Just Pretending

by Myrna Mackenzie

  “He did say that he was coming in for questioning, though, didn’t he?” David had prompted.

  Jackson had sighed. “Storm’s always been a very private person,” he’d admitted. “He’s not exactly one for allowing himself to be pinned down easily or for declaring himself, but—”

  “But?” Gretchen had coaxed.

  “I can guarantee that he’ll be here—and that he’ll be angry when he arrives,” Jackson had promised.

  Her shrug had been resigned. “It’s to be expected,” she’d said.

  But after Jackson had gone, David hadn’t missed the worried look in her eyes. “You’re worried about Storm?”

  She shook her head. “He’s a man who lost his brother many years ago. And now he’s had to face that loss all over again. The families are always angry. Why shouldn’t they be?”

  And David knew just how much this lady had gone through back on those streets of Miami. She’d seen more than her share of the tough stuff.

  “White horn shouldn’t be this way,” he said, wishing they were in a more private place than the station so he could risk placing a soothing arm around her shoulder or even pulling her in close against his side, dropping a kiss on the flowery fragrance of her silky hair.

  She surprised him with the small smile that turned her light green eyes bright. “It usually isn’t this way,” she promised. “Your hometown is a wonderful place, David. Don’t think it isn’t just because a few bad things happen now and then. And don’t go getting that let’s-take-care-of-Gretchen light in your eyes. I’m a very resilient individual.”

  “A woman who handles things.”

  She shrugged. “Aren’t you a man who handles things? Whatever led you into the Bureau in the first place?”

  He laughed out loud at that. “Stubbornness, I’m sure my family would tell you. I was a puny, sickly kid and when I hit college and started bulking up, I was determined to prove that I could play hardball. Purely pigheaded.”

  “Hmm. I can believe that, but I doubt that was the only reason you went into your line of work. Plenty of other opportunities elsewhere to prove yourself. Admit it, Hannon, you’re a sucker for truth and justice. You like to make sure that the good guys win.”

  She stood in front of him, her hands firmly planted on her hips, her chin thrust out in challenge. An immovable wall, sure that she was right.

  He lifted one shoulder. “I like to even the odds,” he admitted. “I like to make sure things are done fairly.”

  Gretchen noted that David, who smiled so wickedly and so well, wasn’t smiling now. She guessed that he’d seen his share of injustice as a kid. If he’d truly been scrawny and sickly as he’d said, she could well imagine what he’d had to put up with, even if he did have the Hannon name behind him. Maybe because he bore the Hannon name. He would have been a target now and then. But no more. He’d grown up. He’d grown gorgeous and tall and strong. He’d found his place, his self-confidence, and he attracted people, especially women, like roses attracted helpless bumblebees. He did it with that sense of justice, that humor, those eyes, and that wicked, wicked smile that promised pleasure beyond belief.

  She was no different. She was susceptible. The temptation to rise up on her toes and feel those lips against hers again was almost overwhelming. And that was why she’d spent the morning drowning in paperwork. If there was anything destined to drown out desire, it was pa per-work.

  “Gretchen—Officer Neal, do you think you could do something about my next door neighbor? I mean, I don’t want you to arrest him or hit him with your club or anything. Not yet, anyway. I just want you to kind of shake him up a little bit.”

  Uh-oh. Here we go again, David thought, raising one brow as Gretchen slowed to let the spindly man walking behind her have time to catch up. She steered him toward the sensible, neighborly way to handle his sticky problem of his neighbor cutting across his yard on his way to work. This kind of question-and-answer session seemed to follow the lady like shadows trailing sunlight. In the past week and a half since he’d become Gretchen’s almost constant companion, David had come to realize that while the lady was fully competent in her role as law enforcer, she spent a substantial amount of her time soothing and mothering the citizens of the town who depended on her.

  They’d almost made it all the way to the Hip Hop Café, David noted. Lunch was only a few steps away, and Gretchen very much needed her lunch. First thing this morning there’d been the news from Jackson, which had been less than they’d hoped for. And then she’d spent the rest of the morning wrestling with paperwork, which he knew she hated. Heck, everyone in law enforcement hated paperwork and there only seemed to be more and more of it as the years went on. So it had been a crummy morning. A draining morning. A give-me-sustenance kind of morning. Did the lady really need any more of this nonsense?

  No, she didn’t, but David was absolutely, completely positive she wouldn’t appreciate him butting into her business, either. And so he settled for giving the man disgruntled looks.

  When she’d finally soothed Harve’s nerves and joined David, walking beside him into the café, she lightly nudged him in the ribs with her elbow.

  “You weren’t very subtle,” she said. “You were all but growling. Poor Harve probably thinks the feds are going to raid his house at midnight just because he asked for a little help.”

  David raised his brows. “He didn’t ask for a little help. He asked you to act like his mother, to act as a mediator between his neighbor and him. A grown man like that, he should be ashamed throwing his petty problems off on you.”

  He lightly touched the small of her back, motioning her toward a booth in the rear.

  “They’re my problems, too,” she insisted.

  David snorted. “You can’t baby the whole world, lady.”

  Gretchen stopped in her tracks. She turned and looked right up into his eyes. Close. She was very close. Near enough for him to catch her to him, to slide his palms around her waist. The thought sent his blood sizzling through his veins.

  “I don’t baby them, Hannon.”

  The defensiveness of her tone told him all he wanted to know. She did baby the citizens of this town and she darn well knew it. She just didn’t want to admit it.

  David grinned. “All right, Gretchen, you don’t go above and beyond the call of duty. Ever. You’re tough as hardtack, cool as ice cream.”

  Finally, she looked up from beneath her lashes and smiled at him as he urged her to sit in the booth they were standing next to.

  She sat. She played with the saltshaker, rolling it between her palms.

  “Okay, I do have a tiny tendency to be just a tad proprietary with the people of White horn. I like them to feel that they can talk to me about anything that’s bothering them.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, Gretchen,” David said, leaning close. “Except—”

  That warning light switched on in her eyes. It occurred to David that he was playing her along in the very hope of seeing that hot green light, that fire that shot through her and right into him.

  “Except?” she coaxed.

  “Except when people take advantage of your willingness to listen. Except when they become so dependent on you that they don’t tend to their own back yards themselves. Except when you don’t seem to be able to say no.”

  Gretchen leaned in close, her face mere inches from David’s. “Are you implying that I’m a bit spineless, David?”

  Her voice was a dangerous, low whisper. He loved it, longed to lean forward those few inches and cover her lips with his own, drink in those low, seductive syllables that rolled off her tongue and engage in a sensual battle of tongues and teeth and will. He wanted to absorb the lady right into his skin.

  Instead, he took a slow, unsteady breath. He held out his palms in surrender. “Any man who called you spineless would have to be blind, sweet heart.”

  She looked quickly around the room. To see if anyone had heard the endearment, he was sure.

  �
�Sorry,” he said, but of course he wasn’t sorry at all and both of them knew it.

  “All right, then,” she agreed, pulling back, picking up her menu and appearing to study it.

  “I could say no,” she said quietly, as if she had just told him that she was going to order the meat loaf special.

  He chuckled and picked up his own menu. “Bet you couldn’t. Not in this lifetime, Gretchen.”

  “I could.” She sat up straighter and fiddled with the plain gold band of her watch. “Tell him, Em.”

  Emma Harper stood beside the table, ready to take their order. “Tell him what, Gretchen?”

  “That I’m not a total pushover when someone asks for my help with their…their community problems.”

  David smiled up at Emma. “Harve Dibbons wants her to help him with his neighbor who keeps cutting across his lawn.”

  Emma’s light laughter lit up her eyes.

  “Oh, that. Sure, Gretchen, face it. You’re a pushover. That is, I’ll bet you steered him in the right direction, but you listened to him tell the whole long, drawn-out story first, didn’t you?”

  Gretchen opened her mouth, her green eyes irritated. “Okay, maybe at times I let people go on, but that’s my choice. I could walk away if I wanted to.”

  “The way you could say no to all those requests to stand up at everyone’s wedding?” Emma asked.

  “Hey,” Gretchen protested. “The world needs its bridesmaids. They keep everyone feeling good, and they take care of the brides of the world. Besides, I only do that for people I’m close to,” she insisted.

  “You’re right. You do, and people ask you because they love you,” her friend agreed, and David could hear the sincerity in her voice. “But then they take it too far. Every wedding you stand up at, people are always trying to fix you up with someone when I know you’ve asked them not to.”

  Gretchen blew out a breath. She nodded. “I know, and I know they do it because they care, but I am absolutely not looking forward to my part in Pamela’s wedding. I adore Pamela, I want to be there, but as for the rest, no, thank you.”

  But her words and the topic had flipped a switch in David’s consciousness.

  “I’ll bet you can’t say no to the next person in town who asks you a foolish question any more than you can turn down one of your friends when they ask you to take part in their weddings.”

  Gretchen stared him in the eye.

  “You’re pushing it, Hannon.”

  “I know. You want to take that bet?”

  Gretchen looked up at her friend who was clearly interested in this topic. A man in the corner was holding up his coffee cup, but Emma was watching Gretchen’s lips. Gretchen nodded toward the man and she and David gave the waitress their orders.

  “I want to know how this ends,” Emma said, her voice a low hiss as she moved away. “You tell me later, Gretchen.”

  But Gretchen had turned back to David.

  “Why would I want to take your bet?”

  David slid his palms across the table, his fingertips touching hers. “Because you’re a proud, stubborn woman who doesn’t want anyone to think that she has an Achilles’ heel.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  He widened his grin, covered her hands with his own. “Well, then?”

  “What are the terms?”

  He tilted his head. “I win, you invite me to your friend’s wedding.”

  “You don’t even know Pamela.”

  “I know you. And I go with you. We tell everyone I’m your fiancé.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Why would we do that?”

  “So that you can actually enjoy the day. So that you can show everyone you don’t need them to find you a man. You don’t, of course, but this will simply let everyone relax a bit.”

  “Except for us.”

  He shook his head. “Oh, I intend to be very relaxed, Detective Neal, and to enjoy myself. You like to dance?”

  She took a deep and visible breath. “Sometimes.”

  “All right, then.”

  Gretchen pulled her hands from beneath his. She placed her long, narrow palms over his hands this time. “What happens if I win?”

  He studied the room for a moment, tried to think of something that would fly. “I walk your pretend dog for a week.”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Done.”

  She smiled up at him as Emma placed her food in front of her. “Don’t think this is going to be an easy bet to win, David,” she said.

  He grinned at Emma. “What do you think, Emma? A diamond ring or— No, something out of the ordinary. An emerald for her eyes.”

  Emma shook her head. “What are you talking about, David, you devilish man?”

  “Rings, Emma. Rings. Gretchen and I are on the verge of becoming engaged.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” Gretchen said.

  He reached across the table and brushed her nose with the tip of one finger. “Okay, whatever you say, Gretchen.”

  “I’m glad you’re finally acting more like a true partner,” she said with a sarcastic laugh, but her tone was a bit grumpy and uncertain.

  It was grumpy and uncertain all day. When he walked her to her car that night, she turned to face him as she put the key in the lock.

  “It won’t happen, David. Don’t look so smug.”

  He lifted one hand and touched her cheek. “Good night, Detective Neal. Sleep tight.”

  And he walked away whistling. Who would have thought that coming to town to solve a murder could have resulted in this much enjoyment?

  Lyle Brooks leaned back against the wall of the White horn movie theater and watched David Hannon lean forward and touch Gretchen Neal.

  Interesting. His family and Hannon’s had never been close, even though they were distantly related. Who would have thought that David would come back to town and snag the attention of his greatest enemy and threat right now? How convenient of the man to do so.

  And how interesting that not only were these two working together, they were obviously doing a lot more. They were getting pretty tight.

  “Good job, cousin,” he muttered. If the two chief investigators were keeping each other company in their spare time, they might be looking the other way now and then. They might be easily distracted, or even better, easily manipulated.

  “Oh, I like that,” Lyle whispered. “I really do like that. If I need to, I could make use of that little bit of knowledge.”

  Chapter Seven

  There were times when a person simply had to admit that she needed a life jacket, Gretchen told herself several days later as she pulled up in the middle of town. This was one of those times. Ever since she’d been thrown together with David Hannon, she’d been struggling to breathe in deep water. The man obviously had way too much experience where women were concerned. She’d seen it that night when she’d had dinner at the Big Sky. He’d been aware of every lady at the table—his sister, his cousins, his aunt, his mother and, oh, yes, herself, as well. He’d been the most gracious of hosts, a man who could make a woman swoon, if women still did that sort of thing.

  “But that’s not you, Gretchen,” she told herself firmly, turning her car off. “You’ve been courted by men before.” And she had. Quite a few men, for that matter. None of them had made a dent in her armor.

  So why did she keep finding herself shivering whenever David came into the room?

  “Because I’m dealing with a pro, of course,” she reminded herself. That was it. Absolutely. The man knew all the right moves, and he had that devilish smile, that long, strong frame, and a look in his eye that made a woman sure that he knew his way around a bedroom way too well.

  What’s more, ever since they’d made that darn bet, he’d had a lazy, cat-in-the-cream look about him. She was beginning to feel like a very small and tasty mouse whenever David glanced her way.

  But not this morning. This morning he’d had calls to make from home. Apparently the government’s bus
iness didn’t stop just because one of their best agents decided to take a few weeks off.

  And so she was on her own. She should feel good about that. Back to normal. Free, so to speak.

  She should.

  “I do,” she insisted, slipping through the door of the Hip Hop. This morning for the first time in a while, she’d been on her own. She’d traversed the town alone, made a few calls trying to locate Storm and get him to come in before she had to take stronger measures. And now here she was heading in to lunch all on her own.

  “Gretchen?”

  The querulous voice came from the first booth, the one she’d just passed.

  Gretchen turned to see Lily Mae Wheeler waving her over.

  “Gretchen, I just had to see you. That man—o-oh, that man. I just can’t even say his name.”

  Immediately the word “David” appeared in Gretchen’s thoughts. For a second she was almost afraid she’d whispered it out loud.

  But apparently she was mistaken. “Him and that darned thick silver hair that covers that equally thick skull,” Lily Mae was saying. Her brace lets jangled on her shaking wrist and her beaded earrings swung in fierce opposition as she bobbed her head, trying to force the traitorous name from her lips. “O-oh, that man,” Lily Mae said again.

  “What man?” Gretchen found her voice long enough to ask the obvious question.

  “That man who keeps letting his crab grass grow over into my yard, that’s the one. Do you know what he did yesterday?”

  Gretchen was pretty sure she was about to hear.

  “Lily Mae…” she began.