What She Forgot (What She 2)

The first thing that hit me was the slight scent of perfume. It smelled like Shelly, like cherry lip balm and freshness. The next thing I noticed was how tidy her apartment was. The last time I’d been here, the white tile floor had been covered in Mason’s blood and Shelly had been confessing her desire to kill him as Lynn sat, stunned, on the floor next to her.

Now the apartment was clean, and empty. Someone had just opened the door. I knew someone was here.

I turned and closed the door behind me, and then I nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized she was standing behind the door, her gun aimed at my forehead. She was a dead shot, she’d told me the other night. I had no reason not to believe her. I held up my hands, because that’s what a smart man does when he’s facing a crazy woman with a gun, particularly when he’s just let himself into her home.

“Shelly,” I said calmly.

“Clark?” she asked. She squinted at me. “I don’t have my contacts in, so you had better start talking.”

Holy shit. She couldn’t actually see me, but she had a gun pointed at my forehead. “Yes, it’s Clark,” I said succinctly and slowly.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, as she lowered her weapon.

“Mason didn’t call you?”

She spoke over a yawn. “I just woke up when some idiot started banging on my door like the building was on fire.” She lowered her weapon and set the safety. Then she put it in the top drawer of the entryway table and closed it with a gentle shove. “What are you doing here?”

She walked by me going toward the kitchen and I suddenly noticed what she was wearing. Or rather, I noticed her ass, because that was all I could see. She had on a pair of tiny little boy-shorts and a grey t-shirt. She turned halfway toward me and I could read the front. It said, “I never said that. ~Jesus.”

I’d never seen Shelly looking less than perfectly put together, so this version of Shelly, this was an anomaly. It was like seeing Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” dressed in leather and metal. But quite the opposite. Shelly had morphed from someone I had no desire to touch into someone who made my fingers itch.

“Did you tell me why you’re here?” Shelly asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She lifted it to her lips and blew across the rim, making the liquid ripple. That breath shot straight to the center of me.

And I couldn’t remember why I was here. “Um…” I scrubbed a hand down my face.

She arched a brow at me and reached into a kitchen drawer to retrieve a pair of glasses. They sat crooked on her face, but her confusion cleared when she could finally see me. “Oh,” she said, and she rolled her eyes.

“Oh, what?” I asked.

She glanced down toward my crotch and then back up, a smile hovering around her lips. “Men are so predictable,” she said. She sat down at the kitchen table and crossed her legs. They went on for miles, it seemed. I jerked my eyes away.

“Men are not predictable,” I scoffed.

I started opening her cabinets until I found her coffee mugs. The one I picked up matched her shirt with the Jesus comment. I happened to agree with it, since in my opinion people put a lot of condemning words in Jesus’s mouth that had never been there. I poured myself a cup of coffee while I gathered my thoughts. She said nothing as she sat quietly at the table.

“Make yourself at home,” she finally muttered. She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Could you go and put some clothes on?” I asked.

She smirked even louder. Or at least it sounded loud in my head. I was pretty sure there was no actual sound to it, but inside my brain, it reverberated like a cathedral bell.

She set her cup on the small table. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?” she said succinctly.

“Mason came by my office to congratulate me on that solved case.”

Her brow furrowed. “Which one?”

“The lady who came to my office. You hacked the power company account.”

She finally nodded. “Oh, yes. That one. Right. It was on the news at midnight. They used your tip and caught him.”

I slapped my hand on the table. To her credit, she didn’t even flinch. “I didn’t leave a tip.”

“Sure you did. Two days ago. I told you about it. You’ll probably get a commendation or a thank-you letter or something out of that one.”

“Shelly…”

“You did a really good job on that case.”