“Because he’s trying to do an end run around me, and I’m not certain it means anything. I told him ‘no’-for all the good it did-and he’s so frickin’ competitive it’s like waving a red flag at a bull. So did he say that because he loves me, or because he can’t stand to lose? I vote for number two, because he doesn’t know me well enough to love me, and I’ve told him that I don’t know how many times.”
“Good for you.” The water for the tea began boiling, the kettle making a whistling sound. She turned off the stove, and the whistle slowly died while she put tea bags in two cups, then poured the hot water over the bags. “How do you take your tea?”
“Two sugars, black.”
She put sugar in mine, and sugar and cream in hers, then brought both cups to the table. I thanked her as she set my cup in front of me, and she sat down across from me. A thoughtful frown between her brows, she stirred her tea. “I think you’re handling him exactly right. Make him work for you, and he’ll appreciate you a lot more.”
“Like I said, he’s winning all the battles.” Dispirited, I sipped my hot tea.
“Honey, ask him if he would rather have played in a hard, close-fought game, or a runaway. He loved the games where it was toe-to-toe until the very end, and he loved making those bone-crunching tackles to stop the ball carrier. He’d be bored within a week if you made things easy for him.”
“He’s still winning all the time. It isn’t fair. I want to win every now and then.”
“If he’s sneaky, you have to be sneakier.”
“That’s like saying I have to be more of a Hun than Attila.” But I suddenly felt more cheerful, because I could do it. I might not win the battle of the neck, but there were other battles where we were more evenly matched.
“I have faith in you,” Mrs. Bloodsworth said. “You’re a smart, savvy young woman; you have to be, to make such a success of Great Bods at your age. And you’re a hottie. He’s dying to get in your pants, but take my advice and don’t let him.”
I managed to keep from choking on my tea. There was no way I was going to tell his mother he’d already been in my pants. I was sure my parents had already figured it out, since Wyatt insisted on taking me home with him last night, but I couldn’t admit it to his mother.
Out of guilt, I steered the conversation away from Wyatt and my pants, and asked if she’d mind showing me through her house. It was a good choice. She beamed and jumped up, and we were off.
My best guess is the house had at least twenty rooms, most of them with those lovely octagonal lines that must have been a nightmare to build. The formal parlor was done in cheerful yellow and white, the dining room had cream-and-green-striped wallpaper, with the table and chairs in a very dark wood. Each room had a very definite color scheme, and I had to admire her resourcefulness in coming up with so many different schemes, because after all there are only so many colors from which to choose. The entire house showed the love she had poured into it, the effort.
“If you get tired during the day and want a nap, use this room,” she said, showing me into a bedroom with polished hardwood floors, mauve paint on the walls, and a four-poster bed with a mattress that looked like a cloud. “It has it’s own bathroom.”
About that time she noticed the way I was cradling my arm, which was still throbbing from the jarring it took. “I bet your arm will feel better if it’s supported in a sling. I have the perfect thing for it.”
She went to her bedroom-done in shades of white-and returned with a beautiful soft blue shawl. She folded it and fashioned a very comfortable sling for me, which did indeed take some of the stress off the stitches.
I was certain I was hindering her, getting in the way of her normal routine, but she seemed happy to have my company and chattered away. We watched television some, read some. I called Mom and talked to her, and told her what Dad had done. That would fix him. After lunch I did get tired, and went upstairs for a nap.
“Wyatt called to check on you,” Mrs. Bloodsworth said when I woke an hour later and came back downstairs. “He was worried when I told him you were lying down. He said you had a fever last night.”
“That’s normal after you get a wound, and it was just high enough to make me uncomfortable.”
“I hate that, don’t you? It’s such a miserable feeling. But you aren’t feverish now?”
“No, I was just tired.”
While I’d been half-dozing, I’d been thinking about Nicole, and how Wyatt had brushed off my ideas about her murderer. Where did he get off, thinking he knew more about her than I did, just because he was a cop and could investigate people? He was wrong, and I knew it.
I called my assistant manager, Lynn Hill, and got her at home. When she heard my voice she gasped. “Omigod, I heard you were shot! Is that true?”
“Sort of. It kind of grazed my arm. I’m okay; I didn’t even have to stay overnight at the hospital. But I have to stay mostly out of sight until they catch the guy who murdered Nicole, and I’m ready for this to be over. If Great Bods reopens tomorrow morning, can you handle things?”
“Sure, no problem. I can do everything except meet payroll.”
“I’ll handle that, and get the checks to you. Listen-you talked to Nicole some.”
“When I had to,” she said drily.
I understood that completely. “Did she say anything about a special boyfriend?”
“She was always making mysterious hints. My guess is she was running around with married men, because you know how she was. She always wanted what some other woman had. She wouldn’t have been interested in some single guy, other than as a temporary boost to her ego. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but she was a piece of work.”
“Married men. That makes perfect sense,” I said, and it did. Lynn had nailed Nicole’s personality.
I said good-bye, and called Wyatt’s cell phone. He answered immediately, not even saying hello. “Is something wrong?”
“Do you mean other than being shot and someone trying to kill me? Not really.” How could I have resisted that line? “Anyway, I checked out something and the word is Nicole was seeing a married man.”
He paused. “I thought I told you to stay out of police business.” There was an edge of anger to his voice.
“Kind of hard to, in this situation. Are you going to be so stubborn you aren’t going to check this out?”
“You didn’t leave the house, did you?” He didn’t answer my question, instead asking one of his own.
“No, of course not. I’m still tucked away nice and safe.”
“Good. Stay there. And, yes, I will have this checked out.”
“It isn’t exactly something the guy will admit to, running around on his wife. Want me to try finding out-”
“No! No. I want you to do nothing, understand? Let us handle the investigations. You’ve already been shot once, wasn’t that enough?” He hung up.
He hadn’t exactly been gracious about my pointer. Okay, so he was worried something else would happen to me, and I wasn’t crazy about the idea of putting myself in danger, either. But I could call people, couldn’t I? I was using my cell phone, so there was no way I could give away my location. The ordinary person didn’t have cell-phone tracing capabilities.