I chuckled. “It does not appear so, but surely deep down they know they’re meant to be. Nonna Albertini has decreed it’s a fact, so you know. It’s only a matter of time.” Which reminded me, I’d forgotten to add a couple of meetings to my weekly calendar.
A bang sounded over the line. “Shit. Gotta go, baby.” He clicked off.
I lay for a moment with the phone still pressed to my ear. Then I sighed and set it on the table again, snuggling down beneath the warm covers. My eyelids closed and I began to relax, figuring the nightmare wouldn’t catch me again.
A whistle pierced through the snowy night outside. The kind from fingers in a mouth and not from a referee at a game.
My eyelids jerked open and I stilled, listening. No sound except a slight wind filtered through the night. Had I heard a whistle, or had I started dreaming? As no other sounds came through the evening, I began to let my body lose the tenseness. All right. I must’ve been dreaming already.
Just as my eyes started to close again, another whistle had me sitting up in bed.
Heat flashed into my ears, and the blood rushed through my veins. I yanked the LadySmith nine mil from my bed table and shoved free of the bed, padding carefully through my cabin to the windows by the front door that looked out to the trees and drive. Holding my breath, I moved a curtain aside to see the snow lightly falling in front of my porch. There was no other movement.
I sat on the sofa and watched for at least ten minutes, my gaze scouting the tree line and my hand sure on the gun. Nothing.
Something caught my eye…something red. I slowly stood and moved to the door, opening it and flipping on the porch light.
My walkway from porch to driveway ran along the side of the garage, and the light illuminated a perfect red heart painted on the side of the garage, drips sliding in a creepy display before freezing in place.
My stomach rolled over.
Chapter 4
Detective Pierce smelled like lavender lotion when he strode inside my cottage, kicking snow off his boots first. He wore jeans, black boots, and a black sweatshirt that stretched across his muscled chest. His blond hair was snowy and mussed, and his green eyes were alert and pissed. “You doing okay?”
“Yes.” I sat on my sofa, one leg crossed beneath me and a mug of coffee in my hands. “Did the techs find anything?” I’d called the police immediately upon seeing the graffiti heart, and as usual when it came to me, Pierce had been pulled in.
“Boot prints in the snow by the garage—they look to be around size twelve. Haven’t found the spray paint cans yet,” Pierce said, dropping into the adjacent chair. An even stronger smell of lavender came from him, and since his normal scent was male and ocean, I wondered whose body wash he’d used earlier that night. But it wasn’t my place to ask, and right now, I had enough to worry about. “You were smart to call us,” he added.
While I’d tried to solve more than one case on my own before, I wasn’t a moron. “It could be nothing. The flowers and the heart might be misguided attempts of a secret admirer or something like that,” I said, blowing on my coffee and not meaning a word. Knowing better.
“Uh-huh,” Pierce said, drawing his notebook out. “Do you think it’s Jareth Davey? I know he usually sends a Christmas card.”
Davey always sent a card. “Anytime anything scary or weird happens, I think of him,” I admitted. “This isn’t his MO, so it’s doubtful. Before you ask, I don’t have any clients or even opponents who’ve acted inappropriately or given me concern lately.” The more I thought about it, the more this seemed immature or silly. “I hope I haven’t wasted your time.”
“You haven’t. It’s smart to get ahead of things like this.” Pierce looked around my quaint home. “Where’s Devlin?”
I wished he were right next to me. “He’s on a job,” I said. “I don’t know where.”
Pierce’s eyebrows rose. “What did he say about the heart somebody painted on your garage late at night when you were here alone?”
Geez. When he put it like that, it did sound creepy. Here I’d just almost convinced myself this wasn’t a big deal. “He wasn’t pleased about the flowers, but I haven’t told him about the painted heart,” I said. “He’s working, and I need him to concentrate on not getting shot, which means his mind has to be on his mission and not on me.”
I expected Pierce to argue.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he mused, sitting back in his chair.
I couldn’t deal any longer. “Why do you smell like lavender lotion or body wash?”
He stiffened. “I don’t.”
“Do too,” I countered.
“Do not,” he retorted, looking down at his notebook, a very slight red winding up his neck.
In spite of the chill in my gut, I grinned. “Timber City might be bigger than my hometown of Silverville, but there are very few secrets here, Pierce. Give it up. Who’s the newloooverrrrr?” I drew out the last word like I would’ve with any friend.
He looked up, a veil dropping over his gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Albertini. Stick to the fact that you apparently have a new stalker, would you?”
