by Sophie Oak
* * * *
Gemma watched them. She couldn’t help it. She had been reduced to peeper status.
Jesse and Bare-Chested Ape…Cade…seemed to be having some sort of argument. Over her almost certainly. Cade wasn’t interested. That much was obvious. He couldn’t stand her. She had that effect on some men, a lot of men. She just wished she knew why he’d decided she was trouble. What sort of rumors were already going around?
The door to her cabin opened after a single brisk knock. Naomi walked in, peeking around the door. “You have been holding out on me. Who was the sexy cowboy you were hugging?”
Gemma didn’t look back. She’d gotten used to Naomi’s nosiness. She found it almost comforting. “He’s not a cowboy. He’s a kinky mechanic. And he’s an ex-con. Sort of.”
Naomi sidled up to her, their shoulders touching as she looked out at the place where Jesse and Cade stood talking. Jesse had a beer in his hand. They were so gorgeous. Cade looked like a male model, all perfection and cheekbones and classic good looks. Jesse was the embodiment of a bad boy. She would bet he had a few tattoos. She would really like to see them.
Zane Hollister stood between them, watching the two like he was observing a tennis match.
“How is someone a ‘sort of’ ex-con?” Naomi asked.
Cade was frowning, that lean body of his taut with obvious tension. Jesse’s shoulders moved up and down. She wished she could see his face. “Juvie.”
Naomi snorted. “Baby con. If he didn’t go back, it doesn’t count. Those are two beautiful men. What do you think they’re saying?”
Gemma could guess. “Well, Cade is saying, why do you want to date that crazy city girl? And then Jesse says, because she’s pretty and I’d like to spank her ass when she spits bile. Then Cade’s all let’s find a nice girl to spank. And Jesse says, all the nice girls are taken. We’re stuck with the beyotch. I don’t know. He might not say beyotch.”
Naomi laughed. “Spank you? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. He said he would spank me when I was rude.” And her whole body had gone on full-scale alert, praying he would start right then and there. Damn it. She’d read one too many erotic romances. It was her only guilty pleasure. She was crazy about over-the-top alpha males, but she knew they were just fantasies. She’d been ready to try some role playing with Patrick in an attempt to amp up their sex life, but that had gone spectacularly wrong.
Naomi bumped Gemma’s hip with her own. “Hmmm. That explains it. If he’s into slapping a girl’s ass for violating courtesy, you’re going to be his dream girl. He might never have to stop smacking your ass.”
Gemma growled a little Naomi’s way. “Like you would know. Oh, shit. That’s not good.”
Cade strode away from Jesse, his face a mask of irritation. Yep, he wasn’t happy. Not at all. He was damn pissed. What had put that look on his face? Jesse followed, clutching his beer. She would have to remember he liked beer. Maybe she should buy some so she would have it if he came over.
Damn it. She didn’t need to remember anything because she wasn’t falling for his line of crap. It was all an act. No one was that honest. And she wasn’t going to even start thinking about pleasing another man. She’d done everything she could to make Patrick’s life next to perfect, and he’d taken advantage of her. She wasn’t going to do it again.
Naomi turned from the window. “I don’t know what’s going on with those two. It doesn’t look good. So why was the hot one with the scruff hugging you?”
Gemma forced herself to turn away. She didn’t want to. She probably would have watched them until she couldn’t see them anymore. But it was for the best. She didn’t need to get involved with anyone. Even if she really wanted to.
He’d talked about spanking her. He hadn’t said the words, but he basically meant he wanted to top her. She’d read about it. Thought about it. Dreamed a little about it. She didn’t really want it. It was just a fantasy, and fantasies weren’t meant to really be lived out. She would only be disappointed.
But he’d really seemed sure of himself. It had been a truly shocking moment. When he’d said he would spank her if she got out of line, her whole damn body had responded and not in a bad way. She’d wondered, just for a minute, what the relationship would mean. Could she depend on him? Could she tell him all the problems she had and expect him to help figure out how to solve them? Her brain went a million miles a minute. Sometimes it was hard to concentrate on just one thing. She struggled, but she persevered. And it would be so much easier if someone was checking up on her. It was like the gym. She needed accountability. But no one cared enough to put up with her shit.
And they shouldn’t. She knew she was hard to handle. She just needed to focus. “That would be Jesse McCann, and he’s a little bit of a pervert. The one who’s running away is the man formerly known as Bare-Chested Ape Man. His real name is Cade. Sinclair, I think. Apparently he likes to be naked. Like a lot. This place is weird.”
Naomi grinned. “This place is awesome. So you’re being pursued by a nudist and a Dom?”
“I don’t know if he’s a Dom. We didn’t actually go over that.”
“Oh, if it looks like a Dom and quacks like a Dom, it’s a Dom, and that man would look good naked. Both of them, actually.” Naomi sighed. “Are you still not over your ex?”
She laughed at the thought. She’d been over Patrick about two seconds after she’d caught him with Christina. She still hadn’t gotten over the loss of her career. That was hard to let go of. “Not at all. I can’t believe I even wanted to marry him.”
“Why did you?” Naomi’s gorgeous brown eyes went from laughing to calculating in a single instant, and Gemma was reminded of just how intelligent the nurse was.
And she was spurred on by Jesse’s honesty. Of all the things that had happened to her today, his flat honesty was the most affecting thing of all. “He was a safe bet.”
Naomi sighed and crossed to her small table, looking down at the box there. “That doesn’t sound romantic.”
It wasn’t. “Think of it more like a merger. Patrick and I wanted the same things. We understood the same world. We didn’t hate each other.” And the sex had been bland, but she wasn’t absolutely sure that wasn’t her fault. Christina hadn’t had the same problem. Another reason to stay away from Jesse and Cade and their ridiculously hot sexuality. “It was an easy relationship. Well, except for the part where he was a cheating, job-stealing weasel. Other than that, I was almost completely in control.”
Naomi shuddered, her chocolate-brown skin shivering. “That sounds horrible. Why would you do that?”
She’d asked herself the question about a million times and could only come up with one answer. “Because the love thing isn’t real.”
“Your momma would disagree.”
She would. Her mother would tell her how much she’d loved her father, but now all Gemma could see was how much she’d grieved. “I was young when he died. I mostly remembered how horrible it was. We didn’t know he had cancer until he went into the hospital. We thought it was a cold. Pneumonia, maybe. And then they told us it was stage-four lung cancer. I watched him die. I watched her watch him die. I don’t see anything great about love.”
Naomi’s eyes filled with tears, and she walked to Gemma. “Then you weren’t looking hard enough, hon. I’m glad you didn’t marry that man. It would have been a mistake.”
Damn straight. “Especially since he was fucking Christina Big Tits at the time.” Gemma got out a letter opener. She should at least look. Jesse had brought it for her. What if it was actually from him? Her heart rate sped up just a little. A good reason to stay away. She was serious about the love thing. She really didn’t want it. But he was too tempting. And Bare-Chested Ape Man was, too. Damn him. “Patrick and I lived in the same world.”
Naomi sat down. “Your world is very narrow from what I can tell. And not particularly pleasant. Why aren’t you joining the party?”
Because those people scare
d the crap out of her with their babies and happy lives and small-town world. Everyone knew everyone else. Everyone seemed to accept everyone else. It was a façade. She wasn’t a dumbass. If she scratched the surface, she would probably find out that Callie hated Rachel Harper and had affairs with half the town, and sweet-faced Nell was really a horrible person. At least Max Harper was honest about his assholiness. “I don’t have anything in common with them.”
“Did they give you a class in self-delusion at Harvard?” It was obviously a rhetorical question since she didn’t wait for an answer. Naomi held up the package. “Who knows you’re here?”
“I left a forwarding address, but that was to our place in Chicago.” She looked at the package. She wanted to go back to the window and watch those two men, but they had been leaving. And it wasn’t like she could go after them. The package looked to be tightly taped down. Gemma started to hack into it. “It’s probably from someone at my old firm. They could find me pretty easily. I didn’t exactly get a chance to clean out my desk. After Christina Big Tits pressed charges, they fired me and wouldn’t let me back in the building.”
A single eyebrow arched. Naomi wasn’t past thirty-five, but she had the motherly attitude down. “Really? I suspect that is not her real last name.”
Someone had been damn serious about taping that package down. The whole thing was wrapped in thick tape. “It might have been Fake Tits. Not sure.”
Naomi leaned forward, her dark eyes sympathetic. “You know this wall you’ve built around yourself is going to have to come down someday.”
“I don’t see why.” She freed one side and went to work on the other. She’d worked hard to build those walls. Taking them down would be a poor use of her time.
“Because you’re never going to find happiness if you don’t.”
“Happiness is overrated. Ask my mom.” Her mom was the reason she didn’t believe in happily ever after. Her mom had done everything right when it came to picking her husband. And he’d died anyway. No forever. No joy. Just an aching sadness and a hole that couldn’t be filled.
“Honey, you should ask your mom. I think you would find she wouldn’t have changed a thing about her life. She’s worried about you. I am, too.”
Gemma finally pried the box open only to be met with a layer of plastic. What had she left behind at the office? No pictures. She hadn’t had any. They’d sent on her expensively framed degrees to Chicago and they now sat in a box on the kitchen counter. Would they really send her all the office supplies she’d kept? “Don’t be worried about my love life. Worry about my career. I haven’t gotten a single callback.”
Naomi was like a dog with a bone. She just wouldn’t let go. “That Jesse seemed like a nice man. Why didn’t you stay and talk to him?”
“Because I don’t want to get my heart ripped out.” She pulled back the plastic and gagged a little. Fuck. She hadn’t left that in her desk. “Looks like someone else had their heart ripped out.”
Tension prickled along her spine. There was no blood in the box, just an organ that had been surgically removed, if the neatness of the incisions was any indication. Someone had sent her a message. A heart. Dead and unmoving. A useless thing, a little like her own.
Naomi put a hand over her nose and looked inside the box where the brownish-gray heart lay. Nothing else. Just a heart. “Okay, gross. I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t get my mom.” She followed Naomi to the door. “You don’t need to get anyone. It’s a prank.”
Naomi shook her head. “It’s a threat. Calm down. I’ll be discreet.”
Naomi strode off the porch and made a beeline for Nate Wright. He waved a hello to her as he cuddled his baby close. Gemma frowned as Naomi discreetly whispered something to the sheriff that caused him to hand off his son and start walking her way. As though he had sonar hearing, Cam Briggs perked up and started following, too. The rest of the party continued, but the two lawmen strode her way.
Nate had a fierce scowl on his face as he climbed her steps. “Seriously? You’ve been on the job for less than twenty-four hours and you’ve picked up a crazy?”
Gemma shrugged. She hated to admit it, but she actually would feel better if Nate knew about it. It was a heart. A freaking heart. She buried the fear deep. It wouldn’t help to show it. “You know how to pick ’em, boss.”
Cam smiled, the buttons of his shirt open and showing off tanned skin. “I’m excited. It’s been boring around here since Hope killed her ex. What have we got? Creepy letter? Voice mail threats?”
Nate looked into the box. “Heart in a box.”
Cam, the asshole, actually fist pumped. “Awesome. Who’d you piss off, Gemma?”
Honesty. It was the word of the day. “Pretty much everyone who’s ever met me.”
Nate turned to Naomi. “You’re a nurse, right? I’ll have Caleb take a look, but I would appreciate your input. Is that thing human?”
Naomi took another look at Gemma’s present. “It’s too small to be human. I think we’re probably looking at a canine heart.”
“Someone killed a dog?” Gemma asked. That was horrible. Someone’s sweet puppy had been murdered so some asshole could scare the crap out of her?
“You were okay when it was human?” Cam asked.
“No. I’m not okay with any of it, but I like dogs more than most people.” Dogs didn’t sleep around on her and take credit for her work. Maybe she should get a dog. She’d never been able to have one in New York.
Naomi shook her head. “It’s a cadaver heart most likely. It might be a swine heart. You can buy them pretty easily. Or sneak one out of most teaching hospitals. It’s been preserved. Formaldehyde. Ick. This is why I didn’t go into research. I hate the smell. Who would send you a heart in a box?”
“I don’t know.” She suddenly felt weary. She’d been forced to walk away from her job, but it looked like it had followed her to Bliss. She turned away. She meant to keep up the tough-girl attitude, but she didn’t have to stare at it. “I’ll make a list of the cases I’ve worked on. There are a few where I was either lead or secondary counsel, but I almost always had face time with the clients or the opponents. Some of them were really pissed off.” She hated to beg, but she felt the need. “Could we please keep this quiet? I would prefer to just be the bitch, not the bitch who gets hearts in the mail. Just the four of us, okay?”
“I have to talk to Caleb, but he won’t mention it.” Nate pulled a set of latex gloves out of his pocket. Gemma could only imagine how much he must love his job. “Who gave this to you?”
Fuck. She did not want to bring him into this.
“McCann. I saw him walk up with it.” Cameron Briggs was way too observant.
“He said the mail carrier was asking Long-Haired Roger about it.” Had she really just called the man Long-Haired Roger?
A long look passed between Nate and Cam.
“He didn’t do this,” Gemma insisted. “Did you check and see where it was posted from?”
“It looks like it came out of St. Louis. But that doesn’t mean a thing,” Nate replied as he started to tape the box back up, carefully making sure he had every bit of packing material. “And I didn’t say Jesse McCann had anything to do with it.”
“But you thought it.”
Cam took over. “He’s new in town. And he’s had a run-in with the law.”
Gemma felt her fists clench. “That was stricken from his record the moment he turned eighteen. It is absolutely unacceptable for you to use that charge against him.”
“Whoa, counselor.” Cam’s hands came up in self-defense. “I didn’t say I was charging him with anything. I merely stated that he has a record, and he brought the box to you. I have to look into it. And as far as the legal records are concerned, his charges are gone. I just happen to be more thorough than simply checking what’s easily available.”
“You’re a hacker?”
The big blond deputy gave her a thumbs-up. “Hacker, profiler, former FBI agent, n
ow small-town deputy.”
She wouldn’t have pegged him as FBI. He was too laid-back, too, well, happy. “I still don’t think it was him.”
Nate started toward the door. “I don’t think so, either, but I’ll look into it. And you seem damn ready to defend him. You two got something going on?”
Nope. Just a whole lot of hot thoughts that she had no intention of acting on. “No.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Because if you do have something going on, I think you should tell him about this before he finds out on his own. I’ll keep it quiet for now, but these things have a way of coming out. Men around here don’t like it when their women hide things.”
Gemma rolled her eyes. “I am not his woman. Come on, Sheriff. What century do you think we’re in? Even if we were dating, this would be my problem and I would want to keep it private.”
“Have it your way. I’ll ask him about it, but I won’t let on.” Nate turned, gesturing for Cam to come with him. “Night, ma’am.”
Cam slapped his boss on the back. “That girl is going to get spanked. I heard Jesse was the type.”
Naomi shook her head. “Damn, the men here are fine. And you just might get spanked, lucky girl. But seriously, think about this. You don’t know that man. Jesse McCann might look nice, but looks aren’t everything. The sweetest-faced man can turn on you in a heartbeat. Just be careful, okay? I’m going to go back out there or your momma is going to start asking questions. Lock your doors. Better yet, come stay with us.”
She wasn’t going to be run out of her rented, temporary home. “I’ll be fine, Na. I don’t have my gun back, but I have a whole purse full of other weapons. This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to scare me. It won’t be the last. Now go on. My cell is charged, and the sheriff and the deputy live right down the road. I’m fine.”
Naomi hugged her and left.
And she wasn’t fine. She was scared, but she was also alone so she had to hold it together.
She fell asleep wondering if Jesse had a dark side. Or if Cade was the type of man to send a woman a message to stay away.
