And besides, I didn’t really want to stay in the house by myself. It was just a month since someone had broken in and tried to kill me. I had handled it, and survived—one of the burglars hadn’t been so lucky—but I wasn’t looking for a repeat. I’d much rather be somewhere where there were other people.
“Where are you going to be?” I asked.
“The duplex.”
I should have guessed. The duplex was located in South Nashville, about halfway between the airport and Antioch, and it was where Rafe had stayed whenever he’d blown through town during the ten years he’d spent undercover. A rinky-dink house in a neighborhood where nobody paid much attention to what the neighbors were doing was just what he needed for the job at hand.
“I could stay with you,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not a chance. I don’t expect anything to go wrong, but if it does, I want you outta here, and safe.”
I turned on my side and wrapped my arms around him. “You better make sure nothing goes wrong. I want you safe, too. If you get yourself killed, I’ll never forgive you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rafe said, and kissed me.
And one thing led to another one more time.
Usually, he just leaves me asleep when he goes off to work in the morning. Growing a baby is hard work, and I’m pretty much always tired. After all the emotional turmoil, not to mention the exercise last night, the next morning was no exception. However, he came into the bedroom just before he headed out.
“Darlin’.”
“Mmmm?”
“I’m going.”
Going. Right.
And then I remembered, and forced my gluey eyelids open. “Wait.”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, in the same oversized shirt and saggy pants he’d worn yesterday, with hair straggling halfway down his back.
“Going,” I said.
He nodded. “Won’t be back tonight. Jamal’s gonna introduce me to some people. And tomorrow’s the big night.”
“When one gang is planning to kill a bunch of members of another.”
“I was thinking, when we make a clean sweep and slap’em all in jail,” Rafe said, “but your way works, too.”
“I like yours better.” There was no killing in it.
I scooted up a little higher on the pillows. The blanket slipped, and he smiled appreciatively as I hiked it back up to cover my breasts. “Don’t get used to them,” I warned him, my cheeks still hot after all this time together. “They’ll go away after the baby’s born. And what’s left will probably be saggy.”
“Don’t mean I can’t enjoy them now,” Rafe said, which I guess was true.
However, instead of making any attempt to enjoy them, he got to his feet. “I just wanted to let you know I was heading out.”
“I appreciate it,” I said. “I’ll get ready and go, too. And make it to Sweetwater by dinnertime.”
His brows drew together. “Why not by lunchtime?”
“Things are going on at the office today. Tim signed us up for this lead generation software, and someone’s coming to do a workshop on it after lunch. It’ll cost me a couple hundred dollars a month, but I’m hoping I’ll actually get some business from it.”
Even if I got just one sale a month, or for that matter every couple of months, it would pay for itself.
I’d had my real estate license a little over a year, and in that time, hadn’t exactly set the world on fire. Granted, other things had happened to steal my focus—like Rafe and a long line of dead bodies—but I hadn’t had the success I’d been hoping for in my new profession. It’s hard to find clients, and harder when you’re a well brought-up Southern Belle who has been taught not to put herself forward. I was hoping that this new software would generate some leads I could work, that would hopefully turn into buyers and sellers, and eventually, commissions.
“You know,” Rafe told me, “you don’t have to work. I make enough to take care of you.”
We were living rent-free in his grandmother’s house, and while we had some expenses—like Mrs. Jenkins’s care at the home where she lived—we were both used to living cheap. Rafe because he’d grown up that way, and me because I’d had to learn after Bradley dumped me.
“I know,” I said. “But I like real estate. I just wish I was better at selling it.”
“You’re fine at selling it. Your clients love you.”
All four of them.
“Anyway,” I said, “I have to wait until the workshop is over to drive back to Sweetwater. So I won’t get there until early evening. Can I call you tonight? Just to see how things are going?” And hear his voice.
He hesitated. “Prob’ly better if you wait ‘till I call you.”
“Will you?”
He hesitated again. “Might be late.”
“I don’t mind. Although I might not answer.” Since I fall asleep early and sleep deeply.
He shook his head. “If I gotta call, you gotta answer.”
“Fine.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I’ll keep the phone turned on, and next to my bed. Hopefully I’ll wake up.”
“How about I just call you in the morning instead?”
I thought about it. “That would work.” If I was asleep, I wouldn’t be worrying, anyway. “Just don’t forget.”
He promised he wouldn’t, kissed me goodbye, and left. I went back to sleep.
Three
By the time I woke up again, it was later. A lot later. Rafe was long gone. I rolled out of bed slowly and took my time getting ready. I had a shower and a nice, healthy breakfast of raisin bran and milk, I threw in a load of laundry, and repacked my bag for another couple of nights away. That done, I got on the phone with my mother.
“I’m driving back to Sweetwater tonight.”
There was a beat. “Oh, dear,” Mother said.
“I’m sorry. Do you have a full house?” I hadn’t realized that she might. All the people at the party yesterday had been local, save for Rafe and myself. Nobody should have needed to stay over; they all lived within a few miles. And my childhood home is a five thousand square foot antebellum mansion with rather a lot of bedrooms. You’d think she’d be able to find a spot for me somewhere. Even if it was in the old, restored slave cabin on the grounds.
On second thought—since the cabin was authentic and didn’t have air conditioning, and the temperature was in the nineties—maybe not there. “I can stay with Dix, I guess. Or Catherine. Or Aunt Regina.”
“Of course not, darling,” Mother said. “You’ll stay here, of course. There’s no one else here.”
Then why hadn’t she wanted to put me up?
Or—my nose wrinkled involuntarily—maybe she’d been planning to get it on with the sheriff tonight. In the parlor.
She sighed. “I’m so sorry you and Rafael weren’t able to work thing out.”
What? “Of course we were able to work things out.”
“Then why are you coming back to Sweetwater?” Mother demanded. “Why aren’t you staying in Nashville with your husband?”
“Because Rafe’s going undercover,” I said. Surely that had been obvious? I’d even said so, hadn’t I? “And he wants me out of the way so he can concentrate on his job.”
“Oh.” Mother sounded relieved. Never thought I’d see the day.
“It won’t be for more than a day or two. The big night’s tomorrow, so I’ll probably be able to go home on Saturday.”
“You can stay as long as you want, darling,” Mother said.
“Do you have plans tonight? With the sheriff?”
She didn’t. Bob was on duty, since he’d taken yesterday off for Mother’s birthday. “We’ll have dinner together,” she told me. “There’s a lot of food left. You can help me by eating some of it.”
For the first time in my life, Mother wasn’t on me to eat like a bird. If I could, I’d stay pregnant for the next ten years. It was the only way I didn’t feel guilty about eating what I wanted when
I wanted it. I even had chocolate ice cream at eleven o’clock at night—when I managed to stay up that late—and I didn’t feel any guilt at all.
Hardly.
I promised I’d help her with the leftovers, and we hung up. And since I still had plenty of time before I had to be at the office, I called the Martin and McCall office on the square in Sweetwater next.
Martin and McCall is the family law firm. The Martin half is my brother, Dixon Calvert Martin, and our father and grandfather before him. The McCall half is my brother-in-law Jonathan, and for that matter my sister Catherine, who has a law degree even if she doesn’t use it much anymore. They have three kids, Robert, Annie, and Cole, and Catherine stays home with them. Robert’s in school, but she ferries the others to Mother’s Day Out a couple of days a week so she can get some peace and quiet for a couple of hours, and since Sheila died last November, Catherine also pitches in with Abigail and Hannah, Dix’s daughters. They and Annie have always been close, anyway. I’m sure, when they’re all in school, she’ll go back to work at least part time, but for now, she’s enjoying being a mother.
I was becoming a mother soon, too. And I really did appreciate Rafe’s offer to support me, so I didn’t have to work.
Not that I was working all that hard. Or not that the work I was doing resulted in much money, more accurately. And not that he was making a ton of money, either, for that matter. Sure, he could support me. We lived cheap. But law enforcement is notoriously badly paid. It isn’t a profession you go into for the monetary reward.
As I’d told him, I do like real estate, though. I like the houses. The run-down, decrepit ones, with so much potential, the renovated ones, and the ones people live in. It’s fun to see how other people live. As a girl, I’d adored poking through my friends’ houses when I came to visit.
What I don’t like, is the business end of real estate. Having to rustle up clients. Convincing them to let me help them. It felt pushy. Wrong.
Maybe I should take Rafe up on the offer of support, and spend my time writing that steamy romance novel I’d been threatening to work on. The one where he inspired the tall, dark, and dangerous hero. I could work on it during the few moments a day when I wouldn’t be sleeping or feeding and changing the baby.
“Good morning,” a voice said on the other end of the line, and brought me back to myself. “Martin and McCall law office. How may I help you?”
“Darcy,” I said. “It’s Savannah.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised, and it took her a second. “Who are you calling for? Your brother or Jonathan?”
“Actually, neither.” Although Dix, at least, would probably be worried—or curious—about what had happened yesterday. Before I hung up, I should probably touch base with him. However— “I was calling to talk to you.”
“Oh,” Darcy said.
“I’m driving back to Sweetwater tonight. I thought maybe you’d want to have lunch tomorrow. And talk about whatever it was you wanted to talk about.”
She blinked. I didn’t see her, but I knew she did. Then— “That would work, I guess. Although I don’t want to take you away from anything you’re doing with your family.”
“I’m killing time,” I told her. “Rafe’s getting involved in Jamal’s gang war, and he doesn’t want me around for it. So he’s sending me back down to Sweetwater for a few days, until it’s safe to come home. I’ll just be sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing. I’d love to have lunch.” And hear whatever it was she thought she wanted from me.
“If you’re sure...”
“I’m positive. Where do you want to meet?”
I waited for her to suggest the Café on the Square—very convenient, just down the row from the law office, and with excellent salads and rolls—or the Wayside Inn, or even Beulah’s Meat’n Three, up the Columbia Highway, but she didn’t. “How about the Cracker Barrel at the interstate?”
“Oh,” I said. “Um... sure.”
Nothing wrong with that. The only reason I was surprised, was because it seemed like a long way to go when there were plenty of places closer by, and with more exciting—or at least more authentic—food. “Would you like me to come pick you up?”
“I’ll meet you there.”
OK, then. Was it my imagination—well-honed, I admit—or did it seem like maybe she was trying to sneak off somewhere where not so many people were likely to recognize us?
But if that was the case, why? It wasn’t like we were doing anything wrong. Unless she thought it was weird to be having lunch with her boss’s sister, or something. But if so, why suggest it in the first place?
Naturally I didn’t say any of that. We settled on a time, and I told her I’d meet her at the Cracker Barrel, and that was that. I hung up and prepared to head to the office, but I admit I kept wondering what it was she wanted to talk about, and why she might want privacy to do it.
Every licensed real estate agent has to be affiliated with a real estate brokerage. We can’t just hang out our own shingles and go to work. My affiliation is with a company called LB&A—Lamont, Briggs and Associates. Walker Lamont founded the company—it was called Walker Lamont Realty back then—but he’s in prison now. Timothy Briggs is the replacement broker, and the one who suggested the name change. Partly to get his own moniker into the mix, I’m sure, but also partly to mitigate some of the fallout of having a business named after a man who murdered a couple of his employees and tried to murder a few more.
Walker hired me, and he and I always got along well, right up until the moment he tried to kill me. Tim and I have never really gotten along, and I’m not quite sure why. He’s nice enough to me when he has to be—polite with a side of snide—but I can tell he doesn’t like me. Or at least he likes to tweak me a lot.
Today was no different. I walked through the door into the conference room, and Tim looked up from his iPad to give me a bright and malicious smile. “Savannah. Glad you could join us.”
I was early, as a matter of fact. It was more than ten minutes until the meeting started. But of course it was into the afternoon by now, and the first time I’d set foot in the office so far today, so maybe he was commenting on that.
Then again, there are days when Tim doesn’t show up at all—times when he spends the entire day away from the office showing properties to people—so it wasn’t like he had a lot of room to talk.
I thought about a few retorts I could make, none of them particularly clever, and before I could make my mind up, he added, “Hard to get out of bed this morning?”
I’m pregnant, so yes, it’s pretty much always hard to get out of bed. Both because I’m always tired, and because I’ve got this basketball attached to my stomach that didn’t used to be there, so literally hauling my bulk out of bed is difficult.
That’s not what he meant, though. Tim developed a raging crush on Rafe almost as soon as he saw him a year ago, and he never lets an opportunity go by to refer, in some way, to my husband’s charms.
“I hope Rafael is treating your right,” he added, right on cue. What his expression said, was that he wished Rafael was treating him right. Like Mother, Tim also prefers to call Rafe by his full name, and the way he wraps his tongue around it is almost indecent.
“He’s treating me just fine,” I said, quellingly. The conversation was starting to make me uncomfortable, since—in spite of it being ten minutes until the workshop started—the room was full, and the instructor was among the people present. So was Tim’s assistant Heidi, who smirked at me from the other side of the table. She doesn’t like me either, and the feeling’s mostly mutual. The instructor was busy setting up for the class, but I could see her ears vibrate.
There was an empty chair at the far end of the table, and I went for it, hoping that would end the conversation.
Of course it didn’t.
“You should bring him by,” Tim said, “and show him off.”
“No, thank you.” Not the way he looked now. And anyway, it was disconcerting to watc
h my boss almost visibly drool over my husband. Not to mention my husband getting a kick out of it.
Although, if I presented Rafe the way he looked now, maybe Tim would stop drooling. I imagined he wasn’t any fonder of dreadlocks and gold teeth than I was.
Then again, it was Rafe. It would take more than saggy pants and gold veneers to kill his appeal.
The workshop started right on time, and Tim kept his mouth shut, at least about Rafe. I soaked up as much information as I could about how to turn this lead generation opportunity into money in the bank for yours truly. It sounded good, at least on the surface. The leads would come in, they would get distributed among the agents who had signed up for the software (the dozen or so of us ranged around the table), and it would be our job to work the leads, meaning that we would have to build relationships with the people behind the email addresses or phone numbers, and then turn them from looky-loos to buyers. I imagined a lot would depend on my ability to be friendly and ingratiating, and to stay on top of staying in touch with them.
The class ended promptly at five. While the others gathered around the instructor to ask questions and express their thanks, I hightailed it out the door before Tim could waylay me with more insidious comments about Rafe. I would be sleeping alone for the next couple of nights, and I didn’t need any reminders of just how hot my husband was. I wouldn’t be getting any. The pregnancy hormones would have to wait.
By five-fifteen I was on my way out of town at a snail’s pace. Rush hour had started—more than an hour ago, actually; we become more and more like Los Angeles every day—and the highways were clogged with commuter lemmings going home to the suburbs for dinner. They started peeling off as we made our way south, and by the time we passed Franklin, there were only a few of us left. I got off at the Columbia exit and made my way south and west, toward Sweetwater.
I reached the mansion before six-thirty, but not by much. Rush hour adds another thirty minutes to the drive, easily. Mother had dinner on the table—leftovers from yesterday—and we sat at the kitchen island and munched our way through the spread. By which I mean that I munched my way through, while Mother graced. She looks damned good for fifty-nine, and is a lot more slender than I am, at least at the moment.
Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12) Page 3
