by Jill Shalvis
“Because the air is crackling?”
“No.” But she had to laugh. “Because you’ve been demanding a lot of answers about me and my life, without giving me anything back.”
He looked at her, then away. “Yeah.”
The only reason she put up with any of it, besides the odd and inexplicable attraction between them, was that he clearly was a cop or an investigator or some such thing, and invoked a sense of trust in her that she didn’t wholly understand.
“Would you believe I’m just a concerned citizen?” he finally asked.
“No. Go away. I need to think.” She practically shoved him over the threshold.
“My dear,” Aunt Gerdie whispered. “That man is quite magnificent.”
Annie thought of how she’d nearly come undone from a touch of his finger, and had to fan cool air near her burning face. “I think you’re right.”
Aunt Gerdie smiled. “Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”
* * *
WHEN THE PHONE RANG at seven o’clock that night, Annie braced herself. It’d been an interesting day, a tough day, and she wasn’t ready to handle anything else. “Hello?”
“Hey. It’s Jenny. I’m still at the office.”
Oh, boy, definitely not good. Jenny worked late often, but refused to deal with the phone after hours. That she was on it now couldn’t be good. “Do I need to sit down?”
“Up to you.” Her partner sighed. “You made the tabloids again.”
“Me, or Annie’s Garden?”
“Both.” Jenny’s voice was unusually solemn.
“Well, just give it to me.”
“Okay, here it is. ‘Annie Hughes, queen of all organic things powder and gloss, confesses she wouldn’t be caught dead using her own products.’
Annie backed to the couch in her living room and sank down on it. Outside was a beautiful New England night. The high moon set an unearthly glow to the wide, open rolling hills. “What else?”
“Just that an unnamed competitor says that she’s not surprised at your antics.”
“What?”
“It says ‘Annie’s Garden’s products are greasy, ineffective and’—I quote here—‘stinky.”’
Annie felt a headache coming on.
“It also goes on to suggest that you don’t really know what you’re doing, that you regularly contact another company’s scientists for their secrets.”
“Stella.”
“Probably,” Jenny agreed. “She’s rather fond of dirty campaigning.”
“She must be behind the scare tactics here, as well.”
“What scare tactics?”
The last thing Annie needed was Jenny panicking over her problems here. “Nothing.”
“Annie? What scare tactics?”
“It’s nothing.” Liar, liar. “And anyway, Stella’s company is ten times the size of ours. Why does she care what we’re up to? They’ve been established for nearly seventy years.” Annie shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nothing about Stella makes sense. Annie…”
She braced herself for more questions she didn’t want to answer.
“We’re actually in a great position at the moment. Strong and stable… But we both know we can’t compete with Stella where we’re at. We’re too big to be small, too small to be big. I think it’s time to make some changes.”
“Such as?”
“Such as…I don’t know…maybe retire?”
“What?”
“Yeah, we could sell our shares. Go sit on a beach for the rest of our lives.”
“I don’t want to sit on a beach.” It was so crazy, Annie laughed.
Jenny didn’t.
“Okay, what’s really up?”
“It’s nothing. I was pretty sure you weren’t interested in selling, just thought I’d check. Maybe we could just cut costs, and then take the difference in big bonuses. Say buy more inventory when the price is down, warehouse it for when we need it, stuff like that.”
“You know we can’t do that with natural products,” Annie protested. “They go bad.”
“I’m not talking about natural products.”
“Jenny, we can do this our way. We don’t have
to give in like our competitors and use synthetic products.”
“It’s not about giving in. I’m talking about money.”
“But we have enough money.” Jenny was silent.
“Jenny?”
“Right. Look, just think about it, okay? I have a supplier lined up, and we could save incredible amounts by simply making some basic ingredient changes.”
“Jenny, you’re scaring me. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Of course.”
“Because if you’re not—”
“You know what? Do me a favor, and forget we had this conversation. It’s just me being me. Eeyore. ’Kay?”
“’Kay.”
But long after they hung up, Annie couldn’t shake it off. Something was up with Jenny…she just didn’t know what it could be.
* * *
JENNY COULDN’T SHAKE THE conversation off, either. She hung up the phone and for a long moment just stared at it, her heart heavy.
She hadn’t confessed anything—not that she needed to sell her shares, and not the bigger, badder secret.
God, she hated herself for that.
Cigar smoke drifted past her nose, making her cough. “I’ve told you,” she said. “This is a nonsmoking building.”
“Oops.” The cigar was extinguished. “You did good, by the way.”
Jenny waved her hand through the air, trying to clear it so she could breathe. Or maybe it was what she’d done to Annie that made it so she couldn’t breathe.
“When is she coming into town?”
Jenny closed her eyes. “She didn’t say.”
“I can hear you worrying from here. Stop it.”
How, when her heart just plain hurt? “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll stop it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE NEXT MORNING, Thomas leaned against the cabinet, sipping from a steaming mug of coffee, watching Ian limp back and forth across the kitchen floor. “Are you going to pace around all morning?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I’ve got better uses for that energy. I could use some help outside.”
Ian shot him a long look. “It’s not even six o’clock in the morning.”
“We start early around here.”
“That’s criminal.”
“If it’s so criminal, why are you up?”
“Because you have a rooster out there that I’m going to hand his own neck to.” Ian poured himself a scalding mug of black coffee and rubbed his leg. “How in the world do you stand his going off like that at four in the morning?”
“He’s my alarm clock.”
“He’s going to be your dinner.”
Thomas laughed and topped off his mug. “Are you going to stay off your leg today?”
“No.”
“Then you might as well come with me.”
“Yeah. What the hell.”
Ian spent the next few hours marveling over his brother’s existence. They fed animals, checked in a few fields for some errant cattle, fixed a downed fence, and helped a lost calf find its mother.
Or rather Thomas fed animals, checked in a few fields for errant cattle and fixed a downed fence, while Ian mostly watched from his perch on the tractor.
Being injured had its benefits. “There’s an awful lot of open space out here,” he noted.
Thomas shook his head. “What is it with you and open space?”
“I don’t know. It’s…quiet, I guess. Too quiet.”
“Quiet is a good thing. Hey, you know what would be funny? If by the time you go back to New York, you’re so used to the quiet, you can’t handle the noise. You’ll be running back here to stay.”
“Yeah, that’d be ever so funny.”
Despite all the rain, snow still lay in
the fields and blocked one of Thomas’s sheds, and thanks to the icy downpour, the snow had become as heavy as wet cement.
“Different from your usual workday, huh?” Thomas shouted over the noise of the snow blower he was using to clear the shed.
“You could say that.” Ian wondered how things were back at work. The promised flowers had never arrived, not that he’d expected or even wanted a bunch of damn flowers.
Still, he had to admit to some anxiety about getting back. He wanted to find Tony Picatta. And he would find him, if he died trying. Yesterday he’d called Steve Daniels, but he hadn’t been on duty. He was off to take care of his sick brother.
Ian didn’t know much about Steve’s family, mostly because Steve wasn’t close to them. His parents lived in Montana somewhere, and the brother… Ian tried to remember what he knew but could only recall he was a bad seed. Ian had then tried Steve at home, twice, but Steve hadn’t returned his calls.
Now he watched Thomas drag a dead tree out of a field. They also shoveled their way to another shed, again with Ian in the supervisory role, and just when Ian’s stomach really started to growl, telling him it was his usual ten o’clock stuff-a-doughnut-down-his-face time, he caught a glimpse of a woman off in the distance on the main road, running directly toward them.
He recognized her long, dark curly hair, though it was pulled back in a ponytail. Recognized as well that petite yet curvy body, even though he’d never had the pleasure of seeing it in a snug bodysuit before. His every instinct on alert, he stood.
At his sudden movement, Thomas glanced in the same direction. Ian shielded his eyes from the early sun, trying to figure out what she was running from, and how best to help her when he himself couldn’t run.
“Before you go racing off on your white horse, big guy,” Thomas said, “you might want to take into consideration she’s merely out for her morning jog.”
Ian glanced over at his brother and took in his mocking voice. “Jogging?”
“For pleasure. Not from any thug. You do see people jogging in New York, right?”
“Shut up.”
Thomas laughed. “You’re such an idiot.”
“I’m not making this shit up because I’m bored, you know.”
When Thomas merely lifted a brow, Ian swore again. “Look, she’s in trouble. I know it.”
“Officer Hunter didn’t think so, and neither does she.”
“Explain the slashed tires.”
“Hunter said two other cars in town had the same problem yesterday. A stupid prank. Ian, we’re in the country here, not the wild urban city. Yes, we’ve had bad things happen occasionally—” The most recent bad thing being when Maureen Cooper’s twins had been kidnapped, but that had followed her from her previous city life, and everything had turned out okay, with the girls returned safely. “In general, this town is quiet. Safe.”
Ian watched Annie come closer. He wondered if she’d stop, say hello. Maybe give him some sort of sign on how she felt about the way they’d left things yesterday.
Yesterday when they’d nearly kissed.
He had no idea what he expected her to do. Grab him, throw herself at him? Yeah, that would work. That would work really well.
She was still a good fifty yards off, but even at that distance, and because of their location between the house and the road, he could admire her hot, tight little bod. Especially at that distance, because then he couldn’t see deep into her expressive eyes, but could instead concentrate on the superficial, as if they’d met late one night in a bar, both looking for the same thing.
She came closer, then closer still, only fifty feet now, so that he could just make out her sweet, concentrated expression and he realized a woman like Annie would never be looking for the same thing as he.
And he would never be looking for the same thing as she.
Granted, he loved women. He loved their scent, their softness, their everything, and he wasn’t discriminating. He loved them in all shapes and sizes—contrary to Thomas’s claims.
But he didn’t love intimacy. Didn’t want to do all the things his past girlfriends had wanted him to do. He and Lila had only dated for a month or so, and she’d already been picking out their china and towel sets.
That had done him in. She didn’t want to stay relegated to the little spot he’d set aside in his life for “recreation only.”
Women seemed to be able to sniff that out pretty quickly in a man. Lila had only been the latest in a string of women to resent that he didn’t want to cuddle, didn’t want to whisper in the deep of the night about hopes and dreams. He didn’t want to talk color schemes. And he especially didn’t want to pick out china and towels.
He knew the exact moment Annie caught sight of him. Her head came up, and their gazes connected.
Held, while time stopped.
Lifting a hand, she waved at him, then added a little smile that did something funny to his insides.
“You going to wave back or just stare at her?” Thomas asked.
Ian muttered a low, obnoxious suggestion, then raised a hand. But he didn’t smile, he couldn’t find one in the strange need and a whole host of other stuff all jumbling up in his belly. He watched as Annie finally passed them, about fifteen yards out on the main road now.
One last time, she glanced back, waved again.
Thomas waved back.
Ian just looked at her. Hungrily. Moodily.
“You’re so friendly it’s shocking.” Thomas looked disgusted. “And you claim to be a ladies’ man.”
“Yeah.” Ian was sidetracked with the delectable view of her backside as she jogged off. Definitely the view of the day. Of the century. Or it would be if he could just concentrate on her lush body instead of her trouble. “Think she’ll call for a ride to get her car?”
Thomas started for the house. “If she wants a ride, she’ll call.”
Ian followed, carefully limping over the uneven terrain, hoping a meal, a big one, was in their near future.
Thankfully, once inside, Thomas headed straight toward the refrigerator. They sat at the table and shoveled food into their mouths in comfortable silence.
Until Thomas said, “I’m thinking about expanding.”
“What, you going to buy another potbellied pig?”
Thomas grinned. “Admit it, you like Augustine.”
“I’m terrified of Augustine.”
“I’m thinking spring will be a good time. More cattle. Another barn. I could really use an extra hand.”
Ian went still. “I’m going back to work in a matter of three short, little weeks.”
“You can hardly bear weight on your leg without your cane.”
“That’s what happens when a bullet rams through it.”
“Really? Because I was thinking you watched me sweat all morning from your perch on the tractor just to drive me crazy.”
“I was.”
Thomas sighed. “All I’m just saying is, it might take longer than you want to heal.”
“No,” Ian said firmly. “It won’t.”
“Ian—”
“I’m going back to the job, Thomas. It’s…” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s who I am.”
“No. You’re Ian McCall. Younger brother. Son. Friend.”
“DEA agent.”
“Why does your work have to define you?” Thomas demanded. “Why can’t the people in your life define you? Be enough for you?”
Ian heard the hurt but didn’t know how to ease it. “Look, I’m different from you and Mom and Dad.”
“Yeah, you’re bullheaded and an ass more than half the time. But you’re still family. You still show up for holiday dinners and the occasional vacation.”
“Because Mom would come get me if I didn’t. But you’re not listening. You guys…you care about everything so much. Life is just a bowl of cherries from your points of view, and I…I don’t see it that way.”
“You care, too,” Thomas said. “You care more than any of us. It’s
why you do what you do. It’s why you chase down the scum of the earth. You’re just afraid to put it out there and admit it.”
“Don’t make me into something I’m not.”
“Whatever.” Thomas blew out a rough breath. “What you do terrifies me, did you know that? It terrifies me how much of yourself you give, how close you came to dying. It could happen again, any single day, and for what? To get some asshole drug pusher?”
Ian opened his mouth to reply, but the phone rang. “It’s her,” he said, pushing away from the table before remembering that it hurt like hell to stand. “Damn,” he gasped, but still got to the phone before Thomas did. “Annie.”
A startled pause greeted him. “Ian?”
He turned his back on an annoyed Thomas, elbowing him in the gut when he tried to take the phone.
“Oof,” Thomas said.
“You okay?” Ian demanded of Annie.
“Yes, I just wanted to tell your brother my car was ready. He offered to drive me into town—”
“I’ll be right there.”
“You can drive?”
Maybe not yesterday, but he sure as hell was going to give it a try today. “Anything else happen since yesterday?”
She let out a low, rueful laugh that hitched at him. “No more tire slashing, I can tell you that.”
He heard a lot more in her voice, and strained his ear as if he could hear all she wasn’t saying. “I’ll be right there,” he repeated softly. Hanging up, he turned to find Thomas so close he was breathing in his face. “What?”
“You’re a goddamn workaholic, you know that?”
“Big deal.”
“Yeah. It is.” He held out his hand. “Fork it over. Your gun.”
“What?” Ian laughed and tried to brush past Thomas, but his brother was standing firm.
“Fork it over,” Thomas repeated. “So I know this is about the woman, not work.”
“Move out of my way.”
Thomas just lifted a brow.
Thomas might be thinner, and at six foot, at least two inches shorter than his brother, but he’d always been able to hold his own against Ian.
Especially now.
Ian eyed the determination in his brother’s eyes. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not going to fight you.”
