Page 12 of Guilty as Sin
“Need a hand?”
She whirled, staggered, and Tinkerbelle went flying like a projectile, straight into the man. He caught her in a move so fast Paige barely saw it, and he held on.
The dog, an enormous, handsome Ridgeback, was still barking. The black goat, Edelweiss, was still running in circles, her heavy udder banging against her legs. The baby goats were still bouncing and bleating. The chickens were still scattering and cackling. And a man with hair as black and shiny as a raven’s wing and a beard as dark as sin was looking at her with a sardonic gleam in his eyes. Hisblueeyes, she realized with a shock that went all the way through her. The blue of… of something very blue. Some jewel.
Whowasthis? Strong neck, faded blue T-shirt stretching over too much broad, lean chest, black running shorts slung over slim hips, long, muscular legs. Musculararms.Big, sinewy hands wrapped around the goat as if that goat wasn’t going anywhere. Which it wasn’t.
His whole self sent one message.Ready and waiting.Ready for what, she wasn’t sure. But this was a man with every bit of the confidence she’d just lost. She straightened up, got her own stance back, and said, carefullynotgasping, “Thanks. Give her to me.”
Mr. Wonderful smiled some more. One-sided, like he didn’t do it much. “Tobias,” he said, which she thought was his name until he added, “Sit. Quiet.” The Ridgeback got on his butt fast and shut up, like everybody had to do what this guy said.
“Where?” her new boyfriend asked her, and she blinked at him. He lifted Tinkerbelle a few inches. The goat had apparently decided she liked him, because she was snuggled up like she’d found sanctuary. Some females had no self-respect.
“Oh,” Paige said. “Barn. Uh, shed.” Whowasthis guy? Was she supposed to know him? “In here.” She led him under the shaded entrance, focusing on keeping herself from limping, and not thinking about her polka-dot black-and-white apron with the huge, flirty pink bow in the small of her back. The one he’d be looking at right now.
Wait. She was Lily.Sweet, dammit.She headed over to the milking stand, which the goats weresupposedto jump eagerly up onto, saw the dish and the stanchion, and thought,Oh, wait. That would’ve been a good idea. Bribery.Somehow, she was reaching for the grain bin, because her body knew where it was. Too bad it hadn’t told her earlier. She sprinkled some grain in the treat dish beyond the stanchion, and Tinkerbelle, whom the pirate had set down, jumped up on the stand and stuck her neck through the opening like she’d wanted to be there all along.
“Oh,nowyou cooperate,” Paige said. Tinkerbelle started munching the grain, and Paige grabbed a baby wipe from the box, started wiping down her udder, and reached for the… the other cup, the one you used first, for the dirty milk you got at the beginning. How did she remember? She just did. She wasn’t sure how long the Lily-magic would last, though, and the pirate was making her jumpy anyway. She told him, “Thanks. I appreciate it. I was, ah, on vacation, and they got, uh, unused to me. I’m fine now, though.”
“Yeah?” he said, leaning back against the wall and watching her too closely, making her fully aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra under the stretchy tank top. “Haven’t been caring for them yourself before, either?”
Breathe.“Yes.” She tried a serene Lily-smile as she took hold of Tinkerbelle’s teat and squeezed. And nothing happened. She tried again, pulling harder, Tinkerbelle shifted and kicked out with a hind leg, and Paige grabbed the cup just in time. Why wasn’t it working? “I sprained my hand, though, on my vacation. Paragliding,” she improvised wildly. “I didn’t realize milking with it would be so tricky. Goats sense weakness, apparently. It’s thrown me off. I’ll just skip it today, put the babies in with their mothers.”
“Paragliding, hey,” her new friend said. “That’s what’s wrong with your leg as well, I’m guessing. I was just thinking about doing something like that, dangerous as it would appear. You’ll have to tell me about it. I could give this a go, if you like.”
Great. How was she going to talk about paragliding? She’d made it up.Talk about goats. Now.“You mean the milking?” she asked. “Not that easy. It takes some practice. I’m fine.” Lily had said that—about the practice—which was why Paige hadn’t planned on an audience. Also, she’d have to have sprainedbothhands, because surely Lily milked with both, and the pirate looked like he knew it. For a horrible moment, she thought he knew about the switch, but that was impossible. Before Paige had changed her hair, their mother had been the only one who’d been able to tell the twins apart with any reliability. And being an identical twin wasn’t something you spread around, especially to attractive men. It tended to distract them from the uniquely-you part of the deal.
Not possible,she told herself again.He can’t know.While she was thinking it, the pirate had grabbed a wipe and used it on his own hands. The dog flopped down on the cement floor with a sigh as if resigned to staying a while, Paige handed his master a stainless-steel milking dish without a word, and he began to fill it.
“I didn’t realize you knew how to milk a goat,” she said. That seemed safe to say, and she needed to find out who he was somehow. She still couldn’t figure out if they were supposed to be acquainted.
“No reason you would,” he said. Which meant—what?
“Grow up on a farm, did you?” she asked. She discarded a few other gambits, likeRemind me how to spell your name.Why, so she could scratch their names in the dirt with a stick and draw a heart around them? She didn’t know if he’d evenmetLily. If he had, why wouldn’t her twin have mentioned him? It wasn’t like he blended. He was too supersized for this barn, for this town. “Readiness” all but crackled off him.
Cop.He had to be. With that hair, though? That beard? He was sitting on the stool now, his hands coaxing the milk quickly out of Tinkerbelle, and the sleeve of his plain blue T-shirt had fallen back to reveal the tip of a dagger, extending just past the ridged contour of his triceps.
Not a real dagger. A tattoo. But the hair on the back of her neck was still standing on end. Nothing she could put a name to. He wasn’t a gangbanger. That wasn’t a prison tat. Too well drawn. But he was dangerous. Dangerous, and milking her goat.
Undercover? In Sinful, “undercover” would be a plaid shirt and a Budweiser cap, not running shorts and too much presence. Fed, maybe? Something about him said, “Law enforcement, and on the sharp end.”
All of that took fifteen seconds to flash through her mind, and then he was pinning her down with those diamond-hard blue eyes and saying, “You’ve mucked up your pretty clothes. Pity.”
Serene. Sweet. Pretend you don’t notice the hard.She smiled at him Lily-style and said, “They all wash the same. And I have extras.”
“That one’s choice, though,” he said. “Not something I’d have expected to say. Reckon it depends on the apron.”
He wasn’t staring at her body, he was milking. But she knew what he was thinking. “Could be,” she said, and left it. Lily would have smiled and said something else, something cool, but leaving the door open for more if she liked him. Paige wasn’t that subtle.
He was finishing off on Tinkerbelle, and Paige was standing here like a statue, staring at the tip of that dagger and the tantalizing tattooed ribbon she could see halfway up its blade. A motto, probably, but what did it say?Thug Life?She’d bet not. She shook it off, took the milk container from the pirate, set it carefully aside as Tinkerbelle jumped down, then pulled a plastic tub from a top shelf without realizing she knew it was there, took out a treat, and held it out for Tinkerbelle. The goat gobbled it down, butted her head affectionately into the pirate’s thigh, earning her a scratch on the head, and made room for Edelweiss, the all-black goat, the other half of the Demonic Duo, who was hopping up now for her turn as if she’d only been waiting to be invited.
Right. Paige poured more grain into the dish and decided to let the Goat Whisperer go for it.
“What made you decide on goats?” he asked when he’d begun milking Edelweiss.
Paige recognized the question for what it was. Interrogation of the more devious kind. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Probably the same kind of thing that brought a man like you to Sinful.” He glanced up, startled for the first time, off-balance, and she thought,Oh, that got you, did it?She added, “Sometimes you’re just at that point in your life, aren’t you?” She gestured at his sleeve. “Needing a change. What is it? The tattoo?”
He hesitated for a long moment, then said, “My unit.”
