Hot Winter Nights Read online

  He took a two-minute hot shower, grabbed fresh clothes and wished for caffeine. Since he’d yet to make it to a store, he was still going without. In the promised five minutes, he came back to the living room to find Molly thumbing through a stack of photos his mom had recently sent him.

  She flipped a pic in his direction, revealing his five-year-old self and his dad, both on skis, flashing toothy grins at the camera. The background was a formidable looking ski run.

  “Squaw Valley,” he said. “I’d just followed my dad down my first black diamond ski run. My aunt lives in the Sierras. We spent a lot of time in the mountains over the holidays. This year will be no different, though my dad’s teaching in England until January. He’s a college professor and he’s on loan to Oxford. But everyone else will be there.”

  “Sounds nice,” she said a little wistfully. “I’ve never been on skis.”

  “I’ll take you,” he said without thinking. And he meant it. He’d love to teach her how to ski.

  But she shook her head and gestured vaguely to her leg, making him feel like a first-class asshole for forgetting.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  She sent him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Don’t worry about it, it’s easy to forget.”

  He cupped her face up to his. “Nothing about you is easy to forget,” he said. “I want you to remember that.”

  She stared up at him for a long, vibrating beat and then stepped free. “Time to go.”

  She had a bag of food in her backseat that smelled amazing and his stomach growled.

  Molly’s mouth tipped up slightly. “He might share. If you ask real nice.”

  He had no idea if she was kidding or not. Fifteen minutes later they pulled up to a duplex in Inner Sunset. “Joe’s place?” he asked.

  “Joe owns the building,” Molly said. “He bought it for me and dad. But I needed to have more independence than that, so I live where I live and they live here. Not together, though—they’d kill each other. My dad lives on one side and Joe on the other. You didn’t know?”

  Lucas glanced over at her. He and Joe were close as far as partners went, same for being friends, but they spent so much time together at work, as in almost all their time, they rarely saw each other off the job.

  Which was just as well at the moment since Lucas happened to be lusting after the guy’s sister. Not to mention getting naked with her, to a very mutually satisfying conclusion if he said so himself. “Joe’s pretty private.”

  “Yeah, where do you think I learned it from?” she said on a rough laugh.

  The neighborhood was blue collar and hardworking. Not all the homes had been shown any love, but this duplex most definitely had. New paint, grass trimmed and mowed, and flowers thriving in the flower pots on both sides of the duplex.

  Lucas started to get out of the car, but Molly put a hand on his arm. “Wait here.”

  He arched a brow. “Like you did at my mom’s house?”

  She grimaced. “Okay, so I was nosy and curious and you’re the same. I get it. But your mom and your sisters, they’re . . .”

  “We’ve already had this conversation,” he said. “They’re crazy. Nosy. Busybodies—”

  “—And wonderful. But this isn’t a joke to me,” she said. “It’s my life.”

  And she was actually letting him see some of that life, which she didn’t do as a rule. For anyone. Knowing how private she was, he felt . . . honored, and let his smile fade. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. If you really want me to wait here, I will. But I’d really like to meet your dad.”

  She stared at him.

  He smiled charmingly.

  She didn’t return it, but he could tell she wanted to. “Okay,” she said, caving. “But only because I could use some help carrying the fifty-pound bag of dog food in the trunk.”

  Lucas didn’t ask questions, just got out of the car and went to the trunk, hoisting the huge bag of food onto a shoulder.

  She stared at him again.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Except it’s annoying how easy that was for you to lift.”

  “Annoying aaaaannnnnd . . .” he asked in a teasing voice.

  “And irritating.”

  “I think you mean sexy, right?”

  She rolled her eyes and made him laugh. At least she wasn’t looking hollow and haunted anymore. They headed up the walkway to the right side of the duplex.

  The front door had a sign that read:

  WARNING: No Soliciting, No Trespassing

  I don’t like you

  I’m not voting for you

  I’m not buying from you

  I don’t need a vacuum

  I’m armed and not tired

  of hiding the bodies

  Lucas smiled.

  Molly sighed and turned to him, pulling him aside, gesturing for him to set the big bag of dog food down. “Listen,” she said. “There’re a few things you really should know—”

  She was interrupted by the sound of a shotgun ratcheting.

  In one move, Lucas pushed her behind him and pulled his gun.

  “No,” Molly gasped, tugging loose and slipping between him and the front door to face him. “Stop. You’ll only make it worse. It’s just my dad. It’s sort of . . . his greeting. Dad,” she yelled, turning to the front door. “It’s me.”

  “You’re late,” came a cranky male voice.

  “I know.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “I know that too,” she said. “But work took a lot longer today than I thought it would. You should’ve turned on the holiday lights that Joe strung for you out here. You’d be able to see better.”

  “What’s the code?”

  Molly knocked four times on the door, paused, then added a fifth.

  Suddenly the outside of the house lit up with icicle lights in white, red, and green.

  “See?” Molly said through the door. “Festive, right?”

  “Stupid waste of electricity.”

  Molly sighed. “Let us in, Dad.”

  “Who’s the guy with the gun?”

  Molly craned her neck and glanced back at Lucas, her eyes going wide when she saw he was still holding his gun. She waved her hand at him, gesturing that he should put it away. It went against every fiber of his being, what with there being a gun trained on him, but he holstered it.

  “I brought . . . a coworker,” Molly told her dad.

  “Why?”

  Molly sighed. “Because he’s helping me work on something. He’s Joe’s partner, Lucas Knight. Dad, it’s cold. Let us in.”

  There came the sound of four locks being unlocked. And then a pause. And then one more bolt shifting.

  Molly waited until that last bolt clicked before opening the door and poking her head into the house. She looked around and then looked back at Lucas with an expression he couldn’t quite place. Not fear, but . . . unease.

  He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and then she led him inside. The duplex was small but neat. The only holiday decorations in here were some garland on the mantel, and a two-foot tall live potted Christmas tree on the coffee table. Wood floors, no throw rugs, wide open spaces between the sparsely furnished living room.

  He got the reason for that when he caught sight of the man in a wheelchair in the doorway to the kitchen wearing an army T-shirt, black boxers, and a rifle across his thighs.

  “Dad,” Molly said, walking to him, then leaning in and kissing his jaw. “We talked about this. You’re supposed to wear pants during the day.”

  “It’s not day, it’s night,” he said, his gaze never leaving Lucas.

  A huge yellow Labrador retriever rose from his bed in the corner. He stretched and yawned.

  “Nice job on the watchdog thing, Buddy,” the man said.

  “Dad, Buddy’s your emotional support dog, not a watchdog.” Molly dropped to her knees and held out her arms, and the dog walked right into t