Page 107 of Guilty as Sin
“Not for her,” Lily said. “For you.”
Jace would have sworn that Paige didn’t know what she was talking about. He almost laughed.
They’d won. Twice. He sat on a weeping Charlotte, held her bloody wrists in his hand, and told Paige, “You’re a wee bit damaged, baby. Half your face is twice its size, your neck is bleeding, and your hand looks like you’ve mangled it. And bloody hell, but I love you.”
Paige ended up with a shot of adrenaline, antihistamine, and steroids that wasn’t any fun at all. When she was shaking under a heated blanket in Emergency with a couple stitches in her neck, with Jace on one side of her holding her hand and Lily on the other, she told them, “S-s-see? I was right. Bees are b-b-b-ad.”
“They’re bad for you,” Jace said. “You’ve convinced me.”
“I don’t have to have bees anymore,” Lily said. “I’ll give them away. If any are left after their hive got smashed.”
“You’re not s-s-sad?” Paige asked. “I’ll bet you loved your bees. And the chickens are out again, too. There are coyotes.”
“I told you,” Lily said. “I only cry for mammals.” Her eyeswerefilled with tears, and Paige wanted to tell her not to cry, but she couldn’t manage it. Lily told Jace, “Give me your keys. I need to take Tobias to the vet.”
“Oh,” Jace said. “Right. I needed to make sure Paige was OK first.”
Paige said, “What? You didn’t take him yet? Jace. You have to.” Lily had ridden with her in the ambulance, even though an ambulance had been over the top, and she’d tried to say so. Jace had driven in, but he hadn’t taken care of Tobias?
“Never mind,” Lily said. All her serenity was somehow back again, even though she’d run for her life tonight, had hidden in a closet from a murderous stalker and slashed her with a razor. “I’m doing it. I can leave Jace with you. Besides, I think Tobias may have saved my life tonight. I thought he was doing that at my house, but I guess not. It turns out he needed to do it at Jace’s house. He gave me the chance to get away and hide. I also think we all saved Jace’s life, because that woman iscrazy.But never mind. We got her.” She told Paige, “I never got it before, why you’d want to be a cop. But wegother, and Jace is safe, and you’re safe. And now Tobias needs to go to the vet.” She held out her hand to Jace. “Keys.”
Jace handed them over and said, “Thanks,” and Lily gave Paige a kiss on the forehead, smoothed her hair back from her face, and said, “Rest, sweetie.”
Paige told Jace again, when Lily had left, “You should have taken him.” The shaking had eased some, and now, what she mostly felt was tired.
“No,” he said. “I had to check on you first. Tobias’s leg is injured. You almost had your throat cut. Lily is taking him.”
“I don’t want Lily to have to… go home alone. Later.” Her eyes were trying to close. “She’s not acting scared now, but she’ll be so scared later, when she thinks about it, when she lies in bed. She’s not used to this. When she came out of the closet… when I think of her hiding in the closet, being so afraid…” She was trying not to cry. It was hard.
“How would it be,” Jace said, “if I got her a room at the Sinful Inn, so she’d have you close, and you’d have her?”
“Since the Super 8 is… booked up.”
This time, he was the one kissing her forehead. “Yeah.”
“I look ugly,” she said.
He laughed out loud. “Yeah, baby. You do. No worries. You’ll be beautiful again tomorrow.”
“You’re a very nice man. You know that?”
“No,” he said. “Just a man who loves you.”
She gripped the hand that was holding hers more tightly, swallowed against the fear, and said it. “Last night. Tonight. When we were making love. I thought… I thought…”
“Yeah?” When she didn’t go on, he said, “You can tell me. Only the two of us here. Your secret’s safe, hey.”
“That I need you.” She opened her eyes. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hand in his, and his eyes had never looked bluer. “That I love you. That I’m going to miss you too much. And it hurts.”
She made it to Lily’s boards-off unveiling the next day. She had to, after all the three of them had gone through to make it happen. When she walked past the sidewalk sign announcing “Announcement @ 2:00 Today!” and into the store with Jace at her side, her floaty, pale-blue dress coordinated once more with Lily’s, her hair and makeup perfect, with a strip of white gauze wrapped all the way around her neck, her index finger in a splint, and a few extra bumps on her face—you could say she caused a sensation.
Lily stepped onto a stool, then up onto the counter, and clapped her hands overhead. “May I have your attention, please,” she told the gathering from amongst the pink and white helium balloons that floated near the ceiling. “First, I’d like to introduce my sister Paige, who you could say has been taking my lumps for me over this past week. In case you can’t tell over the bee stings, she’s my identical twin.”
Hailey had a hand on her ample chest and looked like she was about to keel over. Raeleigh Franklin, the owner of the Timberline Motel, had her mouth open, and the guy from the Gas & Go, whose name Paige still didn’t know, looked stunned for a change, instead of giving off a holy-hell-I’m-surrounded-by-girly-lingerie discomfort-vibe the way he had a minute earlier. Lily waited for the murmurs to die down, then said, “And secondly—I’m in the process of working out a deal with Brett Hunter. If you want to pressure somebody, pressure him to make the deal a good one, so I sign it.”
Hunter was there, too, standing by the nightgowns talking to the older guy from the County Commissioners’ meeting. He smiled at Lily’s comment, held up a hand, and said, “Have some pity. Talk about a hard negotiator. I’m likely to lose my shirt here.”
“Right,” Lily said. “That’s what you say when you’re trying to convince me that this is really your best offer. I’ve bought a car before. I know how this game works.”
