Looking for You (6 page)

"Camille," he said when he
picked up.

On his tongue, her name was like a
caress. She knew they were just friends, so she'd never go
there
, but she hoped one day she met someone else who'd make her
feel the way he did when he said her name. "Dylan, I need help."

"Should I come to you, or do you
want to come here?" he said without preamble.

It was one of the reasons she loved
him. She clearly aggravated him to no end, but he still showed up—without
question. "Come to me. I'm at home."

"Okay."

"What are you wearing?"

She could hear the grin in his voice.
"Shouldn't that be my line?" he asked.

"No, I need some manual labor
help, and I don't want you to come over in, I don't know, a suit."

"I wear suits so often. I'll see
you in fifteen." He hung up.

She quickly put away the rest of the
clothes she had laying around. She put away the romance novel she had on her
nightstand—it seemed like incriminating evidence, somehow. She found one
last pair of pink panties when the doorbell rang.

Stuffing the panties in a random
drawer, she ran down the stairs to open the door for Dylan.

He stood on the porch, leaning in the
doorway, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, looking like every woman's dream.

He was her friend, she reminded
herself, because she didn't have more to offer him than that. Pasting a smile
on her face, she waved him inside. "You got here quickly."

"Maybe I was eager to see
you." At her incredulous look, he chucked her under the chin. "You're
right. The serial killers in my books are prettier."

"I've read your books, so I know
it's true." She grinned.
"Come upstairs. I need help."

He followed her up the stairs.
"Where's Elizabeth?"

"Out." Otherwise, she
wouldn't have been able to invite him over. When her mother was at home, she
was working, and when she was working, you didn't disturb her unless you wanted
to suffer the consequences.

"Nice," was all Dylan said.
Then he stepped into her room. "Did we have a hurricane in San Francisco,
and I didn't notice?"

"I'm writing an article on feng
shui, so I decided to test out its principles."

"Are you going to redecorate in
squash when you interview that gourd artist?"

She gave him a baleful look.

"So what does feng shui say
about a room in shambles?" he asked, looking around.

"It's in transition, not in
shambles." She frowned at the bed. "I couldn't move it."

"Where do you want it to
go?"

"In my creativity bagua."

He grinned. "I don't know what a
bagua is, but I don't think anyone can find fault with wanting to inspire more
creativity in bed."

"
No
." Her face flushed hot. "That's just the position I
want it in."

"I know." He winked at her
and then became all business. "So where are we moving things?"

She showed him, and they began
shifting things around. It wasn't easy—even with the extra brawn, the
furniture was still heavy.

But they did it. The whole while she
tried not to notice that Dylan had way too many muscles for a writer.

She failed.

When they had everything arranged,
she surveyed the room. "I like it, actually."

"Good." Dylan collapsed on
the bed. "Because I wasn't moving things again without serious
incentive."

"Like?" she asked as she
dropped on the bed next to him.

He faced her, turning on his side
with head propped on a bent arm. "Dinner."

"Is that all?" she asked,
rolling towards him.

"Does that mean you'll have
dinner with me?"

"As long as we go to
McDonald's." She grinned ruefully. "I can't afford more than that on
my salary."

He tugged her shirt. "Maybe shifting
your room will make you realize you're meant to do bigger things than write and
bees, furniture, and squash."

"I realize it. I just need the
world to recognize as well."

"So about dinner," Dylan
said, crossing his arms. "I'll pay, so we don't have to go to McDonald's.
Absinthe?"

Camille sighed. She
loved
Absinthe. The bar was
old-fashioned and the food was delicious. Most of all, Dylan knew how much she
loved the restaurant, which had to be why he picked it. "I think I could
probably manage to get away from my busy schedule for dinner."

"Good." Dylan smiled that
intimate smile of his that made women melt.

She averted her gaze—just
enough—because she wasn't impervious. "When?" she asked,
pretending to be occupied with a corner of her bedspread.

"Let me check my schedule. I'll
call you."

She nodded.

"Camille?"

She looked at him.

He held up a pair of black thongs.

"
Give me that
." She snatched them out of his hand, her face
crimson.

"Wear those to dinner and I'll
make sure you get dessert." Chuckling, he strode out of her room.

Camille stared after him, confused,
listening to his footsteps on the stairs. What had just happened? She's moved
the paper shredder out of her relationship corner—maybe the results were
immediate?

No
. Shaking
her head, she hurried after him. He'd probably just had too much caffeine. 

Rick hunched over his desk, looking
at the file he'd compiled on one Gwendolyn Pierce.

It didn't look good.

On the surface, she looked legit, but
that was the surface. Underneath? There was no underneath. She had no driver's
license or passport. It appeared that she'd opened her first bank account and
began establishing credit seven years ago.

If she was in the witness protection
program, it'd explain everything. But she wasn't—he'd checked with a good
friend of his at the bureau. Which left one of two possibilities: she was on
the run from the law, or she was hiding to avoid being hurt by someone.

He didn't like either option.

Leaning back in his executive's
chair, he studied the tiles of his office's ceiling. Not for the first time he
thought he should post a picture up there to stare at when he needed to think.
A centerfold would be in line with the stereotype of a private eye.

It was important to maintain a
certain seediness when you were an investigator, otherwise your clients didn't
believe you were competent. TV had done bad things for PIs.

So he cultivated that image. His
office was located in Chinatown, on the third floor, above a hole-in-the-wall
dim sum joint and a "massage" parlor. He had leather furniture, nice
but slightly worn, and he made sure his cleaning lady kept the office just messy
enough to make him look authentic but not like a slob.

It worked for him.

Turning to his computer, he did a
Google search on Gwendolyn, expecting to find her website and other gourd
related material. To his surprise, there was only one listing for her:
purple-elephant.com.

He snorted as he clicked on it.
Purple Elephant
sounded just like her.

The site was for an art foundation
for kids, in the Mission. Rick scanned through the site, surprised when he
found out that Gwendolyn Pierce was one of the founding members.

He frowned. He wouldn't have expected
it.

Actually, she was nothing like he
expected. Where he'd assume she'd be flighty, she was dependable—he'd
called the Purple Elephant and found out that she came in regularly, several
times a week. Where he'd guess that she'd be unfocused, she was the complete
opposite. You had to be to run a business so successfully.

It didn't compute.
She
didn't compute.

A quick call to the Purple Elephant,
and he discovered she was volunteering until six that evening. Glancing at the
time, he grabbed his jacket and went to check it out.

Parking across the street, Rick
slumped in his seat and watched the front entrance of the foundation. He knew
this was crazy. He knew he shouldn't have been there.

He assured himself he was running
surveillance on Gwendolyn because he had nothing better to do. If he had a case
that was pressing, he wouldn't be there. If he had a date, or if he needed to
do laundry, he wouldn't have been skulking in the Mission, waiting for a
curly-headed artist to emerge from a large purple building.

Rick knew he was lying to himself.

As if on cue, his subject rolled out
of the front door, a bright flare of color. She wore orange skinny jeans with a
dark green jacket that matched her rollerblades. The ends of an orange and pink
scarf fluttered behind her. She slung a beat up burgundy messenger bag over her
shoulder, lifting her hair out from under the strap.

All the colors should have looked ridiculous,
but they were perfect on her. There was a quirky smile on her lips, and her
gleaming curls bounced in happy tandem with her glide. He knew the
sunset-colored corkscrews were soft to the touch and her lips sweeter than he
could have ever predicted.

She wasn't anything like his type. He
usually went for tall, curvy, elegant women. Women who inevitably bored him
after a few months. He couldn't keep his eyes off Gwen. He felt like he could
look at her forever and still be surprised.

A tall, skinny girl followed her out
the door, holding a skateboard. Gwen joked around with the kid for a few
minutes, surprisingly chummy, before they went their separate ways.

His gut tightened with worry as he
watched Gwen maneuver around a couple walking. Those damn rollerblades. He
wouldn't be surprised if he learned she'd broken her neck one of these days.
Where was her helmet?

Oblivious, she skated down the
street, fluidly zipping around people, waving to the occasional passersby as
though she knew them. A light turned yellow, and instead of stopping she darted
faster through the intersection.

He clenched the steering wheel.
Didn't the woman have any sense of self-preservation? He waited at the light,
knowing he'd catch up to her. His gut told him she was headed home so, worse
case, he could take a different route and be there waiting.

Assuming she didn't make a stop or
have plans with anyone.

He frowned at the image that popped
into his mind, of Gwen having dinner with another man. He didn't like it.
Moreover, he especially didn't like that the image upset him.

He caught up to her a few blocks away
and followed her the rest of the way up Valencia, to Market and Franklin, and
then left on Hayes. He stared, disbelieving. Was she really going to skate up
Hayes and its monster hill? There were flatter ways of getting home.

But she did, proving that she was
either crazier than he thought or had legs of steel. They hadn't looked
that
strong the night by the pool when
he saw them bare.

He'd only replayed the entire scene a
million times in his mind over in the past few days.

Mostly he thought about the way she
looked in that little yellow bikini. And he thought about stripping it off her.

Knowing she was headed home, he took
a different route and arrived before her. Luck landed him a parking spot
directly across the street. He wedged his car in and slouched in the seat,
waiting for her to show up.

She darted around the corner and up
to her front gate. He watched as she punched the security code and opened it.

What he didn't expect was for her to
turn around and crook her finger at him.

He blinked, stunned.
Caught
. He never got caught, and she'd
done it twice.

She put her hands on her hips, her
posture showing she was put off by waiting. Then she threw her hands in the air
and called out, "You might as well come in."

And then she rolled into the
courtyard.

He knew that if he missed the gate
before it closed, he'd lose his opportunity, and he was dying to see where she
lived. One day his insatiable curiosity was going to get him in trouble.

So he hurried out of the car and got
to it in time.

The gate closed softly behind him. A
long, dimly lit brick-lined walkway led to a garden and a set of stairs. On the
bottom step, Gwen sat unbuckling her skates.

"You know stalking is both creepy
and illegal, don't you?" she said without looking up.

"It's not stalking. It's
surveillance."

She glanced at him as she took off
her other rollerblade. "Did someone hire you to spy on me?"

"No." He walked up to her.
"Professional curiosity."

"You can't help yourself?"

Her eyes looked large and luminous
from this angle, and his gut clenched with want. "It seems not."

"Bummer. You might at least
consider doing it in a car that doesn't stand out so much." She picked up
her skates and started up the stairs. "Come on."

He followed her up a million steps to
the top floor. Plants encroached on the stairwell, and he had to duck in a
couple spots. "I didn't know I'd need a machete."

"I'll lend you one." At the
top, she opened a door and held it open for him. "Welcome to Narnia."

He looked around as he walked in. The
apartment was sparsely furnished, but the few pieces she owned were good
quality. A luxurious wide, low couch, a coffee table of wooden elephants
holding up the glass top. Vibrant unframed canvases on the walls.

Clean and tidy. He shook his head,
not understanding how his first impression of the woman could have been so off.
"This isn't what I expected."

"What did you expect?" she
asked, setting her rollerblades by the door. "Gourd seeds littering the
floor? Used condom wrappers on the table? Red lights and filmy curtains?"

Something like that. "Am I so
predictable?"

She laughed as she padded to the
couch and curled into the corner. "Predictable is the last thing I'd call
you."

"It's not a word I'd use on you
either." He watched her rub her arches and tucked his hands in his pockets
to avoid temptation, staying where he was, which was far away.  He noted that the flat smelled fresh
and clean. He took a deep breath, trying to catch a whiff of patchouli or
incense or something, but he only smelled a hint of lavender.