The Harder They Fall (Intimate Moments)

by Lovelace, Merline

  She whipped her head around, ready to lay into him. Giving the man a ride didn’t mean she had to put up with the kind of sexual innuendoes she’d endured when Doc had decked his sixteen-year-old protégée out in spandex and spangles and touted her as a sultry voiced Lolita.

  To her chagrin, she saw that Henderson had been referring to the view outside the truck window, not the one she provided in her skimpy cutoffs and tank top. He’d turned his head away, presenting her with his chiseled profile. The wind whipped his hair, more tobacco than mink in color now that the sweat had dried. Crinkly little lines formed at the corners of his sunglasses as he narrowed his eyes against the glare.

  Despite herself, despite every agonizing lesson she’d learned three years ago, Lissa couldn’t entirely repress a little twinge of feminine admiration. Evan Henderson was a hunk, plain and simple.

  Her mouth tight, she swung her gaze back to the road ahead and pressed down on the accelerator. The sooner she got him to Paradise, the sooner she could dump him.

  The abandoned bauxite mine came into view first. The gray, weathered buildings where aluminium had been stripped from ore dug out of the earth now clustered forlornly amid a lake of heat waves. Tumbleweeds had piled up against the fence surrounding the facility. Desert sand coated every horizontal surface.

  The town that had almost died when the bauxite ore played out lay a mile farther south. Constructed of the same weathered gray wood as the processing plant, its handful of buildings strung out along a wide, dry arroyo. Lissa had lived in Paradise long enough to appreciate the blinding speed that arroyo could fill with water. Storms broke maybe two or three times a year in this corner of the desert. But when they did, the sunbaked earth couldn’t absorb the downpour. According to the locals, the only death that had ever occurred in Paradise was a coyote caught by the rushing water in the arroyo.

  Lissa wheeled the pickup down the town’s single street, imagining how her sanctuary must look to someone seeing it for the first time. Boarded-up windows stared like blind eyes from what used to be the town hall/post office. A sign with its lettering scoured completely off by wind-driven sand hung by one hinge above a former coffee shop.

  Henderson’s low whistle cut through the heat. “You weren’t kidding. This place is a ghost town.”

  “Almost. A few people stayed after the bauxite plant shut down.”

  A very few. Three or four old-timers, who’d lived through the boom and bust of the fifties. A one-time Las Vegas cigarette girl who’d left the glittery city after her husband of one week dropped dead while dealing a hand of seven-card stud. Charlie Haines, who owned the only commercial establishment still operating in town, a sort of garage, general store, restaurant and bar all rolled into one.

  The small community had taken Lissa in without too many questions. A few brows had lifted when she’d moved into the dilapidated trailer on the edge of town, sure, but she’d dodged the questions until they petered out and had come to feel safe. Safe and blessedly anonymous. Lissa didn’t want any outsiders violating her sanctuary.

  Particularly this outsider.

  She didn’t like his rugged good looks, didn’t like what he did for a living, and surely to goodness didn’t like the way he stirred something deep in her belly she didn’t want stirred.

  Lissa hadn’t been this edgy around a man since… She set her mouth, forced herself to finish the thought. Since Doc. And for reasons totally unfathomable to her at this point, Evan Henderson bothered her almost as much as her memories of her sleazebag manager.

  With every breath she drew in Henderson’s scent, a combination of heat, wind and healthy male. His jean-clad knees practically knocked hers in the close confines of the truck. She couldn’t wait to get him out of the pickup and out of Paradise.

  Antsy with the need to be rid of him, she drove past the few inhabited houses at the north end of town and pulled up at the native stone building known as Charlie’s Place.

  “There’s a phone inside,” she told Henderson. “And a bar of sorts where you can get something cool to drink.”

  Nodding, he reached for the door handle. Lissa bit her lip at the sight of his torn shirt and bloodied shoulder. She’d offered once to take him to LaGrange to get those cuts and scrapes tended to. She wouldn’t offer again. She’d done her Good Samaritan duty for the day.

  He swung back, smiling at her through the open door. “Thanks for the ride.”

  She dipped her head in curt acknowledgment. That was the best she could do with his blue eyes lazy on her face and his shirt gaping open at the neck to reveal gold-tipped chest hair glistening in the sun.

  “I’d like to pay you for your trouble.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “It’s come by honestly,” he reminded her with a grin as he reached once more for his wallet. “Please, let me pay to get your truck’s air-conditioning fixed. It’s the least I can do by way of thanks for saving my skin.”

  Jaws tight, Lissa shoved the pickup into gear. “I don’t want your money.”

  The pickup’s worn tires spun. She peeled away, leaving Henderson in a cloud of thick, choking dust.

  Chapter 3

  Muttering under his breath about a certain dewy-skinned blonde with the poisonous temperament of a Gila monster, Evan swept off his ball cap and beat the dust from his sleeves and chest.

  “Watch what you say ’ bout Lissa, boy.”

  The deep, scratchy voice came at him through the screen door of Charlie’s Place. The speaker was an indistinct blur, lost in the contrast between the blinding glare outside and the building’s dim interior.

  “What did you do to rile her?”

  “Nothing,” Evan said shortly, pounding at his thighs with the cap. “Except try to thank her for giving me a lift.”

  “She’s a mite touchy around strangers,” the disembodied voice rasped.

  “So I noticed.”

  “When you get right down to it, most of us here in Paradise are.”

  “Well, this stranger’s moving on as soon as he gets hold of his road service.” Cool, damp air seeped through the screen door, drawing Evan like the song of a siren. “Mind if I use your phone?”

  “Not if you buy a beer or two while you’re using it.”

  The screen creaked open. Gratefully Evan pushed through. He stood for a moment just inside the door while his pores gulped in moisture-laden air. From the water rivulets making tracks on the fly-specked mirror behind the bar, he guessed the owner had installed a water-fed swamp cooler, the kind that worked better with windows and doors left open a crack to circulate the damp air.

  When his senses had made the transition from searing brightness to dank dimness, he turned to the short, stocky individual in grease-stained overalls. “Are you Charlie?”

  “That’s me.”

  The old man’s crankshaft voice had to be the product of too many cigarettes and too much desert dust. Beetle-black eyes almost hidden by folds of weathered skin looked the newcomer up and down.

  “Who are you, boy?”

  Evan beat back a smile. The only other person who still called him “boy” was Shaddrach McCoy, the leather-tough foreman of the Bar-H who’d refereed too many of the rambunctious Hendersons’ free-for-alls to count.

  “Evan Henderson,” he replied, thrusting out a hand. “I’m from San Diego, by way of Flagstaff.”

  Charlie gave him another once-over, then took his hand in a callused paw. Evan managed not to wince at the crushing grip and instantly revised his estimate of the proprietor’s age downward by a decade.

  “What do you do in San Diego?”

  “I’m an assistant U.S. district attorney.”

  “That so?”

  Charlie’s glance shifted to the screen door. Outside, the plume of dust made by the white pickup still swirled on the hot air. When he turned back to Evan, his lined face was unreadable. If he shared the same low opinion of attorneys Lissa obviously did, he didn’t voice it.

  “About tha
t beer…?” Evan prompted. His throat felt as dry as an old saddle blanket and twice as scratchy.

  Ambling behind the makeshift bar wedged into one corner, Charlie hauled out a longneck and thumped it down on chipped gray Formica.

  Evan’s parched throat convulsed in anticipation. Aside from the water he sipped in the shade of the saguaro, he hadn’t put any liquid inside him since his last cup of coffee with Jake early this morning. Lifting the bottle in a silent salute, he chugged a good third of the icy beer.

  Arms spread, beefy palms planted on the Formica, Charlie waited until the bottle lowered to resume his interrogation. “How’d you hook up with Lissa?”

  “I lost out in a game of road chicken with a jackrabbit and left my Harley nose down in a ditch. Lissa stopped to pick me up.”

  “Blamed-fool thing for a female ridin’ these roads alone to do, if you ask me. But that’s Melissa James for you. The girl’s always pickin’ up strays.”

  Melissa James. The name suited her, Evan thought. It reminded him of the whisper of the wind through the cottonwood trees. Or the hiss of a diamondback just before it struck. More curious than ever about the contradictory woman who’d stop for a stranded hitchhiker, yet never crack a smile the whole time she hauled him into town, he initiated a casual probe.

  “What other strays has she picked up?”

  “The flea-bitten mongrel who’s taken up residence under her trailer, for one. Old widow Jenks, for another.” Shaking his shaggy gray head, Charlie swiped the wet ring on the Formica with his forearm. “That soft heart of hers is gonna get her in trouble all over again.”

  Again?

  So Evan’s initial guess had been right. His prickly rescuer’s aversion to lawyers obviously stemmed from something more than general prejudice.

  “Lissa mentioned that she lives here in Paradise now,” he said idly, implying a far more extensive conversation with her than the curt monosyllables she’d grudgingly let drop.

  “If you call camping out in that old trailer livin’. Danged thing should have been hauled off to the scrap heap years ago.”

  Interesting. She lived in an old trailer. Drove a pickup that sported more rust than paint. Yet she’d turned down flat Evan’s offer of payment.

  Intrigued despite himself, he hooked a heel on the rungs of a chrome bar stool topped with a tattered red plastic seat. With the consummate skill of a prosecutor considered the front runner for U.S. district attorney when his boss retired next year, he set about to extract more information from Charlie. It didn’t take him long to discover that the few remaining residents of Paradise, Arizona, had taken Lissa James under their collective wings.

  “You must have said something to rile her,” Charlie commented with a shrewd look. “Never seen her drive off and leave someone in the dust like that. Most times, she’s as sweet-tempered as an angel.”

  Evan refrained from comment.

  “Take the way she feeds that half-wild mongrel. Or the way she fills in as organist when they need one at the church over to LaGrange. She’s all giving, that girl. There’s not a mean bone in her body.”

  Her luscious, long-limbed, very seductive body.

  Evan tipped back his beer, remembering all too well the play of muscle and smooth, tanned skin when her legs had shifted away from his. Remembering, too, the pale splash of freckles almost lost in her tan and that pouty, all-too-kissable mouth.

  She’d certainly made a hell of an impression on him, he admitted with a silent grin. Not that his interest sprang solely from lust. More from a awareness of Lissa James as an intriguing, desirable woman on one level, and a mystery to be solved on another. Or so he tried to convince himself when he accepted Charlie’s offer to reclaim the Harley.

  “We don’t get many travelers down this way,” the barkeep/mechanic commented, “but there’s no sense leaving a prime piece of machinery like that lying abandoned alongside the road. I’ve got a winch on my wrecker that’ll lift her out of that ditch. Between the two of us, we can muscle her into my truck and haul her back to Paradise until your road service gets here.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  “There’s a rack of T-shirts in the corner over there. You might want to pull one on before you go back out in the sun.”

  “Good enough. I’ll get changed, make a couple of phone calls and be ready to roll.”

  While Charlie went out to throw some equipment into his tow truck, Evan downed the rest of his beer and considered the limited selection of souvenir T-Shirts. Grinning, he opted for a neon yellow with Wile E. Coyote racing across his chest in full pursuit of the Road Runner. It wasn’t as macho as the bloodred model sporting a salivating, mean-eyed rattler, but it would do.

  Tossing his torn shirt into the trash, he made two quick calls. The first was to his road service, which promised to pick up the motorcycle in Paradise and transport it to the nearest Harley repair facility. They’d also send a car for Evan.

  The second was to his office. His assistant, a sharp young paralegal attending law school at night, answered on the fourth or fifth ring. Sharon sounded even more frazzled than usual.

  “Jeez, boss, it’s absolutely crazy around here.”

  “When is it ever anything else?”

  The harried assistant relayed a request for his immediate return from his boss and an annoyed demand from Carrie Northcutt to know where the hell he was. Apparently she’d been trying to reach him for the past several hours on his cell phone.

  “I’m taking the scenic route home,” Evan replied with a laconic glance around the dim, dank bar. “My cell phone doesn’t work out here in the desert.”

  “Desert? Where are you?”

  “About an hour north of Yuma, at a forgotten spot on the map called Paradise. What’s got the boss in a buzz?”

  “The mayor’s putting pressure on him. He wants an update on the Mendoza case.”

  Since the mayor himself had hired one of the illegal aliens imported by Hector Mendoza’s well-oiled, well-financed smuggling organization, Evan wasn’t surprised that the anxious politician wanted to be kept informed on the status of the case. The mayor claimed complete ignorance of his housekeeper’s illegal immigration status, as did the dozens of other wealthy employers scattered from Beverly Hills to La Jolla. They also all swore they knew nothing of the drugs these unsuspecting mules carried into the States with them.

  “Ask Carrie to start putting an updated brief together. I’ll go over it with her when I get back.”

  “Which will be…?”

  Evan aimed a frown at the mirror on the wall behind the bar. He still felt edgy, still hadn’t worked through the worry over Jake that had taken him off the interstate and onto the back roads to think. Adding to that worry was a curiosity about his rescuer that seemed to have grabbed hold of him.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “But…”

  “Today’s only Friday. I’d planned to be out of the area until Monday, remember?”

  “I wished you’d remind Carrie of that,” Sharon muttered. “She’s been on my case all day.”

  Beautiful, brilliant, brittle Carrie Northcutt wasn’t a favorite among many of the women in the D.A.’s office. Or among a good number of the men, either. As she’d told Evan with a careless shrug, she didn’t have time to pander to personalities.

  “Tell Carrie I’ll call her later,” Evan instructed. “And run a background check on a woman named Melissa James for me, will you? She’s twenty-five, give or take a couple of years, around five-six, one hundred and twenty pounds, blond hair, brown eyes.”

  Technically Evan shouldn’t ask his assistant to run a background check without cause. But his instincts told him there was more to Lissa James than her sun-streaked tawny hair and touchy disposition, and Evan had learned long ago to trust his gut.

  Promising to call Sharon back later, he tugged on his ball cap and braced himself for the sledgehammer blow of the heat outside.

  The sun was blazing low on th
e horizon when Lissa strolled into town that evening.

  She often walked this time of day. She ran in the mornings, while it was still cool, but got out to watch the spectacular desert sunsets paint the sky whenever she could. Before she’d come to Paradise, she’d never seen such symphonies of colors, all golds and purples and swirling, triumphant reds. The wonder of them had found its way into more than one of the hymns she’d sold under her pseudonym the past few years.

  The shower she’d taken a half hour ago had lifted the layers of sweat and road dust from her skin. A floppy-brimmed straw hat shielded her face from the last of the sun’s rays. She’d exchanged her cutoffs for an ankle-length gauzy skirt dotted with pink flowers that matched her sleeveless pink vest.

  She always wore a skirt to visit Mrs. Jenks. The frizzy-haired, onetime Las Vegas cigarette girl certainly wouldn’t object if Lissa appeared at her door in skimpy cutoffs. But all those years at the Baptist Children’s Home had left their mark. A body didn’t go calling on neighbors in shorts.

  Not that Lissa would label her twice-weekly visits to Josephine Jenks calls, exactly. Mostly she went to deliver the mail she’d picked up for the elderly widow in LaGrange…and to dust her porcelain cats. Josephine had collected almost three hundred of them over the years, and her eyesight wasn’t as keen as it used to be. After she’d knocked two of her favorites off the shelf, Lissa had volunteered to take over dusting duty. She didn’t mind the hour or so it took to clean the porcelain figurines. It was little enough price to pay for Jospehine’s fussy, funny companionship and a slice of her killer spice cake.

  Humming a fast, uplifting hymn in six-eighths time, Lissa decided to detour into Charlie’s Place. She’d meant to drop off his mail earlier, but in her hurry to dump Henderson she’d forgotten it.

  “Hey, Charlie.”

  Chilled air flowed over her like cool satin as she pushed through the screen. Reaching into her skirt pocket, she pulled out the advertisements she’d retrieved from Charlie’s post office box in LaGrange.

  “I’ve got your…”