“Do what?” she asked, mimicking his position.
“Had the best head of steam going there, really gonna lay into you about these idiotic notions you get into your head, straighten you out on a few things, like who’s the macho cop and who’s the dainty woman around here, and then wham-bam, I look at you, and all I wanna do is drag you home.” He rolled his head from side to side slowly. Remorsefully. “Just don’t get it.”
Damn. That was one of the longest speeches she’d ever heard from him, and he’d definitely used the “I” word twice. She couldn’t decide what it meant. She only knew that his words made her skin prickle in a nice way. A very nice way. Too nice. “Maybe you weren’t all that mad in the first place.”
He shook his head. “Can’t even stay pissed with you when I want to. Not like my ex-wife. Not at all. Stayed mad at her for days. Like the time she threw out all my underwear—”
“Boxers or briefs?” She couldn’t resist. Or maybe the question had come from Bethany.
He raised his eyes heavenward.
“Sorry.” She still wanted to know the answer.
“She threw out all my stuff and bought—” He cut himself off this time. She could have sworn his cheeks turned pink.
“Yeah. She bought what?”
“Colored Speedos.” He looked thoroughly disgusted.
Her lips twitched. “I take it you’re a white-cotton man.”
He answered indirectly. “A man has a God-given right to choose his own underwear.”
“Is that anything like the God-given right to take a leak standing up?” Which was the reason he’d given her for his divorce, the fact that his ex-wife had insisted he sit while performing certain bodily functions.
“Damn right.”
God. Another Witticism. She almost laughed out loud this time. He was too damn cute for words. Too damn dangerous to her plans to stay unencumbered. This conversation had gotten way too intimate. She threw an immediate monkey wrench into the works, her tone intentionally belligerent. “Do you want to know why I went to Bethany’s or not?”
“Would be nice for starters. Business first. Save the hot stuff for last.”
“No hot stuff.”
He snapped his fingers. “Shucks.”
The man was simply adorable. Was that a Bethany word or her own? The longer she sat in the confines of his truck, the harder it was to distinguish. Nor could she remember what she’d been so upset about. That thing about Cameron and Bethany’s father. And ... oh yeah, the phone calls. “Coming here wasn’t something I planned, you know.”
Witt observed her skeptically, but let her go on without interruption.
“As I was laying in bed—”
“Naked,” he flashed out. The man was quick.
“Noo. Cut it out if you want to hear the rest.”
He leaned his head back, watching her beneath hooded lids.
She went on. “It suddenly occurred to me that the cops didn’t know about Bethany’s little side business.”
“And you wanted to see if he called back.”
There. He’d done it again. Read her mind. She’d like to know how he did it. She didn’t even have to ask who “he” was. “Yes. If Achilles called, that would go a long way, in my mind, to proving he didn’t know she was dead. If he didn’t call ...”
“You’d send out the cavalry to look for him.”
“Yeah. There’s got to be a way to trace the calls through the 900 service. Or if he used a credit card, you could get him that way.” Her excitement rose, the fun of the chase took over.
“So what happened?”
“He called.”
She noticed Witt’s shoulders visibly sag, and then he shrugged. “So he’s not our man.”
She liked the way he said our, automatically throwing them together in this. “Well ...”
“Well, is he or isn’t he? What’s your psychic little brain tell you?”
“The conversation was kind of odd.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “I can’t exactly put my finger on it.” She sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him how explicit Bethany had gotten with the man.
Witt shifted, sat a tad straighter against the door. “Did he talk sex?”
God, she was blushing, she just knew it. “Yeah.”
“What’d he say?”
“He didn’t talk to her the way he did in my vision of the night she died.” There, that was honest, and really all the detail that Witt needed. “That night he said he wanted to meet her, sort of threatened, and I’m pretty sure they used to fight about that a lot. But this time he didn’t ask.”
A shudder ran across her shoulders. She’d stopped short of telling Witt about the creepy feeling she’d gotten because she didn’t understand it herself. She knew if she said anything at all, she’d have to explain the whole she-bang. And ... well ... she couldn’t tell Witt everything she’d felt in that house.
He leaned forward, his face thrown into shadow. “What’d you say back?”
“I played along. I had to.”
“What’d you say, Max?”