by Maggie Wells
“You are exactly the kind of woman I can’t risk,” he said gruffly. Taken aback by the vehemence in his words, she tried to pull her hand from his, but he held fast. “Women like you...”
He kept squeezing her fingers, but he didn’t finish his sentence. She narrowed her eyes. “Women like me, what?”
“You can only be trouble for a man like me,” he answered without hesitation or even the slightest hint of remorse. “We come from different worlds.”
“I don’t recall asking you to do anything—”
“You didn’t have to ask,” he interrupted. “You with your beauty-queen smiles and steel trap of a mind. You’re tuned in to exactly how powerful you are. You use it. You were born knowing how to use it.”
She yanked her hand from his, wincing when her elbow jammed into her rib cage. “You think you can read me how?”
“Because I know someone just like you,” he said, still crowding the open door. “Or, I should say, I know of one.”
Despite her irritation, she couldn’t help rising to the bait. “Only one? To hear you talk, you’d think we were pretty thick on the ground. Surely you should have more than one former beauty queen under your belt.”
“I don’t have any under my belt,” he said, practically snarling the last words at her.
“But you said you knew one—”
“She was my mother,” he said in a growl. Then he stepped back and slammed the car door. The problem was, she wasn’t clear if he meant it as a period or an exclamation point.
* * *
THEY HARDLY SPOKE to one another as they made their way back into town. Marlee stared out the passenger window, unseeing but seething inside. How dare he presume to understand her? How dare he think he could lump her in with other women? He didn’t know the first thing about her, what she was capable of or what she wanted out of life. She was the daughter of the man who ran this tiny town. Everything else he thought he knew about her was pure presumption.
It galled her that he assumed he had her number. What had he meant about his mother? What could she have to do with anything? And how could she have been thinking about kissing a man who was clearly comparing her to his mother? Had her instincts gone completely haywire?
She was still fuming when he pulled to a stop in front of her parents’ home. He pressed the brake so hard, the car rocked forward and then back, jolting her from her thoughts. She gaped up at the house looming in the deepening dusk. The windows were ablaze with lights. Her father’s enormous car sat parked in the drive rather than pulled into the carriage house beyond the main residence. Heaven forbid the man not be able to make a quick getaway.
Crap. Her father was home, and she was being delivered to the front walk in the sheriff’s car. She glanced over at Mrs. Plunkett’s house and saw a lace curtain drop back into place. A hot flush of irritation mixed with mortification crept up her neck. By now, everyone who lived in the big old houses lining the block had seen them.
“What are you doing? Why did you bring me here?” she demanded.
“This is where you live, isn’t it?” He unfurled his fingers from the steering wheel long enough to gesture to the brick-and-stone mansion built by her great-grandfather.
“Yes, but,” she sputtered, “I met you at the station for a reason.”
He leveled her with a flat stare. “I’m sorry if you’re embarrassed to be seen with me, Marlee, but it’s growing dark, and even small towns have their creepers.”
Their gazes locked. “Speaking of creepers, he was quiet today.” She pulled her phone from one of the pockets of her capris, then scowled when she saw she had five unread messages. She’d forgotten to unmute her notifications after she’d left the office. “Or not,” she said, tapping to open the app.
The first message was from her mother wanting her to be home for dinner. Marlee cringed. She hated to worry or inconvenience her mother. It only led to closer scrutiny. She’d simply forgotten how to live under her parents’ thumbs. She’d been excited to see Ben, she admitted—only to herself. She pushed aside the morass of mixed feelings and focused on the screen. The four others were from unknown numbers.
“He texted,” Ben said flatly.
“I silenced everything when I got to work this morning. I didn’t want to give my father any excuse to start in on his ‘cell phones are the scourge of man’ rant on my first day.”
Leaning into the console, she angled the screen so he could see too. The first message read only:
The skirt is good but last nights outfit was better
The next came from an entirely different area code.
Business barbie walking down the street in your sexy shoes sipping your milkshake
She sucked in a sharp breath, wondering how close her stalker had actually gotten to her. She had her answer when she tapped open the next message:
You should be choosier about the company you keep
The last read simply:
Your daddy know you and ben kinsella go out to his lake house to screw around
Ben emitted a low growling sound as he read the last one. Marlee couldn’t help wondering if he was more perturbed by the invasion or the insinuation.
“He’s too close,” Ben said at last. “You need to tell your father about these messages.”
“Oh, no,” she said with a harsh laugh. “No way.”
“Marlee, this guy could be hiding out in your bushes right now,” he said heatedly. “This town is small, and Lord knows it seems impossible for you to go unnoticed, but in this case, proximity doesn’t mean you’re safe.”
The residual heat from her embarrassment morphed into a blush of pleasure. Still, telling her father was out of the question. Reaching over, she placed a gentling hand on his thigh. “Ben, I get that you mean well, but telling my father is not a good option. First, he’d insist I bring this to you, which I already have done. Second, I’m not exactly sure who all was involved in this deal with the Sportsmen’s Club, but it wouldn’t have happened without my father’s signing off on the idea. I don’t want to show my hand until I can figure out what stinks about it.”
He jabbed a finger at her phone. “But this guy isn’t talking about the club, or the property, or even your brother. His focus is all on you.”
“I understand.” She lifted the hand off his leg. “That’s why this is my business. Sharing these messages with you or my father or anyone at all is completely my choice. I chose you,” she said pointedly. “And Lori,” she added after a beat. “I took this directly to my local law enforcement officers for a reason. I am an adult. What my father needs to know about my life is something I decide, not you.”
They stared one another down for a moment.
“I want you to be safe,” he grumbled at last.
“I appreciate your concern.” She lowered her hand again, and this time treated herself to giving his hard, muscled thigh a friendly pat. “In the future, I would appreciate it if you didn’t drop me off in front of my house in a marked vehicle for God and all the neighbors to see.”
His lips thinned into a line. “I didn’t realize you were ashamed to be seen with me.”
“I’m not. But all the same, I don’t need the ladies at bridge club asking my mother if I got caught shoplifting penny candy from the drugstore again.”
The admission coaxed a deep chuckle from him. “‘Again’?”
“I was seven, and believe me, I paid for my crime.”
His self-deprecating grin set her heart aflutter. “It’s a good thing juvenile records are sealed. You might not have passed the background check for the bar.”
She caught a movement on the porch and saw her father standing there waiting for her, his hands on his hips. “Oh, boy.”
Ben blew out a breath, then said a soft, “Sorry.”
She shook her head as she reached for the door handle. “No. I
t’s no problem. If there’s one thing I excel at, it’s handling my daddy.” She hesitated for a moment, then opened the door. Her voice softened as she stepped out of the SUV. “Thanks for going out there with me, Ben.”
“It was my pleasure.”
Something about the way he said the last word made warmth gather low in her belly. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Hey,” he called out to her. “Call me if you hear anything else from your texter.”
She nodded. “I will.” Then, raising her voice, she said, “Thanks for the lift home, Sheriff. I’ll be sure to send a check to the widows-and-orphans fund.”
Marlee caught a snatch of his laughter as the heavy door thunked between them. She made her way up the front walk and greeted her father with studied casualness. “Hey, Daddy.”
He jerked a chin toward the taillights on Ben’s vehicle. “What was that about?”
“What was—” Marlee looked over her shoulder as if she hadn’t given a second thought as to how she came to be there. “Oh, he gave me a ride home. I was talking to Lori about Jeff and didn’t realize how dark it was.”
Her father’s expression morphed from suspicious to grim to obvious discomfiture all in the blink of an eye. “Oh.”
He couldn’t and wouldn’t say much more because Marlee had hit on the two topics of conversation her father avoided as much as humanly possible—his lost son and Jeff’s relationship with the “Cabrera girl.” He hadn’t approved of their relationship and made no secret of his opinions.
“Your mother was worried,” he admonished as she sauntered past him, determined to reach the safety of her room without too many questions.
Her steps faltered when she crossed the threshold. Guilt plucked at the string of tension in her gut. She glanced back to find her father staring at his own vehicle, stark longing etched into his once-handsome features. For a split second, she felt sorry for him. His only son was gone, and he was losing his wife to pills and alcohol because he couldn’t find it in him to share in her grief. But, as quickly as the sympathy flared in her, it died. Smothered by the recollection of how he’d passed her off to Wendell Wingate on her first day.
“I’m heading up. I’ll tell Mama I’m sorry about dinner. I guess I’m not used to checking in with anyone.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not off running wild all around Atlanta anymore,” he chided, stepping inside and closing the door behind them. “Around here, people will notice where you are and what you’re doing.”
She paused at the foot of the ornately carved staircase, her hand tightening on the newel post as she looked back over her shoulder. “Don’t forget to add ‘who I’m with’ to the list.”
“That’s a given,” he said darkly, clearly unamused by her sass.
“Well, you can rest assured I’ve only been spending time with the esteemed members of our local law enforcement and legal communities today,” she said as she started up the stairs, her pace unhurried. It was a tiny show of defiance, but when one was playing on Henry Masters’s turf, one took every victory they could get.
At the landing, Marlee glanced back to find her father watching her, a vertical line bisecting his brows. She forced herself to keep to the same measured pace until she gained the top of the stairs. There, she made a beeline for her mother’s suite of rooms. Outside Carolee’s door, she took a moment to calm her breathing, then pressed an ear to the door. Neither screams nor sobs greeted her. Marlee took the quiet as a good sign. Tapping lightly with her fingernails, she twisted the knob and opened the door an inch or so.
“Mama?”
“That you, Marlee baby?” her mother called from the love seat situated in front of a large flat-screen television. Carolee clasped a tumbler of clear liquid in one hand and the remote control in the other. “You eat somethin’?”
Marlee could tell by the laid-back slur her mother was already well into the evening’s allotment of vodka, so she didn’t step farther into the room. “I did, Mama.”
“You wanna watch The Matchmaker with me, sugar?”
Marlee repressed a shudder at the thought of being trapped on Carolee’s settee being force-fed trash TV. “Not tonight, Mama. I’m wiped out.”
“Sleep well, sugar,” her mother called, her attention riveted to the screen.
Marlee smirked as she pulled the door closed. Her mother didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about a twenty-five-year-old woman claiming exhaustion at eight in the evening.
In her room, Marlee walked directly to the window, closed the slats and dropped the sheer curtains into place over them. Only then did she switch on the light. Seconds later, her phone buzzed.
Spoilsport.
She made an unladylike hand gesture toward the window, hoping her Peeping Tom might have hung around for the shadow-puppet show.
Chapter Ten
Ben hated to admit it, but he’d spent the better part of the next day hoping to run into her. No such luck. He’d seen her from a distance, though. She’d been driving her father’s mammoth SUV rather than her own car, and her mother had been in the passenger seat. He’d whiled away the rest of the day assuming she was tied up with family business. Expectations adjusted, he’d been pleasantly surprised when her name and number appeared on his phone. “Hello?”
“You busy?” Marlee asked without preamble.
He muted his television. “No.”
“I can tell you whoever my creeper is, he has a pretty good view of my window,” she said grimly.
Stomach knotting, Ben flexed his free hand to keep from balling up a fist. “He texted you?”
She blew out a long, gusty breath. “Yes.”
“And you’re only telling me now?”
“Yes, because I handled it,” she said with exaggerated patience.
“How? How did you handle it?”
“I closed the blinds and drew the curtains.”
“But he texted you.”
“Yes.”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut, quickly tiring of their game of twenty questions. “What did it say?”
A moment later, a text came through. Spoilsport.
Something live and primal growled deep inside him, but Ben bit his tongue. He couldn’t give vent to his own fear and anger. His job here was to alleviate hers. “So,” he said, keeping his tone neutral, “did he text anything else?”
“Not yet,” she admitted.
He ran the flat of his palm over his face. “Do you think he’s out there tonight?”
“Do you want me to go out and look?”
The sarcasm behind the question came through loud and clear. “No. I—” He clamped his mouth shut. He was babbling inanities because he couldn’t run right over there, yank this bastard out of whatever bush he was hiding in and beat him to a pulp. “I’ll call Mike and ask him to spend some extra time patrolling the area.”
“I’d appreciate that,” she said at last.
“And Marlee?”
“Yeah?”
“It sounds more a game to him. He’s scary and annoying, but he doesn’t seem to be escalating.” He closed his eyes, hoping he was right and not simply fooling the both of them in his attempt to soothe her.
“Right,” she said after a beat.
“He wants to rattle you, but I don’t think he wants to hurt you.” At least, he prayed his instincts were right on this point. A beep sounded in his ear, and he pulled the phone away to see who was calling on the other line. “Oh, hey, Mike is calling. I’ll ask him to step up his circuits around your house. You try to get some rest.”
“Got it, Officer.”
He exhaled, glad to hear some of her sass back. “I’ll talk to you later.”
He flashed over to Mike. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Ben?” the young deputy managed to croak. Dread slithered down Ben’s spine as he liste
ned to Mike’s labored breathing on the other end of the line.
“What? What is it?” he demanded.
“I was listening to the scanner earlier, and I heard some of the guys from Prescott County going back and forth concerning a possible 10-56.”
Ben sucked in a breath. In all his years as an agent, he’d never had reason to hear the code called. Now, he’d heard it twice in as many weeks. He cringed as he caught on to the one dim bright spot Mike had offered. They wouldn’t be handling this case. Whoever the poor victim was, they’d be Prescott County’s headache. Still, their jurisdiction overlapped in so many areas, the departments shared a close working relationship.
Exhaling loudly, he scrubbed his right eye with the heel of his hand. “Man, this is rough. Who’s on the case?”
“Watson and Rainey,” Mike reported. “But that’s not the kicker.”
Ben lowered his hand, then gripped the arm of the couch to brace himself against what he feared may be a cyclone heading his way. “Let me hear it.”
“No ID on the body. The Prescott guys don’t recognize him. They want us to come over to see if we can get a visual.”
Ben groaned, letting his forehead drop into his palm. He hadn’t lived there long enough to give a positive identification on more than a dozen people, tops. Which meant he and one of his deputies had to go and look at another dead body. Then and there, he decided to take Lori. She was made of tough stuff, and Mike was still shaken from seeing Clint Young’s body.
“Do they think he’s local?”
“Yes. They found him in a half-built house. One of those fancy architectural places...” Mike took a deep breath, then let it out in a rush. “Out on Sawtooth Lake.”
* * *
SHE CAUGHT HERSELF holding her phone long after Ben had ended the call. Embarrassed, even though there was no one around to witness her moment of girliness, she tossed it onto the bed and strolled into her bathroom. There, she stripped off her clothes and dropped them onto the floor as she waited for the water in the shower to warm.
