LITMIR.BIZ

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on an affair in a property you owned was pretty stupid.

      He passed the barbecue place, inhaled deeply and promised himself to stop in on his way back. More an overgrown community than a town, Muddy Landing was small enough so that he had little trouble locating the address, even without the gizmo Hack had installed in the SUV.

      Nice place, he thought as he pulled up two houses down on the other side of the street, although he wouldn’t have chosen to paint a house light purple—orchid or lavender, whatever the color was called—with dark green trim and a red car parked in the driveway. But what the hell, no one had ever accused him of having good taste.

      Jake considered the best way to approach her. “You looked like a hot number, so I decided to follow you home,” probably wasn’t going to cut it. She’d slam the door and call the cops, same as she’d done before, and this time he couldn’t blame her.

      On the way up the front walk, he tucked in his shirt-tail and ran a hand over his thick, dark hair. While he waited for someone to answer the doorbell, he took in the details of the well-kept two-story house. He liked the fact that not all the houses were the same style or color. From here he could see three whites, two yellows and a blue. When it came to color, the influence of the nearby beach had evidently spread inland. Over on the Banks, the county commissioners had actually considered limiting the colors a property owner could use. Talk about government running wild. At least on his own two properties in Manteo, some 40 odd miles south, he stuck to plain white, inside and out. Nobody could complain about that. He was in the process of having the duplex repainted and the roof re-shingled, partly because of storm damage, but mostly on account of it was long overdue.

      He pressed the button again and was about to give it another try when the door opened. “Ma’am, my name’s Jake Smith and I—”

      He got no further than that when a short creature with raccoon eyes growled at him. “Leave me alone, I don’t want any, I’m not interested, and I don’t do surveys.”

      “Oh, hey—” Jake had the presence of mind to wedge his foot in the opening before she could slam the door shut. “I’m not—that is, I’ve got credentials.” When he reached for his wallet, she lunged and stomped on his foot. Pain streaked all the way up to his groin. “Legitimate business,” he grunted through the pain. Quickly, he flashed his PI license and the sheriff’s courtesy card he’d been given years ago, that had no official bearing, but hell, he’d have shown her his mama’s recipe for cornmeal dumplings if he thought it would help.

      “Ma’am, I just wanted to apologize—to explain in case you were still worried.”

      Was this even the same woman? Same height, same hair color, but instead of that hot little number she’d been wearing less than an hour ago—red miniskirt, thin flouncy top and a pair of sexy spike-heeled ankle-strap shoes—she was covered from the neck down with what looked like a deflated army tent. Her feet were bare, with red toenails and red places on the sides where those pointy-toed shoes had rubbed. As fetching as they were, shoes like that were a crime against nature.

      He lifted his gaze to her face while his own throbbing foot held the door open. When a hint of some exotic fragrance drifted past, he inhaled it, eyes narrowing in appreciation.

      “You’re dead meat,” she said flatly. “There’s a deputy living two doors away. All I have to do is call him.”

      “You want to use my cell phone?” He made a motion as if to get it, although he’d left it in the truck.

      She blinked and relaxed her death grip on the door. At least, her fingers were no longer white-tipped. Actually, they were red-tipped to match her toenails. “Just state your business and leave,” she said grimly. “I’ll give you thirty seconds and then I’m calling Darrell.”

      He might have taken her more seriously if she didn’t have eye-makeup smeared halfway down her cheeks. At least he hoped that’s what the black and blue stains were, otherwise this might be a worst-case domestic situation. The hair that reminded him of the color of heartwood cedar was mashed flat on one side, standing up on the other. His wife used to call it bed-head.

      Hell, maybe this was where she was meeting Jamison. Could they have got their signals crossed? That perfume she was wearing smelled like torrid sex in a tropical garden.

      But then, why would she be dressed like this to meet a lover?

      Not that even dressed in what looked like a Halloween costume gone wrong, she wouldn’t make any normal man think of tangled sheets and damp, silky skin.

      “Would you please remove your foot?” she demanded.

      Khaki-colored eyes. He could’ve sworn they were some shade of blue, but then, at any distance of more than a dozen feet, eye color was hard to discern. “Ms. Lasiter, I just wanted to reassure you that—”

      The black-rimmed, khaki-colored eyes widened. “How did you know my name?”

      Jake thought, I’m too old for this. No matter how good she looked under that disguise—no matter how good she smelled, it just wasn’t worth the wear and tear.

      But she deserved an answer, and he’d come here expressly for that purpose. Among other things. “I’m in the security business and I was on a job I had to check out your license I’m sorry if I upset you I just wanted you to know you’re in no danger from me.” He said it all in a single gust of breath, hoping she wouldn’t finish breaking every bone in his foot. Now he knew how a fox felt when it was caught in a steel trap.

      Jake Smith, Sasha thought. A variation of John Smith. Right. How likely was that? Staring through bleary eyes, she tried to convince herself that the man who called himself Jake Smith was on the level. Silhouetted against the sunset he’d been impressive enough. Up close and personal, he was—

      Yes, well regardless of what he was, she didn’t need any. Didn’t need it, didn’t want it, knew better than even to think about it. By the time she’d got home her headache had grown to the four-alarm stage, which meant pills alone weren’t going to do much good. Nevertheless, she’d downed three with a swallow of milk from the carton. Then, not bothering to remove her makeup, she’d shed her clothes, pulled on her oldest, most comfortable caftan and fallen into bed with a package of frozen peas over her eyes.

      “Just so you know,” he said, “I’ll probably be there again. I’m not finished with my job.”

      Even in her semi-demented state, she couldn’t help but notice that he was sort of attractive, his tanned, irregular features bracketed by laugh lines and squint lines. Under a shadow of beard there was a shallow cleft on his square jaw. A few strands of gray in his dark hair. Obviously he’d reached the age where a man either started to fall apart or ripened into something truly special.

      This one was ripe.

      “Well, just so you know, neither am I,” she warned, belatedly coming to her senses. “Finished with my business, that is.”

      He stepped back, freeing his foot. She didn’t wait for him to turn away before slamming the door.

      Two

      Distracted enough without trying to drive and eat at the same time, Jake ordered a barbecue plate to go and drove the rest of the way to Manteo, a distance of some forty miles, listening to a Molasses Creek CD and thinking about the unusual woman he’d just met.

      Sasha Lasiter. It had a ring to it. He wondered if it was her real name. The first thing he’d noticed about her back at the Jamison cottage was her shape. That thing she’d been wearing when he’d tracked her down might have covered her curves, but he’d already seen ’em firsthand. The short skirt and that wispy thing she’d been wearing on top, while it was a lot more than most women wore at the beach, barely covered the essentials. His imagination had filled in the rest.

      A guy didn’t see curves like that every day. Jake had heard about hourglass figures. Hers fit the description, with maybe twenty-minutes more sand in the bottom than in the top. The fact that those same generous

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