My chest filled with warmth. “Okay, but how about you use regular wood this time?”
He gave me a guilty smile. “Agreed.” He glanced around the room and then back to me. “There are no crystals in here.”
“Made you look though,” I retorted playfully.
“Koti?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for asking me.” Penetrating silver eyes stared me down and I had to force myself to speak.
“You really do get it, don’t you, Ian?”
“I really do. I’ll see you tonight?”
“See you, professor.”
I SPENT THE DAY RUNNING around like a mad woman with Jasmine by my side. Her car had been vandalized at the grocery store where she had left it the night before to meet her date.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you about last night,” she said with a sigh.
“You banged a bag boy?” I asked, glancing toward the grocery store.
She turned to me, her dark hair tied up in a bun on top of her head, clad in an electric blue dress. She was rummaging through her thirty-gallon purse. “Me and the captain’s love affair is officially over.”
“So soon?”
“You’re judging me,” she snapped as she searched through the massive purse in her lap.
“Do you check for dead mice in there from time to time?” Jasmine thumped my shoulder and I gripped it with a shriek. “Oww, that shit hurt.”
“So did last night,” she said, wincing.
“Oh Lord. The freak came out of him?”
She nodded, managing to pry three pairs of shades out of her bright red bag. She picked through them as I started the Jeep. “That’s exactly what happened.”
“Jasmine, it’s nine in the morning. Can’t I be spared until at least noon?”
“I promise not to show you my ass.”
“That’s your idea of mercy?” I glanced at her as I turned out of the parking lot and she pushed out her bottom lip. “Okay, tell me.”
“The captain decided he wanted to role play.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, and you know me, I’m down with that.”
“Right up your backhoe,” I said with a grin.
“Are you ever going to let me live that down?”
“Not likely, please continue.”
“So, I’m expecting like dirty French maid and millionaire boss or something juicy like that.”
“Okay.”
“And I was right.”
“Sounds good.”
“Except what the captain really meant was a role reversal.”
My eyes widened. “Oh?”
Her lips were trembling as she fessed up. “He came out in heels and a frilly frock.”
“Oh, my God!” We both burst into hysterical laughter as Jasmine shook her head with her hands covering her face. “I had no idea what to do. I just stood there while his crooked penis poked out of the apron. I’m telling you as blunt as I am, I lost it. I completely lost the ability to speak.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran. I picked up my purse and RAN!”
I pulled over at a gas station and face planted into my steering wheel. “You have got to be kidding me!”
“Nope. I walked it off until I could think to call a cab and went straight to the wine bar. There I met Mark and only let him get to first base before I passed out in his hot tub.”
I couldn’t contain myself, tears were pouring from my eyes as she wiped her own away.
I sighed, my laughter subsiding slightly. “Poor baby,” I said, leaning over to hug her to me. “You are something else, lady. And you should have called me. I would have come to get you.”
“I’ll never be the same,” she said mournfully.
“It’s probably for the best.”
“This is weird,” Jasmine said, noticing the missing key from the lockbox at the Harper rental. “They should have left it at checkout.”
She knocked on the front door and when she got no answer, she looked at me with a shrug.
“You don’t have the master?”
“I haven’t been home,” she said sheepishly. “Or to the office, remember?”
“That’s right, you were up late watching the Discovery Channel.”
“Shut up, or you’re fired,” she snapped. “Crap. Let me see if I can hop the deck. This is my bad.” We walked the side of the cliff house and I stood in the driveway as she made her way toward the upper deck. There was only a narrow margin for her to get her footing on the ledge.
“Don’t! Not smart, lady!”
“I’ve got this.” She tucked her cotton dress between her legs and scaled the deck like a pro.
“I give it a six at best. Sloppy landing,” I piped as I saw her head pop up behind it.
She shot me the bird.
“Hurry up, it’s hot out here!” I ordered. The sun was beating down on the top of my head and I moved to step into the shade when I heard Jasmine’s blood-curdling scream.
“What’s wrong?!” I yelled loud enough for the street to hear.
“Koti, oh, my GOD! KOTI!”
“What’s wrong? What is it?!” I scrambled to the deck and tried to peek over.
“KOTI!”
“Open the front door, JASMINE! Please!”
“OH, MY GOD! Koti! Don’t come in!”
Fearing for her life, I risked my own and leaped to the ledge of the deck holding on for dear life. My execution was far less graceful, I went over like an old maid clinging to the top of the railing before I landed on my ass. Jasmine was still screaming as I jumped to my feet, ran around the side of the house and came to a screeching halt at her back. “OH, MY GOD!”
Eighty-three-year-old John Harper lay in a deck chair spread eagle and naked as the day he was born, his dick standing at attention for all the world to see. I covered Jasmine’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, sir. I apologize. We must have had our schedules mixed up.” I turned Jasmine back the way we came as she ripped my arms away.
“What are you doing?” I bulged my eyes. “He’s naked, come on.”
With her next words, her voice got eerily calm. “I’ll meet you out front, okay?”
“Ugh, the man obviously needs some privacy.”
“Koti,” she took my shoulders in her hands. “Honey, he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I glanced over my shoulder and saw his mouth was wide open.
“Oh, my God.”
Jasmine was nodding slowly, weighing my reaction as my scrambled brain tried to process the sight before us.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, honey, he’s gone. I’ll call an ambulance and meet you out front, okay?”
A towel lay a few feet from where he expired, and I picked it up quickly and covered his saluting soldier. My heart ripped at the sight of him. “Oh no, poor Mr. Harper. I’m so sorry.”
Jasmine bowed her head. “I have to live with that image for the rest of my life.”
“Jasmine!” I scolded as she pulled out her phone from her boobs and frantically dialed emergency services.
As she explained our situation, I took a seat next to Mr. Harper and took in the view he was blankly staring at. If that wasn’t the way to go, I didn’t know what was. He’d probably just taken a swim and sat down to dry off. In the distant water, a whale breached just as Jasmine came back into view, her shoulders slumped.
“You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were being attacked.”
“All I saw was an old man’s penis. It was horrific.”
I glowered at her. “Can you please have a little respect here? This poor man just died.”
“He was what, early eighties? And he died rich,” she shrugged. “He definitely didn’t read the warning on the Viagra box.”
“Jasmine?!”
“What?!”
“I really can’t handle this today.” She made her way inside the house and raided the cabinets until she found a bottle of vodka. She poured herself a healthy cup as the emergency sirens sounded down the street.
She drank a half glass and then downed the orange juice in the fridge.
Crossing my arms at the sliding glass door that separated the patio and large kitchen, I watched her fill another glass of juice. “Hope it wasn’t the OJ that did it.”
She sprayed the juice all over the counter before she gave me the stink eye. “Now you’ve got jokes.” She scrutinized me. “Wait, why are you okay?”
“I don’t know. Just go with it.”
She nodded.
I moved to again sit next to Mr. Harper. The silent blue water seemed appropriate for the cloudless sky.