Page 36 of Hidden With You

ChapterEleven

“Did I piss you off?” Zelda looked at him sideways at him as they walked the beach. “I mean, this was your idea, and you haven’t said two words.”

She was right. He was being an ass. He was the one who suggested they go out. He’d taken a circuitous route to Santa Monica, taking care to make certain they didn’t have a tail, and now here they were walking barefoot in the surf under a starry sky.

It was a lovely night, and he was the one who had started this.

He was the one who was ruining it too.

“Everything’s fine,” he lied, the mysterious raspy voice still ringing in his head. Kill her, and I’ll tell you where to find The Maestro.

She stopped, tilting her head as she looked up at him. “So I didn’t make you angry. This isn’t about the daddy thing?”

He almost laughed, then he realized she was serious about the question. “I already told you that doesn’t do it for me. But it hardly pissed me off.”

“Good. It doesn’t do it for me either.”

“Then why’d you bring it up?”

“Hello? Because I’m trying things. I’ve made it perfectly clear that I want more. That I want to finish what we started. You kind of left me hanging. For that matter, you’ve kind of left me hanging twice now.”

“So you’re looking for ways to entice me into changing my mind.”

“Hell, yes.”

He laughed. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“We get along, Jasper. You know we do. There may be two decades between us, but we get along great.”

He couldn’t disagree. It had been a long time since he’d felt this easy with a woman. He had a good time with Liesl, but there wasn’t this kind of heat with her. That was just burning off steam. With Zelda, it felt like there might be something real.

But he wasn’t sure he was ready for real.

“Did I lose you?”

He stopped walking long enough to look at her. “Just sex. That’s all you want. Just sex.”

“What can I say? I’m a girl who knows what she wants. And it sounds a whole lot less complicated than getting into a relationship.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said as he turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. She hurried to catch up with him as he lengthened his strides.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the car.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Because sand is itchy, and the water is cold.”

For a moment, she looked confused. Then her laughter bubbled into the night as she skipped in the surf. “Finally.”

He shook his head, laughing. Unable to deny that this woman’s exuberance was working on him.

It didn’t take them long to reach his Alfa Romeo, but he decided to drive back the long way, and so he turned north on Sepulveda and took that street to Mulholland, the famous dark and twisty road that ran along the top of the hills that separated the San Fernando Valley from the West Side.

He wanted to see the night above them and the city below, and he knew damn well he was taking the curves too fast, but that was what this kind of car was made for. She didn’t seem to mind at all. She held on to the handhold and watched as the headlights cut through the dark. And when he made a sharp left into a turnabout with a view of the Valley, she squealed with delight.

“You do like to live dangerously,” he said, putting the car in park and killing the engine.