Fast & Loose Elizabeth Bevarly (bts book recommendations .txt) 📖

“How do you know?” he asked, turning her words back on her. “He might just be one of the nicest guys in the world.”

Lulu shook her head. “Nice guys finish last, Eddie. Everyone knows that. No way is this guy going to settle for last place. He intends to be number one. And he doesn’t care who gets in his way.”

Lulu looked at Bree. Bree looked at Lulu.

“There’s just one thing to do,” Bree said.

Lulu nodded. “I’m going to have to go break into my house.”

“No, we’re going to have to break into your house,” Bree corrected.

Oh, right. Bree would want to be along for this, wouldn’t she? Lulu thought. And why did the realization of that make her feel worse, not better? She would have thought having Bree along for the ride would reassure her. Instead, it kind of hacked her off.

“No, you’re going to stay here with me and watch Kingdom of Heaven,” Eddie said, curling his fingers over Bree’s arm. “You know I can’t handle those Crusade scenes by myself. I always cry.”

Bree opened her mouth to object, but Eddie reminded her of Orlando looking all scruffy and defeated in his suit of armor, and in dire need of loving care, and she relented. “You better do it now, though, Lulu,” she said. “While Cole Early is still on the news. He was at the Peterson-Parson party. That thing’ll run ’til dawn. It always does.”

“What if he leaves early?” Lulu asked, her determination suddenly wavering at the thought of actually running into someone at her house—especially Cole Early.

“Oh, please,” Bree said. “Early to Cole Early is A.M., not P.M. It’ll be hours before he heads home. Go, Lulu,” she told her. “Go find out who’s been sleeping in your bed. ’Cause I’m betting it’s the Big Bad Wolf himself. And I’m betting Goldilocks has been sleeping there with him.”

TWENTY MINUTES AFTER PULLING TO A STOP AT THE end of her block, Lulu was still sitting in her car, trying to work up the nerve to approach her own house. She felt ridiculous in the extreme. There was obviously no one home, and even if there was, it was her home. She had a key and everything. Which she would use. So it wouldn’t be breaking in. It wouldn’t even be illegal entry, since she was the owner of the house. All it would be was a violation of the contract she signed for Eddie. That was only unethical. And Lulu had been unethical lots of times.

Well, okay, maybe she’d only been unethical once or twice. And maybe it had never been on purpose. That would be good when she appeared before the judge, right?

Stop it, she told herself. She wasn’t going to get arrested for this. She would just pop in to her own home and see if everything was okay. Make sure Cole Early hadn’t, at best, broken anything or, at worst, trashed the place. Make sure he hadn’t been doing anything he shouldn’t. Make sure there weren’t any, oh, say…drunken debutantes passed out on the sofa. Or any, oh, say…empty liquor bottles strewn about the floors. Or any, oh, say…illegal drug paraphernalia clogging the pipes. Or any, oh, say…appalling—if somewhat interesting—sex toys stuffed under the bed.

Enough, Lulu, she told herself. Let’s just get this over with.

As quietly as she could, she opened her car door and exited, making her way down the uneven sidewalk the way she had a million times before when finishing up her evening walk. Automatically, she sidestepped the gaping crack in front of Mrs. Krautheim’s house and the spot where the root of Mr. Leonard’s sycamore had buckled the concrete. She slowed her pace as she approached her little bungalow, having never really paid attention to it from outside in the dark before.

Cole Early had left on the same light in the living room she generally switched on at night herself, and something about that heartened Lulu. As she drew nearer, she saw that he’d left on a light in the kitchen, too, the one over the stove that she left on when she knew she would be out after dark. From where she stood, all was calm and bright, the house glowing cozily in the pitch-black night.

She told herself she should be satisfied with that, that Cole Early didn’t appear to have done anything too horrible to her house…yet. But even though she could see a bit of the living room through the windows, and it appeared to be as tidy as she left it, she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave without going inside.

She’d just take a little peek, she told herself. Just buzz through the house to make a quick survey and reassure herself that all was well. It would only be a few minutes. And Cole Early would never know. Her desire to go into the house had nothing to do with her curiosity about him that had been growing ever since she met him.

She made her way stealthily up the driveway to the back door and inserted her key into the lock, turning it swiftly and pushing the door open wide. She left it ajar behind her as she strode into the kitchen, noticing right away that her guest had made himself at home. The wine rack on the counter that normally held only one or two bottles of wine now housed four. There was a short stack of periodicals about the Thoroughbred industry sitting on the counter near them. An empty glass was sitting in the sink. Through one of her glass-doored cupboards, she saw both a bottle of what looked like very expensive cognac, and another of what looked like very expensive Scotch. A man’s jacket was slung over the back of one of her chairs. Striding toward it, Lulu ran an idle finger over the fabric, noting not just its fineness, but the faint aroma of something spicy and masculine that was stirred by her fingers.

So he smelled good, she thought. So what?