Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

in broad daylight.”
    “I’d have to be to marry you.”
    The kiss he gave her took her mind off the problem of inside or outside or anything at all except getting closer to him. She could hardly believe she was married again. To Rory Turner.
    Again.
    He was right. It took attitude. That’s what turned her on in a man. Brass balls and the arrogance to make them clang.
    But damn, it made them hard to live with.

Pasadena
    Noon Sunday
52
    M other is all excited that I’m bringing a man home for Sunday dinner,” Lacey said gloomily. “I told her it was more or less business, but…” She sighed and shrugged at the same time.
    “Are you trying to say that grilled Lapstrake will be on the menu?” Ian asked, smiling.
    She sighed. “Yeah. Oh, they’ll be polite about the grilling.” I hope.
    “But they’ll want to know which of your ancestors came over on the Mayflower and is your mother a Daughter of the American Revolution and that sort of stuff.”
    “None and no. There. Wasn’t that quick and painless?”
    Lacey watched him as he drove bumper to bumper at seventy miles an hour with all the rest of the southern California lemmings on their way back from a Sunday outing.
    “Not even a genuine horse thief hung from the old oak tree?” she asked after a few moments.
    Before he answered, Ian eased through several lanes of traffic to take an off-ramp that headed up toward the expensive hills of Pasadena.
    “Oh, I’ve got a few horse thieves in my background,” he said. “When Lapstrakes weren’t fishing and farming, they sort of alternated between being the cops and the robbers. Some of them were both. Made for interesting family reunions.”
    She saw both the humor and the acceptance in his expression. “You really don’t mind about Mom and Dad, do you? Like you didn’t mind when the deputies pulled us over just short of the Moreno County line and took a good look at the inside of the truck.”
    “It beat having them follow us up to your parents’ front door.”
    Lacey didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh at the idea of arriving home for dinner with an unmarked police vehicle right behind. And there would be no way to hide the official tail on her parents’ manicured, sweeping drive.
    “God, Mother would plotz.”
    “Sounds entertaining.”
    “It wouldn’t be. Guaranteed.”
    He gave Lacey a quick sideways glance. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll be on my best meeting-the-parents behavior.”
    “Have you done a lot of it?”
    “What?”
    “Meeting parents,” Lacey said.
    “Nope. Never been married or even engaged. How about you?”
    “The same.”
    “Want to try it?”
    She blinked. “Excuse me?”
    “Getting engaged and married.”
    “Frankly, the whole thing scares the hell out of me.”
    “Me, too. Good thing we’re old enough to live together without the approval of parental units.” He grinned at her and then turned his attention back to driving. “How old was your grandfather when he disappeared in the desert?”
    Lacey switched conversational gears as fast as Ian had. “He would have been eighty-eight last year.”
    “Healthy?”
    “A regular poster boy for the geriatric set. Had most of his teeth andall of his wits. Said both his parents had lived to be a spry one hundred and he planned on doing at least that well.”
    “When you inherited the paintings, did you get anything else of his? Other than his favorite pliers?” Ian added quickly, remembering.
    “Paint boxes, brushes, easels, even his old painting tables and a chair. I still use them. Then there’s some other stuff in the carriage house at my parents’ place. That’s where he lived when he wasn’t roving around, painting. I haven’t had the heart to go through it. I don’t need mementos of him. I have my memories and his paintings.”
    “So he gave you tables, huh?” Ian remembered the night he’d set Lacey’s warm, naked butt on a paint table. “Any particular one?”
    She gave him a sideways glance that said she knew just what he was thinking. “Not that one. It wouldn’t have survived that kind of use.”
    He turned up the sweeping drive toward the stately brick home on its huge lot. As he pulled to a stop in front of the double doors with their heavy iron decorations, he turned toward her with a slow smile. “Did I ever tell you how cute your butt is covered with bright paint?”
    Lacey knew she was blushing. “Of all the things to tell me when my parents are opening the front