Dealing with Annie

by Jill Shalvis

  But nothing else. Damn, he was hard off if he needed noise. How was he going to make it an entire month? He needed his work, needed it like most needed…well, air. Work defined him.

  Work fulfilled him.

  It was going to be a long thirty days.

  After a few more steps, he was shaking and ready to sit down, but he kept going, partly because all the doctors had said he wouldn’t be able to walk on his own for weeks, but mostly because he was stubborn and figured the more he walked, the faster he’d heal.

  At the end of the long, long driveway he came to the two mailboxes he’d noticed on the way in. One was labeled Thomas McCall, McCall’s Farm. The other mailbox was blank but clearly belonged to the driveway across the road. Because it curved immediately to the right, he couldn’t see the house that went with it, and he was craning his neck when the mailbox started to ring.

  And ring.

  Thomas looked around for the Candid Camera crew but saw no one. Utterly incapable of ignoring his own curiosity, he opened the mailbox and found a cell phone. A bright-pink-with-white-polka-dots cell phone.

  In a mailbox. In Nowhere, U.S.A.

  Ringing.

  Okay, now he’d seen it all. And because he still couldn’t help himself, he reached in. Pay phone, the readout said above the phone number, though the area code excited him.

  New York.

  Somebody was calling somebody from his favorite place in the world. He punched the answer button and lifted the phone to his ear. Beyond terrible static and scratchy white noise signaling a bad connection, he could hear only every few words, and what sounded like, “have to…or…die.”

  Ian blinked. “Hello?”

  More static.

  “Hello?” he said again. “Can you repeat that?”

  But the connection had broken. He stared at the phone in his fingers. What the hell had that been? He couldn’t have even said if the caller had been a man or a woman.

  And whose phone was it? The owner of the house he couldn’t yet see? Adrenaline ran through him, making him forget his own troubles for a moment. He couldn’t just put the phone back and go on his merry way. It was beyond him.

  Have to…or…die?

  Someone had just been threatened. Someone was in trouble. Someone didn’t even know it.

  His leg was killing him. So would Thomas when he found out Ian wasn’t exactly “relaxing.” Nope, he was off finding trouble, but hey, trouble was his middle name, right?

  He started up the stranger’s driveway, careful to keep away from the few ice patches here and there. Naturally it had to be longer, steeper than Thomas’s, and he nearly killed himself several times, but finally he took the last turn and came upon another farmhouse.

  This one was Victorian-style, yellow with white trim and a full wraparound porch. The place was neat and tidy as could be, with no rickety wood or broken shutters in sight. Lace curtains decorated the windows and there were lights strung in the trees, remnants from Christmas. There was an air of elegance and sophistication about the place that his brother’s lacked.

  Oh, and as a bonus, there was no potbellied pig guarding the driveway.

  He knocked on the front door but no one answered. The afternoon had turned bitter cold, and he could see his breath puffing in front of his face in little white clouds. Huffing. From a walk up a driveway, no less. How pathetic was that?

  Smoke rose from around the back, so when no one answered his second knock, Ian limped around the side of the house.

  From his tour, he could see the windows and siding were far fancier than Thomas’s, the yard more of a luxury garden than a working farm. Behind the big house he found a guest house, again well tended. There was an antique wheelbarrow amid a flower bed crusted with snow, and a row of wooden barrels he imagined would be filled with flowers in spring.

  Here was where the smoke rose from a chimney, and gritting his teeth over the few short, shallow stairs, he knocked on the door.

  It whipped open.

  “Aunt Gerdie, I’m so sorry, I lost track of the time—oh!”

  Before him stood a small pixie of a woman with dark hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, though much of it had escaped in long, curly strands, sticking in damp tendrils to her neck and shoulders. She had the lightest blue eyes he’d ever seen, which were wide open on him at the moment, and full, bare lips shaped into a surprised little O.

  And oddly enough, mud coated her entire face as if she were some sort of tribal initiate in a rite of passage.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MAYBE, IAN THOUGHT, HE’D walked right into the Twilight Zone. Maybe the meds he’d taken in the hospital had lingered in his brain, messing him up permanently.

  In any case, he and the woman wearing mud were staring at each other when the pink polka-dot phone went off again, ringing into the late afternoon from its perch in his pocket. Pulling it out, he held it up.

  She gasped.

  “Yours?” he guessed.

  “Why…yes. But how did you…” Taking it, she looked down at the number of the incoming call and brought it up to her ear. “Jenny, hi.” She stared at Ian some more. “I’ve got to call you back—Yes, the sponge has to be on top. I realize it’s cheaper your way, but the mirror will break in shipping. One hundred thousand of them, and I sincerely doubt Saks will thank us, or pay us, if they’re all in bits.”

  She wore a line of concentration through the mud on her forehead as she spoke, and her baggy jeans overalls were covered by a mud-splattered apron that seemed to match her face. “I really do have to call you back,” she said. “No, tell them we’ll be switching to synthetic materials over my dead body. Yes. Dead body. You got it.”

  “Dead body,” Ian repeated slowly when she clicked off and lowered the phone. “Just figurative, I’m assuming.”

  She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “Who are you and why did you have my cell phone?”

  For a woman whose hair had rioted and was wearing a whole hell of a lot of mud, she had attitude, he’d give her that. On the whole, women didn’t usually look at Ian as if he was pond scum. Usually they at least smiled, even melted, if he smiled back.

  And if they knew what he did for a living, and the element of danger his world contained…well, he’d long ago discovered that only upped his value. “I was walking by your mailbox and it started ringing.”

  “My mailbox—” She broke off with another frown, then startled him by bursting into laughter.

  The mud on her cheeks split with an audible cracking sound, and with a cry, she brought her hands up to her face. “Ouch. Damn it, ouch!” On the fair sliver of skin between mask and hairline, she went beet red. “I can’t believe I forgot I was wearing a mask.”

  Now he laughed, the sound nearly startling him as he hadn’t laughed much since getting shot. “How could you forget such a thing?”

  “Trust me, it happens.” She looked at her phone. “When I went for my mail earlier, I must have in return deposited what I was holding in my hand—the cell phone.”

  “Ah.” He smiled. “You’re an inefficient multitasker.”

  “Apparently. Anyway…” She backed up a step, her hand on the door. “Thanks for returning the phone, but if you’ll excuse me…” She gestured to her face with what he imagined would be a wry expression without the mud. “I need to—”

  She was shutting the door on him. Unbelievable. “But I didn’t tell you about the call you missed.”

  Her smile was polite and distant. She’d already dismissed him in her mind. He knew because he recognized the distracted expression, as it could have come from his own arsenal. “I’m sure I missed more than one,” she said.

  “This one sounded like a threat.”

  She hesitated, and he put a hand on the door to hold it open. “The connection was bad, and I couldn’t identify whether the voice was male or female. Also, I couldn’t hear all of the words, but I did hear, ‘Have to…or…die.”’

  She stared at him for anoth
er moment, then shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. It had to have been the bad connection, you must have heard wrong—”

  “Yes to the bad connection, but I know what I heard.”

  Just as he said it, the phone rang again. She looked at him, then down at the phone.

  “Who is it?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  Some of her toughness slid just a little, and Ian experienced the oddest thing. The usual urge to protect slid into a more possessive, personal need. “Let me get it for you.”

  “No.” Annie Hughes lifted her head and forced a smile. She might be small and unimposing, but she was a woman well used to taking care of herself, thank you very much.

  She turned from the door, and from the only man who’d caught her looking less than her best.

  Less than her best? Ha! She had the mud mask she’d just created all over her face, and was wearing baggy old overalls and a grungy apron. She looked worse than her worst, but she hadn’t cared because she’d been deep in creative mode. The house could have fallen around her and she’d not have noticed. “Annie Hughes,” she said into the phone.

  No response.

  “Hello?” Pulling the phone from her ear, she stared at it.

  “Another crank call?”

  She nearly jerked right out of her skin at the low, husky voice in her ear. He’d followed her down the hall, and now stood directly behind her. Forcing herself to relax, she continued to stare down at the phone and let out a slow, calming breath.

  “Was it?” her tall, edgy and rather amazing-looking stranger asked.

  She was going to have to face him again, before she got to a sink. Slowly she turned. He wore mirrored Oakley sunglasses, a grim expression, and appeared to be in his early thirties. His hair had every hue of brown, red and gold under the sun, reminding her of a wild buck’s coat. He had on faded jeans, boots and a scuffed leather jacket over an untucked white thermal shirt. And he leaned that long, tough body on a cane. Interesting. Sexy, too, but she had no idea who he was. And he was standing inside her workshop.

  “Did you get another threat?” he asked.

  She stayed still, registering the low, silky voice, the lean jaw covered with at least a day’s growth of beard, the strong shoulders…and felt her own vulnerability. “It was a hang up.”

  He shoved the sunglasses on top of his head and looked at her with eyes the exact color of his hair. “Let me see the caller ID.”

  “I don’t recognize the number.” She didn’t know this guy from Adam. She might live in the country now, but her big-city caution hadn’t left. She’d moved to Cooper’s Corner less than a month ago, but she’d been coming back and forth since last fall. It was a small town, a cozy town. Already she’d learned everyone knew everyone, if not firsthand, then through the local chatter or small weekly newspaper. She’d met everyone at Twin Oaks, Cooper’s Corner’s bed-and-breakfast, about a mile or so away, which was run by a lovely woman named Maureen Cooper and her new husband, Chance Maguire, who Annie had gone to college with at Harvard.

  In the past few weeks, she’d also gotten close to Philo and Phyllis Cooper, the owners of Cooper’s Corner General Store. They always had a smile, and usually more gossip than supplies, and that was not an understatement. Their daughter, Bonnie, the town plumber, had become extremely important to Annie as well, since the plumbing in her house had needed plenty of work.

  Then there was Dr. Felix Dorn, the one and only doctor in town, who she’d met thanks to a bout with some nasty flu right after moving in. He’d made a house call for her, and then had refused to let her pay extra.

  The people here were just so friendly, and after New York, she never wanted to leave again. There were others in town she’d met here and there, as there were often parties and get-togethers with an open invitation for the entire town. She’d enjoyed every one that she’d gone to.

  So she knew for a fact she’d never seen her stranger in town before. The tall, rangy, leanly muscled man wasn’t someone she’d forget. “Again, thanks for returning my phone. I really appreciate it, but—”

  “The brush-off.” He shook his head and spoke to himself with surprise. “I’m getting the brush-off.”

  “It’s just that I’m really busy with my work…” And the mud on her face…

  “Just check the number again,” he insisted. “Tell me you know the person, that they’re fond of jokes, that the call is not from a payphone in New York, and I’ll be on my merry way.”

  Clearly, he wasn’t budging until she gave him what he wanted. And since she desperately wanted him to leave so she could die of mortification in peace, she caved. She checked the call. “A New York pay phone. Could be anyone.”

  He limped a step closer. “Check and see if you missed any other calls.”

  She was already in the act of doing so, but at his bossy tone, she shot him a look. She was used to being in charge, had been in charge all her life, and she’d just about had it with him, no matter how attractive he was.

  Clearly unconcerned with his domineering attitude, he just looked at her right back. He ripped the sunglasses off the top of his head, shoving his other hand through his short hair, an agitated gesture that left it spiked straight up. Instead of making him look ridiculous, it only intensified his…intensity.

  Mud, she reminded herself. You have mud all over your face as you stare at him. “No other calls. So I’m sure they’ve just got the wrong number.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, but again, thanks for returning the phone.” Annie looked pointedly toward the door, silently inviting him to go.

  Naturally he didn’t take the hint. She was beginning to think nothing short of blunt rudeness would get rid of him. “Look, I’m swamped, and—” And without any warning, the mud of her face began to burn. “Uh-oh. Not good.” She moved farther into the large room she’d turned into a workshop for Annie’s Garden. She’d begun the natural cosmetic company right in her college dorm, all while working crazy hours to earn her tuition and study business. Late at night she’d created products in her tiny hole of a bathroom—lotions, lip glosses, you name it, she’d made it, driven by a constant need to succeed, a need to guarantee a future for herself.

  She’d fed that need since she’d been old enough to spell the word future. And she didn’t need a therapist to tell her she was simply reacting to her inner child, a child who’d never felt particularly secure or safe. A child whose father had walked away from her, whose mother had started another family without her…

  Ouch. She shut the mental door on her pity party and headed directly to the back of the large, open room, where the two workbenches met at a large sink. She had to move aside a plastic tub of cucumber-melon mixture she’d been working on for a body lotion, and two bins of various powders, sparkles and brushes. Cranking on the warm water, she dunked her head and began to scrub at her face, which most definitely was still burning. It must have been the cinnamon she’d used as a scent, and she’d been so certain she’d nailed the recipe this time. Still scrubbing, she went over the ingredients one by one in her head, and had already reformulated the recipe by the time she turned off the water.

  This is where Jenny, her partner, the number cruncher, the “Eeyore” of Annie’s Garden, would remind her that if they used synthetic ingredients in their products, testing and research might not be such a huge undertaking.

  But she’d based Annie’s Garden on natural products only. It was her hook, her edge, and in today’s stiffly competitive world, she intended to keep it.

  Besides, if Annie gave in on this, Jenny would only find something else to obsess and worry over.

  “Better?”

  At the sound of his voice, again practically in her ear, she jerked upright and smacked her head on the cabinet above the sink.

  Biting back the oath on the tip of her tongue, she kept her eyes closed as she let out a careful breath and reached for a towel.

  It was handed to her.
/>   “Thanks.” She took it, buried her face in it, not particularly eager to present him with what she was sure to be a pink, shiny, makeup-free face. She took her time drying herself off, hoping by some miracle he’d have vanished by the time she was through, and lifted her head.

  “Why don’t we call that number and see who answers?” he suggested.

  Nope, he wasn’t going to vanish. She lowered the towel. “Honestly? Because I’m far more concerned with the stranger standing in my lab than some wrong number from a pay phone.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HIS EYES WIDENED, AND HE actually looked behind him. “Me?”

  “You,” she confirmed, and tossed the towel aside.

  At that, he did something shocking. He smiled, and oh, baby, it was a humdinger, transforming his face into serious, drop-dead gorgeous.

  “You’re right,” he said, still smiling. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Ian McCall. Thomas McCall’s brother.”

  “Uh…who?”

  “The farm next door? McCall’s Farm?” He let out a low laugh. “I take it you don’t know my brother.”

  “I’ve seen him, but we haven’t actually met. I’ve only been here a month or so, and I’ve been swamped in work.” She paused for effect. “I’m still swamped.”

  Again, he didn’t take the hint, big surprise. “You didn’t tell me who you are.”

  “Annie.”

  “Annie…”

  Why was it that on his tongue her name sounded… sensuous. “Annie Hughes.”

  “So what’s all this, Annie Hughes?” He gestured to the various pots, cylinders, cutting boards and the basket of fresh fruit that had tipped over, spilling apples, oranges and grapefruit. Grabbing a shiny red apple, he wiped it on his chest and sunk strong white teeth into it.

  She snatched it out of his hand. “That’s my work you’re eating.”

  “Work?”

  “I research and develop all the products for Annie’s Garden.”

  “Annie’s Garden…?”

  “We create women’s products, makeup, lotions—” She broke off as he lifted a palette she’d been working on earlier. It was covered in different color samples—corals, peach, rose…the whole gamut. She’d circled a new pale peach as her favorite.