He hadn’t been complaining, exactly. It wasn’t that he minded her talking about sex. He just wanted to be prepared for it so he could act like a seasoned and stoic officer of the law instead of a blushing teenager.
“I’m not letting you in my house,” she finally said. She was haloed by the entryway light, and she wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Please?” he tried.
“I might have left my laptop open,” she said drily.
Okay. So she didn’t want to be alone in her house at night with a strange man. He could certainly understand that. “You could wait here. Watch from the doorway.”
Her head tilted as if she were confused by the suggestion. “Oh,” she finally said. Her forehead creased. “Look—”
Whatever she’d been about to say, it was cut off by a loud thud from somewhere behind her. Her eyes went wide, and Tom put his hand on the gun at his hip. “Step outside, please, Ms. West.”
She actually did as he’d asked, her hostility forgotten in the fear of the moment.
“There’s no one else stayi
ng here?”
“No,” she whispered.
Tom drew his gun and stepped slowly in, switching off the light to make himself less visible from the dark rooms deeper inside the house. “Stay out of the doorway,” he said to Isabelle, relieved when her shadow disappeared and left a clean rectangle of moonlight on the wall.
He was reaching for his cell to call for backup when something shot from the darkness and moved toward him. Before he could aim, it was past his feet and still moving.
Isabelle shrieked when the shadow flew out the doorway. He spun and ran toward her.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “It was just Bear.”
“A bear?” He scanned the porch and driveway.
“My cat, Bear.”
Tension fell from his shoulders like a weight tumbling off. “Your cat.”
“You scared him. He doesn’t like people.”
“Big surprise. But we don’t know that he made that noise. Wait here.”
She didn’t object. The strange man you knew was better than the one you didn’t, apparently, so she let him move past her back into the house.
Enough light came through the front window to let him navigate the living room. It didn’t take him long to discover a framed photograph lying facedown on the carpet. It appeared to have fallen from an end table that held a small plate with half a sandwich on it. He picked up the metal frame. It was heavy enough to have made the sound they’d heard.
Tom switched on the light and saw that some of the meat had been pulled from under the bread. He put the gun away. “I think I discovered the crime. You didn’t finish your lunch, and your cat was cleaning up for you.”
She poked her head around the door frame. “Oh. Sounds about right.”
She switched on the overhead light, revealing the rest of the room. It was simpler than he’d expected for an artist. A couch and chairs and a flat-screen TV along with a bookshelf stuffed full of paperbacks. And the laptop sitting dark and seemingly harmless on a desk that was crammed into a corner.
He looked at the photo in his hand, hoping for a little more insight into this woman. It was a picture of her with two other women, their arms around each other. Sisters or friends, maybe.
He glanced around for more photos, but only found two paintings on the walls.
One was a man, turned away, his eyes focused somewhere distant. His hair curled over his ear, and wind blew his shirt tight to his back. Pine trees rose up in front of him.
If not for the signature across the bottom corner, Tom would’ve thought it was a photograph at first glance; it was that stark and crisp.
The other painting was a completely different style. It was a watercolor of a golden field with shadows of mountains rising far away and storm clouds rolling closer.