by Ava Miles
What was he supposed to pour himself into now?
Being a thirty-five-year-old successful bachelor in the South, he had plenty of people telling him it was time to find a good woman, settle down, and have a family. He’d never had much interest in that. After all, client after client had given him ample evidence that marriage and family didn’t work out for everyone. It hadn’t worked out for his parents either.
But work wasn’t enough anymore. He knew how to deal with clients and handle their cases. Nothing felt like much of a challenge, except there was something about Shelby McGuiness…
As a P.I., Vander sized people up immediately—it was his gift and a key component of his success—but the man in him had sized her up as well when she’d sauntered into his office in her pale pink designer dress suit and sparkly chandelier earrings. She was as classic Southern as pecan pie, but with a modern edge. Her rose perfume dotted with a pinch of peony and musk suited her to a T, and her silky light-brown hair and whiskey-colored eyes had stirred something in him. Cream-colored Jimmy Choos with straps that wrapped up her calves like vines had showcased her knockout legs. He was a leg man, and he appreciated a woman who wore sexy heels. Sue him.
He’d even liked her strong and determined attitude until she’d turned it on her sister. Regardless of that fact, she’d fired something up inside him only his father’s case and his business had fired up before.
He was going to need to keep a tight rein on himself while he worked on this case. It was counter to his personal code to show anything other than a professional interest in his clients. The curse word he uttered didn’t ease his agitation.
A discreet knock sounded behind him, and Vander cursed again. He knew it was Charlie, coming to check on him. She was his number two, with the official title of vice president. He’d hired her for her sixth sense, but he hated it when she turned that uncanny perception of hers on him.
The door opened, but Vander didn’t bother to turn around. “I won’t tell you to go back to work.”
She snorted. “You know I’m too tenacious for that. Besides, I had those Southern belles pegged for a missing father the minute they walked into reception.”
“It’s a waste of company hours for you to monitor new client arrivals,” he told her for the hundredth time.
“It’s my way of testing my sixth sense,” she answered like she always did. “Need to make sure it’s one-hundred-percent accurate.”
“It usually is,” Vander said as she came up beside him, clad in simple black pants, low heels for running after people if needed, and a white button-down shirt.
All the detectives who worked for him were the best out there—he’d made sure of that. Gage Farris was an ex-cop who’d retired young, fed up with the bureaucracy and politics in Atlanta. Lawrence Patterson had run his own private detective outfit until he’d gotten tired of the paperwork and management and come to work for his biggest competitor—Vander. Then there was the support staff that Montgomery Associates used for the more routine work of background checks, something they had a slew of from their country singer celebrity and politician clients.
But Charlie was special. Somehow she’d become his best friend. It helped that they weren’t remotely each other’s type.
“Why don’t you pass this case off to me?” Charlie asked him, putting her hands on her hips. “Give yourself a break for once. It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of your dad’s death. I know it’s on your mind more than usual.”
It was. The thirtieth of August lived large in his mind. His nightmares had returned too. The ones where his mom told him his daddy had been hurt by a bad man and wouldn’t be coming home ever again. Then there was the new dream that shook him to the core, where his dad’s wounded corpse rose out of the morgue and asked him, What are you going to do with the rest of your life, son? before vanishing.
Vander tightened his muscles to fight off the shiver that wanted to run through his body. He cleared his throat. “You know I can’t do that, Charlie.”
There was ultimately no choice for him. He’d returned to Nashville to go to Vanderbilt, where his parents had met and the place after which he’d been named, in the hopes of solving his father’s murder one day. But while he’d failed himself, at least he could find other people’s fathers—or mothers—or learn why they had been killed or had gone missing. It was the only redemption he’d found.
“You’re a stubborn son of a bitch, Vander,” Charlie said, frowning darkly.
“Don’t I know it.”
He had resigned himself to never knowing why his father had been left for dead in a downtown alley a stone’s throw from one of Nashville’s bottom-feeder music venues, the kind of place where washed out, hopeless musicians went to play and drink themselves to death, bemoaning their lost dreams.
The police report suggested his father had been undercover, looking into the selling of illegal substances onsite, and had been discovered somehow. No witnesses had ever surfaced. No prints were found on or around the body. And the murder weapon—a GLOCK 17—was never recovered.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
He was always reassuring her, but part of him liked that she cared enough to worry. Neither one of them had had much of that growing up.
“The girls were pretty,” Charlie said in that practical way of hers.
“Were they?” he bluffed and immediately realized his mistake.
Before he could even register it, she was moving, and her hands were on his shoulders, turning him toward her. Her strength always surprised him since she was five foot nothing and weighed a mere one hundred and ten pounds, mostly muscle.
“Holy shit!” she said, staring into his eyes. “You’re attracted to one of them. You really need to give me the case now.”
He frowned at her.
“The slightly older one, right? I’d peg them for Irish twins, but there’s still an older/younger sister thing going on.”
What the hell was he supposed to say? He’d felt that pull as soon as Shelby came striding through the door, trying to act like their appointment was just another business meeting.
“Vander.”
“Fine, she’s hot,” he said, brushing his shoulder. “But it’s not a problem. Charlie, you know me. I wouldn’t take the case otherwise. Shelby might be gorgeous, but I didn’t like her much.”
“Why not?” Charlie asked, studying him.
“Do you always have to ask so many questions?” he asked her in exasperation. “Forget I said that. Of course you do. It’s your job.” He’d best say it before she did.
“You’re really riled up,” she said, trying not to laugh. “What did this Shelby do to make you dislike her? Besides igniting some weird male attraction in you. Yuck. I think I need to wash my mouth out for saying that.”
“Ditto for hearing it.” But he decided to answer. “The younger sister, Sadie, has a soft heart, and I didn’t like how Shelby treated her.”
“Sadie cried, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did,” he said, remembering how bravely the woman had tried to hide it in the beginning.
It pissed him off that Shelby had tried to stop her. The pain of losing a father was immeasurable, and his mother hadn’t done him any favors by telling him to keep it locked up inside like his hurt heart was a bank vault. Her way of dealing with grief was to pretend none of it had happened. She’d moved them back to her rich family in Boston, who hadn’t approved of her marrying a Nashville native, especially one who’d decided to go into law enforcement over the law.
His mother had soon fallen back into his grandparents’ mentality and had done everything in her power to beat the Southern out of him, even going as far as to make him take voice classes until all trace of his accent was eradicated.
For years, he’d fought the anger and the fathomless sorrow, but he’d erupted in high school, running wild, flirting with the law, all but daring his mother to throw him out like he felt she’d done emotionally.
It
had taken his social studies teacher—also his lacrosse coach—pretty much busting his balls to get him back on track. Ruining his life wouldn’t bring back his father, Mr. Hawkins had told him. Nor would it make his father happy if he was in heaven like people said. Why not position himself for a better life, so he could make his own choices once he turned eighteen? That advice had finally penetrated Vander’s thick skull.
He’d stopped partying with the rough crowd, turned around his failing grades, and gotten into Vanderbilt University as a way to reconnect with his father and his roots. His mother and grandparents had been violently opposed to his return to Nashville, even more so the direction he’d taken with his studies, and it had been the last break in their already strained relationship.
Vander hadn’t wanted to be a cop like his father, but he’d loved the idea of investigating things and uncovering secrets, so he’d majored in criminal justice. Becoming a private investigator had seemed the best course, and he’d pursued it wholeheartedly. He’d opened his own private investigation company in Nashville after securing his license, serving the same community his father had.
“Of the two sisters, Shelby looks more polished and tougher, although I bet they’d both still run in the opposite direction if I so much as said boo to them,” Charlie said, leaving his side to open up the mini-fridge disguised as a cabinet.
She was tough, it was true, but something told him that Charlie might be wrong about the McGuiness sisters—or at least the older one.
“I’m not convinced Shelby would back down,” Vander told her, following in her wake. “It took guts to come here. The mother doesn’t know about their interest in finding their father, and their other sister is against it. The brother sounds like he’s supportive.”
“But he wasn’t here today.” Charlie handed him a bottle of Perrier—sue him, he liked the fizzy water—and grabbed a regular bottle of water for herself.
“No, he wasn’t.” And Vander wondered about that too.
“What’s your gut tell you about this case?” Charlie asked.
“Home troubles, I’d bet,” he told her, running through what little he knew of the case so far. “The mother is currently a preacher. Sounds like they all went to church together like a good Southern family before their father cut out on them.”
“Going to church disguises a lot of deadbeats,” Charlie said in that jaded tone of hers. “Foul play doesn’t feel right to me.”
“Me either,” Vander said, and truth was, he could usually smell violence on a case before he had the facts to support it. “The reason isn’t as important as the amount of time he’s been gone. He went missing when Shelby was two, and from my guess of her age—”
“That was twenty-six years ago,” Charlie told him with a smirk. “I looked up her driver’s license.”
“Of course you did, even though we’re not supposed to use databases to look up our clients unless we suspect them of something,” he said, rolling his eyes, doing the math. Shelby was seven years younger than him. Not that he had any business calculating things like that.
“Shelby Marie McGuiness also likes to speed,” Charlie continued. “She got a ticket for doing eighty-eight on I-64 last month in a new white BMW convertible licensed to her and her alone.”
The car suited her understated elegance. He ignored Charlie’s additional confirmation that Shelby wasn’t married. Neither woman wore a wedding ring. Besides, any husband worth his chops would have been holding his wife’s hand during an appointment as big as this one.
“I’m surprised she didn’t talk her way out of it.”
Charlie’s smirk widened. “The officer was female.”
“Ah,” was all he said.
“I’ll run the father’s name today,” Vander said, taking a sip of his water. He hated to make clients wait on a case like this.
Charlie shook her head. “I already did.”
“Dammit, Charlie! You didn’t even have confirmation it was a lost father case.”
“Please. You’re insulting me. I always know. What was the use in waiting? It’s a dead end, Vander. There are no records of any addresses or credit cards for Preston Matthias McGuiness after he left the Dare River area. He dropped off the face of the earth. He clearly didn’t want to be found.”
“You don’t need to do my job for me, Charlie,” Vander said, setting his water on the edge of his desk. “You have plenty of your own cases.”
“Yes, but I knew those two were going to be trouble for you the minute they walked in,” she told him, crossing her arms and staring at him with those determined hazel eyes of hers. “I’m going to help with this one, Vander, and you’re not going to stop me. You need a friend right now more than ever with August 30th approaching, and since you’re such a stubborn son of a bitch, I’m your best bet.”
He cursed fluently, which only made her laugh.
“You can change your mind and give me the case,” Charlie said, lifting her shoulder. “I promise to be gentle with the soft-hearted one.”
This time he scoffed. “You couldn’t be gentle with a koala bear. Dammit, you know I can’t give up this case.”
“I do,” she told him, patting his shoulder before walking to the door. “Aren’t you lucky I’m your best friend and don’t listen to you when you’re being a doofus?”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I’ll let the McGuiness women know we want to take a look into his family and see whether they’re up for it.”
“I’ll sit in on the next meeting with you,” Charlie said, not posing it as a question.
The door closed behind her petite frame before he could respond—just like she’d intended. It looked like he was going to have a partner on this one. Of course, the sisters might decide not to move ahead after learning the official trail was a dead end. But something in Shelby’s eyes told him she was ready to pursue the truth about her father as doggedly as he had tried to solve his own father’s case. After meeting her and her sister, he had to admit he was pretty happy to have Charlie’s support.
Not that he’d ever tell her that.
Chapter 3
Sadie was ridiculously worried Susannah might see through her lame gift. She’d made extra peach jam to help pacify the guilt she felt every time she thought about hiring Vander without her eldest sister’s blessing. Somehow telling J.P. she and Shelby had finally gone ahead and done it hadn’t soothed her none.
Now she would have to join the rest of the family for their usual Sunday dinner and act like nothing was wrong. It was hard enough to lie at the best of times, which this wasn’t. Vander had called them a couple of hours after Friday’s meeting to say their daddy seemed to have disappeared without a trace. After the initial shock, Sadie and Shelby had confirmed with Vander that they wanted to dig deeper. J.P. had been supportive, thank God.
But the questions hadn’t stopped racing through her head. How could anyone disappear like that? And why? Did it mean Daddy was dead?
Sadie headed into J.P.’s backyard, but while she’d gone around back in the hopes of getting a little more time to herself, Susannah stood there in the sun on the deck, her skin emitting a healthy glow. Heck, who could blame her—she and her husband, famous country-music star Jake Lassiter, were wrapped around each other. Susannah tugged away just enough to greet her, and Jake managed to kiss her cheek without letting go of his wife. She waved at the rest of the people lounging on the deck, and they returned the greeting before continuing their chatter, the melody of their voices blending together like the cicadas in the background.
“I brought y’all some jam,” she said with a bright smile, thrusting the Mason jar out to Susannah.
The lime-green ribbon blew in the breeze. “Peach,” Susannah said brightly. “Your favorite, honey.”
“You’re my favorite,” Jake assured her before kissing her again.
It was something Sadie expected newlyweds should do, but it still embarrassed her a little. Kissing wasn’t the only thing they were doing, of cours
e, and it was weird to think of one of her siblings having sex. Of course, J.P. and his wife were too.
Sadie tried not to think about it. In fact, she tried not to think about sex, period. What was the point when you were a good girl and not supposed to have any before marriage? She’d blown that once, with a man she’d thought she would marry, but it hadn’t worked out. No one had caught her eye since. She was still young, she told herself constantly—only twenty-seven—but the older women at church always reminded her that she wasn’t getting any younger. It worried her some.
“What have you been up to, Sadie?” Susannah said, raising her face to the sun. “Could we have better weather?”
She latched onto the topic of weather like a child might embrace a teddy bear. “The weather is amazing! Hardly any humidity at all, and only eighty degrees. It’s a blessing. How are your gardens coming along, Jake? Tammy told me they look real good.”
Their sister-in-law was a marvel at creating gardens, which was how she’d connected with their brother, J.P. Of course, J.P. had hired his best friend’s sister to design his gardens because he’d taken a shine to her. His strategy had worked because Tammy had felt the same way. Even better to Sadie’s mind, Tammy’s two children, Rory and Annabelle, adored him.
“The gardens look spectacular,” Jake told her, grinning. “My favorite time of day is at dusk when your sister and I take a walk. I might have to ask Tammy to plant a chocolate garden for the little ones we’re planning to have.” The McGuiness siblings all shared a soft spot for chocolate, and Tammy had planted a garden full of chocolate-scented and colored plants for J.P. The two of them had created a magical story about fairies living in the garden to help Tammy’s kids adjust after a traumatic experience.
Her sister’s smile stretched wide across her face, and then she kissed her husband. Again. “I love it when you talk about kids.”
