I felt a burning need to protect her as much as I’d felt the need to protect my family against her a minute before. An older cop came up the steps. I knew him.
“Fifty-one-fifty.” He addressed me by my badge number.
Harry and I exchanged a quick handshake as one of the gun-wielding cops put his piece away and told her to turn around and put her hands on her head.
“I know her,” I said.
“Got yourself a stalker?”
He seemed to think it was funny. Maybe it was. I didn’t have much of a sense of humor about it.
“She’s harmless,” I said without thinking. One of the cops started patting Emily down, and my whole brain short-circuited. I jumped toward them.
“I’ll do it,” I said. The cop looked at Harry, who must have nodded. Emily should have recognized my voice, but she didn’t turn around.
I got behind her.
“Hands on the wall,” I said. “Above your head.”
When she obeyed me, stretching her arms over her head and placing her hands flat on the siding, half my anger drained away. My dick woke up.
“Feet apart.” I didn’t wait for her to do it. Obedience was nice, but kicking her legs open was just a little more arousing.
“Carter.” Her voice was an apology I’d accept later.
“No talking.”
I frisked her, starting at her wrists, working down to her ribs. She wasn’t hiding a damn thing under those strips of clothing except tits and curves and an ass shaped like two eggs in a carton. I took it slow, as if I didn’t want to miss anything.
“I left you in your house. You were supposed to call me if you were leaving.” I let my fingertips brush under her breasts, feeling the soft flesh yield underneath. “You put yourself in danger and ruined my dinner.”
Belly, hips, thighs. I slowly ran my hands between her legs, because you never knew what a girl could hide between skin and Lycra.
I brushed her crotch quickly, then stood behind her.
“What did you think you were doing?”
“You said not to talk.”
Harry and the other cops had gone to the lawn to wait. I waved them away and they waved back. Harry gave me a thumbs-up. I turned back and put my nose in Emily’s hair. Behind me, doors slammed and tires crunched the driveway.
“This is a problem,” I said. She smelled of fear and fresh sweat. “If I can’t trust you, I can’t work with you, and I certainly can’t fuck you.”
“I’m sorry.”
I rested my hands on her hips. “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
“Yes.”
“Was it worth it?”
“Yes.”
“Really?” I moved from her hips to the front of her thighs, to the triangle in between. She shuddered.
“How are you even touching me on your wife’s porch?” She dropped her hands and spun on me. “That’s sick.”
“My what?”
She crossed her arms as if she were loading a weapon. “Don’t bullshit me. Look behind you. Three bikes. One definitely adult female. The pictures on the mantel. You look really happy, Carter. Why would you do that to her? Why would you kiss me and touch me . . .” Her eyes went wide as if she realized something. “That’s why you didn’t let me make you come.”
“Whoa, you are—”
Suddenly, I was on the defensive as Emily lifted an accusatory finger to my face.
“That’s some kind of line for you and her, is it?” She jabbed my chest repeatedly. “Right? What normal man turns down a blow job? A married—”
I took her finger.
“I’m not married. Read my lips. Not. Married.”
“Living with her?”
“No. The only woman I’m attached to is turning out to be a real psycho.”
She jerked her finger away.
“I’m going to call Thor,” I said. “If he’s not around, I’ll get someone to take you home.”
“I can get to my car by myself, thank you. An explanation before you kick me out would be nice.”
I got out my phone.
“I don’t owe you one for peeking in my windows.” I was getting more deeply entrenched in my position than I wanted to be, but her sense of entitlement rubbed up against my sense of safety. “I keep my personal life separate for a good reason.”
Tap tap tap.
Phin knocked at the window. Mom stood behind him. They were both looking at the pretty lady on the porch.
I shooed them away, but Mom took that as a cue to open the door.
“Are you coming in for dinner?”
“Mom,” I said, “go inside.”
“She doesn’t look dangerous at all!”
“Oh my God!” Emily exclaimed. “You’re the one in the pictures. You look so young.”
Her voice was thick with honesty. She wasn’t flattering my mother, but Mom was flattered anyway. She put her hand to her chest and smiled.
“Please go inside,” I said in a last-ditch effort to get control of the situation.
“Oh, stop,” she said, holding her hand out to Emily. “We have plenty of food, even if it’s a little cold.” Emily was polite enough to hesitate, but my mother wasn’t polite enough to know a damned social cue when she saw one. She took Emily by the elbow and led her inside. “Please,” she said, “call me Brenda.”
CHAPTER 27
EMILY
Let me count the ways this was awkward. I had been caught snooping by a security system that automatically called the LAPD. I was wearing sweaty dance clothes that were wet between the legs from a hot frisking that made me wish I had a weapon. Carter was mad at me for good reason, but I had no idea what his relationship with these people was so I had no idea what to say or not. And most important, my stomach growled loudly enough to wake the dead.
Carter’s mother kept her hand on my elbow and led me through the living room, with a leather couch and mission-era coffee table, skirting a TV room with a flat-screen and old fabric couches, to the kitchen, where a nook was set up for dinner. She clapped her hands once, the rings on her fingers clicking together.
“You’re not one of those vegans, are you?”
“No.”
“Because I can work around that.”
“I eat anything, actually.”
“Phin!” Carter’s mother called. The boy who had been looking out the window flopped in with the grace of the newly adolescent. He had freckles and big green eyes. “This is your father’s stalker,” she continued.
Phin put out his hand, and I shook it. “Nice to meet you. I’m kind of a stalker too.”
“I’m not . . . Wait. What?”
I didn’t like being called a stalker, but I’d earned the label. This kid, on the other hand, didn’t look like much of a danger to anyone.
Carter spoke from the doorway. “That’s not funny, Phinnaeus.”
Phin reached for a plate, and his grandmother laid silverware on it. He put out the setting with clicks and clatters while Carter leaned on the doorjamb with his arms crossed.
I mouthed an apology.
He shrugged. I got the uncomfortable feeling that eating with his family gained me zero points. It may have earned me negative points, actually. I was fully and illegally encroaching. Despite the warm hospitality of his family, I was unwanted in that house.
Well, no doubt I’d earned the discomfort by ripping a page from the book of Epic Stupid. Best to just take my licks.
Mom pulled Carter into the room. Phin slid into the nook, Carter opposite him. Mom next to Phin, and apparently I was to sit next to Carter.