He couldn’t help but think of the woman who lived on that third floor. Roxy was a wildcat, driven by her emotions, and while he found himself impossibly attracted to her, at the same time she scared the hell out of him.
Right now what he felt toward her was an empathy born in a common trauma. Hopefully Liz Marcoli would be found soon, alive and well, and this vanishing would have simply been some sort of miscommunication.
His own missing-persons case was an ongoing heartache that he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. The pain of the absence of a loved one had built a shell around his heart, forcing him to pull on the facade of a carefree, flirtatious, shallow man in order to survive his emotional pain.
He hoped Roxy and her sisters never had to deal with days, weeks, months of such ongoing agony. He knew better than anyone that the lack of closure in such an event transformed a person—and, in his case, had the power to completely break a man emotionally.
Chapter 3
Roxy jerked awake just after five in the morning. She was on the sofa, still dressed in her clothes from the day before and appalled that she’d fallen asleep at all.
She’d spent most of the night before on the phone with her sisters and then checking and rechecking with Liz’s friends until it had gotten too late to make any more calls. Then she’d paced the floor, waiting to hear something, anything, about Liz’s whereabouts.
Her body’s need to rest had apparently finally overwhelmed her panicked fear, and even though she’d only been asleep a couple of hours, she felt guilty for sleeping any length of time while her aunt was still missing.
As she roused herself from her awkward position on the sofa, muscles ached and protested the time spent on the sofa and not in her comfortable bed.
Coffee, her brain screamed. Coffee and then a long, hot shower. Although she’d like to call Detective Steve Kincaid and see what he’d done the night before to find her aunt, she knew it was an unreasonable thought at an unreasonable hour of the morning. She doubted that much work had been done overnight, and, in any case, if he’d found out something pertinent, surely he would have called her.
She turned on the kitchen light and stumbled across the room to the coffeemaker. This was her usual time to get up in the mornings, and she normally enjoyed the half hour or forty-five minutes she gave herself before heading downstairs to start the prep work for the day.
Even though it was Saturday, the busiest day in the Dollhouse, Roxy had told Josie to make arrangements for extra help, as Roxy wouldn’t be working. She couldn’t work with her head in utter turmoil, with the fear that had already begun to possess her entire body as she thought of the one woman in the world who had always managed to center her.
It was too early to call her sisters, too early to do anything but sit at her table and sip her coffee and think, but she quickly realized she had no viable ideas about where Aunt Liz might be or what might have happened to her. She’d already considered most of the possibilities, and they’d proved fruitless.
She leaned back in the black-cushioned chrome chair and gazed around the kitchen. It was funny, really, that she’d decorated her restaurant with antiques and kitschy items, but her personal domain was sleek and modern, from the stainless steel kitchen appliances to the glass-topped tables and black-and-white decor of her living room.
Even her bedroom was simple, a king-size bed covered in a black-and-white patterned spread, a dresser holding a couple of bottles of perfume, a jewelry holder and two nightstands with small black-and-silver lamps.
She’d always found the rather austere, impersonal aura of her private quarters comforting and peaceful, but this morning was definitely an exception.
She rarely cooked up here, given the industrial kitchen in the restaurant, where she usually nibbled and picked her way through the day from whatever was on the menu.
The last thing on her mind was food, either for herself or her customers. What she really wanted to know was what time Detective Kincaid began his day at work, or if he was off on Saturdays.
Since the three detectives usually had their first meal at the restaurant around seven and were always on their way out the door within forty-five minutes, she assumed their daily schedule began at eight.
Steve Kincaid didn’t strike her as a man who would be on time. He probably lollygagged to his desk sometime between eight-fifteen and eight-thirty. Roxy had never been late for anything in her life, and she wouldn’t have a hard time believing that Steve Kincaid had never been on time for anything in his life. His laid-back aura was in direct opposition to her driving energy.
She frowned and got up to pour herself a second cup of coffee, her mind still filled with the shaggy-haired, blue-eyed detective, who for some reason irritated her by his mere existence whenever she saw him.
It was, for the most part, an irrational reaction, and that’s what made it all the more irritating. Despite his outrageous flirting with her, he would never mean anything to her in life. No man ever would. Besides, she knew his stupid flirting was just for show.
But she was aware of the fact that she needed him right now, that she was depending on him to fix her world and make it right. She just wasn’t used to needing anyone.
She also realized that in all their talk about Aunt Liz and her friends and acquaintances the day before, they hadn’t mentioned Ramona and the potential that Liz might have run off to meet her young sister somewhere. In fact, Roxy thought perhaps they’d given Steve the impression that their mother was dead, and as much as she hated it, she needed to be clear about the woman who was their mother.
After finishing her second cup of coffee, she left the kitchen and headed for the bathroom, where she took a long, hot shower and then dressed in a pair of jeans and a navy T-shirt that advertised the Dollhouse in bold pink letters.
By that time she knew Josie had arrived in the kitchen downstairs, for the scent of boiling chicken and simmering roast drifted up the stairway as Roxy headed downstairs.
When she entered the kitchen, Josie stood in front of the stove, her feet moving and arms flailing to the music coming in from her earbuds.
She nearly jumped out of her shoes when Roxy tapped her on the shoulder. Roxy might have laughed on any other day, but today there was no laughter to be found anyplace inside her.
Josie yanked out her earbuds, her cute features instantly transforming into concern. “Roxy, how are you doing?”
It took a moment for Roxy to reply. How was she doing? “I think I’m kind of numb right now,” she finally said.
“So there wasn’t any word overnight?”
Roxy shook her head. “No, nothing. Are you going to be okay here without me today?”
“I’ve got it covered.” Josie stepped back to the stove and turned down the flames beneath the boiling chicken that would later be deboned and prepared as chicken salad for the lunch fare. “I’ve called in Allie and Nancy to waitress. Greg will help me out here in the kitchen, and Gus said he’d try to show up a little early this afternoon to help with anything we need and with closing up.”
She moved closer to Roxy, her brown eyes soft with sympathy. “We have this, Roxy. For as long as you need us, we’ll all pull together and keep this place running just as if you were here snapping the whip.”
Roxy smiled faintly, knowing that she was, indeed, a tough taskmaster. She was first and foremost a businesswoman, driven and determined to succeed.
“You know I have full confidence in you to keep the standards high and service impeccable,” Roxy said. “Besides, I’m hoping we’ll figure things out this morning, or at least by the end of the day, and Aunt Liz will be home and I’ll be back in the kitchen in the morning.”
“Are you meeting up with your sisters?”
“No, I insisted they open the store today