“I don’t know about that. You’re cute without makeup.”

“I’m not sixteen now, either. At sixteen, I’d rather have died than let anyone see my natural face. You get convinced that it’s the makeup that’s pretty, not you. Well, I know some girls who felt that way. I never did, because I had Mom. She taught all three of us how to use makeup when we were still in grade school, so it was no big deal to us. See, makeup isn’t camouflage; it’s a weapon.”

“Do I want to know this?” he wondered aloud.

“Probably not. Most men just don’t get it. But at sixteen I did go through an insecure stage, because I had to fight so hard to keep my weight down.”

He gave me an incredulous look. “You were pudgy?”

I slapped his arm. “Of course not. I was a cheerleader, so I worked off my weight, but I was also a flyer.”

“A flyer.”

“You know. One of the ones who gets tossed by the other cheerleaders. The top of the pyramid. See, I’m five-four, so I’m tall for a flyer. Most flyers are five-two, something like that, and they keep their weight around a hundred pounds so it’ll be easier to throw them. I could be that slim, and be fifteen pounds heavier, because I’m taller. I had to really watch it.”

“My God, you must have been a toothpick.” He looked me over again. I weigh about one twenty-five now, but I’m strong and muscled, so that means I look as if I weigh ten or fifteen pounds lighter than that.

“But I also had to be strong,” I pointed out. “I had to have muscle. You can’t have muscle and be a toothpick. I had about a five-pound range where I had muscle but wasn’t too heavy, so I was constantly balancing my weight.”

“Was it really worth it, to jump around and wave pom-poms during a football game?”

See, he knew absolutely nothing about cheerleading. I glared at him. “I went to college on a cheerleading scholarship, so I’d say, yeah, it was worth it.”

“They give scholarships for that?”

“They give scholarships to guys who carry around a piece of pigskin, so why not?”

He had the wisdom to detour off that path. “Back to your high school days. You didn’t steal anyone’s boyfriend?”

I made a scornful noise. “I had my own boyfriends, thank you.”

“Other guys weren’t attracted to you?”

“So what if they were? I had a steady, and I didn’t pay any attention to anyone else.”

“Who was your steady? Jason?”

“No, Jason was my college guy. In high school it was Patrick Haley. He got killed in a motorcycle accident when he was twenty. We didn’t keep in touch after we broke up, so I don’t know if he was dating anyone special or not.”

“Scratch Patrick. Where’s Cleo Cleland now?”

“In Raleigh-Durham. She’s an industrial chemist. Once a year or so we get together for lunch and a movie. She’s married and has a four-year-old.”

He could scratch Cleo, too. Not because she was dead, but because Cleo was my pal. Besides, she was a woman, and he’d said the person trying to kill me was most likely a man.

“There has to be someone,” he said. “Someone you maybe haven’t thought about in years.”

He was right. This was personal, so it was someone I knew. And I was totally drawing a blank on anyone who might want to kill me.

Then inspiration hit.

“I know!” I crowed.

He jerked, instantly alert. “Who?”

“It has to be one of your girlfriends!”

The car swerved. Wyatt brought it back into the lane and glared over at me. “How did you come up with an idea like that?”

“Well, if it isn’t me, then it has to be you. I’m a nice person, and I don’t have any enemies that I know of. However, when was the first attempt? Right after we came back from the beach. How many people know you followed me there? After the way you acted Thursday night when Nicole was killed-”

“The way I acted?” he echoed in outraged astonishment.

“You told your guys that we were involved, right? Even though we weren’t. I saw the way they looked at me, and not one out of about fifty cops came to my rescue when you were manhandling me. So I figure you lied to them and said we were dating.”

His teeth were set. “I wasn’t manhandling you.”

“Stop latching on to insignificant details. And you were, too. But am I right so far? You told them we were seeing each other?”

“Yeah. Because we are.”

“That’s debatable-”

“We’re living together. We’re sleeping together. How in hell is it debatable whether or not we’re seeing each other?”

“Because we haven’t started dating yet and this is just temporary. Will you stop interrupting me? My point is, who were you seeing that you dropped like a hot potato to chase after me?”

He ground his teeth for a few seconds. I know because I could hear them. Then he said, “What makes you think I was seeing anyone?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please. You know you’re to die for. You probably have women lined up.”

“I don’t have women- You think I’m to die for, huh?”

Now he sounded pleased. I wanted to beat my head against the dash, only it would hurt and I had enough aches and pains at the moment. “Wyatt!” I yelled. “Who were you dating?”

“No one in particular.”

“It doesn’t have to be ‘in particular’; it just has to be dating. Because some women have unrealistic expectations, you know. One date and they’re picking out a wedding gown. So who was the last person you dated, and who maybe thought there was something serious going on, then went totally postal when you followed me to the beach? Had you been on a date last Thursday, the night Nicole was killed?” Notice how I slipped that in, because I’d been wondering.

By this time we had reached his house, and he slowed to turn in to the driveway. “No, that night I’d been teaching a women’s self-defense class,” he said absently, to my great satisfaction. “I don’t think your theory holds water because it’s been… God, almost two months since I’ve gone out with anyone. My social life hasn’t been as hot as you evidently think.”

“This last person you were with. Did you go out with her more than once?”

“A couple of times, yeah.” He pulled into the garage.

“Did you sleep with her?”

He gave me an impatient look. “I see where this little interrogation is going now. No, I didn’t sleep with her. And, trust me, we didn’t click.”

“You didn’t, but maybe she did.”

“No,” he repeated. “She didn’t. Instead of digging into my past, you should be thinking about your own. You’re a flirt, and some man might have thought you were serious-”

“I’m not a flirt! Stop trying to throw this back on me.”

He came around and opened the car door for me, leaning in to scoop me up in his arms so my stiff and sore muscles wouldn’t have to go to the effort of climbing out of the car, then gently setting me on my feet. “You’re a flirt,” he said grimly. “You can’t help it. It’s in your genes.”

He had a lot of “f” words to describe me, and I was getting tired of hearing them. Yes, I flirt occasionally, but that doesn’t make me a flirt. Nor am I fluffy. I don’t think of myself as a lightweight person, and Wyatt was making me sound like the most frivolous-another “f” word-nitwit walking.

“And now you’re pouting,” he said, rubbing his thumb over my lower lip, which might have started to stick out just the tiniest bit. Then he bent and kissed me, a slow, warm kiss that for some reason really melted me, maybe because I knew there was no way he was going anywhere with it, and he knew it, too, so that meant he was kissing me just to kiss me, not to get me into bed.