Who Glares Wins (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (4 page)

Since then, nada.
Nothing. Ziparoonie.

Of course, that could
have
a lot to do with m
y
seeing Maddox. Maddox and Solomon
were
colleagues for a short while, working on a joint task force
to
investigat
e
a multi-million
-
dollar fraud—a case I
ultimately
cracked—but
I wouldn't call them friends. As far as I knew
,
they hadn't seen each other since then. Still, even though Solomon
di
dn't press for anything more, and I
di
dn't offer, I
considered
it
more
polite not to push my
relationship with Maddox
in his face. P
lus
,
if I spent all day twirling my hair and giggling about my hot cop boyfriend, I could definitely kiss my job goodbye.

I buckled up and headed out, pointing the car towards Frederickstown,
while
trying not to think about Solomon's lips on mine. I took the job because I wanted it, and because Solomon
promised to train me
, not because he was hotter than a volcano
. B
ut every so often
,
I saw him looking at me in a way that wasn't strictly professional
;
and every so often
,
I caught his eye,
and
held it for a split second
longer than I needed to
,
before looking
away. Playing games didn't seem wise
,
not with my job
,
and certainly not with a man like Solomon.
Definitely
not
until I found
out where things
were
head
ing
with Maddox.
Given my colleagues
’
first
impressions of me, largely due to
my
non-PI
background
and
for which, ironically, Solomon
decided to employ
me, m
y job felt precarious enough as it was
. I did not need to
add any emotional entanglements to the issue.

As I meandered through traffic, my thoughts
turned
to Maddox. I liked him a lot. It was too early to say whether there was, or would be, love, but I felt a lot of affection for him and
received
a lot back. So far
,
our dating life was relaxed, calling each other as and when,
with
normally not more than a couple of days
elapsing
. Our relationship had quickly progressed to the sleeping together stage
,
and was now in regular sleepover territory
;
but although he'd stayed over at m
y place
, I
had
yet to stay at his.

My cheeks flushed and my heart sped up. Possibly that was the invitation for tonight.

Fabulous.

I pulled up
outside Marissa's apartment building
, parking on the street
,
and shut off the engine
. I sat
there
, just
watching for ten minutes
,
until the heat
completely
dissipated from the car. No one came in or out,
and
no cars entered the small lot to the side of the building.

I checked my file for Elisabeth's description of Marissa's car
,
but there was no small Honda. I grabbed my purse,
made sure
my notepad and pen were inside, then walked over to the building. Six names were written against the buzzers on the door and I jotted them down
before walking
back to my car. I sat a while longer, wondering where Marissa was, then drove home
. I was
buzzed
because
tomorrow I might have a case of my own.

Chapter Two

An hour later,
Lily,
my best friend and downstairs neighbor, and I managed to coordinate our exits.

"On a date?" I asked, taking in
her
short
,
black
dress and high heels.

"An early dinner," she said, nodding in the affirmative. She held up a garment bag and pulled a face. "And then I'm working the door at Paradise." We both knew what that meant. Paradise was a fun club with cheap booze and a big dance floor
,
but something of a meat market. People went there to do
two
things: get drunk and meet the opposite sex, two activities that went hand-in-hand. Of course, that also meant the patrons got lippy
;
and Lily, in her job as host and door manager, got to deal wi
th
them
before siccing the bouncers on them.
"You?"

"Dinner with Maddox at his place
,
and hopefully
,
the horizontal tango." I wasn't nearly so well dressed, but after a day in the dress and heels, I was comfortable in
jeans and a silky top, the peep-
toes back in place. I tossed some extra clothes into a small
overnight
bag that really could masquerade as an obscenely large purse, just in case I read the signals wrong
,
and Maddox only intended dinner, not a sleepover.

"Excellent," said Lily. "Have fun! Do everything I
like to
do."

"Even the nasty stuff?"

"Especially that. Do that twice."

I stopped by Monty's Slices, the best pizzeria in Montgomery, for a large chicken pizza,
and
a side o
f salad
,
for no other reason than
to pretend
we had
something healthy on our plates
. Then I
drove the rest of the way to Maddox's.

Maddox lived in Harbridge, an area realtors liked to call
“
up and coming
,”
That meant delis selling foreign cheeses and nice wines sprang up, coffee bars
became
the norm
,
and
housing
prices were starting to
soar
out of achievable reach
. There were
smug couples everywhere
.
I smugly assimilated.

Halfway between my place and Maddox's
, I pulled over and sat for a moment
,
looking at
the dream house I yearned for
. It was
a buttery
-
yellow bungalow with a neat little yard out front
and
m
ansard windows in the roof. Seeing it en route made
the drive both pleasurable and heartbreaking
,
because I couldn't see how my
income c
ould ever stretch to
afford
it.
With a sigh, I pulled out and continued on, the scent of pizza filling my nose.

Like me,
Maddox
had an apartment on the second floor
,
but his place was slightly large
r
than mine
. H
e bought it when his building went co-op. He buzzed me in and was waiting with the door open while I skipped up the stairs and straight into his arms.

Maddox is delicious, inside and out. Today
,
he wore his suit pants and an open-necked
,
blue shirt, the tie long gone, so he clearly hadn't been off duty long. His jaw was dusted
well
past a five o'clock shadow
,
and his hair was cut very short
, ridding it of the unruly growth that just add
ed
to his sexiness
.
I
nheriting
dark-haired genes and a quick wit,
his
fondness for St
.
Patrick's
D
ay
, is more
focused on
the beer and less to do with
his
Irish heritage
, one
that
dates
some way back in his family tree.
My brothers respected him, my parents thought he was great
,
and my sister hadn't said anything condescending when they met
;
so he was doing very well in the boyfriend-stakes
too
.

I stood on tiptoes and kissed him a long, long time. "Pizza delivery."

"The pizza boy at Marcello's never delivers like this."

"Does he kiss?"

Maddox pulled a face and pushed the door shut. "No. Why? You looking for a tip?"

"Bet he doesn't suggest taking his clothes off either." I smirked and sidled past Maddox to lay the box on the small
,
two
-
person dining table that
occupied a sizable
chunk of his kitchen.

"Are you offering?" Maddox's hands went around my waist, and he kissed me again.

"I was suggesting you might want to slip into something more naked." I playfully flicked the button of his shirt, then another, and, oh well, the rest too, pushing it back to reveal a firm chest, peppered with fine hair. "Yummy."

"I've heard you talk that way to pizza. You look at pizza the same way too."

"Yeah," I agreed
, tugging the shirt from his waistband
. "There'
re
some things that I really like."

"I've got something else you'll really like."

"Naughty." I kissed him again.

"Not that, but I'll suggest that in, oh, thirty seconds." Maddox winked, his hands sliding under my top. "I ran your plates."

I raised my eyebrows,
and
stopped the nibbling on his neck. "And you got something?"

"If you stop doing that, I won't tell."

"Fine, but this is purely i
n the name of work.
Just so you know.
" I nibbled his neck some more, making my way up to his jaw. "Keep talking," I reminded him
when a rumbling moan
sounded in his throat
.

"The car was impounded ten days ago. It's
been
sitting
in the impound lot
ever since
."

"Have I mentioned you're a brilliant detective?" I said, and this time
,
I got his mouth.
He sucked my lower lip, before his tongue searched for mine.

"I'm good with my hands too," Maddox murmured between kisses.

"Prove it."

Maddox swiped the pizza box out
of
the way, tossing it onto the counter
. He proceeded to
“
prove it
”
enthus
iastically on the kitchen table,
with
our clothes pooled
in a heap
on the tile floor.

Three
quarters of a still warm pizza
,
and an hour later
,
he also proved it on the couch
,
before tucking us under a heavy
,
wool blanket. My head lay on his bare chest and he stroked my hair. The only light came from the flicker of the television,
which was
turned down low. I was warm, cozy and very, very relaxed. If I never had to move again
,
that
would
just
be
peachy.

"
Tell me
,
what’s going on
with the owner of this car?" he asked.

"I hope you w
eren
't thinking about that during sex." I
planted
a kiss on his chest, about an inch from a small, pert nipple. I licked it and Maddox's hand stopped the stroking and he sighed.

"No. Just popped into my head."

"Solomon doesn't want us talking about cases out
of
the office." He made that very clear the day he assembled the team, introducing us to one another and laying down the rules. Working contacts was fine
;
discussing our cases,
however,
Solomon
stated
plainly, was not.

"I just gave you vital information." We both knew Maddox was playing with me. He knew I could have gotten the info elsewhere and I said as much. "So it was an excuse to talk to me?" he asked, pretending to be surprised
with a mock gasp of astonishment
.

I wiggled my eyebrows at him.
"I wanted the info too."

"You don't need an excuse to talk to me. Just call and say hey."

"I know." I snuggled in, drawing my feet under the blanket, briefly wondering where my clothes were. Ah,
yes,
the kitchen floor.

"Are you staying over?"

"If that's an invitation, yes."

"It's an invitation. Now you have to answer my question or I'll bug you all night."

"
Jeez
, you're not a cop for nothing."

"Stop deflecting,
"
he said, his hand sliding down my back and under the blanket.

I thought about it. There was no particular reason that I could think of not to tell Maddox. Besides
,
we hadn't even taken the case yet. Maddox might have a hint or two for me
,
and that couldn't hurt either. I was confident about my investigative skills,
such as they were,
but I wasn't a fool. I still needed help while I learned the ropes. It wasn't just learning how to assess people, along with working off
a hunch
. I
t was the tools of the trade too: the computer programs, the questioning, the surveillance, learning
how
to protect myself from people who weren't happy about an investigation, not that I wanted it to come to that. I had a gun
permit
, and a
SIG Compact
locked in a drawer in my apartment
,
but I hadn't gotten to the point where I felt
the need
to carry it.

"The owner might be a missing person," I said
, keeping
my info
to the bare minimum
. "Her best friend came to the office to ask us to look for her."

"She should've reported it to the police," replied Maddox.

"She did. You guys weren't interested."

"Must have been a reason."
His fingers danced across my lower back and I held my breath.

"Not a good one
,
according to her friend."

"You going to look for her?"

"Maybe. If Solomon wants us to take the case."

"How's working for Solomon going?"

"You
still
haven't seen him?"
I asked, surprised. Sure, they weren’t buddy-buddy
,
but I expected them to run into each other
from
time
to time
.

"No."

"Really? He's been here
week
s." Or longer, I wasn't sure. Solomon didn't get personal and wasn't real chatty. I didn't even know where he lived. Solomon and Maddox both
insisted
they weren't friends, or
“
didn't hang out
,”
which I thought meant the same thing, but they had worked together closely in the past. I still saw people I worked with.
Well, not Vincent
,
al
though he did send me a postcard from jail
,
which I filed in the trashcan.

"I haven't seen him."

I shrugged and moved on. "It's going okay. Mostly
,
he's teaching me stuff
or sending me out with one of the guys to follow around
. The other guys are all experienced, a lot
more
experienced. You might
k
now Matt Flaherty, he's ex-PD. I haven't had my own case yet."

"Name sounds familiar. Solomon say what kind of cases you might get?"