Scene of the Crime: Widow Creek

And yet he knew nothing could come of his attraction to her. She’d given him no indication that she felt the same kind of attraction to him that he did for her, and even if she did he wouldn’t follow through on it.

He’d had the one great love of his life and he’d blown it and the consequences had been devastating. He was responsible for his wife’s suicide, and he’d never allow himself to get close to a woman again.

Chapter Three

She shouldn’t have agreed to dinner, Lexie thought as she entered the house. She shouldn’t have agreed to dinner with him. Nick Walker definitely made her slightly nervous, although she’d been grateful for his presence during the long day.

Still, she should have thanked him for his time and let it go at that. She didn’t need the distraction of spending time with a man who made her just a little bit breathless when he gazed at her, a man who made her feel a strange mix of both anxiety and anticipation.

And yet she didn’t consider calling him to tell him to forget dinner. She had to eat and she’d rather do it someplace else, anyplace else instead of in the horrible quiet of Lauren’s kitchen.

Before she did anything else she checked the answering machine in Lauren’s office to see if any calls had come in throughout the day. There was only one from somebody who had apparently stopped by for their appointment with Lauren while Lexie and Nick had been out. The woman, who said her name was Anna, only said that Precious had missed seeing Lauren and asked that Lauren call to reschedule the training session.

Lexie vaguely remembered that when she’d looked through the folder of contracts there had been one signed by an Anna. She made a mental note to contact the woman the next day and let her know that, at least at the moment, Lauren wasn’t available for taking appointments.

Zeus followed Lexie to the bathroom where she quickly took off her clothes and stepped into the shower. As she stood beneath the warm spray, her thoughts whirled over what they’d learned that day, which had been darned little.

She still hoped they would discover that Lauren had gone off someplace with Bo Richards and that she’d return home any minute, feeling guilty and sheepish at causing so much unwarranted worry. Maybe she’d made arrangements for somebody to take care of the dogs in her absence and whomever she’d hired had just blown off the job.

She got out of the shower and changed into a clean pair of jeans and a Kelly-green lightweight sweater. Zeus sat at her feet and watched as she applied a light coating of both mascara and lipstick. As she finished with her hair and turned away from the mirror he whined, as if protesting the fact that she was leaving him again.

She checked her watch and realized she had another twenty minutes before Nick would be back to get her. “Come on, baby, let’s see if I can find you a treat,” she said to the big dog, who followed close at her heels as she went into the kitchen.

She rummaged in the cabinets until she found a bag of pepperoni dog treats. Zeus woofed his approval and she tossed it to him, laughing as he caught it midair.

He ate it and then headed for the doggy door cut into the kitchen wall that led to the fenced in backyard. She moved to the window and watched as the dog romped around in the grass next to the other fenced area and then lifted his leg against a bush.

As much as she wanted to believe that her sister had taken off someplace, it just didn’t feel right. Zeus was her baby and Lexie couldn’t imagine Lauren just taking off for days and leaving him behind. She would have at least made arrangements for him to be fed and watered by somebody she trusted to do the job.

The ring of the doorbell pulled her from her thoughts. Nervous energy danced in her stomach as she hurried out of the kitchen to the front door.

Nick had showered and changed as well. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved gray dress shirt and, as if his physical attractiveness wasn’t enough, he smelled like clean, crisp cologne mixed with the faint residual scent of shaving cream.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded. “Just let me grab my purse.”

Her heart hammered with inexplicable quickness as she got her purse from the kitchen counter and then rejoined him at the front door. “Ready,” she said, knowing that Zeus would return to the house through the doggy door.

The evening was cool as they walked to his car. A slight breeze stirred the autumn leaves on the trees, forcing some of them to drift down to the ground.

Although in her heart for some reason she trusted Nick, in her head she wasn’t sure who she could trust. She was comforted by the fact that her purse held her gun and she wouldn’t be afraid to use it if things somehow went bad.

“There aren’t many eating choices in Widow Creek so I thought we’d drive the twenty minutes to Casey’s Corner. It’s a slightly bigger town and has a great Italian place,” he said as they pulled out of the driveway.

“Sounds fine,” she agreed. She wasn’t really hungry, hadn’t had an appetite since she’d discovered that Lauren was missing, but she knew she had to eat to keep up her strength.

For a few minutes they rode in silence. Lexie stared out the window at the encroaching evening shadows and anxiety pressed tight against her chest. She couldn’t believe another night was about to fall without her knowing if Lauren was okay.

“I just can’t imagine what’s happened to her,” she said as much to herself as to him. “I keep thinking maybe she’s been hit over the head and is lying someplace needing me to find her.”

He gave her a curious glance. “Why would you think that?”

She hesitated, knowing he would probably think she was crazy for what she was about to say. “Friday, when I got into my car after work to go home, I was struck with a blinding head pain.” She raised a hand to the back of her head, remembering that violent, momentary slice of pain. “It was there only a moment and then gone and I immediately wondered if maybe Lauren had gotten hurt.”

She dropped her hand back to her lap as a laugh of embarrassment escaped her. “It’s kind of a twin thing. One time Lauren broke her arm and I knew it before she told me because I felt her pain in my arm. Another time I broke my little toe and she called me to see what I’d done because her foot hurt.” She laughed again without any real humor. “I know it sounds crazy.”

“Not really, I saw a documentary one night about twins and the special bond they share. Must have been interesting growing up. Did you two pretend to be each other? Try to fool people?”

Lexie cast her gaze back out the window, her thoughts taking her backward in time. “No, never. From the very beginning, even though we were identical twins, we had completely different personalities. Lauren is an extrovert and I’ve always been painfully shy. I could have never made anyone believe that I was her.”

She turned to look at him, trying not to notice how handsome he looked with the last gasp of the sun lighting his features. “When we started high school there was Lauren and then there was the other twin. Nobody could remember my name, nobody really knew who I was. That’s when I decided to go Goth.”

He gave her an amused smile. “So you dressed in black, wore heavy makeup and spouted tragic poetry.”

She returned his smile. “Something like that.”

“And did that help the other kids get to know you better?”

“Not really. I went from being the ‘other’ twin to being the weird twin.” It all seemed so silly now, but at the time high school had been the most painful experience Lexie thought she’d ever live through. “It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized it was okay to embrace my quirkiness, to be a little different than everyone else.”

“We’re all quirky in one way or another. Some of us just show it more than others.”

“You don’t look quirky to me,” she observed.

He grinned. “Ah, but looks can be deceiving. I sleep in my socks.”

“That’s not quirky, that’s nerdy,” she replied and then gasped at her own words.

He laughed. “That’s what I like about you, Lexie. I have a feeling you always speak what’s on your mind. And you’re right, it is nerdy, but I always have nice warm feet.”

She averted her gaze back out the window and tried to cast out the vision of her in his bed, his warm feet against hers, slowly warming her body from her toes upward.

By that time they had reached the town of Casey’s Corner. It appeared to be a big sister of Widow Creek. The business area stretched over three short blocks and there were only a couple of empty storefronts.

He pulled up in front of Mama’s Italian Garden and as he parked she realized that the conversation they’d shared on the drive had momentarily taken her mind off Lauren. She suspected that’s what he’d intended and a warm gratefulness swelled in her chest.

It took only minutes for them to be seated at a table for two in the restaurant. It was a typical Italian setting, with red-and-white checkered tablecloths, a little candle flickering in the center of the table and a very limited wine list displayed between the salt and pepper shakers.

As Lexie picked up a menu her stomach rumbled with sudden hunger. Maybe it was the aroma of rich tomato sauce and fresh herbs that wafted in the air, or perhaps it was the conversation they’d shared that had relaxed her a bit on the drive to the restaurant.

“I eat here fairly often and can tell you that pretty much anything on the menu is good,” Nick said.

She was acutely conscious of his nearness at the small, intimate table. His eyes glowed almost silver in the candlelight and she found herself wondering what his lips might taste like.

She snapped her focus down to the menu, wondering if the stress of everything was making her lose her mind. She’d given up on men almost six months ago when she’d discovered that the man she’d believed was “the one” turned out to be “the rat.”

Michael Andrews had been a smooth-talking, hot-looking guy who had swept Lexie off her feet and away from her computer. They’d met through a mutual friend and they’d dated for six months. Lexie had thought they were moving toward an engagement, but instead she’d found out that Michael had a woman on the side, a cute, bubbly blonde who was all the things that Lexie wasn’t, that Lexie would never be.