscles moved softly under his shirt as he intermittently jabbed at the logs in the woodstove, and she could tell his mind wasn’t on the fire. She stilled and watched him, content just to take in his movements and his existence in the same space with her.

Then, in a rush, the events of the evening came back to her.

The driving lesson, which had been sweet.

The being shot at, which hadn
’t.

And then of course there was the rampaging, desperate sex on the cabin floor.

Oh, God.
Mortification stabbed through her, and she moved her hands under the blankets and confirmed her suspicion; yep, she was still naked. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she moved her hands around under the blankets, hoping to every force in heaven and earth that her underwear was caught up under the blankets with her somewhere.

Unfortunately, that didn
’t seem to be the case. She lifted her head slowly, trying to be deathly silent as she shifted one leg to the floor and fished for her clothes with her big toe.

“
Everything’s folded up on the other side of the couch,” Tucker said, surprising her. “I’ll keep my eyes on the fire until you’re ready.”

“
Oh. Okay.” Flynn held the blankets to her as she sat up and reached for her clothes. “Meaning, ‘Okay, I’m putting my clothes on,’ not that it’s okay to turn around. I mean, not that it matters much now, I guess, considering… you know. The thing.”

There was a slight pause, then he said,
“What thing?”

She hooked her bra.
“Stop it. You know what thing.”

“
Oh,
that
thing?” He jabbed at the fire, his head turned slightly toward her, but not so far that he could see her. “Don’t worry about it. Never happened.”

She zipped up her jeans.
“Look, Tucker, I’ll admit it’s been a while for me, but usually I know when I’ve had sex.” She put her shirt on and slid her hands under her hair, lifting it up from where it was caught under the shirt. She watched him for a moment longer, enjoying a few more moments when she could see him but he couldn’t see her. Then, she said, “You can turn around now.” Tucker pushed himself up from the floor and brushed off the knees of his jeans, then tucked his hands in his pockets as he stood facing her.

“
So,” he said, one side of his mouth curling up into a sweet smile, “how about them Mets?”

Flynn crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, then
stuck one hand in her front jeans pocket, then pulled it out. Christ. She didn’t even know how to stand. Her thigh muscles shook, calmed, and then shook again, which had always been a sign that her body was taking the hit for emotions her mind wasn’t ready to process. She sat back down on the couch, pulling a cushion into her lap to hide her legs.

“
The Mets suck,” she said.

Tucker nodded, keeping his eyes on hers.
“Yeah. Yeah, they really do.”

Flynn concentrated on her fingers. Her manicure was pretty much ruined. Of course, that was the least of her problems right now.

“Flynn?”

She raised her eyes to Tucker. He smiled softly and moved to the couch, sitting down next to her but taking special care not to touch her, she noticed.

“It never happened,” he said.

She tightened her grip on the couch cushion.
“Tucker. It happened, okay? So stop trying to—”

“
Hey.” He put one finger under her chin and guided her to look at him, lowering his hand the second their eyes met. His expression was achingly in earnest, and she felt both intrigued and weirded out by this new, sincere Tucker. “It wouldn’t have happened. If we hadn’t gotten shot at, if you hadn’t gotten hysterical, if I had slapped you instead of…” He gestured toward the knotted rug, then angled his body toward hers and leaned closer, speaking softly. “I don’t think either of us would have chosen to have it happen that way if the circumstances hadn’t been… extraordinary. So, you know, I think we
deserve a clean slate. No embarrassment. No guilt. What do you say?”

“
I say you’re crazy,” Flynn said, focusing her attention on pulling at a stray thread on the cushion as her leg muscles convulsed underneath it.

“
I’m sorry.” His voice was so soft, she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right until she looked up and saw his face.

“
Oh, please,” she said. “What do you have to be sorry about? You didn’t even...” She made a motion with her hands that wasn’t accurately indicative of what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter. She could tell by his light laugh that he got it.

“
You have an unhealthy fixation on that,” he said, taking her hands and lowering them back to the cushion in her lap. “And I have plenty to be sorry about. I should have stopped you if I didn’t think you were thinking clearly. The problem was, I wasn’t thinking clearly, either, and even if I had been…” He paused, shook his head. “I couldn’t have stopped.”

She tried to laugh, but her discomfort overcompensated with a decidedly unfeminine snort.
“Well, any man and any woman in that situation would have been unable to stop—”

“
You’re not any woman, Flynn,” he said, his eyes on the fire. “You had me since the second you got off that train. You know that.”

“
I do?” Flynn felt her breath catch on the words. “I mean, I did?”

Tucker turned back to look at her, surprise in his expression. He reached up and put one hand on the side of her neck, his fingers extending into her hair, as his eyes searched hers.
“You didn’t know that?”

“
No,” she said. “I thought you thought I was some spoiled little Daddy’s girl sweeping into town to shut down the plant and send everyone home to cheating wives and starving babies.”

“
No.” He watched her with that intent, sincere expression, and her legs shook again. “I never thought that.”

She smiled, and he leaned forward and kissed her lightly, sweetly. It was the kind of kiss that said,
No rush. There’s plenty more where this came from.
Flynn leaned into it, took comfort from it, and when they broke, her legs were calm.

How did he do that?

“So…,” she said after a minute. “It never happened?” He pulled her into his arms and she leaned her face against his chest, listening to the steady heartbeat within.

“
Well,” he said, “I figure we can do one of two things. We can talk the whole thing to death, feel embarrassed and guilty despite the fact that there’s nothing we can do to change anything, let the awkwardness run its course and hope we come out okay on the other end, or we can say it never happened, wipe the slate clean, and have something to eat.” He kissed the top of her head. “I think you know my vote.”

Flynn snuggled deeper against his chest and stared at the fire. The fact was, right now, she didn
’t feel embarrassed or awkward at all. She felt calm, and comfortable, and happy. Somehow, Tucker had managed to fix everything before it had gotten too broken.

She had to find out how he did that.

She lifted her head and looked up at him with a smile. “Whatcha got in the basket?”

***

“So, you’re going to break in
again
to return the laptop and the folder?”

“
That’s the plan,” Jake said. Flynn’s astounded face peered at him between the two candles that sat on the table. Her hair fell around her shoulders in wild waves, and the candlelight flickered warmly over her face. Despite the attempt on their lives and the totally botched lovemaking, he felt calmer and happier than he had in recent memory.

He was toast.

She leaned forward. “Explain to me again why you can’t just give it to the police?”

Jake nudged the last plate of finger sandwiches her way. There wasn
’t much left—two hours of bringing Flynn up-to-date on the Chase situation had pretty much annihilated the picnic fodder. Still, there was something about watching Flynn nibble on finger sandwiches that never got old.

“
Illegally gotten gains,” he said. “Not admissible in a court of law. Gerard Levy—he’s the sergeant at the Scheintown Police Department, my old boss—he’s going to have to go in with a search warrant in order for anything to be worth anything legally. Let’s just hope he doesn’t ask me where I got the printouts.”

Flynn nibbled her lip and shook her head.
“Something’s not right.”

“
Typically, when people are shooting at you, that’s the case.”

“
Okay.” She put her napkin down on the table, and pushed herself up out of her chair. “I’m going to say everything back to you the way that I understand it, because I’m pretty sure I’m missing something.”

Jake sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Go.”

She started to pace.
“Okay. So. Chase is the head of the historical whatsis—”

“
President of the Historical Preservation Society of Scheintown, yes.”

“
Okay. So, this society has healthy funding.”

“
About a million dollars a year, when you combine fund-raisers, private donations, and government grants.”

“
That’s a lot of money.”

He grinned. He liked watching her pace.
“Your tax dollars at work.”

“
Okay, so Chase has been approving consultation fees for this historian guy to come up here and make sure everything’s historically accurate.”

“
Professor Gavin P. Krunk, a specialist in post-Colonial architecture in upstate New York.”

“
Only he’s been dead for… how long?”

“
Fifteen years.”

“
Which is bad because unless Chase is able to transfer funds to the other side, the money for Krunk’s consultation has been going somewhere else.”

“
You learn quick, Grasshoppah.”

Flynn ignored him. He liked it when she did that, too.
“And the laptop also had records for a subsidiary consulting company Chase owns?”

“
Yes. With liquid assets equaling roughly the amount paid to Krunk over the last three years.”

“
In excess of fifty thousand dollars,” Flynn said.

“
Yep. Not so much that anyone would miss it, but enough to get Chase a good, relaxing stretch in the pokey.”

Flynn sighed, walked back to the table, sat down, and grabbed her wineglass.
“Except you don’t thi
nk
Chase did it.”

Jake sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.
“No. Fifty thousand over the course of three years? That’s chump change to Chase. Also, why use the laptop that was stolen from evidence to keep the records? If he stole that laptop to keep the police from tracing that real estate scheme back to him, then he would have had it destroyed. Even wiped clean, the serial numbers would trace it back to him, which links him to stolen evidence. Chase is smarter than that.”

Flynn put her wineglass down.
“So, Rhonda’s backup plan was that if the embezzlement didn’t stick, he’d still be in trouble for stealing the laptop?”

“
That’s my theory. I just don’t know why.”

Flynn blinked.
“She told you why.”

Jake raised his eyes to Flynn
’s. “What? That bit about being in love with him? You believe that?”

“
Hell, yeah. You say she’s a mousy type, right? Guys like Chase don’t even see girls like her, and she probably has no idea that she’s way out of his league, anyway, because women are stupid that way. So, she cooks up a plan to get herself on his radar by being the faithful friend while he’s in jail. It fits.”

He stared at her for a moment, turning it over in his head. And the thing was, Flynn was right.

“Women are scary,” he said.

“
Well, we know she did it. She’s got
Embezzling for Dummies
taped under her desk.” Flynn motioned toward the manila folder that was sitting on the table, containing handwritten instructions outlining exactly how to embezzle the money from the historical society, written in what appeared to be a woman’s hand. “And if she just wanted Chase to rot in jail, she would have gone to the police herself. This is the only thing that fits.”