The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(83)

Lucy had no easy answer for that. “You’ve figured everything else out. I’m betting you’ll figure that out, too.”

Lucy could see that Bree wasn’t buying it, and her own need to make other people feel better asserted itself. “What if Scott showed up today and said he’d made a mistake? What if he said he wanted you back, and he’d never screw around on you again? What would you do?”

Bree thought it over. “If Scott showed up?” she said slowly.

“Just supposing.”

“If Scott showed up …” Her jaw set. “I’d tell him to go screw himself.”

Lucy grinned. “Exactly what I thought.”



LUCY WAITED UNTIL PANDA FINISHED his afternoon workout before she went upstairs to find him. Bree’s story explained her reaction to meeting him, but not his to seeing her. He stood in the middle of the small, overcrowded bedroom he’d taken for himself. As he pulled his damp T-shirt over his head, the sight of that sweaty, too-ripped chest distracted her. But only momentarily. “Why were you so rude to Bree?”

He sat on the side of the bed to take off his sneakers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.” One of his sneakers hit the floor. “When I introduced Bree, you threw yourself in your car and raced off like a teenager trying to beat curfew. You didn’t even say hello.”

“I’ve got no manners.” His second sneaker landed with a thud.

“You have perfectly good manners when it suits you.”

He balled up his socks. “I have to take a shower.”

“It can wait.”

But apparently not, because he walked right past her and across the hallway to the bathroom. The lock clicked behind him.

He kept away from her for the rest of the afternoon. She repaired her black fingernail polish, dyed her bangs magenta, and reapplied her dragon tattoo. Then she went upstairs to bother Temple, which turned out to be a big mistake. A brutal workout and a stinging lecture on the stupidity of Lucy’s “Good Enough” exercise philosophy left her drenched in sweat and pissed off.

Temple refused all of Lucy’s offers to make anything but a plain green salad, and that night they ate more frozen dinners of dry turkey, mushy brown rice, and mashed parsnips. Lucy fell back on her favorite expression from when she was fourteen. “This blows.”

“So does being fat,” Temple replied self-righteously.

“You blow, too,” Lucy grumbled.

Panda lifted an eyebrow. Temple reached across the table to pat Lucy’s hand. “Somebody’s got PMS.”

Panda slammed his elbow on the table. “I swear to God, if I hear any more about PMS, cramps, or even female acne, I’m going to blow something up.”

Temple waved a breezy hand toward the door. Panda glowered. Lucy hadn’t been able to get him alone yet, and she didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the farm stand in front of Temple, so she picked another target for her bad mood. “I hate this table.”

“Tough,” Panda said.

Temple snorted. “He likes being surrounded by squalor. It reminds him of his hideous childhood.”

“How hideous?” Lucy said. “He never tells me anything.”

“My father was a drug dealer shot by a dissatisfied customer when I was two,” he said matter-of-factly. “My mother was an addict. We had rats in our apartment. That’s the part Temple likes best.”

“And he stole food so they could eat,” Temple said gleefully. “Isn’t that sad?”

Lucy pushed her plate away. It didn’t seem right for Temple to know more about him than she did. “What else did you learn?”

“He graduated from college with honors,” Temple said.

Panda frowned, clearly displeased by any information that didn’t portray him as a menace to society. “How do you know that?”

“Google.” She sniffed. “You don’t think I’d have kept hiring you if I hadn’t investigated you?”

“By Googling me? You’re a crackerjack detective, all right.”

“He was also in the army,” Temple went on. “Boring. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything about his romantic history. I think we can safely assume a trail of broken hearts has been left behind.”

“Or unmarked female graves,” Lucy said, which only made him smile.

How could Temple work out with him every day and not want to rip his clothes off? Instead, whenever she took a break, she tended to stare out the window. Lucy studied the long tendon that ran down the side of his neck. The one she liked to bite. He caught her at it and gave her a look that said he knew exactly what she was thinking.



PANDA DIDN’T COME THROUGH HER sliding door that night, and the boathouse remained dark. It was the first time they hadn’t been together since their affair had begun, which led her to wonder … If his connection with Bree only involved real estate, why was he being so secretive?

Rain peppered the windows the next morning, matching her mood. What was it that he didn’t want her to know? She needed their affair to be completely straightforward—no murky corners or dark mysteries she might find herself pondering when they weren’t together. She pulled on an old yellow slicker that one of the Remingtons, maybe Bree herself, had left behind in an upstairs closet, and she set off across the wet grass. But instead of heading for the woods, she turned toward the three acres of land on the north side of the house, a rockier area she hadn’t originally realized was part of his property. By the time she reached the top of the steep slope, she was out of breath.