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Though Willa was scheduled to work that night, Cleo had time, so she stopped at Walmart. The number one thing she wanted was something to sleep in. Preferably something non-sexy.
It didn’t take any deep psychoanalysis for her to know guilt was the source of her need for new bedroom attire. Not that she’d been having sex since Annaliese’s arrest. Alec had been a paragon of understanding that she wasn’t precisely in the mood, but that wouldn’t last. She knew this because, when he held her in the night, his physical response wasn’t something easily overlooked.
And while sex with Alec was great—so much better than anything she’d ever experienced—she couldn’t continue to indulge in something so personal, so intimate, when she was conspiring to pull a story out from under him.
As many times as she told herself men didn’t attach the same significance to sex women did, she couldn’t help feeling having sex with someone she might end up betraying made her a bad person.
And since the sex wouldn’t last beyond their time in Las Vegas, it was a no brainer what she needed to do.
She picked out loose, gray sweatpants. A quick pass through the men’s department for an extra-large T-shirt and she had everything she needed.
When she got into the car, she called Willa. “How’s Jada doing?”
“She’s sleeping.”
“You had to give her another pill?” Damn. She’d hoped Jada was snapping out of it.
“Not ten minutes ago. She just got worked up, you know?”
“No problem. I trust your judgment. I’m only five minutes from home. Why don’t you go ahead and leave so you’re not late for work. Jada should be fine alone for a few minutes.”
Willa agreed. Five minutes later, when Cleo walked into the condo, she found Jada sitting at the breakfast bar, eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes.
“I thought you were sleeping,” Cleo said as she dropped her purse on the stool beside Jada and reached for the coffee pot only to realize what was there was left over from breakfast. She dumped the cold remains and started a fresh pot.
“No,” Jada said around a mouthful of cereal.
“Didn’t she give you a pill?”
“Didn’t take it.”
Apparently, Jada hadn’t been as worked up as Willa thought. “I could make you a real meal,” Cleo offered.
Jada’s eyes lifted for a split second before she pulled her bowl closer and spooned another bite into her mouth. “S’okay.”
Her concern that Cleo might take the cereal away from her wasn’t totally groundless. Annaliese hadn’t been a strict mother by anyone’s definition, but she’d always been a little gestapo-esque about eating healthy. In her world, breakfast cereals were junk food, which meant they were a rare treat.
Left unsupervised, Jada had naturally gone straight for the comfort food.
Which wasn’t a bad idea at all.
Cereal wouldn’t have been Cleo’s first choice. If she was going to sin, she figured she might as well sin big, but since she hadn’t picked up a cheesecake at the store, she grabbed a bowl and poured herself some cereal.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had Frosted Flakes, but after the first mouthful, she decided it wasn’t a bad alternative. Maybe she should make it a staple in her kitchen. What was it about the forbidden that always tasted so good?
Jada was staring at her, wide eyed.
Cleo grinned and took another spoonful.
That seemed to encourage Jada. She poured another bowl of cereal, drowned it in milk, and started eating, looking a little less like a wild animal protecting its kill.
When she finished, she started to pour herself a third bowl—at least it was the third Cleo had seen. Who knew how many there’d been before she’d walked in the door? Her bowl full, Jada shook the box. “We need to buy more.”
Cleo doubted Annaliese would even remember how full the box had been. The thought stalled her. What if Annaliese didn’t come home? It wasn’t something she’d let herself consider before. She’d thought about her mother in jail, but on some level, she’d refused to see it as anything but temporary. A mistake that could be—would be—rectified. But what if it wasn’t?
In stunned silence, she stared at Jada, who was worried she’d be in trouble for eating some stupid cereal. My God, who will take care of her if Annaliese gets sent to prison? That she might have to do it was overwhelming.
“Cleo?” Jada said. “I’m not supposed to eat cereal. If Annaliese finds out, she’ll kill me.”
She shook off her paralysis. This was where taking care of Jada started. “No, she won’t,” she said, trying to be as reassuring as possible. “She loves you.” The word hadn’t even left her mouth when she heard Loretta’s words again in her head.
She’d kill to protect someone she loves.
Someone like her daughter.
Or Jada.
Cleo barely registered the sound of her spoon clattering to the floor.
“Cleo?” Jada’s voice rose, reminding Cleo how fragile the other woman’s calm was.
She forced herself to focus even though her mind was spinning. “Don’t worry. We’ll get another box. Annaliese will never know.” She retrieved her spoon from the floor and rinsed it in the sink before getting another one. “Did you work last Sunday, Jada?”
Jada nodded. “The early show.”
“And what did you do after the show?”
“Annaliese and I got ice cream. I had cookie dough in a sugar cone. With sprinkles on top.”
Alarm bells rang in Cleo’s head. Ice cream? Growing up, Cleo had only been allowed ice cream as a reward. What had Jada done for her reward? “And then?”
Jada’s mouth opened then closed, her lips pressing into a bloodless line.
“Jada?” Cleo asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer, but knowing she had to pursue it.
Jada dropped her head and peered into her bowl. “I’m not supposed to tell. I promised.”
Oh God. Was this the mysterious promise Annaliese had reminded Jada of from jail? “Who aren’t you supposed to tell?”
“Anyone.”
“Well, I’m not anyone, am I?”
Jada peeked at her without lifting her face.
“I’m Annaliese’s daughter. I’m family. Family doesn’t keep secrets.”
Unless it involved cereal-binging. What irony.
“What did you do after you had ice cream?”
“We went to see Sebastian,” Jada said in a tiny voice.
Cleo went cold from head to toe. “Tell me, Jada. Tell me what happened.”
~***~
When Alec walked into the condo, Cleo was sitting alone in the kitchen. The TV was on in the living room and, judging by the laugh track, tuned to a sitcom.
“Is Jada feeling better?”
“Yes.”
Her listless voice made him look more closely.
“Cleo? Is something wrong?”
Her head lifted and he could see in her pale face and her pinpoint pupils the answer was an emphatic yes.
He stepped to the opposite side of the breakfast bar and braced himself on his forearms, so he’d be eye-to-eye with her. “What’s wrong?”
“Annaliese.”
“What about her?”
“Jada was with her.”
“Where?” He didn’t know why he asked. There was only one where that mattered.
“At Sebastian’s.”
“The night he died?” Stupid, useless question, but it came out of his mouth anyway. Probably because he was clutching at straws, giving her every chance to tell him it was something else entirely.
She nodded.
“What else?”
She cupped her hands over her face. He waited.
“She did something . . . not good.”
He touched her wrist gently and she let him draw her hands down.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them, looking as though she’d steeled herself for battle. “Sebastian made a deal with Annaliese. He’d forget about the interest on the loan if . . .”
“If what?”
“If he could have a . . . a three-way.” The last came out as a whisper.
His mouth opened, but words failed him. Not that he didn’t have questions. He just didn’t know which one to ask first. He finally settled for, “So that’s the real reason they were there.”
Cleo nodded. “Except Jada didn’t want to.”
“Ah, hell. Did she tell Annaliese that?”
“Yes. But probably not very forcefully. Annaliese told her not to sweat it. Everything would be okay. Jada felt guilty enough about gambling the money away that she agreed.” Cleo rushed on as though afraid she wouldn’t get the chance to explain if she didn’t. “You have to understand. Annaliese doesn’t think sex is a big deal.”
“Yeah, I kinda got that already.” And until that moment, he’d kind of admired that about her.
“She doesn’t understand why people make such a fuss about it.”
Neither did he as long as they were consenting adults, but it sounded as though Jada had consented under pressure.
“And Jada, well, sometimes, you have to be a mind reader with her,” Cleo said. “Annaliese is usually really good at it. If she’s not distracted.”
He felt for Cleo. She was trying so hard to find a way to justify her mother’s actions.
“Had they ever done anything like that before?”
Cleo rubbed her forehead. “I’m not sure. Jada mentioned a woman’s name, but I was afraid to push too hard.”
He drew a deep breath and expelled it through his nose. “So they had a threesome with Sebastian.”
“No.”
He hiked an eyebrow.
“Jada usually does what Annaliese tells her to, but . . . she really didn’t want to this time, so she—” Cleo swallowed hard. Every time the drugs in Sebastian’s system had come up, she’d done her damnedest to ignore that image of her mother with the prescription bottle in her hand. Fat lot of good that had done her. “She filched Annaliese’s muscle relaxers and mixed some in Sebastian’s drink. He almost caught her doctoring it. That’s when she dropped the prescription bottle, and it rolled under the bed.” And that was undoubtedly the damning evidence the DA’s office had hinted to Danny Bonner about.
Alec swiped his hand across his jaw. That explained why Sebastian had suddenly gotten “sloppy drunk.” And why it had been so easy for someone to drown him in his tub.
For a few seconds, he thought Annaliese’s problems were solved. Jada could alibi her. Then he realized how that would play out. The DA would go after Jada hard, trying to punch holes in her story. She would get confused. Her story would start to sound phony. They’d probably throw her in the cell with Annaliese. He lifted his eyes to meet Cleo’s and saw the same conclusion reflected there. “No one’s going to believe they didn’t drown him.”
“I know,” she said in a flat voice.
“As soon as they find out Annaliese owed him money, it’s going to look like they didn’t want to pay him off.”
“I know.”
He lifted his head and met Cleo’s gaze. “They’ll get life in prison.”
“I can’t let that happen.”
“How do you plan to stop it?”
“I don’t know.”
They needed a plan, but they were already talking to everyone they could who was connected to Sebastian. Alec couldn’t think of anything more they could do.
He mentally reviewed everything Cleo had just told him. Twice. Something was wrong with the story. He had to think it through again before he realized what it was. “Where did Jada get the idea to drug Sebastian?”
Cleo looked at him blankly. “I don’t know.” She sat up straighter. “But you’re right. That doesn’t sound like something she’d come up with on her own.” She got up and walked into the living room.
Alec debated whether he should follow or not. He wanted to, but he didn’t want Jada to feel as though they were ganging up on her.
~***~
In barely a minute, Cleo was back. She sat back down at the kitchen bar and said in hardly more than a whisper, “She says Willa told her to do it.”
“Willa? Are you sure?”
“That’s what she said.”
“But if Willa told her that, then . . .”
“She knew about the threesome.” Cleo compressed her lips into a thin line. She felt sick about how much she’d trusted Willa.
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean maybe? When’s the last time you had a conversation about how to slip someone a Mickey?”
“Probably the last time a news story broke about someone getting roofie raped. Come on, Cleo. Hang on to your objectivity. Maybe Jada told her about the threesome, but maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was fishing for ideas.”
“She’s not that devious.”
“No, not like we can be. She’s childlike. Haven’t you ever noticed how kids can skip from topic to topic with a logic that makes no sense to adults?”
“No, I’ve never noticed that.”
“You haven’t spent much time around kids then. Trust me. I have nieces and nephews. Their minds are a maze.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe Willa hadn’t mentioned this because she didn’t see the connection. Cleo badly wanted that to be true, but she couldn’t quite accept it on faith the way Alec seemed to. “I still need to talk to Willa.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t. Just figure out how to ask without tipping your hand.”
They looked at each other for several long moments.
“You’re right, but I can’t wait on this.” Cleo reached for her phone and dialed Willa.
Alec stood and moved behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and started to knead.
His hands were magic. They had to be because, somehow, as they kneaded the muscles in her shoulders and neck—muscles she hadn’t even realized were tight as steel bands—they began to loosen.
The call rang through to Willa’s voicemail. Cleo left a message asking Willa to call her back then laid the phone on the counter and leaned back into Alec’s hard chest. As good as the massage felt, she didn’t feel relaxed. Maybe relaxed was too much to ask given the circumstances.
“You need a night off,” he said.
“We did that last night.”
“No, you worked on a puzzle while you told me about Sebastian. That wasn’t a night off.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. We could watch a movie.”
Maybe he was right. Too many pieces about the people she’d thought she knew were floating around untethered in her head. If she stopped poking at them, maybe they’d settle down and fall into place. “Okay.”
“Great. What was the movie you wanted to watch?”
“I don’t care. You pick something.”
At his request, she made popcorn while he browsed Annaliese’s DVD collection. As always, the popcorn smelled so much better than it tasted.
“Oh wow,” he said as she set a big, stainless steel bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. “She has The Haunting. The 1963 version.”
That’s what she got for letting him choose the movie. “I guess that’s as good as anything.”
“Don’t you like a good scary movie?”
“I’m not into blood and guts.”
“You’re thinking of slasher movies. This is a ghost story. One of the best ever made.”
Ghosts. What a perfect movie for a tabloid reporter. She almost suggested he could use the movie as research for a story, but she didn’t want to give him ideas.
As soon as she loaded it, he turned off all the lights but one and sat down, turning so his back was against the arm of the couch. Then he coaxed her into sitting between his outstretched legs, so he could continue the backrub he’d started in the kitchen.
She pulled the bowl of popcorn into her lap as the opening credits started to roll. “It’s in black and white?” She was already not a fan.
“It’s an old movie,” he said as he reached around her to grab a handful of kernels. He threw them in his mouth then went back to working on the muscles in her neck.
~***~
She had a knotted muscle right where her neck met her shoulder. Cleo’s moan encouraged Alec to dig in, trying to break it loose.
When she moaned again, he leaned forward, so he could whisper in her ear, “Shh. I can’t hear the movie.”
“You just want me to watch this because you think I’ll get scared and cling to you.”
“Scared by a movie? You?” He snorted. “That’ll be the day.” But he liked the idea of her clinging to him.
His hand brushed her bare upper arms. Her skin was chilled. “You’re freezing.”
“It is cold in here.”
He paused the movie as she pushed herself up and went to the thermostat.
“Sheesh. It’s set at sixty-three.”
“No wonder you feel like a popsicle.”
She kicked the thermostat up then disappeared into the bedroom to reappear a minute later clad in sweatpants and a T-shirt that would have been big on him, carrying an afghan over her arm.
“What are you wearing?” He wasn’t proud of the almost whiney tone in his voice.
“My new pajamas.”
He stuck out his lower lip like a pouting child. “I like the nightie you’ve been wearing.”
“Yeah, well, I like this,” she said as she settled back between his legs and spread the afghan over them both.
“Meany,” he muttered.
He caught the ghost of a smile on the corner of her mouth as she turned her head toward the TV. He started kneading her shoulders again and tried to focus on the movie.
He’d first seen The Haunting when he was fourteen. It had scared the crap out of him though he’d been at an age where he’d have died before he admitted it. He’d seen it a couple of times since and even read the book. He’d been riveted each time.
But during none of those other experiences had anything as distracting as a hot, warm female been pressed against him. If there had been, he’d never have even noticed the scary scenes.
He couldn’t help growing gradually hard. Uncomfortably hard, since he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Just as he hadn’t done anything about it since Annaliese’s arrest. The last thing Cleo needed now was him pawing her. What she needed was a friend to hold her and to offer comfort.
Mierde. This was dangerous territory. When had he stopped seeing her as Cleo with the killer body? A woman he wanted to tup?
Tup?
Oh holy hell. Now Nigel’s Britishisms were invading even his dirty thoughts?
Fuck. A woman he’d wanted to fuck.
Get back on point, he admonished himself. The issue here was, he had stopped seeing Cleo only as the owner of a hot body and started seeing her as . . . Cleo. A complex, sometimes edgy woman he liked. A lot.
Which could get awkward when they went back to Denver.
So he should leave her alone. Put their relationship back on a more professional level. Be a friend to her. It should be easy. Well, relatively. After all, she wasn’t a mystery anymore. He’d never have to think of her as the one that got away. The conquest he could have made but hadn’t. They’d been to bed together. That should be enough.
Except it didn’t feel like enough. His cock clearly agreed with him because even as he’d logicked his way through the reasons he should back away, it didn’t stand down.
More than anything, more than his own physical satisfaction, he wanted to touch her. To make her feel good. To make her forget her life was teetering on the brink.
If he looked at it like that, he could almost convince himself it was a noble cause.