head.
Wasn’t tall.
That was it.
Her Instagram was still up. Private. The picture was her smiling wide. White, straight teeth. Happy eyes. Stupid, then.
The internet search was more helpful. More images. And it came to what I’d expect. A woman with a constant smile. Friends. Pretty, but nothing really special. Pure, if I believed any human on this planet was pure.
Wholesome.
I spent the entire rest of the night combing the internet with something I could find to sully the name of a dead woman, disgrace her a little, and fell asleep at my laptop. No words written.
“I need Deacon’s number,” I said when Margot answered the phone.
It was a big thing, me exchanging numbers with someone. I hated being accessible. That this generation thought they deserved my response to messages, photos, sent without thought or effort.
Letters were different. Took time.
But internet shit? I hated that. People were entitled to your attention. They deserved your reply.
Fuck that.
Less than ten people had my cell phone number. My mother was reluctant number ten.
Margot was number eleven. And I hadn’t even been too bothered about it. I liked having her in my phone. Especially right now.
“I smell trouble,” she replied, not at all perturbed at my lack of greeting.
I glared at my laptop. “Not trouble. Just an…” I trailed off, looking around the kitchen. Spotting what I needed, I limped toward my car. “An issue at the house.”
“Hmmm, what kind of issue?”
I paused, cradling the phone in the crook of my shoulder as I grabbed what I needed from the trunk. I waited for the slam shut to begin talking again.
Margot beat me to it. “If it’s an issue of you needing to get laid, I agree. You’re entirely too tense and bitchy.”
I snorted. “I’m always tense and bitchy, no matter if I’m getting laid or not.”
“Then, baby, you’re not getting laid right.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“That’s what vibrators are for.”
She chuckled into the phone. “Okay, well, sooner or later, your resolve will weaken. But if you don’t want his number for sex, what do you want?”
I muted the phone and sent my tire iron crashing through the pipe underneath my kitchen sink.
“I have a leak in my kitchen,” I replied.
She paused. “Do you have a leak in your kitchen or your brain? Because I’m suspecting you’re trying to make a certain badass mountain man jealous by having a certain ex-Special Forces-turned-bartender who wants in your pants.” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Because that would make a great Pay-Per-View, but I feel like even you don’t want that kind of drama.”
“Do you have the number or not?” I asked, feeling impatient. I didn’t like she was reading me so well and caring about how my decisions might affect me negatively. I didn’t need that shit.
She sighed and rattled off the number. “You’re playing with fire, Mags.”
“And do you think I haven’t been burned before?”
“Wow, looks liked someone came in here with a crowbar,” Deacon said, head underneath my sink.
I cradled my glass against my chest.
The chest that looked damn fine, was moisturized, tanned, and highlighted within an inch of its life. As was the rest of me. I had on a tight, short, tee-shirt dress that hugged every part of my perfect body, bare feet because that seemed more intimate, and hair tumbling around my face in curls that looked effortless but took an hour to do.
Ditto with the makeup.
I knew I looked like sex on a stick, plus the dress and the lowered heat made it clear I wasn’t wearing a bra.
It wasn’t the normal routine for me. I didn’t seduce men. I didn’t need to, even before all this. I’d always been pretty. Good genes, my mom said. But when I got boobs at thirteen, hips and full lips—yeah, I was sexy. There was a darkness that even an idiotic teenage boy was interested in, if not infatuated by.
I’d never wanted to seduce anyone. What was the point?
But I had a point with Deacon.
Was it to make Saint jealous?
No. A man like Saint wasn’t apt to get jealous. He wanted me or he didn’t. If he wanted me, he’d make it known. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be here. Which he wasn’t. Magazines and HBO wanted to make it complicated but it really was that simple. If a man wanted you, no mind games, he’d be with you.
Women did the mind games.
“Ah, well, who knows what happens with household things,” I replied. “Maybe I have an intruder.”
He raised his brow. “An intruder that comes