Susan Crosby - Rules of Attraction

But she must have spotted Quinn, as well, then laid the foundation for ditching him using her sister’s makeover to switch identities. Was Claire part of the ruse? He couldn’t answer that question for sure, but she suddenly bleaches her hair, parks her car on the street instead of in the garage, then her sister-the-suspect disappears? It seemed well planned to him.

It ticked him off that Jennifer had made him. No one had before. How could he explain the screwup to Magnussen, the D.A. who’d hired him because Magnussen’s own investigators had, well, screwed up?

Quinn glanced at his watch. Almost five o’clock. An hour after the end of Claire’s shift. She should be home by now—unless she was going to wear that sexy little number out somewhere.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. People made their way up and down the street. A typical Saturday in June, the weather was cloudy and cool. So far no one had reported him for loitering in his car, which happened occasionally during a stakeout.

His luck held. He spotted Claire’s car. The garage door opened as she reached it. She started to pull in then stopped. Jennifer’s red convertible filled the space.

Quinn blew out a long, slow breath. Okay. She hadn’t left, after all. Okay.

He watched Claire park up the block then stroll to her house, no overt sway to her hips, but sexy nonetheless, her short skirt giving him plenty to admire as she climbed the steps, a grocery sack in each arm. She juggled the bags for a minute before setting them down to open the door, then he got an eyeful of her long, slender, perfect legs.

The door shut on his entertainment. He made himself comfortable in the car, grateful to be there instead of having to report to the D.A. that he’d lost his subject. It was Saturday. Date night. Jennifer would leave the house sometime, and Quinn would be on her tail, his reputation intact.

But several hours later, she still hadn’t emerged.

Claire took a few steps back to admire the flowy white curtains she’d just hung, her first step in redecorating what had been her parents’ bedroom and now would be hers. It had taken six months since their deaths before she thought she might be able to sleep there.

She looked at the dog sitting at her feet. “What do you think, Rase?” she asked.

Eraser grinned up at her, his tail wagging slowly. She crouched beside him and buried her face in his thick, white-tipped gray coat. He let out a little growl of contentment as she scratched his flanks then hugged him a little tighter. He was just a mutt, but he was her mutt, even if he wouldn’t obey a single command.

“The curtains look beautiful, don’t they?” she asked, sitting cross-legged beside him, patting him as she inspected her handiwork.

She’d gotten over her disappointment that Quinn Gerard hadn’t returned to the blood bank at four o’clock. In fact, she’d decided she should be grateful he hadn’t. Obviously he was a con man of some kind or, at the least, a jerk.

“Not worth my thoughts, is he?” she asked the dog.

Rase’s ears pricked up, then he took off down the stairs, running and barking. A moment later the doorbell rang.

Claire saw with surprise that it was almost ten o’clock. She’d intended to keep herself distracted, but had done such a good job of it that she hadn’t noticed that night had fallen. She had no reason to feel guilty, but—

The bell rang again. Rase barked more frantically, alerting and calling her at the same time. She couldn’t imagine who would be coming around this late. Some friend of Jenn’s, she supposed. Someone who didn’t know….

Claire grabbed her portable phone and made her way to the door without turning on any lights, a streetlight providing just enough illumination from outside that she could negotiate the stairs. Maybe it was better that she hadn’t turned on any lights. She could pretend she wasn’t home if the visitor wasn’t someone she wanted to talk to.

Without telling Rase to quiet down—as if it would’ve done any good anyway—she crept to the door and looked out the peephole. She hadn’t turned on the porch light, however, so she could see only a dark blob silhouetted from behind by the streetlight. Now what?

“I know you’re in there,” came a man’s voice.

She hopped back. Rase picked up on her surprise and reared up, slamming his paws against the door, digging at it, barking louder. “Who’s there?” she asked.

“Quinn Gerard.”

Quinn— From the blood bank? She looked again through the peephole but still couldn’t identify the man. How did he— He’d followed her?

She put a hand over her mouth. How stupid could she be? She’d told him what time she got off work. He’d followed her to her home.

“Please open the door,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”

Grateful for how ferocious Rase sounded, she called out, “You’re stalking me. I’m calling the police right now,” she said, meaning it, squeezing the portable phone a little tighter.

“You’ll save us both a lot of time if you don’t do that,” he said, his voice raised but calm. “I’m under contract with the district attorney. If you open the door I’ll show you my identification.”

The D.A.? She relaxed a little, but no way was she removing the safety of the wooden barrier between them. “What do you want?”

“You can call off your dog, for one, so I don’t have to yell. Unless you like having your neighbors hear your business.”

He had a point. “Sit,” she said to the dog. “Quiet.”

Rase wagged his tail, barked once, but didn’t sit. She sighed. “Okay. Now, what do you want?”

“I’d prefer to tell you face-to-face.”

“You can prefer all you want.”

A pause ensued. Her grandfather clock ticked off time, the sound seeming to gain volume.

“If you don’t tell me right now why you’re here,” she said, “I’m calling the cops.”

“I want to talk to you about your sister, Jennifer.”

She closed her eyes. Great. Just great. She should have guessed. Just as she should’ve guessed he hadn’t been attracted to her. They were as different as night and…tuna. For one thing, she was honest.

“Did you follow me from the blood bank?” she asked. If so, he’d been sitting in his car for hours, biding his time, waiting for darkness to fall.

“I followed you to it. I thought you were your sister. Look, is she in there?”

“No.”

A long moment of silence sat like an invisible wall between them. “Will she be home soon?”

Claire leaned her forehead against the door. “No.”

She was tired of covering for Jenn, who was two years older than Claire and should’ve been the big sister but had never behaved like one.

“Is she gone, Claire?”

He asked the question quietly, almost sympathetically. It made her throat ache. Rase picked up on her mood and nudged her thigh with his muzzle. She patted his head. “That’s Ms. Winston to you.”

“Is she?”

She needed to tell someone, even this stranger. Maybe especially this stranger. “Yes,” she said quietly. Jenn had taken so few personal possessions with her that Claire might not have realized she was gone, except that she’d left—

“How do you know?” he asked.

She propped herself against the doorjamb. “She left a note.”

“May I see it?”

“No.” She certainly was not opening her door to a man who’d pretended to like her, who’d lured her just with promise in his eyes. Give her a dull but honest man anytime.

“Why didn’t she take her car?”

“I don’t know. Go away or I’ll sic my dog on you.” Quinn couldn’t see Rase, all twenty-five wimpy pounds of him. He only sounded like a hundred pounds of ferocity. In truth, he’d been known to run from cats.