by Jill Shalvis
Or used to. “She has an elderly aunt living with her. I think Annie takes care of her. But there’s something going on, I can feel it.”
“So she thanked you for the phone? Told you all about whoever is after her?”
“She says no one is after her and that the crank call was just a mistake.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“No.”
Now his brother sighed again. “Can’t you stop being a DEA agent for a little while, at least until you heal?”
“I thought I could.” Ian let out a long breath. “But now I’m thinking no.”
“Ian—”
“Look, I’m still here, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s because you can’t.”
“So shut up and enjoy me.”
“Enjoy you.” Thomas laughed at that, then shook his head. “Because you’re such a peach, right?”
“You know it.”
“Mom would kill you, you know. If she could see what you’ve done to yourself.”
“Mom isn’t here.”
“Because you didn’t tell her you were shot. If she knew, she’d be on the next plane, and then she’d have you tied to your bed, force-feeding you homemade chicken soup until it came out your eyeballs.”
Ian expended the last little bit of energy he had to give his brother the evil eye. “If you call her, I’ll have to hurt you.”
“You and what army?”
“I mean it, Thomas.”
Thomas stretched out his long legs and put his hands behind his head in a picture of lazy negligence. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“Uh-oh.” Ian straightened for this, wincing in anticipation of pain at the movement. But the dizziness had passed. Miracle of miracles, it was even safe to breathe again. Still, he couldn’t have taken his brother down to safe his life, damn it. “No deals.”
“You try a little harder to relax and recoup, and I won’t bring in the big guns.”
“Mom.”
“Mom,” Thomas agreed.
“Listen, I didn’t go looking for this whole Annie thing, I didn’t—”
“Yes or no, Ian.”
Ian glared at him, but Thomas just glared right back.
Ian swore.
Thomas yawned.
“Damn it.” Ian shoved his fingers into his hair. “Define relax and recoup.”
Thomas smiled at the victory. “It means you do as the doctor said. No strenuous activity. No standing on that leg for more than a few minutes at a time. No rescuing fair maidens with errant cell phones. And no looking for trouble with every shift of the wind.”
Ian let out a disparaging breath. He’d never been idle a day in his life. The concept was foreign. “What can I do, then?”
“We had two new kids born yesterday. Goats,” he added with a laugh at Ian’s clueless expression. “Twins. Maybe you can keep your eye on them. They’re already trouble, fighting with each other, knocking around their mama, bullying Augustine.” Thomas rose. “The three of you should get along like kindred spirits.”
“Funny.”
“It’s not the end of the world, you know, relaxing for a few months.”
“One month.”
“You do realize most people would give just about anything for a month off.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ian watched his brother saunter off, smug and righteous. The jerk.
Sure, four weeks off sounded good in theory. But in reality…hell.
Pure hell.
CHAPTER FIVE
JENNY BOLER SAT IN HER Annie’s Garden’s office in New York City, surrounded by stacks of paperwork and ringing phones.
Normally she loved stacks of paperwork and ringing phones, as this symbolized how far they’d come.
And for a girl born in a trailer, the places Annie had taken her with Annie’s Garden were nothing short of amazing.
Past tense amazing, of course.
Oh, God. She sank her head into her hands and resisted the urge to scream. Where would it all lead? How could it ever work out? She had no idea, other than she had to spill her guts.
“My, my, you’re lost in thought.” Stella Oberman, head of Sunshine Enterprises, ruler of her own world, and all-round first-class bitch, entered the room as if she owned the place. In her mind, she probably already did.
Tossing a file onto Jenny’s desk, she smiled.
“What’s this?” Jenny asked guardedly.
“An offer for your shares of Annie’s Garden. A more than fair offer, I might add.”
Omigod, how had she known? “What?”
Stella lit a cigar and happily puffed. “I’m offering to make you rich again, cheri. All you have to do is sell me fifty percent of Annie’s Garden.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Right. So…you still dabbling in day trading?”
She knew. “There’s no smoking in here, damn it.” Jenny waved at the smoke and tried not to panic. “Who told you about the day trading?”
“You know this business is incestuous.” Stella grinned. “I’ve been plying your secretary with good booze on Friday nights at the clubs. She told me you’re so close to bankruptcy you can taste it. Does Annie know?”
“No, and it’s personal bankruptcy only,” Jenny corrected. “Annie’s Garden is fine.”
“Good. Ready to sell your shares?”
It would solve every single problem she’d ever had. Feeling a little sick, she flipped through the file and looked at the bottom line. All the zeroes at the end of the offer made her head swim. “Holy cow.”
Stella laughed. “Yes, I’ve been more than fair in my offer.”
“I could never sell out from Annie.”
“Hmm. So you’re going to ask her to buy you out and save your little tush?”
Jenny felt her resolve sag. She couldn’t tell Annie, not when Annie had made this place her entire life. It had been Annie who had brought Jenny in, it had been Annie who had dreamed the dream, believed in them, while Jenny had come along, always projecting doom and gloom.
Annie was her hero…. “No,” she whispered. “I’m not going to ask Annie to buy me out.”
“Okay, then.” Whirling, spilling oodles of elegance and style as she did, Stella moved to the door. “I’ll just let you think about it. Don’t think too long, though, as my offer will be reduced significantly each week. Ta-ta!”
Through the lingering cigar smoke, Jenny just stared down at the numbers.
The money was staggering.
If she sold, she’d never face poverty again. She could get back online and recoup the money she’d lost in the market. She could…
No. She couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She’d never do it, because that, combined with her other horrible secret, would destroy Annie.
And Jenny was just barely living with herself as it was.
* * *
THREE DAYS AFTER WHAT ANNIE had dubbed “the mud incident,” she stood in the pharmacy aisle of the Coopers’ General Store on Main Street, eyeing the products labeled “bathroom ailments.”
Aunt Gerdie had needed a few things, a constipation medicine topping her list, since she’d gotten carried away with eating peanuts the night before and now “needed a little help, if you know what I mean, honey.”
Annie knew what she meant, she just wished she didn’t. She’d have let Aunt Gerdie come by herself, but the last time Annie had sent her to the store unsupervised, Aunt Gerdie had come home with her purse full of things and no receipt.
She’d forgotten to pay.
This had happened several times before, and though Dr. Dorn assured Annie that her aunt didn’t have Alzheimer’s, Gerdie was starting to show signs of senility at a disturbing rate.
It scared Annie, scared her all the way to the bone. Aunt Gerdie was all Annie had in the way of real family. All she’d ever had.
After her father had walked out on them when she’d been a newborn, her mother had started leaving Annie with her Aunt Gerdie for long stretches of
time, long stretches that kept getting longer. When her mother had remarried, she’d never come back for her daughter again, instead creating a new family with two new daughters. Trish and Linda were only a few years younger than Annie, and she’d held out high hopes for being close to them for too many embarrassing years to count, years where her half sisters had continually gone out of their way to make her feel like a third wheel.
And she was a third wheel, at least in their world. An intruder.
Eventually she’d given up trying. Leaving her and Aunt Gerdie as their own little unit.
And yes, so maybe it’d been a little difficult lately, with Annie doing all of the supporting and caring for Aunt Gerdie, but she didn’t mind. Aunt Gerdie had once been the only one to be there for her, through thick and thin.
And if repaying that love meant shopping for Gerdie’s constipation issues, well then, that’s what she would do.
Standing there in the pharmacy, glancing between soft-gel pills and liquids, wondering which kind Aunt Gerdie wanted, her cell phone rang. As she had for four days, she carefully looked at the caller ID.
But this incoming call, while from New York, wasn’t cause for any concern. It was Quinn. Calling to remind her of his upcoming thirty-fifth birthday, and their subsequent promise? she wondered. Possibly, and yet the thought of marrying him right now brought varying degrees of dread. “Hey, Quinn.” She looked at the shelf in front of her. “Quick, left or right?”
“Left.” His laughing, easygoing voice always brought a smile, and now was no exception. “What did I win?”
Annie scooped up the box on the left of the shelf. The soft-gel pills. “You don’t want to know.” She tossed it into the cart. “How are you?”
“Just wanting to see if you’re tired of the country yet.”
Was that a hint? And if so, how to tell him the truth? That while she loved him as much as she’d ever loved anyone, picturing herself walking down the aisle toward him made her…itch. She’d never thought she’d say this, but she wanted to hold out for the real thing—the can’t-eat-can’t-sleep kind of love she’d only read about in fairy tales. “Nope. Not tired of it yet.”
“Amazing,” he said, like the true city rat he was. “Chance first showed you that place…when? Last fall? You moved so fast my head is still spinning.”
“I know, and I miss seeing you, but Quinn…I’m not coming back.”
“Wait until the frost gets to you.”
“It’s the first week in January. There’s plenty of frost. I’m still here.”
“Time will tell. So, you seeing a lot of Chance?”
Chance Maguire, the third musketeer from graduate school, had shocked them all when he’d reconnected with his first love in Cooper’s Corner, and just a week ago, he’d bitten the bullet and had married Maureen.
Annie was looking forward to spending more time with her old friend, and his family as well. “He’s still on his honeymoon, and judging by his grin as they left, I won’t be seeing him anytime soon.” Annie glanced down at Aunt Gerdie’s list. She needed a shower net for her hair—Aunt Gerdie had her hair done weekly at the salon in town, more for the gossip than anything else, but didn’t like to risk mussing it up between appointments. Also on the list…antacid tablets and a new pair of slippers, preferably pale pink terry-cloth slip-ons.
Annie grabbed the things off the shelves as she chatted with Quinn, relieved to realize he’d called simply to catch up. As they talked, she continued to toss things into her cart until she looked like a personal shopper for an entire senior citizen retirement home. Then, thanking Quinn for keeping her company on her shopping spree, she clicked off and pulled the cell away from her ear just as she turned the corner of the aisle, and…
Ran smack into tall, dark and sexy himself. Mr. Intensity. Her phone savior.
“Oof,” Ian said when the front of the cart hit him in the hip and leg, and he staggered back a step, dropping the book he held.
“Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry!” Horrified, Annie ran around the cart toward him. She put her hands on his upper arms, the tough, corded strength in them not giving an inch through his leather jacket as she squeezed. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
Since this was gritted out from between his teeth, she had to doubt it. “Let’s find a place to sit, and—”
“I’m. Fine.” He backed out of her grip and managed a smile, only named such because he bared his teeth. “You need a beeper warning on your cart.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Any more crank calls?”
Surprised at the quick subject change, not to mention the sincere concern in spite of his own obvious problems, she looked into his face. She’d wondered if she’d see him again, or even how long he was staying at his brother’s. She’d wondered a lot of things, such as how he’d gotten hurt, what he did for a living…if he kissed half as good as he looked.
At the thought, her gaze accidentally slid to his lips. Then when she realized what she was doing, she jerked it back to his eyes.
And there she saw a flash. A flicker of mirroring desire. A dark hunger he didn’t even try to hide.
Oh, boy. “No more crank calls,” she whispered. “No hang-ups, threats, anything?”
She recognized the hard set to his jaw and the lines compressing his mouth. It was the look she’d first seen on him when he’d been in fierce protector mode.
“Not a one.” She bent for the book he’d dropped, one of the latest gory mysteries from the front racks, and handed it up to him, noticing the sweat beaded on his forehead. She took in the white-knuckled grip he had on his cane. “You’re not fine.”
“No,” he conceded. “But it’s not your fault.”
“I plowed right into your leg!”
“Well, it hurt like hell before you did, so don’t worry about it.”
“What happened?”
“Long story.” He turned away. “Take it easy on the other customers, now.”
“But…” She watched him walk away, struck by the depth of her curiosity over a man she didn’t know the first thing about.
Other than he’d drop everything to help a perfect stranger.
Other than he had the most amazing, fathomless eyes the exact color of an expensive shot of whiskey, and that the craving in them stirred a hunger deep in her belly.
Other than that voice…oh, good Lord, the images that husky, slightly rough, deep voice brought to mind.
Quinn would laugh, then shake his head and remind her she needed to date once in a while. But Quinn was a playboy and dated women as a hobby. He loved them all and wasn’t particularly hard to please.
Jenny would laugh, too, because hard as she was to please, she dated as if dating was a sport. Not that she ever found anyone, not with her pessimism.
But Annie had always wanted more from a relationship than casual physical attraction and a general mistrust.
She was so deep in her thoughts as she got into line that it took her a moment to realize she stood directly behind Ian.
“Hi, sweetie,” Phyllis Cooper, owner of the store and today’s checkout clerk, waved to her. She looked over the items Annie set on the conveyor belt. “Aunt Gerdie, huh?”
There were no secrets in this town, not with Phyllis in charge. She knew everything there was to know about everyone. “Aunt Gerdie,” Annie said with a smile.
Ahead of her, Ian paid for his book, then glanced at the items rolling toward him. Fuzzy slippers. Constipation medicine…
His brow shot up.
“For Aunt Gerdie,” she repeated, feeling her face heat. “It’s raining outside and she doesn’t drive well with the slick roads—”
He lifted a hand, signaling she didn’t owe him any explanation.
They walked out of the store together, she with her bag of goodies and he with his book.
Silent, they stood under the protective awning and looked out into the parking lot, which had been turned into a lake from the downpour.
“You didn’t drive here by yourself….” She gestured to his leg.
“No. My brother went next door to get some feed, and I thought I’d get something to read tonight….”
For when he couldn’t sleep. He didn’t say it, he didn’t have to, she could see it in his tired eyes, the tightness of his mouth.
But what would keep such a man awake, a man so utterly in charge of his world, a man she imagined wouldn’t give a care what others thought of him?
She suddenly wished she knew.
She also wished she knew what was wrong with her. She wasn’t a woman easily drawn in by her hormones, and yet there was something about this man that seemed to make her want things she normally wouldn’t want.
“How far is your car?” He raised his voice to be heard over the driving, pounding rain.
“It’s right in front, right over—”
As she pointed to her reliable car right in the front row, right in front of them, in fact, the words backed up in her throat.
“Annie.”
Her name was clipped tightly from his throat, but her own throat felt a little tight, too.
“Tell me your car isn’t that white Lexus right in front of us,” he said. “The one with the two flat tires.”
“Okay. But it is.”
If she thought his mouth looked grim and tight before, it was nothing to how it looked now. “Did you run over glass?”
“No.”
“Did you hit something on the way over here?”
“No.”
He let out a particularly shocking oath, then bracing himself with his cane, headed out into the rain toward her car, with her right on his heels.
CHAPTER SIX
AT THE BACK OF ANNIE’S CAR, Ian stopped, leaned on the trunk with his free hand and carefully, carefully lowered himself down before her two extremely flat tires.
A slow whistle escaped him, his hair already plastered to his head from the rain, little droplets running down his jaw.
She took her eyes off the leg he was so clearly favoring and looked at the two flat tires. “Wonder how in the world I managed to pop them.”
“You didn’t.”
She shoved her wet hair from her eyes. “So…I guess they just…wore out?”
He ran his long finger over a gaping hole. “Try again.”
