Page 9 of Sawyer
Lucky didn’t answer, well, with words anyway. But her eyes sparkled, and she nodded on the inside.
Still, even with the joy of dancing with her best friend, lost in her Little dance world, Lele couldn’t shake it. That prickle on the back of her neck. Like eyes on her. Watching.
She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to freak Lucky out. Not when they were getting their groove on.
Besides, who would be watchingher?
Who’d care enough to spy on a woman dancing with her stuffie in the middle of nowhere?
Silly.
Totally silly.
CHAPTER 4
Sawyer stared at the monitor, torn between laughing and storming across the street to rip those absurd platform shoes off her feet.
Lele looked like she’d time-traveled straight out of the 1970s, clothing, makeup, and a strut that said she absolutely did not give a damn. And the kicker? She’d dressed her stuffed animal the same way. It should’ve been ridiculous. Instead, it was infuriatingly cute.
What the hell was she doing?
It was ten a.m. on a Sunday in the middle of July. There were no costume parties. Halloween was too far away to shop for costumes. He’d found zero evidence she read to kids at the library or moonlighted at the children’s hospital. And yet, there she was, parading around like her getup was perfectly normal.
Sawyer leaned in, elbows on the desk, eyes fixed on her. The woman was a puzzle he had to solve. A sexy, infuriating, glitter-bomb of a puzzle. And God help him, he wanted to know what made her tick. Or better yet, what would make her unravel.
Then she’d turned on the most godawful racket, calling it music, and began to flail around the room. When she played 1970sdisco music at the volume she’d set, he was surprised her ears didn’t bleed.
The godawful mix of disco beats that assaulted his ears was like a jackhammer wrapped in glitter. For a second, he thought she was having a seizure. Her arms flailed. Her hips jerked. And the way her ponytail whirled, it could have kept a hula hoop spinning.
It took two songs before it hit him. She was dancing. Or at least she was trying to.
And she was terrible. Epically bad. She was so out of sync with the music, he wasn’t sure why she bothered to have it playing.
But the glow on her face wasn’t only caused by sweat. She laughed and spun like a toddler on a sugar high. No, like a Little girl having the time of her life.
He couldn’t stop watching. She danced for over an hour without so much as a bottle of water, as if stopping would allow someone to steal her joy. Which begged the question, who was stealing her joy?
Better question, how the hell did she have all those curves with a workout like that? Not that he was complaining. He loved watching each and every bound and jiggle of her perfect figure.
After an hour, she collapsed on the couch, sweaty and breathless. He decided that, if she were his, he’d endure the disco, the chaos, all of it. Just to see her light up like that.
But she wasn’t his. She couldn’t be. He wasn’t the kind of man who betrayed a friend. So even though she might dance like an angel in freefall, she was still the woman who threw Jaxon under the bus to save herself.
It didn’t matter that it backfired. The General had swooped in like he always did, smearing the mess he’d made all over her so she could take the fall. Still, she’d gotten involved in the first place, hadn’t she? She’d earned the time she’d served. Every second. Jaxon hadn’t.
Once she’d recuperated, she peeled herself off the couch andchanged into tiny cutoffs that looked painted on and a red tube top that clung like sin. He scowled. Where the hell was she going dressed like that?
She’d changed into practically nothing. But her hair and makeup were still on. It had to be for a man, right? His breathing sped up as if he’d been the one dancing nonstop for an hour. He’d told Reid she didn’t have a man in her life. Had he been wrong? How could he have been that wrong?.
The longer he watched her, the angrier he got. If she’d gotten all dolled up in her “fuck me, Daddy outfit, it had to be for some man. A man who wasn’t him. He shoved back from his desk, resisting the urge to punch his fist through the computer screen.
Without a thought to why he was so upset, he stomped out of the house he’d rented across the street from Lele. He stared at her home.
Her garage door lifted, and Lele backed out of the garage, pulling her lawnmower down the driveway behind her. He couldn’t believe she wore that to mow the grass.
He’d seen the lawnmower when he’d installed the camera in her garage. It was old, with a pull cord instead of an ignition button, no self-propulsion, and no large wheels. There was nothing to make using the mower an easy job. Her lawn was a steep incline, front and back.
And why had she waited until the middle of the day to mow her grass? It was over ninety degrees without a cloud in the sky. No way had she thought to put on any sunscreen. It would be a miracle if she avoided sun poisoning and heat stroke.
