Dangerous To Love

by Toni Anderson, Barbara Freethy, Dee Davis, Leslie A. Kelly, Cynthia Eden, J. Kenner, Meli Raine, Gwen Hernandez, Pamela Clare, Rachel Grant

  You pleased a lot of people.

  A lot of . . .

  Oh, Lord.

  Vonnie groaned, suddenly thinking of a possible explanation for his words. A place where she’d pleased a lot of people.

  “No,” she moaned, shaking her head back and forth as tears spilled out of her eyes. Images washed over her and she became overwhelmed with the ugliest memory of her life—before now. “No, no, no.”

  Yes.

  It had to be. What other explanation was there? What would “please” a cruel monster like him, as well as a bunch of other deviant bastards whose motives might be a little less deadly but whose pleasures were every bit as corrupt?

  She’d pleased those men, all right. Over and over. Not out of the goodness of her heart, oh no. But because she’d been sold by her own mother.

  Chapter Seven

  Friday, 9:15 p.m.

  “Here I go. Wish me luck,” Lex said, leaping to her feet as the marching band took the field for the halftime program. The teams had gone to their locker rooms after their moment of silence, and Dunston had immediately been surrounded by a mob of curious, worried residents.

  “I’ll stay put and observe.”

  “You do have an eagle-eye view from up here.”

  “And maybe a nosebleed,” he said, his tone dry. “Fortunately I have pretty good vision.”

  “Yeah, I heard that.” A slight wag of her eyebrows said she was joking. Her mood was considerably lighter, with good reason. The restraints were off. She knew it, everybody knew it.

  “Be sure to make a note of anybody who acts suspiciously,” she added.

  He couldn’t help chuckling. In Aidan’s somewhat jaded experience, everyone acted suspiciously. “Will do. Be careful,” he admonished, though as soon as the words left his mouth, he wondered if she’d question his right to say them.

  “Go get ’em, girl,” said a Hoover parent. “Don’t let ’em shut you down again!”

  Lexie turned back and smiled over her shoulder. “Not a chance.”

  Aidan watched her progress down the bleachers and around the track. He couldn’t help admiring her tenacity as she strode on, her steps determined, her shoulders squared. People melted out of her way; she was a force of nature and nobody was going to shut her up again.

  The man she’d identified earlier as the mayor saw her coming and did a one-eighty toward the exit gates. So did Underwood, the newspaper owner who was, technically, her boss. Their zeal for the home team appeared to have faded once the burly players proved they had brains and hearts to go along with the muscles and testosterone.

  Lex did manage to corner both high school principals. The two men stepped to a quiet corner with her, talking for several minutes, each nodding, occasionally smiling. Aidan didn’t have to wonder why. Despite the lapse of protocol, as an educator, it had to be nice to see the usually self-absorbed teenage students become so passionate about a cause. If he’d been the parent of one of the kids on the field, his chest would be bursting with pride.

  He suspected a lot of people felt the same way. Despite the quick exit of some, the majority stayed. The chatter in the visitor’s section showed that the bubble of anger from the first part of the evening had popped with the students’ brave display. He listened to conversations, trying to thin out the gossip and wait for any nugget of useful information. But it proved fruitless. He didn’t know enough about the area to sort the good information from the bad.

  Finally, when the game came to a close and Lex had just about run out of police chiefs and officials to face-off with in front of an appreciative audience, he slowly followed the rest of the fans down the metal steps and across the playing field. The home team had won, but nobody really cared anymore. Both teams were being celebrated.

  Stopping by the refreshment building, he eyed Lex, who stood with a tall, middle-aged man wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches and rumpled pants. He might as well have the words Disgruntled high school teacher tattooed on his forehead. They’d been speaking intently, standing close together in order to be heard over the chatter. When Lex looked down at her notebook, furiously jotting some notes, Aidan saw the man shift even closer, well within her personal space. He also noted the look on the guy’s face.

  Mr. Wannabe College Professor might as well have licked his lips, he was so visibly awash with sexual interest. Alexa wore perfectly respectable khaki pants and a light sweater, but there was no disguising the sensual fullness of her lips, the feminine shape of her face, or the shape of her nicely curved body beneath the clothes. The guy standing beside her was mentally filling in any mysteries her concealing clothes contained, trying to figure out how to get at them.

  Angry for a reason he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—define, Aidan strode over, stopping beside Lexie, eyeing the man she’d been talking to. “Lexie, are you ready to go?” he asked her, knowing his intimate tone hinted they were here together, as a couple.

  She jerked her attention toward him, lifting a quizzical brow, apparently not noticing that the guy she’d been with had been studying her ass and trying to get close enough to cop a feel.

  Something else he didn’t have to be a mind reader to know. Sleazy men all had one thought: how to be sleazier.

  “Hey, you called me Lexie,” she said, wagging an accusing index finger at him.

  He shrugged. “What can I say? You’re growing on me.”

  “I have that effect,” she said.

  The sleazy teacher frowned. “Please, take my number in case there’s anything else you need. I hope you can keep me updated and would be happy to meet with you again.”

  Lexie merely gave him a friendly shrug. “That’s okay. I can reach you through the school. Thanks for talking to me, Mr. Wilhelm. I appreciate your thoughts.”

  “Anything I can do,” he said pleasantly, though his smile was tight at her obvious disinterest. “Vonnie was one of my favorite students. A brilliant girl.”

  “Is,” Aidan interjected.

  “What?”

  “Is one of your favorite students,” he said, wondering if the other man realized how cold he’d sounded. He had no idea whether Vonnie was alive, but the very least her own supposed “favorite” teacher could do was presume so. A small point, perhaps, but the man irritated him.

  “Okay,” she said, staring back and forth between them, grasping the sudden tension. “We’d better get going. Looks like they’re trying to get things cleaned up for the night.”

  She reached for his arm, thought better of it, and simply walked away. He leveled one more stare on the teacher and then walked after Lex.

  They were among the last to leave, along with the volunteers who’d worked the concession stand. Kenny, the scarred man they’d run into earlier, was already piercing trash with a long, spiked pole. As they passed, the guy in the navy blazer, who Aidan recognized as Vice Principal Young, called to the custodian, “Would you hurry the hell up? I’d like to get home before midnight, and I can’t leave until your sorry ass gets out of here!”

  Lexie cleared her throat. Realizing he’d been overheard, Young put on one of those plastic smiles that all future high school administrators had perfected by the time they graduated from college. “Long night,” he said, rubbing a hand over his brow, as if fatigue was enough to explain being a shit to a maimed, scarred underling. “After a long week. Thanks again for your help with this, Ms. Nolan.”

  Uh-huh. Oily. The man would run for the school board someday, Aidan had no doubt. Setting up search parties or no, the man was as fake as the rest of the bureaucrats in Granville.

  “No, thank you, Mr. Young,” Lexie called, not breaking her stride. Once they had gotten a few yards farther, out of earshot, she said, “So, shall I prove my psychic abilities now? You didn’t like Mr. Wilhelm.”

  “No,” he growled, “I did not. That vice principal is a piece of work, too.”

  “But you disliked Wilhelm because he wouldn’t stop staring at my butt.”

  He froze.


  “I’m not stupid. My scum-dar is quite high, actually. But he’s the honors society advisor and was at the meeting Monday night; otherwise I wouldn’t have given that pig the time of day.”

  Glad she’d noticed, he nodded to accede his own overreaction. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Did you have any luck?” he asked as they headed toward the parking lot.

  She smirked, looking more than a little self-satisfied. “They hate my guts.”

  “It’s good to be hated for the right reasons.”

  “Don’t I know it. It’s also good to be liked for the right ones.”

  “How so?”

  “There are some people in this town who have both honor and integrity. A few of them are in positions of power, including that prosecutor, whose kid spoke earlier, and the medical examiner. Two members of the town council demanded meetings with the chief, plus the mayor just got his ass reamed out by his own sister, who wants to know why he hasn’t started a community watch program to protect our young people.”

  He raised a surprised brow. “All because of some kids?”

  She considered it, then slowly shook her head. “Not because the kids convinced them this was happening, but because they had the guts to actually say it out loud and take a stand. How can the adults not do the same? I never realized before tonight how many people saw right through Dunston’s actions last month. A lot of them just didn’t know they weren’t alone in thinking we’ve got a nutless loser for a police chief.”

  He was about to reply when Lex stopped midstride beside him. They had reached the parking lot, heading toward the far corner where his SUV was parked. Her small sedan sat just beyond it, and had been out of sight until a moment ago. She’d spotted it first.

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered.

  Following her stare, he felt his muscles tense with wariness as well. Though it almost never came naturally to him, Aidan gave in to his first impulse and put a steadying hand on the small of her back. It was the first time he’d really touched her, and there were no jolts, no shocks, nothing at all unusual. Not that he’d expected them, especially not since she was wearing a sweater. But with a personality as strong as hers, and with the sparks they’d set off each other from the moment they’d met, he hadn’t been entirely sure what to expect.

  Fortunately, he got nothing except the sensation of a woman who needed some support.

  That was good. Because right now, he just wanted to offer her that support. “You obviously got under somebody’s skin,” he said, trying to contain the anger building inside him as he eyed the carnage visited on her cute little car.

  Whoever it had been, he’d been pretty thorough given the short time frame and the public location. Aidan’s tall SUV had been the only thing hiding the vandal from the view of anyone else heading toward their cars either during or after the game. He’d not only snipped the valve stems on the tires, he’d gouged long scratches down the side and had smashed in the windshield.

  “Okay, so sometimes it’s not so great to be hated,” she said, her heavy sigh hinting that her reaction was more resigned than enraged.

  “Insured?”

  She nodded.

  “So you’ll deal. But do it tomorrow. Let me take you home.”

  He steered her toward the passenger side of his SUV, not wanting to stand here doing a postmortem of the night that had led to this vandalism. Both because she had enough to think about, and because they needed to go. It wasn’t smart to stand under the overhead lights in a deserted parking lot where somebody filled with rage toward Lexie could be watching them.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off her car. “This sucks. I just paid the thing off.”

  “It definitely sucks. But I assume you aren’t in the mood to call the police back out here tonight.”

  “If I have to see Dunston’s smirky face as he pretends to give a damn, I might throw up.”

  “Yeah. That is if he even shows up after having arranged for it to be done himself.”

  Not surprised by his words, as if she’d already considered the possibility, Lexie allowed him to open the door and help her into the seat she’d vacated a few hours earlier. Joining her inside, he glanced over, seeing the weary tilt of her head and the way she rubbed her slim neck. She’d been so strong all day. Now she didn’t look so much weak as simply exhausted.

  “Where do you live?”

  She gave him the address, and he punched it into his GPS, being totally unfamiliar with the area. Maybe he needed to get out a little more. He’d certainly been given reason to today.

  “I can give you directions,” she insisted.

  “It’s okay. Just relax. Close your eyes. Let it all go for a couple of minutes.”

  She sank deeper into the leather seat. “Mm. You have a nice voice, Aidan. Do you have a hypnotist act on the side?”

  Laughing softly, he started the car and pulled out of the lot. “Not a chance. I’ve met too many hypnotists to even consider it.”

  “You mean in your line of work?”

  “Not exactly.” He shifted, not thrilled with the direction of the conversation, but not hung up about it, either. “A few of them tried to cure me of my ‘delusions’ when I was a kid.”

  He didn’t have to look over to know she’d opened her eyes and was staring at him. “Oh.”

  “My parents, my father especially, hated that I was different. They tried everything—from hypnotism to therapy to prayer—to make my abilities go away. Or at least make me stop using them.”

  “How supportive,” she said dryly.

  “Fortunately, I had my great-grandmother, who has the same ability.” He thought wistfully of the old woman, who’d died just after Aidan had gone away to college. She’d been his rock, his blessing. The most important person of his childhood. “You know, she actually helped me save a woman’s life once—my Sunday School teacher.”

  “Wow.”

  “She was pretty wonderful. Especially because, after that incident, she blackmailed my folks into letting me stay with her so she could help me deal with . . . everything.”

  “How’d she manage that?”

  “She threatened to call the National Enquirer and make a fortune touting me as the half-alien mind-reading boy.”

  “Thought you didn’t read minds, alien-boy,” she said with a deliberate snicker, as if knowing they were skirting the edges of a difficult subject.

  “I don’t,” he replied, smiling as well. “So feel free to think whatever you want about the bastard who trashed your car.”

  “Huh. I don’t have to hide those thoughts. I’d be happy to share them, as long as you have a dictionary full of four-letter words to refer back to.”

  “I’ve got a pretty extensive vocabulary.”

  He didn’t blame her. A few choice words had entered his mind when he’d seen the car, too. Not all four-letter ones, though. At the top of his list was coward. Only somebody who had no guts would take such petty revenge on a woman who was just doing her job.

  Though maybe the vandalism was something to be thankful for. It beat somebody taking a pair of scissors or a sharp object to the car’s owner. His hands tightened on the steering wheel at the thought of it, his stomach churning and a faint red haze appearing before his eyes.

  “So,” she said, getting back to the fun topic of his whacked-out family, “the folks don’t like having a psychic for a son, huh? I can sympathize—my mom hates that I’m a reporter.”

  Deadpan, he asked, “Why would she feel that way about such an admirable profession?”

  She swatted him lightly in the upper arm. He didn’t even stiffen at the contact. Progress.

  “She wanted college and a career for my brother. House and babies for me. Now he’s a trucker and lives in her basement, and I never married, moved away, and will never go back.”

  “To?”

  “Chester, Indiana, population twelve hundred.”

  One-upping her, he said, “Fre
emont, Arkansas, population fifty. All of them members of my father’s psychic-power-hating family.”

  “What a couple of big-city big-shots we are to have ended up in this metropolis.” She gestured out the window as they drove downtown. Sounding a little less amused, she added, “Though, of course, you are a newcomer, most recently of Savannah, as I recall.”

  He stiffened reflexively.

  “I’m not going to pry.”

  “You already have, I assume?”

  “Only through the public record.”

  “And that’s always so reliable.”

  “Maybe you’ll tell me your side of the story someday.” As if knowing where his mind immediately went, she clarified, “Off the record. Just like everything else.”

  He nodded slowly. “Maybe.” Then, knowing he owed her one, he added, “I’m sorry I was so abrupt with you yesterday.”

  “Career hazard.”

  Perhaps, but she didn’t seem like the rest of the people in her career. Maybe it was just because of this one case, this particular story, but Lexie seemed bigger-hearted than most of her brethren. “You’re not supposed to get so personally involved with something like this, are you?” he asked. “You need to remain detached to do your job.”

  “Hello, pot, I’m kettle,” she said, sounding tart. She obviously had been reading about him, had seen the truth lurking in his own history—Aidan had almost always become too personally involved with the cases on which he worked.

  “Touché. But I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “I hope not,” she murmured, gazing out the windshield at the oncoming headlights. “I mean, I hope you haven’t stopped caring about the people you’re trying to save.”

  “You can’t save them all, kettle.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, as if cold, though the evening was balmy. “Maybe that’s why I so desperately want to save this one.”

  “Vonnie?”

  She nodded. Falling silent, as if considering whether she wanted to say more, she finally continued. “There was this girl who lived in the next town over from where I grew up.”

  Ahh. He’d half wondered if she had a story, something that drove her on, pushed her to do more than another person might in this situation. “Someone you knew?”