Bad Girls Don't (7 page)

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Authors: Cathie Linz

BOOK: Bad Girls Don't
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“I was already a millionaire. A number of times over.”
“Well, now you’ve got even more.”
“It’s yours.” He held it out to her.
“No, it’s not.” She gently pushed against his hand. “I gave you the lottery ticket as a gift.”
“And I’m giving you the million dollars as a gift.”
“That hardly seems a fair exchange.”
“Skye, you need the money much more than I do. I’ve got no family left, aside from my pain-in-the-behind nephew, Milton. And heaven knows I don’t want him to have this. Think of what you could do with a million dollars.”
She shook her head. Money had never been important to her. She’d never bothered worrying about it. Somehow, some way, something always came through.
“Don’t you have a dream that you’d like to see come true?”
“Plenty of them,” she replied. “But a million dollars won’t bring world peace or end poverty or cure cancer.”
“What about a personal dream? One that only
you
would have. Not a charitable idea or hope, but something that seemed impossible for you to attain before.”
She stared at the ticket as if mesmerized before putting out a hand to ward off temptation. “You should donate the money to charity if you don’t want it for yourself. A million dollars might not cure cancer, but it would help fund more research.”
What kind of bad girl, are you?
her inner voice mocked.
Whoever heard of an altruistic bad girl?
“What are you afraid of?” Owen said.
Now those were fighting words, as far as Skye was concerned. Fear was
not
an emotion she allowed in her vocabulary. “Nothing!”
“And you expect me to believe that you couldn’t do a thing with an extra million dollars?”
“
Extra
suggests I had another million stockpiled someplace,” she noted dryly. “Which is definitely not the case.”
“You could start a college fund for your daughter. Or start a 401K retirement fund for yourself.”
“I’m only twenty-five and Toni is only four.”
“It’s never too soon to start planning for the future.”
“I’m more a dreamer than a planner.”
“Exactly.” Owen pounced on her words. “So dream big.” He spread his hands wide. “You could buy whatever you wanted just about. A huge house. New cars. Stocks and bonds.”
“Or the Tivoli Theater.”
“Or the Tivoli . . .” Owen paused as her words sank in. “The theater? You want to buy the theater? It’s been closed for years now.”
“I know. I live right above it, remember? And I got to take a look around when I first rented the apartment. The real estate agent let me in for a peek. It’s incredible inside. Tattered and bruised after being neglected. But, Owen, those walls talked to me.”
“It was one of the first theaters built for ‘talkies.’ ”
Noting the fondness in his voice, she said, “Why don’t you buy it, Owen?”
“I’ve got enough on my hands running the funeral home. I don’t need another business. But you could buy it.”
“I’m not a businessperson.”
“You’ve got passion and drive and a big dream. You can learn the rest.”
“No way.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I’m not practical.”
“Who says you have to be?”
Skye frowned. “I thought business owners had to be practical.”
“Depends.”
“You’re practical.”
“Yet here I am, handing over a million-dollar lottery ticket to you to buy the Tivoli Theater.”
He had her there. “Sounds pretty crazy,” she admitted.
“Anything wrong with that?”
“You are definitely asking the wrong person. I’m not exactly the traditional type.”
“Which is why you can dream big. You’re always talking about karma. You bought the ticket. It’s karma that you be the winner.”
“It seems more likely that you’ve earned the good karma by doing such good deeds, like paying off my speeding tickets.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“Yeah, I would,” Skye agreed. “The difference is that you’d never have a bunch of unpaid tickets.”
“Are you gonna hold that against me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then take the ticket. It’s yours. Please.” His voice softened. “It’s really what I want.”
“Maybe you should sleep on it . . .”
“Skye, I haven’t reached the ripe old age of seventy-three without knowing that I want. And I want you to have this. Karma and I want you to have this. So take it and make an old man happy.” He pressed the card into her hand.
“If you should change your mind . . .”
“I won’t.”
“But if you should . . .”
“I
won’t.
”
She’d never heard him speak so emphatically.
“The Tivoli Theater needs you,” he added with a twinkle in his light blue eyes. When she’d first met him, his eyes reminded her of Santa’s, in a poster she’d seen as a kid. They were the sort of eyes that drew you in, that radiated kindness and positive energy.
She hugged him fiercely. “When I reopen it, you’ve got a lifetime free pass.”
“That works for me.”
Skye blinked away a sudden wave of tears. She’d never been the weepy type. She was definitely emotional, but more passionate in nature than vulnerable.
Stepping away from her, Owen reached for a Kleenex from the box on his desk. “Now don’t get me started or we’ll both end up bawling,” he teased her.
“There’s no crying in baseball . . . ” she began.
“Or funeral directing,” he said, completing his favorite saying. “Now go on home and celebrate!”
 
 
Angel was cooking angel-hair pasta when Skye burst into the apartment.
“That took a while.” Angel’s attention remained on the marinara sauce she was creating on the stove.
“Yeah, well, I went over there broke and came back . . . a millionaire!” Skye danced Angel around the tiny kitchen.
“What are you talking about? You didn’t borrow more money from Owen, did you?”
“Of course not. In fact, I’m now in a position to pay him back.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of those lottery tickets I got him—turns out it was an instant winner.” Skye waved the ticket at Angel, much the way Owen had waved it at her.
Angel looked at the card as if it represented all the evil in the universe. “Money brings trouble.”
“Not having money also brings trouble. Like the electric company threatening to discontinue service.”
“We don’t need much.”
“Maybe not, but electricity is nice.”
“It starts with electricity and ends with gas-guzzling SUVs and designer watches.”
“I’m not buying an SUV or a watch. I’m buying the Tivoli Theater.”
“What?”
“The movie theater downstairs. I’m going to buy it. And restore and reopen it.”
Angel appeared speechless. Skye knew the condition wouldn’t last long.
“A movie theater?” Angel said.
“That’s right.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Angel sniffed a moment before rushing back to the stove. “My sauce!”
“Are you and Angel playing tag in the kitchen?” Toni demanded as she joined them. She’d traded her customary tiara for a fairy wand filled with sparkling stars. Her feet were bare and she was wearing a two-piece swimsuit with little fish on it.
“No, we’re celebrating by dancing.” Skye scooped her up in her arms and cradled her so she could press a raspberry kiss onto Toni’s bare tummy.
Toni shrieked with laughter. “That tickles!”
“
No.
” Skye stared down at her with mock disbelief. “You mean this tickles?”
She gave her daughter another loud, smacking raspberry kiss, right on her belly button.
“Yes!”
“I had no idea it might tickle. In that case . . . I’ll do it again!”
Toni wriggled herself free, giggling gleefully as Skye chased her into the living room and around the round red couch, a castoff found at the thrift shop.
Always a fan of multitasking, Skye spoke to Angel while playing with Toni. “You’ve run a bunch of businesses, Angel. I’m just following in your footsteps. What do you think?”
“That it appears we’re about to embark on another adventure.” Angel’s expression remained worried as she reached out to hug Skye. “Maybe I should consult the tarot cards and runes.”
“You don’t have to. My mind is already made up.”
Two hours later, Skye’s mind was still racing. She read Toni her favorite Olivia the Pig story and put her to bed. Since Skye never wore a watch, she had no idea what time it was. She only knew that she was too wound up to relax.
“I’m just gonna go get some fresh air,” Skye told Angel. “Can you stay a bit longer?”
“Sure.” Angel looked up from the scarf she was crocheting. “Everything okay? You haven’t lost the lottery ticket already, have you?”
“Not unless it’s grown legs and walked out of the freezer.” Skye often stashed important papers there. “I won’t be long.”
“The last time you said that, you came back with a million dollars.”
Skye just grinned. “Who knows what I’ll come back with this time?”
The August night was hot, the muggy air hitting the skin left bare by her blue crop-top and black cotton shorts. Like most of her wardrobe, she’d gotten the items from the thrift shop run by Sister Mary.
Rock Creek didn’t have a fancy town square like Serenity Falls did, so Skye couldn’t go jogging or strolling through some artistically arranged flower garden in the dark.
Instead, she skipped over the cracked sidewalk and did a sassy salsa dance with the paint-peeling lamppost on the corner. She had to celebrate. Do a happy Snoopy dance. A boogie. Some hip-hop. A waltz that would make Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers proud. Their movies had probably been shown at the Tivoli in the thirties. All glamour and glitz.
Skye twirled and swirled her way down the deserted street until . . .
smack
! She was stopped midstep by a brick wall.
Wait, not brick. Human. Male. Smells good.
Strong hands. Broad chest.
Her nose was flattened against his shirt, her lips pressed against the warm cotton.
Her inner diva came to life. The one that missed having a man in her bed.
“You okay?”
His voice rumbled, reverberating through her body. Wait a second. This wasn’t a man. This was the cop! She quickly stepped back. Nathan wasn’t wearing his uniform. Jeans and a plain blue T-shirt made him look entirely too . . . good.
Better than good. Great enough to haul into bed.
Not that she’d ever do that. Not with an uptight lawman like him. She might be bad, but she wasn’t stupid.
“What are you doing?” Her voice sounded sharp.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” He sounded entirely too laid-back.
“I was dancing. Some law against that?”
“I’m off duty.”
“I’m buying the Tivoli Theater.” She had no idea where the words came from or why she was blurting them out to him, of all people.
“Really.” His tone deleted any sign of a question mark at the end of the glaringly doubtful word.
“Yes, really.”
“I thought you didn’t have enough money to pay your outstanding tickets yourself.”
“I didn’t. But things change.”
“In a few hours?”
“Absolutely. They can change in the blink of an eye.”
Nathan knew that only too well. One minute he’d been happily married, the next he was listening to the call telling him that his wife had died at the scene of a car accident.
“Yeah, I know.”
Skye stared at him. Not the way she’d looked before, when he’d arrested her. Then those green eyes of hers had been full of fire and disdain. Now they were speculative. Thoughtful.
“Yeah, you do,” she said softly.
He stiffened. “Have people been talking?”
“Huh?”
“About me?”
“They tried,” she cheerfully acknowledged, “but I refused to listen to them.”
Nathan didn’t know what to say to that. This woman had a way of doing that to him. Knocking him off balance. Like the way she’d done when she’d smacked into him while waltzing down the street like some escapee from
Singin’ in the Rain
.
He had to admit she did look awesome in those shorts and cropped top. Her bare skin had been smooth and soft beneath his fingertips when he’d caught her.
He had to say something. He couldn’t just stand here with his jaw hanging open. And it had to be something coherent.
While he was trying to come up with a sentence that fit his criteria, she continued right on speaking. “Some things I prefer to discover for myself.”
“Huh?”
Smooth, Thornton. Real smooth.
“You can’t take other people’s opinions about things. You have to form your own impressions. Like when I smacked into you. You want to know what my first impression was?” She didn’t bother pausing to wait for his answer. “That you smelled good. Well, first I thought you were a brick wall. But one that smelled good.”
“I took a shower.”
Brilliant. You and James Bond . . . so good with the ladies. Gag me now. Before I say something else stupid.
“You used soap.”
“Yeah.” What kind of comment was that? Of course he was gonna use soap when he took a shower.
“No aftershave. You don’t need it. You smell good enough without it. Did you know that the sense of smell is one of the most powerful senses we have?”
Nathan made a noncommittal grunt that could have meant anything. It was his preferred means of communication under normal circumstances. Not that anything about his run-ins with Skye fell under the heading of “normal.”
“Most people think we only have five senses. Sight.” She paused to bat eyelashes at him. “Smell.” She sniffed with that cute nose of hers. “Sound.” Her voice went all soft and sexy. “Taste.” She licked her lips. “Touch.” She ran her index finger down from her throat to her collar-bone. “But we actually have six.”

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