Page 90 of Guilty as Sin
“Hey,” she said. “That was a compliment.” He raised a black eyebrow at her, and she said, “Mostly.”
“Mm.” He leaned back against the counter, took in the pair of them sitting at the counter in their pink sweaters, and said, “You’re right. Up close, I still see that bruising, and I’d see the body language, too. But from a distance? No. So here’s my idea. You go into the shop and tell Hailey and everybody else who comes in that you’ve moved in with me to keep yourself safe. Ring Brett Hunter and tell him as well. I’ll go to the Red Rooster, force some more breakfast down myself, and say the same thing. Then I’ll go by the police station and the gym and make sure everybody there knows it, too. If I was effective last night, it’ll work.”
“And what do I do?” Lily asked.
“You stay home,” Jace said. “It’s Thursday. Three days until your deadline. You stay invisible. We’ll come by twice a day for the animals, show ourselves coming and going, so like Paige says—if somebody sees you here, they’ll think it’s Paige. Or rather, they’ll think that both of you are you.” He shook his head. “I get confused myself, and I’m here looking at the two of you.”
“I don’t like leaving her here alone,” Paige said. “Even with the alarms and the cameras. If somebody’s really determined to force me out, here my property is. And Lily’shere.”
“Leave Tobias here?” Jace suggested. “Best early-warning system there is. Best home defense, too.”
The party in question was lying at Paige’s feet right now. Her stockinged foot was stroking over his back, in fact. “I’ll miss him,” she said, “but you’re right. I’d feel better.” It was just a few days. It wasn’t playing house with Jace. It wasn’t the kind of dangerous pretending her heart couldn’t afford. It was drawing attention away from Lily, that was all.
Lily said, “But then Tobias isn’t with you, Jace. And I thought you had somebody after you, too. Don’tyouneed home defense?”
“I’m spending today getting my place alarmed as well,” he said. “And I’m thesecond-best home defense there is.”
“That’s the wild card,” Paige said, trying to ignore the rush he gave her. It was that competence thing, or maybe that hard-man thing. Whatever it was, she’d found the quality that charmed the pants right off her. “Even after your show-and-tell last night. Whoever your stalker is, she’s crazy, and I still think she could’ve been the one who hit me. Just in case she was—do you think we take that twelve-gauge to your house, or leave it here for Lily and buy another one? I could go with you, maybe, so everybody sees me do it.”
“Take it with you,” Lily said. “Please don’t leave it with me.”
“Still?” Paige asked. “Even after I showed you how to use one? It’seasy.It’seffective.It’ll make a mess of your house, but it’s pretty much guaranteed to work. Thatker-chunkwhen you pump it can work wonders all by itself.”
“True,” Jace said. “What’s the effectiveness of a cop with a handgun nowadays, Paige?”
“Life-threatening situation? Forty percent max from right up close. That’s a trained officer who’s shot that weapon tens of thousands of times and qualified on the range. There’s a great big difference between action and reaction,” she told Lily, “and between having somebody shooting back at you and not. A civilian? They’re mostly going to miss, despite my recent experience. But not with a shotgun. That’s the point.”
“I can’t help it,” Lily said. “I don’t like them. You don’t like bees, and I don’t like guns. Which makes a whole lot more sense than bees, by the way. If Jace is willing to leave Tobias with me, I’ll be much happier with him. And if somebody breaks in, I’ll getout.Did you think of that? I know you guys would rather shoot. I’d rather get out so I don’t have to. I have twenty acres, and I know them better than anybody else would.”
“Country girl,” Jace said.
Lily lifted her chin. “Yes. And no, I wasn’t born that way, and I know Paige doesn’t get it. But there’s such a thing as the life you were meant to live. There’s such a thing as the place in your heart.”
Jace held out a palm. “No worries. I was born into a military family, myself, but so was my brother. Sometimes it takes. Sometimes something else does.”
“Like when I saw your pictures last night,” Paige somehow had to say, “and I got that hard rush. Something about a man in uniform that does it for me, maybe.”
His smile started slow, as usual. It started in his eyes. “Well,” he said, “that’s good news. It could be that I’ve got a thing for a woman in uniform myself. But we were talking about your sister. And country living. How she wasn’t born to it. Which I want to hear.”
“We’re from Modesto,” Paige said. “The closest we got to the farm was the stockyards. That’s where our dad worked. All I ever thought was that if I never smelled that again, it’d be too soon.”
“Which is why,” Lily said, “I don’t have a stockyard. I have five beautiful, clean little goats. I have pines and cedars and Douglas fir. I have mountains and snow and a creek. I love them, and I’m going to keep them, but I’m not going to hurt anybody for them. That’s my line in the sand.”
Jace drove Paige to work, since Lily’s car was still parked at the gym. “Give me the keys,” he told Paige on the drive, “and I’ll check it out and drive it to the shop for you.”
He could feel her hesitate, and he knew why. “It wasn’t a marriage proposal,” he said. “It was an offer to drive your car three blocks.”
She set the keys in the center console. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He stopped at the sign at the edge of town, then headed on through.
She said, “I don’t like leaving Lily out there without her car, but it’s a lot more convincing to have it sitting outside your house.”
“That’s the idea.” He stopped outside the shop. “She has your number. She has my number. She has Tobias. And from what I see, she’s got a good brain in her head. Heaps of courage, too. She does it differently than you do. That doesn’t mean she does it worse.”
She sighed. “Would you stop being so smart?”
He laughed out loud. “Can’t help it. I was born that way.”
