Kaleidoscope (Colorado Mountain #6)(46)

And because it felt nice she cared enough to take the time to advise me.

But bottom line, she wasn’t wrong.

This county had seen serial killers, innocent men being framed for murders and women being buried alive.

Heck, the guy who owned the yard before Dad had murdered a bunch of people and successfully conspired to murder another guy. If town lore could be believed, Nina and Max were involved in this in a bad way, with Nina nearly being a victim and Max rescuing her seconds before that happened. Though, I’d never asked Max about it, seeing as, “So, is it true your ex-friend, the ex–lumberyard owner almost killed your wife?” wasn’t idle chitchat.

Now a gang of thieves that were worse than your average everyday thieves had run amuck throughout the county. And I’d been dating one. One who called me from jail after getting arrested for running amuck.

Perhaps I should tell Jacob that Dane had called.

“I’ll go tell Jacob,” I decided.

“Good thinking,” Faye replied on a smile and a hand squeeze.

I squeezed her hand back and realized this might be my shot at having genuine, real, true friends close to home (and a lot of them, shocker!). They’d given all the signs and even if I was the latecomer, they still were letting me in.

I liked that.

I let her hand go, put the phone down, walked through my house and up two flights of stairs to the opening that led to my attic.

There were stairs folded down. There were also two dozen huge rolls of insulation lining the hall. And at the end of the hall, a massive pile of old insulation that didn’t look nice, fluffy, pink and clean like the new stuff.

I actually felt my heating bills decreasing, and the warmth wash through me that Jacob was doing that for me, as I called up the stairs, “Jacob? Honey?”

“Yeah?” he called back.

“Can I talk to you a sec?”

“Can it wait a minute, babe?”

“Well, not really!” I yelled.

Five seconds passed and I saw his head appear in the opening, leather-gloved fingers curling around the side.

It was then I noted, even just seeing his head and fingers encased in work gloves, or maybe because his fingers were encased in work gloves, Jacob Decker was all kinds of hot.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Can you come down?”

His eyes moved over my face.

Then his head disappeared but his whole body appeared as he climbed down the ladder.

There it was. Proof. Jacob Decker was all kinds of hot and it wasn’t about the work gloves.

He had magnificent thighs. They were thick. Pure muscle.

This was a good thought to hold on to (and a good visual to have) while I waited and watched him reach the bottom and turn to me.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Dane used his one phone call to call me,” I answered.

After I said that, I took a step back.

This was because his face turned to stone but his hazel eyes started glittering in a way that freaked me right out. It was a look I’d never seen. It was weirdly sexy. It was also totally scary.

Then he thundered, “Chace!”

“Honey—” I whispered but he didn’t reply or even look at me.

His head was tipped to the opening to the attic.

Chace’s head appeared there.

“Jesus, what’s happening?” Chace asked upon one look at his friend.

Jacob was yanking off his gloves as he said, “Come down. We need to take a ride to the station. McFarland used his one call to phone Emme and I need him in a room where I can explain that Emme ceased to exist for him the minute his f**kin’ fingers dipped in the print ink.”

Chace said nothing but his head disappeared. I heard him talking to the guys as his body appeared and he moved down the ladder.

Just to say, he had nice thighs too.

I didn’t think on that too hard. I moved to Jacob and put my hand on his chest.

His eyes tipped down to me.

Still glittering.

“Really, I made my point on the phone,” I told him.

“And I’ll make my point in person,” he told me.

“Ja—”

His hand came up and cupped my jaw and his face filled my vision.

His voice was scary when he stated, “Emme. No. Get this and get it now. No. I know this guy. You dated him for four months and you don’t know this guy. But I know this guy. And he needs to get my point in person. Yeah?”

My first thought after this pronouncement was, What would Faye do?

And I decided by his scary-glittery eyes, his stony face and his even scarier voice that Faye would advise I just nod and agree, “Yeah.”

So that was what I did.

He nodded back, stepped back and dropped his hand from my jaw.

Chace broke into our exchange by saying (also in a hard, kind of scary voice), “Let’s go.”

There it was. I was right to stand down. Even Chace thought this was important enough to get this done and get it done now, whatever it was.

“Well, uh… good luck,” I said, looking from Jacob to Chace.

Chace was scowling at me, but at my words, he smiled a smile that fortunately reached his eyes.

Jacob’s hand came back to my jaw, his fingers dug in and I was compelled to roll up to my toes, which was good seeing as that meant his head had less distance to go when his mouth landed hard on mine. The kiss was closed mouthed, short, but undeniably angry.