The Rebel's Return

by Gina Wilkins

  “No.”

  “Did Emily say something?” Had his sister been more perceptive as a child than he’d realized?

  “No. I don’t think she knows.”

  “Then what the hell makes you think I was in love with Rachel Jennings?”

  “Just a hunch I got, watching the two of you together in the café.”

  Hell. What was a cop of this caliber doing in a sleepy little burg like Honoria?

  Wade gave him another moment, then prodded, “Roger must have been adamantly opposed to having you involved with his sister. I’d imagine he’d have done just about anything to keep the two of you apart.”

  “Are you looking for motives, Chief? Because if you’re trying to close Packer’s old case by pinning it on me...”

  “I told you, I have no reason to believe you killed Roger Jennings. I’m just trying to understand what was going on around here fifteen years ago...and why Jennings ended up crumpled at the foot of a bluff on McBride land.”

  “I didn’t push him. I didn’t see him fall. As far as I know, it was an accident. It was dark, he took a wrong turn on the path. Maybe he’d been drinking.”

  “The autopsy ruled that out. He was sober.”

  Lucas nodded. “But it was dark. There was no moon that night. Roger was in a temper. Maybe he wasn’t being careful and just walked off the path and into thin air.”

  It was the only explanation Lucas could come up with fifteen years ago...it was still the only one he had now. Nothing he’d seen in Packer’s files even hinted that anyone else could have been involved. Of course, Packer hadn’t bothered to look for other suspects. He’d have been quite happy to lock Lucas up for life...and if it hadn’t been for Lizzie Carpenter, he might well have done so.

  “He was in a temper, was he? Something you’d said?”

  Lucas didn’t answer.

  “Did Roger forbid you and Rachel to see each other?”

  “He had no right to ‘forbid’ either Rachel or me to do anything,” Lucas refuted automatically.

  “As I’m sure you must have told him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Rachel? Did she tell him the same thing?”

  “I would assume so.”

  “He probably considered himself the head of his household. His father deserted the family years earlier, his mother was known for being moody and depressive, his sister was several years younger. When he found out that something was going on between his kid sister and a man he’d been programmed to hate, he must have tried to put an end to it. I can’t see you meekly agreeing to that.”

  “I didn’t push him off that bluff,” Lucas repeated flatly. “No matter what he said, he couldn’t have kept me from seeing Rachel.”

  “How did Rachel react to her brother’s interference? Was she as confident as you that Roger couldn’t keep you apart? Or was she afraid that he could?”

  “I don’t know what you...”

  “I don’t suppose Rachel knew about your involvement with Lizzie Carpenter. Rachel might have thought Roger was the only obstacle between you.”

  Lucas stood so abruptly his chair clattered on the uncarpeted floor, teetering precariously on its back legs before steadying. “Are you implying that Rachel...?”

  Wade held up his hands and cut in quickly. “I’m not implying anything. Just throwing out a few questions Packer apparently didn’t ask.”

  Lucas shook his head. “Packer didn’t know Rachel and I had been seeing each other. No one knew. And if you think Rachel had anything to do with Roger’s death, you’re not nearly as good a cop as I was beginning to think you are.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to reopen the old case file,” Wade pointed out. “I’m just asking the questions I might have asked if I’d been in charge of the investigation.”

  “Just be glad you weren’t. Because if you’d started trying to pin something like this on Rachel...”

  “What would you have done, Lucas? Pushed me off a cliff to protect her?”

  Lucas slammed both hands down on Wade’s desk and glared directly into his future brother-in-law’s eyes. “I did not kill Roger Jennings. And neither did Rachel.”

  “So who did?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Just an accident?”

  Lucas straightened, chagrined by his momentary loss of control. “I don’t know,” he repeated more quietly.

  “You came back here because you heard about the break-in at Emily’s house. You thought it had something to do with Roger’s death. I want to know what the connection was.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You asked me very specifically what was taken in the break-in. You seemed particularly interested in the bracelet she was wearing. Why?”

  Lucas looked pointedly at his watch. “I have to go. Thanks for letting me look through the files.”

  Wade stood slowly, and his usual affable, innocuous expression had hardened into one of steely determination. “If Emily is in some sort of danger, I have as much right to protect her as you do—more even. I want to know what’s going on, Lucas.”

  “If I thought there was anything you needed to know, I would tell you. As far as I can tell, Roger took a tumble all by himself fifteen years ago, and Emily was the victim of a crime ring operated by a couple of bored teenagers.”

  “Damn it, McBride...”

  The outdated intercom on Wade’s desk crackled. “I hate to interrupt, Chief, but Martha Godwin’s on line two and she insists on talking to you. She claims the mailman peeked up her skirt while she was bent over her flower bed, and she wants you to arrest him.”

  Lucas pictured the scrawny, dried-up woman he’d known fifteen years ago. Martha Godwin had to be pushing seventy now. His mouth quirked. “You’ve obviously got a serious situation brewing here. I’ll clear out and let you get to it. And be careful out there. It’s a real jungle.”

  He stepped out of the office and closed the door on Wade’s mild obscenity.

  RACHEL SHIVERED as she stepped out of her grandmother’s kitchen door into the backyard. It wasn’t bitterly cold, but the heavy gray clouds rolling in from the west made it seem colder. It was supposed to rain later.

  It had been raining the night Lucas left Honoria.

  “Here, boy,” she said, rattling dry dog food against the sides of the stainless-steel bowl in her right hand. “Want your dinner?”

  “I’ve already eaten, thanks.”

  Lucas stepped out of the shadows at the same moment the dog bowl fell from Rachel’s suddenly nerveless fingers. Kibble scattered on the ground at her feet. A hungry mutt of indeterminate heritage appeared to start gulping it down.

  Rachel stepped out of the way before Gomer could mistake her shoelaces for dessert. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack before Christmas?” she asked Lucas irritably. “Can’t you just pick up the phone like other people?”

  “I’ve never been quite like other people.”

  She couldn’t help smiling a little at that. She pushed her hands into the pockets of the oversized black cardigan she wore over a red tunic and black leggings. “What are you doing here?”

  Instead of answering, Lucas nodded toward the noisily eating dog. “I take it your grandmother didn’t get the mutt for protection.”

  “Actually, she did. Unfortunately, she forgot to tell him that she wants him to bark at people, not at cats and squirrels.”

  Rachel paused to clear her throat, then asked again, “Why are you here, Lucas? After the scene my uncle caused in the café, I’d have thought you’d want to stay away from the Jennings family.”

  “I always had trouble staying away from one member of it.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t like the way heat rushed into her cheeks, making her blush like the flustered teenager she’d once been around him.

  Lucas shifted his weight. “Is your grandmother in bed?”

  “Yes. She turns in early. Actually, she spends mo
re time in bed than out these days.”

  “Will you go for a drive with me?”

  Rachel wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “You want to go for a drive? Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. Someplace where we can talk.”

  Going off in a car alone with Lucas sounded like a really bad idea to Rachel. So why was she even considering it?

  “I don’t...”

  “Does your grandmother need you here?”

  “No. As I said, she’s sleeping. But...”

  “You said you weren’t afraid of me,” Lucas reminded her.

  “What do you want to talk to me about?” she hedged.

  Lucas exhaled impatiently, and took a step back from her. “Look, if you don’t want to go, just say so.”

  He sounded so much like the impatient, temperamental young man she’d known that her heart ached. He was already moving away. He had too much pride to beg her to go with him—and she wouldn’t have wanted Lucas to beg, anyway.

  “Lucas,” she called out impulsively.

  Without pausing, he looked over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Will you wait until I get my purse?”

  He stopped. “Yeah.”

  She was probably being an idiot—but there was nothing new about that where Lucas McBride was concerned.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the trunk of the massive oak that shaded her grandmother’s backyard in the summer. “Take your time,” he said, patient now that he had the answer he wanted.

  Rachel took less than ten minutes. Any longer, and she probably would have talked herself out of this impulsive behavior.

  Fifteen years ago, Lucas had driven a battered old pickup truck. He’d bought it with the money he’d earned working at a series of odd jobs from the time he was twelve years old.

  The sleek black sports car he drove now was a lot different from that old truck. She studied the vehicle’s interior while Lucas walked around to his side after closing her door for her. The instrument panel was framed in glossy hardwood, and the stereo system was fancier than the one she had in her apartment in Atlanta.

  “Nice car,” she said as Lucas slid behind the wheel. She needed to say something—being closed into the small, cozy space with him had made her heart suddenly start to trip in a manner that threatened her hard-won composure.

  “I rented it at the Atlanta airport. It’s a lot like the one I drive in California.” He started the engine. It purred like a powerful jungle cat.

  Rachel fastened her seat belt.

  An oldies station was playing on the radio. The song was one Rachel and Lucas had listened to on his portable radio during those stolen afternoons at the bluff. She winced, and tried to keep her thoughts focused on the present.

  “What do you do? For a living, I mean,” she asked in a lame attempt to keep the conversation moving.

  Lucas shrugged. “I play around with computers.”

  “And you live in California?”

  “Most of the time.”

  For someone who’d wanted to talk, he wasn’t being overly communicative. “You, er, haven’t married?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “No.”

  She’d been engaged—very briefly. A few years ago she’d impulsively accepted a proposal to ease the loneliness inside her, but she’d known almost immediately that she couldn’t go through with it. She hadn’t been waiting for Lucas, of course, she assured herself. She just hadn’t yet found anyone who could compete with her memories of the time she’d spent with him.

  She said none of that now, of course.

  Lucas drove past the Honoria city limits and kept going. Rachel leaned her head against the high back of her seat and left their destination in his hands. For now.

  She still couldn’t quite believe she was doing this. A few days ago, when she’d come to Honoria, she hadn’t even expected to see Lucas. In fact, she’d even gone out of her way before coming here to make sure Lucas hadn’t been seen or heard from since he’d left on that rainy night fifteen years ago.

  If anyone had told her that not only would she see Lucas, she would slip out of her grandmother’s house to go for a moonlight ride with him, just as she’d done as a teenager, she’d have laughed herself silly. All these years, she’d told herself she never wanted to see Lucas again. That she would never forgive him for the way he’d hurt her. And now here she was, tagging along with him again just because he’d asked her to. Unable to turn him away, even though he hadn’t been particularly friendly to her since they’d run into each other again.

  What was the hold this man had always had over her? And what would it take for her to break it once and for all?

  “Run out of innocuous questions?” he murmured when they’d ridden several miles in silence. “We could always talk about the weather.”

  She turned her head to look at him. “Did you only want me to come along so you continue to be snide to me?”

  “Am I being snide?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He glanced at her, the passing streetlights throwing intriguing shadows across his face. “I didn’t think you would come tonight.”

  “Then why did you ask me?”

  “Because I wanted you to,” he answered after a moment.

  She turned to look out her side window, hiding her face from him. “I probably shouldn’t have come. I’ve worked very hard to forget the past.”

  “I haven’t forgotten any of it.”

  She almost winced. “Emily’s fiancé seemed nice,” she said, grasping the first “innocuous” topic that came to mind. “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s a cop. A widower. He’s got a kid—a boy named Clay. They’re both crazy about Emily.”

  It wasn’t easy making conversation with this man, but Rachel persisted. “Why aren’t you staying for the wedding? Do you have to get back to work?”

  “No. I just think it will be better for Emily if I’m not there.”

  “Emily doesn’t seem to agree.”

  “Emily’s thinking with her heart instead of her head. She’ll understand later.”

  “Don’t you want to see her wedding?”

  She thought his hands tightened on the steering wheel. But all he said was, “She’ll be married whether I’m there to watch or not.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Don’t you want to be there?”

  He phrased his answer carefully. “If I thought I could go without causing a stir or taking attention away from Emily, I probably would.”

  Rachel settled back into her seat, satisfied that she’d finally gotten an honest answer out of Lucas. She didn’t know why that had been so important.

  She almost groaned aloud when a new song started playing on the radio. Neil Diamond’s “Hello, Again,” Which had been one of her favorites when she and Lucas were together. It still made her throat tighten every time she heard it.

  She wished Lucas would change the station to something less evocative of the past. Country, maybe. Or rap. Anything but Neil Diamond.

  Lucas nodded toward an all-night diner ahead. “How about some pie and coffee?”

  “Yes, all right.”

  She didn’t really want pie or coffee, but maybe being in a brightly lit, public place with other people around them would dispel the disturbing feeling of intimacy created by being alone in a quiet, darkened car with him while old love songs played on the radio. At least, she hoped it would.

  LUCAS LOOKED across the table at Rachel and wondered what she was doing here with him. She toyed unenthusiastically with her pecan pie, avoiding his eyes. She looked as though she’d rather be anywhere but here.

  So why had she come?

  For that matter, he wasn’t exactly sure why he had asked her.

  He’d always been lousy at making small talk. He and Rachel had
never had trouble talking in the past, but a lot had happened since then. He cleared his throat and tried to think of something to say. Almost anything would be better than this strained silence.

  When they weren’t talking, it was far too easy—uncomfortably easy—for him to remember how they’d passed the time together on those long, lazy afternoons fifteen years ago.

  “How do you like accounting?” he asked awkwardly, forcefully shoving memories of hungry, innocent kisses out of his mind. “I guess it gets pretty busy at the end of the year.”

  “I like it okay,” she replied absently. “And, yes, it does...”

  She stopped suddenly and frowned at him. “How did you know I’m an accountant?”

  “You, er, must have mentioned it.”

  “No.”

  “Someone else, then.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. Lucas returned the look without expression. He had no intention of telling her that he’d kept tabs on her—just as he had his sister—during the past fifteen years. Rachel might be amazed at what could be learned by someone who knew his way around the Internet.

  “Lucas...”

  “How’s your pie?”

  She looked automatically at her plate. “It’s fine.”

  “More coffee?” He signaled the waitress, pointing toward his nearly empty cup.

  The efficient server had their cups refilled before Rachel could answer. “Y’all need anything else?”

  Lucas shook his head. “Just the check.”

  The woman laid a slip of paper on the table beside Lucas’s hand. “Merry Christmas,” she said, sounding as though she was rather tired of the phrase.

  Rachel pushed the rest of her pie away and reached for the steaming coffee. “Emily must be so pleased to have you home for Christmas, even if you aren’t staying for the wedding.”

  Lucas swallowed the last bite of his chocolate pie. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Have you seen any more of your family since you’ve been in town?”

  “Bobbie and Caleb made a short visit Monday evening. The cousins will be arriving tomorrow—I think most of them are planning to stay through New Year’s day.”