"I'm serious." I reached over to stroke her thigh. "Maybe you'll act it out for me sometime?"
She smiled. "Maybe."
It wasn't a maybe. It was a yes. I could see it in her eyes, which made me a very happy guy. Then again, I was always happy these days. Funny what could happen when you found the girl of your dreams.
About that other house, Chloe never returned, not even once, in spite of the fact that it was located on just the other side of our fence. At the thought, I had to smile.Ourfence.Ourhouse.Ourlife together. I was liking the sounds of all that, too.
About Chloe's car, I got it up and running again, and moved it to my place, and then tried like hell to keep her from driving it. What Ireallywanted was to get her something new, but she wouldn’t hear of it, telling me it was too much.
That's whatshethought.
For now, I let it slide, because the way I saw it, soon, stuff like that wouldn't matter. My money would be her money, too. And from what I'd seen so far, it would be in very good hands.
In the last couple of days, we'd also confirmed that my initial hunch was right. Chloe wasn't just the house-sitter. She was the sucker-in-waiting.
Apparently, the couple – going by the name of Mister and Mrs. Parker – didn't even own the place. They'd been renting it the whole time and owed a shit-load of money to the wrong people, including some shark in Detroit who specialized in high-interest loans.
We were still in the hot tub discussing it when Chloe wondered out loud why the "Parkers" had paid her anything at all.
"They needed you to stick around," I explained. "You were the fall girl, the one who'd pay the price when the bills came due."
"But I didn't have any money."
"I'm not talking about money," I said. "Think about it. The Parkers give you this wad of cash, which they're probably planning to steal right back anyway. Then later, when someone comes looking for thebigmoney, they're long gone. But you're not."
"But that night, I told that guy I wasn't Mrs. Parker."
"Yeah," I said. "Because nobody lies when they're about to get their legs broken."
"But they would've found out eventually," Chloe pointed out. "I mean, let's consider the worst-case scenario. Let's say they killed me–"
My heart clenched. "No. We're not saying that, even as a what-if."
"But the point is," she continued, "those guys would've found out pretty quick that I was just someone staying there."
"Yeah. But so what if it's the wrong person? You were living there, taking care of the dog, handling all their stuff. It would be easy for someone to get the idea the Parkers wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to you."
See, that's where I was different from the Parkers. Because if something bad ever happened to Chloe… I shook my head. I wasn't even going to think about it.
Instead, I focused on keeping her safe while things settled down. For me, that included driving her back and forth from work. If I had my way, soon, she wouldn't be working at all, unless it meant she was working for me.
I didn't trust a lot of people, but I trusted her. And I liked the idea of her keeping an eye on the numbers. One thing I knew for sure, if she had an agreement, she'd sure as hell stick to it.
Things were rocking along pretty good until maybe a week later when I pulled into the restaurant parking lot to pick up Chloe, and saw something that made me pause, and not in a good way.
It was Amber's car.
The way it looked, she'd cut her vacation short.
Damn it.
Chapter 72
I walked into the restaurant and stopped short at the spectacle in front of me. Near the waitress stand, Amber and Brittney were wrestling around on the restaurant floor. Their clothes were stained. Their hair was wild. A crowd of guys were cheering them on.
On the sidelines, I spotted Chloe, along with that Shaggy guy who, a few weeks earlier, had tried to video me as I beat the shit out of my own car. Now, just like before, he was holding out his phone, capturing the action.
I looked to Brittney and Amber. There was some action alright. I saw shoes and arms – and yeah, a lot of blonde hair, flailing all over the place.
