Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (13 page)

Maggie, silent and morose up to this point,
twisted her paper napkin until it fell apart in her fingers. “I
didn’t think I needed to.”

“Tell me what?” Brax croaked. His voice
probably hadn’t cracked like that since he was thirteen years old.
He had to
know
what was coming. In fact, Simone could have
sworn he ducked slightly as if to ward off the blow.

“Our Manor of the Ladies is a home for former
ladies of the night,” Divine explained.

“Chloe built it for us,” Rowena added.

“Sadly, many of us aren’t terribly good at
saving our money for old age,” Agnes admitted.

“We never thought we’d reach old age,” Divine
scoffed. “What with AIDS and all that.”

“Speak for yourself.” Rowena tipped her head
with a queenlike gesture in Divine’s direction. “I always insisted
on protection even before it was fashionable.”

Brax made an odd sound, either horrified
laughter or he was choking on the bit of scone he’d just popped in
his mouth.

“But Chloe came to our rescue.” Nonnie
acknowledged credit where credit was definitely due.

“Isn’t she the most wonderful person?” Agnes
said on a grateful sigh. The others nodded their heads like bobbing
apples.

Simone couldn’t agree more, but Chloe,
flustered by the glowing compliments and admiration, busied herself
with buttering a second scone.

That’s why Chloe was the only one in town who
wanted Jason’s resort. Most thought it was because she wanted
increased traffic through The Chicken Coop. Which was true, but
Simone suspected she wanted the extra cash flow to support the
Manor. Fifteen ladies now lived in the small rest home, but she
constantly received new petitioners. Chloe had a hard time saying
no.

Brax finally swallowed the scone. He raised
his dainty teacup, looking ridiculously fragile in his big hand,
and saluted each one. “Here’s to the most gracious quartet of
ex-ladies of the night I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.” Then
he inclined his head toward The Chicken Coop’s madam. “And to Chloe
for her generosity.”

They all drank to his toast.

What a sweet guy. He could have run screaming
from the room.

Agnes pointed to the hand still holding aloft
his teacup and said, “So, don’t keep us in suspense. Eight inches?
Or more?”

* * * * *

After numerous offers of aid, they’d left the
Manor ladies to cleanup duty. Brax’s earlier shock had receded. A
home for ex-prostitutes, only in Goldstone. Having made it through
teatime, Brax wiped the proverbial sweat off his brow as he stepped
out onto the Manor’s front porch, Simone a pace in front of him.
She was close enough for him to draw in her fresh fruity scent.
“All I can say is thank God I didn’t screw up and call Myrtle by
the name of Divine.”

Simone snorted in disgust. “Her
real
name is Myrtle, and you were
supposed
to call her
Divine.”

He did remember, but he’d wanted to see
Simone’s smile. The feminine snort was the next best thing. “Thank
God I managed not to call her anything at all.”

Simone glanced at him over her shoulder, her
hair blowing into her eyes and sticking for a moment to her
freshened lipstick before she pulled it free.

He had a sudden vision of lipstick prints all
over his body.

“You were terribly sweet, you know.”

His turn to snort. “Remember what I said last
night about nice? Goes the same for sweet. Men aren’t supposed to
be
sweet
,” he finished, the last word rife with his
disgust.

She patted his forearm in comfort. Damn, what
the slightest touch from her did to him. He shouldn’t have played
with her in the dining room, shouldn’t have touched her thigh, her
silky hair, or laid her napkin across her lap, where he wanted to
lay his head. Sheer torture, his actions had built the tension and
anticipation she’d seduced him with last night. Her very proximity
shot his testosterone level into the ozone.

“Aren’t you going to drive Maggie home?”
Simone asked.

Thankfully, she found the perfect question to
bring him back to earth, solid ground, and his sense of
responsibility.

At the far end of the lot, Maggie fumbled
with her car keys at the side of her clean, white four-door sedan.
Last year’s model. Carl certainly didn’t skimp on the vehicles they
drove. Brax wondered at their debt-to-equity ratio.

“She wanted to be alone.” He didn’t consider
himself ineffectual in most cases. He had, however, been practicing
quite a bit of ineffectual behavior lately.

“My mother says a gentleman should always see
a distressed lady home.”

In this case, Brax had to agree with Simone’s
mother whole-heartedly. He’d offered to drive Maggie home, but
short of snatching the keys out of her hand, there hadn’t been much
he could do about it. Maggie needed some alone time. The discourse
with Della Montrose at the tea party had deteriorated almost to
blows. He was sure witnessing that hadn’t helped Maggie.

Which made him extremely glad Della had been
the first to leave, before the second pot of tea had been emptied
or the last scone demolished.

“Perhaps you’ll let me make up for my lack of
chivalry by walking you home.” It was only a mile. Everything was
only a mile away in Goldstone.

“I wasn’t criticizing—”

“Any more than was deserved,” he finished for
her.

She nodded as if in agreement. “And how do
you know I didn’t drive myself over?”

He glanced around the near empty lot, now
that Maggie had pulled onto the highway. “I didn’t find my favorite
bumper sticker.” That and the fact that she wore flat sandals more
conducive to walking than the platforms he’d admired. She’d painted
her toenails a pale pink.

Her mouth lifted in a slight smile, not as
dazzling as the usual, but enough to raise his pulse rate. “Of
course, while we’re walking,” she said, “you intend to ask all
about how you can help Maggie.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.” That was
his strategy behind accompanying her home. A secondary plus to that
plan was its guarantee to keep his mind where it belonged instead
of on Simone’s pretty pink toes, shapely ankles, and what she wore
beneath that polka dot skirt fluttering in the breeze. “I think
you’re a better choice than your friend, Della.”

Simone sighed and started across the parking
lot to a path Brax now saw headed back into Goldstone proper.

“I don’t know what got into Della. She’s
usually more...” Searching, Simone shook her head from side to
side, her hair brushing her nape and shoulders, then she shrugged.
“Diplomatic. Being a politician, she doesn’t usually go off like
that.”

Brax had his doubts. There was a pinch to
Della Montrose’s lips and a hardness in her cold blue eyes that
said she went off on a regular basis. “Why doesn’t she like
Carl?”

Simone flapped both hands, then dropped them
to her sides. “It’s not that she doesn’t like him. She loves
Maggie. Della came to Goldstone about the time Carl brought Maggie
home as his wife, and both being new, well, I think they naturally
became the best of friends. She’s very protective of her
friends.”

An admirable trait, though somehow it did not
make him appreciate Della. “How long has she been mayor?”

“Seems like forever, since she had the office
when I got here. But I guess it’s been about six years. And she’s
also been the county judge for almost the entire time she’s been in
Goldstone.”

The path they followed widened to a gravel
street. The old schoolhouse stood a block to the east, the stone
facade crumbling, and a twelve-foot chain-link fence surrounding
it. A dog barked off to the right, answered by another perhaps a
block farther down, and cars whooshed by on the highway a few
hundred feet away. Other than that, they could have been alone for
all the activity
not
happening in Goldstone on a Tuesday
afternoon.

Brax would dearly love to be alone with
Simone, if not for the fact that he liked her too much in addition
to wanting her. With liking came responsibility, commitment,
relationship questions, and a woman’s desire for a man to share his
emotions.

He nipped that line of thinking in the bud.
“So Della’s protective. Seems to me a better way of handling the
rift between Carl and Maggie would be to talk it through with her.
Isn’t that what women do best? Talk?”

Simone stopped in the middle of the road, put
her hands on her hips—he really did wish she would stop touching
her own body parts, it was driving him nuts—and cocked her head. “I
get the sneaky suspicion there was something derogatory in that
remark.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender, then
took her arm and steered her down the street. “No, no. I meant that
women seem to need to talk things out with someone else.”

“Like we can’t make our own decisions or need
someone else to tell us what to do?”

“Hell, no. That is
not
what I meant.”
He was glad he had his hand on her or she might have gone careening
down the road. The militant female blaze in her eyes burrowed
beneath his skin the same way as the thought of her finger poking
his chest. She had spark. He wanted to ignite it. But not this way.
“I admire the way women talk over a problem, come to a conclusion,
and act.”

“Hah.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Men hate talking.”

He gave a shrug, letting his hand fall away.
“Yeah. But we admire that women are able to do it.” At least when
it was amongst themselves.

“And?”

“And, I’d like you to talk to Maggie. Because
I’m inadequate at it.”

She dropped her gaze to her toes. Obviously
his plea wasn’t what she wanted or expected. She wiggled the toes
on her right foot, then her left, a mesmerizing performance.

“You know...I...” She bit her lip.

“What?” The only good thing was that he’d
turned the tables on her by admitting his flaw.

She tipped her chin up to look at him through
her lashes. “How about if I talk to Della and get her to let up
about Carl?”

“Maggie needs more than that.” Something he
should tell himself instead of palming his responsibilities off on
Simone.

“They’ve known each other longer. I think
Maggie will open up to Della more than me.”

He smiled wryly. “Della seems more concerned
with getting Maggie to leave Carl.”

“She was just edgy today, that’s all.”

“I noticed.”

“She’s been edgy since Jason Lafoote came to
town.”

“Because of the resort?”

Simone turned then and headed down the slight
incline toward her street. Brax followed, catching up just as she
mumbled, “Everyone hates that resort.”

“Except Chloe.”

“Chloe has her reasons, I’m sure.”

“To fund the Manor?”

Simone tucked her hair behind her ear and
nodded. “I’m pretty sure that’s the reason. More business. But not
to line her own pockets. She’s very selfless, you know.”

Hard to believe that a whorehouse madam could
be selfless, but Brax had to agree Our Manor of the Ladies could be
nothing but an altruistic endeavor. He couldn’t find the hitch in
it anywhere. “The ladies certainly love her.”

“We all do.”

“I didn’t know Maggie knew her so well.”

She rolled her eyes, then gave him the
dazzling smile he’d been waiting for with bated breath. “Everybody
knows everybody in Goldstone. Really well.”

An exact repeat of Maggie’s words yesterday,
and precisely as it was in Cottonmouth. Only difference was,
Cottonmouth didn’t have a madam or a whorehouse, and the only
chicken coops were the genuine articles.

One thing he still found puzzling. If Maggie
knew Chloe so well, why did she send her brother down there to find
out if Carl was a customer instead of asking Chloe herself? Not
wanting to air dirty laundry came to mind. Even in a town the size
of Goldstone, people wanted to keep their secrets.

He wondered how many secrets Simone was
keeping.

Chapter Eight

“I’ll talk to Della. She’s the best one to
help Maggie. I promise.” Simone felt like a traitor. Or maybe
something else. A heel. Not quite right, either, too harsh. The
person caught in the middle. Writing snippets for the Doodles to
play with was fine. Giving Carl a fantasy when she knew he and
Maggie were having problems was downright stupid.

Not that she’d thought of it that way until
she figured out Carl hadn’t even used the story. At least not that
she knew of.

“I’d rather you did it.”

Brax had walked her all the way home, hoping
to change her mind, she was sure. Now he waited for her answer on
her front walk, within touching distance, while she stood on the
step trying to figure out how to get away with a fib.

She couldn’t risk talking to Maggie. What if
she revealed something she shouldn’t? “I’d probably say the wrong
thing.” She had a very big mouth sometimes, especially when she
didn’t know how to bring up the subject. “My mother always says I
speak before I think.”

“Your mother’s wrong.” A hard edge filtered
through his voice. “You’re perfect the way you are. And you’ll say
the perfect thing.”

A nice sentiment, but Simone knew her mother
was right. “Della. She’ll do it. I’ll buy her a drink at Flood’s
End and talk to her. I swear.”

“Why don’t you want to talk to Maggie?”

Darn. She’d forgotten he was a cop. They
always asked why. Not that she’d had any real experience with cops,
but that’s how they acted on TV. Now, if only she had a really good
reason. Other than the fact that she was a big-mouthed coward. She
looked over his head at the row of rusted barrels lining the side
of her neighbor’s house. Thinking, thinking... She gave him a
modified version of the truth. “I’m afraid of making things worse.
A woman has to
want
to talk. You can’t butt in and tell them
they
need
to talk. It gets their back up, then they won’t
listen at all.”