Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(71)

“You like carpentry?”

“Most days, more than it likes me.”

Zeus circled the table. Handsome dog, with broad head, silky ears. He stopped in front of Tessa, cocking an eyebrow in clear expectation. Tessa’s husband, Brian, had had a beloved German shepherd. Her own experience with dogs was limited, making her uncertain. “What does he want?”

“What does any man want? Your undying devotion and a decent back scratch.”

Tessa held out a hand. The dog moved until his head was underneath. She took that as a hint, and rubbed between his ears. The old dog closed his eyes and sighed contentedly.

“You can have a dog even with your travel schedule?” she asked Lopez. He’d stopped scrubbing and moved on to rinsing.

“For starters, Zeus is hardly a dog. He considers himself human, plain and simple. Two, he lives with my neighbors. But they work most weekends, so if I’m around, Zeus hangs with me. We hammer things, sand floors, belch. You know, guy time.”

“And he can open doors?” Wyatt, with a touch of awe.

“When he’s not fetching beer. Hey, these are valuable life skills.” Lopez banged off the faucet, grabbed a roll of paper towels to dry his hands and crossed back to them.

Zeus opened one eye at his approach, then resumed sighing blissfully beneath Tessa’s touch.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lopez muttered. “So much for the code of brotherhood. Keep that up, and I’ll have no choice but to rat you out, buddy. Mention to the pretty girl that, sure, you can open doors, but walk over a metal sidewalk grate? Cross a suspension bridge? Turns out, Mr. Handsome is afraid of heights, which I learned the hard way, having to carry him down the Lion’s Head trail on Mount Washington as he trembled like a baby. Hiking up, all good. But then, turning, looking down… Black Labs can turn green. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

Zeus didn’t seem to care that his deepest darkest secret had just been revealed. He placed his head on Tessa’s lap and sighed again.

“You’re a hiker?” Wyatt again.

“When I can. Gotta say, this project’s keeping me busy.”

“White Mountains?”

“Yep.”

“Favorite trails?”

Lopez rattled off several. By the sound of it, he knew his way around the Presidential Range. Interesting, given the location of Justin Denbe’s jacket in northern New Hampshire.

But if Chris Lopez was damning himself, he didn’t seem aware of it.

“So,” Lopez said shortly, “I’m kind of thinking you didn’t come all the way here to ask me about hiking.”

“Nope,” Wyatt agreed.

“What can I do for you?”

Tessa decided they might as well get straight to it: “Tell us about Kathryn Chapman.”

The effect was immediate: “Ah, shit. Do you mean my stupid niece? Or my boss’s even stupider ex-girlfriend?”


CHRIS’S SISTER HAD ASKED HIM FOR A FAVOR: Could he find a job for her daughter, Kate, at Denbe Construction? Unfortunately, given that business was slow, there was a temporary hiring freeze. But then Chris heard that the building’s travel agency had an opening for a receptionist. Perfect. He got his niece an interview and a couple of weeks later, Kate was employed and Chris’s sister was happy.

“All I wanted,” Lopez emphasized slowly, his dark eyes still snapping, “was to get my niece a job. So I got her a job. Not in my company, but in my building. End of story.”

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Chris became suspicious in January. Over the holidays, it became clear that Kate had a new boyfriend. She kept sneaking off to check her phone, blushed when anyone asked about her job, hell, was so obvious about trying not to be obvious that even Chris had teased her a couple of times.

Then, just two weeks later, Lopez had walked into the travel agency to arrange for a couple of plane tickets and saw them: his boss, Justin Denbe, leaning over Kate’s desk, and Justin had this smile and Kate had this look on her face, half dazed, half dazzled, and just like that, Chris knew.

“Not the first time,” he said bitterly. “Justin? Shit. You gave me a hard time”—he shot Tessa a look—“but I just talk a good game. Hell, I travel three hundred and forty days a year and spend the majority of my waking hours with a bunch of hairy-backed guys who are barely evolved enough to walk upright. I only wish I could find a good woman who’d want me. But Justin… What can I tell you? That apple didn’t fall far from his old man’s tree. Justin liked women. Women liked him. But my niece? I mean… My twenty-year-old niece?”

Lopez sounded extremely offended.

No, he had not confronted Justin. What could he say? Instead, he’d cornered Kate, trying to get her to listen to reason. Justin was married. Justin was never leaving his wife. This whole thing would only end in heartbreak.

Kate hadn’t cared. She was special. She was the one. She just knew it.

Which, slowly but surely, started to piss Lopez off.

“You gotta understand,” he said, “my niece…she may not have a brain in her head, but she’s sweet. She’s trusting. She’s not looking at Justin the same way he’s looking at her. He’s twice her age and twenty times more experienced. For him, having his cake and eating it, too, is more than a lifestyle choice, it’s gene pool. Like a f*cking family legacy.”