“Whoa, counselor.” Cam’s hands came up in self-defense. “I didn’t say I was charging him with anything. I merely stated that he has a record, and he brought the box to you. I have to look into it. And as far as the legal records are concerned, his charges are gone. I happen to be more thorough than simply checking what’s easily available.”
That surprised her. “You’re a hacker?”
The big blond deputy gave her a thumbs-up. “Hacker, profiler, former FBI agent, now small-town deputy.”
She wouldn’t have pegged him as FBI. He was too laid back, too, well, happy. “I still don’t think it was him.”
Nate started toward the door. “I don’t think so, either, but I’ll look into it. And you seem damn ready to defend him. You two got something going on?”
Nope. Just a whole lot of hot thoughts that she had no intention of acting on. “No.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Because if you do have something going on, I think you should tell him about this before he finds out on his own. I’ll keep it quiet for now, but these things have a way of coming out. Men around here don’t like it when their women hide things.”
Gemma rolled her eyes. “I am not his woman. Come on, Sheriff. What century do you think we’re in? Even if we were dating, this would be my problem and I would want to keep it private.”
“Have it your way. I’ll ask him about it, but I won’t let on.” Nate turned, gesturing for Cam to come with him. “’Night, ma’am.”
Cam slapped his boss on the back. “She’s going to get spanked. I heard Jesse was the type.”
Naomi shook her head. “Damn, the men here are fine. And you might get spanked, lucky girl. But seriously, think about this. You don’t know that man. Jesse McCann might look nice, but looks aren’t everything. The sweetest-faced man can turn on you in a heartbeat. Be careful, okay? I’m going to go back out there or your momma is going to start asking questions. Lock your doors. Better yet, come stay with us.”
She wasn’t going to be run out of her rented, temporary home. “I’ll be fine. I don’t have my gun back, but I have a whole purse full of other weapons. This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to scare me. It won’t be the last. Now go on. My cell is charged, and the sheriff and the deputy live right down the road. I’m fine.”
Naomi hugged her and left.
But she wasn’t fine. She was scared, but she was also alone so she had to hold it together.
She fell asleep wondering if Jesse had a dark side. Or if Cade was the type of man to send a woman a message to stay away.
Chapter Four
Gemma stared at the red-haired doctor as he examined her gift from the previous day. She stood in the Bliss Clinic’s version of a lab. It wasn’t much more than a converted storage room, but the equipment Dr. Caleb Burke was working with looked pretty top of the line. He stared into a microscope at a piece of tissue he’d taken from the heart.
All in all, not the way she’d thought she would spend her first day on the job.
“We had a nurse look at it last night.” Nate leaned against the countertop next to a container marked EBOLA CURE. “Naomi happened to be there. She thinks it’s not human.”
Should they be standing so close to anything called Ebola? “Uhm, I didn’t know there was an actual cure for that.”
Caleb’s head came up and he glanced her way before shrugging and going back to his microscope. “It’s SweeTarts. Cassidy Meyer likes them. When I tried to give her mints she wouldn’t take them. Apparently the flavor winter green is an alien trap. Now when she gets the Ebola, as she puts it, it’s SweeTarts for the win.”
Gemma looked at Nate. “Someone in town has hemorrhagic fever?”
Shouldn’t they be more worried? She got that this was a laid-back place, but damn.
Nate waved it off. “Cassidy’s always got something. She’s a character, as we like to say here in Bliss. Doc always checks her out and then gives her something to calm her down.”
“So she’s crazy.”
Doc’s head was back up, a glare in his eyes. “You want to define crazy for me? Because I’ve discovered we’re all crazy in our own way. I can give Cassidy candy when she has an episode or she’ll get a bunch of drugs that won’t change the fact that she’s simply different from the rest of us. She’s happy and she’s healthy, and who cares if she’s also a hypochondriac.”
Doc could go cold when he wanted to. She held her hands up, giving up that fight. “It’s cool with me if she wants to pretend to have a bunch of diseases. I have told many a guy I had explosive diarrhea to get out of a bad date.”
Nate snorted. “So what do you think, Doc? Was the nurse right?”
“It’s definitely a cadaver heart. I would say swine. It’s something you could pick up from a medical supplier if you had the right contacts, and those wouldn’t be hard to find. All you need is some cash.” He turned to her. “The good news is the pig was already dead. The bad news is someone is trying to send you a message, and not a good one. Usually when you get a body part of any kind sent to you anonymously it means you’ve pissed someone off,” the doc said.
“Had a lot of experience with it, huh?” She had to ask the question even though her brain was running about a hundred miles a minute. It had been going all night.
“Absolutely,” the doc agreed. “Though mostly it was bodily excretions.”
“He’s been sent a lot of shit through the mail,” Nate explained. “But that was back when he was a complete asshole.”
“Nah, someone left a big load on the doorstep of the clinic a couple of days ago. Pretty sure it was Max because his yearly physical was last week.” Doc shrugged. “I will admit to being overly thorough with him. If anyone deserves an embarrassing rectal exam, it’s Max. After all, he’s ninety percent asshole.”
Nate snorted at that. “Well, I don’t think anyone would disagree with you, and we all know Quigley can drop a deuce. But none of that solves the problem of my brand-new office manager’s stalker.”
She sighed. “We don’t know it’s a stalker.”
“You think someone who likes you sent you a heart?” Doc pointed to the Ebola cure box. “You need a SweeTart?”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. It’s someone who’s unhappy with me. That could be a whole lot of people. I was a lawyer in New York City. Everyone hates me.”
“I’m going to need you to be more specific,” Nate insisted.
“Who would send you a heart?” Doc asked.
A crazy person. Only a crazy person would send a damn heart. Or someone who had a very specific point to make.
Nate seemed to catch on to what Doc was saying. “Did you work any cases involving medicine? You were a litigator. You sued people or defended companies who were being sued. Some of them had to involve pharmaceuticals, right?”
“Several.” She’d made a list the night before. “I can probably give you the names of half a dozen people who wouldn’t mind scaring the shit out of me, but there’s only one who actively stated he would find a way to kill me.”
A single brow rose over Nate’s eyes, and she was certain he was perfecting that “dumbass said what” look he would use later on his boys. “You didn’t think to mention this until now?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
Doc pointed her way. “I get her. So tell me about this nurse because I could use a nurse. I don’t know why I’m having trouble finding one.”
Probably because they walked in and saw that he had developed a cure for Ebola that he kept in a plastic cereal container. Still, she wasn’t sure Naomi would want to go back to Chicago. “You should ask her. Mom’s getting better every day. She won’t need her full time soon. But she’s going to need benefits if she has to put up with your sarcasm.”
“I would think she’s used to it. You’ve been around her for months, right?” Doc challenged.
It was fair. “But she would also have to deal with that Mel guy,
right?”
The negotiations had begun.
Nate stepped between them. “Hey, could we figure out who’s trying to murder my admin before we deal with Caleb’s staffing issues?”
“Says the guy who actually has an admin,” Caleb pointed out. “Fine. But I’m going to talk to her.”
He stepped out of the room, leaving her alone with her new boss.
“I’d like a list of names,” Nate said.
She’d already made one. She’d sat up the night before and written down what she could remember about all the cases she’d worked on. Only one stood out. “I worked on a case when I was a first-year associate. This dude claimed he’d invented some new material that they were using in heart valves. A major medical company said it was their intellectual property and they didn’t owe him anything.”
“I take it you worked for the company.”
“That’s me. Always on the side of evil. You know evil needs a lawyer, too,” she said. “Anyway, I might or might not have found a teeny tiny loophole in the contract that the firm might or might not have used to ensure the dude who probably developed the material in question didn’t get a dime off of his hard work.”
Nate stared at her. “Might have?”
“It was a job. I was good at it.” She wasn’t going to apologize. Even if she kind of felt bad about it now. “I don’t remember his name, but he figured out I was the one who found the loophole and he sent some nasty notes.”
“What do you mean by nasty?”
“The usual. I’m going to kill you. Blah. Blah, blah. You’re going to burn in hell. Yadda, yadda. That kind of stuff,” she admitted.
Nate sighed. “We’re going to have to work on the fact that you’re good at burying the lead. I’ll need that list and everything you can remember about the case.”
“Sure. I’ll make a project of it.” She looked at the sheriff. “Still happy you blackmailed me? You know karma’s a bitch, right?”
A smile tugged the sheriff’s lips up. “Somehow I think you’ll be worth it.”
That surprised her. “What makes you think that? I really did help a firm screw that guy out of his own work. I wasn’t joking about that. It was my job to find the absolute best outcome for my client.”
“And what happens when you start to view my office and this town as your client?” Nate mused. “You see, this town works on you. I should know since I wanted to leave it once. I thought for sure I didn’t fit in here, but Bliss…well, this town finds a way to change a person.”
“I don’t change easily.” She didn’t want him to think she would be some softie after a few weeks of clean mountain air and sunshine. “I’m going to work for you while I find a way back to my life. My real life.”
“I’ll take that bet.” Nate settled the Stetson on his head. “Let’s head back to the office. I’m ready for a nap.”
She bet he was. The place was weird, and she didn’t understand these people.
Still, she grabbed some Ebola cure before she went because Cassidy was right. SweeTarts were delicious.
* * * *
Jesse glanced inside the window of the Sheriff’s Department and caught sight of Gemma frowning at a filing cabinet. She was dressed in slacks and a blouse that had likely cost more than he made the previous week. She bit that sexy as hell bottom lip of hers and then shook her head as though giving up.
“You going in?” Cameron Briggs walked up the sidewalk, passing him on the stairs that led to the outer door. “Is Long Haired Roger having problems?” He looked inside, his hand on the door. “Ah, it’s Gemma that brings you out today.”
“How’s she settling in?” He’d given her a day to think about whether or not she wanted to see him. He was planning on getting to know her this week, letting her see how he liked to treat the women he dated without scaring her off. He wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to fuck around on the weekends and not see his lover outside the bedroom. He wanted to know her, to be a part of her life.
But only if she wanted the same thing, too.
Cam grinned. “She’s awesome. I mean Hope was great. She was, but she was also super nice and that doesn’t always work in law enforcement. I always worried about leaving Hope alone when we had someone locked up because she could be taken advantage of. Not Gemma. She could be a cop.”
“You leave her alone with criminals?” He didn’t like the sound of that.
“They are locked up and with Gemma around, they’re going to stay that way. Hope and Callie were suckers for a hard luck story, but Gemma ignores the crying like a pro.” Cam sighed, a contented sound. “She actually got a guy to confess on her first day. I don’t think he actually did the crime, but she had him ready to confess to anything. She’s awesome.”
Well, at least she seemed to have found her place at work. “I like her, too.”
“Then why are you standing out here instead of going inside?” Cam asked.
Because he wasn’t sure he should go inside. “She’s been through a lot. I don’t know that she’s ready to date again. I know Cade’s not ready, but I’m not sure he ever will be. Did you ever think about what you would have done if Rafe hadn’t been ready to share Laura?”
Cam’s hand came off the door and he stepped down to Jesse’s level. “We fought in the beginning, you know. We didn’t get together here in Bliss like some of the others so the idea of sharing her at all was foreign. It cost us years. It wasn’t until we came here that we realized it was a real possibility.”
“Cade’s never minded sharing a woman,” Jesse said, a bit wistful. He’d known what he’d wanted for years. “I always thought when it was time to settle down, we would find a woman and start a family. Turns out Cade never had that plan.”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say about the best laid plans. They often go astray and there’s usually a gorgeous woman involved. If Rafe hadn’t been ready, I would have gone after Laura myself,” Cam admitted. “At some point, you have to put her first. If you want to try with her, then make the decision that even if Cade’s not interested, you’re still going to go for it. It can’t work any other way.”
“I feel something for her I haven’t felt…well, I’ve never felt it.” Their chemistry was off the charts and he couldn’t help but explore it. With or without his best friend. “I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t try to figure out if we could work.”
“Then you should start by walking in there.” Cam hopped up and opened the outer door.
There was a knot in his gut that Cade wasn’t with him, but he had to try. Up ahead, Gemma had a huge stack of folders on her desk and she was shaking her head.
He walked through the doors and she looked up, holding one out.
“This is the worst filing system….” Her hand came down and those big blue eyes widened. “Oh, hi. Sorry. I thought you were Nate coming back from lunch. Cam, this filing system is terrible. You know the alphabet has an order, right?”
Cam merely walked past him toward his desk. “I was unaware. I’m glad to know that. There’s a reason Nate put the whole thing in your capable hands.”
She put a hand on her hip and glared Cam’s way. “He did that because he’s lazy.” She pivoted, facing Jesse. “Sorry about that. Office stuff. Can I help you?”
That bravado of hers was such a shield. He had no doubt she could handle herself with the best of them, but there was something in the way she softened around him that let him know she wanted a place where she didn’t have to be tough.
He wanted to be that place. “I wanted to see if you would come to lunch with me. It’s nothing fancy. Just Stella’s.”
She shrugged like it didn’t matter. “I like Stella’s. And I haven’t eaten yet.”
“I asked if you wanted to go with me,” Cam pointed out. “You said you were waiting. What exactly were you waiting on?”
Cam was a bastard, but he’d let Jesse know she’d been waiting on him. He’d mentioned he might come by for lunch sometime this
week. Had she waited yesterday, too?
Maybe she was more ready than he suspected.
She sent Cam a look that could have frozen fire. “I had a phone call I needed to take and I took it so now I can go to lunch. Thank you very much.”
She grabbed her purse and joined him.
“I’m glad you were free.” He didn’t want to embarrass her. “I was worried I would miss you. I normally would take lunch around 11:30, but I was trying to finish the Bronco. It’s outside. I’ll walk back.”
“Or I can take you.” She started walking beside him. “Is Cade with you?”
He wanted to smack his best friend. “He had to work through lunch.”
“Oh,” she said, pressing through the door. She walked down the stairs and got to the sidewalk before stopping and turning to him. “You sure you want to go to lunch with me on your own?”
Coded language. Do you want to date me without Cade by your side? Such a wealth of worry in that question. He took her hand in his. “There is nothing I want more than to take you to lunch. I want to spend time with you. If it’s okay with you, maybe we can start with lunches every day. Long Haired Roger doesn’t mind when we take lunch as long as the work gets done.”
She seemed to think about it for a moment as though deciding how to handle the situation. He was pleased beyond measure when she nodded.
“I would like that, too.”
“And if Cade came with me occasionally?”
“I would be okay with that.” She looked down to where his hand was on hers.
He pulled away, not wanting to push her. This week was about getting to know each other. “I’m glad. Let’s get lunch and I’ll tell you all about how I fixed the Bronco.”
Her nose wrinkled. “That sounds terrible. Tell me about how you came to Bliss.”
“It’s a long story.”
She started toward the café. “Then it’ll be a long lunch.”
He moved beside her, more hopeful than he’d been before.
Chapter Five
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