Page 13 of Sirens
Only, the door swung away before her knuckles could make contact with the wood.
Trent McGarvey stood there looking unfairly handsome in a crisp white dress shirt and tailored slacks of a deep navy, a bemused grin tugging at one corner of his lips.
“Did you want to come in, or were you planning on loitering in the hall all night?”
Loitering.Implying that he knew she’d been standing there for some length of time.
Implying that?—
“Motion sensor camera.” McGarvey’s voice, deep and smooth, caught her off guard.
Christ on a slice. He’dseenher?
Imagining McGarvey watching while she wrestled her chub back into the spandex cincher slowly cutting off the circulation to her ankles, Maggie wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or aroused.
Unfortunately, her body had already decided for her.
“Just making sure the building is equipped with fire extinguishers,” she said, giving her head a playful toss.
“Smoke detectors, too.” Trent nailed her with a swoon-worthy smile and stepped back to grant her entry.
“Glad to see everything is in working order,” she said, giving him a stiff nod as she breezed across the threshold into anArchitectural Digest-worthy foyer.
“Take your coat?” he asked, closing the door behind her.
My coat. My panties. My firstborn…
“Sure.” Maggie made quick work of the buttons and shrugged the classic, figure-flattering trench down her shoulders.
McGarvey’s eyes flicked toward her nails as she held it out him. “I don’t know how you do anything with those.”
Maggie suppressed an eye roll. If she had a dollar for every time she’d heard that, she wouldn’t have to haunt the sample stands at Costco on weeks when her nails and stomach both needed a fill.
Not that that would be an option in Townsend Harbor unless she took the ferry back to Seattle.
Still, she’d already wrangled a brunch invite from the two adorable, ruckus-raising late-in-life lesbian life partners who’d made her evening infinitely more tolerable after the mayor had fucked off.
And women over fifty almost always sent you home with leftovers, in Maggie’s experience. Probably she’d be able to put off a grocery run for at least a few days after this weekend.
“Carefully,” she said belatedly. Her standard, if totally untrue, answer. Mostly she accidentally punctured things and swore a lot.
Trent’s grunt sounded less than convinced as he opened a closet door and plucked a black velvet hanger from the rail. “I have a purse hook too if you want to offload that.” He tipped his chin toward the Prada clutch dangling from her forearm.
A purse hook? In a bachelor pad?
Oh, this guy wasgood.
“Thanks,” Maggie said, clipping open the buckle to extract her phone. McGarvey’s eyes followed it as she tucked it beneath her bra strap below the neckline of her sweater.
She couldn’t afford to miss Gabe’s call.Not after what she’d learned about the Palace Hotel.
Namely that, like the mayoral mansion, it was owned by Mayor Stewart, but had ties both to Madame Katzandthe Townsend family. Who, Maggie was quickly learning, were balls deep in just about every account of this picturesque Pacific Northwest hamlet’s history.
History that was proving to have some rather interesting inconsistencies, depending on whose version of it you were reading.
Which was why she intended to make Ethan Townsend—Townsend Harbor’s golden boy, according to Gabe—her next target.
“Do I need to take my shoes off?” Maggie asked, pointing to the orderly rack beside the door.
