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It was a near thing, but within five minutes, they were out the door. Cleo attacked the glove box, hoping someone might have left tissue in the rental car. She came up empty.
“Are you okay?”
Fighting the urge to sneeze, she held the backs of her fingers to the tip of her nose and breathed through her mouth. “Allergies.”
“Something in the house?”
She nodded. “The dog.” She sounded as though she had a head cold. The need to sneeze abated enough for her to dig into her purse again. Where was the Benedryl? Ah, there. A blister pack of pills in the zipper pocket she never used. “I need water.”
Alec reached behind her seat and pulled out a plastic bottle.
She accepted it, mentally tagging him something between a magician and a saint. After freeing two pills, she chased them with the water. She stopped to breathe—even simple tasks like drinking water were difficult when her nose was plugged—then took a couple more swallows as he pulled away from the curb.
She capped the bottle and set it on the floor beside her. Now she just had to grit her teeth until the pills kicked in. And find something to wipe her nose with. She could feel it leaking. Ugh.
She had nothing. The smart thing would have been to use Candy’s bathroom and stuff her pockets with toilet paper, but she’d been too desperate to get out of there to think sensibly.
Trying to be discreet, she dabbed at her upper lip. It was like trying to plug a hole in a dam with her finger. She turned toward the window, hoping Alec wouldn’t notice, slid her fingers inside her shirtsleeve, and used the edge to wipe at the leakage.
The car swerved back to the curb.
“What are you doing?” She wanted nothing more than to get back to Annaliese’s as soon as possible and he was stopping?
He peeled off his t-shirt and handed it to her in a wad. “All I ask is you wash it before you give it back.”
She looked at him, astounded. What a gallant thing to do. And with him bare-chested, the scenery had just gotten sooooo much better. Too bad she didn’t have the time to appreciate it, but her nose was running. She wiped it on his shirt, then gave up and blew her nose into it.
Something brushed her chest.
“What are you doing?” Her outrage was muted by her allergic reaction.
“You’ve got dog hair all over you.” He kept brushing the fabric over her breasts.
She swatted at his hand. “You’re not helping.” Sadly, if it were doing any good, she’d have let him continue, but the hair stubbornly refused to give up its attachment to her.
He ignored her protests. A few more swipes, then he scowled at her chest. “You’re right. The best thing we can do is get you home, so you can change clothes.”
That’s what she would have recommended had she been asked. Being a man, of course, he hadn’t. After all, it wasn’t as though she’d been through this before and knew what to do.
But it seemed churlish to point that out since she’d just blown her nose in his shirt.
~***~
Alec couldn’t quite believe Cleo had saved him from Candy’s dog and its amorous behavior, all the while knowing she was going to go through this, but the proof was right there in the seat beside him. Bloodshot eyes, runny nose, and all.
How did she still manage to look good in the middle of an allergy attack? He glanced her way. Okay, so she wasn’t as hot as normal, but he had to appreciate that she looked like that to save him the embarrassment of booting that damned yap dog across the room.
Not that she’d admit it. She’d probably tell him she did it to save the dog. Or to keep him from blowing the interview. Except he knew she didn’t care about either. How could she when dogs kicked up her allergies and she thought the interview was a waste of time?
Not many women would have done what she had. Rescuing him like that was almost a guy thing. Well, not exactly a guy thing. Jackson might have done it to save an interview, but they wouldn’t have been two feet out the door before Jackson started razzing him about his new, furry boyfriend.
When they pulled into Annaliese’s complex, Cleo had lain her head against the headrest, eyes closed, mouth breathing. She clutched his balled-up shirt in both hands.
He caught himself smiling. “We’re here.”
She lifted her head. “Thank God.”
Inside, she headed straight for the shower. He thought about offering to soap her up, but he doubted she’d be any more receptive to his amorous advances than he’d been to Bruiser’s.
He stepped into the bathroom and scooped up the clothes she’d left on the floor. The least he could do was keep her from having to touch dog hair again. Even hazy as her form was through the frosted shower door, he got turned on. Yeah, an asexual shower with Cleo was not in the cards. Not today. Maybe not ever.
Annaliese and Jada had gone somewhere, so he searched until he found the washer behind bi-fold doors off the kitchen. He threw the clothes in, then made a pot of Cuban-style coffee, and went over his notes on the interview.
Cleo looked better when she came into the kitchen in fresh clothes, her hair wrapped in a towel, but her eyes were still bloodshot, and she kept scrunching her nose as if it itched. He found it oddly endearing.
He poured her a cup of coffee and set it on the end of the breakfast bar. “Here.”
She stood, looking down into the depths of the cup, as though she didn’t recognize the object in front of her but was too dazed to be curious about it. “If you think this will keep me going for very long, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”
“Why?”
“The Benedryl.” She scrubbed her hand across her eyes. “Before long, I’m going to be too sleepy to hold my head up.” She sat down hard on one of the stools and yawned so wide he could have counted her fillings.
He pushed his notes toward her. “Is there anything I missed?”
She picked up his tablet, holding it at eye level, so she didn’t have to lower her head to read. A couple of seconds passed before she said, “I need my glasses.”
Clearly, she was already functioning at half speed. He retrieved her purse from the bedroom.
Glasses in place, she stared at the paper for a good thirty seconds. “I can’t believe how much you hate gossiping, and yet that’s what we just spent the last couple of hours doing. I don’t see how any of this is useful.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. It kept us busy. I haven’t heard you say one thing today about how we should pack it in and head back to Denver.”
She looked slowly up from the tablet. “What?”
“I said―”
“I heard what you said. So all this was to distract me?”
“Maybe a little.” He winced inwardly. She was paying a steep price for his maneuver.
“You wouldn’t have even bothered with her if I didn’t want to leave.”
The medicine had to be kicking her butt already because she said that without any heat.
“No, I’d have still wanted to talk to her, but I probably wouldn’t have agreed to the tea party.”
“It’s such a shame wife number two is out of town. We could have wasted another couple of hours with her.”
Okay, so she still had enough mental capacity to inject a hint of sarcasm.
“From the tone, I’m guessing I’m going to have to spend the rest of the day hearing about how we should be on a plane to Denver now.”
“If I had the energy for it . . . Maybe tomorrow.” She focused on his notes again, but he didn’t think anything he’d written was sinking in.
Ten minutes later, arms loaded with shopping bags, Annaliese and Jada swept in. That was exactly how it felt, he thought. They swept in like a rising tide.
Annaliese took one look at Cleo and said, “You look tired as hell, honey. Why don’t you go to bed?”
It was only five o’clock, but Cleo nodded and drifted toward their room. A minute later, Jada went upstairs to try on her purchases. Annaliese poured herself a cup of coffee—black—and sat down next to him at the breakfast bar.
“So what did you two do today?” she asked.
“We talked to Sebastian’s ex-wife Candy.”
“Get anything useful?”
He shook his head. “Not particularly, but you can’t always tell right away.” Then, knowing he might not have this chance again without Cleo there running interference, he asked, “I’m curious. How did the police know you saw Sebastian the night he died?”
“They didn’t say, but I took the private elevator to his penthouse. They must have―” She stopped and cocked her head, looking perplexed. “No, that can’t be right or they’d have . . .”
Alec hated when people didn’t finish their sentence. He always imagined the unspoken ending contained the most interesting stuff. “They’d have what?”
“Hm.” Her attention clicked back to him. “I don’t know how they knew.”
Damn. Now it was going to bug him until he figured it out. He took a sip of his coffee. “Cleo rescued me from Candy’s dog this afternoon.”
“Cleo rescued you from a dog?” She looked surprised.
“To be fair, it was a small dog, but he fell in love with my leg.”
When Annaliese stopped laughing, she asked, “How’s the bed-sharing situation?”
He leveled a pseudo-scolding look at her.
She controlled her smirk, letting one corner of her lips turn up. “I think Cleo likes you, too.”
“If she does, it’s against her better judgment.”
“She does have a bit of a holier-than-though streak. It’s her way of rebelling.”
“So her mother’s a free spirit like you?”
Annaliese opened her mouth to respond then closed it again. After a moment, she said, “Cuckoos.”
“What?”
“You know that some species of cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Cuckoos are ruthless. Sometimes, they push the other eggs out of the nest, so the parent birds have to hatch and rear the baby cuckoo or wait a year to try again.”
Alec didn’t know where she was going with this, but he didn’t think she was merely rambling. He waited, trusting the destination would be relevant.
“My parents were Bible-thumping, God-fearing, Christian fundamentalists,” Annaliese said. “Very dour people who frowned on everything from women cutting their hair and wearing pants to working outside the home. Sundays were a lot of fire and brimstone.”
That explained a lot.
“I really envied kids—envy is the sixth deadly sin, in case you didn’t know—who had normal families. Parents who let their daughters go to dances and on dates with—Oh my God”—she clapped a hand to her bosom and cast her eyes heavenward—“boys.”
He smiled. She made it easy to see the amusing side, but it clearly hadn’t been pleasant to live through. “So you and your sister rebelled.”
Annaliese’s gaze dropped to her cup.
It was only a slight hesitation, but he thought he sensed a lingering pain behind it.
“It’s like a clock pendulum,” she said. “When you start from one extreme and release the pendulum, it swings all the way to the other side.” She swung her hand, pointer finger extended, to the right. “And then it swings back.” Her hand moved to the left. “I’m just grateful it never occurred to Cleo to seek out a fundamentalist church. Once they get their hooks in you, they don’t let go easily.”
“So she rebelled by . . . what was it you said? Repressing her fantasies?”
“Oh, she repressed more than her fantasies. She probably didn’t tell you she took a vow of chastity in high school.” Annaliese shuddered.
And that explained even more. “That’s not a horrible thing for a high school girl to do.”
“I’m not saying a thirteen-year-old girl should be getting laid,” she said. “But by seventeen, she should be experimenting. Cleo was uptight. So straight-laced she might as well have had a stick up her ass. I started worrying she’d join a nunnery.”
“If it puts your mind at ease, she got over it.”
She hiked an encouraging eyebrow at him.
He grinned. “You should see the smut she reads.”
She burst out laughing.
Madre de Dios. She was magnificent when she laughed.
“Does Cleo know her grandparents?” Alec wasn’t sure why he asked, except that he liked digging into things. It was probably a side effect of being a reporter. And, he admitted to himself, because Cleo would never share any of this with him, which gave it the luster of the forbidden.
“Oh heavens, no. Her grandparents would hold it against her that she was born”—Annaliese finger quoted—“out of wedlock. And yes, it’s hard to believe, but there are people like that out there.”
“So you and her mother are all she’s got.”
“Yeah.” Her mouth twisted into a wry grimace. “Pretty sad, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know about that. You don’t need a lot of family if what you’ve got stands by you at crunch time.”
“Cleo does do that. I don’t know that I deserve it, but she came through for me when things went sideways. Lord knows the rest of my family wouldn’t have.”
“Not even Cleo’s mom?”
“Cleo’s—?” She looked flustered for a moment, but then she recovered. “No, we—well, that’s a long story.”
He almost said, “I’ve got time,” but decided not to push it though his curiosity was nearly killing him. “And you don’t think your parents would help if you reached out to them?” With his tight-knit family, the idea of parents turning their back on a child in need, even an adult child, was foreign to him.
Annaliese’s laugh had an edge to it. “My parents disowned me when I told them I was pregnant.” Before he could comment, she drew a sharp breath, as though she’d said something she regretted.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up anything painful. Cleo told me about Patty.”
Annaliese stared at him, her brow furrowed. “Patty?”
He bit back the urge to say, “You remember Patty. Your daughter.” This was weird. He had that same sense of falling down the rabbit hole he’d experienced the first time he’d spoken to her in Cleo’s apartment.
“I saw the picture of her in your living room. Cleo said she died.”
Annaliese dropped her head and lifted her hand to her brow, hiding her face. Her shoulders shook and a couple of faint strangled noises emanated from her as though she was trying to suppress tears.
Mierde! He’d made her cry. He moved the box of tissue Cleo had left earlier near Annaliese and quietly left the kitchen. Cleo had told him to keep his mouth shut, but it seemed he couldn’t do that even outside the bedroom.
~***~
He found Cleo lying kitty-corner on her stomach in the bed, looking as boneless as an octopus. One hand dangled limply over his side of the bed, near the pillow. The opposite foot stuck out from the covers on her side. Her other limbs were spread out. X marks the spot, he thought, remembering a game he’d played with his siblings, where one of them would create a pirate’s map, hiding some little prize for the others to find when they got to the “treasure trove.”
Cleo wouldn’t appreciate the things he’d like to do to her treasure trove at the moment.
The patches of unoccupied space would have required him to curl up like a dog. Even then, he’d have to be no larger than Bruiser.
Her name got no response, so he tried nudging her, then poking, then insistent shoving, hoping she’d surface from Morpheus’s domain enough that he could convince her to move, but she didn’t even flinch. Eventually, he resorted to grabbing her feet, pivoting her into the middle of the bed, and rolling her onto her side. By the time he finally had her situated, he knew he never wanted to have to hide a dead body; it was too much work.
He sat on the bed and looked at her. Her thick hair had fallen onto her face, making her look like Cousin It after a trip to the beauty salon. He smoothed her hair back.
She was so beautiful when she wasn’t frowning at him that it made something tighten in his chest. Maybe someday, she’d even gift him with one of her world-killer smiles. As much as he wanted one, his heart might actually stop if he got it.
Even now, his heart hurt a little.
Then again, that might be guilt.
He’d lied to her. He had done the kiss-and-tell. Jackson brought out the competitive side of him and, in the years they’d known each other, sexual conquests had become something of a sports statistic.
It hadn’t seemed so bad because most of the women he’d been with hadn’t been looking for a big romance, and the few exceptions had sprung their expectations on him after the fact, losing what respect he might have had for them with their game-playing. Talking about them later hadn’t seemed like a violation.
Cleo made him ashamed of that.
Madre de Dios, was this what they called personal growth? But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe one day he’d be a grown up. Maybe then, he’d deserve one of Cleo’s thousand-watt smiles.