Undercover Groom

by Lovelace, Merline

  From the reluctant gratitude in her voice, Mase gathered that his timely save had won him a measure of forgiveness for his caveman tactics earlier.

  “You’re welcome. I’m just glad I was close enough to catch her.”

  “Me, too. The last thing she needs is another fall.”

  “Is that what happened? She fell?”

  “Right off the top step of the ladder. She was checking the shelf life on the cereal boxes.”

  “That sounds like a dangerous occupation for a woman her age.”

  “I guess you came back for your fishing permit,” Chloe said, shoving off the windowsill. “Come inside. I’ll wash up and write out the permit for you.”

  “That wasn’t the only reason I came back,” he admitted as he righted the bushel basket he’d toppled in his charge across the porch. “I brought your dinner. There are a couple of orders of liver and onions lying around here somewhere.”

  Her low gurgle of laughter cut right into Mase. She sounded so much like herself that his stomach did a quick two-step with his backbone.

  “So that’s what I smell. For a minute there, I wasn’t sure if it was me or the worms or...”

  “Or me?”

  “Well...” She sniffed delicately. “The aroma did sort of follow you.”

  This just wasn’t his night, Mase decided. He searched behind him for the sack he’d tossed aside when he’d reached for his weapon. “I’m afraid our dinner landed in the dirt with the worms.”

  “Our dinner?”

  “Mayor Dobbins threw in an extra order,” he replied blandly. “I haven’t eaten in a while, and my stomach was rumbling loud enough to get a glassy-eyed stare from the mountain goat above the grill.”

  As if to prove his point, the organ under discussion gave a long, protesting growl.

  “I’ll go back down to the café for another order while you wash up,” Mase offered.

  “Never mind. Liver and onions aren’t exactly my favorite item...”

  His pulse jumped. How did she know that? How much did she recall of her likes and dislikes? Was she starting to remember?

  “. . . from Harold’s menu,” she finished with a shrug, unaware of his sudden stillness. “Hannah and I will make do with sandwiches tonight.”

  “I’m not real high on fried liver, either. Sandwiches sound good to me.”

  He was pushing. Chloe knew it and didn’t particularly like it He could see the hesitation in her face, hear it in her grudging invitation.

  “Come inside, then. You can keep Hannah company while I wash up and raid the cold cuts.”

  The much-patched screen door squeaked on its hinges, as did the glass-fronted door behind it. The color and jumble of the store reached out to grab Mase as soon as he followed Chloe inside. Although he was seeing the rows of shelves crammed with goods for the second time, the eye-dazzling display still hit him with the visual equivalent of a stun gun.

  “Do the residents of Crockett ever need an item that this store doesn’t carry?”

  Chloe skimmed a look around the jam-packed shelves. “If they do, they haven’t asked me for it yet.”

  “Is that so? How long have you been working here?”

  Her smile faltered at the casual question, then disappeared completely. The skin over her cheekbones seemed to tighten.

  “Awhile. Come on. We’ll let Hannah know you’re here, then I’ll wash up.”

  Mase followed her through the storeroom to the living quarters at the back of the store. He had no difficulty interpreting her evasive reply or the stiff set to her shoulders. The message came through loud and clear. She didn’t trust him. Not enough to talk about her apparent amnesia, anyway.

  After this afternoon, he couldn’t blame her. He still had a way to go before he completely recovered from that blunder. And, he thought grimly, from the scene in his office. When Chloe’s memory returned, she’d demand an explanation. Mase had one ready, one that didn’t breach security, but the idea of lying to her again left a coppery taste in his mouth.

  Damn! How had his relationship with Chloe gotten so bogged down in deceit? He hadn’t deliberately set out to mislead her. He’d been working for the government for years before she returned from Paris and burst into his life. He’d conducted a couple of particularly dangerous missions during their long engagement, but he’d made the conscious decision to end his career as an undercover agent. It wasn’t fair to Chloe for him to lead a second life that regularly put him in the line of fire, even if she didn’t know anything about that life. Still, there was no getting around the fact that he’d lied to her by omission.

  The same could be said of their phony engagement. True, it had been Chloe’s idea, not his. But he’d certainly taken advantage of the opportunity she’d handed him to finesse her closer and closer to the real thing. Another few days, a couple of weeks at most, and they would have peeled back the layers of lies and subterfuge to the core of friendship and desire that bubbled beneath.

  So here he was, Mase thought with an ironic twist of his lips, perpetuating another deceit. Pretending he didn’t know Chloe. Keeping his distance and his silence, when everything in him wanted to cradle her in his arms, to soothe away the confusion and fear she must be feeling.

  He was beginning to appreciate just how tough the next few days or weeks might be when Chloe led the way into the living room.

  “Hey, Hannah,” she called with a forced cheerfulness that dug at his heart. “Mase is here.”

  From her nest of hand-sewn quilts, the older woman flicked him a considering glance. If she made any special note of Chloe’s use of his first name, she didn’t comment on it.

  “He brought our dinner from the café, but it ended up in the dirt, along with half your stock of night crawlers.”

  “That so?”

  “I’ll let him explain. I have to clean up, then I’ll throw together some sandwiches.”

  While Chloe’s footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs, Hannah waved a hand toward the overstuffed armchair on the other side of the pine coffee table. “Have a seat, Chandler. I have to admit, I’m a bit curious about just how you came to be feedin’ my dinner to the worms. I’m curious about a few other matters, too.”

  Mase settled his weight on the lumpy cushion. The speculative look Hannah laid on him said more clearly than words that she didn’t quite trust him, any more than Chloe did. It also told him that he was in for a tough inquisition. Not that he doubted his ability to dodge any questions that cut too close to the truth. Mase still carried the scars from his decidedly uncomfortable session with the Colombian dopers who’d tried unsuccessfully to break his cover a couple of years ago.

  He had to admit that he hadn’t exactly anticipated spending the first hours after he’d found Chloe dodging her protector’s questions, though. Or sharing sandwiches in a small, cluttered living room. His earlier plans to sweep his fiancée off to the nearest hotel came back to mock him. Images rolled through his mind in vivid Technicolor. Of Chloe smiling her understanding when he explained away Pam. Of Chloe flushed with passion when he kissed her with none of the restraint he’d shown all these months. Of Chloe naked, panting, wanting him as much as he wanted her.

  With a silent, frustrated sigh, Mase filed the images away for another day. Another night.

  Sure enough, Hannah waited only until the sound of Chloe’s footsteps had faded before dismissing any polite chitchat with a wave of a hand misshapen by arthritis.

  “Just between you and me, Chandler, what I want to know is what brought you to Crockett...and what, exactly, you’re hunting.”

  “I came to find Chloe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s my fiancée.”

  “him.”

  “You don’t sound particularly surprised.”

  “Maybe that’s because I’m not,” Hannah retorted. “I figured Chloe was either your wife or about to be. I also figured that it was only a matter of time until someone came looking for her. So why’d she run a
way from you?”

  The best cover, Mase had learned over the years, required the least subterfuge. Elaborate details and complex identities could trip a man under questioning . . . particularly the Colombian brand of questioning.

  “She walked into my office and found me with another woman in my arms.”

  Mase didn’t make any excuses or apologies. Those he owed to Chloe, and only to Chloe. Folding her hands across the blankets, Hannah contemplated him with about as much warmth as her employee had given the night crawlers.

  “You’re lucky she just ran away, Chandler. From what I’ve seen of that girl in the past few weeks, she’s got enough grit in her gullet to grab my shotgun and blow you from here to next year if she takes a mind to.”

  “I’m going to do my damnedest to see she doesn’t take a mind to.”

  “Hmm.”

  There was no mistaking the message in the single, drawn-out syllable. If he hurt Chloe again, intentionally or otherwise, Hannah would take matters into her own hands.

  “Why haven’t you told her who she is? Or who you are?”

  “After I found her this afternoon and realized she didn’t recognize me...”

  “After you kissed her and she didn’t recognize you, you mean,” the gray-haired woman said with a snide smile. “That creased your ego a mite, didn’t it?”

  “Let’s just say it spurred me to consult with one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. I talked to him for some time after I left here. He recommends letting Chloe find her own way back, at her own pace.”

  “What about her family? Did they agree?”

  “Reluctantly.”

  Mase didn’t even bat an eye at that gargantuan understatement.

  “So you’re not going to tell her anything?”

  “Not until she asks.”

  “That right? What if she never asks?”

  “I’ll worry about never when it comes,” he replied grimly.

  Hannah was silent for several moments. Mase had just decided that the inquisition was over when her mouth cracked into a tight smile.

  “Well, I’ll tell you this, boy. Chloe Smith came here about as ignorant of the workings of a country store as anyone ever was, but she’s learned fast, damned fast. She’s studied up on the business and cleaned the place up as much as I’d let her. She gives me nightly tallies of sales and expenses, not that I do anything with the dad-blamed things. She’s even got the mule-headed route man who’s been squeezin’ my profit margin on beer and wine agreeing to cut his wholesale prices.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Chloe comes from a family of remarkable businessmen. She’s spent the past year or so developing her own sales and marketing skills.”

  “Her sales and marketing skills aren’t all she brought along with her to Crockett,” Hannah drawled. “Every ranch hand within a hundred miles who isn’t dead from the waist down or hat-overheels in love with his horse has been tryin’ to snare her interest. Business hasn’t been this good since before that supermarket went in over at Custer.”

  That didn’t surprise Mase, either. Chloe’s smile could light up Minneapolis in the dead of winter.

  The idea that it was lighting up a number of the locals didn’t particularly sit well with him, however. He was trying to digest the tight curl of displeasure in his gut when Hannah leaned forward, her eyes dead serious.

  “What I’m telling you, Chandler, is that I wouldn’t mind one little whit if Chloe decided to stay here in Crockett. Permanently.”

  Mase’s jaw tightened. “I would.”

  “Right now,” she drawled, sinking back against the sofa cushions, “your druthers don’t matter a lick of spit to me. They matter even less, it appears, to the woman upstairs.”

  Chloe gave herself far more time than she needed to clean up and change. Her jeans went into the antique egg crate she’d appropriated from the storeroom to use as a hamper. So did the long-sleeved T-shirt. Resisting the urge to shower away all traces of her close encounter with the worms, she settled for some serious scrubbing with a scratchy washcloth. That done, she padded into the spare bedroom under the slanting eaves and pulled a clean top and jeans out of the bureau that held her few changes of clothing. Hannah had insisted that she take whatever she needed from the supply of gaudy T-shirts and sweatshirts they stocked for the tourists, but Chloe hadn’t wanted to abuse her employer’s generosity. Nor had she wanted to spend more than absolutely necessary of the salary she was carefully hoarding . . . just in case she found herself alone and lost again.

  Shivering, Chloe slammed the bureau drawer shut. It took only a moment or two to tug on the clothes and drag a brush through her hair, but a reluctance to leave the tiny bedroom with its handcrafted, lodgepole pine furniture kept her standing before the bureau. The room had become her sanctuary. Here she’d learned not to panic at the shadows that darkened her mind. Here, in the bed Hannah’s grandfather had made with his own hands when he first settled the area, she’d forced herself to accept the bare facts that defined her.

  She’d run away from someone or something.

  She’d had an accident.

  She’d pawned a sapphire ring that someone named Kate had given her and used the money to get as far as Crockett.

  Unless, Chloe thought bleakly, she’d found or stolen the ring. In which case, even the name she was using belonged to someone else.

  She stared at her own image in the mirror. Who was she? Who had she run from? A familiar panic fluttered in her veins. She fought it, as she had so many times in the past few weeks, gulping in deep breaths.

  She wasn’t alone. She had to remember that. Hannah had taken her in and showed her a gruff, protecting friendship. Mayor Dobbins and Doc Johnson and the others in the area had accepted her without questions. She felt safe here. Even more important, she felt needed and wanted.

  Chloe had no idea why that mattered, or why dealing with suppliers and balancing the day’s receipts to the penny and nursing Hannah should give her this sense of satisfaction. Had she led such an empty life before she arrived in Crockett? Had no one ever depended on her, or expected her to put in the kind of back-breaking hours necessary to keep the shelves stocked and the store open from morning till night?

  Had no one loved her?

  Had she never loved anyone?

  Unexpectedly, an image of Mase Chandler, hunkered down on his heels, his mouth tipped into a grin, flashed into her head. Her breath hitched as something tugged at her. She tried to grab it, to pull it out of the haze in her mind. When she finally brought it into the light, her face heated.

  It wasn’t a memory. It was a need. An undeniably sexual need. She wanted Mase to grin up at her again. Almost as much as she wanted to kiss him again. The sudden contraction low in her belly was lust. Simple, undeniable lust.

  Blowing out a long sigh, she addressed the disgruntled image in the bureau mirror.

  “Great! Just great! Your mind is mush, but everything from the neck down appears to be functioning normally. You’d better watch yourself around this guy, Chloe Whoever-you-are.”

  With that stern admonition, she left her sanctuary. A moment later, she breezed past the living room on her way to the store.

  “Sorry I took so long. Hang tight while I raid the deli case.”

  Mase pulled in his long legs and started to rise. “Can I help?”

  “No, thanks. Just keep Hannah company. I’ll be right back.”

  The now-familiar scent of smoldering pine logs along with the sharp smell of coffee left too long in the pot greeted her when she stepped into the store. Chloe dumped the dregs and brewed a fresh pot before retrieving Swiss cheese, sliced ham and a paper-wrapped package of smoked venison from the refrigerator case.

  She nibbled on a slice of the tangy meat while she sliced the cheese, wondering if she’d ever tasted smoked venison before coming to Crockett. If not, she was certainly hooked on it now. She had just grabbed a loaf of fresh bread from the shelf when the bell above the front door jangled.
The man in the curly beard and bulky sheepskin vest who stepped inside greeted her with a shy smile.

  “Hello, Chloe.”

  “Hello, Doc. We didn’t expect you today.”

  “I was out at the Parker place and, uh, thought I’d swing by on my way back to Custer.”

  Chloe had only lived in the area for a few weeks, but even so she knew that Doc Johnson had driven close to fifty extra miles to “swing by” on his way home. She swallowed a sigh, sincerely hoping he wasn’t going to press her for a date again. As nice as he was, she didn’t want to go out with him, or with any of the others who’d asked her. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.

  Or was she?

  What about that little pull she’d felt earlier? That tug of sexual need? Chewing on her lower lip, Chloe slanted a quick look at the doc. He was younger than Mase Chandler. More boyish looking, with his mop of sandy curls. His bushy beard utterly failed to give him the air of maturity he obviously tried for. He was younger and nicer and, she sensed with sure, feminine instinct, safer.

  “How’s Hannah?”

  The question brought her wandering thoughts back in focus with a snap. “She was doing better until she got out of bed this afternoon.”

  “What! The orthopedic specialist in Rapid City ordered her to stay off that ankle for at least six weeks.”

  “I remind her of that fact at least eight times a day, but she doesn’t pay any more attention to me than she does to him.” Chloe sent him a worried look. “Her ankle gave way under her, Doc.”

  “Did she fall again?” he asked sharply.

  “No, Mase caught her.”

  “Mase?”

  “A customer. Will you talk to her? Please? Tell her she has to take it easy?”

  “She’s not my patient, Chloe,” he reminded her with a rueful smile. “I could lose my license if I gave her medical advice.”

  “I know, I know, but you could talk to her as a friend.”

  “Ha! As if she’d take my advice. I’m still a grubby-faced kid to her. Every time I come in to visit, she reminds me of the time she caught me snitching candy and fed me a dozen dill pickles to teach me a lesson.”