That’s more appealing than my ex-wife’s carefully contrived appearances and public freakouts whenever she lost a single fake eyelash.
The supposed Blackthorn woman retrieves a small wallet from her purse and stalks back to me, yanking out a card and handing it to me.
“My license,” she announces. “Happy now?”
Happy isn’t the right word for this fuckery, but yes. A quick scan tells me she wasn’t lying about her name.
Margot Blackthorn.
The picture matches, too—and she’s somehow just as damnably pretty in that awful ID photo as she is in the flesh.
Just a few years younger.
Rounder face, the same sultry hooded eyes she has now, but without the same tiredness. I wonder if the past few years have been hard.
According to the license, I wasn’t far off with her age.
She’s only twenty-five.
Still not a reason to roll out the sympathy train.
“Margot,” I say, looking back at her like I’m a bouncer checking her ID.
“Awesome. You can read,” she says impatiently. “So do you believe me now?”
My jaw clenches.
Unless this is an excellent fake, I have no groundsnotto believe her. And if she’s a Blackthorn, then chances are she really does own the place.
Which means—
Nothing fucking good.
I scratch my head, processing.
I’m stumped.
Mrs. Griffith assured me this place was vacant since it needed a little ‘fixin’’ in her words. Even so, it was still pricey for a vacation rental at the edge of the offseason.
I blamed that on its size and location, just steps from an awesome lake, the whole reason we’re here.
“Satisfied?” she clips again.
“Yeah,” I say. She looks ready to slash my throat with the license I’ve just passed back to her.
“Uh-huh.” She shrugs and returns her wallet to her bag. “So, now it’s my turn. Why areyouhere?” she asks over her shoulder.
“We have a reservation,” I say.
She turns, frowning until her pretty pink lips turn down.
It’s a normal expression I shouldn’t notice so much, but dammit, I do.
The lushness of her lips, the way they make her face more sensual than sharp, balancing out the point of her nose and slight point of her chin.
Blackthorn or not, she rocks supermodel good looks.
Not at all the type of woman I expected to find in this sorry, beat-up house.
