by Francis Ray
There had been few romances after her sophomore crush on the popular senior who had lettered in every sport and whose name was whispered amid girlish giggles and wistful sighs. She could count on one hand the number of serious relationships she’d had before meeting Andrew.
Perhaps she didn’t inspire loyalty in a man. She didn’t have the lush body that lured and kept men. What she knew about lovemaking, Andrew had taught her.
Stepping into the tub, Justine sank deep into the scented water until it closed around her neck. Leaning her head back against a plastic pillow, she closed her eyes. If she kept thinking about her shortcomings she’d start crying again. If she wasn’t woman enough for Andrew, then that was his problem, not hers.
Nicely put.
Justine just wished she could convince herself that she believed it.
Seven
Dalton pulled up in front of It’s a Mystery Bookstore at a quarter to seven Tuesday night. Getting out, he removed the orange cone one of the store personnel had said in an e-mail last week was to designate his parking spot. Good thing, Dalton thought as he climbed back in the Jeep. There wasn’t a parking spot to be seen on either side of the bookstore in the strip shopping mall.
Parked, he climbed out again and headed for the double glass front doors. In the old days before he’d made bestselling lists, he’d carried a small briefcase filled with bookmarks, booklets, and a signature book. Now, the marketing department of the publishing house took care of all that.
Through the glass window he thought he caught a glimpse of Justine among the people in the store, and paused. He was adept as any other brother in keeping his feelings under wraps, but he’d found out last night that with Justine that was next to impossible. He’d wanted to keep holding her, give her whatever it took to make the smile reach her dark eyes. The only way to do that was to put her back in the arms of the man she loved, her husband.
He’d didn’t want to delve too deeply into how he felt about that. He wasn’t the type of man to step on another man to get a woman, but he was woefully human and at times selfish. He just hoped he could also be noble as well.
He’d seen her embarrassed blushes last night when he’d come close to stepping over the line. Justine had been surprised and he hoped a bit flattered. But she wasn’t the type of woman to cheat. He knew that as surely as he knew his name. The blushes were a dead giveaway.
She remained the sweet unassuming girl he’d fallen hard for in his senior year in high school. And she belonged to a man fighting for his life. Only the scum of the earth would make a play for a woman at a time like this. He’d done some things he prayed to forget, but he hadn’t stooped that low.
Opening one of the doors, he stepped into the spacious and comfortably crowded bookstore. The area was light and airy with white shelves and blue molding around the recessed ceiling. The expected cardboard dumps of bestselling novels were positioned on either side by the door. He was pleased to see one with his books among them. Three books remained out of the thirty-six the dump usually held.
Several people with Hidden Prey, his latest, or with one or a couple of his earlier books milled around the store or were seated in gray padded folding chairs in front of a wooden podium. There was a group of men in police uniforms in a line of about fifteen people in front of the cash register on a raised platform directly ahead of him.
To his left was a three-by-five-foot table with greeting cards and stationery. A few feet farther was a rack of African-American greeting cards. A bit farther was the children’s book section. Several animated mobiles hung from the ceiling. Two small children, a boy and a girl who looked to be about six or seven, sat at the small white table, reading.
Something tugged at his heart. He had yet to figure out if it had been a blessing or a curse that Gloria hadn’t had any children.
“Mr. Gunn, er . . . Ramsey?”
Dalton turned to see a slim fair-skinned woman in her early thirties with waist-length braids. People were often confused as to which name they should call him. He smiled and extended his hand. “Right both times. Please call me Dalton.”
Her hand trembled in his. “I’m Iris Palmer, the store manager. It’s such a pleasure to meet you. I’ve read all of your books.”
“Hello, Ms. Palmer. It’s always great to meet a fan and a bookseller,” he said, meaning every word.
Her eyelashes fluttered. “Iris, please. I feel old enough when the children say ma’am.”
They laughed together. “Believe me, I understand.”
“We’ll be ready to start in a moment. I’ll take you to the podium.” She turned and headed in that direction. “You can see people are already waiting.”
Dalton nodded to people as he followed the bookseller. Several men in uniform were already seated. “Thank you, Iris,” he said, ordering himself not to ask if Justine was there.
“Do you want water or anything?” Iris motioned to a table with an African print covering, two trays, and a punch bowl on the other side of the room. “We plan to have refreshments afterward, but we have a cafe if you’d like anything now.”
“I’m fine.”
She sighed. “I’ll just go tell Justine you’re here.”
His heart shouldn’t have thumped. It did, and there was nothing he could do about it. “Thank you.” As the manager walked away, Dalton turned to greet the people already sitting and waiting. He needed to get his mind off Justine. “Thanks for coming.”
“He’s here, Justine, and as yummy as the picture in his press kit,” Iris said, her eyes dreamy. “It’s great when you can hand-sell a book that you enjoy. A few women might have picked up the book for a male friend, but they came back because they’d read the book themselves.”
Justine slowly rose from her heavy oak desk and brushed her hand over her navy linen slacks. She was one of those addicted to Dalton’s lead character, Brock Jernigan, a man committed to righting the wrongs of the world. “Thank you, Iris.”
“This is going to be great. I’ll just pop back out.”
“Looks like Dalton struck again.” Brianna stood as well as the manager left. The raspberry-colored business suit with the fitted short skirt suited her almond complexion.
“Yes.”
Brianna eyed her critically. “You can go home, you know.”
Justine was already shaking her head. “I’ve put my life on hold and hidden enough.”
“But still it’s not enough,” Brianna guessed.
“No.” Justine glanced at the phone. “Beverly asked me to come back by before I go home. She’s called twice. She said he’s agitated since I left.”
“Bull crap. You just arrived from the hospital, and why the hell should you care?” Brianna hissed.
“Because I’m his loving wife,” Justine said simply. “Let’s not talk about it, or I’ll never get through this.”
“My lips are sealed.”
Justine looked over her shoulder at her best friend. “Your eyes and face are shouting.”
“Then I’ll put on my lawyer face.” She hooked her arm through Justine’s. “Come on, let’s get this show on the road. And despite what you say, I’m introducing Dalton. No arguing, and afterward you’re eating some of that food you had catered.”
Justine didn’t argue. Brianna wasn’t the type of woman you could push, especially when she had right on her side. In the store, Justine passed people she knew and, as always, they wanted to know about Andrew.
“He’s holding his own,” Brianna said. “Please excuse us. We have to get the signing started.”
In the wake of people saying, “Give his mother my best” or “I’m praying for you” they made their way to the podium. She could feel the eyes on her. She gave the idea of wearing a sign around her neck more thought, felt laughter tickle her throat, and realized if it erupted it would be high-pitched and hysterical.
Besides last night, she hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks, wasn’t sleeping. She couldn’t go on like this.
A
sort of hushed silence slowly permeated the store as Justine and Brianna reached the podium. They were showing respect for the wife. Those who didn’t know were quickly told in hushed whispers. The half-smile Justine tried to keep on her face kept slipping. She was about to give up pretending when she saw Dalton.
The hot intensity of his stare stopped her in her tracks. She didn’t move until she felt a slight tug from Brianna. Don’t do this to me, she wanted to shout, but wasn’t sure to whom she’d shout the words.
Brianna’s eyes narrowed. Dalton’s laserlike gaze was pinned on Justine and, as any red-blooded woman would have reacted, she trembled. Except that Justine’s reaction was part fascination, part shame. If Andrew did wake up, Brianna was going to make him wish he’d kept his zipper in place.
Dalton started toward them. Brianna gave a short, negative shake of her head. He stopped and moved to the other side of the podium. Brianna reluctantly released Justine’s arm and stepped to the microphone. Then she was the one who hesitated.
In the third row, a half-smile on his sexy mouth, was the man from her condo. He couldn’t have followed her because she’d come from her father’s office. She didn’t like coincidences. He winked and she wanted to throw a book at him. Instead she ignored him and the sudden rapid beat of her heart.
“Welcome to It’s a Mystery Bookstore. I’m Brianna Ireland. It’s been my pleasure to know Dalton Ramsey before he set the literary scene on its ears with his nail-biting suspense novels,” she said, comfortable with crowds. “A former police officer with the Detroit Police Department, he knows of what he writes. I see we have Charleston’s finest and other members of various law enforcement agencies with us tonight. Welcome. Without further ado, I give you our native son, Dalton Ramsey.”
Applause erupted. Brianna stepped back to let Dalton take her place, then went to stand by Justine, who resisted her urging to return to the back. Brianna looked around for a chair and almost jumped when the stranger from the elevator offered his.
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
The voice was deep and as sexy as the man. She turned her back on him and pushed Justine into the chair before she fell down. Luckily, when she stepped to her friend’s side, the man was gone.
Dalton’s hands gripped the side of the wooden podium as he waited for the applause to stop. He resisted the urge to look at Justine. From the annoyance in Brianna’s face earlier, he’d flubbed it again. It was bad enough they knew how he felt without anyone else catching on.
Justine didn’t deserve ugly whispers. Leaving town as soon as the signing was over was looking better and better. Later he’d come back to look at the house, when Andrew was well. Maybe he’d hire someone to handle it.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, then went into the rehearsed spiel about his reasons for writing—an extension of his childhood dream after watching dozens of episodes of Peter Gunn, and his fascination with mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe. Thus his pseudonym, Edgar Gunn. The audience would have been shocked and probably a bit titillated if he had told them the truth—that writing had been an escape from the hell he’d lived in daily. And at times he’d felt as if he were the main character in one of Poe’s macabre novels.
Fifteen minutes later, when he finished and asked if there were questions, a woman in the front row raised her hand. “Why did you decide to reveal your identity?”
A few of the police officers shifted uncomfortably. Dalton pretended not to notice. Even thousands of miles away, they had probably heard about the scandal. They certainly could have checked him out.
“It was time.” Since he’d practiced that lie as well, it rolled easily off his tongue. Not for the first time, it occurred to Dalton that for a man who valued truth and honesty, he certainly told a lot of lies. But at the moment it was the only way for him to survive.
Another hand. This was from a uniformed police officer. “Sergeant Haskell, with the Charleston Police Department.”
Dalton applauded and was joined by others. “Thanks, Sergeant Haskell, for coming and keeping the city safe.”
The gray-haired officer nodded. “The guys at the station had a bet that you were a policeman even before you did those interviews in People and Black Enterprise, We wondered about Jernigan, the homicide detective. He’s tough and often curt even to his commander. Is that a bit of a payback?”
Dalton’s mouth curved upward. “All I’ll say is that in my first book a police captain was captured by a serial killer. Jernigan saved him, but the captain went mad.”
Several officers whistled through their teeth. A man, the same broad-shouldered one who had given Justine his chair, raised his hand. “If you need any names for police officers who meet an unpleasant end, I’ll give you my e-mail address.”
Laughter erupted. Dalton’s lips twitched. People often talked about going postal, but there was probably twice as much pressure and crap going on in the police station. “I’ll remember that.”
A woman in the front row raised her hand. She clutched Hidden Prey to her chest. The friend beside her had been nudging her for the past few minutes. “Yes, thank you for coming.”
“Please read the opening. I bought it for a friend, but started reading it after I was caught in a traffic jam.”
“He never got the book,” the nudger said with a laugh.
The woman who had spoken frowned as if the friend had admitted too much. “I don’t see him anymore in any case.” She moistened her red lips. “Could you please read the opening? It is so riveting.”
“And grisly.” The woman on the opposite side gave a delicate shudder. “I had to keep the lights on that night to go to sleep.”
“Bloody, too.” This from a uniformed policeman with an unblinking stare. “Like Haskell said, you know the writer has stepped in blood.”
The women shuddered, but their eyes remained bright with gory fascination. It wasn’t uncommon to be asked to read, and normally Dalton enjoyed it. Tonight he knew he wouldn’t. The passage was pretty gruesome. The night he’d written the opening he’d awakened from a sound sleep, sweat pouring off him, adrenaline pumping.
He’d gone to the computer and typed. The officer was right. He had stepped in blood. “There were children in the store earlier.”
“They’re gone,” Iris said from the raised platform. “Please read.”
Applause erupted again. He cut a quick glance at Justine. He didn’t want her to remember the hell she must have gone through in rescuing her husband. Her long legs were crossed, ladylike, at the ankles, her slim hands were resting in her lap, and her face was composed. Her eyes looked haunted.
His gaze lifted to Brianna, and she gave a slight shrug. Justine wasn’t budging.
“Please read,” said the woman in the front again.
Dalton opened the hardback, flipped to the first page, and began to read. “Blood was everywhere. Death hadn’t been neat or quick. Brock Jernigan crouched over what remained of Bill Tatum and ignored the urge to retch.”
Eight
In the audience, Patrick Dunlap leaned against the corner of the raised platform circling the two cash registers and fought the churning of his stomach. The opening Dalton was reading brought back too many horrific memories. That was one of Gunn’s books that he had no intention of reading. Ever.
He probably never would have read any of them if Brooke hadn’t given him Deadly Prey to read while he was recuperating in the hospital. He’d accepted the book and then promptly forgot about it. After all, it had been a selection of the book club she and her two business partners belonged to, which automatically meant it wasn’t for a macho man like himself.
That it was a murder mystery didn’t bother him. He’d been a police officer in the toughest part of Myrtle Beach for too long for him to be squeamish or flinch just because he’d ended up on the wrong side of a bullet. He’d thought it was probably full of procedural and factual errors.
But Brooke was not a woman to let anything rest. He’d finally g
otten tired of her asking him about the book and decided to read it one night when he couldn’t sleep, and had been hooked. Thankfully it had been a cat-and-mouse game with chilling accuracy between the killer and Jernigan, who was taking his first vacation in ten years on a cruise ship.
Like the woman in the audience, Patrick hadn’t been able to stop reading. He would have had no trouble turning off the lights to go to sleep . . . if he hadn’t read through the night. He still recalled the first lines. Murder doesn’t take a holiday, so why should you? Patrick had stayed up to finish the book and asked for another. Now he was glad he had for another reason. He’d met the stunning woman from the elevator again, and now he knew her name.
“Jernigan came slowly to his feet, snapping off his gloves as he did. ‘Bag and tag. We have a serious nut in our midst, and I have a bad feeling this is only the beginning.’”
Dalton closed the book. The audience stood and applauded. “Thank you.”
The woman behind the counter rushed to the podium, her hand over her heart. “Wonderful. If you’ll please line up, your books will be signed. There’s also refreshments. Thank you for coming.”
She looked up at Dalton and even across the room Patrick thought he heard her sigh.
“Thank you so much.”
“Always a pleasure,” Dalton said.
The clerk sighed again. Patrick shook his head. If the woman wanted a chance with Dalton she should lose the worship attitude. Most men still enjoyed a challenge.
As people lined up, he positioned himself near the counter so he could see Brianna Ireland, his cautious neighbor. The corners of his mouth kicked upward. She was certainly prickly. Now there was a challenge that heated a man’s blood.
He had no difficulty imagining the delectable body beneath the stylish raspberry-colored suit. His hands fairly itched to peel it away, then slowly kiss every inch of her creamy skin as it was exposed.
Brianna jerked her head toward him, her pretty lips pressed together in annoyance, her light-colored eyes narrowed in anger. He tipped his head. Her expression remained unchanged. Well, he knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
