Chapter Seventeen
Chapter
Seventeen
“What are you doing here?” I demanded after steamrolling my way over to Wyatt.
“You really cut to the chase, don’t you?” he said. “Never waste any time with greetings or small talk.”
My parents had drilled politeness into me as a little girl, but sometimes my brain overrode that setting. Wyatt’s words, however, racked my inner child with guilt.
“Hi. How are you? And how did you even find out about the cocktail party?” I said it all in a rush, hoping to assuage the guilt that was quickly getting overridden by curiosity.
Wyatt’s slow grin awakened the butterflies that had been slumbering in my stomach. His dimple appeared as he looked at me with amusement. “Zita mentioned it.”
So now he was on a first-name basis with Mrs. Nagy?
I narrowed my eyes. “You’ve seen her since yesterday?”
Even I hadn’t seen her since I’d made my foolhardy promise to her, and I lived right next door to the woman.
“She called me.” Wyatt slid his hands into the pockets of his tailored suit pants.
He wore a cobalt blue suit with a white dress shirt, but no tie.
He’d left the top two buttons of his shirt undone, and his dark hair was artfully tousled.
“Agnes gave her my number,” he continued, looking perfectly relaxed and at ease.
“Zita called to thank me for taking on Zoltán’s case with you. ”
“And you’re here because?” I couldn’t seem to stop myself from acting prickly around him.
He glanced at all the people present, several of whom were not-so-subtly watching him out of the corner of their eye. “A room full of potential suspects and sources of valuable information. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“But why do you care about suspects? You don’t live at the Mirage, and you’ve never met Mr. Nagy. You’d never even met his wife until a couple of days ago.”
“True,” he conceded. “But she reminds me of my late grandmother, and did you see the look in her eyes when she asked for our help?”
The impossible-to-ignore pleading. I’d seen it all right. Just the memory of it tugged at my heartstrings.
“Besides,” Wyatt continued, “I’ve always wanted to be a detective. Blame it on my childhood obsession with the Hardy Boys.”
“Huh.” I sized him up. “And which one are you? Frank or Joe?”
“I’d like to think I’m a little of both.” He grinned, looking oh-so-casual and oh-so-good. “Should we work the room?”
A sense of satisfaction brought a smile to my face. “I’ve already got what I came here for.”
I threw back the last of my champagne, set the empty glass on the nearest side table, and strode out the door.
I made it two steps into the hallway before Agnes called me back.
“Emersyn! Will you try a profiterole before you go? It’s a new recipe of mine. My daughter and I are thinking of selling them at our bakery, but we want to get some feedback first.”
By the time she got those words out, she had an arm around me and was ushering me back into Minnie and Yolanda’s apartment.
So much for my grand exit.
I let Agnes steer me over to the food table because if I couldn’t have my perfect mic drop moment, I could at least have more free food.
I tasted one of the chocolate-covered profiteroles while Agnes watched with anticipation.
The heavenly pistachio and Irish cream filling made me sigh with happiness, much to Agnes’s delight.
While I didn’t have to lie about how delicious the profiterole tasted, I struggled to stay focused after the first bite because my traitorous gaze wanted to follow Wyatt around the room.
At the moment, he was chatting with Bitty and Yolanda, but as I watched, Leona slipped in between them, latching on to Wyatt’s arm.
Serves him right, the prickly part of my brain grumbled.
The rest of me felt sorry for him. I tried to silence that part but without success, so I turned my back on Wyatt and focused my full attention on the profiteroles.
Once Agnes was satisfied that I was absolutely sure about my glowing review—I had to eat three profiteroles for her to believe me, though that wasn’t exactly a hardship—I slipped out through the open door. This time, my exit definitely lacked any drama, but at least it was more successful.
I’d just stepped into the elevator when I realized I had no idea how to carry out the plan that had formed in my head.
It made perfect sense to take advantage of the fact that Rosario was currently at Freddie’s wake/celebration of life/cocktail party by searching her apartment.
The reports of her multiple arguments with Freddie had shot her straight to the top of my admittedly short suspect list. The problem was that I didn’t have Theo with me, and I had no idea how to pick a lock.
I dug my phone out of my clutch, hoping to consult YouTube.
The elevator doors had nearly closed when a hand shot in to stop them.
A very masculine hand.
The doors parted, and Wyatt stepped into the elevator.
I dropped my phone back into my clutch. “Couldn’t you have taken the stairs?”
“Why?” He’d had a grin on his face when he first appeared, but that expression fizzled away, and he suddenly looked stricken and decidedly less at ease. “Do I make you uncomfortable? I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable!” Okay, so I was a little, but he wasn’t responsible for that. Unless you could say he was responsible for the thoughts in my head. Thoughts that involved his buttons flying off as I ripped open his shirt to reveal his sculpted chest and abs.
“Are you sure?” It was the first time I’d seen him worried, and there was something endearing and adorable about it. Which only made him hotter somehow.
“Positive.” Did I sound a little breathless? I hoped not. “You’re fine.”
Oh, so very, very fine, a voice in my head piped up.
I fanned myself with my hand. “I’m just a little warm. I think it’s the champagne.”
Yes, that had to be it. The alcohol had gone to my head.
To my relief, the elevator dinged, and the doors parted. I stepped out into the hallway, relieved to be able to put a little more space between us.
“Okay, I’m glad I didn’t make you uncomfortable,” Wyatt said, sounding as relieved as I felt. He followed as I started down the third-floor hallway. “But can I ask why it is that you hate to like me?”
“I don’t hate to like you!” I protested. “I don’t know you well enough to hate to like you or to like to like you.”
“Really?” His good-humored disbelief irked me. “Because I seem to make you cranky. Unless you’re a cranky pants by nature?”
“I’m not a cranky pants!” I stopped in the middle of the hallway and crossed my arms over my chest. I wasn’t as annoyed with him as I was with myself. I always seemed to go on the defensive in his presence, and my habit of protesting against every second thing he said grated on my nerves.
He stood there, watching me expectantly. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get rid of him easily. And maybe I owed him an explanation, if not an apology.
I let out a resigned sigh. “Okay, so I’ve been a little grumpy with you.
But that doesn’t have anything to do with liking you or disliking you.
It’s just…” I took a second to figure out how to explain my jumbled feelings, or some of them, anyway.
“I don’t like being a damsel in distress, and even though we’ve barely known each other for five minutes, you’ve already had to help me out of scrapes on multiple occasions. ”
Wyatt nodded. “That’s a blow to your independent nature.”
“I guess that’s a good way of putting it.” I uncrossed my arms and approached the door to Rosario’s apartment.
I knew full well that there was more to my irritation and defensive attitude.
What I’d told him was true, but there was also the fact that I felt this crazy ridiculous attraction toward him that was so incredibly inconvenient at this point in my life.
Add to that the fact that he’d seen me in awkward and embarrassing situations several times already.
He probably thought I was an amusing hot mess, and knowing that awakened lingering vestiges of humiliation, which then got me as prickly as a porcupine facing off with a mountain lion.
He didn’t need to know about all that, though.
“Are you going to knock?” Wyatt asked.
I realized I was standing there, staring at the three gold numbers on Rosario’s door. “No.” I didn’t offer any further information.
“It’s just…this isn’t your apartment, so…”
I glanced at him. The knowing, amused glint in his eyes raised my porcupine quills again.
“You know exactly why I’m here,” I said.
He slid his hands into the pockets of his pants.
“I’ve deduced that you learned something at the cocktail party that made you decide to search somebody’s apartment while they’re otherwise occupied.
” His smile was a little smug. “I’ve also deduced that you don’t know how to get inside without a key. ”
I fought against the urge to remain prickly. The sad fact was that he was absolutely right, and I was running out of time. The cocktail party might wind down at any minute.
“Do you know how to get in without a key, Sherlock?” I asked with only a slight edge to my voice.
His grin widened. “And here I thought you might never ask.”
He reached into an inner pocket of his tailored suit jacket and removed what I thought at first was a wallet but then realized was a small carrying case for lock-picking tools.
First Theo and now Wyatt. Was lock picking a common skill that I’d somehow missed learning in school?
Wyatt slid out two of the tools and handed me the case.
He paused before getting to work on the lock. “If I’m going to help you with breaking and entering, I think it’s only fair that you acknowledge we’re investigating this case together.”
Several emotions flew into an instant wrestling match inside of me.
I didn’t want to need his help yet again, and I didn’t want to keep fighting my attraction to him, but I really wanted to keep my promise to Mrs. Nagy.
To do that, I needed to get into Rosario’s apartment.
And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, the foolish part of me wasn’t the least bit disappointed about the prospect of spending more time with him, even though I knew I should remain wary of him.
After all, he’d been at the Mirage around the time of the murder, and he’d now inserted himself into my investigation.
Was it really because of his grandmother and his lifelong desire to be a detective?
Or was he hoping to steer the investigation in a direction that pointed firmly away from him?
I had no clue what reason he’d have to kill Freddie, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one. I’d have to stay on my toes if I was going to have anything more to do with him.
Wyatt waited, the tools held loosely in one hand. Those darned coal-like eyes of his flickered with amusement, and I feared he could see all the different thoughts spinning around in my head.
“Fine,” I said eventually, knowing we couldn’t afford to waste any more time. “We’re on the case. Together.”