Seeing Red(39)

Ignoring her sarcasm, he looked her over while taking a long drink, and when he lowered the can, he said, “You don’t strike me as a beer drinker. Or a collector of balloons with goofy faces on them.”

“The crew hosted a party.”

“Party, huh? If you ask me, you don’t have much to celebrate.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you, did I? I don’t want you here, and where do you get off showing up and barging in whenever you feel like it?”

“When I barged in, you didn’t put up much of a fight. How come?”

“I’m short on verve.”

“Maybe. But that’s not it. You’re scared of me.”

“I am not.”

He took in the upward tilt of her chin and defiant stance, and scoffed. “You get credit for at least trying to sound unafraid.”

“Why would I be scared of you?”

“Beats the hell out of me.” He came toward her until he was close enough for her to see individual ice crystals melting on the shoulders of his jacket and in his hair. “You tell me, Kerra. Why would I make you afraid?”

“I’m not afraid, I’m weary.” She edged around him. “Achy. My shoulder hurts. I’m reminded of my cracked collarbone whenever I move a certain way. I have a headache. Occasional dizzy spells. It’s been a very long day, and I’m tired. I’m especially tired of you bothering me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I bother you?”

Ignoring that, she said, “I want you out of here so I can go to bed.”

“So you’ll be daisy fresh for the big interview tomorrow.”

That brought her up short. “How did you know I’d consented to it?”

His expression hardened. “I didn’t.” He drained the beer, crushed the can with one hand, and lobbed it into the wastebasket. “Wild guess.”

“Very clever.”

“I’m not a private eye for nothing.” He waited a beat, then, “Actually, the guess wasn’t so wild. I knew you’d do it.”

“No, you didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t make up my mind until after thinking about it overnight and all day today. Don’t presume to know me, anything about me. You don’t.”

“Oh, yeah?” he said in a drawl. “Let’s see. I know that you use bath powder. I know that you have an old scar about two inches above your left knee on the inside of your thigh. I say old because it’s pale, barely visible.” His gaze dropped to her chest. “And you get chilled easily.” He let that resonate, and when his eyes reconnected with hers, he said, “What else do you want to know?”

It was indignation that caused her to go hot all over. She was sure of it. She should call him on the uninvited suggestiveness, but then he would know that his sexy insinuations had affected her, and that would equip him to intimidate her even more than he already did.

Instead, she turned the tables and put him on the defensive. “How did you get my shoulder bag? When? Where?”

“Funny, we covered a lot of territory last night, but you failed to mention that your bag was missing. Why?”

“Why would I? It was none of your business. Or so I thought.”

“Well, it for damn sure is my business now.” With a suddenness that made her jump, he whipped off his coat and flung it into a chair. “I was sitting there in the ICU waiting room, waiting to see if The Major’s improvement would continue or if he’d tank, my butt going numb from sitting, reading an old copy of Outdoorsman for the third time. Ask me anything about the mating rituals of white-tail deer.”

The fuse on his temper was burning short. At the end of it, she feared it was going to be explosive. He had started out with his voice at a conversational level, but the volume had steadily increased. “What happened?” she asked.

“In sauntered two deputies who told me that Sheriff Addison wanted to see me. I told them that Glenn had my cell number. If he wanted to talk, he knew how to reach me. Noooo. A phone call won’t do, they said. The meeting had to be in person.”

“You were arrested?”

“I told them I’d already had a person-to-person meeting with Sheriff Addison today, thank you, and went back to reading about stags in rut. But then one of the officers plucked the magazine out of my hand and said that the summons was more than a friendly invitation. I could follow them in my own vehicle to the sheriff’s office, but I had to go, and it had to be right then.

“So I left those poor bucks unfinished and followed the pair of deputies to the sheriff’s office, where I was grilled for the next two friggin’ hours.” As expected, he was furious. He didn’t end with a shout, however, but rather with a snarl, which was much more menacing.

She backed a step away from him. “They questioned you based on what I told them?”

He put his hands on his hips and closed the distance she’d created. “Ya think?”

“Trapper—”

“You suspect me of trying to kill my own father?”

“No.”

“That’s what it sounds like. I know I didn’t make a very good first impression on you, Miss Louis Vuitton, but Jesus!” He raked his fingers through his damp hair. “You changed the sequence of events in your story—”