And last night was the worst. She tossed and turned till midnight, then opted for some chamomile tea and a novel. Two cups and forty pages later, exhaustion kicked in, and she fell into a fitful sleep. But it was much too short. Now she was feeling it.
She slid the last box into the back of BethAnn’s van and slammed the door. A Cadillac Escalade crept past, Marge Tandy at the wheel. Chris sat in the passenger’s seat. In another twenty minutes, he would have Marge’s things unloaded and be headed home. His temporary home, anyway. She turned her gaze back to BethAnn. “Just the table and canopy, and we’re done.”
“Don’t worry about the canopy. Kevin can get it. That’s what husbands are for.” She shot a glance to the center of the park where a half-dozen men worked to tear down the stage and pack up sound equipment. “Go home and take a nap. You look ready to pass out any second.”
She flashed BethAnn a crooked smile. “You won’t get any argument from me.”
A few minutes later, she pulled into her driveway, that nap forefront in her mind. But halfway up the walk she hesitated. A plain white envelope hung on the front door, her name across the front in bold, black print. As she pulled the tape loose, a chill passed over her, raising the hair on the back of her neck.
The breeze intensified, and she cast a furtive glance over her shoulder. Branches stirred to life, thousands of hushed voices descending on her. She jerked her gaze to the windows. They were still intact. At least the front ones were. And Handy Andy had replaced the shattered glass in back the day after it was broken.
She unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer, pulse pounding in her ears. What was wrong with her? It was just a note, probably left by one of her neighbors. Why did she have to turn it into something ominous?
No amount of silent scolding, however, stilled her racing heart as she tore the seal and pulled the contents from the envelope. It was a single page, thick and unlined, folded in thirds. The print matched that on the envelope. She leaned back against the door and began to read.
Melissa, my sweetheart. Your beauty surpasses that of the most flawless flower, the finest painting, the grandest sunset. Your perfection is unrivaled.
The first moment I laid eyes on you, I knew. From the first lilting words out of your mouth, my life was changed, and now that I’ve tasted the sublime, I will never again be satisfied with my mundane life.
She closed her eyes, suddenly feeling dizzy. Was this a joke? Someone trying to engage in some good-natured teasing with no idea of her situation? She tried to steel herself against the nausea churning in her stomach and returned her gaze to the page.
But I’m worried about you. Last night your light was on till 2:30 a.m. You need your sleep. Do you long for me as I long for you? Soon we’ll be together, and nothing will tear us apart.
She clamped her hand over her mouth, fighting the bile rising in her throat. This was no joke. Someone was watching her. Closely enough that he knew what time she went to bed the prior night.
Dear God, please, no, not again.
She closed her eyes and grasped for a shred of security, some assurance that everything was going to be okay. There was none. She was standing at the edge of an abyss, ready to fall in.
And no one was there to catch her.
* * *
He shouldn’t do it.
He should just leave Harmony Grove and head back to Lakeland. Melissa didn’t want him hovering over her. She had made that clear.
But his conversation with Ron had left him with a bad feeling. It wouldn’t go away, no matter how many times he told himself the local police could see to her safety. As long as he was within fifty miles of her, he couldn’t resist the need to get involved.
For several moments, he waited at the end of the Tandys’ driveway. Then he stepped on the gas and turned right—away from the road leading out of town. All day long, he had been less than thirty feet from her. But other than a quick greeting while they were setting up, and a couple of brief conversations when they each took a break from their assistant vendor positions, they had hardly spoken.
But she never left his thoughts for long. Several times he found himself seeking her out across the crowd, while she made change, bagged purchases and chatted with those who stopped to browse. All the while, she smiled, her tinkling laughter riding to him on the afternoon breeze. But beneath the confident facade was hesitation, the apprehension of someone waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The Melissa of old had always been so self-assured. That Melissa seemed to have vanished, or at least gone into hiding. As he watched her at the park, he saw a vulnerability that wasn’t there before. And it was doing funny things to his resolve.
He didn’t want to feel anything for her. He needed to keep everything professional—a detective concerned for a woman’s safety. She didn’t want more than that, anyway. And that was all right. Because who was he to say that she wouldn’t do it again? That with the next storm that arose, she wouldn’t just walk away? It was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.
He shoved the truck into Park and strode up the front walk. When Melissa answered his knock moments later, everything he had tried to squelch while watching her at the park rushed back with a vengeance. Haunted blue eyes stared out from a drawn, pale face, a silent plea floating on the air between them.
“Melissa, what is it? What happened?”
For several moments she stood in silence, her innate self-sufficiency doing battle with the longing, just once, to lean on someone else. At last, the indecision fled her features, and she motioned him inside. He followed her to the living room, where she handed him a sheet of paper, then sank onto the couch. Bold black print filled the page, and as he read, an equally dark cloud settled over his soul.
“Who wrote this?”
“I don’t know.” She drew in a shaky breath. “It was on my door when I got home from the show.”
A sense of protectiveness surged through him. He sat next to her and raised an arm to lightly circle her shoulders. “Does the handwriting look at all familiar?”
“Not really. It’s pretty generic—block letters, all caps.” She studied the note, lower lip drawn between her teeth. Then the corners of her mouth kicked up in a tentative smile. “The handwriting actually looks a lot like yours.”
“Mine and a thousand other guys. We print because we write so poorly.”
“Well, I’d say it’s safe to eliminate you.” She smiled a little more fully, and some of the tension seemed to fall away. Already the color was returning to her face.
He refolded the page, cringing at the thought of how the handling had probably destroyed any prints left behind. “So who do you think wrote this?”
Her gaze drifted away until snagged by some point on the walnut coffee table. “It’s probably just a prank by some neighborhood kids.”
“Uh-huh.” He cast her a doubt-infused glance. It wasn’t just her averted eyes. It was her tone, that total lack of conviction. “So what time did you go to bed last night?”
She met his eyes, her own filled with resignation. “Two-thirty.”
“This isn’t a prank, Melissa. Someone’s watching you.” He waited for a response but didn’t get one. “Any ideas? Anyone from your past who might do something like this?” Talk to me, Missy. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.
Her gaze returned to that invisible spot on the coffee table. Her hands were clasped together in her lap, clutching one another tightly. As long as he had known her, she had been strong and self-sufficient. His betrayal, plus five years on her own, evidently hadn’t made it any easier to drop the barriers.
She pulled her long, thick braid forward and slid the cloth-covered elastic band from its end. Once she had worked the woven tresses loose, she shook out the dark strands until they flowed in silken waves over her shoulders and down her chest. Did
she have any idea what that did to him? Of course she didn’t. She was simply doing what she always did—filling uncomfortable moments with activity.
He watched her for some time, silently pleading with her to let him in. Finally she drew in a long, slow breath. “There’s only one.”
“Who?”
“A guy I knew in Atlanta. He started stalking me. No matter what I did, he wouldn’t leave me alone. So I got a restraining order.” She continued to stare at the table, her tone flat. “That only made matters worse. By the time the police got there, he was always gone. They were never able to catch him.”
“So you changed your name and moved here?”
She nodded slowly and raised her eyes to meet his. Her shoulders rose and fell with each shaky breath, lightly brushing his side. Subtle hints of citrus and spice teased his senses, and the vulnerability on her face shot straight to his heart.
He cleared his throat and corralled his wayward thoughts. He needed to focus on one thing—her safety. “Do the Harmony Grove police know anything about this?”
She shook her head. “Maybe I should tell them.”
“There’s no maybe to it. You need to tell them. And they should know about the flowers and this note. They can drive by here regularly, you know, keep an eye on things.”
Her gaze fell back to the table. “I don’t think it’s him, though.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “Leaving me flowers and notes just doesn’t sound like something he would do. And I don’t see how he could have found me. He doesn’t have my new name, doesn’t know where I went, doesn’t know where I’m from and doesn’t have the financial means to hire someone to get that information.” It was a pep talk aimed at herself as much as him. And judging from the worry lines etched into her features, she wasn’t convinced, either.
“I think you should have someone come and stay with you for a while.”
“Everybody’s got their own lives. I’m not going to impose on anyone like that.”
“Look, Melissa, whether it’s this guy or not, you’ve got some nutcase watching you. You shouldn’t be alone. How about if I stay? I could sleep on your living room couch.”
She shook her head, her tone adamant. “You can’t move in here.”
“I’ll stay in your shed.”
“It’s a stable,” she corrected, “and it’s not habitable. The doors don’t close properly and it leaks. The Tylers are planning to have it torn down.” That signature independence was back, that stubborn determination that was so characteristic of Melissa. It would be a relief if it weren’t for the danger she was in.
“Then let me check on you. And you’ve got to promise to call at the first sign of danger.”
“All right,” she agreed, although reluctantly.
“You won’t try to play the brave, reckless heroine like you see in the movies?”
Her lips quirked upward. “You mean the kind that hears someone in the house and opens the door to the room with the mysterious light, instead of calling the police?”
“Yeah, that kind.”
“No way. You know me. I’m not the brave, reckless type.”
She got up from the couch and walked slowly back toward the foyer. When she reached the front door, she turned to face him. “Thanks for stopping by. I feel...better.”
“Good. Call me if you need me. And you’re calling the police as soon as I leave, right?”
“I will. I promise.”
He rested a hand on her shoulder, wishing he could somehow shield her from everything that threatened her. And it was more than just male protectiveness. The brief peeling away of her self-sufficiency, revealing the vulnerability beneath, stirred something in him, making it harder and harder to leave.
But that was exactly what he needed to do. In a few short weeks, his work in Florida would be finished, and he would be going home, back to his life in Memphis. More than likely, he would never see her again. And that was just the way it needed to be.
Five years ago, everything they had had come to an abrupt end—final and irreversible.
Because he burned his bridges when he didn’t trust her.
And she burned hers when she walked away.
* * *
Melissa leaned against the doorjamb and watched Chris back slowly up the driveway. She hadn’t intended to tell him about Eugene. And she would probably live to regret it. Maybe it was fatigue—physical and emotional exhaustion. But the moment the words spilled out, a sliver of that ever-present uneasiness seemed to drift away. And for a brief moment, she didn’t feel so totally alone.
With a sigh, she closed the door and twisted the lock. Chris wanted her to trust him with her safety. At one time she had trusted him with everything, including her heart. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. No matter how badly he wanted to be there to protect her, she wasn’t about to let him back into her life, even on a temporary basis.
But there was one concession she would make. She would go to the police. The idea of Branch knowing her personal business was hard to accept. But she would do it. In fact, she would go one further.
She swung open the front door and strode across the yard. Except for the occasional doctor’s appointment, her elderly neighbor was always home, often working outside. Even with all the greenery obstructing her view, Mrs. Johnson may see someone prowling around.
Melissa stepped through the gate between the two properties, and a gentle breeze followed her, blowing strands of hair against her cheek and pulling some of the stickiness from the air. Next week promised some relief, a cool front, which meant temperatures in the eighties instead of the nineties.
But Mrs. Johnson wasn’t waiting for the cooler weather. She sat on her porch swing with a tall glass of iced tea, beads of sweat dotting her forehead. A dark smudge marked one wrinkled cheek, and her gardening gloves and pruning shears lay on the wooden slats beside her. Two tabby cats weaved in and out of her legs.
“It looks like you’ve been hard at work. Your roses are beautiful.” Melissa nodded toward the bed that wrapped around the outside of the curved walkway. Perfect blooms boasting a palette ranging from the palest pink to deepest fuchsia opened their petals to the late-afternoon sun.
“Thank you, dear. I managed to get a little bit accomplished, even laid down after the craft show.” She pushed back a snowy-white curl that had fallen over one brow and picked up the gloves and pruning shears. “Have a seat, dear. You know, I probably should sell and move into something with less upkeep—one of those condo complexes for old people. But there’s forty years of memories here. And they probably wouldn’t let me bring my animals.”
“You’d be miserable. All this is what’s keeping you young.”
In the driveway, a car door slammed, and after several false starts, an engine sputtered to life. It was one of those 1970s muscle cars, with a low rumble that rattled the teeth and settled in the chest. Chrome headers, polished to a mirrorlike shine, protruded from under a body sporting three different colors of paint. Four, counting the gray primer.
Mrs. Johnson shook her head. “I know he’s my grandson, but I sometimes wonder if Dennis will ever grow up. I thought maybe having his own place would teach him some responsibility, even it was just an efficiency apartment over his grandmother’s garage.”
Melissa watched him roar up the driveway and screech to a stop at its end. She had lived next door to him for more than four months but had hardly spoken a dozen words to him. Something about him made her uneasy. Maybe it was his brooding air, as if he was put out with the whole world. Maybe it was the way he would never quite make eye contact. Or maybe it was how he sat hour after hour in the upstairs window, like some self-appointed sentry.
The piercing wail of peeling rubber announced his exit from the driveway, and Mrs. Johnson again shook her head. �
��He’s two months behind on the rent, and now he’s lost his job. He’s taking an art class at the college three mornings a week, but he needs to work.” She sighed and took another swallow of her iced tea. “By the way, I’ve really enjoyed the flowers you brought over. They’re just now starting to wilt.”
“I’m glad you liked them.” They had occupied a place in the center of her dining room table for all of a few hours. She had tried. But every time she walked through the room, her chest clenched. What should have been a thing of beauty was a constant reminder that no matter what she did or where she went, she could never let down her guard. So she had given the arrangement to Mrs. Johnson to enjoy. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. Someone’s watching me, and I was hoping you’d let me know if you see anyone snooping around.”
“Oh, no.” Concern filled her features, deepening the lines crisscrossing her face. “I haven’t noticed anyone, but I’ll definitely keep my eyes open. And if you ever need anything, Dennis and I are just a phone call away.” She pushed herself from the swing and hobbled with the shears to her freshly tended rose bed. When she straightened, she held five long stems. “Here are some flowers you can enjoy—they shouldn’t remind you of anything except the little old lady next door.”
Melissa took the roses and inhaled their sweet scent, glad to have a neighbor like Mrs. Johnson.
The only thing better would be a six-foot-five-inch bodybuilder with a forty-five.
SIX
“Derrick, have you ever known Donna to not show up for work?”
Midnight Shadows (Love Inspired Suspense) Page 6
