“Your shoes look like they could kill a person, Ruthanna,” AnnieLee said, giggling.
Ruthanna kicked out a leg to show off a pointy-toed stiletto. “They’re killing me,” she said. Then she brushed a red-gold curl away from her cheek and said, “I like you. And that’s not something I say very often.”
“No, it is not,” Ethan muttered.
“I know you’re new in town,” Ruthanna went on. “Where are you staying, AnnieLee Keyes?”
AnnieLee looked down at her hands. She didn’t want to lie. “Well, around,” she said.
“Around,” Ruthanna repeated.
Ethan’s brows knitted together. “That sounds kinda questionable,” he said.
AnnieLee thought of her dirt bed and her cop alarm clock. “It is.”
Ruthanna and Ethan shared a meaningful glance before Ruthanna turned back to AnnieLee with an almost maternal smile. “You’re welcome to stay with me for a little while,” she said.
AnnieLee didn’t say anything right away because she was too shocked. How in the span of a few minutes had she gone from threatening Ruthanna to being invited to her house? When she looked over at Ethan, she was surprised to see him nodding, as if he thought this all made perfect sense.
“I stayed there once,” he said. “Woke up feeling like the king of England.”
Ruthanna stepped into the alley. “Come on,” she said to AnnieLee, her voice gentle now. “Don’t be too proud. The car’s waiting.”
AnnieLee hesitated for only a moment. The prospect of an actual bed to sleep in was just impossible to resist. And so with one last wide-eyed look at Ethan, she followed Ruthanna along the cobblestones and into an idling white limo.
Chapter
18
AnnieLee sat tensely on the soft leather seat as the car glided along the dark streets. Ruthanna, who was gazing out the window with a thoughtful expression on her face, didn’t seem to be in the mood to make conversation.
It still made AnnieLee nervous to look at her, and so she stared at the back of the driver’s big bald head. Every once in a while, she caught his eyes in the mirror. But his expression was unreadable.
After half an hour, they turned into a driveway almost hidden beneath towering trees. An enormous pair of wrought-iron gates swung open, and replicas of old gaslights flickered on as they passed. The driver proceeded a full quarter mile before coming to a stop under a porte cochere to the right side of the house.
Although house was hardly the right word for it.
Would you call it a manor? A country estate? AnnieLee wondered. Neither did the place justice. Hell, it looked big enough to be the state capitol building.
“You live here?” she asked incredulously—and by mistake. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t act like a poor dope who’d hardly ever seen a two-story house or had a meal fancier than the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast at Denny’s. What had that guy Shakespeare said? The truth will out.
Ruthanna laughed. “It’s a bit much, I know. I was younger and dumber when I bought it, and I got upsold. Here, we’ll go in the side.”
Feeling more self-conscious than ever about her faded jeans and old Gap T-shirt, AnnieLee followed her into a warm yellow kitchen, where Ruthanna kicked off her shoes and immediately shrank at least four inches. AnnieLee bent down to tug off her beat-up Ropers. Her big toes stuck out of the holes in her socks.
“Now it’s time to get out of this preposterous dress,” Ruthanna said. “And I bet you’d like to take a shower.”
AnnieLee nodded mutely, suddenly worried that she smelled like sweat and dive bars. But she refrained from sniffing her pits as they walked up a wide, curving staircase and then down a long hall lit by a series of glittering chandeliers.
“Voilà!” Ruthanna said, pushing open one of the many heavy wooden doors. “The Lilac Room.”
At Ruthanna’s urging, AnnieLee stepped into the largest bedroom she’d ever seen. Besides the king-sized four-poster bed with its matching mahogany end tables, there was a sitting area, with a silk brocade couch and two matching armchairs, and a work area, with a beautiful old-fashioned rolltop desk. The walls were painted a soothing shade of the palest purple.
“The en suite’s through that door,” Ruthanna said.
The what? AnnieLee thought.
Ruthanna gave AnnieLee’s shoulder a pat. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“I really don’t know how to thank you—” AnnieLee began.
Ruthanna cut her off. “Hush,” she said. “It’s nothing.”