Three very large men off-loaded her dining table and chairs as she slipped inside the house with an armload of packages. Inside the house, Jeanine removed the plastic wrap as each item was brought into the dining room. “This is as fun as Christmas morning,” she told Emma, her smile wide and happy. “Your bed is already in place, and made up with those beautiful green sheets, and I’ll have this table polished the second I can wrangle off this plastic.”
“Wow, you work fast. Everything is coming together beautifully, thanks to you. Nice work, Jeanine.”
Jeanine beamed then went back to peeling the plastic off one of the chairs.
Seeing how relaxed the other woman was, Emma knew she’d done the right thing inviting Jeanine and David to live with her. The fact that the woman was helping to make the stark, empty house into a warm and comfortable home was a bonus.
In the living room, David sat on the sofa, an older model laptop in front of him.
Emma couldn’t get over the progress. Every room on the first two floors was now furnished. “David?” she asked as she put down the packages beside the new hall table.
He looked up with none of the insolence she had seen on their first meeting. “Yeah?”
“Can you help me with the rest of the bags in my car?”
He set his laptop aside. “Sure.”
In no time, they had the Target haul inside and Emma worked side by side with Jeanine to put all the odds and ends in their rightful places. Emma stopped only long enough to tip the movers, then went back to the accessories.
Then she took a little time to admire her new things. The only glaring missing thing was some sort of window treatments, but for now the blinds would have to do. She was all shopped out.
“You have a beautiful home,” Jeanine said, standing beside her as they admired their hard work.
“We’re not finished yet,” she told the other woman with a smile. And as if on cue, the Furniture Barn truck came up the drive.
It took the delivery men about an hour to set up the two third-floor bedrooms and while they were doing that, Emma insisted that Jeanine and David stay away. Emma wanted a big reveal.
“I made jambalaya,” Jeanine told her when she came downstairs.
“Is that what I’ve been smelling all this time?” Emma asked.
Jeanine nodded. What a difference twenty-four hours had made in the woman. She was more relaxed and the puffiness around her blackened eye had subsided somewhat.
Emma washed the new dishes and silverware, dried it, then set the table for three. “Where did you learn to make that?” she asked.
Jeanine smiled. “My people are from southern Louisiana. For me it’s comfort food.”
“Anything that doesn’t come out of the microwave is comfort food for me,” Emma teased.
Taking a step back, Jeanine eyed the table. “David and I can eat upstairs.”
“Don’t be silly,” Emma insisted. “Not after you went to all this trouble.”
“If you’re s—”
“I am.”
Jeanine’s shoulders relaxed. “I just need to make cornbread and supper will be served.”
The Furniture Barn movers found her to sign off on the delivery. “Sounds delish, but hold off on that for a bit,” Emma said. She went upstairs for a few minutes to make the beds, then returned and took the woman’s arm and called out for David.
The trio climbed the two flights of stairs and as they reached the top, Emma allowed David and his mother to go ahead of her. “If there’s anything you don’t like…”
“Oh my,” Jeanine exclaimed as she covered her gaping mouth.
“Holy shit,” David said.
“Like I said, if you don’t like anything, we can exchange it.”
“I’ve never had anything so nice before,” Jeanine said. “Neither has David. But it’s too much,” she insisted.
“I had to furnish this house anyway,” Emma reasoned. “Having you here just forced me to do it immediately. Besides, I had a lot of fun shopping.” Except for my encounter with Sheriff Kavanaugh.
“You’re too generous, Emma,” Jeanine said.
Emma smiled. “And we’re not finished yet.”
Jeanine eyed her cautiously. “What do you mean?”
She waved her hand. “You’ll have to wait.”
“Mom!” David called. “Check this out!”
The two women went the short distance to David’s room. He was running his hand along the state-of-the-art computer station. “There’s a spot here where you put your phone and it charges it.”
Emma pointed up to the top shelf of the station. “Did you see your reading material?”
David’s smile slipped when he glanced up at the GED prep book. “Not my thing,” he said.
“It is now,” Emma insisted. “You’re too smart to sit around smoking weed and playing video games. Do you want to end up like Skeeter?”
“I’m nothing like him,” David countered.
“So prove it,” Emma challenged.
David took down the book and skimmed the pages. “I don’t understand half of this stuff.”
“Then I’ll get you a tutor.” Emma rubbed her belly. “I’m starving.”
“Of course,” Jeanine said, scurrying down the stairs.
Emma took advantage of that brief moment alone with David. “You will get your GED.”
He tilted his head and gave her a defiant look. “Told you, not my thing.”
“Well, I’m telling you it is your thing. If you don’t put forth the effort, then there’s no reason for me to keep employing your mother.”
“That’s blackmail,” he whined.
“That’s right.” She turned toward the steps. “I have faith in you, David. You’ll do the right thing.”
“You’re a controlling bitch,” he muttered with resignation.
“You’re not the first person to notice that.” Emma followed the wonderful smell to the kitchen and found Jeanine putting a cast iron pan of cornbread in the oven. It smelled divine. While David went back to his computer, Emma decided to use the alone time for her own purposes.
“Did Mrs. Burke like your cooking?” she prodded.
Jeanine stirred the pot. “Not very often. She has a cook. Macy. Been with the family since Mrs. Burke got married.”
“So you just cleaned?” Emma asked.
Janine nodded. “Mostly dusting things that didn’t need it. Spent most of my time cleaning the bedrooms.”
“Bedrooms?”
“Miss Renae and Mr. Maddison don’t share a room. Heck, they don’t share much of a life together if you ask me.” Jeanine suddenly went red. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel real comfortable speaking out of turn.”
Emma raised her hands. “I’m sorry for asking. I was just curious after last night.”
“You mean the town council meeting?”
“How did you know about that?”
“I saw Becky at the market today.”
“And Becky is?”
“She works at Stella’s and Stella told her and then she told me.”
“Purdue at its finest,” Emma muttered.
“Not much gets left unsaid here,” Jeanine agreed. “There’s no such thing as a secret in Purdue.”
* * *
“Better?” Conner asked when Sam came out of her room.
“Yeah, but can I paint the walls?”
“What color?” he asked as she joined him on the sofa.
“Eggshell.”
“That’s a color and not a thing?” he asked.
She smiled. “Off white. Clean and minimalist. That’s my groove these days.”
“But didn’t you buy a red bedspread?”
“That’s the pop of color,” she explained.
Conner nodded. “I’ll get the paint and we can do it next weekend.”
She pursed her lips for a moment. “C’mon, Dad. It will give me something to do when you’re at work.”
“I thought you could come to the
station with me.”
“Ewww! And hang out with the criminals?”
Conner tilted his head back and locked eyes with his daughter. “You used to like coming to my office.”
“When I was like five.”
“You’re going to be here for eight weeks, Sam. You’re going to have to come to my office some days.”
She tucked a leg under her. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
Conner froze, preparing himself in case she was about to ask to leave early. “So talk.”
“I want to get a job.”
“Doing what?”
She shrugged. “Wait tables, cashiering, shelving books at the library…anything, really. I just want to keep busy and I’d like to earn some money.”
“You don’t need money. I can support you.”
She gave him a playful punch in the arm. “I know that. I’m talking about having my own money, not some handout from you or Barry.”
“And how do you propose to get to said job?”
She drew her lower lip between her teeth. “Your old truck?” she suggested.
“That thing is about as reliable as a broken watch.”
“But we could fix it up, right?”
Conner breathed in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Can I think about it?”
“Yep. Give me your answer by the time I finish de-pinking my room. Speaking of which, can we go to Jake’s Hardware before it closes to get the paint?”
“Deal.”
It’s going to be a very long eight weeks.
* * *
The new car arrived after dinner and Jeanine was reduced to tears when Emma placed the keys in her hand. “It only makes sense,” Emma insisted. “You’ll be doing most of the errands and the shopping and forgive me, but your car looks like a death trap and I don’t know about your motorcycle, but—”
“It’s my motorcycle,” David injected.
“Does it run?”
He shrugged. “She’s a little rough but it gets me from point A to point B.”
“It’s dangerous,” Emma said. “The thing looks like it’s put together with spit and chewing gum.”
He just shrugged again and Emma made a mental note to consider having it properly repaired. She was about to make that suggestion when her cell rang. It was Amelia. “I have to take this,” she said as she excused herself to her office and closed the door. “Hi.”
“I’ve been calling all day,” her sister admonished.
“I’ve been busy,” Emma returned. “Has Mom’s condition changed?”
“No. But this isn’t what she wanted, Emma. You know that.”
“I just need to do this first,” she argued for the umpteenth time.
“And what exactly are you doing?” her sister asked in a huff.
“Research.”
“You do that in a library, Em. You don’t pick up and move and you sure as hell don’t move to Purdue. What if they figure out who you are?”
“What do you think will happen? That the neighbors will come with pitchforks?”
“Go ahead, make jokes, but I’m serious. I’m worried about you.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Emma insisted. “All you have to do is keep me updated on Mom’s condition while I’m down here.”
“I think you’re playing with fire. What if this goes public? Did you ever think about what that could do to both of us? It would mean starting over a second time and I don’t want to do that. I have friends and a fiancé.”
“You really should tell Brody the truth,” Emma advised.
“And risk him walking away from me? No way. He asked Amelia McKinley to marry him. Not the daughter of the infamous Courtland Hodges. Look what happened to you in New York when your coworker found out who you really are.”
“Yeah, I got rich off a wrongful termination lawsuit.”
“And lost everything you’d worked so hard for. Or did you bust your butt at Harvard to practice law in a backwater town?”
“It’s actually very pretty here,” she insisted. Her mind instantly produced a picture of Sheriff Kavanaugh. She dismissed it. “I know what I’m doing Amelia. Don’t worry.”
“I—”
Whatever her sister was about to say was lost in the crackle and boom of a high-powered rifle shot that splintered the window casing and exploded into the room just inches from where she sat.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Instinctively, Emma dropped to the ground and rolled beneath her desk. Shaking, she clutched her phone and huddled in a fetal position waiting for a second shot. What the hell? The hard thud-thud-thud of her frantic heartbeat echoed loudly in her ears as she braced for another shot.
“Emma?” Jeanine called.
“Stay down!” she yelled.
“I called the police!” Jeanine yelled back.
Emma spent the next several tense minutes breathing deeply and processing what had just happened. She hastily hung up on her sister. Maybe Amelia’s right. Maybe coming to Purdue was a mistake.
It wasn’t until she heard sirens in the distance that she came out of hiding. She was still shaking and her pulse was racing. Moving into the hallway, she found Jeanine and David with stunned looks on their faces.
“Did someone just shoot at us?” David asked.
Emma donned her best smile, trying to reassure the seventeeen-year-old. “I think they were shooting at me,” she admitted. The last of her sentence was nearly drowned out by the arrival of the sirens.
With more bravado than she felt, Emma flipped on the porch light then opened the front door. Conner was in the lead, his handsome face deeply lined with concern. Even in her frazzled state, she made mental notes about the man. Hard not to when he was dressed in jeans and T-shirt that hugged his muscular, well-defined torso. Big, broad, armed and dangerous-looking Conner Kavanaugh filled her doorway. She’d never been so happy to see anyone in her life.
He had his hand on the gun at his hip and practically barreled past her into the house. It was then that Emma noticed the young girl in the passenger seat of his SUV.
“You brought your daughter to a crime scene?” she asked incredulously.
“I was the closest unit,” he explained. “Show me where the shot came from.”
“Right after you bring your daughter inside. What if the crazy person takes another shot? She’s out there alone.”
Conner sighed heavily, then went and retrieved his daughter. “Emma, this is my daughter, Samantha. Sam.”
“Hi,” Sam said with a shy smile. She looked a lot like her father. “You’re really calm for someone who got shot at.”
“Only on the outside,” Emma told her. “Follow me.” She stopped only long enough to introduce Jeanine and David. “Sam, would you stay with Jeannine and David while I show your dad the window that was shot out?”
Sam hung back with the Segans while Emma escorted the sheriff into the study. He immediately went to the splintered window casing, then walked across the room and squatted down to examine something.
“What is it?” Emma asked.
“Hard to tell. Maybe a .308, maybe an AK. I’ll send it to ballistics for testing,” he said, taking a latex glove out of his pocket and lifting the misshaped bullet for her to see. It was one hell of a bullet too. Maybe two inches long with a pancaked end and very lethal looking.
Pressing her hand to her pounding heart, Emma asked, “Is that bullet unusual?” Dear God, if that bullet had found its target…A full-body shudder made her grab onto the edge of the desk for support as reality hit. The realization that Connor could’ve been here investigating her murder chilled her.
“It isn’t common. Best I can say is it’s from a rifle.” He turned and looked at her with those intense gray eyes. “Made any enemies since you arrived?”
She shook her head. “I’ve only been here a few days. I haven’t even had the chance to make a friend, let alone an enemy.”
“With the right rifle, this kind of ammo can trave
l several hundred yards. Could be nothing more than someone firing in the woods and the bullet accidentally striking your house.”
Emma felt the tension in her shoulders dissipate. “And here I thought buying this house in the middle of the woods was going to be quiet.”
He smiled. It was enough to turn her legs to jelly. Her heart rate quickened and her breath seemed to be caught in her throat. But the worst part was her brain. All notes to self aside, she couldn’t look at him without thinking carnal thoughts. She’d never experienced this sort of reaction to a man. But did it have to be this man? At this time? Seriously?
Conner rose to his full six feet four inches and said, “It’s virtually impossible for me to say for sure, but I think this is probably nothing more than some jerk out shooting without knowing the range of the weapon.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t be positive, but if you don’t have any enemies…”
“I don’t.” At least not unless someone knows who I really am.
He held up the bullet. “I’ll go put this into an evidence bag.”
Conner turned and in profile, Emma could see his expression change and go rigid. She looked beyond him and saw Sam and David with their heads together.
“Sam, go to the car.”
His daughter looked up and gave him an insolent look. Her eyes were intensely blue just as Conner’s were intensely gray.
“Stay for coffee,” Emma said impulsively. “After all, if you came out here for nothing, I can at least make it worth your while.”
“I’d kill for some coffee,” Sam said.
“Me too,” David added.
Conner gave the young man a withering glare but David didn’t seem to care.
“I’ll start the pot,” Jeanine said, then disappeared into the kitchen.
Conner moved into the hallway, probably hoping his sheer size would intimidate David. It didn’t work. Emma found the whole unspoken interchange between father and daughter amusing. Sam clearly had her father’s stubborn streak.
In no time Jeanine had served up coffee in the living room. Emma and the Segans sat on one sofa while Sam and Conner sat opposite them. Sam had her head down and was texting away. Every few seconds Emma noticed the young girl would sneak a quick glance at David. There was a crackle of tension in the air but it had very little to do with the teenagers in the room. Conner was silently watching Emma’s every move. His eyes locked on her mouth as she took each sip of coffee. It was unnerving and exhilarating all at once. Without moving anything but his gaze, Emma felt as if he was caressing her with his eyes. It was more sensual than a kiss. But being this turned on by merely a hot look was not a good idea.
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