by Cindy Dees
“Mostly, I have enemies. Eddie had a lot of friends and a big family.”
“Then why did you come back here?” he asked curiously.
“I think I came back to punish myself. Or at least to let Eddie’s family punish me.”
Whoa. He hadn’t expected so baldly honest an answer. Must be the painkillers talking. “Do you miss your mother?”
“No.”
That was emphatic. He’d had some epic fights with both of his parents over the years, but they’d always gotten past the arguments and forgiven each other. He couldn’t imagine being abandoned by his family. Although, now that he thought about it, he’d made a pretty good-faith effort to push them away since he’d gotten home. He made a mental note to stop by the main house for dinner sometime soon.
He had just tucked her into her bed with a mug of chicken noodle soup he’d found in her kitchen cupboard when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID—Joe Westlake.
“I have to take this. You drink your soup and try to get some rest,” he admonished Anna.
“Sheesh. You’re fussier than a wet chicken.”
“Have you ever seen a wet chicken?” he retorted. “They look like crazy, homeless aliens.”
Her laughter floated down the hall behind him as he stepped into the living room. “What have you got for me, Joe?” he muttered quietly.
“Nothing. By the time I got there, her car was completely engulfed in flames.”
“What?” he squawked. “It wasn’t on fire when we left. There wasn’t even a fuel leak. Believe me, Joe. I’m a Spec Ops type. That was the first thing I looked for when I got there. I swear, that car wasn’t smoldering, let alone leaking.”
“I believe you. Fire chief says it looks like someone doused the car in gas and lit it up. He’s got an arson guy coming out from Butte to take a look at it tomorrow. I’ve roped it off as a crime scene and one of my deputies will be out there all night to make sure no one tampers with it any further. But the car’s a total loss. Any evidence we might have found about who ran her off the road has been destroyed.”
Brett swore under his breath.
“I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. Someone tried to kill Anna.”
Chapter 11
Anna didn’t know what to make of a man who not only was proficient in a kitchen, but who was willing to fuss over her. Brett plumped pillows and fetched blankets and kept bringing her food and hot drinks until she thought she was going to burst. It was so sweet of him, though, that she didn’t have the heart to tell him she couldn’t eat another bite if she tried.
The evening grew late, and she’d barely finished a single yawn before Brett scooped her up in his arms off the living room sofa to carry her back to her bedroom. “Really, Brett. I’m capable of walking by myself.”
“Congratulations,” he murmured, striding down the hall.
“You can put me down,” she tried.
Nope. No dice. He carried her all the way into her bedroom and laid her down in her bed. She was going to have to get up to use the restroom before she slept, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. No way did she want him carrying her into the bathroom and trying to babysit her in there!
“I’ll be on the couch. If you need anything at all during the night, just call out and I’ll be right here.”
She looked up at him shyly. “I don’t know how to thank you, Brett. I don’t deserve any of this—”
“Will you stop with that deserving/not deserving stuff?” he snapped.
Her head hurt too much to argue with him tonight, so she merely frowned up at him. What must it be like to see the best in people? To believe that the world was a decent place and that most people were good-hearted?
In spite of a throbbing headache, she managed to sleep and startled herself by not waking up until morning light streamed through the window. Her wrist was hurting this morning, but her head felt better. She padded into the living room to say good-morning to Brett, except he was gone.
She was disappointed, but by the same token, he didn’t exactly strike her as the domestic type. She fried herself a few eggs one-handed and made toast.
She’d finished eating and was rinsing off her plate in the sink when she heard the front door open. She froze, panicked that it was Jimbo or one of Eddie’s friends. It would figure that she’d just found a reason to live, and that would be when one of Eddie’s family offed her.
“Anna?” She recognized Brett’s voice and sagged in relief.
A scrabble of claws on hardwood warned her that Reggie had come to visit, and she squatted down, smiling, to welcome the Lab into her house. He trotted into the kitchen with his stiff-legged gait, but smiled and wagged his tail when he caught sight of her. She gave his ears a hearty rub with her good hand and the dog leaned against her affectionately.
Reggie turned around and headed back toward the front door, and she followed behind him, stopping cold when she reached the main room. Brett held a rifle in one hand and a nylon duffel bag in the other. He set the bag down and opened it, laying out three pistols and a half-dozen boxes of ammunition. Alarm roared through her. She hated and feared guns, and didn’t like the idea of any of them in her house.
Good grief. “Expecting a war?” she asked cautiously.
“Just taking a few precautions.”
She frowned. “Against what?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m prepared for anything.”
She’d been in a car accident with some jerk with road rage, and Brett was overreacting. A lot. But he also was recently returned from a war zone, and who knew how that affected his view of the world.
Still, she hated guns. She’d lived in fear of Eddie getting the bright idea to bring one into the house and mixing it with his drinking and drugs. But from the grim look on Brett’s face, he wasn’t going to be talked out of his weapons.
Instead, she asked a question that had been bugging her since yesterday. “How was it that you found me so soon after I went off the road?”
His face reddened. “I followed you out of Sunny Creek. I was in town and saw your car. I was curious about why you left my place without saying goodbye and I wondered where you were going.” He added in a rush, “I shouldn’t have followed you. It was weird and stalker-y. I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad you were there to help me. I don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t gotten there so fast.”
His expression closed down grimly as if he didn’t want to think about that either. After a moment, he mumbled, “It’s just that I have trust issues—”
She cut him off gently. “Really. It’s okay. I didn’t give you any reason to trust me when I left your place the way I did yesterday morning. I shouldn’t have left without at least thanking you for the time we spent together. It was amazing, by the way. Likewise, you shouldn’t have followed me. But it all worked out for the best. Let’s call it even, okay?”
He nodded in agreement.
“Is there any way I can talk you out of having that arsenal in my house?” she tried.
“Not a chance.”
“Why?” she challenged.
“Because your safety is important to me.”
“In the first place, my safety is my business. And in the second place, no one’s trying to kill me. At least not today. As long as Jimbo Billingham and his drunk buddies aren’t around, I’m fine.”
“You have no way of knowing if someone else is out to harm you,” he bit out. A note of desperation entered his voice.
“Who would hurt me? I’m nobody.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “God, I hate it when you put yourself down.”
“Just keeping it real, Brett.”
“You’re putting me down at the same time, you know.”
She stared. “How’s that?”
“I like you. I find you a
ttractive. Interesting. If you’re nobody, what does that say about my taste in women?”
He made a good point. Not that it changed her mind about her relative worth as a human being, of course. She scowled at him, and he scowled back.
If he was determined to babysit her back to health, this was going to be a long weekend. Very long.
He seemed agitated as well and picked up a piece of sandpaper. He attacked hand sanding the carved wood trim on the wainscoting and made short work of sanding the door frames she hadn’t gotten to. He spent several hours in silence, staining the wood he’d just sanded, and she let him stew. If he wouldn’t respect her wishes in her own home and take his guns and his overprotective attitude outside, she had nothing to say to him.
But when he headed for the kitchen with a crowbar, that was when she protested. “What on earth are you thinking about doing with that crowbar?”
“You plan to redo that god-awful avocado, 1970s nightmare of a kitchen, don’t you?” he asked.
“Eventually. When I can afford it.”
“Consider it done.”
“But I can’t afford—”
“I’ve got nothing better to do, and I’m sick of sitting around the cabin by myself.”
“But—”
“Think about it like this. I’m bigger than you, I’m meaner than you, you’re the one with the concussion, and I’m the one with the crowbar.”
She did stand up with some idea of stopping him, but before she could get to the kitchen, she heard a mighty rending of wood followed by a crash.
“What on earth?” she exclaimed, bolting for the kitchen.
An entire counter was torn off its cabinets and lying on the floor.
“Stop!” she shouted over the kitchen sink being ripped free of its moorings.
“Out with the old and in with the new!” he shouted back.
She hadn’t given him permission to reinvent her entire life, darn it! But that was exactly what he seemed set on doing. Sheesh. Sleep with a man once, and he thought he could just come in and rip up a woman’s kitchen.
She didn’t even want to think about how she was going to pay for new cabinets, counters, floors...heck, appliances. “You have to let me help,” she insisted.
“Nope. You’re hurt. Stay over there out of the way.”
Helplessly, she watched as he efficiently emptied her drawers and cabinets into plastic storage bins that he’d carried in as part of his suite of tools. He carried the bins into her dining room, and then destroyed the rest of her kitchen. Cabinets came off the walls, linoleum came up off the floor and he started to unhook appliances.
“You can’t carry all this stuff out by yourself,” she declared.
“You’re right. That’s why a few hands from Runaway Ranch—” He broke off as the sound of a truck engine became audible in the driveway beside her house. “Speak of the devil. Hank Mathers and a few of the guys just pulled into your driveway with a flatbed truck and gloves to help me haul off this trash.”
She watched in amazement as the entire contents of her kitchen disappeared out the back door. In short order, she stood in a bare room, stripped down to the laths and studs. She officially was kitchen-less. “And how am I supposed to eat and cook and wash up now?” she demanded.
“That’s what takeout is for. And in the meantime, do you feel up to a field trip?” he asked.
She glared at him. “Are you always this bossy?”
“Bossy’s my middle name.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you remind them a lot of your mother? On a bad day?”
He just grinned and helped her into a coat. The painkillers she’d taken upon waking were kicking in and her headache and wrist were mostly dull throbs and not actual distractions.
“You’re a bully, Brett Morgan.”
“Guilty as charged.” He moved toward her purposefully as if to pick her up bodily.
She stopped him with a hand on his chest, glaring as menacingly as she could manage. “I swear, if you pick me up, I won’t go with you wherever you’re planning to take me.”
He grinned at her unrepentantly. “Fine. I’ll just kiss you, then.”
He handled her like spun glass and his kiss was far too gentle and short for her taste. Worse, he stepped back from her before she could get her arms around him and demand more. The man seriously was an awful tease.
She did let him take her good arm as they went outside to his truck. Yesterday’s snowmelt had frozen overnight into a thin layer of ice on the sidewalk. The last thing she needed was to fall and bang her head again or land on her fractured wrist.
She dozed as he drove all the way to Butte and parked beside a kitchen design store. She eyed it warily. “This place looks expensive. I was planning to buy vintage stuff from Vinny Benson. He’s keeping an eye out for cabinets that are the size I need. In fact, he called yesterday morning to tell me he might have a dresser I could turn into a bathroom sink cabinet.”
“You could wait for months or years for the right kitchen cabinets to show up at his place. Better to order exactly what you want and have a functioning kitchen.”
Horror slammed through her. She couldn’t afford this? Not by a mile.
She opened her mouth to refuse flatly to go inside, but he cut her off before she could speak. “I don’t want to hear a word about the cost. This is my gift to you.”
“It’s way too much. It’s entirely inappropriate, Brett,” she retorted.
“I never have gone in for the whole appropriate thing. How about you agree that whenever I drop by for supper in the future, you have to feed me in the kitchen I built for you? Would that make you feel better?”
She scowled at him, appalled. “No!”
His smile faded and he spoke seriously. “Anna, let me do this. Think of it as therapy for me. Trust me. If my old man knew I was getting out of the cabin to work on your place, he’d pay for your whole damned house.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. What was a person supposed to say in response to that? She would find a way to pay him back. Somehow.
Brett refused to let her ask about the price of anything in the kitchen store, from cabinets to appliances. And when she tried to choose basic models, he casually told the salesman to upgrade them. He had even brought the exact measurements of her kitchen with him. Fortunately, she liked the original layout, so he wouldn’t be tearing out her plumbing and wiring to reconfigure the space. That would save some money, at least.
She was in shock by the time Brett handed over a credit card and casually paid for the entire order without ever letting her see the grand total. It had to be thousands of dollars, though.
She tried one last time to stop him. “Brett—”
“My father can afford a thousand of your kitchens. Hush.”
He led her out to the truck. If only she weren’t starting to droop. And her pain meds were wearing off. She would put up the mother of all fights against this...
...She woke up as the truck turned into her driveway and dusk was falling. Brett made her stay in the truck while he went inside and presumably searched the house. Which was total overkill, but not worth arguing over. And besides, his concern for her sent warmth through her that had nothing to do with the truck’s excellent heater.
He came outside to open her door and escort her inside. His mama hadn’t missed a trick when it came to training him to be a gentleman. They shared pizza they ate out of the box lid, à la college coed, and she called it an early night.
The same nightmare that always visited her in the wee hours came again, and she woke to Brett leaning over, coaxing her to wake. Her throat was dry, and her entire body shook.
“Geez, Anna. What do you dream about that makes you scream like that?”
She blinked up at him in dismay. He would know if she lied, so she answered, “I dream about Eddie�
�s death.”
“How did he die? I’ve been out of the country for the past few years and didn’t catch the local gossip while I was gone.”
“He was stabbed.”
“God, I’m sorry. He was an asshole, but no one deserves to be murdered.”
Brett’s words might as well have been knives stabbed right into her heart. As amazing a fantasy as it was to play house with him, the truth hadn’t changed. She had no business allowing herself to be happy. She closed her eyes, and rolled away from him, hoping he would take the hint and leave.
He didn’t. In fact, she felt the covers rise and he slid in behind her, his big body spooning hers, his arm coming around her gently.
She squeezed her eyes shut, silent tears escaping to run down her face onto the pillow. She was bad. Horrible. A killer, whether intentional or not.
Brett might be a soldier, but he didn’t kill in cold blood. He engaged in combat with violent enemies who would kill him if he didn’t defend himself. She had long given up on defending herself from Eddie when he’d charged her that night. If only she had moved the knife. If only. If only. The refrain played in her head like a broken record.
She should tell Brett the truth. She owed it to him if he was considering getting involved with her. Being with her came with baggage he deserved to know about. But she couldn’t bring herself to confess her sins to him. For once, she was happy, and it was entirely possible Brett would walk away from her if he found out she’d killed her own husband and then hidden that fact.
Truth was, Brett could never despise her as much as she despised herself.
Chapter 12
Brett held Anna patiently, waiting for nearly an hour until her body finally relaxed in his arms into sleep. He knew she wasn’t afraid of him. So what, then, made her so tense after her nightmare? Had it frightened her that much? Had she seen Eddie’s murder? As a civilian, she wouldn’t be accustomed to what violent death looked like. Unlike him. He carried far too many images and memories of what war did to human bodies. To innocents. To his friends and comrades.
But lying here in the dark with Anna cuddled up against him all warm and soft, the images were a little more distant for a change. A little less personal. He hoped it was progress and not just his being tired after a long day of hard physical labor. Whatever its source, he was grateful for it.
