Page 11 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
“What were you doing?” Jean-Pierre asked, his tone professionally accusatory.
“I got lost,” Kate huffed, glancing back surreptitiously at the door. The men still hadn’t emerged, which was just as well. Even if she wanted one quick peek at their faces.
“Mmm, keep up, please,” Jean-Pierre said, turning and hopping upthe stairs toward the third floor. Kate started up the stairs that seemed to go on and wrap around with no signs of stopping. How many floors could one manor have?
The answer, in this case anyway, seemed to be four, as Jean-Pierre and Jake were down at the far end of a hall when Kate finally caught up on the fourth floor. She slowed as she approached, looking at the rickety set of stairs leading to a rectangular hole in the ceiling that he had pulled down with a golden cord.
“This… can’t be right,” Kate said, looking up dubiously. “It looks like an attic.”
“Because it is an attic,” Jean-Pierre said, typing away on a small device in his hands. It must be connected to Bluetooth, Kate figured, because she hadn’t been able to get any signal on her cell phone since they left the dock in Seattle. “Non, non!Not the heirlooms, the cherry! Why must I be the only competent one? You two go up now. I’m very busy. Abraham is waiting.”
Jake looked as dubious as Kate felt, but he nudged her toward the stairs. “Ladies first.”
“That’s sexist,” Kate said, chewing one corner of her lip as she eyed the stairs. “You should go first. As a male feminist.”
“Ah, but because I am a male feminist, I can allow a woman to face danger without needing to ride to her rescue as a white knight,” Jake countered.
“Okay, but I’m asking you to go first,” Kate said through gritted teeth.
Jake was all wide blue eyes and guile. “Because you’re scared?”
“You are, too,” Kate hissed.
“Yes, but I’m comfortable enough with my masculinity to admit I am.”
Jean-Pierre huffed. “My bruschetta will be a nightmare if I leave it to Henri’s clutches. Up, up you go.”
Kate heaved a sigh, her first step on the rickety staircase warping the whole contraption. The air was positively frigid the higher she climbed, charged with the energy of the storm bearing down outside. She was surethis was just an attic, probably filled with half-gutted animal carcasses missing their eyes or teeth or something else that would haunt her nightmares. Maybe this was a psychological play on Spencer’s part, to rattle a plot for book four out of her by sheer terror. Maybe he thought it would inspire her. Hell, maybehewas the Deer Shredder.
Her gaze came level with the opening, a yellow glow emanating from above. She paused in surprise with a soft “oh,” taking in the attic. The room was absolutelydelightful. The space looked like a cozy reading nook filled with bookshelves, the light coming from a Tiffany lamp in the corner beside a stuffed leather chair. The whole place was blissfully unadorned with dead animals, although the furry white rug in front of the leather chair was suspect. Still, it didn’t have a head, so it would have to do.
“This looks fantastic,” Kate said, enthusiastically exploring the space now that the prospect of murder had proven unsubstantiated.
“Not much elbow room, though,” Jake said as he scaled the ladder. “You think they expect you to sleep on that stack of books over there?”
“There’s a bed back here,” Kate said. It looked to be a twin, narrow but comfortable, with fresh white sheets and a soft pink canopy enclosing it, the curtains pulled back on either side with a ribbon. Something about the whimsy of it appealed to Kate. Like she could close the curtains and shut out the rest of the world for the weekend.
“Well, I won’t look if you won’t,” Jake said, already stripping out of his Henley. Kate caught the barest glimpse of his intercostal muscles lengthening and flexing over his rib cage before she whirled around abruptly.
“Yep, nope,” she muttered, crawling behind the half wall of books. “No peeking. Nope.”
She did her best to wrestle out of her sweater and leggings while also hiding behind the meager privacy screen made of what looked like a bunch of old paperback westerns. She dug out the dress she’d bought a month ago that felt like a good idea then, but now felt too short and tight and way too low cut. There was a brief moment, just after she’d slipped out of her leggings and unhooked her old bra, when she was topless andonly a few feet away from Jake. The air was cool, the storm picking up momentum above them, whistling and humming through the eaves, and her skin prickled in response to the electric energy.
“So,” she called out, hoping to mask the unevenness in her voice with volume. “Weird that they had you as my plus-one, huh? Must have been some kind of error or something.”
“Must have been,” Jake said vaguely. She swore she didn’t mean to, that it happened by accident, but she caught a glimpse of his backside through a crack in two Louis L’Amour books. Fortunately—or unfortunately—for her, he’d already slipped into his dress pants. “Probably a mix-up because my invite was so last minute. I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I only got back from Borneo two days ago. My business partner took ill. We had to medically evacuate him back to the States.”
“Oh,” Kate said. “I’m surprised you’re here, then. With all of that going on.”
“Yeah, well.” Jake didn’t answer right away, which wasn’t like him. The only subject she’d ever known him to be cagey about was his dad, who treated him like a failure for chasing surfing and getting himself nearly killed because of it. “I, uh, I went into the Simon Says office. Had some business to clear up. I ran into Kennedy, she invited me, and… here I am.”
“Here you are.” Kate twisted her way into a pair of lacy pantyhose. Another uncomfortable mistake, but she was committed now. Still, she could tell by the tension running through Jake’s shoulders that he was lying. She didn’t know why he was here this weekend, but it wasn’t because of an impromptu invitation from Kennedy Hempstead.
“This wasn’t the Spencer wedding I thought I’d be reluctantly invited to,” Jake said before Kate could ask any more questions about his reasons for being there that weekend, glancing back at her and catching her eye over the stack of books as she wrangled her boobs into her new strapless bra. He turned his back too quickly for Kate to read his expression. “The two of you got together and engaged so quickly I figured it would be a done deal before I made it back stateside. But I get back fromBorneo and hear from my aunt you two called it off, and he’s marrying the peppy marketing girl.”
Kate sighed, slipping into her dress and fiddling with the tiny buttons on the sleeve. “Yeah, well, you know the old story. Boy meets girl, boy asks girl to marry him, boy hooks up with cute new marketing hire and ends up leaving girl to marry the marketing girl six months later. Tale as old as time.”
“And girl comes to their wedding weekend because she can’t resist the temptation of rich people cake?” Jake gently prodded.