Fool's Gold: A Kisses and Crimes Novel Page 7

  And since when does trash detail involve “election year horseshit”?

  I almost knock on the front door, but decide against it. Not wanting to make it obvious that I know he’s in there, I grab for the high-placed window again.

  This time I open it with a bit more of a bang.

  Bishop finally hears me.

  “You know…” he says behind the slowly opening door, “you shouldn’t have to resort to burglary tactics. If you want to come through the front door… you could always just ask.”

  “I would,” I reply to the open door that bears no sign of him. “But I have no key. And if the man that does own the key wants to give it to me, I’ll be more than happy to accept.”

  The rain continues to beat over my head, but at this point, I ignore it.

  When Bishop finally emerges from the house, jeans on, his t-shirt thin enough to see through, I forget the thundershower completely.

  He flashes a bit of a mocking smile… and that is all the invitation I need to come in.

  I follow him inside.

  “Stay there, burglar,” he shouts over his shoulder as he heads upstairs. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  Dripping, I wait impatiently at the threshold of the living and dining room. When Bishop returns, it’s with another terry clothed white towel—just as I used this morning.

  I thank him as he hands it to me, careful not to touch him.

  He pulls away just as our fingers begin to meet… and I realize that I am not the only one engaged in the “no-touching game.”

  I regard him even closer.

  “You let me go,” I say to him. It is more a question than it is statement. “I guess I want to say thank you then… for trusting me today.”

  The attempt at appreciation captures Bishop’s attention. He looks up as he rounds the kitchen counter towards the fridge.

  He reaches inside, and I don’t even notice the two things he pulls out securely with both hands.

  He places them on the counter, and I think of nothing else as he stares me down. I let his hot gaze almost warm me up.

  “You had your phone on you, right? I could have gotten a hold of you whenever. Besides, I know you…” He narrows his amber eyes. “I knew there were only three places you could possibly be.”

  “And where’s that?”

  He motions towards the counter with one empty hand.

  “Anywhere there was bread, booze or books. I took a chance that you’d be at the latter one. Figured I’d take care of the other two.”

  I look down—at last—at the items he’s laid out: two bottles of red wine and a jumbo-sized baguette.

  I smile when I think of my visit at Amelie’s and how right Bishop’s been so far.

  I frown at the thought that it took me two days to figure out.

  At this point… it’s more than safe to say that he knows me better than I know myself, and to be honest, I just don’t know how that makes me feel.

  I turn my back to him.

  The clink of the wine bottles lets me know what’s happening and before I can look back up, Bishop is heading past me towards the living room. He sits his items down in front of the fireplace.

  “You might as well get yourself some of this heat I’m about to start. And while you’re at it, grab some glasses. I’ll pour you a drink while you tell me how much I suck at starting fires.”

  AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

  DANI

  Bishop was right.

  He fucking sucks at starting fires.

  I’m not really in the mood to care now that the fire’s lit, but it literally took him thirty minutes.

  My hair’s almost dry already and so is some of my shirt. My jeans are still wet through, but I can hardly tell. I’ve drunk half of the bottle of the red Claret since we sat down.

  The rain begins to quicken, and so does the urgency within me.

  I let Bishop step away from the fire and soon as he does, I launch into a new set of questions I’ve been dying to ask.

  He settles in beside me, stretching his long legs out on the floor-length rug.

  “What was it like when we first met?” I peer at him behind the edge of my half-empty wine glass.

  He squints. “You mean the very first time?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “Well…” he hesitates. “It wasn’t pretty…”

  I lean in.

  “Gold decorations. Champagne flutes filled with pink lemonade. A hardwood dance floor too sophisticated for sixteen year-olds… And there you were. Decked out in red. I remember you told me that’s what real women wear—that’s what heroines did. The second you stepped out onto the dance floor, I couldn’t see anything but you.”

  I nearly choke on my wine.

  Bishop describes a scene that’s so much like my first dream that it’s scary. So scary because in that moment, I almost remember it.

  The lady in red. That’s what I’d called myself.

  The party was real.

  I realize it now because it suddenly hits me as clear as day.

  “The party was mine.”

  Bishop simply nods. “Sweet Sixteen.”

  “Oh my God.” I sit up straighter.

  “Rings a bell, doesn’t it? It should… It was the most extravagant Sweet Sixteen I’d ever been to, though there was nothing sweet about you that night.”

  He smirks.

  I look over at him, lowering my glass.

  “Why? I wasn’t nice?”

  “Oh, you were. Just not to me… I’d shaken your hand and not kissed it. Apparently, that’s not what ‘gentlemen’ should do…”

  I laugh, feeling strangely giddy. “Well, that was bitchy.”

  “Nahhh,” he grins, shaking his head at me. “That was just you. You’d had high expectations from an early age. At twenty-three, I wasn’t so sure that I met them.”

  “Twenty-three?” I assess Bishop with curious eyes. “At a Sweet Sixteen?”

  “I a-was… a friend of the family.” A slight misstep on Bishop’s part. He falters.

  I catch it, but am not sober enough to really care.

  The smirk Bishop shows is almost sad. “I’ve spent the last ten years trying to make up for that one meeting.”

  He leans forward, whispering.

  “And is it working?”

  I suddenly feel like I’m floating on air.

  “Hmm. Not bad so far,” I answer. “A couple more glasses of wine, another ‘peace offering’ or two, and I might even tolerate you.”

  He laughs, a sound that I’m finally getting used to, and I join him, moving in close, allowing his laugh to a rock me into a rhythm that is our own.

  I can’t believe the change we’ve made in the past couple of days.

  Being attracted to Bishop is one thing... but tripping, stumbling, falling ass-backwards in “like” with him?

  Well, that’s something entirely different.

  I think I’ve been trying to mask these feelings for days now.

  I actually like Bishop… and the more time we spend together, the more I realize how easy our connection is.

  The conversation, the closeness, the magnetism.

  I’d never thought I’d say this… but I might just be falling for my husband.

  And the realization makes me oddly shy.

  I realize that I want to get to know him—everything about him. I want to understand what it’s like to be in his life.

  And so… I ask the sort of question that husbands and wives don’t have to ask. I ask the sort of question more suitable for a blind date.

  It’s a question known for its innocence… but often found to be a loaded one all the same. And yet I have to ask it.

  I glance up into Bishop’s hazel eyes, and I find the glimmer of hope that I was looking for.

  “Can you tell me about yourself?” I ask him.

  Bishop freezes, literally stiffening underneath of my fingers, and just when I think he is going to shut down, give me the run-around that I�
��ve become accustomed to, he does the complete opposite.

  And on the dance floor, under the watchful eyes of many, he tells me the story of his life.

  He tells me a story about a boy with no family, a boy come from murdered parents.

  He details the childhood of this boy, a happy one—until they crossed paths with a powerful sadist.

  He details the struggles of this boy—a boy who had to become a man before his time and the man who stepped in his life to help him become one.

  And then he tells me how this young man changed.

  How he came into the life of this innocent sixteen year-old girl and was never the same.

  She changed him, he said—altered the course of his life without him knowing it.

  He doesn’t force me to remember “Dani”… but he sure as hell won’t allow me to just forget.

  He turns away from me, sitting back down near the fire.

  “Ten years… and I never did get that ‘gentleman’ part down right.” His grin is half-mocking.

  I smile back. “You built me a fire. I’ll give you a pass.”

  “A shitty fire. More like a half-snuffed spark,” he comments on a silent laugh. “Just like the heroes in your stories, I’m sure…”

  “Better.” I lift my glass. “You brought me booze.”

  At that, Bishop’s grin grows wicked.

  And for the next three hours, he gives me the real him.

  For all his hardness and closed-off attitude, he is the grown-up version of the kid who sat alone in the cafeteria at school.

  Tragedy sits in his eyes, his seriousness seeming to be no more than a well-planned defense mechanism.

  Isolation is second nature to him, and secrecy is as natural as breathing. If I had to take a guess… I’d say he’s been running. Protecting himself, shutting out the world for all his life.

  Until tonight…

  There’s something different in him now, something changed in just the few short days we’ve spent together.

  He smiles. He laughs. He actually talks.

  Considerate in the oddest ways, helpful even when he doesn’t know it, it seems he keeps people at arms’ length because he almost doesn’t know any other way.

  His heart is sheathed, layered.

  I want so badly to get inside him, to see all of the beautiful things I know he shields.

  I fall asleep on the beautiful rug beside the hearth, and the last thing I feel before my eyes close are the arms of my temporary hero, Bishop, closing in around me.

  It is the first time he’s really touched me since my “incident” happened.

  In the midst of a cold, continuously wet night, it keeps the chill away. Too bad it can’t seem to do the same for my nightmares…

  ***

  The next morning, Bishop has me for breakfast.

  Cold and alone, I awake to the sound of him making sandwiches as large as my head… and making my mouth water all the same.

  I look over only to find him at the stove just as shirtless as the day I met him… well, met him again… and his back is ripped with familiar muscles, his black hair unruly in all the right ways.

  An insomniac of epic proportions, Bishop leads the life of a man to whom sleep just never came easily.

  Call it a hunch…

  In bed late. Up early.

  Before I go to sleep, I hear him up all hours of the night. The second I wake up, he is already making meals.

  And as I stare at him as he works, the desire I’d thought I’d lost with my memory comes flooding back, bathing me in shudders that rock me to my very core.

  Bishop “No First Name” splaying me like a breakfast spread across the kitchen counters.

  Bent at the knee. Kneeled at the waist.

  Devouring me. Like no man has ever feasted before.

  My legs are his handlebars. My body is his meal.

  He looks at me, his golden eyes hungry, and I want to give him whatever he wants, whatever he needs. And right now, all he seems to need… is me.

  My breaths grow shallow. A tongue along one wet lip below my waist sends my gasps into panic, and I throw my hands above my head, reveling in ecstasy.

  The sucks, licks and kisses between my thighs will be the end of me, the pleasurable burn of Bishop’s dark stubble my final feeling. My dark knighted hero possessing me as only he can… and I can’t tell where I begin and Bishop ends.

  When he places one strong hand at the peak above my slit, I come. And as I am in the clutches of an unending climax, Bishop holds me to the crest of my orgasm, refusing to stop… and somehow I know that whatever he gives me will never be enough.

  Even in the midst of his sweet torture, I desperately want more.

  I start to cry out his name—Bishop’s real name—when his voice, low and velvety, pulls me from my daydream as violently as I just entered it.

  I have to steady myself on the couch cushions to get my bearings.

  “It’s not enough?” he says, frowning down at me.

  “I’m sorry—what?”

  “The food.” Bishop looks at a plate that’s balanced in his hand, his gaze bouncing from me to the sandwich in it. “It’s not enough?”

  I glare up at the non-daydream version of him. “Why would you say that?”

  “You kept on saying ‘more’… I’d just assumed that maybe your appetite was even bigger than mine, and that’s saying something.”

  Even slight, his grin is full-on charm. In an effort to explain, I try quickly to come up with a story, but it’s no use.

  The Bishop I’m coming to know won’t fall for a tall-tale… and if I tell him the truth, I’d be digging myself into a hole I may never climb out of.

  If he only knew which appetite he was really referring to…

  I take the plate from his hands.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He nods. “Just wanted to get you fed. I’m on my way out for business soon.”

  My hands freeze on the sandwich, and I am careful not to look at Bishop’s half-naked body again when I throw another look away. “Business?”

  Bishop shrugs. “Something like it…”

  I stop mid-bite, narrowing my eyes at him, but he doesn’t notice.

  “If you’d like to leave a little later,” he suddenly declares, “I can push my appointment back fifteen. If you’re not leaving, then I wouldn’t worry about it. Have as many sandwiches as you like. I made enough to feed your foul-assed mouth.”

  Bishop half-laughs before turning his back on me to head towards the kitchen.

  “Me? I’m leaving?” I mumble with a mouth full of roast beef.

  Bishop stares at me with no pretense.

  “Sure… if you want to exit out the front door. If you don’t, then you have to take your chances elsewhere. Find another exit route to take off from. I’ve seen how good you are at that.”

  Anxious to not scrape another knee climbing through the kitchen window, I hurry through my food. Before Bishop can even finish his own, I’m in the shower.

  I wash my hair twice out of habit and then hop out soaking wet. Throwing a thinly-strapped cotton red dress over my head, I start for the stairs.

  By the time Bishop is in his shirt and shoes, I am in the kitchen, falling in step right behind him.

  “That was quick, burglar,” he jokes.

  “Well, if I wanted to leave the house on my feet and not on my knees, I had to move fast.”

  Slinging the same black bag over his shoulder, Bishop stops. He places his cell phone into the bag, and when his eyes find me once again, they are liquefied gold.

  I can see in Bishop’s eyes the desire that I’m currently hiding. I stifle a gasp when his gaze lingers from my lips down slowly toward my legs.

  “Sure, kitten. We wouldn’t exactly want you on your knees now, would we?”

  He turns his back to me without another word.

  Trying to hide my surprise, I say nothing as Bishop hands me back my own cell phone. I say nothing w
hen we leave the front door. And when he secures the locks behind us, I still say nothing.

  A wicked smile in my direction, a stroke against my chin, and Bishop is off again, heading in a separate direction, taking a small and inexplicable piece of my longing with him.

  WHERE THERE’S SMOKE

  DANI

  An hour later, I am at Geoffrey’s bookshop again.

  Head down, my nose stuck in another book, I read through the pages of yet another love tale… and all the while, I carry the dirty day-dream I’d had about Bishop with me through each line.

  Amber-colored eyes replace the blue ones of the hero, blonde hair is supplanted by black, and by the time I reach the second chapter, I am reading a fantasy I’ve constructed in my head.

  A fantasy where protagonists are dressed in all black and heroines are swept off their feet by these darkened knights.

  I turn the page and recreate another scene when the sound of footsteps makes their way into aisle leading to my cozy corner.

  Startled, I raise a fist, prepared to swing.

  A man, clad in a collared shirt and bowtie, backs up and throws up his hands. His copper-colored hair is slicked back off of his handsome face, and his cheeks turn the hue of his reddish hair when he looks down and sees my tiny fist cupped wholly in his.

  I apologize immediately.

  “I’m sorry,” I say abruptly in English. “It was a reflex.”

  The man, to my surprise, responds just as easily in the same language.

  “It is alright.” His accent is the stuff of movie fantasies. “At least the hand was not my face.”

  He lets me go with a sudden smile.

  “You have a fantastic right hook.”

  He laughs and, feeling disarmed by his surprising charm, I join in.

  “You should see my left jab.”

  He extends his right hand for me to shake.

  “Gi. I’m the clerk here.”

  “Dani…” I smile at how natural the name now feels.

  “Dani,” he repeats. He nods his head, seemingly mulling it over. “Interesting set of books.” He leans his head toward my stack.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I almost blush considering what I’ve just been thinking. “I’m a sucker for a good romance.”