Smoky Ridge Curse

Nobody was going to have that kind of control over her life, she’d vowed. She would never become what her mother had become.

Only Adam Brand had ever tempted her to think twice about happily ever after. And that hadn’t exactly turned out well.

“What did you do with the clothes you had with you?” she asked, patting down the last piece of surgical tape. “Or did you run away from home with just the clothes on your back?”

He sat in the chair next to her. “There are some things in a canvas duffel bag stashed near a big truss bridge that goes over a gorge. Close to some seedy little bar out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Purgatory Bridge,” she murmured, wondering if he knew how that bridge had figured into her brother’s life recently. Seth had saved Rachel Davenport’s life on that bridge less than a month ago, and now they were already talking rings and forever. “I can get it for you now if you can describe where you left it.”

“I’d probably have to be there.” He glanced at the papers spread out in front of her. “What’s all this?”

“My notes on the Davenport Trucking case,” she answered. “I was just adding the things we discussed about Wayne Cortland.”

He picked up the notes and glanced over them. “Thorough, Hammond. Guess I taught you a few things after all.”

“A few,” she conceded, dragging her gaze away from the muscular curve of his shoulder. “You sure you have to be there for me to fetch your clothes?”

“I hid the bag well. It would be easier for me to find it myself.”

“It’s cold out, and you’re half-naked.”

He shot her a grin. “Does that bother you?”

“That it’s cold out?”

“That I’m half-naked.”

“No,” she lied.

He just kept grinning.

“In this weather, it’ll be dark enough by five-thirty to risk it,” she said. “I can’t go out with a strange man in daylight around here. People would notice.”

“I never thought I’d see you back here. You used to talk about this place as if it was hell. What did you call it—the Smoky Ridge curse?”

“Yeah. The Smoky Ridge curse. People who made it off Smoky Ridge always brought a little bit of hell with them. You can ask Seth about that sometime.”

“I have. He agrees, and yet he’s back here again, too.”

She shrugged. “Can’t escape it, so you might as well come back and face it, I guess. Another old friend of ours from childhood came back here to stay recently, too.”

“Sutton Calhoun, right?”

She nodded. “His daddy’s the one who got Seth into the con game. I never figured Sutton would step foot in this town again, but here he is.”

“Seth says Calhoun’s involved with one of the local cops?”

“Right. Ivy Hawkins. I’ll be working with her at the police station.”

“Two female detectives on a force this size in a place this small?”

She shrugged. “Maybe they’re trying to meet a quota. I don’t care why. I know I can do the job, and I’m glad to have it.”

“I could get you back on the domestic-terrorism task force—” Brand stopped short, his smile fading. “Well, I could have.”

Impulsively, she reached across the table and covered his hand. “We’re going to get you back there again.”

He turned his hand over, palm up, and closed his fingers around hers. His hand was hot, the skin of his palm a little rough, reminding her that he’d always been a man who liked working with his hands, even when he was stuck behind a desk. He’d worked with wood, building things like cabinets, tables and, once, for her birthday, a remarkably intricate teakwood jewelry box. She still had it, sitting in a storage unit back in Maybridge, where she’d put most of the stuff from her apartment before moving into this rental house in Bitterwood.

She wondered if she’d left so many things back in Alabama as a safety net, in case coming back here to Bitterwood didn’t work out.

“What are you thinking?” he asked in a half whisper that sent a delicious shiver up her spine. She’d always liked his voice, the deep timbre and the leftover hint of coastal Georgia that his years in D.C. hadn’t been able to obliterate.

“Just wondering if you still do that woodworking you used to do.”

“Not at the moment,” he said with a lopsided quirk of his mouth. His voice lowered a notch. “But you don’t forget how to work with your hands.”

Another tremor of sexual awareness rocketed through her, transporting her mind back eight years to a night in a tiny mountain bed-and-breakfast in West Virginia. It had been snowy that night, too, and their case had ended that afternoon with a successful arrest. The storm had delayed their flight, forcing them to stay one more night at the inn.

What happened that night had changed her life in so many ways.

She pulled her hand from his and rose, pacing away from the table. “I need to call my mother, see how she’s getting on. Why don’t you go look through my closet? I may have some oversize sweatshirts in there.”

He stood, cocking his head thoughtfully. “Leftovers from old boyfriends?”

“Leftovers,” she said simply, leaving it at that.

He took a deep, sharp breath through his nose and walked past her out of the kitchen, his shoulder brushing against hers.

She let out a breath and pressed her head against the kitchen wall, hating how rattled and on edge she felt when he was around.

Hating it—and craving it.

PURGATORY BRIDGE, STANDING thirty feet above Bitterwood Creek, was one of the only remaining truss bridges in the county, and it had seen better days even when Delilah had been a child, crossing it daily on her walk from Smoky Ridge to school. She’d walked across the span more times than she could remember, but she still felt a little flutter in her belly as the Camaro hit the bridge, wondering if this would be the time the whole thing would come crashing down into the gorge.

But they made it safely across, and Brand said, “It’s just over there.” He waved his hand toward a narrow path leading into the woods from the road, and Delilah parked the Camaro well off the road, mindful of the bright neon lights of Smoky Joe’s Tavern about fifty yards down Old Purgatory Road. Even on a Monday night, the bar’s parking lot was nearly full, and anyone could drive by at any time, spot the Camaro and stop to see what was going on.

“We need to hurry,” she whispered as she followed him into the woods.

“It’s near a fallen tree.” His eyes narrowed as he peered into the gloom. “It was right over—” He pitched forward suddenly and fell to the ground.

“Brand!” Barely avoiding tripping over him, Delilah crouched beside him as he tried to regain his feet. He groaned as her hand brushed against his injured side. “Sorry!”

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