Cloaked in Malice by Annette Blair

Author:Annette Blair [Blair, Annette]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.
Published: 2012-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-two

Fashion does not reflect nostalgia for the past, but an eternal present that lies beyond the past.

—BARBARA VINKEN

As we made our way back, Paisley continued refusing to return to the farm where she was raised, however logical the suggestion.

“No, no, no, no!”

Steps behind us, she sang her song, not at all joyful, but grudging, and most definitely not to herself. “I said I would not come back here, and you talked me into coming anyway. But I am certainly not sleeping here, not that I sleep anywhere, ever, especially not here.”

I turned to wait for her. “We could pass the time by codesigning your wild wardrobe. Do you have drawing paper?”

“I used to do all my artwork on rolls of butcher paper,” Paisley admitted with a wrinkled nose. “Will that do?”

“Ask Tunney how much butcher paper I snitched from him over the years. One Christmas, he gave me a full roll. My father thought we were both nuts.”

Nick chuckled. “I can picture the exact look on your father’s face,” he said, snapping his revolver back into its holster.

“You must feel safer now,” I said.

Nick gave me a one-raised-shoulder affirmative. “I’m reasonably certain there’s nobody here who wasn’t before. Whoever sabotaged the rope, cut and run.”

“Paisley seems to have calmed down about being stuck here overnight,” I observed as she got sidetracked picking a variety of wild orchids in purples, yellows, and greens.

“Paisley, let’s use those as a print for one of your dresses.”

She relaxed into a smile. “I’d like that.”

Nick brought me close for a hip-to-hip hug-and-walk. “I think designing her a wardrobe was inspired. Good job.”

I got the warm fuzzies from head to toe and not simply from the compliment. “Thanks.”

“While you two are designing, I’m going to try and break the code and get into the computer.”

“I thought that would get you in trouble with the Feds.”

“It’s an emergency now that we’re stranded here. Motivation is everything. Your hair would stand on end if I told you what I’ve gotten away with in the name of making a getaway.”

“I’d probably sleep better if you did tell me. My imagination is pretty wild, and some nights, when you’re on assignment, I sit up worrying about you and conjuring some pretty scary situations.”

That netted me an ear nuzzle.

Paisley stopped beside us and crossed her arms. “You two aren’t going to sleep together at the farm tonight, are you? Because I’m here to tell you…Yuck!”

For some reason, her disgust struck me as funny. “But at my father’s house—”

“No details, no excuses,” Paisley said. “My house, my rules. No doorway is more than a few feet from the next. And don’t suggest a bedroom on a different floor for the two of you. Now that I know those are caskets in the cellar, I’ll swim back before I, or anyone else, sleeps there again.”

“Don’t look daggers at me,” I said. “I don’t plan to sleep. Do you, Nick?”

“Not on your life.”

Paisley’s hiccup turned to a half sob, and she lowered her head, presumably so we wouldn’t see her emotions so clearly.

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