To Die For Read online

  Jenni looked stricken that her grand plan should be so summarily turned down, not just by me but by Wyatt, too; in the end, his was the approval that counted, because he had the authority to either nix the plan or put it into motion. He’d nixed it.

  “There must be something I can do,” she said, and a tear streaked down her face. She looked pleadingly at me.

  “Well, let’s see.” By this time I’d found my voice. I tapped my bottom lip with a fingernail while I thought. “You could wash my car every Saturday for the next year—after I get a car, that is. Or you could regrout my bathroom, because I really hate doing that.”

  She blinked at me as if she couldn’t quite make her mind wrap itself around what I was saying. Then she giggled. In the middle of the giggle she hiccuped a sob, and that was a very strange sound combination. It startled me into my own giggle—which I’ve tried hard to stop doing because of the image thing. I’m blond; I really shouldn’t giggle.

  Anyway, we ended up hugging and laughing, and she apologized five or six times, and I told her she was family and I’d choose her over Jason Carson any day because he was a lowlife bastard who made a pass at his seventeen-year-old sister-in-law and I was better off without him.

  Whew. Family dramas wear me out.

  Wyatt had to take Jenni home. They asked me to come along, but I elected to stay because I felt that I needed some alone time to get my emotions settled. I had tried to forgive Jenni and to some extent I had, because the lion’s share of blame belonged to Jason; he’d been an adult, and married, while teenagers aren’t the best in the world at making rational decisions. Still, it had always been there in the back of my mind that my own sister had betrayed me. I had tried to act normally toward her, but I guess she knew there was a difference between Before and After. What surprised me most was that she cared. No, what really surprised me most was that she’d ever been jealous of me; Jenni is gorgeous, and has always been gorgeous, from the day she was born. I’m smart, but not as smart as Siana. I’m pretty, but not in the same class with Jenni. I was sort of middle-of-the-road in our family. Why on earth would she be jealous?

  I started to call Siana to talk things over with her, but decided that I’d keep this private between Jenni and me. If she was serious about mending our relationship—really mending it—then I wasn’t going to sabotage the opportunity by maybe blabbing something she wasn’t comfortable with others knowing.

  Wyatt was back within the hour. His dark brows were drawn down in a scowl when he came in the door. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you blackmailed your ex into giving you everything you asked for in the divorce? Don’t you think that’s something that could be considered as motive?”

  “Except Jason didn’t shoot at me,” I pointed out. “And he thinks he got the negative.”

  He did the green-eyed laser look. “He thinks?”

  I blinked my eyes at him, and put on my most innocent expression. “I mean, he knows he got the negative.”

  “Uh-huh. Does he know he got all of the copies?”

  “Um . . . he thinks he did, and that’s what’s important, right?”

  “So you blackmailed him, then double-crossed him.”

  “I look at it more as insurance. Anyway, I’ve never needed to use the picture and he doesn’t know it still exists. I haven’t had any contact with him since our divorce was final, and that was five years ago. That was why I knew Jason wasn’t trying to kill me, because he wouldn’t have any reason to.”

  “Except he does have reason to.”

  “Well, he would if he knew, but he doesn’t.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, as if I’d given him a headache. “Where are the copies?”

  “In my safe deposit box. There’s no way anyone saw them by accident, and no one else knows I have them, not even my family.”

  “Okay. I strongly suggest that, when this is over and you can come out of hiding, that you get those copies and destroy them.”

  “I can do that,” I allowed.

  “I know you can. The question is: Will you? Promise me.”

  I scowled at him. “I said I would.”

  “No, you said you could. There’s a difference. Promise me.”

  “Oh, all right. I promise I’ll destroy the pictures.”

  “Without making any extra copies.”

  Sheesh, he wasn’t the most trusting guy in the world. It pissed me off that he’d thought of that, too. Either Dad had been giving him advice again, or he had an unnaturally suspicious mind.

  “Without making any extra copies,” he repeated.

  “All right!” I snapped, and made plans to maybe accidentally drop his television remote in the toilet.

  “Good.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Now, are there any other little secrets you’re keeping from me, anyone else you’re blackmailing, any revenge thing going on that you neglected to mention because you didn’t think it was relevant?”

  “No, Jason’s the only person I’ve ever blackmailed. And he deserved it.”

  “He deserved worse than that. He needed to have his ass kicked up around his shoulders.”

  Slightly mollified by those sentiments, I shrugged. “Daddy would have done it, so we didn’t tell him why Jason and I got divorced. That was to protect Daddy, not Jason.” No way was stomping Jason worth my dad spending even one minute under arrest for assault, which is what would have happened, because Jason is the petulant type and he’d have filed charges.

  “Agreed.” Wyatt watched me for a moment, then gave a rueful little shake of his head and pulled me into his arms. Comforted, I slid my arms around his waist and laid my head on his chest, and he rested his cheek on top of my head. “Now I understand why you need so much reassurance,” he murmured. “That was a big hit you took, finding your husband kissing your sister.”

  If there’s anything I hate, it’s people feeling sorry for me. In this case, there was no need. I’d moved on, and left Jason in my dust. But I couldn’t say, “Oh, it didn’t really bother me,” because that would have been a big fat lie and he’d have known it and thought I still hurt so much I couldn’t let myself admit it. So I muttered, “I got over it. And I got the Mercedes.” Except I didn’t have my Mercedes now, because it was just a hunk of crushed and twisted metal.

  “You may have gotten over the hurt, but you didn’t get over the experience. It made you wary.”

  Now he was making me sound like some poor wounded bird. I pulled back and scowled up at him. “I’m not wary; I’m smart. There’s a difference. I want to be sure there’s something solid between us before I sleep with you—”

  “Too late,” he said, and grinned.

  I sighed. “I know,” I said, and laid my head back on his chest. “Gentlemen don’t gloat.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  It told me he was way too cocky, and I needed to shore up my defenses. There was a big problem, though: I didn’t want to shore them up; I wanted to tear them down. Common sense said I might as well abandon my stance on not sleeping with him, since I was doing nothing but wasting my breath. On the other hand, it went against the grain to let him have his way in everything.

  “It tells me I should probably go stay in a motel in another town,” I said, just to wipe the smile off his face.

  It worked.

  “What?” he snapped. “What gave you a harebrained idea like that?”

  “I should be perfectly safe in another town, right? I could check in under a fake name, and—”

  “Forget it,” he said. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you run away.” Then he realized that I now had wheels, and he had no control over what I did during the day while he was at work. He didn’t anyway, because if I wanted to leave, all I had to do was pick up the phone and call any of my family and they would come pick me up. For that matter, his own mother would, too. “Ah, shit,” he finished.

  He was so eloquent.

  Chapter

  Twenty-five