Rachel Gibson - Tangled Up in You

The little collar had pink sparkles and a tiny pink bell and when Maddie had walked to the road to check her mail at around three, she’d found it in her mailbox. No note. No card. Just the collar.

Mick was the only other person who knew about Snowball. She hadn’t told any of her friends for fear they’d all die of shock. Maddie Jones—cat owner? Impossible. She’d spent most of her life hating cats, but here she stood, pink collar in hand and staring down at a white ball of fur curled up in her office chair.

She scooped the kitten up in both hands and brought it face level. “This is my chair,” she said. “I made you a bed.” She carried the kitten to the laundry room and set her on a folded towel inside an Amazon box. “Rule number one: I’m the boss. Number two: you can’t get on my furniture and get it all hairy.” She knelt down and placed the collar around Snowball’s neck.

“Meow.”

Maddie scowled.

“Meow.”

“Fine. You look cute.” She stood and pointed a finger in the kitten’s direction. “Rule number three: I let you in and gave you some food. That’s where it ends. I don’t like cats.” She turned on her heels and walked out of the laundry room. The tinkling of a bell followed her into the kitchen and she looked down at her feet. She sighed and pulled a local telephone book out of a drawer. She turned to the yellow pages, reached for her cell phone, and punched in the seven numbers.

“Mort’s,” a man answered, but it wasn’t Mick.

“Is Mick available?”

“He usually doesn’t show up until eight.”

“Could you give him a message for me?”

“Let me grab a pen.” There was a pause and then, “Okay.”

“Mick, thanks for the pink collar. Snowball.”

“Did you say ‘Snowball?”

“Yeah. Sign it ‘Snowball.’”

“Got it.”

“Thanks.” Maddie disconnected and closed the phone book. At ten minutes after eight while Maddie glanced through a crime magazine, her phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Your cat called me.”

Just the sound of Mick’s voice made her smile, which was a very bad sign. “What did she want?”

“To thank me for her collar.”

Maddie glanced at Snowball lying in the red chair, licking her leg and in flagrant disregard of rule number two. “She has good manners.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Teaching Snowball which fork to use.”

He chuckled. “When is she going to bed?”

She flipped a page in the magazine and her gaze scanned an article about a man who’d killed three of his trophy wives. “Why?”

“I want to see you.”

She wanted to see him too. Bad. And that was the problem. She didn’t want to feel all happy inside just at the sound of his voice on her telephone. She didn’t want to see him in a parking lot and remember the touch of his hands and mouth. The more she saw him, thought about him, wanted him, the more their lives became entangled. “You know I can’t,” she said and flipped a few more pages.

“Meet me at Hennessy’s and please bring your camera.”

Her hand stilled. “Are you offering to let me take photos inside your bar?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t usually take the photos for her books, but there wouldn’t be a problem if she did.

“I want to see you.”

“Are you bribing me?”

There was a pause on the line and then he asked, “Is that a problem?”

Was it? “Only if you think I’ll have sex with you for a few photos.”

“Honey,” he said through what sounded like a sigh of exasperation, “I wish getting you naked was that easy, but no.”

Just because she went to Hennessy’s and took some photographs didn’t mean anyone was going to end up naked. She’d lived without sex for four years. Clearly she did have some self-control.

“Why don’t you come here around midnight? The place will be cleared out and you can take as many pictures as you want.”

If she went, she’d be using the undeniable attraction between them to get what she wanted.

Just as he was using her desire to photograph the inside of the bar to get what he wanted. She wondered if her conscience should rise up and decline the tempting offer, but as had happened from time to time in her life when it came to her work and her scruples, her conscience was silent.

“I’ll be there.” After she hung up the phone, she took a deep breath and held it in. Entering that bar would not be the same as every other crime scene she’d walked and explored and stood within. This was personal.

She let out her pent-up breath. She’d viewed the crime scene photos and read the reports. Twenty-nine years after the fact would not be a problem. She’d sat across a mesh barrier from killers who told her exactly what they’d do to her body if they ever got the chance. Compared to that nightmare, walking into Hennessy’s was going to be a piece of cake. No sweat.

Hennessy’s was painted a nondescript gray and was bigger than it looked from the outside. Inside it had two pool tables and a dance floor on either side of the long bar. In the middle, three steps led down to the sunken floor surrounded by a white railing and fitted with ten round tables.

Hennessy’s had never had the unruly-girls-gone-bad reputation of Mort’s. It was more laid-back and was known for good drinks and music. And for a time, murder. Hennessy’s had finally lived down the latter—until a certain true crime writer had blown into town.

Mick stood behind the bar and poured South Gin into a cocktail shaker. He glanced up at Maddie, at the light shining in her hair, picking out reddish brown strands in her ponytail. He returned his gaze to the tall clear bottle in his hand. “My great-grandfather built this bar in 1925.”

Maddie set her camera on the bar and glanced about her. “During Prohibition?”

“Yeah.” He pointed to the sunken middle. “That part was a restaurant dining room,” he said. “He made and sold grain alcohol out of the back.”

Maddie looked at him through those big brown eyes that turned all warm and sexy when he kissed her neck. At the moment her eyes were a little wide, like she was seeing ghosts. “Was he ever caught?” she asked but looked about once again, her mind clearly not on his masterful attempt at conversation. When he’d opened the back door and seen her standing there, she’d looked so tense, he’d had to check his first impulse to push her against the wall and kiss the breath out of her.

“Nah.” Mick shook his head. They both knew she was there to take photographs, and Mick was surprised at how uptight she was about being inside the bar. He thought she’d be happy. He was giving her what she wanted, but she didn’t look happy. She looked ready to break. “The town was too small and unimportant in those days, and Great-Grandfather was too well liked by everyone. When Prohibition ended, he gutted most of the place and turned it into a bar. Except for maintenance and a few necessary renovations, it’s been like this since.” He added a splash of vermouth, then put the lid on the cocktail shaker. “My grandfather turned the area over there into a dance floor and my father brought in the pool tables.” He shook the premium gin and vermouth with one hand and reached below the bar with the other. “I’ve decided to leave it as is.” He set first one and then another frosted martini glass on the bar. He added a few olives on toothpicks, and as he poured, his gaze lowered from the firm set of her jaw down her throat to her white blouse and the top button that look perilously close to popping open and giving him a great view of her cleavage. “I’ve put my money and energy into Mort’s. Next week my buddy Steve and I have a meeting with a couple of investors to talk about starting a business giving helicopter tours in the area. Who knows if it will pan out? Owning bars is what I know, but I really want to branch out and have other interests. That way I don’t feel as if I’m standing still.” He pushed the martini glass toward her and wondered if she was even listening to him.

Her fingers touched the stem. “Why do you feel as if you’re standing still?”

He guessed she had been listening. “I don’t know. Maybe because as a kid I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.” He reached for the toothpick in his martini and bit an olive off the end. “But here I am.”

“Your family is here. I don’t have family—well, except for a few cousins I’ve met briefly. If I had a brother or sister, I’d want to live by them. At least I hope I would.”

He recalled that her mother had died when she’d been young. “Where’s your father?”

“I don’t know. I never met him.” She stirred her martini with the olives. “How do you know what I drink?”

He wondered if she’d purposely changed the subject. “I know all your secrets.” She looked a bit alarmed and he laughed. “I remember what you were drinking the first night I saw you.” He walked around the end of the bar and sat next to her. She turned to face him and he planted one of his feet between hers on the rungs of her stool. She wore a black skirt and his knee forced the material up her smooth thighs.

“Really?” She picked up the drink and gazed at him over the top of the glass. She drained half of her drink. Sucking down his best gin as if it were water, and if she wasn’t careful, he’d have to drive her home. Which wasn’t a bad idea. “I’m surprised you remember anything beyond Darla’s tempting offer to show you her bare bottom,” she said and licked her bottom lip.

“I remember you were being a smart-ass that night too.” He took her hand and brushed his thumb across the backs of her knuckles. “I wondered what it would be like to kiss your smart mouth.”