“I heard they were out helping Cord and Jackson get their second barn built on Monday.” Anna took a hook out of her purse, opened it, and then used it to hang her purse on the edge of the table.
All the years she’d known her mother, Anna Jessop had never put her purse on the floor.
Nancy brought herself back to the conversation. “They said they quite enjoyed the experience.”
“They’re fitting in very nicely.” Her mother’s smile beamed—there was just no other word for it.
Ginny came over and gave them menus. “What can I get you to drink, ladies?”
“I’m going to have a soda,” Anna said.
“What kind?”
“I’m in the mood for Dr. Pepper, I think.”
When Ginny looked her way, Nancy’s response was automatic. “Unsweetened tea, please.”
Ginny nodded. “The special today is fried chicken. You can have mashed or fries, and it comes with your choice of small green salad, or steamed mixed vegetables. I’ll be right back with your drinks.”
“I hope you’re at least going to put some sweetener in your tea,” her mother said.
“I am. Sucralose, not aspartame. It’s a small thing, but I try to cut out the sugar where I can.”
Her mother looked over her glasses at her. “You never used to be so self-conscious, Nancy.” Then she frowned. “It’s likely all that Tony Martin’s fault.” She nodded once, firmly. “I should have let your fathers pay that young man a visit after what he did to you.”
“Oh, God.” Nancy didn’t need a mirror to know she looked horrified. Her deepest, darkest secret and not only her mother, but her fathers knew about it?
“Did you think we wouldn’t keep an eye on you? You were only eighteen years old, and you traveled all the way across the country to attend the college of your dreams. We didn’t worry, well not overmuch. But it gave us some comfort to know what was what.” Her mother must have understood some of Nancy’s embarrassment, for she waved her hand. “We didn’t even blink that you would finally have a boyfriend, honey. That’s only natural and a part of life, after all. It was why that horrid little pissant did what he did that got us so riled up.”
Nancy supposed in the back of her mind, she’d known that her parents would likely have had someone “watching over her.” She wasn’t stupid. She was an heiress, a prime target for kidnapping. The fact that Lusty as well as her citizens kept an extremely low profile didn’t alter the reality of things.
She bowed her head. “I was so humiliated.”
“What you should have been was madder than hell,” her mother said. “But you’re really very much like me.”
Ginny arrived with their drinks. Nancy sat back to give the woman room to set the glasses down. She realized that she hadn’t even looked at the menu. She knew what she wanted, but had been going to be “good” and order a salad, instead.
Ginny whipped out her order pad and pen. “Ladies?”
“I’m going to have the chicken,” Anna said. “I love the way Kelsey makes it. I’ll have the fries with it, and a small green salad.”
Ginny finished writing and looked at Nancy. Oh, to hell with being good. I almost never order what I want, and it doesn’t make any difference, in the end.
“I’ll have a burger with cheese on it, and fries, please.”
“Got it. Won’t take long.” Ginny touched Nancy’s mother on the shoulder in what she realized was an affectionate gesture. “I’ll have your salad out in a moment, Aunt Anna.” Ginny smiled, and headed to the kitchen.
Nancy emptied two packets of sweetener and stirred them into her glass of tea. She sipped, frowned, and then added another packet of sweetener, then tested it again. Better.
“I’m like you?”
Before she could answer, Ginny was out and placed a small tossed salad on the table in front of her mother. Beside the plate, Ginny set a tiny container of dressing—honey mustard, her mother’s favorite. Her mother thanked Ginny, and then tilted her head to one side as she met Nancy’s gaze. “You are like me in oh, so many ways. You’re a reader, and detail oriented when it comes to things you consider important. You don’t play games—in the social sense—and always tend to think the best about most people, because most of the people you encounter deserve that. You can recognize a stinker, but only if he or she is really obvious.”
Nancy nodded. That did sound like her.
“But you’re easily hurt, and that thick skin everyone always says you need to develop? It’s not ever going to happen. And when you get badly hurt, it takes you a long time to recover, and an even longer time until you can fully trust your instincts and your emotions again.”
“I want to. But…”
“You’re afraid of getting hurt again.” Her mother reached for her hand. “Like I said, you’re very much like me.”
“How do you know? How do you know if it’s for real? How did you know?”
“Oh, sweetheart. I didn’t—I didn’t know for certain at all. With your fathers? I wanted to believe they could love me—fat, frumpy me—more than I had ever wanted anything in the world. But like you, I was afraid to believe, afraid to take that leap of faith. Until the day came that I realized if I didn’t, I would lose them. At that point, I knew that I could live with rejection. But I could never live with not trying.”
Nancy sat back as Ginny Kendall returned with a full tray, and set their lunches before them. Nancy had been so certain that her mother would have had the perfect answer for her. The burger smelled wonderful, and Nancy realized this was the first time in a long, long time that she’d actually ordered something she really wanted to eat.
Maybe she wouldn’t clean her plate. But she would damn well enjoy every bit that she put in her mouth.
Since the other day when she’d been trying to drum up the nerve to step out onto that limb and tell those two undercover cops how she felt about them, she’d been hoping that her mother would have all the answers for her. And actually, she did—even if what her mother had said wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for.
Nancy looked up and met her mother’s gaze. Sometimes, the way she looks at me, it’s as if she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“Love doesn’t come with a guarantee of time, daughter. We never know if it will last. We can strengthen the odds by working at it. But that’s all we can do. In fact, love only promises one thing. While it lives in your heart, it will multiply tenfold, and fill you with more joy than you ever could have imagined.”
“That’s really a hell of a promise, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” her mother said. “It really is.”
* * * *
Eli felt itchy, the way he sometimes did when he was on the verge of solving a case. Running all the phone numbers in Nancy’s cell phone call log hadn’t turned up anything. He switched his attention to the pictures, and that was when the itch began. Nancy had taken a lot of photographs with her cell phone the day before she left the District.
Rather than look at them all right there in the sheriff’s office, he’d surrendered the phone to Connor, who was going to download them to his computer and enhance them.
Normally he didn’t balk at letting someone else take the lead in a case. But then, this wasn’t just any case. It was a matter of his woman’s security. One look in Jeremiah’s eyes as they’d been in Sheriff Kendall’s office, and he’d known he wasn’t the only one having difficulty keeping his attitude strictly professional.
Of course the most important factor in favor of surrendering the cell phone was that Connor Talbot had programs and years of experience when it came to making pictures give up their secrets—or so Adam said.
Connor downloaded the pictures and Adam had then secured the cell phone in his safe, and they agreed to gather again that evening at Nancy’s to see what Talbot had come up with.
It was seven in the evening, and right on schedule, Connor and Adam arrived at Nancy’s house to review what they had.
Nanc
y must have sensed both his and Jeremiah’s nerves. She’d kissed them both sweetly, and then suggested they gather in the den with coffee and some of her mother’s cookies.
Eli crunched his way through a couple of the buttery pecan bits Anna Jessop had made and considered that his woman’s version of a chill pill was pretty damn tasty.
Connor worked quickly to hook his laptop up to the television. “Okay, we’re ready to go.” He turned to Nancy. “You took a lot of pictures—I’ve lived in DC and I can see where you started out that last day, and where you ended up. If I had to guess, I’d say you were collecting memories.”
“That’s exactly what I was doing. I was feeling a little nostalgic because I was leaving. It wasn’t a move I had even considered a few days before. And then wham—I got fired on Wednesday, and this was Friday and I was leaving town the next day. So I began snapping some pictures of my favorite places as I walked back to my car. I thought that when I got here, I would have a couple of them printed large and framed.” She grinned. “I’d be able to look at those pictures on the wall, and remember an important period of my life. Not that I’m much of a photographer, or anything.”
“I think you have some talent there,” Connor said. “Okay, I enlarged them, and showing them on this big-ass television should help us to see every detail. If there’s something sketchy there, we should find it.”
Fuck patience and professionalism. “Let’s see them,” Eli said. And because he couldn’t be professional about this, he took Nancy’s hand, sat on the sofa, and brought her down to his lap.
Connor snickered, but he got to work. The television came on and then moments later, the first picture Nancy had taken her last day in DC flashed on the screen. The first picture showed her with three other women.
She likes them but they aren’t best friends. Eli could see the wall she kept around herself, the same wall he and Jeremiah had been trying to put a dent in for more than two years. He mentally grinned. I think we’ve mostly demolished that sucker.
“I’d just had lunch with three colleagues at the Lafayette,” Nancy explained. “The Senator made the arrangements and footed the bill, though he didn’t accompany us. They wanted to memorialize the moment.”
And she hadn’t particularly wanted to, because she’d already shifted out of Washington mode. Eli could understand why her family called her Hurricane Nancy. She didn’t mess around—once her mind was made up, it was made up and she wanted to act immediately.
“I had run a couple of errands before lunch, and had already cleaned out my office. I’d parked a few blocks away, close to the Mall. I figured the walk to the restaurant and back would be a good idea.”
Eli grinned at the almost tourist-like shots Nancy had taken. He could even track her path. She’d turned down 17th Street and headed south, toward Constitution Avenue and the Mall. There didn’t seem to be any theme or logic to the scenes Nancy captured as she walked. He suspected that she had been collecting random samples, gathering memories, as she’d said.
Once she reached Constitution Avenue, she crossed and then walked east, toward the Capitol.
“I loved the Mall,” Nancy said. “Most days I’d eat lunch at my desk, but when the weather was sweetest—especially when the cherry blossoms were in full splendor—I’d take my lunch with me and sit on one of the park benches.”
“I can see why you’d be drawn to that,” Adam said. “It’s pretty even without the trees being in flower.”
“I think I’m going to miss those cherry blossoms more than I’m going to miss most of the people.”
Adam nodded. “We’ve got Mountain Laurel and the antique roses. They should go a long way toward making up for the lack.”
Nancy chuckled. “Yeah, and my roses last a lot longer than those cherry blossoms. Or they will, after I prune them in February.”
The scenes in the slide show on the television were mostly just random samples of what one would see walking along the Mall. She’d captured a museum here and there, a few of the embassies, and the park.
Even though Eli was focused on the images, and was looking for something out of place, he almost missed it. Two more pictures filled the screen before he felt his heart begin to pound. “Stop. Go back three frames, and then go past this point for a few more.”
Connor did as Eli asked, clicking the pictures manually. There were eight shots in all, taken roughly four seconds apart.
“What is it?” Nancy asked. “I was just snapping a sequence because I had in mind I might make a mural. The view was so pretty.”
“Pretty incriminating,” Eli said. “Connor, can you enhance the bottom quarter of those frames?”
“What? Those two men on the park bench?” Nancy asked.
“Yeah. Those two men on the park bench.”
“Give me a moment.” Connor got to work and Eli wondered if the PI saw what he saw.
Eli had never seen a man’s fingers fly so fast over a keyboard. As he worked, Eli looked at Jeremiah, to see if his partner had caught it, too. He himself had only recognized the man, because he’d been thinking about him a lot in the last couple of weeks.
Jeremiah returned his gaze and nodded.
“Okay, got it.” Connor brought the newly enhanced sequence up on the screen.
Eli knew in the way Connor hunched forward, that he was seeing it, too—as was Adam Kendall. Connor ran the sequence through three more times. It was all Eli could do not to laugh out loud. Got you, you son of a bitch.
“Oh my goodness! Is that Senator Davies?” Nancy looked at him. “I didn’t even notice him there. Huh. What’s the big deal? He’s just sitting on a bench reading a newspaper.”
“No, baby,” Jeremiah said. “He’s pretending to be reading a newspaper.”
“While the man sitting next to him is passing him a very fat envelope.” Eli said.
“Then he puts his hand on that envelope and slides it under his briefcase.”
“You mean, like a bribe or something? Well, why the hell would he do something like that out in the open? That’s pretty stupid, isn’t it? Why not just have the man come to his office?”
“The first reason that comes to mind is if the man handing over the cash is someone he shouldn’t be seen with.”
“Oh. Like a foreign national?”
“I’m thinking something a little more domestically illegal,” Eli said.
“Well, I guess that makes these pictures a bit awkward.”
Eli shook his head. He knew, with that cop sense of his, that this was indeed why Nancy had awakened to a man rummaging through her purse the night before she left the District.
“No, sweetheart. It makes them more than awkward. It makes them evidence. Now we just need to find out who’s giving Davies the payoff, and for what.”
Chapter 20
Nancy expected a flurry of activity. Surely, Eli and Jeremiah would begin to pack and then head back to DC. After all, they had uncovered evidence of possible influence pedaling by a sitting United States Senator. That was a big deal, and as the cops who’d “broken the case open,” so to speak, they’d be at the center of the operation.
This would be a career coup for both of them, no question about it.
After the dust settled, she wouldn’t be at all surprised if the two were awarded promotions or medals or both for their good work.
But when the door closed a half hour later, Eli and Jeremiah were still there with her. Eli had called his boss, and reported on what they’d found, and then Connor had sent the photographs along in an e-mail to the man. Adam was in possession of her cell phone and had been ever since that morning—he had it bagged and tagged and locked away in the safe in his office—thus satisfying the need for protecting the integrity of the chain of evidence. He was also, officially, included in the case—an intermediary between the Department of Justice and the primary witness—her.
Eli and Jeremiah didn’t look like a couple of G-men who’d just executed a slam dunk, game-winning goal, career-
wise. Staring at them, taking in their calm, unaffected attitude, she couldn’t think of a thing to say. She could only look from one to the other of them.
Clearly both men read the confusion on her face. Jeremiah approached, and then ran his hand down her back. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“I thought you’d have to go,” she said. “You just stumbled on this huge case. I know how things work in the District. This could be a turning point in your careers.”
The two men exchanged a look. Then Eli came up to her and cupped her face in his hands. He tilted her head up, so that she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “The only place we have to go, sweetheart, is up those stairs with you.”
“But…it’s a very important case. You said your boss was excited about it.”
“You’re right, it is an important case,” Eli said. “And he is excited.”
“But it’s not nearly as important to us as you are, baby.” Jeremiah stood behind her, his front pressed against her back.
“We know what our priorities are, Nancy Jessop.” Eli held her gaze. “We’re staying right here.”
Oh, God. How can I go on being such a coward after a statement like that? She couldn’t. And in the end, she didn’t even think about the words. They were just there.
“I love you. I love you both so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Eli’s grin and Jeremiah’s sigh of relief said it all.
“You don’t have to worry about that, sweetheart, because you will never be without us—not ever again.” Eli leaned forward and placed a sweet but far too brief kiss on her lips. “I love you, Nancy Jessop, with all my heart.”
“I love you, Nancy.” Jeremiah turned her into his arms and enfolded her. She felt safe and warm and accepted—loved for the woman she was. “I’ll never stop loving you. That’s a promise, baby. One I am most definitely going to keep.”
Nancy eased out of Jeremiah’s arms. Her eyes were wet but she didn’t care. “I was afraid to believe.”
“We know.” Jeremiah gave her a kiss just as brief as his best friend had done.
Love Under Two Undercover Cops [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 19
