Undercover Groom

by Lovelace, Merline

  “Come again?”

  “It’s too complicated to explain now.”

  And too intensely private. Mase still hadn’t adjusted to the kick in the gut he got every time Chloe looked at him with the polite friendliness of a stranger. Or to the idea that he’d have to win her trust...and her love...all over again.

  “Just fax me the data this afternoon, will you? Any further sightings of our friend, Dexter Greene?”

  As he’d known it would, the question instantly diverted Pam from the personal to the professional.

  “No, not yet. We bugged your office and home phones, per your instructions, on the off-chance he’ll try to get information of your whereabouts from someone on your staff.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “I will.”

  “Mase . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  Uncharacteristically, Pam seemed to hesitate. Then her husky contralto rippled into laughter.

  “You’re the only man I know who’d woo a woman with Census Bureau data. Good luck.”

  “Thanks! I’ll need it.”

  Six

  Mase needed more than luck.

  Courting Chloe, he soon discovered, required patience, pursuit and dogged persistence. It took him several days to develop and implement a strategy that worked. Not only did he have to take into consideration the long hours Chloe put in at the store and her refusal to leave Hannah alone. He also had to work around the competition. Every unattached male between the ages of nine and ninety seemed to have the same goal Mase did.

  Shamelessly he played his insider’s advantage to edge the locals out of the picture. He knew Chloe. Even more, he knew the stock she’d sprung from. Fortune blood ran in her veins, and with it the business acumen that had vaulted the Fortune family business into an international conglomerate. Bit by bit Mase fanned the spark of her entrepreneurial instincts.

  At his suggestion, she followed up her customer survey with a price comparison of the main staples stocked in the store. Calls to supermarkets and convenience stores in Custer, Hot Springs and Rapid City revealed that Hannah considerably underpriced many of the items she sold. Late Saturday evening, Chloe mulled over the results with Mase, her forehead creased.

  “No wonder Hannah’s having trouble paying her suppliers,” she muttered. She caught herself and flushed. “Forget I said that. I shouldn’t be talking about her business with outsiders.”

  The “outsiders” bit stung, but Mase let it pass. “Maybe the information you’re gathering will convince her to raise her prices.”

  “I doubt it. Hannah’s regulars are all her friends.”

  “This is her livelihood,” he reminded her gently. “If you can show her ways to increase her profit margin without gouging her friends or driving away her customers, you’ll be doing her a service.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right.” She let her gaze drift around the crowded store. “I just hope she doesn’t think I’m meddling too much, or sticking my nose in where she doesn’t want it.”

  “If you are,” he drawled, “she’ll let you know.”

  Chloe’s frown eased. “Yes, she will.”

  Hannah grumbled and harrumphed and said she had to study the figures before rushin’ into any decisions. To Mase’s secret amusement, Chloe interpreted that as a green light to go ahead with a top-to-bottom inventory of goods on hand. The following Tuesday she ruthlessly dragooned him and any of her admirers who wandered into the store into counting cans and cartons and rolls of tarred roofing paper.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this since the first day I walked in the store,” she confided, swiping her arm across a forehead streaked with dust. “I don’t think Hannah’s inventoried her stock since... since...”

  “Since the forties?” Mase supplied.

  His eyes dancing, he displayed a World War II ad for Chesterfield cigarettes he’d found stashed behind the cat food. He had to admit the variety and sheer number of items that showed up on the inventory amazed him as much as it did Chloe and her helpers.

  “We carry six different flavors of oatmeal?” she exclaimed a few minutes later, poring over the results as her helpers compiled them. “I didn’t know there were six different flavors.”

  “Honeynut raisin’s my favorite,” one of the extras put in earnestly. “Hannah’s store is about the only place that stocks it anymore.”

  “Hmm.”

  Mase hid a grin. His fiancée had not only taken to operating the Crockett General Store with as much proprietary interest as its owner, she was even beginning to sound like her.

  The noncommittal response spooked her volunteer, a retired postal worker who’d gravitated to Crockett to indulge his passion for trout fishing. His fleshy jowls quivering, Charlie Thomas eyed Chloe uneasily.

  “You’re not thinking about cutting out the honeynut raisin, are you?”

  She gave a small sigh. “It’s not my place to cut out anything, Charlie. I’m just gathering information for Hannah to assess her stock.”

  “Okay,” he muttered, “as long as she doesn’t assess out my honeynut raisin.”

  Catching her lower lip in her teeth, Chloe sent Mase a glance that carried equal measures of resignation and laughter. The resignation made him grin. The laughter had him sucking in his breath. For a few heartbeats, the barriers between them came down. He saw his Chloe in the sparkling violet eyes, the smile that fought to break loose, even in the dust-streaked face and blond mane caught back in a plastic clip. The need to kiss her hollowed his stomach. He leaned forward an inch...two.

  The laughter left her eyes. She stared at him for an instant...two. Then she blinked, and the barriers fell into place once again.

  “We’d better get back to work,” she said, gathering up her inventory lists.

  To Mase’s intense satisfaction, she sounded more than a little breathless. Good! Breathless constituted a considerable improvement over the distant politeness she’d treated him to at first. Maybe, just maybe, she was starting to trust him. Humming to himself, he went back to counting cans and plotting ways to take Chloe from breathless to panting.

  Unintentionally, Hannah aided him in that effort the very next evening.

  “No more, girl! No more of these dad-blamed facts and figures!”

  With a grunt that tried to disguise her pain, the older woman shifted the cast encasing her leg from foot to mid-calf. Chagrined, Chloe closed the notebook she’d appropriated to tab and file her various reports.

  “I’m sorry, Hannah. I didn’t mean to pester you when you’re hurting.”

  “It’s the cold,” her employer grumbled, trying to get comfortable. “When the sun goes down, the damned pins in my ankle pick up the cold.”

  “Why don’t I turn on the furnace?”

  “I never fire it up until the fifteenth of October,” her employer snapped. “Besides, I’m waiting on my delivery of fuel oil.”

  Which wouldn’t occur until she paid the bill Chloe had found stuffed in a drawer, along with the overdue notices from several of her suppliers. Making a mental note to take care of the fuel bill herself from the wages Hannah had paid her, Chloe rose.

  “I’ll get you another blanket.”

  “I don’t need another blanket. Stop fussing over me!”

  The whiplike order stopped Chloe before she’d taken a single step. “I’m sorry.”

  Hannah took in her stricken expression and heaved a long sigh. “No, girl, I’m the one who’s sorry. Truly. I guess I’m just feeling caged and takin’ it out on you.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I know how difficult it is to... to operate at less-than-maximum capacity.”

  “Now that makes me feel even sorrier. You’re handling your affliction a damn sight better than I am, Chloe.”

  “You’re in a lot of pain.”

  “No, don’t try to peel off my rough bark. I’ve been acting meaner than a she-wolf separated from the pack, snappin’ your head off and grumblin’ about your reports when y
ou’re just trying to help.”

  Frowning, Hannah hitched up the blankets and tucked them under her armpits. “Here, give me that notebook. And you, you get yourself out for a while. Take a walk. Go on down to the café for a bowl of chili. Shoot some pool.” Her watery blue eyes grew sharper. “Maybe take a ride with that Chandler fellow. He’s been hanging around the store even more than Doc Johnson or that fool postman, Charlie Thomas, the past few days.”

  “I know.”

  “Chandler’s got more in mind than just helpin’ you count cans, girl.”

  “I know.”

  “Does that scare you?”

  Chloe thought long and hard before answering. The thought of climbing into Mase’s mud-splashed Blazer for a ride in the moonlight caused a distinct flutter deep in her belly, but the sensation had nothing to do with fear.

  “No, it doesn’t scare me.”

  “Hmm.” Hannah settled back against the cushions. “Go on, get yourself out of here and let me try to make sense of all this gobbledygook. I’ve got the phone close to hand,” she added irritably when Chloe hesitated. “I’ll call down to the café if I need anything.”

  “Shall I bring you back some dinner?”

  “No, no! I’m feelin’ ornery, not hungry. You just scat.”

  The cold Hannah had complained about hit Chloe the moment she stepped outside. Thankfully, she’d taken the precaution of bundling up in one of the bright orange hunter’s jackets Hannah stocked. Its downy fill toasted her from neck to mid-thigh, but the tip of her nose tingled in the sharp evening air.

  The bright October sun still warmed the days, but the coming winter nipped at the night. Shoving her hands in her pockets, Chloe made her way slowly down the town’s one main street. The passage of the season unsettled her far more than she’d admitted to Hannah.

  Would she spend the winter here in Crockett? Would she spend forever in Crockett?

  If not here, then where?

  And with whom?

  Unbidden, Mase’s image crept into her mind. Chloe might have lost her memory, but she hadn’t lost her wits. If Mase Chandler had come to Crockett to fish and hunt, he certainly hadn’t made much use of the licenses she’d sold him. In the past few days he’d spent as much time at the store as he had roaming the hills around Crockett. What’s more, he didn’t even try to disguise the fact that he was attracted to her. She caught it in his glance, in the smile he reserved for her alone, in the careful restraint he’d exercised around her since that one, explosive kiss.

  Was he staying in Crockett because of her? Had he come here in the first place because of her? Was there more between them than mere attraction?

  Part of her wanted to believe there was.

  Part of her didn’t want to know there wasn’t.

  With that confused thought rattling around in her mind, she passed under the shaggy moose head mounted above the entrance to the café. Inside, the heavenly scent of sizzling meat and the equally heavenly sounds of a Mariah Carey ballad greeted her. She’d just started for the lunch counter when a heavy boot tread sounded on the stairs. She glanced up as Mase ducked under a low ceiling beam and appeared on the landing.

  His black hair gleamed—from the shower, Chloe surmised. His jaw had that tinge of red that came with a recent shave. A blue wool sweater covered those world-class shoulders and softened the slate of his eyes to a bluish gray.

  When he smiled down at her, intense pleasure pinwheeled through Chloe. She gulped, and decided she’d better get some answers to the questions she’d just asked herself before this searing pleasure led to something else, something she wasn’t ready for.

  “Your nose is pink,” he said by way of greeting.

  “It’s cold out.”

  He flicked a quick glance at the darkened windows beside the door. “You shouldn’t have walked down here alone. I would’ve picked you up or brought whatever you and Hannah wanted to the store.”

  “We’ve already imposed on you far more than we should have in the past few days.” She hesitated, then began a subtle probe. “Before you know it, your vacation will be over and you’ll have to head back to Minneapolis without racking up any real fishing or hunting time.”

  “I’m spending my time in Crockett just the way I want to.”

  That told her everything...and nothing. Obviously, subtle wouldn’t work. “How long are you planning to stay here?”

  “I haven’t decided,” he replied with a shrug before neatly turning the tables. “What about you? How long are you going to stay here?”

  “I...I haven’t decided.”

  For a moment Mase appeared ready to do some probing of his own. His eyes searched hers. A muscle ticked at the side of his jaw. Wanting answers from him, not questions, she preempted whatever he would have said by the simple expedient of shrugging out of her jacket and heading for the dining area.

  “Hannah shooed me out of the store for a while. I was starting to get on her nerves, big-time. I decided to come down and see what Mayor Dobbins’s special is tonight.”

  “Do you want me to go up to the store and sit with Hannah while you’re here?”

  The offer melted an iceberg-size chunk of Chloe’s reserve. Her smile shot up in both warmth and wattage.

  “She has the phone close at hand and promised to call down here if she needed anything. Thanks for offering, though.”

  “Anytime, Chloe.”

  The way his voice dropped when he said her name tickled her ear. The low, rippling familiarity wasn’t quite a caress, but it came close enough to start her nerve endings dancing under her skin. She could have sworn she’d heard that same tenderness, that same familiarity before.

  “Mase . . .”

  “Hey, Chloe!”

  Harold Dobbins’s cheerful greeting cut through the pounding in her heart. Biting back a sigh, Chloe turned and wove her way through the half dozen tables.

  “Hello, Mr. Mayor.”

  He chuckled. “That title sounds a whole lot more impressive than it really is.”

  One of the ranch hands clicking pool balls on the felt-covered table at the back of the café snorted. “No kidding!”

  “The Tuesday-night special is rib-eye, fresh off the hoof,” the mayor announced, ignoring the cowboy’s jibe. “I’ve got a couple of juicy steaks all ready to slap on the grill.”

  While Chloe was still trying to banish the image of her dinner on the hoof, Mase answered for them both. “Slap away.”

  “How do you like them cooked?”

  “Make mine rare. Chloe likes hers medium well.”

  Her breath caught. She threw him a startled glance. “How did you know that?”

  After a pause so brief she might have imagined it, he shrugged. “You wanted your hamburgers medium well the other night. Don’t you like your steak the same way?”

  “Oh.” Her heart resumed its normal beat. “Right.”

  “Would you like a beer while we wait for dinner?”

  “Sure.”

  While Mase got the drinks, Chloe chose a table. The café only boasted a half dozen or so, most of which were occupied by patrons hunched over platters of steak and fried potatoes swimming in thick white gravy. The Tuesday-night special had drawn a considerable crowd for Crockett.

  Several patrons greeted her by name, others with a nod. To her surprise, a good number greeted Mase with the same casual friendliness. He’d certainly gotten to know folks in the... what?...four days he’d been in town.

  Four days, she mused. It seemed longer. A lot longer. Frowning, Chloe hooked her jacket over the chair and studied Mase as he carried two dewstreaked bottles and two glasses to their table.

  Okay. All right. She was attracted to him. That was understandable, given his rugged good looks and easy charm. She was also starting to like him. Really like him. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to trust him. Not until she got answers to the questions whirling around in her head.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t get any during dinner. As she’d
learned in the past few weeks, the residents of Crockett were a gregarious lot. Most of them, anyway. One loner with scraggly gray hair kept his shoulders hunched over his dinner and his fork working, but the rest of the café’s patrons carried on conversations that flowed across tables.

  Inevitably, they drew Chloe and Mase into lively discussions of the weather, the price of beef and the governor’s chances in the upcoming November elections. The mayor dished up gory details about the first day of elk season that Chloe could have done without, along with huge platters of steak and home fries. When Mase finally pushed his plate away, groaning, the winner of the pool game sauntered over. Seeking a new victim, he tossed out a challenge.

  “Go ahead,” Chloe said with a smile. “I’ll watch.”

  Watch she did. Perched on a tall stool safely out of the range of the cue sticks, she was in perfect position to take in the bantering rivalry and the clack of the pool balls, not to mention the long, tight lines of Mase’s body when he leaned over the table to make a shot. By the end of the first game, her throat was dry. By the end of the second, her heart thumped against her ribs. When they racked up the third and final set, she could barely hear the jukebox over the pounding in her ears.

  Even then, she wasn’t ready for the dart of pure delight she experienced when Mase laughed and paid the jubilant victor three dollars. Or for the sudden catch in her throat when he turned and held out his hand.

  “I’m better at dancing than pool. Barely. Would you like to work off some of that steak?”

  Chloe swallowed. She wanted answers, didn’t she? What better way to get them than to slide off the stool and into Mase’s arms? If there was more between them than just this simmering attraction, this tug of sensual need, surely she’d feel it. Slowly she put her hand in his.

  The pool table took up most of the dance floor. The old Mac Davis tune pouring out of the jukebox called for more of a two-step than the waltz Mase pulled her into. Chloe didn’t sweat the minor details. As she fit herself to his long length, her entire being focused on the sensations that registered on her whirling mind. The leathery-lemon tang of his aftershave. The play of his muscles under her fingertips. The press of her hips against his. The way her temple brushed his chin.