“But you’re a child,” I said, piecing things together.
“I’m twenty-four, Char,” he said, arching his eyebrows at me. “Tabloids have shown you with younger. Not that I’ve been keeping up with you …”
The heat in my face spread to my ears, and I looked away. “Yeah, you definitely grew up,” I muttered. “And filled out.”
“I’m not the only one.” When I looked back, he winked at me.
“And you’re a cop?”
“A detective, actually,” he said. “Hence the street clothes. I live in Milledgeville now. I’m on a case at the moment, so I really need to get going.” He moved closer to me with a hint of something devilish in his gaze. “I’m supposed to get a statement from you about that drunken jackass, but seeing how I’m kinda busy right now, maybe we could get coffee tomorrow.”
Was he … asking me out? Was Lulu’s little brother asking me to go on a date with him? I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that. On one hand, he was definitely cute enough to warrant a second (and probably third, fourth, and fifth) glance. But he was Lulu’s brother. Wouldn’t that make things weird?
Ugh! I shook my head. What did it matter? I wasn’t here for that. I wasn’t even here to stay.
“We can meet for coffee, but only while you take my statement,” I answered firmly.
He smiled. “What else did you have in mind?”
“Look, I—”
“Oh, stop.” He waved me off. “Does it look like I’m hiding a diamond ring in my pocket?” He kicked a pebble in front of him. “Just coffee is more than okay with me. I’ll text you the address.” He shot me another smile and started to walk away. “You know,” he said, turning around and walking backwards, “they were right about you. You went off to the big city and got all full of yourself.”
My face grew even hotter now, and my hands balled at my sides. “I did not!”
“Yeah, you did,” he said, looking me up and down. “But I never said you didn’t have reason to be.”
***
I had barely managed to beat Dalton out of the forefront of my mind when I made my way into what passed for the heart of town. Good, I thought. That meant I had successfully dodged the cemetery. Coming face to face with that place right now, with my mother’s headstone in the western corner, would only serve to send my mind down a path it didn’t need to go right now. I was here to reset, and you can’t reset if you keep rewinding.
The extra-crowded marketplace came into view. People smothered the streets and, the drunken would-be rapist aside, my dress and shoe combination had its expected effect. I could barely contain my glee at seeing the distasteful looks that graced the faces of the old farts as they caught sight of me.
A woman whispered, “She’s either charging for it or giving it away,” to her friend, and as I was about to spin around and give her a challenging glare, something more alarming caught my attention. A missing person poster. I wouldn’t have stopped normally, but aside from missing posters being something of an oddity in a town like New Haven, the girl’s picture was oddly familiar. She looked like …
Well, she looked just like me.
As I read over the poster, checking out the girl's brown curls, her full cheeks and bust, and the curve of her hips that could have been a reflection of my own, I shuddered. Sure, her nose was a little bigger, and her eyes were a darker shade of blue. But, for the second time in two days, I was face to face with a picture of a woman who looked a great deal like me. And, for the second time, it was clear something horrible had happened to her.
Annabeth Girts was last seen heading to her car on the night of April 16th. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing an orange sweater and jeans. Any persons with information on her whereabouts are to contact—
I would have kept reading, except right then, my heel broke.
As I went winding down a nearby stairwell, I thought about a lot of things— none more than the fact that the piece of garbage Italian shoes were eleven thousand goddamn dollars! And they were now likely about to kill me. All because New Haven liked half of their stores to have cellars!
I braced for impact, envisioning my bloodied face and broken teeth that would no doubt come as a result of tumbling down concrete stairs.
I wonder who I could sue at this point.
But there was no pain, no metallic blood taste, no broken teeth or bruised tailbones. Instead, I found myself in the arms of a man—the second inexplicably attractive man I had crossed paths with in a single day.
Either I was losing it, or Lulu was right. This town had changed. Especially with the selection of … er, well … men.
My rescuer this time had dark eyes and even darker hair that slicked back on his head. His cheekbones were dusted with stubble—I would bet he was the type that always had five o’clock shadow. He stared down at me for a long moment before his lips, pink and inviting, finally parted to speak.