Page 219 of It Happened on the Lake

He carried the boxes inside, left them on the old couch, then spent nearly an hour sweeping the interior for more listening equipment, searching through the jumble of his things and his mother’s furniture and household items. From the basement where the old Wurlitzer sat unplugged and gathering dust to the attic where he found more boxes of junk. He looked through old wire hangers, broken picture frames, and Christmas decorations from his youth, glass bulbs that glittered in what was then the new “Space Age” design. Straight out of the fifties.

But no more spy equipment.

Good.

Dusting cobwebs from his hair and grime from his hands, he returned to the chaos of the main floor. The only neat area of the house was one corner of the living room where he’d stacked the seven boxes he’d hauled from Serenity Acres earlier this week, days after Director Allison Gray had laid down her edict of when the unit had to be cleared.

Fuck that. His mother had just died a horrible death, and he hadn’t been concerned with Serenity Acres’ time line or Allison Gray’s need to fill her room with another warm body.

Through the window, he saw the Alexanders’ house.

Silently Levi berated himself for getting involved with Beth. What had he been thinking? When she’d approached him about selling this house, she’d flirted a bit and he’d resisted. He hadn’t been interested.

She was married, for God’s sake, and that’s where he’d always drawn the line.

Before.

Hell, didn’t he have enough clients on his books to know that getting involved with a married woman was the kiss of death? If not literally, then financially and emotionally?

He sipped his beer and thought back. They’d met several times, at her insistence, and as they’d had coffee or drinks, she’d let it slip that things weren’t great between Craig and her. Money problems. She needed listings and sales, he needed new construction projects.

Levi had ignored her woes. She’d always been overly dramatic. Even in high school she got most of her news from tabloids at the check-out counter in the local grocery stores, so he’d discounted a lot of what she told him.

Even when she’d admitted that Craig had been unfaithful over the years but she’d stuck with him for the sake of their son, Max, Levi had only nodded and filed the information away.

Not his business.

Until it was.

Beth Leonetti Alexander was nothing if not persistent.

Once, when yet again they’d met and she’d tried to pressure him into listing the house, they’d had one too many drinks or possibly three or four too many. In her efforts to convince him to sell, she’d not only mentioned the profit he would make on the lakefront cottage but also how it would help her and her son. Max was a stellar student, but Beth had indicated she and Craig might not have any money to help Max with college. In fact she was afraid they would have to sell their house and were under water with it. They had borrowed extensively against their home on the lake in order to finance her purchase of the realty company and pump up Craig’s fledgling construction business, which had never really taken off.

He thought about their conversation as he took his beer upstairs and walked into the room where he’d found the bug.

Beth had admitted their financial dilemma brokenly to Levi that night, and he had caught sight of a tear tracking down her cheek. She admitted that her marriage was over. She was sticking it out until Max left for the university, then she and Craig would split, her dreams of happily-ever-after shattered long before.

Levi had tried to console her, placing an arm around her. She’d turned into him and kissed him, then, her lips salty from her tears.

And, damn it, he’d responded, kissing her back, feeling his blood rise, desire sparking.

They’d ended up in bed together.In this very bed, he thought, casting an angry look at the king-sized mattress and springs and the hobnail bedspread with its tufted pattern his mother had loved. What had started out as solace had swiftly become passion and hot, raw sex, a physical release that had left them both breathless and gasping.

It had felt good, if tainted with a measure of guilt.

He should have ended it there.

Three weeks ago.

Before it had gone further.

But he hadn’t.

Nor had she.

Though he’d regretted sleeping with her the very next day, he hadn’t called and ended it. He had told himself it would never happen again, that it had just been a moment out of time. A mistake. One night.

But he’d been lying. Deep down, he’d known it at the time.

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