Bliss’s rounded shoulders lifted. “I dunno. But you look pretty pissed right now.” She licked her lips. “And you’re kinda hurtin’ my arm.”
Gaby dropped her hand so fast that Bliss stumbled back. Until then, she hadn’t even noted how the girl strained against her hold.
“I’m not mad,” Gaby repeated evenly, trying to prove it through a moderate tone and temperate disposition. “It’s just that I need to talk to her, but I can’t find her. That’s all.”
Bliss frowned in thought. “It’s been a couple of days, I think.” She reached out and removed a cobweb from Gaby’s hair.
Grooming her? Great. Just fucking great.
Teeth sawing together, but expression as affable as she could manage, Gaby said, “Try to remember, Bliss. It’s important.”
Lowering her head, Bliss concentrated, and finally said, “You know, I haven’t seen her since the first of the week. Do you think—?”
Rather than let Bliss’s mind start wandering down the wrong path, Gaby interrupted. “What was she doing when you last saw her?”
“Workin’, as usual.” Her blue eyes studied Gaby’s hair. “Well, sort of.” Distracted and far too familiar, Bliss urged Gaby to sit on a step, then she went behind her and, after retrieving a tie from her pocket, began finger-combing Gaby’s hair back into a ponytail.
It was the oddest thing to have another woman touching her, but the hookers were a familiar lot, free with physical contact. They did each other’s hair and makeup, modeled clothes for one another, gave advice, and all in all, grossly intruded into Gaby’s personal space.
Gaby would never get used to it, but she had learned to tolerate it.
Sort of working? “What does that mean?” She tried to twist around to see Bliss, but enrapt in her chore, Bliss didn’t release her hair, and Gaby gave up. “Who was she with? Can you describe the guy?”
“Actually . . .” Bliss put the tie in, securing the short ponytail. “It wasn’t a guy. Lucy was talking to a girl.”
Whoa. Okay, Gaby knew some of the ladies did whatever, and whoever, for cash. But she hadn’t known Lucy to favor other females.
It seemed more likely that she’d made an incorrect assumption. She turned toward Bliss. “For business? Or was she maybe chatting with another hooker?”
“Neither.” Bliss laughed, reached out, and tugged a few strands of hair loose over Gaby’s ears. “There,” she said. “That’s real pretty.”
Pretty would never be a word ascribed to Gaby. The compliment left her prickly with embarrassment. “Then who was she?”
“I dunno. I’d never seen her before. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t from around here.” Bliss licked her thumb and wiped a spot on Gaby’s forehead.
Swatting her hand away, Gaby asked, “Why do you say that?”
“She was young. Not really pretty, but . . . sort of refined-like.”
“Dressed fancy, you mean?”
“No. She was dressed real plain.” Bliss smoothed a wrinkle out of Gaby’s shirt. “The reason I noticed is because—” Suddenly Bliss’s eyes widened and she looked beyond Gaby.
Gaby stiffened, waited.
“Gaby.”
And there it was, that voice she’d never forget, the one she sometimes heard in her dreams, and in her daydreams.
The voice that made her stomach punchy and her breath short.
How the hell had Luther gotten so close without her knowing it?
Bliss met Gaby’s gaze, giggled at her expression, and rolled her eyes. She stood and smiled widely. “Hey there, Luther.”
“Hello, Bliss. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you.” She smiled over the formality, which was surely foreign to her.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you two girls during such a fascinating exchange—of words and deeds.”
Bliss giggled again. “I was jus’ fixin’ her hair.” Around Luther, Bliss’s lack of good grammar became more apparent than ever.
“You did a beautiful job.”
Beaming, Bliss asked, “You’re on the wrong side of town, ain’t ya?”
“For a reason.” Luther’s big hands settled on Gaby’s shoulders with warm weight and outlandish possession. “I’m sorry, Bliss, but would you mind if I had a moment alone with Gaby?”
Gaby, who still hadn’t turned to face him, couldn’t seem to get her vocal cords to work. How much had he heard? How much had he seen?
A tidal wave of heat washed through her. Insane! Since when did she give a shit what others thought of her?
Since Luther, that’s when.
Before Gaby could object, the decision was taken away from her.
“Be my guest.” To Gaby, Bliss said, “We can talk later.” She gave a fingertip wave and headed off.
Gaby watched as Bliss made an almost immediate assignation with a young man who appeared to be waiting specifically for her. Then she felt Luther’s fingers gliding over her ponytail and she shot to her feet.
Jerking around to face him, she scowled. “What the hell do you want now?”
His hand fell from her hair to her cheek and lingered there. Looking at her mouth, now set in hard lines, he said simply, “You.”
For a nanosecond, Gaby’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Bliss’s presumptuous way of primping her hair was disconcerting enough. For Luther to continually state a sexual desire for her rocked her very foundation.
Ill humor combusting, Gaby shoved Luther away from her. “Hands off, cop. I’m pissed at you.”
“You always are.” He smiled and sighed. “So what’s the problem this time?”
Grumbling, because she couldn’t dare admit to missing him, maybe even needing him, Gaby said, “I doubt you want to hear it, and it’s for certain I don’t want to hear your solution for it, so forget it.”
“Not this time.” He caught her hand and pressed money, wrapped around a note, into her palm.
“What’s this?” Gaby started to separate the cash from the slip of paper, but Luther’s hand curved over hers.
Leaning close, he breathed into her ear, “You’re in disguise as a hooker, if you’ll remember. Well, I’m just keeping up appearances.” His hand tightened. “You should do the same.”
Heady with the richness of his scent in her nostrils, Gaby took a moment to gather her defenses against his effect. When Luther separated from her again, she looked at his face, and saw too much.
No one could call her a dummy. Aware of Luther’s urgency, Gaby smiled. “Sure thing.” She stuck the cash and the note in her pocket. “Let’s walk.”
His body didn’t budge. “I thought maybe we’d go to your room.”
“You thought wrong.” Her eyes narrowed. “And the next time you go poking around up there, I’ll have something to say about it.”
Luther went still, decided against subterfuge, and shrugged. “How did you know?”
Gaby couldn’t say for sure, but when she’d first returned to her rooms, she’d sensed that someone had been there, snooping around. The door hadn’t been disturbed, so no one had entered, but only because she’d made it so difficult to do so.
“I’m astute—and you’re far from stealthy.” She looked behind her at a noisy duo of men haggling price with Jimbo. “Now do you want to get away from here, or what?”
With a strange sort of affection, Luther said, “You are so damn difficult.”
Still watching the prospective johns, Gaby shrugged. “Not to people who leave me alone.”
“And that,” Luther said, taking her hand, “is something I can’t do.”
Gaby shot him a look, but he’d turned away and was determined to take her with him.
Did he infer an affection, or duty to his job as a cop?
She gave token resistance as Luther, maintaining his hold, towed her down the dark stretch of roadway, but they both knew if she wanted loose, she’d be loose, and he’d be hurting.
At least, she knew it.
Luther persisted in the farcical theory that he could hold his own against her.
And usually he could—because usually she hesitated to hurt him.
“You can let go now,” Gaby told him.
“I don’t want to.”