Chaos in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series)

by Jana DeLeon

  He looked around and nodded. “I would never admit it to my mother, but she did a great job.” He headed toward the kitchen. “I know I’m tired and starving, and figure you are too. I’m not exactly a chef, but I have a frozen pizza I can pop in the oven. You can take the shower first.”

  “My mouth just watered at ‘frozen pizza.’”

  “Always a sign that you’re working too hard.”

  He stepped into the kitchen and opened the freezer. Jadyn clutched the strap of her duffel bag and headed for the bathroom. The thought of standing under a hot stream of water was heavenly. Even her hunger couldn’t surpass her desire to shed the layers of mud and salt water that covered her from head to toe.

  The bathroom was done in a marine theme with white walls and navy accents, which looked both masculine and tasteful. Jadyn closed the door and turned on the shower. Colt’s mother had really good taste.

  I wonder if she will like me.

  The thought rocketed through her mind so unbidden that she froze in place. Where in the world had that come from? Colt had made some suggestive statements…a couple of advances that were never followed through. They’d never even been on a date. Certainly, they were nowhere near the meeting-the-mother part of things.

  She shed her clothes and stepped into the hot stream of water, still pondering her odd thought. Never had she considered herself a traditional sort of woman. She had nothing against marriage, and always assumed she’d get there someday, but she’d never had the desire to pursue it like her contemporaries. Her career had always been more important.

  That’s because you never met the right man.

  She leaned back and let the water cascade through her hair. Maybe it was that simple—she’d never met a man who made her think long-term. But why in the world would the thought enter her head now when she had nothing to base it on?

  Maybe because you’re naked in his shower.

  Okay, so there was that. Her current situation was far from normal, and being closed up in an intimate space in an isolated area had her on edge for more reasons than the attempted attack she’d narrowly escaped.

  Focus on the work.

  She sighed. How come her mind always went back around to logic? The last thing she needed right now was distraction, and Colt was the biggest distraction she’d ever known. Her focus should be on Clifton Vines and why someone tried to poison her. That was plenty to think about. She didn’t need to cloud things with thoughts of Colt and possibilities that might never be.

  She finished up her shower, slipped on shorts and a T-shirt, and pulled her long wet hair into a ponytail, then headed back to the kitchen. Colt was sitting at the breakfast table, typing on his laptop. He rose from the table as she entered the room.

  “The pizza has another ten minutes. There are sodas, water, and beer in the refrigerator. Take your pick.”

  He gave her a smile and headed off for the bathroom. Jadyn opened the refrigerator and stared at the selection. A cold beer was so tempting, but who wanted to stop at one, especially with pizza? Finally she settled on a diet soda, checked the pizza, then sat at the breakfast table.

  Colt’s laptop was still open and she stared at it for several seconds before pulling it over in front of her. Surely if he were working on something confidential, he wouldn’t have left it open. She found herself somewhat relieved when she saw that he’d been checking the weather for tomorrow.

  She accessed her own e-mail and cleared through the junk. The last one remaining was an e-mail from her mother. Her finger hovered over the touch pad, but she couldn’t bring herself to open it. Finally, she closed the e-mail page. With everything she had on her plate, she didn’t need aggravation, and contact with her mother was guaranteed to provide just that.

  On a new page, she opened a search for Taylor’s client. It wasn’t any of her business, but she found herself oddly fascinated by a woman who would carry a torch for a man for so long. Thousands of hits returned from her search and she started reading. When the timer went off on the stove, she jumped.

  Colt, who’d just walked back into the kitchen, gave her a look of concern. “You need to try to relax.”

  One look at him and her heart went fluttering all over again. His hair was still damp and hung in a slight wave. His athletic shorts and T-shirt were modest but revealed enough of his ripped body to make her momentarily speechless.

  Finally she recovered use of her mouth. “I am relaxing. I mean, I will. The buzzer just startled me is all. I was caught up in what I was reading.”

  Colt pulled the tray with the pizza on it out of the oven and grabbed a knife to cut it. “And what was so interesting that you attempted to burn our dinner?”

  “I was reading up on Taylor’s client.”

  “Any particular reason why?” He pulled two large slices of pizza onto plates and slid them onto the breakfast table.

  Jadyn shrugged as he took the seat next to her. “I guess I just wondered what kind of woman would still be looking for her missing husband almost three decades later.”

  “It’s definitely a level of dedication you don’t see often today. Did you find anything interesting?”

  “No. Just more detailed information of the things Taylor already told us. Sophia Lambert is a very wealthy woman who inherited the family empire and by all accounts, runs it with a firm grip. She’s clearly intelligent, has more money than Donald Trump, and recent pictures show her to be quite a beauty. I guess I wonder why she never remarried.”

  “Probably no man could handle her,” Colt joked.

  “True,” Jadyn said as she reached for the slice of pizza. Her mouth started to water as she lifted the slice to her lips. That first bite was pure heaven. A tomato sauce and melted cheese heaven.

  Colt frowned. “I would say maybe she’s protecting her money, but she was already set to inherit when she married Perkins. Who knows? Maybe she loved her husband so much she doesn’t want to replace him. Maybe no other man ever measured up to her standards—I’m betting they’re high.”

  She swallowed her bite and chugged some of her soda.

  “Maybe,” she said. “The only takeaway I got was that Taylor’s probably going to have her hands full dealing with her, especially if she decides to tell her about the Clifton Vines situation.”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to make that phone call. What about the water bottle situation? You have any breakthrough thoughts on that?”

  “Nothing that really stands out. If we assume I got on someone’s shit list while we were trying to identify Clifton Vines, then that limits the suspects to the shrimp house owners and workers that I spoke to. For now, I’m leaving out people we talked to together since no one came after you.”

  “That we know of. I’ll be checking the tabs on my water bottles pretty closely until we figure this out. But yeah, we should probably focus first on the places you visited alone. You mentioned before that something seemed off at one of them, right?”

  Jadyn sat her slice of pizza back on her plate. “I think I arrived in the middle of a disagreement between the owners. That could be all there was to it, but something didn’t feel right. And then there was the situation with the fish.” She described in detail what had happened at Vincent Brothers Shrimp House from the time she arrived and including helping with the scattered fish. She left out Helena’s part in it all.

  When she finished, Colt nodded. “Might be something. Might be nothing. But it’s as good a place to start as any. I’ll get Shirley and Eugenia started checking backgrounds on the owners and the two dockworkers.”

  “Do you think they could have had something to do with Clifton’s boat sinking?”

  “At this point, I’ve decided that anything’s possible.”

  “If someone deliberately sank Vines’s boat, that would be all the more reason for him to stay hidden in the swamp, assuming he’s still alive. But how long could he survive out there?”

  “Plenty of camps are empty most of the time. He could find shelter
and probably enough food to keep him going for a month or more if he moved around. Lots of people leave fishing tackle at their camps too. Worst case, he could fish after dark.”

  Jadyn nodded, remembering her and Colt’s impromptu stay at one of the camps during their last investigation. “Bottom line is he probably wouldn’t starve.”

  “No. If he’s not injured, he could survive quite well for a while.”

  “Do you think we should let the rest of the search party cover the bayou and we should start checking the camps in the area?”

  “It sounds like a plan.”

  Jadyn polished off her piece of pizza and leaned back in her chair.

  “You want another piece?” Colt asked.

  “Nah. That was practically a third of the pie.”

  He glanced at the remaining pizza. “I admit, I’m tempted, but I shouldn’t load up this late.”

  “I hear ya,” Jadyn said, although she didn’t think for a moment that the additional calories would hurt one perfect inch of Colt’s body. She rose from the table and put her plate in the dishwasher. When she turned around, Colt was right behind her. She took his plate and put it beside hers in the rack. When she straightened back up, she expected that he would have moved, but he was still standing there, not six inches from her.

  His gaze locked on hers and she felt a tingle run through her body. She knew that look. She’d seen it when they were trapped in a camp together, hiding from a shooter. And she knew the kiss that had followed—had thought about that kiss a million times since then.

  He was also hesitating, which she supposed made sense. Colt was a good guy and probably felt he would be taking advantage of the situation if he made a move. But Jadyn couldn’t help wishing he’d abandon logic and simply go with instinct. She had no way of knowing what the next day would bring, but right now she knew someone was out to get her.

  You can heal a broken heart, but you can’t heal regret.

  Before she could change her mind, she took a tiny step toward him. That step was all the invitation he needed. His hands clasped around her and he drew her in for the kiss. His lips brushing against hers set her heart beating so fast it felt as if someone were beating a drum in her chest.

  The kiss deepened and Jadyn pressed her body against Colt’s, running her hands across his body and leaving him no doubt what her intentions were.

  He paused for a second. “Are you sure?”

  “Right now, this is the only thing I’m sure about.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The security alarm’s sounding startled Colt out of a deep sleep and a great dream. In a split second his trained mind processed everything—the attempted attack on Jadyn, her staying at his cabin, the alarm blaring. In that split second his mind processed the situation, his body went on autopilot. He bolted out of bed and grabbed his pistol from the nightstand, then hurried to the security panel next to his bedroom door.

  By the time he reached the panel, Jadyn was already beside him and armed as well. If he hadn’t been so worried, it might have been amusing, both of them standing there naked except for their firearms.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “One of the cameras on the back of the house picked up motion.”

  “Could it be an animal?”

  “Only if it’s as tall as a human. The alarm only goes off if the motion is above five feet from the ground.” He grabbed his shorts and tennis shoes and pulled them both on before dashing to the back door.

  Jadyn was only seconds behind him and clothed when he peered out the back window and scanned the yard. The floodlights on the edges of the roof had automatically flipped on when the alarm sounded, giving him a good field of vision all the way to the tree line. Nothing moved. Nothing in the light, anyway.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said. “Most likely, he was scared away by the alarm. I’m going to see if I can find footprints.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No. If he’s positioned at the edge of the swamp, you’re an open target.”

  “So are you.”

  “But he’s not after me.”

  “That you know of.”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t up for discussion. I’m going outside and I need you inside covering me in case things go south. Go into the guest room and raise the window enough for you to get a good shot off if needed.”

  He slipped outside, pulling the door shut behind him before she could reply. Scanning the tree line, he listened for any sound that was out of place, but the noisy night creatures were all he heard. He hurried down the steps into the lawn and headed for the left side of the house, where the camera that had tripped the alarm was mounted. Starting close to the house, he scanned the soft ground for any sign of passage. With the recent rain and his lawn’s lack of good drainage, anything of size would leave an impression.

  About ten feet out from the corner of the house he spotted the footprints. They were large—a man’s prints—and made by rubber boots. The tracks led out of the swamp to the left and retreated back in the same direction. Automatically, Colt reached back for the small flashlight that was usually attached to his belt and cursed when his hand brushed against bare skin and the cotton waistband of his shorts.

  The foliage of the swamp was thick and the trees so close together that not a sliver of moonlight entered the area where the man had made passage. Without a good light, no way could he track him. Frustrated and more than a little concerned, he made his way back inside his house.

  Jadyn met him at the back door, her anxious expression a dead giveaway to how she felt. “Anything?” she asked.

  “Footprints leading out from and back into the swamp. The footprints leading into the swamp were farther apart than the ones leading into my yard.”

  “He was running when he left.”

  Colt nodded.

  “What is going on?” Jadyn asked. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  Colt’s heart broke a little at the tiny sliver of fear that made it through Jadyn’s words. A stalker was every woman’s worse nightmare, and this one was more brazen than most. He’d entered the hotel in broad daylight to poison her water. Now he’d approached a house belonging to a law enforcement officer.

  “Let’s check the camera footage. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  They hurried to the kitchen and Colt accessed the security footage from his laptop, rewinding to a couple of minutes before the alarm tripped. They both leaned forward in their seats, staring at the screen, and after thirty seconds or so, they saw him creeping out of the swamp where Colt found the footprints.

  He wore jeans, rubber boots, a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and a ball cap. Jadyn squinted, trying to catch a glimpse of something that might tell her who the man was.

  “Damn it!” Colt swore. “He’s got his hat pulled down so far that we can’t see his face.”

  He saw Jadyn’s hands clench as she watched the man inch closer to the house. Suddenly, the man froze.

  “That must be when the alarm went off,” she said as he whirled around and hurried back into the swamp.

  Colt reversed the footage and froze it in frame. “He doesn’t move like a young man.”

  “No, and his neck has thickened. He’s definitely older.”

  “What about height and weight? I’m thinking six foot, give or take an inch or two, and maybe two hundred pounds.”

  Jadyn studied the man and nodded. “That looks about right.”

  “Does it match the description of any of the shrimp house people you talked to?”

  “Yeah. All of them.”

  “Of course.” He sighed. “I’m going to send this footage to my office. Maybe a specialist can do more with it than us.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to try,” she said, but Colt could tell she was as disappointed with the lack of solid leads as he was.

  She rose from her chair and glanced at the kitchen clock. “It’s almost six. Might as well get dressed for work.”

 
Colt watched as she shuffled off down the hall. This wasn’t even close to his thoughts of how the morning would go. Last night, he’d thought it impossible to get enough of Jadyn, and he was right. Any doubt he’d had about her attraction to him and their potential together had flown completely out the window. Jadyn St. James was the most perfect woman he’d ever met, and he was going to do everything he could to make her part of his everyday life.

  Last night had been incredible and he’d never wanted it to end.

  Unfortunately, the mind was willing but the body was no longer sixteen. After hours of incredible lovemaking, they’d collapsed in each other’s arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so soundly.

  Until the alarm went off.

  He opened his e-mail and sent the file to the sheriff’s department. The man had made a bad mistake coming after Jadyn. And if it was the last thing Colt ever did, he would hunt him down and make him pay.

  ###

  Jadyn pulled on her clothes, then sat on the edge of the bed to pull on her work boots. Before she reached for a boot, she lifted the pillow to her nose and inhaled.

  It smelled like him—spicy and masculine.

  She put the pillow back on the bed and ran her hand over the rumpled sheets. If anyone had told her that making love to a man could be like what she and Colt had last night, she would have called them crazy. Now she was a believer. Her night with Colt had been mind-blowing, earth-shattering, and a whole bunch of other adjectives she couldn’t think of at the moment.

  You’re falling for him.

  Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. No. That couldn’t be. She barely knew him.

  She shook her head. That wasn’t really true. Granted, she hadn’t known Colt for very long, but she was pretty sure she knew what kind of man he was. What he stood for and believed in. Was that enough to fall for someone? That and a compatibility in bed that boggled the mind?

  She reached for her boots. This was not the time to get ahead of herself. They had to find Clifton Vines and figure out who was stalking her. Both of those were potentially life-threatening issues and besides that, it was their job to fix things. Colt wasn’t going anywhere. They had plenty of time to work out what was between them. There was no need to rush.