Heather Graham - Picture Me Dead

He didn’t question her. She should have known he wouldn’t, she thought as he looked up at her with his customary grin. Nick wasn’t the jealous type. If she wasn’t enjoying his company and wanted out, she was welcome to leave at any time. If she was happy with him, well, then, she should be there, and he would be delighted.

“Hey, how was your day?” he asked.

“Great.”

“Sell anything?”

“Showed two expensive places, but I don’t have any bites—yet.”

“It takes time.”

“Has Ashley called? Did the girls reach their hotel yet?”

Nick shook his head. “She won’t call me today unless there’s a problem. I’ll probably hear from her tomorrow. Hey, she loved the cookies. She’ll tell you herself, when she gets back.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

She set her purse down behind the bar and gave him a kiss, wishing she didn’t feel so nervous. It wasn’t like her. She was never uneasy. Never. She was always in control.

She started to leave, but he pulled her back, giving her a stronger, much more suggestive kiss. When he released her, she flushed. “Sandy Reilly just came in, and he’s staring at us!”

“Sandy’s as old as the hills, and we’re stirring memories of adventure and excitement and raw sexual thrills for him,” Nick replied.

“Chill, you two,” Sandy called out. “And break it up. Let’s have some service around this place. The old-as-the-hills guy has perfect hearing, and he needs a beer.”

Sharon and Nick broke apart, both of them laughing. Nick called out, “Beer’s on the house, Sandy.”

“Thank the good Lord for some things in life,” Sandy said, shaking his white head. “I could really use a cold one.”

“You sound desperate, Sandy.”

“I am. Now I know why I stick to boats. Just went to pay some bills, and it felt as if I were on the road forever. The traffic sucks.”

“Worse than usual?” Nick said.

“Hell yes, seems like every psycho in the world is out there today, and I ain’t driving again. Line ’em up for me, Nick. Line ’em up.”

Beneath the water, Jake Dilessio could hear the sound of the scraper against the boat. Strange sound, more like rubbing than scratching. He finished with the last of the stubborn barnacles just as his air was giving out. He rose the few feet to the surface, grabbed the Gwendolyn’s back ladder, inhaled a deep breath and drew his mask from his face in a single fluid motion. Dripping, he climbed the ladder and stepped onto his houseboat.

He sensed the whirl of motion before his attacker came after him. Tension, years of training and a rush of adrenaline kicked in.

As a fist shot out, he ducked, then bolted straight up, sending out his own left jab. Luck was with him, and he caught his mystery opponent straight in the jaw.

To his amazement, the man—wearing a tailored white dress shirt, tie, seamed navy pants and leather loafers—stayed down, something like a sob escaping him as he heaved in a breath and balanced on one hand and his knees, rubbing his jaw.

“Ah, hell,” Jake muttered softly. “Brian?”

“You were sleeping with her,” the man said.

Jake reached down, helping his attacker to his feet. The man was almost his height, slim, well built and usually attractive, a blue-eyed, blond surfer type, the kind of guy to whom women tended to flock. Right now, however, his blue eyes were red-rimmed and puffed up from crying, and his jaw was swelling, disrupting the usual classic line of his features.

“Brian, what the hell are you doing here?” he asked quietly. The adrenaline had ebbed from his body as if he’d been deflated. “Come inside, I’ll get some ice for your jaw.”

Brian Lassiter started to pull away, then followed Jake into the living room of his houseboat. Efficiently designed, the Gwendolyn offered a broad main room/kitchen/dining room area all in one, while a set of stairs led down to an aft cabin and another few steps led up to the main cabin at the fore.

He drew Brian in, setting him on a bar stool, and opened the freezer to get ice. He wrapped a number of cubes in a bar towel and walked over to his visitor, shoving the bundle at him. “Here, put this on your jaw. I’ll make coffee.”

“I don’t need coffee.”

“You sure as hell do.”

“As if you’ve never had a few too many to drink.”

“I’ve had a few too many to drink a few too many times. And I’ve done some stupid ass stuff. But coming at me like that…hell, you could have gotten yourself killed.”

“I just wanted to deck you once,” Brian said. His voice dropped to a whisper-like sob. “Just once. You were sleeping with her.”

Jake had started brewing coffee. He flicked the switch on the machine hard and turned around. “Brian, I wasn’t sleeping with her. And she never told you I was.”

“You’re lying. There’s no reason for you to tell me the truth now, because Nancy is dead.”

“That’s right,” Jake said, his voice lethally quiet. “Nancy is dead.”

“And if you had been sleeping with her, you’d never tell me, ’cause now there’s no way I could know for sure.”

Jake held his temper. “I think we both remember the inquest. It was a nasty, dirty affair. But it proved one thing, Brian. She wasn’t with me that night.” She’d had what the medical examiner had deemed consensual sex with someone that night. He’d volunteered to be tested, proving that it hadn’t been with him.

“She sure as hell wasn’t with me,” Brian responded bitterly. “But even if she wasn’t with you that night, she loved you.”

“We were friends, Brian.”

“Friends. Yeah.” He was silent for a moment. “You still think I was responsible.”

“I never said that.”

“You never said that? Like hell. Every time you looked at me during the inquest, you fucking accused me with your eyes.”

Brian really had been drinking heavily. Jake shook his head. He understood the feeling. Now and then, he still felt like heading out on a major bender himself.

“Brian, you’re wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Accident. They said it was an accident. But you…you never believed that.”

“Brian, I think you were responsible for being a real idiot now and then, but not for your wife’s death, all right?”

“I didn’t make her do shit, man. I never made her do drugs, and when we were together, we never got plastered.”

“Brian, you’re on a crying jag of a drunk right now. You’re not thinking straight. No one ever suggested that you made anyone do anything. You were an ass, and hell yes, she was mad at you a lot. But she loved you, got it? Jesus, Brian, it was all a long time ago now. What the hell brought this on?”

“You don’t know? Man, how could you have forgotten?”

Jake stared at Brian. He knew. He knew every damn year. “Her birthday,” he said softly.

“Yeah. She’d have been thirty, Jake. Thirty. Shit. She was twenty-five.”

Jake leaned against the counter, feeling as if hot wire were coiling in his stomach. “Twenty-five, and there’s not a damned thing either of us can do about it now. She’s been dead for nearly five years, Brian. And if I’ve heard right, you’ve been living for the past two of those years with a flight attendant.”

“Yeah, I’ve been living with a flight attendant,” Brian agreed. He shook his head. “Nice girl. I should marry her. But every time I get too close….” His words trailed off, and a pained expression having nothing to do with his swollen jaw crossed his features. “Well, hell, I start to wonder if Nancy will live with me forever, if I won’t keep on waking up nights and thinking she’s staring at me, thinking that if…Well, hell.”

The coffee was ready. Jake turned away from Brian and poured him a cup. Brian had hit a nail right on the head—for the two of them, though Brian couldn’t know that.