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“Please tell me this cabin has electricity,” she said as she leaned forward to get the benefit of the warmth blowing from the heater vents.
Benjamin smiled. “Electricity, running water and cable television,” he replied. The smile faltered somewhat. “There’s something else you need to know. Jacob is staying at the cabin.”
Shock waves shot through her. “Jacob? But, I thought he was in Kansas City working for the FBI.” As far as Layla was concerned Jacob had always been the hottest of the Grayson men. She’d had a major crush on him before he’d left town to become an FBI agent.
“He was, but he’s been back for about six months and staying in the cabin.”
“Did he get hurt or something?”
“Or something,” Benjamin replied. “He hasn’t told any of us what brought him back, but he’s not the same man he was when he left Black Rock. Anyway, I just thought I should let you know that you’ll be sharing the space with him.”
Layla leaned back and digested this new information. At least she’d have some company and it didn’t hurt that her company was a man who had always intrigued her. “I’m sure we’ll get along just fine,” she said. It also didn’t hurt that her protective custody involved an FBI agent.
“Good luck with that,” Benjamin muttered under his breath as he turned into the entrance of his ranch.
They drove past the ranch house and across the pasture. “How’s Edie?” she asked.
A smile flashed across Benjamin’s face. “Terrific.”
Edie Burnett had come to town to check on the well-being of her grandfather, Walt Tolliver. She and Benjamin had fallen hard for each other and Edie had moved in with him.
A fist of loneliness slammed Layla in the stomach. It wasn’t an unfamiliar punch. Sometimes she thought that she’d been born lonely and that she’d never find somebody who might help ease that affliction.
It certainly wasn’t from lack of trying. She felt as if she’d dated every eligible bachelor in Black Rock between the age of twenty-one and forty.
She shook her head, wondering if she was losing her mind. Somebody had just tried to kidnap or kill her and she was thinking about her love life. Because that’s not scary to think about, she told herself, because that didn’t fill her soul with terror.
They drove over a rise and in the beams of the headlights in the distance she saw the small cabin nearly hidden by evergreen trees crowding in on every side.
A faint light glowed at the front window, but it didn’t add any sense of real welcome to the isolated place. The front porch was bare and the exterior paint was starting to show signs of age.
“You’ll be safe here. Few people even know this cabin exists,” Benjamin said as he parked the truck in front of the small structure and turned off the engine.
Layla got out of the truck, a bit unsteady on the uneven ground in the red high heels she’d put on at her house. With her tight jeans and in a new red sweater she felt ready to face whatever life threw at her.
Benjamin grabbed her oversize suitcase from the back of his truck and together they walked up the stairs to the small porch and the front door.
Benjamin knocked and a deep voice replied. He opened the door and Layla stepped inside. Her first impression was that the place was downright cozy with a fire crackling merrily in the stone fireplace and a thick throw rug covering an expanse of the gleaming hardwood floor.
“What in the hell is she doing here?” The deep voice came from a recliner and a stunned surprise fluttered through her as she got her first glimpse of Jacob Grayson.
His dark hair hung almost to his shoulders and his jaw was covered with a thick growth of whiskers. She could tell from the hollows in his cheeks that he’d lost weight, but his shoulders were still broad beneath the navy sweater he wore and his jeans hugged the length of his long legs.
It was his eyes that made her breath catch in her throat. Dark as night and filled with the shadows of hell, they bore into her with intensity. He looked at her, her suitcase and then at Benjamin. “What the hell is going on here?”
A bubble of laughter unintentionally escaped her. “I guess you didn’t get the memo,” she said. “I’m your new roomie.”
Chapter 2
Jacob recognized her immediately even though the last time he’d seen her Layla West had been about nineteen years old. Even back then she’d liked her jeans tight and her heels high and it looked as if nothing had changed. She’d be about twenty-eight now, definitely not a kid anymore.
There was some small part of his brain that processed the scent of her sexy perfume in the air, part of him that was drawn to the shine of her long blond hair, but the bigger part of his brain stared at Benjamin through angry narrowed eyes.
It would be just like his well-meaning brothers to set up something like this in an effort to pull him from his self-imposed isolation. Nothing like a hot, sexy woman to pull a man back into life. Yeah, right, he thought bitterly.
“Is this some kind of a joke because if it is I’m not laughing.” What he wanted to do was shove both Benjamin and the lovely Layla West right back out the door. Instead he got out of the chair and approached where Benjamin stood.
“Of course you’re not laughing,” Benjamin replied tightly. “That might make you human.” He dropped Layla’s suitcase on the floor and looked at her. “Layla, would you excuse us for a minute?”
He grabbed Jacob’s arm and pulled him toward the door. The two men stepped out on the porch and into the cold night air. “This is not a joke,” Benjamin said, a touch of uncharacteristic anger in his voice. “This isn’t about you and any issues you might have, Jacob. We’ve all pretty much left you alone out here for the last six months. We’ve asked damn little of you and hoped to hell you’d pull yourself together.”
The cold December wind sliced through Jacob’s sweater almost as effectively as the disgust in his younger brother’s voice. He jammed his hands into his pockets and waited for Benjamin to finish whatever it was he wanted to say.
“Layla was attacked this evening when she got into her car after work. She managed to get away but she didn’t see who was responsible. We need to stash her someplace where nobody will know where she is for a day or two while we figure out what’s going on.”
“Why don’t you put her at your place? You could hide her there. Edie doesn’t strike me as the loose-lipped kind of woman.” Edie and Benjamin lived at the ranch house up the lane.
“Edie isn’t, but you know Walt. He means well but he has never met a secret he could keep.” Benjamin jammed his hands into his coat pockets.
Jacob sighed, knowing his brother was right. Walt Tolliver was Edie’s grandfather, a nice old man who had become something of a local hero after being responsible for bringing to light a scheme involving illegal experiments on the dead of Black Rock. Walt meant well, but Benjamin was right, the old man had never met a secret he could keep.
“A couple of days at the most,” Benjamin said. “Surely you can force yourself to be civil for that long.”
Maybe he could pretend she wasn’t there for that length of time, Jacob thought to himself. “Whatever,” he finally said, the cold seeping deep into his bones.
He stepped back in the door where Layla stood poised for flight next to her suitcase.
“Take off your coat. Relax, you’re staying,” he said grudgingly as he threw himself back into the recliner where he’d been seated before they’d arrived.
“Great, this should be fun,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. She took off her coat and draped it over her arm. “Where do you want me to put my things?”
“There’s only one bedroom,” Benjamin said. “I’m sure my brother would want you to have it.” He pointed to one of the doors off the main room.
Layla looked at Jacob as if to see if that was okay. He nodded. Most nights he slept in the recliner or on the sofa anyway. Besides, if he was lucky she’d stay in the bedroom and out of his hair until Benjamin came back to retrieve her.
“We’ll stay in touch,” Benjamin said to Layla as he backed toward the front door. “You’ll be safe here, Layla. Just give me a call if you need anything.”
With that, Benjamin left. Jacob picked up the remote control to the television and turned the volume up enough that conversation would be difficult. He knew it was rude and he didn’t care.
He’d stopped caring about anything six months ago when he’d left his job in Kansas City with the FBI and had returned to Black Rock and this cabin. All he wanted was to be left alone with the crushing guilt that never left him and the images of dead women that haunted him.
“I guess I’ll just get settled in,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the television.
He watched as she pulled the suitcase toward the bedroom, unable to help but notice how her jeans cupped her curvy behind. As she disappeared into the bedroom he got up and grabbed a beer from the fridge.
In the past six months beer had become his best friend. Although he never got falling-down drunk, he drank just enough to dull his senses and aid in a little selective amnesia.
Hopefully it would take her at least an hour to unpack that suitcase, which had looked big enough to hold a month’s worth of clothes, and hopefully she’d only be in his personal space long enough to wear one of the outfits she’d packed.
He took a long pull on the fresh beer and tried to ignore the scent of her that still eddied in the air. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smelled the pleasant scent of a woman or touched warm silky skin in a fevered caress.
The only women in his life in the last year had initially been faces on flyers who had eventually become bodies in crime scene photos. And their deaths had been his fault.
He shook his head and took another deep swallow of his beer to dispel any horrible visions that might drag across his brain. He didn’t want to think about those women, knew that dwelling on them would cast him into the darkest of despair.
As if this personal baggage wasn’t enough, his sister had disappeared almost four months before. He’d used what resources he could in an attempt to find any trace of her whereabouts, but had come up empty-handed, as was the case in all his brothers’ investigations.
He had a feeling his sister was dead, otherwise they would have found something, heard something by now. It was just a new grief he refused to acknowledge.
He frowned as Layla emerged from the bedroom and sat on the sofa. He glanced at her and she gave him an overly bright smile. “So, what are you doing here? Are you in hiding, too?” she asked.
“Something like that,” he replied. The red sweater she wore enhanced the pale blond of her hair and the blue of her eyes. Suddenly his thoughts turned to another woman. Sarah. She’d been wearing red the last time he’d seen her. His stomach clenched tight.
“I usually hear all the gossip but I haven’t heard anyone mention that you were back in town.” Her voice was raised to be heard over the blaring television.
Reluctantly he lowered the volume. “Besides my family I’d prefer nobody know I’m here.”
“Why?”
“Because I want it that way,” he replied curtly and hoped she’d drop the subject. He didn’t intend to tell anyone what had brought him back here, the culpability he’d had in the last case he’d worked.
She crossed one long slender leg over the other and leaned back, looking as comfortable as if she were in her own home. “So, what do you do to pass the time?”
He sighed. She was obviously determined to have some sort of conversation with him. “I drink beer and watch television or I listen to the silence,” he replied pointedly.
“I’ve never been a beer drinker. I like wine, especially a light blush, and sometimes a strawberry daiquiri is good. But if I’m celebrating something special I love a glass or two of champagne.”
Shoot me now, Jacob thought as she continued explaining what drinks she liked and didn’t like. She certainly didn’t act like a woman whose life had just been threatened. It was just his luck to be cooped up with a superficial woman hell-bent on talking him to death.
When she finally wound down her alcoholic drinks speech, she launched into a monologue about how much she liked Christmas. He tuned her out, making her voice white noise in his head.
“Jacob?”
He reluctantly tuned back in as he realized she must have said his name several times. “Is there anything around here to eat?” she asked. “I skipped dinner and now I’m starving.”
He pointed toward the kitchen. “Help yourself.” He breathed a sigh of relief as she got up and disappeared into the next room.
There had been a time when he liked nothing more than sitting with an attractive woman and indulging in a little flirtatious small talk, and if it led to something more all the better. But, that had been before Sarah, and before the case that had broken him.
And he was broken.
As an FBI agent.
As a man.
He took another long pull of his beer as he listened to the sounds of rattling pots and pans from the kitchen. Benjamin always made sure he had plenty of groceries so she’d have any number of things to choose to eat.
His stomach rumbled as the scent of frying bacon filled the air. He hadn’t eaten supper and he’d skipped lunch, as well, opting for a liquid diet of booze.
Most of the time if he was going to eat he either made himself a sandwich or zapped something in the microwave. Food had lost its appeal, as had most things in life.
Layla stepped into the doorway. “I’m making a bacon and cheese omelet. Want half?”
He didn’t want anything from her, but his stomach decided otherwise and he nodded affirmatively. “Okay,” he agreed. Within minutes she called to him that it was ready.
“I’ll just eat in here,” he replied.
Once again she appeared in the doorway. “No way,” she said with a hint of steel in her voice. “I’ve got the food on the table and it’s only civilized that we eat there.”
“What makes you think I’m civilized?” he countered. God help him, not only did he have a chatty woman on his hands but apparently a bossy one, as well.
“If you want to eat, then you’ll come into the kitchen.” She disappeared from the doorway.
He stared after her. Who did she think she was to come in here and try to tell him what he should and shouldn’t do? If she thought she was going to run this place while she was here then she had another thing coming. Reluctantly he got to his feet.
He was starving and at the moment the issue didn’t seem important enough to fight about. He carried his beer bottle into the tiny kitchen where she’d set the small dinette table for two. He dumped the rest of his beer down the sink drain, tossed the bottle into the trash and then took the seat at the table across from her.
Above the scent of the bacon he could smell the ridiculously sexy fragrance of her perfume. Sitting this close to her he could see the gold flecks that sparked in her blue eyes as she gazed at him and to his stunned surprise a tiny flame ignited in the pit of his stomach.
“So, what happened to you?”
The question surprised him, along with his unexpected physical reaction to her nearness. “Nothing happened.” He picked up his fork and focused on the food in front of him even though he felt her gaze remaining on him.
“You look like hell,” she said.
Jacob set down his fork and gazed at her balefully. “We’re here together through no choice of mine. I don’t want to share personal feelings and experiences with you. I don’t want to make pleasant little chitchat. I just want to be left alone.” He picked up his fork and began to eat once again.
“Looks to me like you’ve been left alone too long,” she said as if unable to not be the one who had the last word.
He ignored her and ate as quickly as possible, ignoring the fact that she continued to look at him as she ate her dinner. When he was finished he carried his dish to the sink, washed it and set it in the drainer to dry.
He left the kitchen without saying a word and returned to the recliner that had become his second best friend, after his beer.
Within minutes she’d returned to the room and to his dismay once again positioned herself on the sofa. “So, Layla, what’s been going on in your life for the last couple of years?” she said. “Oh, not much. I own the only realty in town but unfortunately business has been pretty slow lately. I like Chinese food, I’m a Libra and I love to dance.”
For the first time in months Jacob felt the urge to smile. It stunned him. It felt like an affront to all the blood that stained his hands.
“Are you always so irritating?” he asked.
She frowned as if seriously considering his question. “I suppose it depends on who you talk to. My friends don’t find me irritating, but it’s possible some of my old boyfriends might. And just for the record you’re more than a little bit irritating, too.”
He felt her gaze on him as he stared at the television. “You didn’t used to be this way,” she continued. “In fact you used to be every teenage girl’s fantasy.”
“Yeah, well things change, and now I’m going to sleep.” He clicked off the television, lowered his chair to a sleep position and then closed his eyes.
He was acutely aware of her in the silence of the room—her scent, the bubbling energy she brought and the faint whisper of the sound of her breathing. He felt her gaze on him but refused to open his eyes.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard her finally get up, and a moment later the door to the bedroom closed. He opened his eyes and frowned thoughtfully.
