She glared at him and added a hostile pointed finger. “I swear on the Bible, if you had anything to do with my stolen roses, I don’t care if you have an AK-47 strapped around your chest, I will make your life a living—”
“What stolen roses?”
“The ones that were snipped and stripped right out of their beds sometime in the middle of the last night.”
“Last night?” He waved a dismissive hand. “Not interested. What about these?” He flicked the paper. “Who bought these roses? And when?” With each demand, he inched closer, the sheer power and size of his body was like Granny Belle’s big ol’ John Deere about to chew her into human mulch.
She should run. She should hide. She should pray for mercy. But all she could do was… look.
She tore her gaze from his chest and stared at the receipt, blinking to clear her head.
2 doz BC roses $200
Instantly, Callie remembered the sale because, well, who could forget that woman? Tall as an Amazon with eyes as green as spring willow leaves, but not nearly as welcoming. Everything about her was severe and cold, so much that her spontaneous request for the Black Cherries had completely taken Callie by surprise.
“I didn’t get her name, sorry. It was a walk-in off the highway asking for directions to Tallahassee.”
“But she bought flowers?”
“She asked if I grew Black Cherries, and I sold her two dozen.”
“When?” he demanded. “There’s no date on this receipt. If you can even call it that.”
“Sheez, buddy, is an undated handwritten sales slip a criminal offense now?”
He narrowed impossibly dark eyes at her like her negligence was worthy of jail time.
“About a week ago,” she said quickly.
“How’d she pay?”
“Cash.”
“Shit,” he murmured, finally backing away but still stealing all the space and air. “I don’t suppose you still have that cash in a…” He cocked his head toward the receipt can. “Coffee container marked ‘profits.’”
Actually, it was marked Paris. “You can’t have it,” she blurted out.
He stared at her, his silence saying more than any demands.
“No,” she insisted, practically stomping one muck boot as fear and frustration and fury rolled around in her. Was she going to be robbed twice in one day? “And I don’t care if you’re the president of the IRS, Mr. Government Guy. You are not getting that money. Not now, with every one of my most profitable roses gone.”
He backed up another inch. “Look, I’m sorry about the flowers, but—”
“Not as sorry as I am. I hope whoever stole them eats the darn things. That’ll serve ’em right.”
His eyes flashed with sudden interest. “Why?”
“Because those suckers are so poisonous a half a teaspoon on your breakfast toast’ll kill you dead.”
“What?”
Chapter Two
Ben frowned, not sure he’d heard correctly since Daisy Duke had a lilting, thick southern accent and distractingly short overalls, covering a body that didn’t look like any farmer he’d ever seen.
“They’re poisonous?”
“Deadly.” She tipped back the bill of a baseball cap, giving him a chance to catch a spark in bright blue eyes and a smear of dirt that didn’t quite cover a peppering of golden freckles. “If you eat ’em, which I don’t generally recommend to my customers.”
He forced his attention off the freckles and eyes—and the fine farmer’s body— to absorb the impact of what she was saying. The bouquet of roses left at the rally rope-line after a text telling him a murder weapon would be left behind were deadly?
“Did you discuss toxicity with her?”
“You mean, did I tell her the flowers were poisonous?” She braced her fists on narrow hips, a position that showcased a sweet little waist and sweat stains on a thin cotton top. Very thin. Very sweet. “Why the heck would I do that?”
“But you do remember her and could describe her in detail?”
“Possibly.”
“What did she drive?”
“A car.” At his look, she drew back. “I don’t know those kinds of cars. Nice. Like yours.”
“A car that would have a GPS system.” So why ask for directions?
“I didn’t look inside it.”
“But she bought poisonous flowers on her stop for directions.” That made no sense at all. “Did she ask about the flowers right away or did you mention that you grew them?” He glanced around the little wooden shed, which was more of a workroom than a showroom. And conveniently off the beaten path and seriously low tech, which would work for someone determined to cover their tracks.
His gut burned like this adorable little farm girl had just lit a firecracker in it.
“Actually, she asked outright if I grew Black Cherries, which I remember thinking was kind of odd.”
“Not odd if she’d done her homework,” he said, thinking out loud and already putting the puzzle pieces together. “Not odd if she was in the market to get her hands on something lethal and leave no trail.”
“Holy moly!” All of a sudden, those sky-blue eyes widened and her mouth dropped open to a perfect ‘o’ that revealed the tip of a pink tongue that he guessed hadn’t cursed in… ever.
“What?” he asked.
“You are dead right about her.” She pulled off the hat, freeing a cascade of tawny blond hair that fell over her shoulders as she swiped a sweaty forehead. “And she came out there with me and picked her bouquet!”
“So?”
“So she probably came back and stole the whole bed full last night!”
Why would she do that? Because her first attempt failed and now Ben was off the case?
“I didn’t talk about them being poisonous, but I did tell her how rare they are. And she knows they can go for a hundred bucks a pop because that’s what I charged her. I even told her how my great-grandmother bred them by crossing them with a wild black cherry plant seed to get the color.”
“Wild black cherry plants?” He rifled through some cursory knowledge of poisons that every Bullet Catcher had to know. “They release cyanide.”
“Bingo, big guy.” She gave him a mirthless smile. “Put a wild black cherry in a certain mix of foods and, wham, you are on your way to a better place.”
Damn it, he knew the roses left at the rope-line weren’t meaningless. “What kind of mix?”
“Well, I’m no chemist, but my Granny Belle knew a lot about this stuff. My guess is something that binds with water and gets all acidy so that it breaks down enzymes.”
Something like… “Pepper jelly?”
“Oh, yeah,” she nodded. “That’d do the trick. The pectin would come from the right part of a plant, and the capsaicin in the pepper, if it was hot enough, would open the receptors on your taste buds. That’d slam some poison into your blood stream real fast.”
Everything fit. Someone must have been hand-delivering those flowers and the jelly—a molecular catalyst to turn them into a fast-acting poison. But delivering to whom?
Someone on the campaign trail, that was for sure. Someone who wasn’t able to get to the rope-line because Ben had made the call to cancel the rally. Thank God he’d listened to his instinct.
“Oh!” She punched an angry fist in the air. “I led her by the hand to three thousand dollars’ worth of roses. How could I be so stupid?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he said. A little country and plenty sexy, but not stupid. “You might have just saved a man’s life.” And Ben’s job.
“Well, I don’t know why you’re looking for her, buddy, but I’m going to find her. She stole those flowers in the last five or six hours and my bet is that she’s selling my roses on some corner out of the back of her car right now.”
“I doubt that.” She was probably delivering them to someone in the inner circle, probably at the Tallahassee Rotary Club luncheon where McManus would be speaking in about
three hours.
“I don’t doubt it.” She brushed her hands on her overalls and stepped away. “And when I’m done with her, I’ll have my money.”
He snagged her arm, pulling her back. “Oh, no you don’t.”
“Oh, yes I do.” She tried to shake him off, but he held tight to a toned, tense muscle under surprisingly warm and smooth skin.
“We go together.”
She raised her eyebrows and then shrugged. “If you want to come and look for her, you can follow me, but…” Her voice trailed off as he touched her face, brushing off the dirt. She met his gaze, her eyes darkening with surprise. “What are you doing?”
“I bet you clean up nicely.” Nicely enough to crash a formal luncheon.
“Excuse me? This is not about how dirty I—”
“I meant with the right clothes and makeup…” He eased her back to get a better look, taking a moment to really explore every curve and imagine her in real clothes. And out of them.
Instantly, she jerked away with a fiery glare. “I don’t need any clothes but the ones I have on and I don’t wear makeup, thank you very much.” She made it to the door and opened it, pointing out. “You can leave now.”
Not a chance. She knew who’d purchased poison roses and planned to give use them to kill the governor. He needed this little farmer to make a positive ID without the killer knowing.
“Did you look like this when you met her?” he asked.
“I always look like this,” she said, no shame at all in her voice.
“You own a dress?”
She curled her lip and cocked her head. “I go to church on Sunday.”
“Good. Then let’s put you in the shower and get this show on the road.”
Her eyes widened as she choked a response. “Nice try, perv. But I’m not taking a shower or going on your road trip.”
He took a step closer and reached for her hand, going with the intuition to trust her. “Listen to me. You’re going to attend a state luncheon and covertly examine every guest until you find an assassin who I believe is trying to poison the governor of Florida. If you can make a positive identification of the woman who bought those roses, I will personally pay you twice what they were worth.”
Doubt and desire ravaged her pretty face as the words sunk in. “Twice? That’d be six thousand dollars, I’ll have you know.”
“Fine.”
She swallowed, teetering on the edge. “Cash.”
“Done.”
“A thousand up front.”
He reached into his back pocket to get his wallet. Opening it wide enough to reveal both his security ID and a wad of bills, he got a rewarding hiss of surprise in response.
“Whoa, that’s a lot of Benjamin… Franklins.”
“Youngblood,” he corrected, showing her the ID as he whipped out a stack of hundreds and stuffed them in her palm. “Benjamin Youngblood. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to…” She stared at the money, then up at him. “I’m Callie Parrish.”
He nodded. “You need to understand that a man’s life hangs in the balance.” And a man’s job, but that was secondary. He needed to get to McManus, and quickly.
She nodded slowly and then held out her free hand to shake his. “I won’t let you down.”
The single statement of raw honesty and commitment punched him low and hard. Right in the… gut.
He watched her walk away toward a weathered farmhouse, her rear end hitching from side to side like a threadbare denim pendulum. And that hit in a place somewhat lower and potentially far more dangerous than his gut.
~*~
Benjamin Youngblood, bodyguard to the rich and famous and possibly the most persuasive, attractive, intelligent, and downright cool guy Callie had ever met, drove like he had a death wish and cussed like the devil he’d surely meet the day he got that wish. Still, he was… mesmerizing.
As they drove up to what had to be a ten-star hotel, Callie ran her hands over the kick-pleat skirt, smoothing the fabric.
Of course she’d picked one of Granny Belle’s timeless French silk outfits, made in Paris with a faint and familiar fragrance of rosewater still clinging to it. Grateful for that connection to a complex woman who loved fashion as much as farming, Callie mentally reviewed all she’d learned in the last two hours.
Everything Ben had told her seemed entirely credible, and scary for poor Ray McManus, even if he was kind of a loser governor who didn’t do a darn thing for farmers. No one deserved to die.
All she had to do to help make sure that didn’t happen was cruise through a fancy banquet room, check out every woman, and find the she-devil who stole her roses. Easy-peasy.
Still, she kept wiping the skirt… and drying slightly damp palms.
“You’re not nervous, are you?” he asked.
“Should I be?”
“Not at all.” He sped into a multi-story parking garage, the tires squealing as he took each turn a little too fast, making Callie’s stomach flutter. He finally stopped on the completely deserted top floor.
“Just remember the cover story when we check in. You are the daughter of a diplomat; I’m your bodyguard. It’s the only way they’ll let me in and you can use the invitation I already have.”
She nodded. “I can do that.” Heck, for five thousand more dollars, she’d kiss the woman when she found her. If some scary guard didn’t pull her out of line and throw her into jail for impersonating a diplomat’s daughter. “You’re sure they won’t want to, like, call Diplomat Daddy and check me out?”
“Not with that invitation.” He turned off the ignition and flipped his seat belt. “Plus, I’ll get you in the right line, at the right time, and they’ll be moving people through too quickly to ask a lot of questions. That security firm is made of weak sauce.”
“But what if—?”
His T-shirt came off so fast she sucked in a breath, then another when she saw what the striptease revealed. Muscles. Bare, cut, solid, masculine… muscles.
She attempted to swallow. “What are you doing?”
Reaching over the seat, he grabbed a white shirt, all folded up from the cleaners. “Dressing for work.” As he opened the shirt and stuck his arm in the sleeve, he grinned. “You look like you’ve never seen a man’s chest before.”
“Not one…” That exquisite. “With a gun hanging off the hip.”
“Not to worry. We won’t need it. You just ID the woman, and I’ll take it from there.” He buttoned the shirt, then snagged a silky red tie and pulled it around his neck. “Hang on, this’ll take a sec.”
He produced more clothes from the back and threw open the car door to step out, standing next to the driver’s window and giving her a perfect view of his lower half as he… took off his jeans.
“Mother of God,” she muttered, unable to look away. He wore black, tight boxer shorts, not the loose kind that old men wore and not the tighty-whities, either. These just fit perfectly, clinging to narrow hips, a carved-from-stone back end, and a world-class bulge.
Well, that was worth the price of admission.
She finally turned away, blood rushing to her head, the image of his manhood burned into her brain to be saved and maybe brought out on the loneliest of lonely nights on the farm.
She heard his zipper, so it was safe to look, seeing expensive trousers and a white shirt neatly tucked in. He opened the back door and leaned in to get a sports jacket thrown over the back seat.
“You ready?” he asked, some strands of ebony hair touching his brow as he glanced from the jacket to her.
“As I’ll ever be.” She took a minute to gather her wits and stepped out of the car when Ben opened her door. That close to him, smelling something heady and manly, her eyes inches from his perfectly knotted tie and crazy wide shoulders, she wobbled a bit on the circa 1950 kitten heels she’d found in Granny Belle’s closet.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder, his touch hot through the thin silk blouse.
“Just remember the money.” He squeezed shoulder, and inched her closer, forcing her to look up at him. “What’re you going to do with it? New car? Clothes? More flowers?”
She almost snorted. “As if those things matter to me.”
“Then what does matter to you?”
“None of your business.”
He circled his thumb, the touch somehow both comforting and sensual. “Let’s make it my business. That way, I can remind you in case you decide to bail or freak out.”
“I’m not going to do either one,” she assured him. “But if it’s that important to you, I want the money to take my great-grandmother to Paris.”
He gave her a slow smile of complete surprise. Or pleasure. Or both. “Really.”
“Really.”
For a long moment, he just looked at her and then grazed her cheek with his knuckles, sparking every nerve from there to her toes.
“Is that so hard to believe?” she asked.
“What’s hard to believe is…” He brushed her lower lip with a fingertip. “I didn’t even know they made girls like you anymore.”
She just smiled. “They don’t.”
“Pity.” He slipped his arm around her shoulder to lead her forward. As they walked through the empty parking garage, with Granny Belle’s ancient pumps knocking the same beat as Callie’s heart, Ben started whistling very softly.
La Vie en Rose.
Right then, for one insanely wild second, she could have sworn she heard her great-grandmother give a squeal of pure delight. He kept right on whistling until they reached the top of a massive escalator, where Callie stopped dead at the sight of at least a thousand people milling about a hotel lobby.
“Holy Moses.” She grabbed the moving handrail with soft exclamation. “I didn’t know there’d be so many—”
“Excuse me!” A man’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Hold it, Youngblood!”
Pick Your Poison Page 2
