Unfortunately, Mrs. Baker was more than a threat. There was no way she worked alone, which meant he would have to drag the information from her. That’s why he needed the knife. The quick neck snap was more his thing, but the threat of it rarely garnered much information. Evil people weren’t afraid to die, but they didn’t like pain.
From the garage he heard a car pull into the driveway. He slipped back into the house and grabbed his knife from the kitchen table. He had another lesson in an hour. There would be no time to waste on meaningless chitchat.
“Ryn.” He tried to sound excited to see her as he strained to see if Mrs. Baker had pulled in too.
“I know you have a lesson, but I need to talk to you. Do you mind if I wait here until you’re done?”
“Uh … or I could meet you at your house?”
“Well I’m already here so …” She looked at his hand. “You’re holding a knife … a scary-looking knife.”
He looked at his hand as though he’d forgotten about it. “I am.”
“You’re not planning on killing anyone, are you?” She grinned.
“Ha. Well, now that you’re here I’m not.” Jackson gave her his sexy grin and winked while slipping it into his back pocket.
Ryn shook her head as she stepped inside. “Seriously. What are you doing with a knife?”
“I’m … changing the batteries in a clock. It was easier than looking in Jillian’s tool chest for a screwdriver.”
“The tools belong to Jillian?”
“She likes working on cars and motorcycles. I like working on computers which don’t require anything with the word Craftsman on it.”
She pressed her finger to the taped center of his glasses that were supposed to keep any spurting blood from getting in his eyes. “You’re such a geek.”
He grabbed her hand and bit her finger. “Watch it, hot pants.”
The doorbell rang, the daunting reminder that Mrs. Baker would live to see another day.
“I’ll wait downstairs. Maybe practice some pull-ups.” She leaned up and pecked his lips before slipping around the corner.
“Mrs. Baker.”
“Jackson.” She beamed her flirty teeth-covered-in-lipstick grin at him as she stepped inside wearing expensive everything—right down to her Manolo Blahnik shoes.
He inspected her head to see if it was her real hair or if the red hair had been a wig. “You have a bug in your hair.”
She rolled her eyes toward her brows as he yanked on a few strands of hair. The delayed “ouch” confirmed that it was a wig.
“Sorry.” He smirked. “Got it.” With a flick of his fingers he sent the nonexistent bug flying absolutely nowhere.
“That’s fine.” She eased her hand over her wig. “Is that Jillian’s car in your driveway?”
“Why do you ask, Mrs. Baker?”
She took a seat at the piano. “Just curious I suppose. If it’s not hers then you might have company.”
“You’re my company, Mrs. Baker.” He slipped the knife under a magazine on the table and walked toward the piano giving her the you-should’ve-been-dead-by-now stare.
She averted her eyes. He grinned at the thought of how easily she would squeal like a pig, spewing out everything he needed to know before removing her from the equation. A necessary casualty.
“I’m not company. I’m your student.”
Jackson sat in the chair next to the bench, resting his ankle on the opposing knee. “You are. So please…” he gestured “…let me hear your progress.”
She played each song with perfection. Too much perfection. Mrs. Baker was his only student who practiced, although he suspected she knew how to play before taking lessons with him, in spite of claiming to be a novice. At the end of her thirty minutes he told her to have a good week—her last week of course.
After replacing the knife in its leather sheath in his drawer, he took a deep breath to expel the anxiety before going downstairs. If he didn’t control his sexual urges with Ryn, he could scare the mother of his children away before he had a chance to implant them inside her.
*
Ryn braced herself for the sexual hurricane that she knew would come tearing down the stairs at any moment. Jackson had ripped the zippers off two pairs of jeans, disintegrated four pairs of panties, and broken the clasp on her newest bra. She couldn’t even complain about him being selfish because his first stop was always between her legs. Lips, tongue, teeth, and she was gone. Every. Time.
“I started my period.” The words came out so fast it all sounded like one long word instead of four.
Jackson paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Jillian probably has something in her bathroom.”
“No … I just mean I or we can’t … you know.”
He smirked then nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets, pulling the waist down to tease her with the wide band of his sexy briefs. “Is that what you needed to tell me?”