All the Lies - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,41

the dog runs up to me, yelping, but Liam places his hand on her head, and she immediately calms down.

“This is Skylar,” he says. “She's a little protective of me, but she's friendly. Don't worry, she won't bite.”

I lean over to try to pet her, but she bursts out into another cacophony of barks.

“You might want to give her some time,” he advises.

I decide to not approach her again until she calms down.

Liam leads me to the large kitchen island made of marble and reinforced with steel and offers me something to drink. There's a farmhouse sink with one of those modern, spring-like faucets installed in the island and when I tell him that I want some water, he grabs a Mason jar and flips on the filtered water setting on the faucet. When I bring it to my lips, it tastes cool and delicious like it's straight out of the spring.

“Good, right?” he asks.

I nod.

“I have a well on the property, one of the few around here so that's natural spring water.”

“Wow, it's some of the best water I've ever had.”

“Yeah, it's one of the reasons I bought this property.”

I look around the enormous open floor concept containing both the kitchen and the living room in one. There are huge skylights up above in the twenty foot ceiling, illuminating every nook and cranny. The walls are mostly bare, except for a few gigantic canvases. One is of a woman's nude body, facing away from the painter, done in an abstract style with hues of blue and violet.

“These are beautiful,” I say, looking around the space.

There's a large modern chandelier the shape of an enormous hexagon hanging in the kitchen. The floors are the color of cool oak, covered with a few distressed looking rugs. Along one wall sits a modern midcentury couch and along the other is a plush chaise lounge in linen white.

“I love the way that your house is designed,” I say.

“Thank you.” He nods. “I did it myself.”

I raise my eyebrow, surprised. It looks like something that could have a whole architectural spread in Coast magazine. I'm tempted to suggest that I pitch him and his home for the cover story.

I'm tempted, but I'm not stupid.

He's already suspicious of me and if I bring up another story angle, I know that he won't let this go any further.

I need him to trust me. I have to put him at ease. The problem is that I feel like I'm going to pass out every time he looks at me.

“I'm sorry if I was a little rude earlier,” Liam says, opening the double doors to his wide subzero refrigerator and pulling out a box of blueberries.

He raises some to my eye level and shrugs, asking, “Do you want any?”

After such a long drive, I'm feeling quite peckish and I give him a vigorous nod.

After he washes the blueberries in the sink, he transfers them to a glazed bowl with small little imperfections along the sides which makes it look like it was handmade. If the berries looked good before, now they are completely irresistible. I grab a few and pop them in my mouth.

“I'm sorry that I just showed up here. The thing is that I had no idea that you would be who I would find here. I thought that maybe D. B. Carter was actually this Matt Lipinski and he was testing me.”

“You know, that wasn't really smart. Coming out to the desert all by yourself to knock on a stranger's door. What if it had been a trick? What if he was just trying to get you to come to his house… For…”

His voice trails off, but we both know the threat that women face from strange men.

“I know, but I told my sister where I was going and I was going to stay in touch. Besides, I looked up the house and it looked quite nice.”

“Yes, rich people never commit crimes,” he says sarcastically and we both laugh.

“So… Can I ask you a few questions?”

He shrugs and tosses a blueberry in his mouth.

“How long have you been writing as D. B. Carter?”

“Five years or is it six? It's been a while.”

“How did you get started?”

“Like any writer. I started with short stories and essays that I submitted to what feels like hundreds of literary magazines. Some got accepted, fewer got published. None made money.”

“So, what happened?”

“I got sick of it. I went to this writers’ conference and I attended a talk by a fantasy