It didn’t have anything as incriminating as the other woman’s prescription medication. Toenail clippers, dental floss, toothpaste, mouthwash, and a supply of toothbrushes still in their packages. Randy had always been hell-bent on hygiene.
Or hell-bent on disguising the taste and scent of another woman.
Lola’s stomach threatened to heave once more.
You have to be a big girl. That’s what her mother had told Lola after her dad had left. You have to forget about dreams and stop crying.
Lola didn’t want to be a big girl. She wanted to go home, crawl in bed, and hug something.
And there was a hard truth. She had nothing to hug.
Lola splashed water on her cheeks and turned to face the main room. A bed and a bureau. What purpose did the bureau serve? Maybe there was something in its drawers to give Lola a clue about who her husband’s mistress was. A change of clothes. A receipt from a bar. A photo of the cheating couple.
The front door swung open.
Lola shrieked, bumping into the bathroom doorframe and jarring her shoulder.
But it wasn’t Randy’s mistress. It was Drew, dressed for his day off in blue jeans, boots, and a blue checked shirt. His police radio was clipped to his shirt pocket. Dark whiskers, dark tousled hair, dark eyes that saw too much.
“Couldn’t you knock?” she demanded, swaying like Paul had last night when facing the jail cell.
“Couldn’t you leave the past alone?” he replied with a scowl, standing tall and unshaken. He handed her a check.
Lola tucked his rent into her bra strap.
“Go away.” She only half meant it. His presence calmed her. She marched across the beige linoleum, clutched the handles to the top bureau drawer, and pulled.
Stubby candles. A battery-powered strobe light. A canister of red rose petals made of silk.
“No pictures, no matchbooks, no love letters,” Lola mumbled, swimming her hands through the near-empty drawer with increasing speed.
“Don’t do this.” Drew caught her wrists and pulled her away from the bureau. “I’ll get Gary to come up here and help me move everything out. Don’t put yourself through this.” His words were measured and calm. His dark eyes lined with concern. The sheriff doing his duty, keeping the peace.
But there were still drawers to go through and answers to find, and Lola could feel her mother’s dramatic, foolish, eccentric impulses building inside her like a pressure cooker without a vent. She eased from his hold. “I have to know if what we had was real.”
The next drawer was filled with silky lingerie. Black, white, red, pink. Bustiers, thongs, corsets, baby doll gowns. She held up one racy black number. It was see-through.
“Okay. All right. You get the idea.” Drew snatched the nightwear away and stuffed it in the drawer. “I know what you’re thinking. Just…don’t say it.”
“My lingerie isn’t half as nice as hers,” Lola blurted, pathetically envious.
“I told you not to say what you were thinking.” Drew placed his hands on Lola’s shoulders. They fit, those hands.
Or maybe she was just so lonely that anyone’s touch would have comforted her.
He turned her toward the door. “You need to go home.”
“To what?” Lola dug in her sneakers and resumed her search.
The two bottom drawers were deep. The first one had a variety of costumes for both men and women. Fireman, black cat, nurse, schoolgirl, Santa.
Oh, Santa.
Lola shook out a crumpled bit of blue polyester. It was a jumpsuit with a halter top, and it loosely resembled a cop uniform. Whoever Randy’s mistress had been, she had an overactive imagination. Lola lifted the uniform to Drew’s shoulders. “You might be able to squeeze into this. Polyester is very stretchy.”
“I’ll wear my own pants, thank you.” Drew put his hands on hers and gently but firmly pushed them back into her space.
Lola’s hands lowered, and she looked at Drew, really looked at him. If she’d seen him on the streets of New York, she wouldn’t have looked twice. He didn’t have a smile that charmed or a wardrobe that said he had great taste. He’d never barge through a crowd as if he owned Wall Street or cut in front of her at the corner Starbucks because he was late for a meeting.
He could have made a snarky remark about the lingerie (or hers). He could have lost his temper when she’d teased him about wearing the cop costume. There was a reason he was the sheriff. He was steady and reliable, the opposite of her husband.
Nothing had been said during her scrutiny of his