Page 33 of Sirens
Okay, so he knew she wastechnicallystill married.
At least he didn’t knoweverything.And Maggie certainly hadn’t felt compelled to offer up any extra details.
Like the fact that Charlie was about to be paroled after serving a four-year sentence for bribery and racketeering charges, along with eleven other members of the Long Island Local No. 200 Journeyman and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry Union.
Or that he’d taken her virginity in the back of his 1989 Cadillac Eldorado the night of the Sophomore Fall Formal to “Closer” by the Chainsmokers.
She shuddered as the sprawling Victorian monstrosity came into view, looming over Water Street and Puget Sound, its tidy garden and wraparound porch boasting an unobstructed view of the lighthouse beyond.
Maggie paused to catch her breath, glaring at the structure as if it were personally responsible for her discomfort.
And in a way, it was.
If only Mayor Stewart had shown up at Sirens’ happy hour either of the last two evenings like he was supposed to, shewouldn’t be fighting for her life while the town’s native deer gangs silently judged her, their liquid chocolate eyes stoic as she aggressively sucked salty wind down her raw, hoarse throat.
On the upside, she’d had a chance to schmooze with Darby Dunwell, who had quickly become her favorite—okay, second favorite—person in Townsend Harbor. And that was only because Myrtle and Vee were a package deal.
Over cosmopolitans almost theexactshade of her hair, she’d served Maggie the tea about the Townsend-Stewart scandal that had rocked the small town to its core. While her lumbersnack of a man-piece slowly turned the color of an atomic beet.
Maggie supposed she might too if her mother had been out bribing officials and arranging Machiavellian machinations instead of sucking an endless succession of Newport 100’s while using her one-year AA chip to molest Lucky Dog scratch-offs at the kitchen table.
The image opened an ache in her chest that propelled her the last few yards to the border of the mayor’s property.
Dappled sunlight fell through a thick canopy of trees, casting playful shadows on the cobblestone driveway that snaked its way up to the grand façade. Illuminated beneath the flickering light, the mansion was simultaneously imposing and inviting with its ivy-scribbled walls, intricately carved gables, and the towering oak that stood sentinel by the small service gate entrance.
Which, thank fuck for small favors, was exactly as it had been pictured on Google Maps: concealed from the street by a hedgerow and on the other side of the formidable gazebo that stood between it and the rear veranda.
Maggie paused on the corner, midwifing her camera out of its carrying case and lifting it to her face to squint through the aperture.
Only, there wasn’t one.
She blinked at the wall of black, confused until she pulled it away to examine the lens.
Which was covered by a lens cap that Trent McGarvey had helpfully put on it.
After he’d obviously wiped it down. Just as he had the rest of her cluttered hidey-hole of a home base before she came home to bust him pawing through her panty drawer.
A little shower of sparks sizzled through her center as she remembered the stricken look on his face.
And the not-inconsiderable semi in his trousers.
What followed was adorably awkward confrontation that ended with McGarvey sputtering something about verbal consent before he’d hightailed it out of her place like he was being chased with a blowtorch.
Still. The man was perhaps the only cop in existence who left the premises nicer than he found them after a search.
Never in her life had a man she was sharing a home with ever bothered to lift a finger to clean. Her father, for instance, had only ever contributed to household chores by mowing the lawn and carving the holiday ham. And the only thing that walking colostomy bag Charlie had ever lifted around the house was his left butt cheek to rip ass every time the Jets scored a touchdown on Sunday afternoons.
And now, there was McGarvey. Beautiful, responsible, infuriatingly meticulous McGarvey, who had not only navigated her labyrinthine instructions for feeding Roxie, he’d broken down the small mountain of empty Amazon boxes to craft a makeshift barrier to keep her everything-impaired rescue dog from getting stuck under the coffee table.
Again.
Speaking of Roxie,Maggie thought—the sooner she finished this unpleasant errand, the sooner they could curl up on the couch together with a bowl of 9 Pound Hammer and theEntenmann’s Lemon Crunch Cake that Mark had been kind enough to send in her East Coast withdrawal care package.
True to Gabe’s “nobody fuckin’ locks nothin’ around here” adage, she found the gate secured by only a basic gravity latch, which she easily reached through the wrought-iron bars to unhook.
Beyond the gate, a wild oasis of lush greenery stretched out before her, a stark contrast to the cookie-cutter lawns of Townsend Harbor. Century-old willows wept their tendrils over a stone path leading to a small pond surrounded by well-manicured rosebushes, seemingly transported straight out of an English countryside.
As she neared the back of the house, the unmistakable sound of sharp consonants and hissed whispers pricked the air with tension. Her curiosity piqued, Maggie sidestepped a marble statue of a cherub peeing into an ornate birdbath—Townsend Harbor’s idea of tasteful lawn décor, apparently.
