If he was infiltrating a biker gang, his hair was long and sometimes straggly. If he was infiltrating a white-supremacist group, it was the shaved skinhead look. And if it was something in between, then his hair would be somewhere in between.
The funny thing was that Jenna had liked it all. She’d enjoyed tickling her fingers over the slightly stubbled curve of his skull just as much as running them through the long, silky strands when they’d reached halfway down his back.
What she hadn’t liked were the changes to Gage’s personality. The distance that seemed to grow between them more and more each time he returned home after being away.
Gage cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to the present.
“You going to let me in, or have you changed your mind about letting the house flood?”
It took a second for Jenna’s snookered brain to send the message to her limbs that she needed to move, especially with the way the deep timbre of his words turned her spine to jelly. But finally she stepped back, pulling the door with her, and waved him inside.
“Sorry,” she said, having to lick her lips and swallow to clear the squeak from her voice. “I’m just tired, I guess. I didn’t expect to still be up this late or to have to deal with household emergencies.”
As stories went, it wasn’t exactly a New York Times bestseller, but it was the best Jenna could do on the fly, with a roiling mass of nerves wiggling around in her belly. She just wasn’t as good at this sort of thing as Grace and Ronnie… or as good as Grace and Ronnie assumed she would be, at any rate.
“Can I take your jacket?” she asked.
He set the dented red metal toolbox in his hand on a bench just inside the front door, and while he shrugged out of the mammoth black leather coat, Jenna ran to the kitchen and grabbed one of the bottles of Corona from the fridge that Grace had so carefully spiked. She gave it a little swirl and twisted off the cap on her way back into the other room.
Having been in Jenna’s aunt’s house many times before, Gage didn’t need her to show him around and had already hung his jacket on one of the wooden dowels running along the wall above the matching bench by the time she returned.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the cold bottle toward him in what was not the smoothest motion in recorded history.
Gads, she hoped he didn’t figure out what was going on… or that she’d had one or two-maybe six-drinks too many with her so-called dinner. Let him chalk up her odd behavior to the discomfort of having to call her ex-husband in the middle of the night to help with some supposed plumbing problems. Or even to simply being alone with him again after their less-than-amicable breakup and two years of avoiding each other as much as possible given their mutual social circles.
Gage’s warm, slightly wary brown eyes took in the beer in her hand before moving back up to her face.
“I thought you might appreciate a little compensation for coming all the way out here in the middle of the night. I know it’s not your favorite brand, but…”
She shrugged one slim shoulder, hoping he’d buy what she was selling, because Lord knew she didn’t have a clue what else to say to convince him to accept the offering.
Thankfully, he lifted the pressure by reaching out for the bottle and taking a quick first swig. A small wave of relief washed over her as she mentally checked that step off her list. If she could just keep him drinking, then this plan might actually have a shot at working.
“So where’s this leak?” he asked, picking up his toolbox. The hand holding the beer lowered to thigh level at his side and he clutched the neck between two fingers.
Realizing there wasn’t much chance of getting him to imbibe more of the doped Corona right this minute, she dragged her gaze up from his strong, tanned hand to his equally strong, tanned face… and slurped up her tongue long enough to tilt her head and turn for the stairs.
“This way.” She spun around to lead him in the opposite direction… and nearly did a three-sixty as the room whirled around her and her feet failed to stop when they should have. Catching herself, she took a second to regain her balance, then started forward, hoping he hadn’t noticed her imitation of Drunken Ballerina Barbie.
She’d never considered herself inherently sexy, and she’d lucked out when she’d met Gage, because he’d always seemed to find her attractive enough just the way she was. She hadn’t needed to doll herself up or bat her lashes or slap on layers of makeup and lip gloss to catch his attention. There’d been an instant and unmistakable zap of electricity between them that had never required play-acting or embellishment.
Even so, as they made their way up the narrow stairwell to the second floor, Jenna found herself purposely swishing her hips, taking exaggerated Mae West steps that put her a couple of feet ahead of Gage and hopefully kept her rear end at his eye level.
Until the sleeping pills mixed with his beer kicked in, she had only her feminine wiles to lure him. And since they’d been divorced for almost two years now, she wasn’t certain her appearance or flirting skills would have the same effect on him as when they were married.
At the top of the stairs, she took her time rounding the newel post, keeping her hand on the carved wood and drawing her fingers slowly-seductively, she hoped-along the railing. It also helped to keep her steady, but he didn’t need to know that.
Gage didn’t say anything, simply followed along behind, his big boots thumping first on the creaky old stairs, then along the creaky hallway floor.
That was the thing about two-hundred-year-old houses, she thought absently as they approached the upstairs bathroom. Everything tended to be squeaky, rickety, and in constant need of repair.
Jenna liked her aunt’s old farmhouse, though. It had a comfortable, homey feel to it, and was filled with a million childhood memories. Not just her own, but those of all the generations that had come before.
Keeping with Charlotte ’s unique-okay, quirky-sense of style, the upstairs powder room was crazy and colorful. The walls were a watermelon pink so bright, it almost hurt to look at them. There was no window in the room, but both an overhead lamp and rows of tiny bulbs on either side of the mirror above the sink provided plenty of light.
With her own overzealous hand, Charlotte had made a shower curtain of fabric that contained both neon checks and huge, oddly shaped flowers in colors that were equally bright and didn’t quite match the blocks, but didn’t clash, either.
Alone, the curtain might not have been too bad. But, of course, her aunt hadn’t stopped there. She’d added a rubber duckie soap dish, a giraffe toothbrush holder, a SpongeBob SquarePants Dixie cup dispenser, and a rainbow trout towel rack that held a black towel and washcloth set. (Black, of all colors, when there was nothing else black-save perhaps some miniscule outlining on the shower curtain design-in the entire room.)
But that wasn’t all. Charlotte had also knit several Southern belle toilet paper covers and had them strategically displayed. Three lined up along the back of the commode, two on the floor on either side of the toilet, and one across the room on the floor at the opposite end of the white porcelain tub. Just in case, you know, there was a major toilet paper emergency. Like maybe a Girl Scout troop dropped by and all needed their tushies wiped at the same time.
Martha Stewart, her aunt definitely was not. Although, ironically, Charlotte ’s bedroom and the rest of the house was actually rather normal and mundane. There were a lot of antiques sprinkled around, and a few unusual pieces here or there, but nothing that would put someone in fear for their life.
Gage wasn’t afraid, though. Jenna doubted much of anything scared him, frankly, and he’d been around Charlotte and Charlotte ’s old farm house enough while they were married that he probably wouldn’t have been surprised if a litter of rabid squirrels jumped out of the linen closet.