I sat on the edge of the tub. Not that my knees had gone weak, but … well, I just needed to sit.
Oh, Dix, don’t do this. Don’t feel this.
Okay, this was Dylan … but still, he was a man. I was too smart for that. Too tough. Too cynical. I wasn’t going to fall for any man, especially one so young and handsome, while I….
While I what? What excuse should I make up this time?
I gave myself a mental kick in the ass. And I continued to listen. Apparently the door between us gave him as much freedom to speak as it did me to listen.
“Dix, I just don’t want to make love to you when you’ve got so much trouble on your mind. I don’t want to do anything that would fill you with regrets after. I don’t want us to share mind-blowing orgasms and then have to race away into hiding again. I want it to be like it should be for us. I want it to—”
“Wait!” Oh, Jesus, he was scaring the shit out of me. Give me a mugger in a dark alley. Give me a cheating boyfriend who’s just been busted charging my way. Hell, give me Dickhead on a wild-eyed rampage. All of those things at once couldn’t scare me the way Dylan was scaring me right now. Dix Dodd didn’t do close. Close hurt. I squeezed my hands into tight fists until my nails bit into my palms. “What happened shouldn’t have happened, Dylan. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“But Dix….”
“We’re both under pressure here. That’s it. That explains everything. It was nothing.”
Please, I prayed, as the minutes ticked by in silence, not even sure what I was praying for.
“All right, Dix. You got it. It was nothing.”
I should have felt relief. Yep, sure should have.
“Good. Great. Glad we cleared that up.”
His voice was flat in its return. “I’ve gotta get going. Need to sneak back into Camillia’s, then out again. I’ll keep working this, of course. And I’ll call you in the morning like I said.”
I sat there for a moment, my insides shredding in the silence. Then I leapt up.
“Dylan! Wait.”
I dropped the jeans and shirt I’d been holding and held the housecoat around me as I raced from the room. But Dylan was gone. The backdoor was closed. I was alone with only the muted glow from the television flooding the room.
“Just like you wanted, Dix,” I mumbled.
But no one answered back.
Chapter 14
Eventually, Mrs. Presley did return my clothing. Washed, ironed (people still did that?), folded perfectly and smelling of Tide. My underwear had never been so soft. Mrs. P brought them to me herself, just after Dylan left. Which was good, because as I’d discovered when I searched the bag Dylan brought me, he’d packed the be-tasseled glow-in-the-dark abomination my mother had given me for my birthday. Could I be any more humiliated?
I’m sure Dylan hadn’t planned to grab this set, especially. Yes, it was the only matched set of underwear I owned, but I doubt if that factored into it. I couldn’t see him rummaging around in my underwear drawer until he found a match. No, he probably just grabbed the first things he saw, which in the dimness of my unlit bedroom, would be the glow-in-the-dark green nestled there among … oh, shit, among my granny panty collection!
To think I’d thought I’d bottomed out on the humiliation scale. Argh!
But Dylan Foreman had seen more than just my underwear as of late I reminded myself. And that thought was causing me a little more consternation than I wanted to acknowledge.
I barely slept that night. Tossed and turned, tangled the sheets up good all by myself. Thinking of … thinking of everything. The Flashing Fashion Queen. Dylan’s kiss that still lingered on my lips. No wonder the mattress was half off the bed when I awoke.
It was not yet dawn. The curtains were not tightly drawn and I watched the sky. I found myself staring into the stars as I waited for my bedside phone to ring with the 4:45 am wake up call I’d requested. I no longer needed the call to awaken me, but I did need it. I needed it to cue me into getting a move on … getting ready for today’s criminal offense.
But that wake up call came in the form of a petite woman in blue suede shoes, knocking softly on the door, and tiptoeing her way into Room 111 where she’d hidden me.
+++
“You’re not going out without breakfast, Dix Dodd,” Mrs. Presley said. “Don’t even try to argue.”
I didn’t.
She set the tray — complete with two fresh blueberry muffins, the butter already melting into them, orange juice and a steaming cup of my beloved nectar of the Gods (black coffee) — on the night table. The tray also contained a red rose in a tiny vase and morning paper, rolled up and held tight with a thin elastic band. The newspaper was spotted a darker gray in a place or two. It was raining. Good. Fewer early morning joggers to worry about when I broke into the Weatherby home. Just the fanatics, heads down and hunkered in on themselves against the rain.
“Thanks, Mrs. Presley. But you didn’t have to do this. I could have grabbed something … somewhere.”
“Ha. Are you kidding me? You don’t want to be coming eyeball to eyeball with the counter staff of any convenience stores or coffee joints today. You haven’t seen today’s paper yet!”
Oh no.
“I got Craig to pick it up when I sent him out for that other thing you wanted.”
“He got it?”
“He did.”
I reached for the paper, but Mrs. Presley snatched it away before I could grip it.
“First,” she said, with a stabbing finger toward the muffins. “You eat.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Well, I really do.” Her tone brooked no argument. “You’re no good to yourself fainting from hunger.”
Resigned, I choked down one of the muffins and washed it down with some orange juice before Mrs. Presley relinquished the paper.
Yes, there I was. Front page, of course.
“Shit.”
Mrs. P handed me my coffee with one hand, and set the other gently on my back as I looked at the paper.
Murder Suspect Dix Dodd On the Loose. And in smaller letters below this lovely 80-point headline, Murder appears to have been crime of passion.
The picture they put below the caption, of all things, was my driver’s license photo. I don’t take a good picture on the best of days, but after an hour of standing in line at the DMV when their air conditioning was on the fritz while some guy who must have bathed in ripe cheese stood in front of me digging who knows what out of his ears, I had a bit of a snarl on my face when the bubble-gum snapping employee clicked my pic. And omigod, it looked exactly like a mug shot.
As picture ID, it worked fine. In fact, I kind of liked the kick-ass-and-take-names-later snarling edge to it. However, had I known it was going to wind up plastered larger than life on the front page of the Marport City’s Morning Edition, I’d have fled the DMV office that day and not come back until I’d been to the esthetician.
“So much for my modeling career,” I mumbled.
I rushed to read the story, and quickly decided that the mug shot that made me look like Quasimodo’s ugly stepsister was the least of my troubles.
Marport City Police have asked residents to be on the lookout for local private detective Dix Dodd, who is wanted for escaping police custody and resisting arrest. Police sources confirm she is a person of interest in the investigation of the recent brutal murder of Jennifer Weatherby, wife of millionaire businessman Ned Weatherby. Dodd is considered dangerous, and citizens are advised not to approach, but to immediately call police at 555-8250 or 911 should they see her.