Mistaken Twin

by Jodie Bailey

  Tapping the wheel with two fingers, Wyatt looked at Jenna as though he was about to say something else. Finally, he turned away. “We’re supposed to... To shelter in place for a while, make sure there’s no second wave coming. Might as well eat.”

  Eat. She’d forgotten all about the burrito he’d brought, one more act of care and concern she couldn’t fit into the giant puzzle piecing together their new relationship. Every time she thought she had everything figured out and found her balance, he shifted a piece and reset the whole picture. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” Her stomach revolted at the thought of food, but from past experience she knew food was important, would bolster her for what came next.

  Not to mention, it would give them something to do while they waited, trapped together in what was rapidly turning into an underground prison.

  They both washed their hands at the small sink in the corner, then ate in silence. Jenna racked her brain for a conversation starter, but nothing she could think of fit the situation or the mood, which had twisted the air into knots around them. It was as though neither of them knew what to make of whatever had passed between them, but couldn’t figure out how to ignore it and move forward.

  An hour passed with Wyatt checking his phone, and making a few comments that fell like wet clay to the floor.

  Jenna picked every fleck of nail polish from one hand and was contemplating starting the other hand after another half hour passed. She glanced at the clay Christa kept wedged and ready. Maybe she could start another piece, but then Wyatt would watch and...

  No. They had to talk about what had happened, or they were destined for a worse relationship when this was over than the one they’d had before. She’d grown used to Wyatt over the past day. Had watched her illusions about his personality and his heart shatter. Returning to short barbs and cold nods would cut her too much to bear.

  Ignoring each other and dwelling in this awkwardness would be worse.

  “Wyatt?” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat as his head lifted. “Can we talk about—”

  Pounding on the heavy wood door brought them both to their feet, Wyatt slipping his pistol from the holster as he edged to the door, holding one finger to his lips then motioning Jenna to the side of the room.

  She couldn’t swallow. Her mind revolted. Enough was enough. She was tired of panic. Tired of fear. Tired of...everything.

  “It’s Thompson.” Arch’s voice bled through the door.

  Wyatt hesitated, then opened the door slowly, weapon at the ready as though he didn’t trust his own ears.

  Chief Thompson walked into the room wearing a totally incongruous grin. He looked at Wyatt, then at Jenna, who stood to the side, too numb to wonder at his expression. “I heard from Agent Nance. One of the men we apprehended tonight started talking in the back seat of the car before they could even interrogate him, spilling intel like his life depended on it.” His smile widened. “Long story short, it’s over. Jenna, you’re safe.”

  NINE

  Wyatt scrubbed eyes scratchy from yet another sleepless night. They’d all spent a restless night trying to sleep in various rooms at the station until the chief had released Jenna to return to work with Wyatt in tow. Although the chief viewed it as a mere precaution and that Jenna was likely safe, Wyatt didn’t believe the evidence. Not for one second. He’d heard the same before and it had proven false.

  Jenna wasn’t out of danger. It didn’t matter what the Feds said. It didn’t matter what their suspects said. This felt like déjà vu all over again, right to the uneasy dread in his gut, the warning that something bad was coming.

  Wyatt leaned a hip against the desk in Jenna’s office and stared out the two-way mirror into the storefront area. Four rows of four easels faced the side wall, where Liza demonstrated a painting of a stylized sunrise over a mountain. A group of seven men, women and children followed her every move with mixed results, though everyone seemed to be having fun.

  None of them paid any sort of special attention to Jenna, who maintained her spot at the coffee bar. She’d alternated the day between serving customers, cleaning and simply staring out the front window.

  Staring anywhere but in his direction, if he was telling the truth.

  She hadn’t said more than two sentences to him since he’d followed her into the shop early in the morning. “Stay in the office” and “don’t scare the customers” didn’t really qualify as conversation. It could be she was upset with him for talking Chief Thompson into extending his guard duty for a few more days. She hadn’t seemed to appreciate his presence, almost seemed to resent it, in fact.

  He couldn’t blame her. He’d overheard her on the phone with Erin in the small hours of the night. She wanted this to be over. Wyatt’s continued presence did nothing but reinforce the fact she might still have something to be afraid of.

  He couldn’t believe the federal team had backed off so quickly, taking their suspect at his word. It was foolish to trust a criminal. Even Chief Thompson had been a bit cagey this morning, refusing to meet Wyatt’s eye.

  There was a bigger issue at play, one nobody wanted to discuss, and Wyatt couldn’t figure out what it was. The men arrested at Christa’s had confessed to coming after Jenna, but they claimed they were lone wolves out to get revenge on Amy for taking down Grant Meyer.

  Their confession didn’t feel right. The whole thing was too easy and the entire situation made his head hurt. He’d have to talk with the chief later, try to find out what was really happening behind the scenes. It would have to be at a time when Jenna was safely somewhere out of earshot, though. Getting her worked up again wasn’t something he wanted to do. The woman needed peace badly. Seemed she also needed time away from him, which she wasn’t getting until he knew for certain this had all blown over and she was truly safe.

  There was one other reason Jenna might be avoiding him, one he wished he could avoid himself. Wyatt pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes, wishing there was a way to kick himself hard enough to knock some sense into his own head.

  He’d almost kissed her last night, and the moment hadn’t left him alone since. He’d lain awake on the couch in Chief Thompson’s office, undeniably aware she was down the hall in the break room, wishing he could stand, march in there and tell her how she’d wrecked him.

  But he could never confess any of those things.

  Because she couldn’t wreck him.

  Not only were every one of his thoughts dangerous and unprofessional, but they were also downright stupid in light of his knotted feelings for the woman who stood a thin wall and a couple dozen feet away from him, but who might as well have taken up residence on Jupiter.

  He’d completely lost his mind last night. The things she’d shared with him. The way she’d looked so terrified and vulnerable when the warning came to tell them she’d been found.

  The way she’d looked at him with complete trust, total faith, and something entirely too gooey and warm. He’d practically dragged her into his arms, relieved she was safe, half-scared she wasn’t.

  No woman had ever looked at him the way Jenna had in Christa Naylor’s old fallout shelter, standing there with her hands at his waist. He could still feel them, couldn’t seem to scratch away the sensation. Her touch had felt...normal. Right. As though she’d rested her hands right there a thousand times before and would do so a thousand times again.

  Her look. It had made him feel...things. Warm fuzzy things, where his heart used to be. Wyatt shuddered and scrubbed the top of his head. Not even Kari had made him feel so completely like a superhero, as though he could do anything, could scale a rock face without a rope, could stand up to a hundred armed men with nothing but a pocketknife.

  Brother. He sounded like one of those TV romance movies Erin had on half of the time.

  And romance this was not.

  The mere thought of Kari froze his emotions into cold mountai
n river rocks. She’d lied to him and he’d bought it. She’d been using him, and it had almost cost him everything.

  Lies. Jenna had been living lies for three years. Even now, with all she’d told him, there were pieces of herself she was holding back. He could never trust she’d confessed everything. In the back of his mind he would know she was accomplished at being someone different than she was. He’d always wonder if she was telling the truth, if he could trust her words.

  He could definitely never trust she wouldn’t lie to him the same way Kari had. He’d missed the signs then, so it was completely conceivable he could miss them all again.

  Motion on the other side of the window put the screeching brakes on an oncoming pity train. Members of the class were gathering their canvases, chatting with one another and with Liza, or grabbing a final coffee creation from Jenna.

  Once again, he’d let his emotions take over his mind and he’d missed everything happening in the main room. Further proof he needed to keep his thoughts in line.

  Wyatt glanced at his watch. It was almost closing time, later than he’d thought. With more bluegrass concerts tonight at the Fine Arts Center, the activity in town would crank into high gear soon. He’d like to get Jenna to her apartment before the streets crowded with even more tourists.

  When the shop cleared out, Liza started collecting brushes from the middle row of easels, but Jenna stopped her at the end of the row and took the brushes from her hand. Their voices were a low murmur drifting along the short hallway, but he couldn’t make out any words. After a short conversation that involved Jenna gesturing toward the door quite a bit, Liza hugged her then practically skipped out, Jenna locking the door behind her.

  Wyatt checked the time on his phone. A few minutes before six. She’d probably sent Liza home to get ready for a date with—

  “We need to talk.” Jenna’s voice from the doorway came out of nowhere, jerking his head around so fast it pained his neck.

  Uh-oh. Wyatt straightened. How had she managed to sneak up on him? And why did her voice send his heartbeat to the same jolt he’d felt standing with her in Christa’s bomb shelter twenty-four hours earlier? He had to check himself, to gain full control before he could turn to look at her.

  Jenna stood in the office doorway, one hand hanging at her side, one fiddling with the simple silver flower pendant she wore at her throat. Her jaw was set, as though whatever she had to say, she was determined to say it. Likely, she was finding her footing after the whiplash of the past few days and was about to lay into him for being here, shadowing her when the chief had assured her they had the all clear.

  Except she didn’t look very bold. She looked...lost. Uncertain.

  Every rational thought he’d been thinking, every reason he should keep his professional mask on and pretend he didn’t notice her, evaporated. He was in trouble.

  Wyatt pocketed his phone, then shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching for her. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “Okay. We can talk. What’s going on?” Every man in the world knew “we need to talk” could lead to trouble, but here he went, stepping right into it.

  With a nod, Jenna dropped her hand to her side and stiffened as though she was steeling herself for whatever she had to say. Her auburn hair slipped across her shoulder to her back, leaving a clear view of the tight determination in her jaw. “It’s about what happened at Christa’s.”

  His mind raced to the exact spot he’d been fighting to keep it away from all day—the moment when something bigger had clicked between them, when she’d changed everything about him.

  But it was impossible she was here to discuss those few short moments. There was no way she’d been obsessing about those brief flickers all day the way he had. Not after the way she’d backed off and acted supremely uncomfortable in his presence afterward. Not after the way she’d ignored him since they’d walked into the building this morning. “If this is about how those men found you, we’re working on finding out—”

  “No.” Jenna stayed in the doorway.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Wyatt faced her head-on as he leaned against the edge of her desk. Though she hadn’t stepped into the room, the small square footage in the office meant she was only a few feet away, close enough to hear her breathing.

  Close enough to reach out and tug her to him.

  Seriously. This heart thing was getting out of control. He needed to focus. Now. “Okay, what’s bothering you about it?”

  She studied him for a long time, then she dropped her gaze to the ground somewhere around his feet, the determined look she’d worn seconds before slipping into some kind of sadness he couldn’t quite read. “Nothing. I’ve got... It’s nothing.” She waved a hand as though dismissing him, then backed into the hallway and turned toward the front room. “I have to... I have to clean the shop so we can close for the day. You have to go home tonight. Get some real sleep. Accept all of this is over.”

  The way she said it, the drop in her voice, the slope of her shoulders... She wasn’t talking about the threat to her life. She was talking about them and the tenuous friendship that had replaced their typical growling. The closeness they’d formed out of necessity.

  She wasn’t relieving him of duty. She was kicking his friendship to the curb.

  “No.” Okay, now his mouth was out of control, too. But when she froze in place, one eyebrow raised in question, Wyatt knew he wouldn’t take back the word for anything.

  He refused to return to hostility or even to indifference. It wasn’t in his nature to be at odds with anyone, and he’d been at odds with Jenna for too long. Now that he’d been allowed to see beneath the surface, to understand even the smallest bit of who she was... Now that she’d trusted him with her real identity... He couldn’t do it. He could never look at her with the same nonchalance he had in the past. It was impossible. “No. This isn’t over.”

  “Wyatt, they caught the guys. They confessed. They’re at whatever interrogation room they’re at singing like canaries or whatever it is you law people say.”

  The laugh he swallowed almost choked him. “Not that. We honestly never say that.”

  “Well...” His amusement clearly irritated her. “Either way—”

  “You can stop with the act. You know I’m not talking about the danger to your life.” Even though he didn’t believe she was safe now, either.

  Her expression shifted, the tight lines around her mouth and above her eyes softening. “It has to be over. It can’t be anything else. It can’t be anything...more.”

  Wyatt rose from the edge of her desk. So her head really had been in the same place as his all day.

  The wrong place.

  Or was it the exact right place?

  Emotion overran reason. He needed her. Needed the way she made him feel twenty feet tall, like the hero of her story. Even more, he needed to be the hero of her story. Her whole life, no one had protected her, everyone had walked out on her.

  He refused to be another in a long line to abandon her. He wanted to be the one who stayed, who shielded her from any person who ever dared try to hurt her again.

  Before she could tuck into herself and run, Wyatt reached out. He stopped short of touching her, though. She’d ignore him or, worse, turn away. Instead, he extended his hand, palm up.

  An invitation.

  TEN

  Jenna stared at Wyatt’s outstretched hand. He didn’t move. Didn’t waver. Simply waited...for her.

  She froze.

  This was her office. Her shop. Her normal, everyday, unimportant life...until a couple of days ago, at least.

  But here was Wyatt in the midst of it. Not normal, everyday, or unimportant. And this wasn’t an invitation to take his hand.

  It was an invitation to change everything.

  He couldn’t possibly mean it, not in the way her heart wanted him to. He didn’t
know who she really was. Didn’t know the thoughts running through her head. Didn’t know she had nothing to offer him.

  He was incredible, wonderful, perfect. She was a wreck in every possible way.

  Still, everything in her cried out for him. It would feel good to be loved, to be needed, to share everyday life with Wyatt Stephens.

  She lifted her hand and inhaled deeply, the breath catching in her throat as a familiar odor wafted in.

  Gasoline.

  “Wyatt...”

  His hand fell to his side as his expression shifted from soft and questioning to firm and determined, the same look he’d worn each time he’d put himself between her and danger. He grabbed her arm, shifting her behind him as he reached for his cell phone. “Probably nothing, but I’m going to—”

  Glass shattered at the front of the building. A light flashed, then grew steadily brighter in the shop.

  Jenna whipped toward the light. Flames spread rapidly along the center of the room, hungrily licking the tile floor, feeding off the breeze from the broken front window. Voices from outside shouted and yelled, becoming muted as the sound of fire grew louder.

  Wyatt shoved his phone into his pocket and reached for her hand. “We have to get out of here. Now.” He dragged her out of the office and along the short hallway to the back door, but when he looked up, he halted. Expression grim, he placed his palm on the door, then jerked it away.

  Jenna followed his gaze to the small screen in the corner above the door. The monitor painted a horrifying picture of the steps, one filled with thick smoke and angry flames.

  There was nowhere to run. With solid brick walls on one side of the building and two layers of brick between her shop and the gallery next door, they were trapped.

  He flipped the dead bolt to unlock the door, then tugged her hand and led her to the front of the shop. Although the fire ran along the floor toward the center of the room, space remained to squeeze by along the wall. Barely. They’d have to move fast.

  Jenna tried to blast past Wyatt, but he tightened his grip on her hand, raising his voice to be heard over the increasing pop and roar of the fire. “The door.”