She’d known him just over a week. People didn’t fall in love in a week. It was supposed to take longer. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or both.
Lucy took her coffee into her bedroom and slipped on a pair of pink panties and bra. Quinn hadn’t called her after he’d rushed her out the door. The last she’d seen of him had been his back as he’d hurried inside his house. Something horrible had happened, but all he’d told her was that it had been related to his work. So how horrible could it have been? Yeah, stopped-up toilets and busted pipes were a drag, but not life or death.
She pulled out a pair of jeans and a woman’s marathon T-shirt from the time she’d signed up to run but had accidentally on purpose slept in until after the starting gun. Maybe someone had broken into Quinn’s work and stolen equipment. She’d heard on the news the other night that theft on job sites was a real problem. Although honestly, she couldn’t understand the rush. He hadn’t been able to get rid of her fast enough, and that worried her.
Alot.
Her feelings were so new. So scary. So sudden, and she hadn’t a clue how Quinn felt about her. Well okay, there were certain times when she was sure he was attracted to her. Like when he looked at her or kissed her or touched her, but that wasn’t love.
Lucy pushed her feet into a pair of slippers, then grabbed her coffee on the way out of the room. Last night when she’d decided to get out of bed and work, she’d searched her briefcase for the six chapters Maddie had returned to her yesterday. The collapsible folder hadn’t been there, and she’d figured she’d left it in her car. As much as she felt safe in her home and in her neighborhood, there was no way she’d been willing to walk outside to her garage at 3:00 a.m.
The soles of her slippers slipped across the tiles in her kitchen and slapped the concrete stairs and sidewalk as she made her way outside to the garage. She searched the BMW and found a stick of gum, a pen, and a window scraper under the seats. No folder. She retraced her steps back inside, looked up the number, and called Barnes and Noble. Jan Bright hadn’t seen it, but she said she would ask the employees and the Women of Mystery.
The doorbell rang as she hung up, and she moved across the living room. She looked through the peephole at Quinn, and her heart did that crazy speedup slowdown thing. He wore black-framed sunglasses to shield his eyes from the brilliant morning sun, and dark stubble covered the lower half of his face.
She opened the door as a gust of cool air ruffled his dark hair. “Good morning.” He was wearing the same clothes that he’d worn the night before-a white dress shirt and jeans. He hadn’t been to bed, and he should have looked a rumpled mess. He didn’t. He looked like someone she’d like to reach out and touch, soothing his brow and feeling his rough cheek against her palm. He looked like someone she’d like to undress and tuck into her bed.
From behind his glasses, he gazed at her for several long moments before he asked, “May I come in?”
“Of course.” She opened the door wide, and he moved past her, bringing the scent of spring on his skin. “Coffee?” she offered as she shut the door.
“Please.” He pulled off his sunglasses and stuck them in his breast pocket. He had shadows beneath his brown eyes.
“Long night?” She moved past him, resisting the urge to touch him.
“Yeah.” He laughed without humor and followed close behind her into the kitchen. The heels of his boots sounded unusually loud against the tile floor.
Lucy reached into a cupboard and pulled out a mug. “I worked until about three this morning.” It was such a relief not to have to lie any longer. “I do that sometimes,” she explained. She’d had boyfriends in the past who’d hated the often erratic hours of a writer. Now that everything was out in the open, she wanted to be up front with Quinn. “Sometimes I work for days without much sleep. One time,” she confessed as she poured coffee into a mug and handed it to him, “I forgot to shave my legs for over a month. I looked like a Clydesdale.” Okay, maybe she should have kept that one to herself.
“Thanks.” The corner of his mouth curved up as he blew into his coffee. “Sorry about what happened last night,” he said before he took a drink. She looked at her slippers and fought the blush creeping up her neck. She wondered exactly which part of the night he was sorry for. That he’d had to run out? That they’d gotten to know each other better in his hall or that they hadn’t finished? She was really sorry about the latter. “Something came up and we need to talk about it.”
Okay, that didn’t sound good. “All right.” She moved to the small table in her kitchen and took a seat. Quinn sat across from her, and the light pouring in through the windows picked out strands of his dark hair. It lit his white shirt from behind and accentuated his wide shoulders.
“Remember when you confessed to me that you’re not a nurse?”
Was he mad about that after all? She hadn’t figured it was still an issue. “Yeah.”
“I have a confession to make, too.” His dark eyes stared into hers, tired but as intense as ever. “I’m not a plumber.”
She leaned forward in her chair. “What?”
“I’m a cop.” He reached for something hooked to the side of his belt and slid it across the table at her. It was a police shield. Yep, he was a cop. A detective. He’d lied to her. “Why did you lie?” And why hadn’t he confessed the same night she had?
“Because when I met you, I was dating on the Internet undercover.” When she didn’t say anything, he explained further. “I was posing as a plumber to catch Breathless.”
“Who?”
“Breathless. That’s the name the police have given the woman who’s killing men around town. We think she’s meeting them online.”
Lucy took a drink of her coffee and let the information sink in. “So the police are working undercover online to catch the woman we’ve been hearing about on the news?”
“Yes.”
Okay, so far she understood, although it seemed bizarre.
“Last night, she killed her fourth victim.”
“Oh, no.”
“While you were at my house, she was at a motel on Chinden suffocating Robert D. Patterson. That’s why I hustled you out so fast.”
That name sounded familiar. She sat back in her chair and thought of all the men who’d e-mailed her in the past few months. “Throbbinbob?”
“Did you know him?”
“Not really. He e-mailed me a few times.” He’d kind of been a pest, but he hadn’t deserved to die, for goodness’ sake. “Did you catch this Breathless last night?”
He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “No, but we got some good leads.”
“So, you’re a homicide detective,” she said, testing it out loud. Now that she thought it over, it made more sense than his being a plumber. It explained his intense gaze and his attention to detail.
“Yes.”
She guessed she understood why he’d lied. She didn’t like it but couldn’t exactly get mad about it. That would make her a hypocrite. She watched him take a drink from his mug and took a moment to process what he’d just told her. So, he’d met her while he’d been working undercover. In a sense, she’d been working undercover too. It might not have been the best way to start a relationship, but it wasn’t something that was insurmountable. They could work on it. Maybe even laugh about it sometime in the future. “So, you met me at Starbucks to see if I could be a serial killer?”
He stared into her eyes and gave an abbreviated nod of his dark head.
Okay, so their meeting had been unconventional. People met under unusual circumstances all the time. Who cared about how and why they’d met. “That’s kind of funny when you think about it.” Only he wasn’t laughing. “How long before you realized I wasn’t a killer? A minute or two?”