Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (31 page)

Watching Lafoote’s car disappear at the
bottom of the hill, Brax’s instinct was to follow, see what he got
up to. But Brax had deserted Maggie one too many times tonight,
with disastrous results. Tomorrow, Mom would be here and Maggie
could be in no better hands.

Besides, he’d set the stage for Teesdale to
do a little probing tomorrow. If Lafoote had anything to do with
Carl’s death, he’d be a stark raving lunatic by the morning
wondering what the sheriff had on him.

He found Della, Chloe and his sister in the
living room.

Della tipped Maggie’s chin. “Drink your tea,
sweetie.” The woman had found her backbone once more.

“What did Lafoote really want?” Brax needed
to know.

Della patted Maggie’s back as she spoke over
her head. “What he said. Condolences. Even Jason Lafoote will at
least wait until tomorrow to try to turn this to his
advantage.”

Brax had a gut feeling Lafoote wanted
something far more. Maybe to hide his own complicity by visiting
his victim’s widow?

“Someone murdered Carl, Della.” Maggie
hiccupped.

“Nonsense, honey. Carl fell.”

“Elwood doesn’t think so.”

Della jerked her head to look at Chloe. “Why
not?”

Chloe pointedly flashed her gaze to Maggie’s
tearstained, ravaged face. “Let’s talk about it later.”

The Elvis clock hit the midnight mark,
bursting into a shortened, tinny rendition of “Viva Las Vegas.”
Brax was suddenly so damn tired. He’d never been so glad to have
two women hovering around his sister as he was when the worst day
of Maggie’s life finally gave up the ghost.

Chapter Seventeen

“You okay?”

As soon as she’d heard Brax’s voice, Simone
took the portable phone into the bathroom, locked herself in, and
sat on her fluffy chenille toilet seat cover.

“I’m fine. How’s Maggie?”

“Not so good. Mom should be here tomorrow.
She’ll know the right thing to say.”

Simone ached inside for the weary sound of
his voice. If she could have wrapped his pain up in her arms and
made it all better, she would have. Honest to God. She didn’t know
any more than he did how to fix things for Maggie.

“Don’t let your mother give you any crap,” he
said.

Give her crap?
Her
mother?
“Never.”

“You’re beautiful just the way you are.”

She appreciated the sentiment, but it was
like saying,
I accept you with all your faults
. She didn’t
want him to think she had any faults. Even though she did.

“You’re beautiful and desirable, and the way
you smile turns me inside out.” His voice was a sweet purr in her
ear. “And you’re gorgeous without a speck of makeup.”

She put a hand to her bare cheek, then her
lips. “Not even lipstick?”

“Perfect without it, like I said. But
lipstick does have its uses for appropriate activities.”

“Like what?” Lipstick on the dipstick? Or the
ice-cream cone? Or...

“I’ll have to show you. Some things require
demonstration.”

Oh my. She had her own vision right there
across the phone line.

“I need to give you a heads-up.” His voice
changed, from softly seductive to no-nonsense sheriff.

She felt a twinge in her chest. Bad news
cometh.

“It’s going to be all over town tomorrow that
I believe Carl was murdered.”

She’d forgotten. Well, not forgotten, but
she’d put that slip of time they’d talked about Carl in a corner of
her mind where she didn’t have to look at it. Or think about
it.

“Tomorrow Teesdale and I are going up to the
spot where Carl allegedly fell. So I won’t be around to take any of
the fallout off your shoulders.”

“Fallout from what?”

“Your mother.”

Oh, he was sweet. Thinking about her at a
time like this, when his sister’s husband had been murdered. Tears
oozed at the corners of her eyes. “I’ll be fine. Brax, I—”

“Yeah?”

She’d been about to blurt the unblurtable.
That she loved him. Silly. It wasn’t the time. And he’d think it
was some post-traumatic stress thing anyway. “I’m really sorry
about Maggie and Carl. But thanks for everything tonight.”

He chuckled. “You don’t have to thank me for
giving you two great orgasms. The pleasure was all mine. Not to
mention the one you gave me.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Even with distance
between them, her cheeks flamed, because she had meant that, among
other things. “I was talking about, well, you know, how you sort of
defended me. When my mother arrived.”

“There’s nothing to defend. Remember that,
okay.” His voice grated with a hard edge. “You’re perfect.”

Just the way I am?
She managed not to
beg to hear it again. “I’ll remember.”

“Goodnight, Simone.”

He was gone before she even had time to say
goodbye. She blew him a kiss anyway.

Then someone pounded on the thin bathroom
door. “Simone. How can you have only one bathroom in this place?
It’s uncivilized. I have to remove my makeup and perform my nightly
regimen.”

“I’ll be out in a minute, MOTHER.” Simone
didn’t have a nightly regimen. Besides, as her mother had pointed
out, her makeup was already gone.

She quickly took care of necessities, washed
her hands, then brushed her teeth. Over two minutes before she
opened the door. Her mother stood outside, tapping the toe of her
feather-trimmed mule. She’d already changed into an elaborate
golden robe that cascaded down her figure and swirled at her
ankles. She should have been a forties starlet.

“All yours.” Simone smiled brightly.

“Is there any mold in the shower?”

“I squirted it down before you came. Should
all be dead as a doornail by now.”

“That is not funny, Simone,” her mother said,
closing the door.

“I thought it was.” Kingston laughed heartily
from the living room as he shook out a sheet with which to cover
her ratty couch. “Jackie, since you did such a good job making your
mother’s bed, why don’t you help me?”

“I’ll do it, Kingston,” Simone offered.
Jackie was a guest, after all, not a servant. And her sister had
already had to put the extra-thread-count sheets on the master
bed.

Kingston refused her offer. “Your sister will
help. You go get your pretty little self into bed.” He dropped his
voice. “Before your mother gets out of the bathroom. You know
she’ll be in there at least an hour.”

Jackie, now changed into paisley silk
pajamas, sidled by her.

Simone watched with indecision as Jackie
grabbed one end of the sheet, smoothed it, and began tucking it
beneath the cushions.

Kingston flapped a hand. “Go, go, go.”

She wasn’t needed, she wasn’t wanted, and her
mother had taken over her room, spraying it with the cloying scent
of roses. It would take days to air out. She closed the guest room
door, slipped off her T-shirt and skirt, and pulled on her
Beauty and the Beast
nightshirt.

Crawling beneath the covers, she heard
Jackie’s fragile voice. Was she crying on Kingston’s shoulder?
Probably. Simone had done her share of that over the years.
Kingston had very big shoulders, and he was a good listener.

Simone should have lain awake, consumed with
thoughts of poor Carl and Maggie, her sister’s faint crying, and
the remembered feel of Brax inside her, but she was almost asleep
when she heard the snick of the door, then felt Jackie climb in
beside her.

“Are you all right?” Simone whispered.

She heard Jackie’s indrawn breath, held, then
out with a long sigh. “I’m fine.”

“Is it true?”

Jackie rustled the bedclothes, then settled.
“Is what true?”

“That you’re seeing a man?
She
thinks
you are.” Neither of them needed to specify who
she
was.

She could see her sister’s nod in the weak
moonlight falling through the window.

Simone was dying with curiosity. “Who is
he?”

Jackie stared at the ceiling for a long time.
“I don’t want to jinx anything.” She turned. “Do you mind?”

He was probably some megastar. A little
kernel of hurt lodged next to her heart, but she understood
Jackie’s fear. Look at what happened to the hapless Wesley.

“Don’t tell her about him,” Simone said.
Their mother would find a way to get rid of him.

“He wants it out in the open,” Jackie
whispered.

“Keep it for yourself.” Relationships didn’t
last long in the public spotlight. Even without an
Ariana-intervention. “A little while longer.”

“He’s not like Wesley.” Jackie read her mind.
Or made her own comparisons. “MOTHER won’t scare him away. I know
it.”

Simone hadn’t imagined the capital letters
the last time. “She won’t want to let you go.”

Her sister turned on her side, pulling her
knees to her chest, the covers fluffing up around the childlike
position. “That’s why we’re here, you know.”

“To get you away from him?”

“No. To get
you
away from your
sheriff.”

Impossible. Unless her mother was a fly on
the wall earlier tonight, she couldn’t have known how necessary to
the mere act of breathing Brax had become.

And he was leaving. Soon. The thought
depressed her. She pushed it aside to think about Ariana. “I don’t
get it. I hardly told her a thing when I talked to her last
night.”

“She was listening in when you called me the
other night.”

She should have known Jackie wouldn’t rat her
out. And that her mother wasn’t above lying about how she got the
information.

“We’d have been here yesterday at the crack
of dawn, but it took her a day and a half to pack and make all her
phone calls.”

“Why would she care, Jackie?”

Jackie snorted. If Ariana heard the sound,
she’d shriek. Chandler women did not snort. “You’re such a silly
goose. You don’t even hear the way you talk about him.”

“How do I talk about Brax?” Simone whispered.
Her stomach fluttered with the way she felt about him.

“Like he’s the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Your voice sparkles. I even heard it on the phone.” Jackie paused,
tucking her hands beneath her cheek. “And when he kissed you
tonight, it was like we weren’t even in the room. That scared her.
Badly. You should have seen her face. I’m sure there was a wrinkle.
You’d never have known she got a BOTOX injection before we
left.”

Ariana’s face had seemed a little fixed.

“She doesn’t want to let you go.”

Simone puffed air through her lips. “You’re
the one she won’t let go. I’m miles away already.”

“Are you?”

“Well, sure. I live in Goldstone, a state
away, and worse, I live in a trailer.”

“If you’re so far beyond her control, why
don’t you tell her you’re not looking for a job? Or that you aren’t
coming back, ever? Or that you write sexy little stories on the
Internet?”

Oh my God. Simone almost squeaked. If her
mother ever found out, if the press ever found out. Well, it would
rival the Paris Hilton scandal. “How do you know about that?”

Jackie smiled. Simone only ever witnessed
that look when her sister was up on the movie screen. A special
glitter. As if Jackie came to life only behind the camera, when she
wasn’t standing in their mother’s shadow.

“I do know how to use a computer. Maybe I’m
one of your clients,” Jackie whispered through a smile.

Simone gasped. “You are not.”

But Jackie didn’t answer. Instead, she said,
“You think you do what you want, Simone, but you’re not free.”

“I have lots of freedom.” Tons. “I don’t wear
size zero clothing.”

Her sister’s smile faded, and the twinkle in
her eyes dimmed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it
sounded.” Simone had, and guilt made her clamp down hard on her
back teeth.

“It’s okay. That’s why I have to tell her
about him. Soon. I need to be free, too.”

“Are you in love?” Suddenly, they were in
high school again and whispering secrets to each other in the
dark.

“He’s special. When I’m with him, I feel
giddy, like I can’t stop smiling. And when he touches me, Simone,
it’s like I can’t catch my breath. Like I’ll die if he stops.”

She knew exactly what her sister meant.

“I don’t want to crawl out of his bed and
sneak home. I’m twenty-eight years old, and I don’t want to sneak
around.” Jackie pushed a lock of her silky, blond, perfect hair out
of her eyes.

Simone squeezed her hand. “I guess you better
tell her.”

“I’m scared. Isn’t that silly?”

“No.” When facing her mother, Simone reverted
to the eight-year-old child caught sneaking a chocolate bar up to
her room. It was a closely guarded secret that most people would
never ever admit aloud, except in a psychiatrist’s office, but
there was always an authority figure in your life, the one person
who made you quiver like you were eight years old. Or a
jellyfish.

That icon happened to be her mother. Jackie
was no different when it came to Ariana’s effect.

“We could wake her up right now and tell her
together.” Like when they were kids, she and Jackie holding hands
in solidarity.

Jackie gasped, choked, then laughed. “Don’t
rush me.”

“Tomorrow?”

“When the time is right.”

“Will there ever be a right time?”

A tear pooled in the corner of her sister’s
eye.

“She can’t hurt you unless you let her.”
Which is why Simone lived miles out of Ariana’s sphere. It didn’t
seem as brave as she’d thought, more like running away. “Let’s make
a deal. I’ll plan to tell her that I’m not taking that job with
darling
Ambrose, and you plan to tell her that you’re in
love.”

“Okay.” Jackie sniffed.

“And Jackie? I really am happy for you. Don’t
let her take it away, no matter what.”

“She might not have to. I don’t think he’s
going to wait much longer for me to break the news to her.”