"LIAR." The letters were like a brand on her soul as the door opened and Deirdre stepped out with a bucket of hot sudsy water, a scraper, and sponges.
"I'm sorry, Mikayla," Deirdre said softly as pedestrians walked by slowly, whispering.
Everyone whispered.
"It's not your fault, Deirdre." It was her own fault, she thought. She must not have been careful enough when she stopped by the new foreman's house, a friend of her father's, and tried to discuss Eddie Foreman with him.
That or he had called Maddix Nelson after she had left.
"Luke Nelson told some of the guys at the bar that his father had hired a private investigator," Deirdre said as Mikayla dampened the window, then went to work with the scraper. "Have you seen anyone?"
She shook her head. No one had talked to her. A part of her wished they had, then that evening wouldn't seem more like a too-vivid nightmare than reality.
There were days she had wondered if it had even happened. If it hadn't been for the fact that Eddie Foreman was indeed dead, then she would almost be convinced she had imagined the entire thing.
"What about Nik Steele?" her friend asked. "Have you seen him again?"
"Coming and going." She scraped at the stubborn paint as Deirdre began working on the other side. "I haven't spoken to him again."
"Not since your brothers cock-blocked you." Deirdre snickered.
Mikayla knew what her friend was trying to do. Deirdre was trying to ease the hurt. This had happened so often now that there were times Mikayla wondered if it even hurt any longer.
"I don't want to talk about that, Deirdre." Perhaps she had made a mistake in telling her best friend about the deck fiasco with Nik Steele.
"Of course you don't." Deirdre grinned. "Then you might have to admit you miss him."
Of course she missed him. There was no doubt about that. But the sane part of her brain realized that the absence was for the best.
"Doesn't matter." She finally shrugged, keeping her eyes firmly on the job at hand. "Some things are better off unknown."
Nik Steele was better off being one of those unknowns. Like aliens, the mysteries of the universe.
As she watched the water smear across the red, mixing with the color, looking like blood running in rivulets to the sidewalk, the image of Eddie Foreman flashed in her mind.
She swallowed tightly, her heart thudding sluggishly at the remembered fear.
"Mikayla, you don't mean that," Deirdre said softly.
"I mean it," she whispered as she fought to shake off the nightmarish image of Eddie Foreman's dead body. "He's a bad boy, Deirdre. I'm the good girl. Doesn't that suck? Sounds like a recipe for trouble if you ask me."
"Sounds like a recipe for some incredible sex to me, but I'm prejudiced toward the idea."
The dark rasp of his voice sent a rush of sensation up Mikayla's spine. She swung around, her gaze hitting directly in the center of his chest before lifting, slowly, to those incredible light blue eyes.
What had ever made her believe his gaze was icy? It was hot. Filled with hunger, with sex, with trouble.
Deirdre was so dead. That wench had totally betrayed her.
Blood rushed to her face, heated her body. That was all well and good, but the flush afflicting the flesh between her thighs was terribly uncomfortable. It was lush, damp, so heated. The need for touch began to rock her system, to travel across her nerve endings and throb in areas of her body that she was certain shouldn't be throbbing.
"You weren't supposed to hear that," she muttered irately, turning back to the window, scrubbing at the paint, promising to make sure Deirdre paid for this one. Somewhere, sometime.
"We need to talk, Mikayla," Nik stated as he moved closer, the heat of his body surrounding her. "Could you leave the cleanup to your assistant?"
"No, actually, I can't." She was too close to proving just how thin that layer of her good-girl persona was. It was barely skin-deep, and the flames burning beneath it were melting it away as quickly as a fire softened butter.
He had an effect on her she knew no man should have on a woman. He made her weak. He made her need things she knew she shouldn't need.
She had plans. Her plans did not include having her heart broken, her future forever marred, by the man she couldn't have.
"We could always discuss this on the sidewalk." He turned, leaning his back against an unpainted section of the window, crossing his arms over his chest. "I could tell you in detail exactly what I had planned last week when your brothers decided to become inquisitive and protective. For instance, I didn't have time that night to tell you how soft your pretty thighs are."
Mikayla froze. For one horrible second she could only imagine who was standing behind them. Her breath stopped. Her eyes widened; then she sneaked a peek around them, nearly giving a hard breath of relief when she saw no one.
Her gaze jerked back to him.
"Come inside and talk to me, or we'll talk out here."
"You don't want to talk," she hissed.
"Talking is the last thing on my mind," he assured her, his fingers curling around her wrist, his eyes locking onto hers. "Isn't this where the bad boy kisses the good girl in public and begins sullying her pristine reputation?"
There was a twinkle of amusement in his gaze, but it was hesitant, as though in teasing her he was enjoying something he hadn't expected to enjoy.
"Sorry, someone else already took care of sullying that pristine reputation. At least, the honesty part of it." She sighed as she attempted to pull her wrist from his grip. "Let me go, Nik. I don't have time for this. I have a window to clean."
"And I have a discussion I want to have with you. Come along, sweetheart." He pulled her into the shop as she stared at his back in amazement.
The black T-shirt he wore stretched across the hard, well-defined muscles, catching her gaze. Otherwise, she assured herself, she would have never followed him, at least not without the fight she should have given him, into her office.
As the door closed behind them and he began to turn, her lips parted to inform him of her opinion, in blistering detail, of his high-handed tactics.
He was quicker than she. Between one breath and the next he was lifting her to him, his lips catching hers, his tongue slipping between her lips with rapacious demand, with hungry sexuality.