With This Kiss

by Susan Meier

  He stopped, watched her turn up Prospect Avenue, and frowned. She was walking to her house. Walking? It was freezing! His frown deepened. Her house was at the top of Prospect Avenue, which really should have been named Prospect Hill, because the entire avenue was a steep incline. It would take her at least most of her lunch hour just to walk to her house and back.

  He shook his head. What did he care? Her dad owned the paper for which she worked and with him gone she was the boss. She could be a few minutes late returning from lunch.

  Calling himself crazy, he finished the trip to the diner and chose a seat at a wooden table like the twenty or so others scattered about. A long shiny red counter matched the booths that circled the outside rim of the room. Red-and-white checkered curtains hung in evenly spaced intervals on the wall of windows beside the booths.

  He ordered a chef salad and pulled out a copy of the Calhoun Corners Chronicle. If he weren’t the chief of police, he wouldn’t open Rayne’s father’s rag for all the tea in China. But he was the chief of police and it was prudent for him to keep up with births, deaths, weddings and engagements. Not to send cards and be in good “social” standing, but because a police department never knew when the change of a family’s status would result in a strain that could culminate in a domestic disturbance. On the other hand, finding the right girl or becoming a father could also tame a usually drunk and disorderly twenty-year-old.

  Elaine Johnson, the tall, amply built wife of the diner owner, Bill Johnson, walked over with his salad. She set the dish on his place mat.

  “Thanks, Elaine.”

  “You’re welcome, Chief,” she said, a giggle in her voice.

  He glanced up and smiled. “Jericho’s fine. I’m not much for titles.”

  “You should be,” Elaine said, her brown eyes gleaming with pleasure. “Your mother is so proud of you. Nobody in your family even knew you’d gone into law enforcement. It was such a surprise.”

  “And exactly the opposite of what everybody expected.”

  She batted her hands in dismissal. “My guess is that you saw the inside of a jail one too many times and realized that if you didn’t change you might find yourself locked up permanently.”

  Jericho grimaced. She was close but not exactly right. He’d actually made his first attempt at reforming at around twenty-three, when Laura Beth Salvatori came into his life. A tall, beautiful redhead, with a quick wit and a sharp mind, she was a challenge for his intellect as well as his sexual prowess. In the end, he’d won her over. Or so he’d thought.

  After they lived together for two years, his best friend, Brad Baker, had come to Colorado for a visit. A rich kid Jericho had bummed around with on local ski slopes when Brad was in the Western United States and not in Europe, Brad was every bit as good-looking as Jericho, twice as charming and a thousand times richer. Laura Beth had taken one look at Brad and that was the end of anything she’d felt for Jericho. She’d packed her bags and left with Brad that weekend. That was the last Jericho had seen of Laura Beth or Brad and the beginning of what Jericho referred to as his lost years.

  Hurt and angry, he drank, got fired from his manufacturing job and went back to bumming around the ski slopes, picking up enough money for booze and bail by giving skiing lessons. Then one night he woke up in jail with a teenage boy who had stabbed a rival gang member. They’d talked and Jericho realized that the kid hadn’t had half the guidance and love Jericho had had in his formative years. He’d found himself telling the boy some of the very things his father had told him and by morning the kid had seen the error of his ways.

  Unfortunately, the boy he had stabbed died during the night. The kid Jericho had saved wouldn’t get a second chance. He would go to prison. Maybe for life.

  That sunny morning when Jericho stepped out of jail, he realized he was drinking, getting into fights, gambling away his money, all because a woman he’d loved left with a guy he’d thought was his friend. At first, his behavior might have seemed justified, but two years later, he knew that if he continued down that path, Laura Beth really would have taken everything.

  So he quit drinking—except for the occasional beer or glass of wine with dinner—and he’d had a long talk with his attorney who had convinced him to go into law enforcement. After graduating from the police academy, he’d spent almost five years working vice in Las Vegas. Then his dad offered him the job as chief of police in Calhoun Corners, and he knew it was time to come home.

  “Whatever your reasons for going straight,” Elaine was saying when Jericho came out of his thoughts. “Most of us are glad you’re home.”

  Jericho smiled. He hadn’t missed the “most” in her last statement. He knew he had detractors, people who thought his dad had been wrong to make him chief of police. People who assumed he hadn’t changed or, worse, as the mayor’s son he couldn’t be objective. People who assumed that after Mark Fegan’s attacks and the swell of people who believed the opinions in his editorials, Ben Capriotti was getting his friends and family into position to make sure no one got so bold again. And now that Jericho thought about it, Mark leaving so mysteriously didn’t look good for the Capriottis.

  Elaine pointed at the paper. “Damn shame what happened at the Chronicle.”

  Not sure what she meant, and not about to talk about anything Rayne had told him, Jericho didn’t reply.

  “I know. I know. You and your family aren’t big fans of the paper but, really, once you get past Mark Fegan’s rhetoric, it’s the only source of news we have.”

  Jericho hid a smile. “You mean gossip.”

  She shook her head. “No. There’s real news in there.” She took the paper from his hand. “And Rayne doesn’t shirk from the truth.” She opened it to the page she wanted, folded it twice, and set in it front of Jericho so he could read the headline of the article at which she pointed.

  “Newspaper to cut staff.”

  “Paper’s not making money so she’s going to run it single-handedly.”

  Jericho peered up at Elaine.

  “Her dad’s gone. There’s no money. She can’t afford to give out what little she makes to other people as salaries. So she’s outsourcing the actual printing and distribution. And she’ll do every other job herself.”

  Jericho stared at the article in disbelief. It was no wonder Rayne had been upset when she came into his office. Her life was a mess.

  Before he could come up with an objective reply to Elaine about Rayne’s circumstances, Drew Wallace, Jericho’s sister Tia’s new husband, entered the diner. Wearing his trademark black Stetson, jeans and a denim jacket, he didn’t look nearly as prosperous as Jericho knew he was.

  Elaine waved him back. “You should eat with your brother-in-law,” she said when Drew walked over.

  Jericho motioned to the seat across from him. “Sure, Drew, have a seat,” he said, then Elaine scampered away to get a place mat and silverware.

  As Drew pulled out the chair across from Jericho, he said, “So how’s it going?”

  “Good. How’s Tia?”

  Drew rolled his eyes. “Between doing her advertising job from our den, planning Rick and Ashley’s wedding in our living room, getting ready for our baby in our bedroom and taking Ruthie every chance she can get, our house is a madhouse.”

  Jericho laughed.

  “Yeah, you can laugh.”

  “Oh come on. You love it.”

  Drew scowled. “It’s better than being alone.”

  “Right,” Jericho said, knowing male bluster when he heard it. He’d said a few things like that a time or two himself when he was living with Laura Beth. He’d griped about stockings in the sink, telephone bills, and the home shopping network, but he’d loved having a woman around. He’d liked having an apartment that was a home, the scent of her cologne surprising him when he walked around corners, her warm body beside him on cold nights. But there was a downside to that, too.

  Tia loved Drew exactly as he was. But to Laura Beth, Jericho had been something lik
e a work in progress. She’d changed how he dressed, how he combed his hair and how he behaved. To keep her happy, he’d damned near let her turn him into a sap. But going into law enforcement had corrected that mistake. If a policeman looked weak at the wrong time, with the wrong person, he could find himself dead. So, Jericho was a strong, not-to-be-messed-with lawman, set in his ways, grouchy, cantankerous and glad to be.

  “So what the hell is the deal with Rayne Fegan hiking up Prospect Avenue?”

  Jarred out of his thoughts, Jericho looked up at Drew. “You saw her, too?”

  “She’s a wacky, wacky woman.” Drew shook his head. “It’s raining, but she has no umbrella and she’s trudging up that hill as if she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders.”

  Jericho knew that to Rayne the weight of the world was on her shoulders, but he said nothing. He certainly wouldn’t reveal what he’d been told in a police interview.

  Drew opened the menu Elaine handed him before she set down place mats and utensils and walked away. “Of course, with a dad like hers, how could she be anything but wacky?”

  Jericho took a breath. “I guess.”

  “The way he dogged your dad through this year’s mayoral campaign was ridiculous.” Drew caught Jericho’s gaze. “You know he even brought up your past and Rick’s.”

  “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “He tried to get people to think that if your dad couldn’t raise his own kids, he couldn’t be trusted to run a whole town. But that backfired. Even if it wouldn’t have been ridiculous to bring up things that happened fifteen years ago, Rick came home with a degree and took over Seven Hills as if he were born to it.” Laughing, Drew shook his head. “And that angle fizzled pretty darned quickly.”

  “Yeah, Rick certainly came home a changed man,” Jericho said, knowing that bringing up his past and Rick’s past had been a last-ditch effort by Mark Fegan to save his hide from the loan shark. Jericho didn’t wonder why somebody wanted his dad out of office. The horse farmers who made up about sixty percent of the local population were thrilled that Ben Capriotti had maintained ordinances that precluded big business from moving in and farmland from becoming housing developments. Twenty or thirty percent of the people who liked living in a safe, quiet small town also supported him. But some landowners, particularly heirs who wished to sell the farms they didn’t want to run, weren’t as supportive. Some were downright devious. And Mark Fegan had been a pawn.

  “Your family is becoming something like a force in this town.”

  “Yeah,” Jericho agreed, but not happily. Jericho’s father had become mayor in the late seventies when the farmland was in danger of being swallowed up by developers. Now Drew Wallace, Jericho’s brother-in-law, was one of the super-successful horse farmers who liked things the way they were. Even Rick fell into that category. Not only was he marrying Ashley Meljac, but Ashley’s dad had deeded Seven Hills horse farm to Rick and Ashley as an engagement present. He stood to lose if anything in Calhoun Corners changed.

  All that caused an unexpected problem for Jericho. He didn’t have a vote on council, couldn’t change ordinances or vote to keep them as they were, but he was the one who kept the peace. And that gave him a power of sorts. He had to answer to his dad, because his dad was the mayor. But he couldn’t become a yes-man. He and his dad might laugh about the people who worried about Ben Capriotti hiring his own son to be chief of police, but Jericho knew he had to prove he was objective, not just to protect himself and his own reputation, but also to protect his dad’s.

  He might have inadvertently shot himself in the foot by so easily dismissing Rayne Fegan.

  Chapter Two

  At eight o’clock that night, after working a twelve-hour shift—still organizing the department and getting to know his officers—Jericho walked down the alley behind Main Street until he was at the back door of the newspaper office. He’d given Rayne the name of the best skip tracer he knew, so the search for her father was probably already under way. But that was as it should be. Hunting for a person who wasn’t actually missing was out of his purview. Still, he couldn’t let it appear that he had too casually dismissed Rayne. He knew how perception could be reality to some people, especially in a small town, so he had to nip speculation in the bud. One quick check to make sure everything was progressing would go a long way to prove he wasn’t giving Rayne the brush-off because of their fathers’ feud.

  Jericho tried the door and was relieved to find it was locked. For as out-of-sorts as Rayne had seemed to be when she was at his office that morning, Jericho had worried that she might be too upset to think clearly. The locked door showed she was doing the important day-to-day things in her life, which meant she was fine. Nine chances out of ten when she saw him, she’d snipe at him. That would be complete proof that things were back to normal and once he followed through on the situation with her dad his duty would be done.

  He knocked but no one answered. Having seen lights in the front part of the first-floor offices, he knew she or somebody was inside, so he knocked again. A few seconds later the door opened. Rayne frowned at him.

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to see how things turned out when you called my friend.”

  “The skip tracer?”

  He nodded.

  She took a breath, then opened the door a little wider. “Come in.”

  Jericho almost groaned. If she’d called his friend and had good results, all she had to do was say yes. Her inviting him in was not a good sign. Damn.

  “I called your friend,” she said as she closed the door. She motioned for him to follow her through a path created between piles of boxes that were jammed in the room. Jericho had no clue what was inside the stacks of cardboard containers, and didn’t ask as he navigated around them.

  “But he’s too expensive for me.”

  “Oh.” In the hall just outside the box-filled room and before he would have stepped into the front room of the newspaper offices, Jericho stopped walking. “I forgot he charges a hefty fee.”

  “His fee’s not that far out of line with the other private investigators I called, but I couldn’t afford them, either.” She took a breath and continued into the front room. “I paid all the money I had saved to the loan shark.” She fell into the chair behind the desk next to the open door of an office Jericho assumed was her father’s. “I didn’t think any further ahead than getting that debt paid.”

  “Don’t you have escrow or reserves here at the paper?”

  She shook her head. “No. When I realized I would have to find my dad to tell him the debt had been paid, I looked at the books for the business.”

  “And?”

  “And we are broke.”

  Jericho wasn’t surprised that she so easily poured out all her troubles. The uniform he wore usually inspired trust. Especially in people who had no one else to talk to. But he’d fulfilled his responsibilities by giving her the skip tracer’s name and since she couldn’t afford the skip tracer, and he really didn’t have the authority to help her, they were at a dead end. He stayed silent, not volunteering any more assistance.

  “So anyway,” she said with a note of finality in her voice, which was there, Jericho hoped, because she understood there was nothing more for them to discuss. “I don’t have the money to hire your friend.” She pushed her big glasses up her nose. “In case rumor hasn’t reached you, I didn’t even have the money to keep my own staff.”

  “Do you think your dad assumed you’d close the paper once you saw the financial condition?” The question was out before Jericho could stop it. But it made sense. A person didn’t abandon things they wanted saved.

  Still, his question surprised them both so much that Rayne’s gaze jumped to his. When her pretty blue eyes met Jericho’s, a flash of memory of her in the contacts and the tight red dress leaped into his brain. He wasn’t seeing the girl in the too big jeans and the ponytail, but the siren at the party.

  “I can’t close the paper.” Her
words came out little more than a whisper. “It’s the only thing we have.” She shook her head. “It’s the only thing he has. If I close it, he’ll never come back.”

  The sadness in her voice caused compassion to tighten Jericho’s chest and he damned near cursed. He didn’t like her. She didn’t like him. Hell, she didn’t like his whole damned family. He shouldn’t feel sorry for her. But he couldn’t stop thinking that he’d help the girl in the red dress—on his own time. His fertile imagination instantly came up with a thousand different ways she could repay him if he found her dad. But that was just plain wrong. Stupid. Macho. The kind of situation a smart law enforcement officer stayed away from.

  She snorted derisively. “Look who I’m talking to. Your family hates mine. I’m the one who was digging up the dirt that my dad used in editorials before the election. My dad was the one writing the editorials. I understand why you don’t want to help us.”

  “My decision not to help has nothing to do with disliking you or your dad. The department can’t investigate a case where someone isn’t really missing. This is America. Your dad left a note saying he was going and he has a right to travel wherever he wishes.”

  “Whatever.” She took a quick breath, then said, “Just go. Okay? I’m fine.”

  Jericho almost turned to leave, but couldn’t quite do it. Having dismissed him, Rayne bent her head to return to her work and couldn’t see him as he glanced at the empty chairs behind the desks and the pitch-black world beyond the big front windows. If the stack of papers piled to her right was any indication, Rayne would be burning the midnight oil tonight and every night. Alone in an empty office, in a downtown area that was deserted when the shops closed, knowing her dad had no clue that he could come home because she’d drained her own accounts to save him.

  He took a breath. He refused to feel sorry for her. She’d just as soon spit at him as look at him. And anything he felt for her was nothing more than imagination. A fantasy.