Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(55)
I stared at the stranger in the cheval mirror. My new height and the tight clothes made me look modelesque, though three-inch heels with crisscrossing straps were going to make it hard to walk in the sleet. I’d manage long enough to do the meet and greet. The colorful hair was a shock, but . . . I looked . . . I looked really good, actually. I looked hot. Which was a very uncomfortable thought.
I coiled my wig up into a bun and stuck hair picks into it. The picks had faceted onyx and skulls dangling from the ends. The multicolored hair looked better bunned up. Except for the sticks and the color of the wig, the hairstyle made me think of a churchwoman’s bunned-up look.
It made me think of Mud with her hair up. For now, Daddy was keeping her safe, but I had to do something about her. Soon.
I shook my head and the earrings swung against my neck, which looked too long and skinny. I wrapped a colorful scarf around it and then tried on my winter coat, which seemed out of style with the outfit. I rooted around in the closet, among Leah’s old clothes. I had never been able to make myself give away some things, even though I never wore them, and I remembered a quilted shawl made of velvet patchwork. She had made it at the same time she made the velvet quilt for the bed. I found it on a shelf and draped it around me. It looked splendid, perfectly matching the street-waif-meets-gypsy-fortune-teller look I hadn’t realized that I was going for. I repacked my gobags with fresh clothing and with extra goop for fixing my hair after I removed the wig. I felt a car pull into my drive. If I hadn’t been so busy, so distracted, or if I’d been barefoot, I’d have noticed it sooner. A knock on the door interrupted me and I sighed. Occam. Had to be. I’d had a bad feeling he would show here, wanting to chat before work. My gypsy-fortune-teller look was working.
I threw the shawl across my chest and strode to the door. Threw it open. To see Benjamin Aden standing there.
NINE
“Is Nell ho . . . Oh,” he said. His blue eyes dragged from my sexy-sporty-strappy boots to the top of my colorful head.
Shame and horror and shock twined through me. “I’m going undercover,” I blurted out.
Ben’s eyes went wider if that was possible. “Nell, you look . . .”
I got a breath and the shock of icy air cleared my head. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Not like a prostitute.”
He shook his head. “You look fantastic.”
That was not the reaction I expected from a churchman. The cold air was stealing my meager heat and I stepped back to let him in. He shut the door behind him and I walked away, knowing my backside in the tight jeans was . . . moving . . . in front of him. I wanted to wrap up in the shawl to hide, but I tossed it on the couch. I wasn’t a churchwoman. Not anymore. Except that I went straight to the woodstove, just like a good female in her homemade dress, and put a tea bag in a mug with the water I’d left heating. I put coffee on the Bunn, a strong French roast I knew a churchman would like. My tall heels clomped on the floor. I hadn’t offered Ben a seat. I was equally mortified and electrified.
I got myself under control and turned back to him. “Have a seat.” Not Whyn’t you’uns take a chair and rest a spell. Not Welcome to my home. Hospitality and safety while you’re here. Not the old God’s Cloud of Glory sayings. The church and I were truly parting ways. At long last. My cell dinged with a text. I ignored it.
Ben looked squirmy and twitchy, standing by the couch, looking everywhere but at me. Cello jumped up on the sofa and went to him for attention, sticking a demanding cat nose in his hand. Ben jerked away, his eyes wide. There was a cat on the sofa. Cats weren’t allowed in most church homes except when there was a mouse problem. I stifled a giggle.
At the soft sound that escaped me, he flinched, but then he laughed and shook himself like a wet dog. He held out a basket in his other hand. I hadn’t even noticed it. “Your mama suggested you might like some fresh eggs. She has some new laying hens. Easter Eggers and Ameraucanas.”
I accepted the basket and pulled back the cloth that covered the contents. There were greenish and bluish eggs inside. I put the basket on the long kitchen table. One designed and built for a multiwife family with dozens of children. It was dusty. Unused. There were cat tracks across it. The floor beneath was dusty too, the result of a wood-heated house and a homeowner too busy to clean. Another sign I was following the yellow brick road to hell. My silence had gone on too long.
I glanced at Ben and away, fast. He was staring at me. “Please tell my mama thank you. And that I’ll be over to see her soon.” The Bunn stopped drizzling and I asked, “Cream? Sugar?”
“Black, please. Um, Nell, your hair—” He stopped.
A feeling like shame whipped through me. I knew what he had to be thinking. What any churchman would be thinking. “I’m not a scandalous woman.”
His blue eyes widened. “I know that. I’m—”
“I’m a law enforcement officer.” Still speaking, I placed the cup with a cloth napkin on the coffee table and turned back to the stove. “I have an interview with a girl who dresses like this. It’s to make her feel comfortable so she’ll talk. Like Paul when he went into the pagan temple and talked about the missing god. He didn’t condemn. He started where they were.”
“I know my Bible, Nell,” Ben said, amusement in his voice. But he sat on the edge of the couch and tasted the coffee. “This is good.”