Infamous (14 page)

“Sit.” Alison motioned to the chair at the near end of her kitchen table. She turned on the overhead light and sat down next to him. “Let me see.”

A.J. held out his hand, and as she took it, she inhaled through her teeth.

“It’s not that bad,” he said. And in a sick and twisted way, whatever pain he was feeling was worth it, because she was holding his hand in both of hers, her long fingers cool against his skin.

“I can see the glass,” she said. “But I should get tweezers.” She looked up, directly into his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize, when I wrapped that towel around you … That must’ve hurt.”

“Yeah, that was kind of how I knew something was still in there,” he told her. “It’s okay. You didn’t know.”

“You didn’t scream,” she pointed out, still holding his hand, holding his gaze. “How could I know that it hurt, if you’re too busy being stoic and manly to scream?”

“I try to save the bulk of my screaming for when I’m killing giant snakes,” he told her. “Although a giant squid could probably get a rise out of me.”

Alison laughed. “Not a lot of giant squid in Arizona.”

A.J. nodded. “That would make it even scarier, don’t you think? Giant squid attacks from behind the desert scrub …?”

And time seemed to hang as they just sat there, smiling at each other. Until, that is, A.J. cleared his throat, and sat back.

“Oh, come on,” Jamie said, exasperation thick in his voice.

Alison let go of his hand, rising out of her chair. “I’ll get those tweezers.”

Jamie slid down off the counter. “For the love of God, son,” he said. “Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?”

“Don’t you need to be off fighting crime and righting wrongs?” A.J. asked, keeping his voice low. “Somewhere that isn’t here?”

“Dr. Alison Carter requests the presence of Austin James Gallagher, the Second, in her kitchen, after a soul-shaking, near-death experience, for a liplock in which she will kiss the jumping bejeezus out of him. No need to RSVP.”

“She doesn’t want to do that,” A.J. murmured.

“Yes,” Jamie said. “She most certainly does. She was trapped in her bathroom for hours with that snake, and you don’t even pat her hand, let alone give her a comforting hug? And okay. All right. I get the fact that you were being careful, when you thought you might be certifiable, but now that, thanks to that snake, may he rest in peace, I’ve managed to convince you that I’m truly here, that’s it’s really me, Jamie, your old gramps.… Right? So I just don’t get what’s holding you back. In fact, now I’m starting to think you’re just chickenshit.”

“I am not,” A.J. said. Not chickenshit nor entirely convinced that Jamie was real. He had been, yes, in the moment. But now the doubt was back. His mother would’ve insisted that there was some scientific explanation for the
snake’s behavior. But he didn’t say any of that aloud because that was, of course, right when Alison came back into the kitchen.

“You’re not what?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, clearing his throat to give himself time to think. “I’m, um, still not sure how the snake got in.”

“Well,” she said, sitting down and taking his hand again. “I’m calling the local pest control company. Let them figure it out and spray eagle urine or whatever they need to spray to keep it from happening again.”

“Eagle urine?” A.J. repeated just as Jamie did, too.

“Yeah, don’t eagles eat snakes?” Alison asked. “Wildlife tends to stay away from the wildlife that eats them, right? And while I prefer organic, natural solutions like eagle urine, after staring into that snake’s evil eyes for all those hours, I just might be okay with the boys from Snakes Begone Incorporated spraying toxic waste around the outside of the house, if that’s what it takes.” She looked up from his hand. “And yes, probably not, but still.” She held up the tweezers. “I sterilized this with a match while I was in the bathroom.” She paused and one elegant eyebrow went up as she added, “While you were out here. Talking to yourself.”

Oh, good.

“I, um, do that a lot,” A.J. told her, purposely not looking anywhere near Jamie.

“It’s a little weird,” she said, “but not too weird. A guy who looks like you? It’s quirky and even charming. But dye your hair chartreuse, gain four hundred pounds, tattoo your entire face, and stop bathing …? Different story, pal.”

A.J. had to laugh. “I’ll take that under advisement. I just … I’m alone a lot up in Alaska—”

Jamie moved directly into A.J.’s line of sight. “Why don’t you just tell her the truth,” he said, right when Alison said, “This might hurt.”

“Come on, kid,” Jamie implored him as, yes, her probing
did
hurt.

A.J. gritted his teeth but managed to force a smile as Alison looked up at him.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You know I’m real,” Jamie continued, “so just tell her about me, get it out of the way. Yeah, she’ll be freaked out at first, but I’ve figured out how we can prove it to her—”

“Got it!” Alison said triumphantly. She stood up, cupping her hand under the nearly invisible splinter of glass, washing it down the drain of the kitchen sink.

When her back was to him, A.J. took the opportunity to shake his head at Jamie. No. He wasn’t going to do that. Not yet. Not here. Not now.

Not until he gave it a whole hell of a lot more thought.

Because what if she was like his mother?

And what if his mother was right?

Alison rinsed the tweezers and washed her hands, raising her voice to be heard over the running water. “I don’t have the kind of bandages you’re going to need, but there’s an extensive first-aid station in the main production trailer.” She shut off the water and turned to face him, drying her hands on a towel. “I think they have some of those flexible fabric ones—you know, so that you can bend your hand? But I’m going to need you to be really careful, if you do any extra work, to take it off during the shot. When are you working next?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll remember to watch for it.” She glanced over at the clock on the microwave and took a deep breath. “I hate to snake and run, but I have a production meeting.”

“Oh,” A.J. said. He’d thought she had the afternoon free.

She followed his train of thought. “We’ll have to reschedule,” she said. “Our meeting. I’ve really only got my lunch and dinner times free. I’ve kind of used up lunch, and dinner’s already filled.”

“I didn’t realize that,” A.J. said, standing up and pushing the chair he’d been sitting in back under the table. “That you were using your downtime to …”

She waved it off. “It’s fine,” she said as she crossed back to
the table and started rummaging in a bag that was on one of the other chairs. She pulled out a clipboard, with what looked like a calendar attached. “It’s … interesting. Your story is … Well, there’s this new letter that just surfaced, from a local woman who met Melody right after she arrived in Jubilation. I didn’t know about it when I wrote my book, but … It raises some questions. And of course, if those diaries are real …”

“I still haven’t reached my sister,” A.J. told her.

“Ask her who wrote the letter,” Jamie said.

“Keep trying,” Alison said, flipping through the pages and checking her schedule. Unlike most of the crew, she apparently didn’t keep track of her life on an electronic device. “How’s tomorrow evening?” She looked up. “I’ve got a break from seven to eight-thirty.”

“Does that give you enough time to eat?” A.J. asked.

“Ask her.” Jamie was focused on the letter. “Better yet, ask her if you can see it.”

“We can meet at the caterer’s tent,” Alison spoke over Jamie, of course, because she couldn’t hear him. “Grab a tray and bring it over to my office. Eat while we talk. I’ll try to remember to clear us some desk space.”

“Almost like a dinner date,” Jamie pointed out.

“That sounds great,” A.J. said, resisting the temptation to hush the ghost.

“Letter,” Jamie persisted as Alison found a pen and wrote A.J.’s name next to 7:00 on her calendar. “Ask her if it mentions Mel’s black eye. She still had a trace of the bruise when I met her, nearly a month later, so it must’ve been a doozy when Quinn first hit her.”

A.J. sighed. “This letter,” he asked Alison. “Did it mention that Melody was injured, maybe? A black eye, or …?”

Alison tipped her head to look at him. “As a matter of fact, yes, it does. She fell off her horse.”

Jamie snorted. “Mel? Never. She could outride me—sidesaddle. You know how hard it is to ride sidesaddle? In a skirt? You should try it sometime—”

A.J. spoke over him. “She was an experienced rider.”

“Not according to Quinn.”

“I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but the whole story’s according to Quinn.”

“Melody
said she fell off her horse.”

“Fell off her horse,” A.J. said. “Tripped and fell down.
Clumsy me, I ran into a door.…”

Alison nodded somberly. “Yeah,” she said. “I hear you. Although, really, A.J., sometimes an accident’s just an accident.”

“Who wrote the letter?” Jamie asked again, and A.J. repeated his question.

“A Mrs. Penelope Eversfield,” Alison reported.

“The general store owner’s wife,” Jamie said, along with her, adding, “Second wife. Ol’ Dick Eversfield. He was a mean SOB and Quinn was in his pocket. Dick paid extra so that if there was trouble in town, Quinn and his men would protect the store first. After Quinn’s private interests, of course.”

“Apparently she wrote hundreds of letters to a sister in Denver,” Alison told A.J. He was getting good at listening to both of them talking at once. “I haven’t had a chance to read any of the others, but the woman who owns them is sending them. Which is really exciting.” Her eyes sparkled, but then she mocked herself. “And yes, I know I’m a total history nerd. Letters—whee!”

A.J. laughed. “I think it’s great,” he said. “Being able to see Jubilation through someone else’s eyes …”

“You are starting to sound like a broken record,” Alison told him. She glanced at the clock again.

“You need to get ready to go,” A.J. said, heading for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

But she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she said again. “Can I just …?” She moved toward him, into what might’ve turned into an awkwardly loose embrace.

But A.J. saw it coming and he stepped into it, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close, remembering Jamie’s words about his failure to deliver a comforting hug. But
she’d been in bare feet and he’d been standing in a puddle of dead snake.

But he wasn’t anymore, and he tried his best to be brotherly or paternal, to make this be about comfort instead of his wanting like hell to grab her ass.

She slipped her own arms around his waist and pressed her face into his shoulder, and there he stood, trying not to think too much about how smooth and soft her skin had looked when he’d burst through that bathroom door. He tried not to think about what he wanted, but instead to enjoy and appreciate this simple moment for what it was.

A little shared comfort after a bad scare.

“Kiss her,” Jamie murmured. “Come on, kid.”

A.J. shook his head and closed his eyes, trying to block Jamie out.

But then Alison laughed, her head still down, her voice muffled as she said, “Okay. So this was a mistake. I know I’m completely unable to think about anything besides the fact that you saw me naked, and I’m not sure what’s worse—” she lifted her head to smile up at him with amusement, except her eyes revealed that she was also feeling a little vulnerable “—the idea that you’re thinking about it, too, or that you’re maybe not thinking about it at all and—”

A.J. didn’t need any additional prompting. He kissed her, and he felt more than heard or saw Jamie vanish.

He felt Alison’s surprise, too, and for several oh-crap-filled fractions of a second, he worried that he’d read her wrong, that he’d listened to Jamie’s nonsense when he shouldn’t have.

But then her surprise turned to something else—something not just warm and welcoming, but also urgent.

And then she was kissing him back with that mouth that was both softly pliant and sweetly demanding. Her arms were tight around his waist, her hands against his back as she pressed herself against him, as he pulled her even closer—God, the woman was fire in his arms.

A.J. couldn’t help but think that had he done this while she’d had nothing more than that towel on, it would’ve
fallen to the floor at their feet by now, and her skin would be warm beneath his fingers.

Still, this was good, it was better than good, it was great, because now wasn’t the time to do more than kiss her. She had to go to her meeting, and he had to tell her … Something.

I might be crazy
.

I see dead people
, but that was not quite true. He actually saw dead
person
. Singular.

But then she slipped her hand up beneath the edge of his shirt, her fingers cool and soft against his bare back, and he knew he had no strength, no willpower, no resistance.

No integrity, and absolutely no honor, either, because if she started to tug him toward her bedroom, he would follow. Hell, if she started unfastening his pants, he’d have sex with her, right here, in her kitchen, pushing himself hard inside of her with most of their clothes still on, while she half-sat, half-leaned up on the counter. No explanations, no warnings, no
Before we do this, there’s something you should probably know about me
 …

And that should have made him feel bad, but he was too busy feeling unbelievably good as she kissed him even harder, deeper, longer, as her hand swept up his back, as he felt the softness of her breasts against his chest, as his own hand slid down, down, until, God, he was cupping her incredible ass and pressing her hips more tightly against him, and still, all she wanted, too, was more.

“Hey, Al, are you—whoops—sorry!” It was Hugh. He’d finally found the key and he’d used it to open the door. “I guess A.J. found you.”

Alison had pushed away from A.J., who immediately let her go.

“Hey,” she said weakly. “Hugh! We were just …”