“Yes. You sound disappointed. Why? Didn’t I primp long enough?”
He shrugged. “I liked what you were wearing a few minutes ago a lot better.” And then he gave her a sudden, devastating smile—one that made heat rush straight down her body to her toes, then back up again right to her center.
Vivien didn’t know what to say, so she fumbled for her phone and bag and started for the door. “Well, a nightgown isn’t very practical for digging around an old theater, is it?”
“You call that a nightgown?” he muttered, following her out the door with the headpiece in hand. “Looked more like a piece of—what did you call it?—scrim to me.”
* * *
It tooktill they got to the theater before Jake was able to think about anything but the sight that had greeted him when Vivien opened the door to her cottage. She’d been a vision of rumpled bourbon hair, sleepy sloe eyes, and filmy peekaboo negligee that left little to the imagination—and he had onehellof an imagination.
Hell, how was a guy to concentrate on blows to the back of the head and vandalized cars and theatrical threats with that sort of distraction sitting next to him in the car—and clearly unaware of its potency?
“So…when did Helga ask you to pick me up?” she asked as they pulled into the parking lot at the theater. She’d been strangely quiet during the seven-minute drive. “And don’t you have to work this morning?”
“I’m off today—I have a weird schedule—and I was conscripted into being her DD last night,” Jake told her. “I think she knew she wasn’t going to want to get up really early today, so she asked me when I dropped her off last night.”
When Vivien didn’t reply, something told him it was imperative he elaborate. It was almost as if Mathilda was kicking him under the table. “Uh…so, I should tell you that I was—we were—staking out the parking lot here last night.”
“You were?” She whipped her head to look at him, but there was still a funny look in her eyes. “You and Helga?”
“Baxter and I. I mean, I was, and then I asked Bax if he wanted to hang out too. And Helga caught us with a case of B-Cubed in the car, and she confiscated it under the guise of it being official police business, but it turned out she was off-duty at the time, and so what really happened was that she got to drink several of my beers and I had to drive her—and Bax, who also got to drink some—home while getting to drink none of it myself.”
Now Vivien was looking at him as if he’d sprouted another head. She narrowed her eyes and said carefully, “So…you and Baxter were hanging out here and Helga managed to swipe an entire case of your beer?Andget a ride home?”
“That about sums it up. See, there’s her cop car still parked back there. She threatened to arrest us for having open containers in the car—”
Vivien burst out laughing. “She is such a badass. I’ve told her a hundred times I want to be her when I grow up.” Her face was all lit up and her eyes glowed with pleasure.
Jake’s chest felt tight, and he hid the discomfort by climbing out of the car.Too soon.
He grabbed the ugly Nutcracker mask from the back seat and followed her. She was still chuckling a little as she led the way to the theater’s side door.
“So while we were here last night, someone drove into the parking lot without their lights on and then sped away when they saw us and the cop car,” he told her.
That got her attention, and she stopped suddenly. “Did you see who it was?”
He had to shake his head. “Helga went after them, but it was too late and they got away. But Baxter said the brake lights were unusual, so he was drawing a picture of them. And there was only one person in the car that I could see.”
“You think it was them—whoever’s been breaking in.”
“No headlights, then taking off as soon as they saw us—yeah, I’d say so.”
“They didn’t come back?”
“We were here till two, two thirty. I drove Bax and Helga home—by the way, is there something going on with them?”
“Going on like how? Dating?”
“Yeah. Or something. I think I got a vibe…”
She shook her head as she fit the key into the lock. “Not a chance. Baxter is hung up on Emily Delton, and Helga’s very happily single and unencumbered. I mean, she likes guys, but she’s not interested in all the hassle.” Then she looked directly at him. “Why? You afraid you’re going to step on his toes?”
Jake was rendered speechless. Surely she wasn’t that clueless… “I’d only be stepping on his toes if he was moving in on you, VL. I thought that was pretty obvious.”
“Oh. No…well, maybe. Ugh. I… Jake, we have a history. I can’t help it if that’s the lens I look through when I—with you.”
What could he say to that?
