Sudden Engagement

by Julie Miller

  “Your men are watching us.”

  Brett angled himself to shield Ginny from his crew’s prying eyes. “Maybe we’d better kiss instead. Make this charade look real.”

  “No.”

  “No? We’re supposed to seal an engagement, not a traffic citation.”

  Her deep, fortifying breath matched his own. “I hate it when you’re right.”

  She pressed her lips together, zeroing in on his mouth.

  Brett caught her chin in his palm and stroked his thumb across her lips. “Relax. I’ll meet you halfway.”

  Ginny sank back as he lowered his head and replaced his thumb with his mouth. The lower arc of her sweet lips trembled. Drawn to the tiny flutter of movement, Brett pressed the generous curve between his own lips.

  Her lips barely moved.

  Her hands were another story altogether.

  Her fingers dug into his chest, then crept up to his shoulders, holding herself steady or holding him close, Brett couldn’t tell. He wondered if she even knew.

  SUDDEN ENGAGEMENT

  JULIE MILLER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Julie Miller attributed her passion for writing romance to all those fairy tales she read growing up, and to shyness. Encouragement from her family to write down all those feelings she couldn’t express became a love for the written word. She gets continued support from her fellow members of the Prairieland Romance Writers, where she serves as the resident “grammar goddess.” This award-winning author and teacher has published several paranormal romances. Inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Encyclopedia Brown, Ms. Miller believes the only thing better than a good mystery is a good romance.

  Born and raised in Missouri, she now lives in Nebraska with her husband, son and smiling guard dog, Maxie. Write to Julie at P.O. Box 5162, Grand Island, NE 68802-5162.

  Books by Julie Miller

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  588—ONE GOOD MAN

  613—SUDDEN ENGAGEMENT

  THE TAYLOR CLAN

  Sid and Martha Taylor:

  butcher and homemaker

  ages 63 and 62 respectively

  Brett Taylor:

  contractor

  age 38

  the protector

  Mac Taylor:

  forensic specialist

  age 37

  the professor

  Gideon Taylor:

  firefighter/arson investigator

  age 35

  the crusader

  Cole Taylor:

  the mysterious brother (the family’s not quite sure what kind of work he does—undercover)

  age 30

  the lost soul

  Jessie Taylor:

  the lone daughter antiques dealer/buyer/restorer

  age 2

  the survivor

  Josh Taylor:

  police officer

  age 27

  at 6'3", he’s still the baby of the family

  the charmer

  Mitch Taylor:

  Sid’s nephew—raised like a son police captain

  age 39

  the chief

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Detective Ginny Rafferty—As a rule, this headstrong cop works alone. So temporarily joining forces with her potently sexy “fiancé” is bound to wreak havoc on her steely self-control—and on her heart.

  Brett Taylor—This neighborhood hero would do anything to protect his family or a friend. And he never forgets a promise, especially when it is made in the heat of passion to the woman he can’t resist.

  Sophie Bishop—She survived a treacherous past. But will she survive her future?

  Eric Chamberlain—Attorney-at-law. Brett’s high-school rival still wants to be #1.

  Pearl and Ruby Jenkins—This mother and daughter have their sights set on Brett.

  Dennis Fitzgerald—Ginny’s attentive neighbor knows a lot more about her murder investigation than he’s letting on.

  Detective Merle Banning—Is Ginny’s true-blue partner jealous of the new man in her life?

  Zeke—Just another homeless guy. Or does his occasionally lucid mind hold a decade-old secret?

  Amy Rafferty and Mark Bishop—These star-crossed lovers paid dearly for their dreams.

  Alvin Bishop—The neighborhood bully finally got what he deserved. But who put him out of his misery?

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my two ace research assistants, who possess a lifetime of expertise on Kansas City, Missouri, and its history—aka Mom and Dad!

  Dedication

  This book is for the Mom’s Group, especially my friends Linda Whitely and Lee Carter—because I promised.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  “Brett. Over here.”

  Brett Taylor ducked beneath the yellow tape that marked off the condemned building as a crime scene. He took the concrete steps two at a time and joined his younger brother at the top.

  Mac Taylor adjusted the wire-rimmed frames of his glasses, pulled off his plastic gloves and extended his hand to greet him. “I said I’d call you when I knew something. What are you doing here?”

  Brett shook hands, then splayed his fingers on either side of his denim-clad hips. He looked down a couple of inches at his tall, fair-haired brother. “I’m saving the world. What does it look like?” He surveyed the team of men and women in black Kansas City Police Department jackets, who were swarming in and out of crumbling doorways and kicking up dust from the disintegrating brickwork. The old Ludlow Arms apartment building was an accident waiting to happen. Apparently one already had. “Your people know to watch their step, don’t they?”

  He crossed the entryway to a hole in the plaster. He glanced at the connecting struts within the wall, then reached inside and pried loose a rotting two-by-four. He turned and displayed the evidence of age and neglect for his brother. “This is one gal I can’t fix.”

  “We understand ‘structurally unsafe.”’ Mac shook his head. “Though I still don’t get the concept of buying this old place if all you’re going to do is tear it down.”

  Brett wasn’t sure he could explain the tricky combination of memories and guilt and dreams that had prompted him to take out a loan against his business to buy a block of dead buildings in his old neighborhood. “This old Victorian lady—” he said, giving the structure a feminine appellation like any devoted captain. He tilted his chin and cataloged the remains of the intricate molding that outlined the ceiling, appreciating their elegant curves the way he’d appreciate any woman’s figure “—is beyond help. But I can turn the acreage into a pocket park to add value to the other sites I’m remodeling.”

  “You sure you can afford a project this size?”

  “I have investors.” Brett tossed aside the beam—and Mac’s concern—and got down to business. “Now show me this dead body you found.”

  “Not me. A couple of homeless guys tried to camp out in the basement.” He checked the notepad he carried. “A Zeke and a Charlie. No last names. Heard sounds in the walls. Thought the place was haunted. Went to check it out.”

  Brett laughed. “Yeah. Old Zeke’s a war vet. The only enemy he’s afraid of is the real world.”

  Mac nodded and led the way downstairs to the basement. “I guess. He called 911 and said he’d pulled a buddy from a foxhole.”

  Brett’s admiration for the seventy-eigh
t-year-old gave way to habitual worry. “I’m hoping to turn the old Walton Building into a shelter. Put in office space upstairs. Maybe we can get the therapists and clients in the same building and save a few bucks.”

  “You really are out to save the world,” Mac teased.

  “Just my corner of it.”

  Maybe this time he’d get it right.

  The Ludlow Arms hadn’t seen electricity for years, but the path was lit by a series of battery-powered lanterns, spaced evenly between puddles where the steady drizzle of rain leaked in. Even inside his red-and-white flannel shirt and thermal top, Brett felt the drop in temperature as they descended into the unheated darkness.

  “You know this place has a subbasement?” asked Mac.

  Brett trailed his hand along the cool concrete walls. The drowsy sunshine of early April would never penetrate this far. Layers of plaster dust and ancient dirt and moldy slime came away on his fingertips. He curled his fingers into his palm and crushed the sensation in his fist. This place was as dark and unwelcoming as it had been fifteen years ago when Mark Bishop had first brought him down here.

  The best place to hide from my dad, he’d said with a laugh that hissed through his broken tooth and bloody lip. Right beneath the old man’s nose. Brett had suggested the hospital emergency room as a better place to go after that fight. Mark had been little more than a kid then, an honorary little brother. But with no money and no insurance, with nothing but a young man’s pride to sustain him, Mark had wanted to hide out down here. Brett had brought him ice, peroxide and some food for the night. Mark took strength from their friendship, and from the idea that his dad, Alvin Bishop, would never be smart enough or sober enough to find his way down to the basement.

  If only he’d known.

  “Brett?” Mac was staring at him in that quizzical way of his that questioned everything but revealed nothing.

  He quickly pulled himself back to the present and processed Mac’s question. “Yeah. It’s on the old blueprints. This is one crazy lady,” he added. “I wish I had more time to check out all the nooks and crannies. Abandoned dumbwaiter shafts, stairwells boarded over for remodeling.”

  Mac had stopped them at a trapdoor in the floor. His grim sigh put Brett on guard. “I don’t think this particular nook shows up on your blueprints.”

  Wary, but equally intrigued, Brett climbed down the ladder after Mac. As his work boots hit the dirt floor, he inhaled sharply and winced. The air smelled stale. Cold and damp like a cave, with no circulating breeze to cleanse the heavy air.

  The basement had been chilly. The subbasement raised goose bumps along his forearms. He adjusted his yellow hard hat on top of his head and gazed into the darkness made dim by Mac’s flashlight and a lone stationary lantern. He followed him over to the collapsed section of bricks built up around the iron infrastructure of the building. Mac stepped aside and shined his flashlight into the closet-size hole.

  The smell of rust and rot hit him a split second before he looked inside. He pulled his head back and spun around, cutting across the room with the calculated prowl of a caged animal. He swore low and viciously.

  Mac remained cool and detached. A prerequisite for the kind of job he did, Brett knew, but still… He stopped in the center of the room and pointed toward the manmade hellhole. “Doesn’t that make you sick? We grew up in this neighborhood. Stuff like that…”

  Hell. He wasn’t the eloquent one. He had no words for the gruesome sight, for the personal violation he felt at seeing a corpse like that in his building, in his community, in the place his friend had considered a haven.

  “Stuff like that makes me angry, too,” Mac conceded. But unlike Brett, he kept his emotions firmly in check. “I have to ask you to delay demolition of the building until we’re satisfied with the crime scene.”

  Brett returned his hands to his hips and nodded. “Any idea who? Or why? Or even how long he’s been in there?”

  “Obviously, we’re beyond the fingerprint stage, so I won’t have any ID for a while. I’m not even up to motive yet. And as far as time, the dampness down here accelerates decomposition. But, nobody’s lived in this building for five years or so, right?”

  “Eight years.” Brett breathed in, needing fresh air. “Do you think he was alive?”

  Mac’s uncharacteristic hesitation snagged his full attention. “Yeah. I do.”

  Brett cursed the cruel inhumanity of the crime. He went to Mac and squeezed his shoulder, offering a degree of comfort he’d yet to find for himself. He’d been half joking about saving the world. He’d like to reclaim at least a part of it for his mother and father and younger siblings.

  But maybe he was already too late.

  “I’ll hold the crews as long as you need me to.” Taking charge came easily to him. And even though Mac was the expert here, he couldn’t help but offer, “Anything else you need from me?”

  Mac shook his head. “I know where to find you.”

  A reviving breath of fresh air soothed Brett’s frustrated sense of justice. He turned to the creak of footsteps on the ladder, seeking the source of the delicate, flowery scent that drifted past his nose. It wasn’t a specific perfume, but a clean fragrance, faintly scented like the purplish freesia plants his mother had cultivated to add color and freshness to the drab, overcrowded apartment where he’d grown up.

  Mac moved into the light while Brett savored the memory. “Mac, have you figured out any details for us?” Brett snapped to attention at the familiar female voice sparkling with intelligence and clipped with professional patience. He remembered that voice. “What’s this unauthorized civilian doing here?”

  He smiled, knowing he was the cause of her accusatory tone. Mac urged him forward, out of the shadows. “Let me introduce you to the lead investigator on the case. Detective…”

  “Ginny Rafferty.”

  Mac and the second man down the ladder looked at Brett, surprised by the recognition. But he had eyes only for the petite woman standing in the muted light of the lantern and flashlights.

  Angelic wisps of white-gold hair, damp with rain, curled and clung to her jawline. Dark blue eyes, wide and clear as a cobalt pane in a stained-glass window, studied him without expression. She was a pint-size package of beautiful woman that didn’t even reach his shoulders.

  He remembered her.

  Proper and preachy and stubborn enough to get under his skin like an itch he couldn’t reach, Ginny Rafferty unsnapped the front of her jacket and fisted her hands on her slim hips, exposing the holster and badge clipped to her belt. Her proud, wary stance dared him to question her authority.

  Oh yeah. He definitely remembered her.

  His smile broadened a notch. “We’ve met.”

  “Yes. We shared guard duty of your cousin Mitch’s wife before they were married. My boss called in all his favors to protect her from the man who assaulted her.” She let the front of her jacket slide back into place, but her tiny body retained its stern posture. “As I recall, you cheat at Scrabble.”

  “Being a bad speller doesn’t make me a cheater.”

  “No, but doing anything necessary to ensure a victory does make you annoying.”

  She walked past him, directing the beam of her flashlight into the hidden corners of the room. Mac laughed at the clear brush-off. “Yep, big brother. She knows you, all right.”

  She put on a pair of plastic gloves and knelt beside a dust-filled footprint. She measured it with her hand and made a notation in her notepad. “Anybody been down here today but the two of you?”

  Mac, too, slipped into his professional mode. “The two men who found the body. The preliminary scan team. We’ve taken photos. Marked samples. It’s slow going, though. This place is falling down around us and won’t withstand a lot of traffic.”

  Ginny stood and flashed her light onto Brett. “So why don’t we clear the crime scene before we disturb any more evidence.”

  “Brett knows the building inside and out. He can tell us where it’s s
afe, and where it isn’t. Besides, he knows more history about this neighborhood than city hall. I thought he’d be a good source of information. And, he can tell us about the construction of this wall.”

  Her blue eyes flashed with the same intensity as the powerful beam. “Nice defense, Mr. Taylor. I suppose you can stay.”

  Brett couldn’t resist the challenge thrown up by her all-too-serious concession. “You missed me, didn’t you?”

  But she didn’t rise to the taunt. Instead, she flashed her light past him to the second detective. “That’s my partner, Merle Banning.”

  The trim, six-foot package of suspicion eyeballed him before shaking his hand. “Mr. Taylor.”

  “Everybody calls me Brett.”

  “I’ll remember that, Mr. Taylor.”

  He wondered what he had said or done to earn the younger man’s disapproval. This guy didn’t look too far past the rookie stage. Maybe he was working on his tough-guy routine. He had the master champ to learn from in his partner. Brett backed off a step. “You do that.”

  “Is the body still here?” Ginny asked. Apparently, what passed for pleasantries had ended.

  Mac swung his light around to the hole in the wall. “In there.”

  Ginny nodded, taking charge of the scene. Brett noted that his brother and her partner responded to her commands without hesitation. “Merle, you get Mac’s report. Then see if you can track down the two gentlemen who found the body. I want their statements ASAP.”

  “Right.”

  A split second passed before Brett understood that the others were leaving. And Ginny was heading toward the corpse. An instinct to protect, a need to shield shot through him. His property, his emotional territory had already been violated by the gruesome scene behind that wall. No one else should have to see it. Especially not a lady. With a lineman’s quick agility, he moved his big frame and blocked the opening. “Wait a minute. You can’t go in there.”