Bad Girls Don't (23 page)

“You’ve been avoiding me for a week now.” The words were out before she could stop them. Her lack of an inner editor to monitor what she said had never bothered her, but it was starting to now. And it was all his fault.

“I saw you at the football game a few days ago.”

“Yeah, and made out with me under the bleachers, only to shove me away.”

“You pushed first,” Nathan said.

Well, okay, he was right about that. She’d pushed first in order to be proactive. Skye was tired of being the one rejected. Better to be the dumpee and not the dumper. Better to be first to walk away. And better to stick to the facts, not the sex.

“Someone threw something at the marquee in the middle of the night and broke a bunch of the incandescent bulbs and some neon tubes. Or so Jerry tells me. I’m not an expert on neon.”

“Jerry?”

“Jerry the electrician. Lulu’s grandfather. He’s also promised to tune the Wurlitzer.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Is that your suspicious voice? I can’t tell for sure.”

“No,” he said mildly. “I was just making a comment.”

“Not a snide comment?”

“No.” Okay, now he didn’t sound so mild. He sounded like he was getting aggravated.

Well, join the party, buddy.

“Was anything taken from inside the theater?” he asked. “Any sign of forced entry?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you show me the exits?”

Why? So you can head for one of them instantly?
Hey, she didn’t say that out loud. Maybe she was learning some restraint.

Wait a second, was that necessarily a good thing?

“The exits?” he prompted.

“Right. Well, the front doors, of course. And then the ones at the back of the theater, near the stage.” She led him down the aisle and pointed to the two side fire doors and the two sets of double-wide doors on either side of the stage.

“What about the stage itself?” Nathan asked.

“What about it?”

He climbed the few steps leading up to the stage. The screen rolled up out of sight when not in use. Jerry had gotten that to work yesterday.

She followed Nathan onto the stage. “Pretty cool, huh? I can see this place as not only a movie theater but also a community center. We could do performances here of local groups.” She sat at the edge of the stage, not caring if her black shorts got dusty, and let her legs dangle down. She stared out at the empty seats as if imagining them filled with an appreciative audience.

“Local groups?” To her surprise, he sat beside her. “You mean, like local belly dancers?”

“Among other things, yes.” She started swinging her legs, excited with her plans for the future. “We could do fund-raisers. Special events.” She turned to find him staring at her.

Something in his eyes made her abruptly say, “You think I’m the kind of girl you bang once and then forget about.”

Her blunt words didn’t shock him. “No, I don’t.” He cupped her cheek with his big hand. “You are definitely unforgettable.”

She wasn’t convinced until his lips replaced his hand, and he tenderly nibbled his way across her cheek with the sweetest string of kisses she’d ever experienced. Once his mouth reached her parted lips, things got hot pretty fast.

Presto, they were both horizontal on the stage, putting on a passionate performance starring dueling tongues and caressing hands. He stole the scene by undoing the buttons of her cherry-studded shirt, slowly pulling the edges apart as if opening the proscenium curtains at a movie premiere.

Skye wasn’t wearing a bra. Nathan muttered his approval before bending down to swirl his tongue over her right nipple.

Which made it a very bad time for a hammer to come crashing down from someplace far above, almost hitting them both.

Chapter Twelve

Nathan
was on his feet with lightning speed. “Who else is in the building?”

He was totally the law enforcement officer now.

“No one.” She sat up. “Why?”

“That hammer didn’t fall by itself.”

“It could have. Maybe it slipped off something. There are metal beams, rollers, and other stuff up there. Some of the guys were working in that area earlier this morning.”

“What guys?”

“The guys that Tyler hired.”

“What do you know about Tyler?”

Skye blinked. “Oh, come on. You don’t think he left a hammer up there to fall on me, do you? How could he know I’d be making out on the stage with you at this exact time?”

“Maybe someone was watching us.”

“Hope you enjoyed the show!” she shouted at the ceiling.

“This isn’t a joke.”

“Do I look amused?”

She looked like a woman who’d been made love to. Her lips were still swollen from his kisses, her blouse unbuttoned. She wasn’t wearing a bra, so he could see her creamy breasts through the gaping material.

“Button up.”

“You button up,” she said, pointing to his shirt.

He quickly redid his buttons. She made no such move toward her own.

Nathan did a quick recon of the stage area to make sure they were indeed alone. When he returned, Skye was sitting just as he’d left her. “I’ll need a list of people who don’t want you opening the theater.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” He couldn’t take staring at her breasts a second longer without touching them. So he bent down and tried to button her blouse himself.

But his bumbly fingers kept brushing her bare skin. Skye smacked his hand. Hard. Not because she was modest, but because she was pissed off at him. He was wise enough to know the difference. And to back off.

“You think someone is trying to sabotage my opening the theater?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“So is the Loch Ness monster, that doesn’t mean that it’s real. Well, okay, that one time I did visit Scotland, I really did see something in the water that day, so maybe the monster was a bad example.”

Nathan was a little freaked to realize he was actually able to follow that garbled statement of hers. He knew her that well.

Irrelevant
, his crime-fighting, former Marine self stated.
Complete the mission. Ignore distractions
. “Who might have it in for you?”

She shrugged, making her shirt gap a little more. “How should I know? I don’t worry about things like that.”

“Well, you should start worrying.”

“Worrying creates negative energy.”

“So does getting hit on the head with a hammer. That can create permanent brain damage.”

“You’ve got brain damage if you think I’m going to back off renovating this theater.” She was shouting at him.

“I never said you should do that.”

“Is that your plan? To scare me into stopping?”

“My plan is to keep you safe.” He yanked her into his arms and kissed her, open blouse and all. “Why can’t you understand that?” he muttered against her mouth.

“Keeping me safe is just part of your job, right?”

“Kissing you is definitely
not
my job. It’s my . . . pleasure.”

“How do you know another tool won’t fall on us if we keep this up?”

“I’m almost willing to take the risk.” He tapped his index finger on the tip of her nose. “Almost. But not quite.”

“Skye, what on Earth are you doing up there on that stage half naked like that?” a voice demanded from the aisle.

It was Violet Wright.

Nathan instantly released Skye.

Skye made the introductions. “Sheriff, meet my long-lost grandmother, Violet.”

“I’ve never been lost in my life,” Violet declared. “And I’ve never seen a more derelict theater.”

“It used to look much worse,” Skye said cheerfully.

“Somehow, that’s not reassuring to me. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing, Skye.”

“And I have no intention of doing so.”

Nathan recognized that stubborn look in her eyes, even if her long-lost grandmother didn’t. He could have warned her that ordering Skye to do anything only made her dig in her heels.

Violet sniffed. “Clearly, your mother didn’t teach you to respect your elders.” Her gaze fixed on Nathan. “What about you, young man? Are you really a sheriff?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you should know better. What if someone else had walked in and found the two of you like that?” She waved a disapproving hand at them. Then, “Your blouse is unbuttoned, Skye.” Now she sounded horrified.

Nathan could read Skye’s mind. He could tell how tempted she was to yank open her blouse and flash the old lady.

But she didn’t.

Instead, Skye gritted her teeth and buttoned her shirt. Crookedly. On purpose, he suspected. As a sign of rebellion.

He was getting to know his bad girl pretty well.

Halt right there
, he ordered himself. She wasn’t
his
at all.

And he certainly wasn’t hers.

She didn’t even want him to be. Did she?

Why her? Why now?
Why not?

Well, that last question had about twenty good answers, too damn many to go into right now with him facing down an infuriated grandmother.

He tried to make polite conversation. “Do you live around here, Violet?”

“No, I came all the way from Bakersfield, California.”

“When she learned I’d won a million dollars,” Skye added.

Violet’s perfectly made-up face reflected her anger. “That’s not the reason and you know it. I already explained—”

“I know what you told me,” Skye interrupted. “That doesn’t mean I believe it.”

“I’ve never seen a girl so disrespectful.”

Skye shrugged. “What can I say? I’m one of a kind.”

Nathan was standing close enough to Skye to sense the tension in her body. He took note of her defensive body language.

“I hope you don’t plan on raising your daughter to be this disrespectful,” Violet said naughtily.

Big mistake. Nathan could have told the old lady that.

Skye reacted instantly, just as he’d known she would. “Don’t you tell me how to raise my daughter! You were hardly a model mother yourself. Letting your husband kick your only child out of the house as a teenager. What kind of mother allows that?”

“A frightened one.” Violet stared at them with stricken eyes before turning and walking out of the theater.

“Oh, shit.” Skye sank onto the stage floor. “Shit, shit, shit!” She banged her clenched hand against the warped wood.

Nathan knelt beside her, taking her hand in his. “Talk to me.”

“Why?” She sniffled. “So you can write it all down in your report for that thick file of yours?”

“Because you’re hurting.”

“Bad girls don’t hurt.”

“And I suppose they don’t bleed, either, huh?” He pointed to the scratch on her arm.

“Gravity.”

“Gravity made you bleed?”

“We got a new kitten. Her name is Gravity.”

“Isn’t that the kitten that Wally found over at the thrift store? The one that fell through the hole in the roof before it was repaired?”

“That’s right. How did you know that?”

“It’s my job to know what’s going on in this town.”

“What is going on?”

He was no dummy. He knew what she was asking.
What was going on between them?

Problem was, he didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know,” he admitted huskily.

“Yeah. Me, either.”

Their eyes met and he drank her in, as if hoping to absorb her into every cell of his body. She was gazing at him exactly the same way. Whatever this was between them, they were both in danger of falling victim to its power.

Nathan had a hard time seeing Skye as a victim of anything.

There was a time when he’d been like that too. Until he’d become victim to a grief that had brought him to his knees.

As if sensing the darkening of his thoughts, Skye suddenly looked away and focused on their surroundings.

“You know, a lot of these old theaters have been either demolished or chopped up into cubelike compartments to watch a movie. The magic of a big auditorium like this is lost.” She pointed to the deep blue ceiling where angels floated in a star-studded sky.

“So you’re a bad girl who still believes in magic?”

“Yes,” Skye said. “You always have to believe.”

“Sometimes things happen that make you stop believing.”

“Yeah, I know.” She gently squeezed his hand. He didn’t have to say that the death of his wife had made him stop believing in anything other than the letter of the law. She seemed to already know.

Nathan cleared his throat. “So, getting back to the matter of that hammer . . .”

“You don’t think it was an accident?”

Nathan shook his head. “That’s not what my gut is telling me. I’m going to check the hammer for fingerprints, see what turns up.”

“How do you know someone wasn’t after you?”

“Because last night, someone vandalized the Tivoli’s marquee.”

“And you think the two occurrences are related?”

“I intend to find out,” Nathan said grimly. “You can rely on that.”

“When is your mother leaving?” Tyler asked Angel as she fussed over Lucy the Llama.

They’d come in his pickup truck to visit the llamas on the farm. Angel welcomed the chance to get away from Julia’s house, where Violet had settled in with disturbing ease.

“I wish I knew.” At the moment, there was a lot that Angel wished. She wished for a healthy pregnancy for Lucy. She wished she knew a good way to tell Tyler about her time spent with Adam. She wished she knew what danger the tarot cards were foretelling for Skye.

She also wished for world peace and an end to hunger and global warming—but those were long-standing wishes.

The others were personal ones that kept her awake at night.

Well, okay, after Hurricane Katrina the prospect of global warming and the probability that it was intensifying hurricanes kept her awake at night. Even now, when many had forgotten the problems of the devastated Gulf Coast region, Angel continued to make regular donations to Habitat for Humanity in their quest to rebuild housing for those in need.