Truly, Madly, Dangerously

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “You didn’t know…”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”

  He quit crying, but he still held on. He held on as if he was afraid he’d fall apart if he had to stand on his own. “You know, Livvie wants kids, sooner rather than later.”

  Sadie patted Cal’s back, trying to comfort him. How was it possible to comfort a man like this one? “Sounds like fun.”

  He shook his head. “No. Not fun. Not fun at all. What if I can’t protect my kids any better than I protected Kelly? What if we have a little girl, and I can’t keep her close enough or safe enough or…” He choked on the words.

  “You’re going to make such a wonderful father, Cal.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a lousy brother.”

  He lifted his head and stared down at her. She had never seen him look so devastated.

  “You are not a lousy brother, not at all,” she said gently. “You’ve done everything possible to find Kelly and bring her home.”

  He had regained his composure, and was approaching his normal self. “She keeps moving. A kid shouldn’t be able to hide and blend in and keep us guessing for so long.”

  “You could, if you had to.”

  Cal didn’t argue with her.

  “She’s on the run, Cal.”

  “And now I know for sure what she’s running from. I always wondered if he…”

  “Don’t,” she interrupted. “The past is past. We can’t fix it. All we can do is go forward.”

  “You’re right. I have to focus on finding her. That’s all that matters. You’ve seen her. I could use you with me. It wouldn’t kill Santana to work with Mangino again. They’ve worked together before.”

  Sadie shook her head. “I can’t leave town at the moment.”

  “So I hear.” He sounded only a little disappointed.

  “But I can work with a sketch artist and come up with a drawing that will do you a lot more good than that old high-school photo.”

  He leaned down and gave her another hug. “You’re the best, Harlow.”

  She hated to tell him the rest. He likely wouldn’t think she was “the best” when he found out that she’d put Kelly on the ABI’s list of murder suspects. She told him, and while he wasn’t happy with the wrinkle in the situation, he didn’t hold it against her, either.

  The men she worked with were like the brothers she’d never had. She adored them all, even if they did sometimes get on her last nerve. Like brothers.

  “You really are going to be a great father, Cal,” she said, giving his back one last pat. “Now, go wash your face.” She stepped away and pointed toward the hallway that led to the employees’ rest room.

  He didn’t immediately leave. “As soon as this mess is cleared up, you call me and I’ll come fetch you.”

  She gave him a reassuring smile. “You know I will.”

  Cal turned and walked away, and almost ran smack dab into Truman.

  “Excuse me,” the man…Cal, Sadie had called him…brushed past Truman, barely paying him any mind at all. Apparently his mind was spinning with the news that he was going to be a father.

  Sadie smiled at Truman as if nothing had happened.

  He did not smile back.

  He had always known Sadie didn’t intend to stay here, but he had never come to grips with the fact that he was nothing more than a diversion. Somebody to screw while she waited for her boyfriend to show up.

  Expendable.

  “Bowie left. He said you could lock up.”

  Sadie nodded. “No problem. Just as well that he’s gone, I guess.” There was the oddest expression on her face. Was she going to tell him about Cal? Daddy Cal? “I dread this,” she said as she walked toward him. “Really, really dread it.”

  Was she going to tell him here and now that she was pregnant? That the Neanderthal was her boyfriend? No, not a boyfriend. Sadie had outgrown boyfriends years ago, he imagined. She was a woman who took lovers, not a girl reaching for a fleeting emotional attachment.

  Instead of confessing, Sadie took his hand and led him back into the dining area.

  The big blond asked, “Where’s Cal?”

  “In the little boys’ room,” Sadie said.

  “What’s up?”

  “He’ll be here in a minute,” she said, ignoring the direct question.

  Sadie led Truman behind the counter, so that a long span of Formica separated them from the men she worked with. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if preparing for something difficult.

  “This is Major Benning,” she said, nodding to the blond man. “My boss. He’s actually a retired major, but Mr. Benning just doesn’t seem right.”

  Sadie’s boss offered a meaty hand over the counter. “Benning will do.”

  “Dante Mangino,” she said, moving on to the next man. “Part Italian, part redneck. Don’t let the long hair and the tats fool you. He’s one of Benning’s finest.”

  Mangino smiled widely and offered his hand as well.

  Cal returned from his visit to the rest room, composed and apparently recovered from his emotional outburst. He took the stool between Mangino and Santana.

  “Quinn Calhoun,” Sadie said. “Cal to his friends. He’s a mercenary, a hothead, and new husband to a woman who is really much too good for him.” There was a hint of friendly teasing in her voice.

  As the others had, Cal offered his hand for a shake, and Truman took it.

  Already, he felt like a grade-A chump. Maybe Cal was going to be a father, but Sadie wasn’t the mother. She wasn’t Cal’s lover, she was his friend. The hug had been…comfort of some sort. What she’d dreaded was introducing him to her cohorts. He already knew that she was an intensely personal woman who didn’t like sharing too much of herself. Introducing him to the men she worked with was a huge step for her.

  He’d been so quick to jump to the wrong conclusion. Sadie wasn’t Diana. In fact, no two women could be more different.

  “And this is Lucky Santana,” Sadie said with a sigh. “He’s the closest thing I have to a partner. We all switch up now and then, but Santana and I have worked together a lot.”

  Santana did not smile like Mangino, and he did not offer his hand. Instead he said, “We know who we all are now, except for him.”

  Sadie took another deep breath. “This is my friend, Truman McCain.”

  For a long, strained moment, the entire café was eerily silent. No one said a word. Sadie didn’t even breathe.

  “I always knew you had a friend stashed somewhere,” Mangino finally said with a widening of his grin.

  Benning just nodded and gave a little grunt, already bored with the conversation.

  And Lucky Santana stared at Truman with an expression that said, very clearly, “Hurt her and I’ll ruin your other knee.”

  The way they were looking at him, it was clear Sadie didn’t have much of a personal life. At least, not that she had made her colleagues aware of. These men were like family to her, he imagined.

  The dreaded chore of introducing him to her coworkers done, Sadie started talking—in a very businesslike voice—about contacting a sketch artist they had used in the past. Then she scooted down the counter so that she stood directly before Cal.

  “Do you want to tell them?” she asked softly.

  He nodded once.

  And behind the counter, where no one else could see, Sadie threaded her fingers through Truman’s and held on tight.

  Chapter 13

  To Sadie’s absolute horror, all four of the guys decided to stay in Garth overnight. Benning wanted to speak personally with Evans, and the others were overly curious. About the murders and about Truman. She wasn’t sure which intrigued them most.

  And since Cal now knew the Kelly-sighting in North Carolina had to be false, he wasn’t in a hurry to do anything but get back to his wife, who was now teaching at a county elementary school near Benning’s headquarters in south Alabama.

  S
adie grudgingly put them all up at the Yellow Rose Motel. Jennifer absolutely drooled over Mangino, whose hair was not even in the same ballpark as Jason’s or Bradley’s. Mangino’s long black hair was the envy of many a woman, and it actually looked good. Great, even. Drool-worthy. This was the look the other two men had been aiming for—and had missed much more widely than the bullet had missed her and Truman. Sadie was not surprised that her cousin honed in on the most outrageous of the four men; Jen could spot trouble from a mile away.

  Before she headed back to the cabin with Truman, she gave Dante a word of warning. He was not to mess with her cousin. He was not to so much as look at Jen and flash that Mangino smile. No argument. No, it didn’t matter that Jennifer was over twenty-one.

  Sadie wasn’t sure if she was doing her best to protect Jennifer from Dante or if it worked the other way around. In the romance department, they both had a reputation for being, well, fickle.

  She checked the rearview mirror often to see if anyone was following, as Truman drove toward the cabin. Not that she’d actually see anyone behind them if one or more of the guys had decided to follow her home. They were good. They were the best.

  It struck her like a thunderbolt when she realized that she’d very naturally thought of Truman’s cabin as home. Not a home she wanted to escape from, not a home to which she felt an obligation. Heart and roots and belonging, all the things she’d been so sure she didn’t want, waited at the end of this road, and the fact that she was happy to be going there was terrifying.

  Truman was quiet, his attention on the road before him and on…something else. Something he didn’t share. Was he shocked by his brief confrontation with the men she worked with? Did he just now realize what her life was like?

  If that was the case, he obviously didn’t care for it. Not at all. His jaw was tense, his eyes hooded, his mouth too firm. Even the hands on the steering wheel were tight and strained. It didn’t matter that she’d just formed an unnatural attachment for a small cabin by a pretty lake, and for the man who lived in it. She wasn’t what he wanted or needed—and she’d known that all along.

  The cabin was in sight at the end of the long driveway when she asked, “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  He didn’t hesitate to answer. “I’m an idiot.”

  For getting involved with her, for leaving his job, for getting caught up in this very personal investigation that got him shot at and fired…there were a lot of possibilities wrapped in that curt response. “Care to be more specific?”

  “No,” he said as he parked her Toyota at the back of the cabin, near the kitchen door. “But I think I’m going to have to.”

  The day was turning cool. Autumn would soon be gone, and winter would arrive. Winter in Alabama was rarely what any northerner would call brutal, but when the tree limbs were bare and the wind whipped across the lake, the cold could cut to the bone.

  It had been a long time since she’d felt that Miranda Lake chill. She’d been so sure that she wouldn’t be here long enough this time to experience it again, but day by day—minute by minute—things were changing. She was changing. Something deep inside her wanted to be here when the winter wind whipped across the lake, and when the crocuses bloomed, and when summer came with its long days and hot nights.

  Truman took her hand and led her around the cabin and down to the pier. He belonged here—in Garth, in this cabin, by this lake.

  And she didn’t.

  As they stepped onto the wooden pier, he began to speak. “When I walked into the kitchen and you were telling Cal that he would make a great father, I thought, for a few minutes, that you and he were…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, and still Sadie knew exactly what he meant. “Cal’s married!” she protested. “Very happily, I’ll have you know. And even if he wasn’t, I don’t mix business with pleasure.” In the past several years, she hadn’t mixed anything with pleasure. She’d been all about business.

  “I know that,” he said, his voice soft. “But when I saw him touching you I just…I almost lost it.”

  The cold weather affected Truman’s knee; he limped a little more than usual as they made their way, hand in hand, to the end of the pier. Sadie wanted to stop here in the middle of the pier, drop down and wrap her arms around that leg, kiss the knee and make it all better, and tell Truman that he didn’t have to worry, not about her. She was his and always would be.

  But she couldn’t make his knee better, certainly not with a kiss, and even if in her heart she felt like his…was she? Truly?

  “Diana had a thing for sportscasters,” he said, his eyes not on Sadie but on the lake that danced on the autumn wind. “That’s the reason she didn’t get the chance to bleed me dry when we got divorced.”

  “Stupid bitch,” Sadie said in a soft voice.

  Truman actually smiled a little. “You always did get right to the heart of the matter.”

  She wrapped her arm around his waist, and drank in the warmth of his body. Where other people were concerned, she was quick to get to the crux. But when it came to her own life, it was a different matter entirely.

  Truman draped his arm over her shoulder. “After I got rid of her, I swore I’d never get married again. Actually, I swore I’d never get seriously involved again. Not worth the trouble. My mother is always trying to fix me up with one girl or another, and she’s forever talking about more grandkids. But I decided when I came here that there wouldn’t be a second Mrs. McCain, no little Carter or Lincoln.”

  “I understand,” she said. More than he would ever know, she understood….

  “You’re changing my mind, Sadie Mae,” he said into the wind, “and I’m not sure that I like it.”

  Her heart did a sick flip, and her stomach tried to crawl into her throat. Instinctively, she tried to pull away. “I’ll go…”

  Truman held her tight. “Don’t run. I’m not so sure I don’t like that idea, either.”

  He drew her in close and kissed her, and she kissed him back with everything she dared to give. The kiss was deep, arousing and…romantic. Yeah, she was definitely coming away from this homecoming fling with more than she’d ever bargained for.

  Truman turned her toward the cabin, and, with his arm around her, led her toward home.

  “Let’s get inside. I feel like someone’s watching us.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s probably Mangino and Santana.”

  He made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a hum. “What about the other two?”

  “Cal is talking to his wife on the phone, and Benning is hunting down Evans.”

  “You sound sure.”

  “Pretty sure.” She smiled. “If Evans hadn’t been treating me like a serial killer, I might feel sorry for him.”

  At this moment it was definitely easier to make a joke than to tell Truman that she was falling in love with him, too.

  Truman woke with a start. For a few moments all seemed to be as it should be. Sadie slept beside him, naked and warm. The clock ticked. It was just after five-thirty in the morning, too early to wake without cause.

  And then he heard it again…the shuffling noise outside the cabin that had awakened him in the fist place.

  He shook Sadie lightly. “Sadie, honey. Would those fellas you work with be sneaking around outside the cabin for any reason?”

  “Of course not,” she said sleepily. “Don’t be silly. Why would they do that? Go back to…” The noise came again, and this time Sadie heard it, too. Her head popped up, and she was immediately alert.

  Without a word Sadie rolled from the bed, pulled on his discarded T-shirt, and reached for her gun. Truman did the same, only he grabbed a pair of jeans and pulled them on. Sadie was faster than he was. She was headed out the bedroom door, weapon in hand, as he zipped his pants.

  He could call 911, but by the time anyone got here whatever was about to happen would be over. But just in case…

  He lifted the bedside phone, but there was no di
al tone. Whoever was out there had cut the phone lines, which meant their visitor was more than a large animal or a curious friend.

  “Where’s your cell phone?” he asked as he slipped down the hall behind Sadie.

  “In my purse.” His white T-shirt hit her at mid-thigh, but she seemed not at all aware the vulnerable state of her dress. Her mind was on what was happening, not what she was wearing.

  She’d dropped her purse on the couch, as they’d come in for the night. “The phone line’s been cut. Call…”

  “I don’t get a signal out here,” she said, whispering as she edged into the dark great room.

  A shadow passed before the window that overlooked the lake.

  Sadie turned her head slowly to look at him. She wasn’t afraid. In fact, she was more in her element than when she’d been pouring coffee or serving up Lillian’s Wednesday surprise. Or sleeping in his bed. This is who she was, what she had become.

  Sadie nodded her head once toward the rear door, then signaled that she wanted him to go out the front door. They’d head the prowler off. Every masculine instinct called for him to protect his woman…but the truth of the matter was, Sadie didn’t need much in the way of protection. She could more than hold her own.

  She slipped out the back door; Truman exited by the front. The sky was gray with coming morning, and outside the cabin his nose was filled not with crisp morning air but the stench of gasoline. The SOB had obviously planned to burn the cabin down with him and Sadie sleeping in it. Coward.

  He heard a noise on the west side of the cabin. A whisper, the sound of liquid hitting the ground and splashing onto the wood. Truman stayed close to the house, rounded the corner, and saw their prowler. He couldn’t deny that he was surprised.

  Rhea Powell, Hearn’s assistant—and maybe his lover, according to Sadie—splashed gasoline along the ground around the cabin and even into the wood itself. She had dressed in black for the occasion, and had her hair pulled back in a casual ponytail.

  Truman raised his gun and aimed it at Rhea. “Hold it.”