Slime was not the word Max would’ve used. Slime indicated something organic. Lacking a heart, Bud Traynor couldn’t even be considered living tissue.
She suddenly realized her fingernails had dug into her palms. She looked at her nails. Damn, the Cajun Spice hadn’t worn off with all that frenzied cleaning. “It was uncharacteristic of him to let you see what he’s really like.” Traynor’s facade could be dropping. “You must make him feel awfully safe.”
She prayed Bud would underestimate Witt until the moment the detective slipped the cuffs on him for...something.
“Wanted him to be guilty, didn’t you?” Witt was too damn intuitive about Traynor—and her—for her own good.
She shrugged her shoulders in answer. Witt let her go for now, but she knew he’d come back to the topic of Bud Traynor eventually. Witt never forgot a thing. He reminded her so much of Cameron.
She went back to the thing that had bothered her yesterday after Witt had rushed to her rescue. “So tell me, if you thought it was Carla, why’d you end up at Hackett’s?”
Witt shifted on the chair. Uneasy. An atypical reaction for him. “You need something more comfortable here. This thing sucks.”
“Nowhere to put it.”
“Then you need a new place.”
She looked around the room. She certainly couldn’t call it an apartment. “Maybe I do.” She supposed it would have to be somewhere that took pets. She couldn’t leave Buzzard alone to starve all over again. “And I do realize you didn’t answer my question.”
Witt rubbed a hand across his chin. “Never thought I’d be able to pull the wool over your eyes.”
“Then answer.”
He pulled at the neck of his T-shirt as if it suddenly felt too tight. “This is a little complicated.”
She crossed her legs, leaned back on one elbow. “I’ve finished cleaning so we have all day.”
He squirmed some more on the chair. Buzzard got so disturbed, he jumped down.
“Well...I sort of...heard a voice.” The words came out all in a rush at the end.
“A voice?” Her heart kick-started.
“Well, not really a voice. Just a feeling.”
“About me?”
“That you were in trouble.”
“But how’d you know where to go?”
He scratched his temple and avoided her eyes. “Just sorta seemed...to know.” He paused a moment. “There was this scent of peppermints, kind of led the way.”
Cameron. She knew it, every nerve-ending suddenly on alert. Floating tether-free in the nether regions, Cameron had breathed a message to Witt and left a trail of peppermints.
He’d broken their invisible umbilical cord, but he hadn’t left her alone.
So. She was psychic, not crazy after all. What did that make Witt?
“Gosh, Detective, I think you might be psychic, too.”
He flushed. His blond eyebrows looked painted on. He cleared his throat. “Normally, that kind of assessment would insult my male sensibilities. At this point, however, it’s preferable to insanity.”
“Was it a man’s voice?” She didn’t tell him it had been Cameron.
“Well, ah...”
“Come on. Admit it, it was a man’s voice.”
He dodged the bullet with a fluid change of subject. “Promise me one thing, Max. This will be the last time I gotta rescue you.”
She stood, crossed to his chair, her knees not quite touching his, then braced her hands on her hips. “I rescued myself before you even got there.”
She realized her mistake the second he put his hands on her flanks and pulled her closer, his fingers brushing the curve of her butt.
Oh goodness, this was way too nice. She promptly forgot what they’d been talking about.
He didn’t seem to be having the same trouble. “All right, I’ll rephrase. Tell me this is the last murder you’ll get involved with.”
She couldn’t think with him touching her this way. She wanted nothing more than to climb on his lap and straddle him. Instead, she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed away. He didn’t lose his grip on her.
What had she been about to say? Oh yeah. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether I start having those psychic dreams again.” She hummed the “Twilight Zone” opener. “In fact, I feel one coming on now.”
If she didn’t get his hands off her right this minute, there’d be a lot more “coming” going on, too.
She didn’t think either of them was quite ready for that.
Epilogue
Sunday nights had always been her favorite at the Round Up. The roar of voices was lower, the music seemed softer, the age of the crowd slightly older, less punky. And the men were delicious.
But this Sunday night, Max climbed into her bed alone, her body and mind clamoring for attention, her heart begging for the strength of resistance. The resistance had nothing to do with Detective Witt Long, of course, but more to do with erasing the lingering sexual tension Wendy had left behind.
Yeah right.
Okay, maybe it was a bit of both.