Deadly Secrets

by Ann Christopher

  She shrugged. “Depends.”

  One dark brow headed north. “On?”

  “On whether you make any funny moves or not.”

  His lips pressed together. Crouching, he examined the flatter-than-a-pancake tire and stood again, looking grim. “Suspicious, much?”

  “Yeah. Much.”

  “Well, I stopped to help. I'm not a murderer.”

  She frowned at him, torn between wanting to believe him and a double dose of caution.

  “Do I look like a murderer?” he asked when it took her too long to respond.

  She pointed out the obvious. “What you look like and what you are could be two different things.”

  The edge of his mouth curled. “Are you going to give me the tire iron so I can get started, or not?”

  “No, thanks. I can handle it,” she said, motivated by an irritating combination of lingering caution and stubborn pride. Why did everyone think she couldn’t handle a simple tire change?

  The guy’s gaze swept her up and down, skimming her white tank top, frayed jeans shorts and hot-pink-painted toes in flip-flops. His attention lingered on her bare legs for a beat, after which his jaw tightened. Then he made a skeptical noise she didn’t appreciate.

  His gaze flicked back to hers as he studied her face. “You. Can handle it.”

  “Yes. But if you'd like to be helpful, please stand guard and make sure none of these speeding maniacs swipe off my butt when I’m bending over.”

  “And that would be a real shame.”

  “What did you say?” she asked, shocked and not sure she’d heard him right. She and her butt had a troubled history together, probably because it insisted on being way bigger than it should be, even now that she’d shed most of her med school freshman forty, and she wasn’t always a fan of it.

  And what kind of Good Samaritan commented on the needy woman’s ass, anyway?

  “Nothing.” His expression was bland, but exasperation crept into his voice. “Look. Give me the tire iron so I can work on the lug nuts for you. It's about to rain.”

  She glanced up at the sky, which now looked as if it were thinking about spawning a tornado. The wind was a continuous swirl, and the lightning flashes were coming on top of each other. All in all, there was no cause for optimism, but she didn’t let that stop her.

  “There’s plenty of time,” she said.

  “Yeah, okay. Buh-bye.”

  With a dismissive wave over his shoulder, he stalked back to the BMW and leaned against the safer passenger side, crossing his arms and ankles the way she’d done a few minutes ago. She thought she heard him murmur something like Unbelievable as he went, but it could just as easily have been Idiot.

  In a classic example of poor timing, the first cold sprinkles began to fall.

  “Really, God?” Reeve asked the sky.

  More sprinkles. Harder sprinkles.

  Galvanized and muttering, she stooped and went to work loosening the lug nuts with the tire iron, which was difficult given their ancient condition and the guy’s unwavering attention.

  Uncomfortable with an audience, she decided to ignore him.

  Tried to ignore him, anyway, but his watchful gaze was like a warm finger pressed to her nape.

  The lug nuts, meanwhile, were rusted into permanent place and refused to budge, no matter how she struggled with the tire iron. Increasing frustration made her lose her head and wrench at the thing, and that, naturally, made her overcompensate and lose her balance. She toppled out of her squat and landed, flat on her butt, on the damp pavement.

  A soft noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker came from his direction.

  “Don't let me keep you,” she called, risking a glance at him. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. My friend’s coming soon, anyway.”

  He had his head bent low and was tapping on his phone, probably texting someone, and didn’t bother looking at her. “The thing is,” he said, “I don't think it's a good idea to leave a woman, even a stubborn to the point of foolish woman like you—”

  She made an involuntary sound of outrage.

  “—alone by the side of the road in the rain. Because then you’d be in trouble if any real murderers showed up, and I'd feel bad when hikers discovered your dismembered body in the undergrowth come fall. How're you coming with those lug nuts?”

  He had to see that they weren’t moving despite her increasingly desperate attempts to turn them, so he was just having fun needling her, the jackass.

  Pride―yeah, you could add pride to her list of shortcomings, right next to stubbornness and impatience—made her lie.

  “I'm coming along great.”

  “Great. Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said through gritted teeth. “Really.”

  Her divine punishment for this tiny falsehood came quick and harsh. With another flash of lightning, the skies opened up, pelting her with raindrops the size of water balloons and the temperature of ice cubes. Dropping the metal, she scurried to put her belongings back in the trunk before they got soaked.

  “Oh, look,” he said in that dry tone she was beginning to hate. For emphasis, he stretched his arms out, palms up. “It's raining. Who could've predicted?”

  Slamming the trunk, she hitched up her chin as she walked back to the flat tire and tried not to feel the embarrassed burn in her cheeks. Being the bigger person, she chose not to rise to his bait or dignify his stupid observation with a response.

  “I'll be in the car,” he said. “Where it's dry. Holler if you need me.”

  With that, he climbed back inside his luxury-mobile and the door swung shut with the quiet ease of a well-made car.

  She picked up the tire iron with no real enthusiasm. By now, her back, thighs and fingers were aching from effort. Her chilled flesh fought the shivers because her clothes were soaked and her body temperature had dropped into the subzero range. Needing a break, she stood for a minute, swiping water out of her dripping hair and eyes, and stared at the BMW, where it was warm and dry and the low thump of music could now be heard. Then she looked at her own loser car.

  Stupid Saab.

  Cursing, she went back to work on the lug nuts, fueled by the strong desire to prove―to the guy, Sofia and probably to herself—that she wasn’t some helpless female who needed rescuing, someone with book smarts but no common sense or basic life skills. She was a grown and capable twenty-six-year-old woman. Back in the day, she’d already have five or six kids by now, cows to milk, a house to run and fields of cotton or corn or some such to grow. She would not disgrace her ancestors by failing to change a lousy tire.

  Menial labor is not your strong suit, Princess. Adam had always teased her about that.

  Shut up, Adam, she told the voice in her head.

  Five minutes later, though, she came to one inescapable conclusion: she couldn’t change that lousy tire and therefore needed rescuing. There was no more room for denial.

  Dejected and knowing she’d have to eat some serious crow, she trudged through the rain, which was now falling sideways, straight into her face, and squishing between her bare toes in their flip-flops.

  Thoroughly drenched, she reached the driver's side door of the BMW. The guy sat inside on the tan leather seat, reading a book. Though he had to see her out of his peripheral vision, he didn’t glance up.

  Forcing her to knock.

  It took two or three more beats for him to finish his paragraph and lower the book. Meanwhile, she stood there like an idiot, soaked and seething. Then he took his time about lowering the automatic window just enough for her to see the quiet gleam of triumph in his dark eyes. The silky voice of Ella Fitzgerald drifted from the high-end speakers and over the rain.

  “‘Let’s Do It,’ eh?” she asked. “Good choice. And I love everything she did with Louis Armstrong. Don't you? Lately I’ve been getting into Sarah Vaughan. She’s got a version of ‘Let’s Do It,’ too.”

  His eyes widened, but he recovered quickly and gave her an indifferent stare that mad
e her think he was probably amazing at poker.

  “Yes…?” he asked.

  “Ah,” she began.

  He waited, like there could be some puzzle about what she needed. As though he wanted to make sure she didn't pop by to get his opinions on world hunger and climate change before she continued changing the tire herself.

  “You're going to make me say it, aren't you?”

  Dimples bracketed his mouth. “Absolutely.”

  “Please, sir. If it wouldn't trouble you too much, kind sir,” she said with all the elaborate politeness she could muster while shivering, “I’d be most grateful if you could please help me—”

  “Forget it.” He swung the door open and climbed out, forcing her to hustle out of the way or get whacked. Then he produced a baseball cap from inside the car and put it on to keep some of the rain out of his face. “The British accent was a nice touch, but you don't do humble well.”

  He yanked the tire iron out of her hand and strode off toward her car before looking back. By this point, she surely resembled one of the drowning rats on the Titanic, but he took pity on her anyway.

  “Have a seat inside. Warm yourself up,” he called.

  This thoughtful offer made her feel even worse for being so suspicious.

  “I'll drip,” she pointed out. “I don't want to ruin your—”

  His jaw dropped. “Are you always this oppositional?”

  “You have no idea.”

  More dimples. “I’m trusting you with my car. Murderers don't do that. Go.”

  He pointed and she went, gratefully climbing behind the wheel, cranking up the wonderful heat and directing all the vents straight at her face. He had seat warmers, too, so she turned hers on and prayed that a seat warmer plus a wet butt didn’t lead to immediate electrocution.

  After a minute or two, her chills eased up enough for her to appreciate the car, which was perfectly clean and fresh. He had a black gym bag on the passenger side floor, a battered book on the seat, and a Swiss Army knife dangling from his key chain.

  Not that she was curious about him.

  With nothing else to do, she picked up the book. It turned out to be Moby-Dick, one of her all-time favorites. She sat for a minute, digesting this improbability. God could produce a guy who looked like that and read the classics, too? But He couldn’t make a pair of jeans that didn’t make her ass look like a VW Beetle?

  You need to think about what you’re doing, God.

  She tossed the book back onto the seat and that was when she noticed something sitting in the cup holder: a black velvet jeweler’s box small enough to hold an engagement ring.

  Something inside her sank a little.

  Nosy though she was feeling at the moment—what kind of powerhouse woman had he fallen for? A model? A Fortune 500 CEO-to-be?—she’d never snoop so low as to rummage through someone’s stuff. No matter how much her fingers itched to open the box and see what was in there.

  Determined not to let temptation get the best of her, she checked the rearview mirror in time to see the guy wheeling the spare tire into place and crouching to put it on. He was just a Good Samaritan, then, and an efficient one at that. But no good deed went unpunished, because she’d rewarded his kindness by behaving like a nut job.

  Her idiocy felt complete.

  Time to apologize.

  Climbing out of the warm little slice of heaven, she braved the ongoing monsoon to walk back to the Saab.

  Hearing her squishy approach, the guy gave her a swift once-over, but kept working with the tire.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “And thank you. I really mean it.”

  “Forget it,” he told her.

  She smiled, grateful he wasn’t going to make her grovel. “It's just that you can never be too careful,” she continued, “and I wasn't sure that—”

  He stood to his full height (six one or two, if he was an inch) and fixed her with his gaze, which was piercing under the shadow cast by his baseball cap. Something in his expression rearranged itself, softening. She watched him, arrested, fighting the unsettling sensation that he could see all sorts of things about her that had nothing to do with her physical appearance. Things she wanted left in the dark and hidden under a blanket.

  “I get it,” he reassured her. “I’m a stranger. You were being careful. Actually, you were being paranoid, but it's all good.” He swiped his wet hands on his thighs, smearing his jeans with grease and dirt.

  “Plus, I saw your copy of Moby-Dick,” she added. “Which proves you’re a good guy, right? Or a smart guy, anyway. Assuming you didn’t steal the copy from the library.”

  He grinned, a startling and disarming flash of white teeth and dimples that made her skin prickle with heat. “It was my grandmother’s favorite. She talked about it all the time. So I thought I’d get around to reading it.”

  “Oh, you’ll love it.” She blinked, using the back of her hand to swipe raindrops from her face. “And when you finish it, you and your grandmother can sit around discussing the nature of evil and justice. And then you should both read Crime and Punishment, if you haven’t already.”

  The light in his eyes dimmed.

  His eyes weren’t as dark as she’d first thought, she realized, simultaneously realizing they’d drifted closer to each other as they talked. His eyes weren’t black at all. They were hazel.

  “My grandmother died.” He swallowed, a rough bob of his Adam’s apple. “Last month. Her name was Ella.”

  “Oh, no.” Her hand reflexively came up to cover her heart. “I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded, pressing his lips together.

  “Well,” she said, fumbling for a new topic that wouldn’t make him look so bleak. “Need any more light reading suggestions?”

  He snorted out a laugh. “Not if you’re going to suggest another thousand-pager.”

  “Oh, I’m much more diverse than that. If you want suspense, you must read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

  “Loved it.”

  “For history, you absolutely must read Band of Brothers and Team of Rivals. Immediately.”

  “Done.”

  “Game of Thrones? Sherlock Holmes?”

  He faked a yawn. “You’re wasting my time.”

  She laughed. “Oh, so you’re a player. Okay. Let’s see. Thinking...Thinking...” She snapped her fingers. “Got it. For true crime, it’s got to be Fatal Vision.”

  He wavered, scrunching his face as he tried to recall it. “The one about the Green Beret who killed his family?”

  “Yep. It’s a big one—”

  He groaned.

  “But it reads really fast. You’ll love it.”

  He nodded, grinning. “Thanks.”

  She grinned back, trying not to fall under the spell of his bright eyes. “Any time.”

  They stared at each other, the moment stretching into something deliciously unsettling.

  He really was an interesting guy. The kind of guy she’d be interested in, if she was in the market.

  What about me, Reeve? asked Adam.

  Reeve’s smile slipped.

  “So...Bad news,” he said, also sobering. “The spare’s flat, too.”

  Before she could react, a semi sped by, creating a gust of wind that reminded them both of where they were. Without a word, he grabbed her waist and steered her back into the berm. This purely functional move, designed to keep her from being flattened into roadkill, made her flesh tingle.

  His hand was big. Strong. Warm.

  Adam’s hands were smaller than that.

  Flustered, she fidgeted nervously under cover of smoothing her hair out of her face. This led to the discovery that the rain, which was tapering off, had turned said hair into a squiggly mess best described as ramen noodles dyed black.

  “Sorry,” she prattled. “My hair does this Medusa thing whenever it gets wet. You probably shouldn’t even look at me right now. It’s not safe.”

  This little joke made his jaw tighten. He blinked and his pointed ga
ze dropped from hers, skimming over her and lingering on her legs on the way down and her breasts on the way up.

  Her body reacted with exquisite sensitivity. Goosebumps erupted all over her skin, and her nipples tightened down into achy beads that made her breath shallow.

  That was when she looked down and belatedly realized that rain plus white tank top plus thin bra equaled unobstructed and detail-rich view of her breasts—nipples, aureoles and every other tiny detail of her cleavage. He could probably even see the mole near her armpit.

  And yet she waited, unabashed and unmoving, and let this man whose name she didn’t even know look his fill at her. In the end, he was the one to put a stop to it, not her.

  The whole incident lasted only two seconds. Three at the most.

  Adam never once entered her mind.

  At last the guy blinked, freeing her from his spell.

  “You’re right,” he said lightly, backing up a step. His voice sounded husky. “I shouldn’t look at you now.”

  Her cheeks flooded with sudden heat and guilt, making her look away as she hurriedly crossed her arms over her chest.

  “So.” She paused while her buzzing thoughts settled down. “Thanks again.”

  “Any time.” There was that huskiness again. He gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “Let’s wait in the car. Just, you know, until your friend comes.”

  “Ah...” She hesitated. Waiting in his gorgeous car would be great, but now, suddenly, she was wary of being alone with him for reasons that had nothing to do with his potential for violence. “I think I'll just stay in my car with Muffin.”

  His smile, she was discovering, was a blindingly beautiful event in the category of rainbows, solar eclipses and Tahitian sunsets. It made her knees weaken and her thoughts fuzz.

  “Muffin? That’s what you call that tiger in your front seat? Muffin?”

  She laughed. “I know, right? I didn't name him. He was a rescue.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  His body turned toward his car, but he lingered, in no apparent hurry to be anywhere else. This led to her lingering. Muffin, she figured, could fend for himself for a minute. They watched each other, the silence growing awkward. The guy opened his mouth. Seemed to think better of whatever he'd been planning to say and closed it again. Adjusted the bill of his baseball cap. Looked to the sky.