JOANNA NEARLY MOANED OUT LOUD as she bit into the thick turkey club that Lisa gave her as they sat at a small table after the Friday lunch hour.
Now the Lucky Break was quiet again as the bulk of the lunch crowd was gone. The sandwich had thick slices of avocado, her favorite, and she smiled in deep pleasure at the mix of flavors in her mouth. Sex might not be an option for her right now, but the food around here was so good it was almost making up for it.
“Heaven,” she murmured as she swallowed and grabbed her soda.
“Nothing sexier than a man who can cook,” Lisa said with a grin, her eyes drifting over to Charlie.
“That would be nice,” Joanna said with a wistful smile. “One skill I never quite picked up.”
Lisa grinned. “Me neither, actually. The kids love when Charlie makes dinner.”
Joanna lifted her glass. “To men who can cook.”
Lisa met her glass with a nod.
“So why are you guys so on the down-low with this? Charlie seems like a solid guy, and you might not be divorced, but you’re separated.”
“It’s more complicated when you have kids, and Paul is trying to get custody. I can’t do anything that he could take to court to prove I am not a fit full-time parent.”
“Jerk. He hit you?”
Lisa stared, clearly surprised. “Why do you say that?”
In her line of work, Joanna knew too much about what bad men did to women, and could see it in their faces even if they didn’t say a thing. Of course, she couldn’t tell Lisa that.
“Been there,” she said instead, though that wasn’t true. If a guy ever tried to hit her, he’d be out before he knew what hit him back.
“Yeah, and I put up with it, thinking it was better for the kids to have both parents at home. My folks were divorced, and so many of the kids’ friends are from broken homes, too—”
“The way I see it, their home was more broken with him around. Kids know, believe me.”
Joanna remembered hearing her parents fight before her mom had left. She didn’t know what it was about, she was too young to understand, but she knew the tension in their house that kept her in knots. She also knew how it went away and things were better when her mom was gone, hard as it was.
“Thanks,” Lisa said with a small smile. “But, I only went to the E.R. once, so there isn’t much of a record of it. And Ben’s grandpa, who helped me a few times, is passed on now, so you know, there aren’t many witnesses to convince the court.”
“He didn’t hit the kids?”
“He was heading that way. I kicked him out and got a restraining order before he did any real damage.”
Joanna sat back, making another mental note. She might be able to help here, though she couldn’t say anything now. She could see why Lisa was cagey about Charlie, though. It also meant Lisa was vulnerable, and that if someone wanted to get access to Ben, she would be a ripe target.
“Hey, where’s Ben?” she asked Lisa, changing the subject. She’d have time later to look deeper into Lisa’s ex, and she should probably look a little closer into Lisa, too, to make sure there wasn’t a possible problem there.
But Joanna hadn’t seen Ben all day, and while she knew she couldn’t keep eyes on him every second without blowing her cover, when it went past a few hours, her own alarm bells started chiming.
“He was over to his parents’ ranch all morning helping get ready for the party tomorrow.”
“What party?” Joanna asked. Ben’s parents’ ranch was on the same land as the Lucky Break, all part of the family business. The main house was about ten miles down the road.
“He didn’t tell you?” Lisa said, frowning.
“Nope. I assumed tomorrow was a regular work day, but there’s a party here?”
“Not here. We’re closed for the day, and then we’ll have Sunday off, too, as usual. This party is at his folks’ place. His dad’s fiftieth. They have a party every summer for his birthday. Everyone from everywhere comes around.”
“Oh,” Joanna said, feeling slighted that Ben hadn’t told her, but also that she might not have a way to keep tabs on him for an entire weekend. That was a problem.
“I’m sure he meant to invite you, but things have been a bit busy,” Lisa said, looking at her knowingly.
“It’s no problem. So he’s out there all day today?”
“I think he got back an hour or so ago, and headed upstairs with his tool belt. He said he needed to fix something electrical. You were busy with customers, so I guess he just went up.”
Joanna froze. Ben was in her apartment, alone?
She was careful, but she didn’t count on people being in her space when she wasn’t there. She’d left her phone there as well as her extra gun.
“I’m going to go see what he’s doing,” she said quickly, pushing away from the table. “You okay here?”
Lisa chuckled. “Yeah, I’m fine. You go see what he’s up to. Maybe he needs a hand,” she said lightly, her eyes dancing, clearly assuming Joanna was headed upstairs hoping to meet Ben for a little afternoon delight.
Joanna wanted to make sure he wasn’t looking around her apartment when she wasn’t there. Why he would, she didn’t know, but given his background, it wasn’t untenable that he might want to know more about her than she was telling him.
Upstairs, she found the door cracked open, and stepped inside to see Ben’s tools and belt on the floor near one of the wall sockets that had been taken apart, but there was no sign of Ben. She heard a knock, something hitting something else, and a groan. Definitely male.
Her heart rate picked up, and she grabbed the gun she had put in the ankle holster she’d worn under her jeans—she always carried it in one spot or another—and moved it to the small of her back, where it was more accessible.
Moving through the apartment, she walked along the edge of the wall. Had someone followed him up here? Caught him unaware?
Moving one hand to her back, she entered the bedroom where she spotted the bathroom door ajar. Instinctively, she slowed her breathing, pausing for a moment.
Then she heard another clunk, and a cursing noise that had her across the room in a second, hand on the handle of the firearm at the base of her back as she flung open the door.
And found Ben rubbing his head as he looked up at her in surprise, soaked from head to toe, water spewing from a pipe in the wall. He bent back down, and turned the shut-off, killing the flow.
Joanna took a breath, relaxed, and set her hands on her hips.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing your faucet,” he said, as if that wasn’t obvious.
“Why?”
“I was working on that faulty socket, until I had to use the facilities. I noticed it was leaking pretty steadily, and so I figured I could open it up, tighten up the coupling, but it didn’t end up being that simple. The hardware was old, and the pipe was cracked, and—”
“And you just decided to do all of this without asking me?”
Her tone came out more sharply than she intended, but she was coming down from a state of high agitation, and had to take another breath.
“Well, you were busy, and this was the only time I had,” he said, straightening and peeling off his wet shirt. “I remembered the socket had been a problem before, for Charlie, and, if you recall, I pay the water bill and the electric for this place. If something is broken, I’d appreciate knowing, especially something like plumbing.”
She nodded, taking another breath. He was right, and she was being too touchy.
“You’re right, sorry. I meant to mention it, but I didn’t want to be a pest, especially after the air conditioning. The leak being a problem for you didn’t even occur to me.”
They both stood there in the small space, staring, her eyes drifting over his chest. There was only about two feet of space between them, and her shower fantasies were coming back to her with a vengeance.
“I, uh,” she sputtered, stepping away before she did somethin
g stupid like jumping him right there and then, and bumped into the wall. She scraped the doorway on her way out and heard a heavy thud on the floor behind her.
Her gun.
Closing her eyes, she didn’t turn around for a moment, knowing there was no way he’d missed that.
“What are you doing with that?” he asked, his tone low and dangerous.
Shaking her head, she turned back around, and reached for the weapon, but he made it to the Sig first.
“It’s mine. I have a license,” she said defensively.
“Why do you have it?” he asked again, stepping closer.
“I…a girl can’t be too careful, you know? I picked it up in San Diego.”
“Most women who have a gun leave it in the night stand, or somewhere in their house. Maybe in their bag. They don’t usually carry,” he said, and dipped down before she could stop him, running a hand over her shin, feeling the leg holster, and looking at her curiously.
“Tell me about this, Joanna. Now.”
She fell back on her cover story. Thank goodness she had invented her lousy ex, Lenny.
“I was more worried about Lenny showing up than I said before,” she said, biting her lip. “Or any of his friends. He carries, too, and I just wanted to make sure he didn’t catch me off guard. I was afraid if I told you that before, you wouldn’t keep me on.”
Ben nodded. “I guess I can understand that, but you should have been straight with me.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I just like to handle things myself.”
He looked down at the gun, moved it around in hands that obviously knew how to handle weapons.
“You know how to shoot?” he asked.
“Aim and pull the trigger,” she said simply, making him smile.
“This weapon is heavy-duty. Have you fired it before?”
“The shop I bought it from had a target range. I used it once there.”
He shook his head. “Meet me out back of my house in an hour.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Why?”
“I can show you how to shoot, and not how to miss. You can get some practice there,” he said, sticking the weapon in the back of his own jeans and reaching for his shirt.
“Hey!” she objected. “That’s mine.”
“It is. And when I’m satisfied you know how to use it well, you can have it back, but I don’t ever want you carrying it on the floor again. You keep it here, with the ammo in a separate place. It’s too dangerous, an amateur carrying a weapon around in a roomful of people,” he added.
She wanted to rail, to tell him that she was no amateur. Far from it. Her training very likely prepared her to outshoot him, in fact. But she couldn’t argue without blowing her cover, and besides, she still had her Glock under her pillow in the bedroom.
“Fine,” she said sullenly as he moved past her in the small doorway, his bare chest only inches from her hands as he did so, which triggered another set of alarms in her head.
He smelled good, and she actually took a deep breath, looking up into whiskey-brown eyes that watched her back, just as intently.
“One hour?”
“One hour,” she confirmed, and let out a breath as he passed by.
“I’ll call someone to come by and fix that pipe,” he added from the hall as she watched him gather his tools.
“Thanks.”
Then he was gone, and she sank back to the bed, grabbing her Glock from under her pillow and seeking a better hiding spot where he wouldn’t stumble onto that, too.
Not that he’d have any reason to go looking under her pillows, or be in her bed, but she couldn’t risk it.
Looking around the apartment, she finally settled on the top shelf of an empty kitchen cabinet. No one would have a reason to be searching there, not even Ben. She could put the gun back under her pillow at night, so she had it close by, but during the day, no one would find it up there.
A beep from her phone caught her attention, and she grabbed it from the bed, noting that the dossiers on Charlie and Lisa had come through, and she quickly dashed off a note asking for background on Lisa’s ex, Paul, as well.
Scanning the documents, she saw nothing to be particularly concerned about in Lisa’s file, not that she had expected anything. To be extra cautious, she replied asking for a list of recent calls to her phone, just to be sure.
Charlie’s was a little larger, citing a few minor teenage troubles and then his military service. The only things that really caught her attention were some gaps in time after he’d left the VA. There was a lapse between when he’d left the hospital and when he had moved here with Ben, started working at the bar, not that that meant anything. He could have been staying with a friend or at a motel, in between times. Still, it made her want to look deeper. Unexplained time in someone’s record could mean they were simply in between places to live, as she was now, or it could mean they were hiding something.
She was going to dig around Charlie’s past, if for no other reason than that she was starting to like Lisa. While Charlie seemed like a good guy, if he was hiding anything, Lisa didn’t deserve that, especially if her ex’s lawyer discovered it first.
But that was for later.
Changing her clothes, Joanna washed up and prepared to go down and meet Ben, and hoped she could cover her training, convincing him that she didn’t know how to shoot. That would be tricky. Shooting was as natural to her as breathing.
From a window, she saw Charlie in the parking lot, talking to someone. It did not look like a friendly conversation.
Making her way quickly downstairs and out the back, Joanna slid along the side of the building, quieting her breathing and staying still near the corner where she heard the men’s voices. They were using low tones, so she couldn’t make out everything they were saying.
Charlie said something like “that was a mistake,” Joanna heard, but then he lowered his voice before she could hear the rest.
“Yeah, well, you’d better listen up,” the other man said.
“There’s no way I’m…” Charlie responded with a hiss, and Joanna cursed under her breath, losing the second half of what he said to tires crunching across the gravel when a truck drove into the lot.
There was no way to tell if this was just a personal thing, or if it was a bigger problem, but she had to try to find out. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out from the edge of the building and smiled brightly as she approached the men.
“Charlie, there you are! I was looking everywhere for you,” she said, joining them. She didn’t miss how Charlie instinctively turned around and put himself between her and the other guy.
Protecting her? Or hiding the other man?
“What’s up, Jo?” Charlie said, obviously stressed by her appearance.
“I wasn’t sure about…whether you wanted the soup from lunch frozen or just put in the fridge.”
It was thin, but all she could come up with.
“I’ll do that when I come back in. Don’t worry about it,” he said, giving her a look that clearly told her he wanted her to leave.
Joanna stepped to the side, and got a good look at the dark, towering man who watched them. He had goon written all over him, and obviously wasn’t local. Certainly not a ranch worker—the hundred-dollar tie gave that away, as well as the shiny boots with hardly a speck of dust on them. For all of his fanciness, he still hit her as slimy.
The man glared, still as stone. Joanna looked from him to Charlie, and cocked her head, eyeing Charlie more closely.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” the dark man spoke smoothly, smiling in a way that sent shivers down her spine. “I was just trying to convince Charlie to convert over to a new security system for the bar,” the man said. “Never can be too careful.”
“Oh, you’re a salesman,” Joanna said, in feigned relief, then smiled.
“Yes.”
“I know I said I’d consider buying, but I talked to my partner and we chan
ged our minds,” Charlie interrupted. “Thanks anyway. But it’s not going to happen, so don’t come back,” he said to the guy emphatically, taking her by the elbow—a little too firmly—and turning away from the man without another word.
They walked back into the bar, and Joanna pulled her arm away. “Ow. Geez, Charlie,” she exclaimed. “What was that all about?”
Luckily, Lisa was elsewhere.
“Sorry,” Charlie said, still clearly anxious as he pushed a hand through his hair.
“Who was that guy? And don’t bother lying. Anyone could tell he wasn’t a salesman.”
“You shouldn’t have come out there,” he said. “You could have gotten hurt.”
“Who is he?” she demanded, on alert.
“A guy Lisa’s ex sent to watch her, intimidate her. He came into the bar, looking for her, and I tossed him back out. I think he was at her house a few days ago. He’s probably a P.I. or something, I don’t know, but I don’t want her knowing about it, and if he comes back, I’ll handle it.” Joanna wasn’t sure what to think. Charlie seemed to be telling the truth, but even if he was, Joanna didn’t think the man was a PI. He was far too threatening. He was there to intimidate, yes, and maybe worse.
“Okay, I won’t say a word. Listen, I gotta go,” she said, eyeing the clock, but planning to follow up as much as she could later.
“Thanks, Joanna. It’s just…really difficult for Lisa, and I don’t want her worrying more than she should. I can look out for her and the kids, and I don’t want you getting in the middle or getting hurt, too.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” she said with a smile, though something was off. First, Ben was speckled with scrapes and bruises from a fall he supposedly took while running, and now some thug stood in the parking lot of his business, giving Charlie a hard time. There was no overt reason to think the two incidents were connected, but could Ben or Charlie be covering something up? She needed time to do some digging and find out, but right now she had to go convince Ben that she didn’t know how to use a gun.
5
JOANNA WIPED HER HANDS ON HER jeans, as if nervous, as Ben explained the basics of gun safety: always treat the gun as though it was loaded, even if you knew it wasn’t. Always keep your finger off the trigger until you were ready to shoot. Don’t point the gun haphazardly, and always know what was behind what you were shooting at—bullets traveled for a while, and you never knew what they’d hit.
Straight to the Heart Page 6
