Chapter 4 #2
She stared. I blinked back. “That’s not exactly how that conversation went.”
“No, it’s fine, we encounter biases and stereotypes all the time. You’re clearly no different.”
“To be fair, I’d had a rough morning—”
“Oh. Did you? How sad.” She made an exaggerated sad face and pouted. “Was your beloved son and heir arrested for murder?”
“Uh, no?”
“No, do you know what happens if Theo gets thrown into jail?”
I probably had a better idea than she did. “No, ma’am.”
“It would be most inconvenient to my political ambitions. Imagine if they kept him in there?” She shivered. “Bentley would be all I had left.”
I smiled, because clearly this conversation was only about to get worse. “I have work to do, so I’ll just go back over there and do it . . . unless there was something else you wanted?”
“There was actually, Owen.”
Was that the first time she’d used my name?
“Did you find anything in the pool that morning?” she asked.
“What morning?”
“You know what morning, dear. The morning you left with Theo.”
“I didn’t actually leave with him, he stowed away—” I cut myself off when her eyes narrowed to slits.
“Oh, yeah, that morning. Did I find anything in the pool? Hm . . . let me think.” I glanced at the pool, as though it could give up its secrets, even though the cops had already gone over it forensically.
“I don’t think so. Was there anything specific you were looking for? ” Like a ring?
“I see.” She sucked on her vape and eyed me carefully, rooting around in my soul with her pale gaze. I’d read somewhere that vampires could see souls, but I wasn’t sure if that was true or just another folklore rumor.
“Nothing at all?” she pressed.
“No, nope, don’t think so.”
“Alright, I’ll let you go back to your work.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” I headed back to the filter pit and kept my breathing slow. Inside, my heart thumped in my ears. Why hadn’t I told her about the ring? It seemed important that she not know. Like the ring being in the filter that morning was a clue she didn’t want me knowing about.
She watched me for a few more minutes, then headed inside, leaving the sliding door open behind her.
That morning, I’d found the ring, tucked it in my pocket, then forgotten about it while dealing with an emotionally unstable vampire playboy and finding a body next door. Was it somehow connected?
I stared at the pool with its calm turquoise water. It would have been easy for Geraldine to say the ring was hers, and for me to hand it back. So, either she didn’t know I’d found it, or she didn’t know what it was I’d found.
What did the ring have to do with the dead pool guy?
And why had Theo been trying to hurt himself on the lounger that morning?
Was it just something he did on the regular, or had he been triggered?
Did he know the pool boy who had died next door, and that was why he’d sent me over there?
As a witness? A hundred bucks to go look at the neighbors’ pool, where there happened to be a dead body. Hm, that was pretty suspicious.
I believed him when he said he hadn’t done it. It wouldn’t have made sense for him to kill someone and then deliberately send me over there to show me the body. But something had prompted him to ask me to go see the neighbors’ pool, and it hadn’t been because he was bored.
“Not your problem, Owen.” I mumbled to myself.
I was keeping my head down and not getting involved.
“Beer?” Theo offered, appearing half an hour later, wearing wide-legged linen pants that hung low on his hips, almost like a skirt, and a tight white V-neck T-shirt.
No shoes. Bare feet. Cute feet. He looked better than when I’d last seen him.
His face was warmer, skin a little softer, more sun-kissed and less like a corpse.
He held out the beer but hung back under the shade of the sail.
“I’m working,” I told him, then realized that sounded rude. “Thank you.”
Although, I had every right to be rude, after he’d had his fans mob me on social media. Which I was not going to mention.
Nothing to see here.
“Suit yourself.” He sat on the lounger, beer bottle dangling between his fingers.
I continued testing the water’s composition, using the colored bottles of chemicals for each one.
After another ten minutes, he asked, “What are you doing there?”
“My job.”
He huffed a laugh, took a pull of beer, and lowered the bottle again. “It was a genuine question, but if you’re going to be a dick, forget it.”
I looked up. “Sorry. Sometimes I can be a bit blunt . . . I’m not very good at peopling.”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“Right. Like you understand? Mister Party Personality.”
His right eyebrow lifted. “You see a party right now? See a whole bunch of people?”
“No,” I admitted.
“No. You think that’s all I am, don’t you? Shallow and flashy.”
I did think that, yes. I wasn’t going to deny it. He was a bored rich party guy with nothing better to do.
“Whatever,” he snorted. “I don’t know why I’m bothering. You clearly think you know me. You can keep on thinking that. Doesn’t matter to me.”
I wanted to apologize again. The words were in me, trying to get out.
How had I done something wrong? He owed me an apology.
“That stunt you pulled, on Instagram, acting like you know me? I had some random woman come up to me and take a selfie while I was in a . . . while I was meeting someone important. Hashtag MurderMeetCute or something.”
He laughed, fully laughed, and the sound of it carried across his back yard, filling the gardens, while also tugging a smile to my lips.
“It was just a bit of fun. You allergic to fun, Owen? Or maybe you just haven’t had any in a while. Eh?” He smirked, and drank some more beer, his gaze on me.
I looked back into the filter pit and kept right on working, because he was right. I hadn’t had fun in a long time. Years, maybe. I didn’t even know if I could have fun anymore.
“I tried to look you up,” he said, after another five minutes had passed of him just watching me examine all the colored charts. “You don’t do social media, huh? Or you didn’t, until a few months ago. You’re there, but you don’t post.”
I kept my head down and kept on working.
“Owen the Pool Guy didn’t exist much further back than that.
And I got to thinking, maybe Owen has other socials, but Owen Marsh is all locked down.
Then I remembered you don’t much like the cops.
And I started thinking about why a clever, handsome guy like you is cleaning pools and washing cars for less than minimum wage. ”
“That’s a lot of thinking,” I muttered, keeping my gaze on the pool filter. Wait, he thought I was handsome? That was a very specific word. Handsome. Hot was throwaway, but handsome was almost romantic. No, don’t go there. He was just playing with me, trying to get me to talk.
“You’re not going to confirm or deny any of it, are you?” he said.
I dried my hands on the towel and looked up, because he’d gone quiet. He gazed over the pool, smirking.
He didn’t like not knowing about me. “You should let the filter run for a few days before swimming in it.”
“They don’t swim in it anyway. Mother is never here, father rarely leaves his room, and Benny is . . . his hair is too precious to get wet.”
I couldn’t imagine Bentley in swim shorts and decided right then I didn’t need to ever see that. “But you swim?” I asked.
He held my gaze, adding intention to his words. “Come by in a few nights, when the pool guy says the water will be okay, and try it with me.”
Now that was a thought. A big, distracting thought. Him, in swimming shorts, wet, hot, in the pool. Under the stars. Pool light reflection in his dark eyes, and that smile . . . No. Nope. That wasn’t ever going to happen. Not in a million years. Not getting involved.
“What?” he said, when I didn’t answer. “You don’t do people, just pools, I get that. But you don’t swim in pools either? That’s a lot of rules.”
“I like rules,” I admitted. “Rules keep things where they should be.”
He grinned, and this time I did see his fangs. Gleaming, curved, sharp. “Fuck rules, Owen.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” He had a safety net, money, a name. The rules probably bent around him.
“Sure,” he half laughed. “Easy for me to say. Billionaire playboy, right?”
“Did you know the guy who died?” I asked, catching him off guard.
He stilled, beer bottle halfway to his lips. Then corrected, and took drink. But I’d seen it. He looked away, toward the yard and the neighbors’ house hidden behind the trees and bushes.
Not only did he not reply, he stood and sauntered back inside. Conversation over.
He clearly had known the guy who died. Known him enough to lie sprawled on a sun lounger, waiting for sunstroke to take the hurt away? But he couldn’t or wouldn’t say.
Now that was interesting.
“Don’t go there,” I told myself. “Stop looking for trouble.”
The problem was, I just couldn’t help myself.