Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Get out!” Sybil shrieked.
Her knee connected solidly with Peter’s temple as she scrambled to get off the bed. She slid off the side, hiding next to Peter—who was clutching his head—like it was a bedroom-set foxhole.
“Are you okay?” Mallory asked.
“Get. Out!”
The door clicked shut, and Sybil put her head in her hands and groaned.
“This can’t be happening,” she said into her palms.
“It’s okay,” Peter soothed, and squeezed her knee.
“No, it’s not,” she insisted. “I am not an exhibitionist. I do not have discovery fantasies. It would’ve been bad if it had just been Mallory but—” She shuddered at the memory of Willis’s shocked and mortified expression. She could relate. “I may never be horny ever again.”
“Were you close? Because I don’t think they’re coming back,” Peter began, then trailed off when she glared at him. “Never mind.”
She had been close. So. Very. Close.
Bone-melting embarrassment made space for fury. Why was Mallory letting a cop into her house and then barging into her room?
Sybil hunted for her leggings, and after a few frustrating, fruitless tries to put them on and getting her feet stuck, she grabbed a pair of baggy fleece pajama pants from her hamper and shoved her legs into them.
She yanked the door open and marched out. “Mallory!”
Mallory and Willis weren’t loitering in the hall. Sybil raced down the stairs, skipped the last two, and skidded across the wood floor when physics worked against her.
The front door was open and Mallory had been in the process of ushering Willis out, but they both stared at her as she regained her footing and stalked toward them.
“What the actual hell?” It wasn’t a question but a demand for an answer.
“There was a call—” Willis began, but Mallory cut him off.
“Edith saw someone in a hoodie and hat walk down the street, hide in our bushes, peer through the front window, then climb the tree and enter through your window. She called the cops, and Willis came to check it out. I was telling him that we’d heard something upstairs and you went to check it out when we heard you kind of scream, but it was muffled and we thought maybe you were being attacked by a burglar.”
Edith Nelson was Sybil’s across-the-street neighbor and Crane Cove’s reigning busybody. Who needed a neighborhood watch or a security system with Edith peeking through her curtains?
“If you breathe a word of this to anyone—” Sybil pointed a menacing finger at Willis, and he held his hands up in surrender. He looked awfully scared for someone carrying a gun.
“My lips are sealed,” he promised. “Can I go tell Mrs. Nelson there wasn’t anything to worry about? ”
“What are you going to say if she asks what was happening?” Sybil crossed her arms.
Willis fumbled for an answer. Mallory came to his rescue.
“Tell her it was one of the McMahon boys playing a prank,” she said and put a gentle hand on Willis’s back. If she hadn’t been so mad, Sybil would have thought it was comical, tiny Mallory comforting the looming, giraffe-like Willis. “And that they’re very sorry that they scared her. Have a good night, Willis.”
Her sister nudged Willis out onto the porch and closed the door.
“You thought I was being attacked by a burglar?” Sybil asked dubiously.
“Yes, I did,” Mallory said with a sigh. “You went upstairs and I didn’t hear anything, and then I did start to hear some weird noises and I was about to go check on you when Willis showed up and said Edith had seen someone lurking and breaking in. So, yes, Sybil, I thought you were being attacked by a burglar. It never occurred to me that the burglar was after pussy and not plunder.”
“Plunder? Is he supposed to be a pirate?”
“I liked the alliteration, so sue me.” Mallory rolled her eyes. “Why is your paramour peeking through the panes instead of coming to the door?”
Footsteps on the stairs made them both turn their heads. Peter descended, a sheepish look on his face, and gave Mallory a small, awkward wave.
“Hey, Mallory.”
Mallory’s eyes widened. She looked from Peter, to Sybil, back to Peter, and then Sybil again.
So she hadn’t noticed the who, just the what when she’d barged in. Sybil should’ve told Peter to stay put.
“You”—Mallory pointed to Sybil—“and you”—she pointed to Peter—“are…?” She made a circle with one hand and inserted her pointer finger into the circle rapidly.
“No,” Sybil said at the same time Peter said, “Yes.”
“Ah. Schrodinger’s hookup.”
“Except the box is open and the cat is dead,” Sybil said and went to the front door to open it for Peter, but she thought better of it and changed directions to head for the back door. Edith wouldn’t stop snooping even if Willis gave her the all-clear. She snagged Peter’s wrist as she passed him, and he followed as dutifully as a dog.
She unlocked the backdoor, wrenched it open because it stuck, and motioned for him to exit.
“Are you really kicking me out?” he asked, an amused smile gracing his gorgeous face. He stepped outside and down the first step, but stopped, turned, and added, “Your sister already knows I’m here. I could stay.”
She shook her head, but followed him out to stand on the small back porch. Peter didn’t loom over her so much this way, and they were nearly eye to eye.
“I am definitely not horny anymore.”
“We don’t have to fool around.” He touched her arm, caressing her from elbow to wrist. The goosebumps that rose on her skin had nothing to do with the cold night air. “We could snuggle. Talk.”
“We’re not talking. We’re not even fucking,” she told him.
Peter smiled softly, like he knew something she didn’t, then kissed her forehead, then her nose, then finally her lips. The kiss was gentle, so featherlight that her heart clutched and she instinctively pressed into him, wanting more. He cradled her face in one hand, the other held her hip, and kissed her in a deep, unhurried way that made time stretch. He’d always been good at making her feel like a precious, perfect, ephemeral yet everlong treasure. Like he couldn’t believe he got to hold her, to touch her. Which was ridiculous, but she wasn’t going to correct him right then when she could still taste herself on his tongue.
The sound of Willis’s patrol car starting broke the spell, and Sybil pulled back.
“Okay, we’re not fucking tonight,” she said in a daze.
“But another time?”
“We’ll see.”
Peter walked backwards down the steps. “Despite how it ended, I had a great time tonight.”
Sybil shook her head but couldn’t help but smile. “Go back to your hotel. Make sure to stay in the shadows this time.”
“Lock your window. You never know who’s going to climb in.”
She stood on the back porch until he rounded the corner of the house and was out of sight.