Page 7 of No More Secrets

Ivy returns to the kitchen that smells of melted chocolate and butter, exactly what he once believed a home should smell like, not the toxicity he grew up with. Her entire apartment is homey, with knitted blankets draped over tweed couches and frilly pillows used as seat cushions at the dining table. Nothing like his barren apartments, the one here and his place back in Seaside Cove.

She drops a handful of cookies in a brown lunch bag, rolls the opening closed, and gives him the bag. The slight tightening of appreciation he feels in his stomach is unexpected, but he digs in, finishing a cookie in two bites.

“You need to sell these in the deli,” he tells her, not for the first time.

Her gaze swerves to the doorbell’s chime box. “It would make sense if I had enough customers to buy them. They’ll get stale. Do you think it’s broken?”

“The chime box?” He shakes his head. “It works.”

Her mouth turns down. Today has been slower than most. It’s why he hasn’t told her about Sunshine Girl. Not because he doesn’t care what happens in the market on his watch. He doesn’t want to deal with the aftermath. Oh, he knows exactly what Sunshine stole, and that today’s sales barely make up for the loss of those items. It’ll break Ivy’s heart. Hard to entice prospective buyers for the property when a business isn’t profitable. But sales should pick up in a few weeks when schools let out for summer and people return to the road for vacations. Either way, she’ll be upset. Maybe he can convince her to install cameras to deter further thefts.

Ivy returns to her baking as his phone buzzes with an incoming text from Faye, one of many she’s sent today. First she spewed a chain of insults over how rude he was this morning when he shut the bathroom door in her face. Apparently she’d gotten out of bed to join him in the shower. He hadn’t noticed and frankly didn’t care. If she knew him, she wouldn’t have wasted her time insulting him. He didn’t care about that either.

Then a stream of apologies flew in over the next hour. She didn’t mean what she’d said. Last night had been wonderful. He hadn’t been rude this morning. It was a simple misunderstanding on her part. Could he forgive her?

Uh, no. Because he had been rude. And if she didn’t see that? He shakes his head.

He reads Faye’s latest text. Rafe’s getting in late. She wants to come over. She’ll make him dinner, bring a bottle of his favorite, El Tesoro Anejo, a tequila he can savor, not the cheap crap he tries to drown in.

He can picture it clearly. She’ll cook taco meat in the nude, lick sour cream from his chest. They’ll never get around to eating. Heat spreads from his center. He feels a curling down low.

“That your girl?” From the kitchen, Ivy gestures at his phone with a spatula.

Lucas grunts. Faye’s anything but. It’s just sex. She’s already attached, so she can’t get hooked on him. If he were wise, he’d block her number.

He slips the phone in his pocket, leaving the text unanswered like the others.

“We’re a tight community, Lucas.” Her back to him, Ivy transfers cookies from the baking sheet to a wire rack to cool. “Everybody knows everybody.”

And they’re all up in each other’s business. With a population under fifteen K, how could they not be? There’s not much else to do here. Aside from Mike who used to live in apartment three and a buddy of his Lucas meets at the Lone Palm over conversations of baseball, trucks, and dirt bikes, he keeps to himself. The permanent scowl on his face does wonders keeping people at a distance.

“Faye knows a lot of people. You also aren’t her first... indiscretion, to put it delicately. Don’t think her comings and goings go unnoticed.” She glances at him over her shoulder, brows high on her forehead.Just saying.

He grunts again, latching up the old metal toolbox, the red paint scuffed from decades of projects. If people are noticing, then he has to stop seeing her.

“Her husband’s a trucker and out of town a lot. Makes cheatin’ easy.”

“I’m not the one who’s married.”

“She is, and Rafe used to work at the prison.”

Not one of his brightest decisions, especially for a guy hiding from the type of people her husband associates with. Call him a masochist. He’s been called worse.

Lucas tucks the stepladder under his arm and picks up the toolbox. “Your point is?”

“A lot of those guards are his friends. And the Lone Palm is their favorite watering hole.”

He knows. They’re there every time he is, playing dice in the corner table. But Lucas can’t seem to stop himself from tempting fate.

He twists the knob on the front door, itching to bail. He needs a shower. “Say what you gotta say, Ivy.”

She sets down the spatula and turns around, hand on hip. “Don’t be foolish. There’s a good chance Rafe already knows about you.”

And he’s a big guy who packs a gun and probably owns a few rifles.

But Lucas is taller and wider. He’s also faster, and he knows when it’s time to make an exit.

He shrugs a shoulder.

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