Why the hell was he thinking of that now? He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to that question. But something about her drew his interest. It wasn’t only her beauty.
He glanced at Carly’s profile. She had a delicate narrow face with a soft full mouth and a stubborn chin. In the fashion pictures, she’d looked remote, regal, very much like a sculpture of Nefertiti he’d first seen in a book in high school. It was cheekbones and skin tone, he supposed. In every way, Carly was better in the flesh than in her pictures. Her skin was a warm shade of brown. Her hair a celebration of her African American heritage. The fashion photographs resembled art house stills. As much about her body being a sculpture in the space of light and shadow and color. Hers was a gorgeous, slim body with just enough curves to make a very touchable sculpture of female perfection. But it wasn’t real.
The real woman was sitting next to him now. He could see her pulse beating in the hollow of her throat. Could watch in real time the unedited expressions crossing her face as she maneuvered through traffic. There was a tiny mole on her left collarbone just above the neckline of her oversized sweater. Tiny curls bounced happily against her forehead each time she moved her head. The hair said Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Her expression said Woman at Work. The dichotomy stirred his investigative juices.
He didn’t think it was only the store that drew the two lines between her brows. From what he’d read, she’d lived a lot of her early life in the fast lane. And what about that gap in her life story? What thirty-year-old has three years unaccounted for? What had happened to pull her off her pedestal?
He glanced again at her, mind-warping images of her body artfully posed in ways that showed off her nakedness running through his mind. Suddenly he was thinking about how long it had been since he’d spent a night with a woman.
So maybe the second reason he was sitting in the passenger seat wasn’t the only other reason. She said she pulled him out of the fire by herself. Tall and still slim, she’d lost the coltishness of her youth—another thing he liked better about the real Carly. But what did she weigh, a hundred twenty, a hundred twenty-five? She didn’t seem capable of dragging his one hundred and ninety pounds out of a building alone. What if there was someone else?
He didn’t want to think about what that might mean. But it was his skin in the game, and he was going to find out.
He half turned to her in his seat. “We need to get one thing straight. I came to see you, not just to get Harley back. I need you to tell me everything, in great detail, that you remember about last night.”
She didn’t say anything. She just kept driving. Finally, she sighed and looked at him. “I don’t want to be any more involved. You get Harley back. We’re done.”
*
When Noah glanced out the window, they were climbing a terraced hill with flowing shrubbery lining the drive. “Where are we?”
“Off Riverside, eastside.”
They crested a curve to find a large traditional two-story white brick house coming into view. Beyond it the grounds fell away in all directions. It was a mini-estate of several acres in the middle of a neighborhood.
“Who lives here?”
“My aunt Fredda. Why do you sound so suspicious? You were expecting the hood?” She laughed. God, she knew how to get to him.
Talking with her was like drinking whisky, neat. It packed a kick but then went down with fiery smoothness, leaving him with a warm stimulating craving for more.
He rubbed his eyes with his fingers. They still stung from the smoke. “Actually, I know this place. Mrs. Fredda Wiley lives here. Worked for years as president of Eastside Citizens on Patrol.” He grinned as she turned to him, brows lifted. “This is my town. I get around.”
They pulled up into a broad paved space large enough to park half a dozen cars easily. At present the only car there was a late-model Mercedes.
Carly sighed when she saw it. No sneaking in and out of Aunt Fredda’s house without having to answer questions.
Carly exited her car and hurried across the lawn instead of heading toward the house. Noah followed and grinned when he realized why. She reached a long fenced-in area behind. And there was Harley, tail wagging. Then he saw Noah. He stepped back a few feet and then jumped and cleared the five-foot-high chain-link fence with ease.
Noah heard Carly call out in surprise just before he was hit by ninety pounds of happy K9. Barking and leaping and wagging his tail so hard it seemed like his rear end might break off, Harley did happy all over his handler.
“I know. I know. Hi, Harley. Missed you, too.” Noah went down on a knee to accept the slobbering licks of his K9 buddy. “Sorry to leave you alone so long. But you’re lucky to have a nice lady take care of you.”