Free Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) by Shelley Singer Page A

conversation, four people got out of the tub and four prepared to take their places. Charlie, Artie, Julia, and Eric went into the house to dry off and dress. Nona, Hanley, Jim, and I took off our clothes and joined Carlota, Arlene, and Mary in the water. I’d never taken a hot tub with more than one other person before, and I thought about leaving on my jockey shorts. But Rosie was trying her best to embarrass me by watching me undress, so I stuck my tongue out, turned around, and removed the last scrap between me and the cold air. If she wanted to laugh at my backside, she was welcome to. Once I was safely in the tub, I told her she was really missing something.
    “Oh, yeah?” she laughed. “What?”
    That was when I felt the fingers on my left thigh. What, indeed, I wondered, was Rosie missing? Both Arlene and Carlota were submerged to their necks in the middle of the tub and both were close enough to touch me. Someone had turned on the bubbles, and I couldn’t see anything beneath the surface of the water. I suppose I should have enjoyed the mystery, but I kept thinking about Hanley, on my right, and Nona, on my left. I was not interested in making either one of them jealous. In fact, if I’d had my pick of all the people I would least like to make jealous, those two would have been the big winners.
    Charlie had come back outside, dressed warmly in jeans and sweater, and got the meeting going again, unfortunately on a completely different topic. The spillway needed repairing and they had to talk about materials and volunteer labor time. Eric had been asked at a previous meeting to check it out, and he droned on with his report while the delicate touch of someone’s hand was raising the hair on the back of my neck. I kept looking cautiously at Carlota, hoping that if I caught her eye, she’d stop. I couldn’t catch her eye, which was wandering between Rosie and Nona. I switched to Arlene, staring at her until she turned her vacant gaze my way. She blinked once and turned her head again. The hand never stopped moving slowly up my thigh, and whoever it belonged to managed to keep it so disembodied that I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Not so much as the touch of an elbow. The fingers reached my crotch, resting lightly against me. When they began to do more than rest, I thought this was my chance to solve the puzzle. Surely, there would be some small movement to give the culprit away. Then I could look offended and move away from her, whoever she was. But I forgot to look for movement. Then I caught myself beginning to think what the hell, maybe no one would notice anyway. That’s when I knew my mind was going, and dealt with myself sternly, sliding my butt off the bench and moving, submerged to my chin, over to the other side of the tub.
    No one paid any attention. Not Arlene. Not Carlota. I sat there for a moment, listening to a discussion of the price of redwood, and then got the hell out of that tub and into my clothes. I was almost completely dressed before I realized that I had forgotten to dry myself first.
    The meeting didn’t last much longer. Although there were occasional surreptitious glances at Artie and Julia, everyone, even Carlota, exercised enough restraint to leave untouched the subject of Alan. A few minutes after I returned, safely dressed, to the backyard, the second shift got out of the hot tub and we all moved back into the house. Everyone milled around for a few minutes, saying goodnight. Rosie was saying something about an estimate to Carlota, while Nona hovered alertly by.
    Eric said it was nice meeting me, and wasn’t I staying at Charlie’s now? I said I was.
    “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Charlie’s been pretty lonely since George left.” He smiled paternally. I didn’t bother to explain that I was not George’s replacement, even though Eric seemed to expect me to say something in reply. I just nodded and smiled back.
    Rosie followed me down to my room and