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“Still feeling murderous?”
“You have no idea.”
Oh, he felt pretty sure he had some. Dangerous or not, the woman was cute as hell when she was mad. “I think you need to be a little more on guard with those two.”
That full, sexy mouth of hers pulled tight. “No kidding.” She gazed longingly at his Jeep. “I don’t suppose you have a spare gallon or two?”
“No,” he admitted, “but there’s a gas station a quarter mile away. Let’s go.”
She hesitated for a moment, staring at him with those big, incredible eyes. She looked tired and annoyed still, but also wore that hint of vulnerability he’d seen before. She’d obviously had a very long day and looked about at the end of her rope.
Mike reached out and took her arm, giving her some physical support. And maybe some of the emotional kind, too. Not even realizing he owned such a gentle tone, he murmured, “On second thought, you’ve been through enough today. Why don’t you wait in your car, I’ll be back in five minutes.”
She nodded slowly, not pulling away. A tremulous smile curved her mouth up. Not her usual smile of snarkiness or mischief, but one of relief, of gratitude. “You know, it’s not going to do my reputation any good if people find out a nice, considerate guy came to my rescue not once but twice today.”
Ha. As if anyone would recognize him as a nice, considerate guy. Seemed they were both suddenly acting out of character. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Opening her car door, she got in. “Fair enough. Thank you.”
She didn’t say anything else as he walked away, nor much when he came back ten minutes later with a small gas can. Though he offered to follow her to the station after he’d put some gas in the tank, she insisted she’d be fine.
He didn’t press it. Whatever moment of weakness she’d allowed him to see earlier, it was under control now. She was staunch and resolute, appreciative, but also once again very self-confident. So accepting her final thank you and knowing there was nothing more for him to do, Mike got in his Jeep and drove away from her for the second time that day.
JENNIFER DIDN’T LIKE THE END of anything. Whether it was one of her books that she was having a great time writing or a visit from her parents or simply the joy of the holiday season, she hated reaching The End.
She especially hated watching people leave. Particularly people she’d just met—sexy people—who she’d like to get to know better. Like him.
But it obviously wasn’t to be. Like before, he’d played the hero and ridden away on his Jeep Wrangler steed. Big, strong, silent. As she watched Mike Taylor’s taillights disappear into her history again, she felt like a saloon girl watching the handsome lawman ride away in some cheesy western.
Pathetic. She was thinking like one of the women who wrote to her talking about how wonderful her own handsome hero had been before he’d turned into a cheating toad.
This latest incident was simply the crap-flavored icing on her mud pie of a day. One for the to-forget books.
After filling up her tank at Trouble’s one and only gas station—paying prices that would make an oil baron blush—she headed downtown. Her mood had slipped from mostly gray and cloudy to nearly black and stormy. A big part of her wanted to just keep driving, straight back to New York. She had a book to finish—her third—with a hefty check waiting at the end of it.
But she had a feeling that if she left, she would never be able to make herself return to Trouble and see her aunts again.
While that appealed to her on one level, on another, she knew that, as twisted as they were, she’d miss them. Miss their stubbornness and their independence, their caustic natures and the aura of mystery that had always surrounded them.
No. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until they’d hashed things out, face-to-face.
But first things first. She steered the car toward the local store. Once inside, Jen ignored the shelves full of expired canned goods for a nickel to scout the first-aid area for bandages and antiseptic to clean her blisters. She managed to find a tube of stuff that didn’t look as if it had been produced during the Carter administration. Adding a toothbrush to her cart, she paid for her things just as the store closed at six.
Six o’clock on a Friday night and the town was closing up shop. Rolling up its sidewalks. The one stoplight in the main square had already stopped changing from red to green and turned into a flat, blinking yellow beacon that screamed, “You’re in the middle of nowhere! Get out while you still can!”
“Unbelievable,” she muttered, glancing across the street at the one business that still appeared to be open. But it took a few minutes for her to muster the courage to actually go over and enter Tootie’s Tavern. Because if the Travel Channel ever stopped doing shows on the ten scariest places in the world, and started naming the ten scariest places to eat, this would probably make the cut. She’d bet it was on an FDA watch list somewhere.
Finally, though, she forced herself inside. Knowing Aunt Ida Mae and Aunt Ivy were very untrusting, she suspected they hadn’t even crawled out of their hiding places yet, much less unlocked any doors.
“Hey there, missy, thought you was gonna spend your whole week here without comin’ in to see me!”
This comment came from the owner, Tootie herself, who was shaped like a box—as wide as she was tall—with hair the color of congealing sausage gravy. But she had always been nice to Jen as a kid. Even if Jen’s mother had always made her throw away any cookie or treat Tootie had slipped to her during a family visit.
“Hi,” she said. “I, uh, need to use the ladies’ room.”
Jen immediately wished she hadn’t put it like that. She knew she’d been overheard when a meaty guy at a nearby table, wearing a Bud T-shirt and a backward baseball cap, snickered like a third grader who’d spotted a little girl’s underwear.
That, of course, instantly made her think about the conversation she and Mike had had earlier…and his wickedly erotic comment about the soft fabric between a woman’s soft thighs. The soft fabric between her soft thighs had gotten a mite damp after the remark, that was for sure. And just thinking about Mike now could probably make it more so.
Forget it. He’d driven away—twice—without mentioning the possibility of seeing her again. Besides, she didn’t like the big, strong, drop-dead gorgeous, dangerous, silent type.
Hmm. Maybe…No. Not her type, even though her friends all thought she should be happy with any guy who was breathing. But she wasn’t that desperate. Yet.
“Sorry, sweetie, facilities are for paying customers only,” the proprietress said with an apologetic shrug, her loud reply ensuring they were being overheard now.
Then the words sank in. Perfect. She was actually going to have to eat here? “Oh, uh…”
“Meat loaf’s on special.”
She was tempted to ask what type of meat was in it—armadillo, mastodon—but wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Unfortunately, every other place in town was probably already closed. This might be the only bite she’d have until she could get her aunts to let her in. That could take a week.
“Could you just get me a plain salad and an iced tea?”
Tootie nodded. “I’ll have Scoot put in the order, but you’ll have to sit at the counter. There’s no tables.”
She glanced at the counter, seeing a sea of men wearing red plaid and wife-beater T-shirts. All packed shoulder-to-shoulder, heads down, like horses at a trough. All probably having heard her ladies’ room comment and right now thinking about her walking into the next room and pulling down her panties.
Eww.
“Can I get it to go?”
“Didn’t she already say she had to go?” a phlegmy voice asked. The question was accompanied by a lascivious chuckle. Both had emanated from a guy at the closest table who, judging by his comma-shaped posture, was between one hundred and death.
Tootie leaned close. “I don’t blame you, sugar. Some of these fellas act like mongrels over a bone when a pretty woman comes around. Me ’n’ Scoot have taken to giving each other signals when we need help extricating ourselves from one when he gets over-amorous.”
Scoot. That was the waitress. Tootie’s assistant. Practically Tootie’s twin. The hottest single ladies in Trouble?
“Ooo-kay,” she murmured, keeping her eyes forward, focusing on the door to the ladies’ room. “I’ll be back.”
Once inside the bathroom, however, she realized she’d made a tactical error. “This place is dirtier than the ground,” she muttered, staring in dismay at the mildew climbing up the backs of the sinks and the peeling, puke-green linoleum on the floor. She’d be better off cleaning her cuts in a truck stop men’s room.
If there had been a hotel anywhere in the vicinity, she would have given up for the night, blowing off Ida Mae and Ivy’s houses for clean sheets, hot water that wasn’t the color of dirt and free HBO. But, if she recalled correctly, Trouble had only ever boasted two inns and both were now closed. One—Seaton House, where she had once stayed with her parents as a child—due to the death of its former owner. And the other, the Dew Drop Inn—where she had never stayed with her parents as a child because the owner was a nudist—also closed. From what the aunts said, the owner, Mr. Fitzweather, had had a bit of a run-in with a dog during his nudist days and had since retired.
“This is ridiculous,” she told her reflection, continuing to shift her toes to keep them protected by the flip-flops, so they wouldn’t come into contact with the dirty floor. “There has to be something I can do.”
Then she remembered something. And started to smile.
During Jen’s last visit, Ivy had nastily told her that Ida Mae was a loose woman, praying for a burglar to come along and ravish her. In order to make it easier for said burglar, Ida Mae always kept a spare key under the rusty iron bench sitting on her front porch. Knowing Ivy, she’d probably forgotten she’d spilled the secret five minutes after the words had left her lips, just as Jen had forgotten the comment. Which meant Ida Mae probably hadn’t removed the key.
A half hour later, when she returned to Ida Mae’s, holding a plastic container full of salad, she checked. And hit pay dirt. The key was there.
“Oh, Luuuucy, I’m home,” she called as she let herself into the house, hoping Aunt Ida Mae had calmed down and could be reasonable. She didn’t dare hope for such a thing from Aunt Ivy.
“How did you get in here?” a stern-sounding voice said, emerging from the dark, cluttered parlor.
Jen immediately swung toward it and strode into the room, carefully picking her way through the maze of furniture. Good thing she’d become familiar with it during her week’s stay because it was nearly dark outside and not a single light was on within. The heavy oak and crushed-velvet pieces stood in odd positions around the room, competing for every inch of floor space. It was like being inside a child’s antique dollhouse which had too much toy furniture. Jen had never left this house without a bruise or two from having banged into something.
She’d already been bruised, battered and cut enough at her aunts’ hands today, thank you very much, and didn’t need any more war wounds. “I used your spare key,” she said, plopping onto the sofa and opening her bag of food. She’d ditched the drink right after leaving Tootie’s because, after sucking in a big mouthful through the straw, she’d had tea leaves coating her tongue.
“Who said you could come into my house?”
“Technically, Aunt Ida Mae, since I cover your mortgage, paid for the new roof and am responsible for all the utilities, I think it’s partly my house.”
That got the old woman out of the darkness. She came out of the corner and expertly wove her way across the room, flipping on a single lamp as she went by it. The whiteness of her round face, emphasized by dark circles under her brown eyes, said she’d been tense, waiting for this confrontation.
Ida Mae had probably never been considered pretty—though Ivy had. Judging by the pictures Jen had seen, the younger Feeney sister had been more than pretty; she’d been a knockout. But the older one would have to be described as handsome rather than pretty, even today at seventy-eight. Ida Mae carried herself well and was proud of her thick, snow-white hair. Usually up in a bun, it now hung loose, halfway down her back, stark against her pink housecoat. Thick and lovely, it was definitely her best feature.
Way nicer than her smile. Which almost never got any use. Kind of like Mike Taylor’s.
“You can have your roof and your utilities.”
Jen opened her salad, tore open the packet of Italian dressing that had come with it and squirted it onto the wilted lettuce. Ignoring the obvious impossibility of removing the new roof, she murmured, “So you want to sit here in the dark and get rained on?” she asked before taking a bite.
“That’s just what you’d like, isn’t it? To make me so sick and miserable I’ll let you put me in an almost-dead-folks home?”
Jennifer couldn’t contain a small laugh. Ida Mae was nothing if not blunt. “Look, can we please call a truce? I have absolutely no intention of forcing you to do anything.”
“As if you could,” the woman mumbled, eyeing Jen’s salad.
Without saying a word, Jen pushed the container across the coffee table, watching Ida Mae grab an olive and pop it into her mouth. With Ivy, only liquor, ice cream or an oldies CD for the stereo Jen had bought her last Christmas could have done the trick. Ida Mae was much less picky when it came to bribes.
The ploy worked. The older woman slowly lowered herself onto the opposite chair, but kept griping. “Shocking lack of respect for your elders. Your dear, sweet father will be horrified to hear this.”
“You’re not going to bother my father,” Jen said, her tone steely. “You know as well as I do that he can’t handle the stress. Mom said he’s just now strong enough to walk to the mailbox without coming back winded. None of us are going to do or say a thing to worry him.”
Ida Mae sucked in her bottom lip. The only thing Jen could ever do to get the old woman to back off anything was say it wasn’t good for Ivan Feeney. Ida Mae and Ivy did have a soft spot in their brittle hearts for their much younger brother.
“Sweet baby boy,” Ida Mae said, sounding about as gentle as Jen had ever heard her. “I do wish your mother would have let us stay longer to take care of him.”
Ha. Smother him was the better term. Jen’s mother had almost shot herself when her two elderly sisters-in-law had come down to North Carolina to “help” her parents get settled in their new home. If they went back, Mom was likely to have a heart attack and end up right beside Dad.
Which was why Jen intended to take care of the aunts whether they liked it or not. “I’m very sorry my suggestion came across as an order.”
Getting better. Ida’s posture eased a tiny bit, but she wasn’t finished grumbling. “Think I buried one husband and divorced another just so I could let somebody else order me around?” She didn’t wait for an answer, instead grabbing a cherry tomato and a slice of green pepper. The aunts usually lived on canned tuna, so fresh veggies had to be a real treat. Even if they had come out of Tootie’s greasy kitchen.
“I would like…I would hope, that you and Ivy would at least consider moving into someplace a little nicer.”
Oh boy. Tactical error. She knew it the minute the words left her mouth.
Ida Mae’s spine stiffened as if somebody had sent a bolt of electricity through her. She launched herself up on her sturdy legs and glared down, a bit of pepper flying out of her mouth as she snapped, “Nicer? You’re saying my house is not nice? Well, young lady, you may feel free to stay somewhere else then.”
“Aunt Ida…”
“Out.”
She shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The shrug, and reasonable tone, seemed to get Ida Mae’s attention more than anything Jen had said. She appeared a bit nonplussed that her niece hadn’t launched to her feet and started arguing back—as Ivy probably would have done. Ida Mae could handle anger. But she wasn’t so good at holding up against calm, rational conversation.
Maybe that was one reason she never battled with her brother. Jen’s father was the absolute epitome of a laid-back, kindly man. Which had made his massive heart attack at fifty-nine that much more frightening.
As if knowing she’d lost the skirmish—though, she’d never concede the battle—Ida Mae glared. “Fine. Stay then. Just be gone tomorrow.”
Without another word, she bent down, grabbed Jen’s salad and stalked out of the room.
THE LAST TIME MIKE HAD VISITED his grandfather in Trouble had been during the winter, at Christmastime, to be exact. So it hadn’t quite hit him just how hot this part of Pennsylvania could be in August. Particularly in a monstrous old house with no central air-conditioning. Even his hair was sweating.
He hadn’t noticed it as much when he’d first arrived the previous evening, since Roderick had served up a great dinner on the back patio. With newly installed ceiling fans spinning lazily overhead, an icy cold beer in his hand and his grandfather’s fine company, he hadn’t even felt the temperature.
Until he’d gone to bed.
Then he’d turned into Mr. Heat Miser from that old Christmas show.
His grandfather had said he’d looked into installing a system when doing renovations on the old monstrosity over the last year. But supposedly the lines of the oddly constructed building—which, in Mike’s opinion, looked like a bunch of kid’s card houses on top of one another—would be affected by installing central air. So Mortimer hadn’t done it. He’d merely brought in a few window units, though none for the third floor.
Hence the sweating. Even Mutt had known better than to sleep up here. He’d come in with Mike the night before, then turned right back around and gone downstairs where it was cooler. Man’s best friend. Huh.
Mike had to concede it: the steaminess of his first night in the house might also be attributed to the dream he’d had. He couldn’t remember all the details. But he definitely remembered it had involved Jennifer Feeney, a bottle of massage oil and a pair of his handcuffs.
It had also caused him to wake up as hard as a tree trunk.
“Get out of my head, lady,” he muttered as he got up, knowing there was no point trying to sleep any longer. When his feet hit the floor, he groaned. Even the scratched old wooden floors of the attic room were hot, and it was only 9:00 a.m.
His brother Max, who’d spent a few weeks here last summer, had sworn this third-floor room got the best cross breezes from the two turret windows. Supposedly, its greatest benefit was that it was out of earshot of Mortimer’s snoring, which had been known to knock pictures off walls.
Mike was apparently a lighter sleeper than his brother. He’d heard his grandfather sawing away from one story below until at least 3:00 a.m. And if a breeze had come through the front window last night, it had tiptoed around him sprawled naked on the bed and gone right out the other side. Now that some rainy weather had rolled in, the humidity was thick enough to drink from a cup and his whole body felt sticky.
He didn’t know how Max had managed to stay here last summer. Then he thought about his new sister-in-law. And he knew how.
His brother had fallen hard and fast for Sabrina, and more power to him. Maybe with one grandson settled, Mortimer would get some great-grandchildren who’d distract him from this mess of a town he’d purchased a little over a year ago.
The man was never as happy as when he had someone to scheme and fuss over, and a new baby would definitely fit the bill. The way Grandpa talked about Hank, his secretary Allie’s kid, he sounded as if he’d already bought stock in Pampers. He adored the boy who was, to be technical, a relative, since he was Sabrina’s nephew. Mike couldn’t even imagine what Mortimer would do with his own great-grandchild…beyond loving him more than life.
Just as he had his grandsons, who’d never forgotten what he’d done for them when their parents had died. He hadn’t shuffled them off to private schools or dumped them on paid servants. Hadn’t treated them as if they were a nuisance. Hadn’t allowed them to wallow in their own unhappiness. No. Instead, he’d become a true parent all over again, in every sense of the word.
Mike had only been a kid when his dad had been blown out of the sky during the first Gulf War. But he remembered full well how terrified he’d been of losing anyone else he cared about. So the death of his mother from cancer less than a year later had brought his entire world to a crashing halt.
