by Lynn Turner
Abbie’s mouth twisted in a rueful grimace. He was fretting about professional ethics.
‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I said I was a medical secretary. I had to lie,’ she added quickly, before Roger could start giving her a lecture. ‘He despises reporters almost as much as he despises women, and he’d never have agreed—’
Roger hastily cut her off! ‘Hold it! I don’t think you’d better tell me any more.’ He hesitated a moment, then murmured drily, ‘It sounds as if you’re going to end up with one hell of a story, kid. I’ll have a staff photographer waiting when you arrive. All you have to do is let me know the approximate time you’ll get here and which route into the city you’ll be using.’
A frown settled on Abbie’s forehead. ‘That might be a little difficult. Contacting you, I mean, without Garrett’s knowing.’ She considered the problem for a moment. ‘I guess I could tell him I need to call my landlord, or the doctor I’m supposed to start working for next week.’
‘Either story sounds good to me,’ Roger said with an enthusiasm she didn’t share. ‘Now that I think of it, it would be a good idea for you to contact me at regular intervals during the trip, too—keep me informed about how the race is going.’
Abbie’s spine stiffened in alarm. ‘I can’t agree to that,’ she protested. ‘I might be able to sneak in one or two phone calls, but Garrett would be sure to suspect something if I called Washington every time we stopped for fuel.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Roger conceded reluctantly. ‘But I’d still like to be brought up to date as often as possible. Use your own judgement. Call me whenever you think it’s safe. I’d better give you my home number, in case you have to call at night.’
Abbie jotted down his home telephone number in her notebook, beside the one for the Post. Then she told Roger that she really had to go, and rang off before any more questions or unreasonable requests could occur to him.
Fortunately the clerk at the front desk wasn’t busy, so it only took a couple of minutes to check out. Abbie then picked up her suitcase and hurried for the hotel bar. She paused in the doorway to scan the room for Deke.
When she spotted him, she almost dropped the suitcase. Deke was seated at a table approximately halfway across the room, engrossed in conversation with another man. From their relaxed posture and the way they both laughed at something Deke had just said, it was obvious that they knew each other well.
The man sitting with Deke was Sheriff Collier.
CHAPTER FOUR
DAMN!
For several interminable seconds Abbie stood frozen in indecision. Squaring her shoulders, she walked directly to the table. Both men looked up when she stopped and deposited her suitcase on the floor. Deke jumped to his feet with a welcoming smile. The sheriff also stood, but he wasn’t smiling. Abbie’s pulse skittered nervously.
‘Sorry I took so long,’ she said before either man could speak. ‘Sheriff Collier, what a pleasant surprise! I didn’t’ expect to see you again.’
Whatever the sheriff was thinking, he didn’t seem eager to blurt out any damning revelations about her. His green eyes met Abbie’s levelly as he touched the brim of his hat in greeting.
‘Evenin’, Miss Kincaid. Deke tells me you’re movin’ out to the Garrett place.’
Abbie wavered between panic and cautious optimism. She willed herself to hold the sheriffs steady gaze as she replied. ‘Yes, but only for tonight. Mr Garrett was kind enough to invite me.’
Deke’s snort of disbelief gave her an excuse to shift her attention to him. ‘Knowin’ Mal, I suspect it was more like an order than an invitation,’ he said drily. He slipped Sheriff Collier a sly wink as he added, ‘But I’ve got a feelin’ that ol’ Mal may be about to meet his Waterloo.’
Abbie glanced at the sheriff to see how he’d reacted to that last cryptic remark and caught him squelching a smile. Her tensed muscles went slack in relief. Evidently he found the situation amusing and thankfully he didn’t seem inclined to blow her cover.
Deke suddenly bent over to collect her suitcase. ‘Guess we’d better be goin’, Rafe,’ he said to the sheriff. But when she and Deke headed for the entrance to the bar, the sheriff tagged along.
‘I wish you luck on your trip, Miss Kincaid I suspect you’re going to need it.’
Before she could think of a reply that wouldn’t rouse Deke’s suspicion or pique his curiosity, Sheriff Collier’s long legs were carrying him across the pavement to where his brown and tan patrol car was parked.
When they arrived at the farmhouse, Mal was nowhere in sight. Deke led Abbie to a bedroom on the second floor, depositing her suitcase at the foot of an old-fashioned four-poster bed. He pointed out the adjoining bathroom, then said he thought he’d go down to the garage and see if he could lend a hand with any of the last-minute details.
‘If there’s anything else you need, just poke around ‘til you find it,’ he told her with a grin. ‘Mal won’t mind.’
Abbie seriously doubted that, but she merely smiled and thanked Deke for playing chauffeur, assuring him that she had everything she needed She waited until she heard the front door close behind him, then lifted her suitcase on to the bed and opened it to take out a fresh stenographer’s pad. The bedroom was located at the top of the stairs, so she left the door ajar while she jotted down a few notes. If Deke or Malachi Garrett returned to the house, she would hear the front door close and have time to stash the notebook back in her suitcase.
Abbie was a compulsive meticulous note-taker. She never completely trusted her memory of people, places or events. As a result, usually she had filled a couple of steno pads with line after line of neat script by the time she was ready to begin the actual writing process. Often her notes took the form of a personal journal, because she had discovered that her own impressions and observations were at least as important as the factual details when she began to put a story together.
When she finished recording everything that had happened that afternoon and evening, she skipped a couple of lines and printed the initials MG. Then she paused, absently tapping her pen against the notebook.
This was the point at which she usually made a list of one-or two-word descriptive tags—impressions she had formed of her subject. Abbie was surprised to discover that pinning labels on Malachi Garrett was no easy task.
The pen in her hand stopped tapping long enough for her to write the word ‘paradox’.
‘What else?’ she murmured aloud. ‘Come on, Abigail, think! What else about the man makes him special enough to write about?’
She wasn’t pleased with the first answer that occurred to her: his looks.
‘All right, yes,’ she muttered impatiently. ‘It’s true, he is a good-looking man.’ An incredibly sexy, good-looking man, a tiny voice inside her added. But what was there about this one that made him different… unique?
Well, for one thing, he didn’t seem to take the slightest interest in his personal appearance.
‘Eccentric’ joined ‘paradox’ under his initials.
Abbie frowned down at the notebook in disgust.
Purely on impulse, she added three more tags, all on the same line. The list beneath Malachi Garrett’s initials now read,
paradox
eccentric
handsome, sexy, MCP
Irritated at her own lack of professionalism, she started to scratch out those last three entries. The tip of her ballpoint was halfway through ‘handsome’ when the front door suddenly slammed shut. Abbie jumped guiltily. A second later she heard someone ascending the stairs.
She barely had time to stuff the notebook and pen under a pair of jeans before the handsome, sexy male chauvinist pig himself appeared in the bedroom doorway, looking even grubbier—and, she had to admit, sexier—than she remembered. He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb and gave her a long, level look. Abbie told herself it was foolish to imagine that those penetrating brown eyes could see right through the facade she’d created and into the se
cret corners of her mind.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked when the silence and the intent way he was staring at her began to make her uncomfortable. ‘Are you having some kind of trouble with the car?’
Mal shook his head slowly. His gaze didn’t waver from her face. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m just a little surprised.’
Abbie frowned in confusion. ‘Surprised?’
‘That you came back with Deke.’
She stared at him blankly for a moment. ‘You told me to,’ she pointed out. There was a hint of exasperation in her voice, so that the statement sounded almost like an accusation. ‘In fact, I’d go so far as to say you insisted.’
She could have sworn his lips twitched in the beginning of a smile. A second later she decided she’d only imagined it as she watched him straighten from the door. He stretched both arms over his head, then used his fingers to comb his hair back from his face. The hem of his sweatshirt rose a couple of inches, allowing Abbie a tantalising glimpse of taut brown flesh. The muscles in her lower abdomen contracted in reaction.
‘I guess I did, at that,’ he drawled. ‘I threw some meat and vegetables into a pot this morning. Hopefully they’ve turned into some kind of a stew by now. Give me a few minutes to clean up, and we’ll have supper.’
Not giving her a chance to respond, he abruptly turned and disappeared down the hall. Abbie sat staring at the empty doorway for several minutes, attempting without much success to make some sense of their brief conversation.
If Garrett had found out who she was and what she was up to, Abbie had no doubt whatsoever that she’d be on her way back to the hotel right now. Assuming she was still alive and fit to travel, of course.
Telling herself she was being paranoid, she collected the bag that held her toiletries and took it into the bathroom. What she yearned for was a long, relaxing soak in the tub, but that would have to wait. She suspected that, when Malachi Garrett said he’d only be a few minutes, that was precisely what he meant. She also suspected that he would possess little or no tolerance for any woman who kept him waiting while she primped and preened.
When every trace of make-up had been removed and she’d brushed her hair until it crackled with static electricity, Abbie slipped the blouse back on, then took a moment to give her reflection a critical onceover. Her shoulders slumped in dismay. She looked about sixteen years old. Eighteen, tops. Thinking that a little more cleavage might add a couple of years to her appearance, she opened the top two buttons of her blouse, then quickly reconsidered and poked them back through the buttonholes when she caught a provocative glimpse of peach lace.
She glared at her reflection.
‘Ready to eat?’
Abbie almost choked on a startled gasp, but the next instant she whirled around, an accusing frown drawing her delicate brows together over her nose.
‘Do you always sneak up behind people like that?’
The question started out sharp with annoyance, but by the time she got to the last two words her voice had faded almost to a whisper. She struggled to collect her scattered wits and regain her composure, which had fled the instant her gaze encountered the man lounging negligently in the doorway.
Fresh from the shower, his damp hair for the moment obediently hugging his perfectly shaped skull, the hard-boned beauty of Malachi Garrett’s face took her breath away. She could only stare, agonisingly aware that she was staring and mortified by the knowledge, but unable to tear her eyes away from him.
Abbie somehow managed to turn her back on those broad shoulders, lean hips and the strip of tautly muscled torso that beckoned to her through his unbuttoned shirt.
‘You could have knocked or something,’ she murmured, and was relieved that her voice sounded normal—steady and composed. ‘Given me some warning that you were there . You scared at least a year off my life.’
She was congratulating herself for having made such a rapid recovery from what must have been an episode of temporary insanity, when he suddenly stepped up close behind her, bending slightly to peer at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. His chest pressed lightly against her back, reminding her that he still hadn’t got around to buttoning his shirt. His warm breath caressed her cheek. Abbie froze, caught between panic and giddy exhilaration.
‘You don’t look like you’ve got a year to spare,’ he drawled close to her ear. ‘Are you OK? You look a little peaked.’
Peaked! An indignant shade of pink flared in Abbie’s cheeks, making a liar of him.
‘I’m not wearing any make-up, that’s all,’ she said stiffly.
‘Ah, so that’s it. You had me worried for a minute there.’ His tone was perfectly sober, but Abbie was watching the reflected image of his narrowed eyes, and she could have sworn she caught a glimmer of laughter there.
His attention remained focused on her reflection, his half-closed eyes subjecting her to a thorough inspection from behind those unbelievably thick lashes. His expression was solemn, slightly pensive, giving no clue about what he was thinking. Abbie endured his scrutiny in silence, her nerves stretched as tight as piano wire. Finally he straightened and took a step back.
‘I guess you wear all that war paint to make yourself look older,’ he drawled. Abbie knew she hadn’t imagined the note of censure in his voice. Before she could challenge it, or make any response at all, for that matter, he was halfway across the bedroom.
She managed to hold her tongue until she was halfway down the narrow staircase.
‘Be honest. If I’d come up to you in the bar looking like I do now, would you have even considered letting me drive the Shelby?’
Mal reached the bottom of the stairs just as she issued the challenge. He stopped and turned to face her. At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then a rueful grin slid across his mouth.
‘Prob’ly not,’ he admitted.
‘Because without make-up I don’t look old enough to drive a car, right?’
Pretending to give the question serious consideration, he took a minute or so to examine her from top to bottom, slowly and with evident enjoyment. His gaze lingered for several irritating seconds on the swell of her breasts. Abbie bit down hard on her indignation. By the time he lifted his eyes to hers again, she was wishing she had let the subject of how much make-up she should or shouldn’t wear die a natural death.
‘I guess that would depend on what part of you I was lookin’ at,’ he replied in a wickedly amused drawl. ‘From the neck up, you could pass for sixteen or seventeen. But from the neck down—’
‘We were talking about make-up,’ she reminded him through stiff lips. ‘Or war paint, as you so charmingly put it.’ She didn’t know what compelled her to pursue this ridiculous conversation. Unfortunately, the man seemed to have a knack for getting under her skin, arousing her fighting instincts.
‘It’s no big deal,’ he said carelessly. ‘I just think it’s stupid to cover up such a pretty face with all that goop. Besides, it makes you look cheap.’
Abbie’s jaw sagged in astonishment. Meanwhile, Malachi Garrett took advantage of her stunned silence to turn and walk away.
Abbie quickly recovered both her composure and the power of speech. ‘Cheap!’ she yelped as she clattered down the last two steps. ‘Is something wrong with my hearing, or did you just say I looked cheap?’
Mal’s long legs continued to carry him down a narrow hall and toward the back of the house, leaving her to scurry along in his wake. ‘That’s what I said.’
‘How dare you?’ she stormed at his back. ‘Of all the rude—’ Angered as much by his blasé attitude as by what he’d said, she reached out and grabbed a fistful of his shirt-tail, yanking him to an abrupt half. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you, dammit!’
Mal pivoted to face her. His rugged face wore an expression of such innocent surprise that Abbie knew it had to be fake. She felt like slapping him silly; except she had a nasty suspicion that if she did he just might slap her back.
‘What are y
ou so worked up about?’ he asked, still feigning surprise. ‘I didn’t mean for you to take it personally.’
‘You didn’t—! You don’t seriously think you can tell somebody she looks cheap, for God’s sake, and expect her not to take it personally! You meant it personally!’
He shook his head in denial. ‘No, I didn’t. I only meant that too much make-up makes any woman look cheap.’ Abbie searched his face for some sign that he was amusing himself at her expense. She had just about decided to give him the benefit of the doubt when he added in a bland tone, ‘Especially if she loads her eyelids down with three or four layers of purple gunk.’
Abbie sucked in a strangled breath. She felt hot colour surge up her neck and flood her face as she fought to hold on to her temper. It didn’t help that Mal had finally allowed his sensuous mouth to curve in a devilish, taunting grin.
‘You insufferable—’ she began through clenched teeth.
‘Ah-ah, no name-calling,’ he interrupted. ‘I was only getting back at you for saying I looked like a bum.’
Abbie glared at him. ‘You did look like a bum.’
His bushy brows rose eloquently, but he refrained from making the obvious and expected response. His gaze dropped to her hand, which was still clutching the tail of his shirt. Abbie snatched it back as if she’d suddenly discovered that her fingers were curled around a slug.
‘Y’know, it’s really your own fault,’ he drawled. Not waiting for a reply, he casually placed his hand at the small of her back and steered her through a doorway to their left.
Abbie swallowed nervously. She wasn’t at all sure how to deal with this new Malachi Garrett. In the space of two or three minutes he seemed to have turned into a completely different person. If the idea hadn’t been so preposterous, she might have suspected that he was flirting with her.
‘What’s my own fault?’ she asked warily.
‘That I get such a kick out of needling you. If it wasn’t so easy to make you pop your cork, I prob’ly wouldn’t be tempted to do it so often.’
