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When he didn’t, she brought her knee up. He managed to twist out of the way. Then he wrapped an arm around her middle, picked her up so that her feet were kicking wildly in the air, carried her five feet over to the couch and dumped her on it.
She expected him to fall on top of her, but instead he backed up a couple steps, practically tripping over the coffee table in his haste to get away. Scooting to the corner of the couch, she pulled her old robe tight. She felt naked and vulnerable, and she thought she might throw up.
Why hadn’t she been more careful? She’d been so cautious for fourteen months and now, in one instant, it was all for nothing.
Never taking his eyes off her, he moved sideways, far enough that he could flip the switch on the wall. When nothing happened, he looked at the candle and she saw bleak acceptance in his eyes. He pulled a flashlight out of his pocket, turned it on and swept the space that served as a combined kitchen and family room. His gaze rested on the sink and she knew he saw the lone clean plate and coffee cup.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. The minute he came closer, she was going to grab the lamp and hit him with it. She was going to use her fingernails, her teeth, anything she could.
But when he moved, it wasn’t forward. He sank down on the love seat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I looked in the garage window and saw a van. I thought somebody might be home.”
“Get out of my house,” she said, her voice low.
“I was in an accident.” He pointed to his forehead. “My truck is in a ditch, a deep one, about a mile from here. I’m not sure how badly it’s damaged. My cell didn’t work. All I want is to use your telephone to call a garage so that I can get the son of a—” he hesitated “—gun out of there.”
Could he be telling the truth? She held her arm to her side, the rough, scarred skin pressing against her ribs, separated only by the thin robe. Rain always made the bone ache. Getting pushed up against the front door hadn’t helped.
She’d run on instinct. She’d fought when cornered.
That brought her some comfort. As hard as she’d fought, however, she knew the stranger was big enough and strong enough that he could have easily hurt her. But instead, he’d backed off and was giving her a chance to calm down. Was it some kind of trick?
Or was it possible that he hadn’t come looking for her, that Michael hadn’t sent him? That he’d simply crashed his vehicle, knocked his head in the process, and her house had been the first he’d stumbled upon? “Where was the accident?”
“A mile or so south. I’m on my way to Wyattville,” he continued. “Please tell me that I’m headed in the right direction.”
She wasn’t telling him anything. Not until she knew why he was here. “What’s your name?” she demanded.
“Jake Vernelli.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a wallet. From his poncho pocket, he pulled out what appeared to be a hastily folded sheet of paper. After flipping open the wallet, he tried to smooth out the crumpled paper.
She leaned forward. The picture on the license was of him, sans bloody forehead. With a practiced eye for taking in details quickly, she scanned it. Dark hair, olive skin, classic Italian appearance. Six-two, 190 pounds. He’d be thirty-three in two weeks, making him almost exactly a year older than her. The name on it was Jake Vernelli.
She shifted her gaze to the paper. It was a fax sent from the law offices of Chase Montgomery. Chase had been elected mayor the previous year and when she scanned the fax, she remembered the gossip she’d heard at the restaurant just that morning. The mayor had called a childhood friend and arranged for him to fill in for Chief Wilks, who’d had a heart attack and then bypass surgery.
“Do you know Chief Wilks?” he asked.
She nodded. She liked the chief; everybody did. But she’d never really felt comfortable around him. Michael had gotten to the police once before, he could do it again.
“I’m taking his place for six weeks,” he said.
Tara’s stomach tightened. “So you’re a cop?”
“That’s right.” He swallowed deliberately. “Given the circumstances, I would think you might consider that a positive.”
Hardly. She was living way outside the law.
Chapter Two
“You broke into my house,” she accused.
“I did not break in.” He said it so fast his words were clipped. “You opened the door and pulled me in.”
His head injury couldn’t be too serious. “I suppose I did.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She didn’t want to tell him. There was something about this man, something about the intensity of his gaze, the edginess of his attitude. Would he see things that others had simply looked past? Would he find a loose thread and pull at it until her life unraveled?
“Tara Thompson,” she said, as if she’d been saying it her whole life. She got up, walked ten feet to her kitchen counter, pulled out a drawer and felt around for the small box of plastic bags. Then she opened the freezer door and filled the bag with ice. She gently tossed it in his direction. “You’ve got a pretty good-sized bump.”
“Thanks,” he said. He held the ice bag up to his forehead. “Who’s Alice?” he repeated his very first question.
“Alice Fenton. She and her husband, Henry, are my landlords. They live one crossroad over.” She wiped the palm of her hand on her old robe. “Do you think you need to see a doctor?”
“So that I can hear that I’m going to have a hell of a headache for a couple of days?” He smiled and it was such a startling change to his serious demeanor that she was thrown off balance.
She stepped back and rammed her spine against the kitchen counter. He studied her. And while there wasn’t enough light at this distance to clearly see his eyes, the tilt of his head, the subtle thrust of his chin, told her that he was assessing, considering. Wondering.
It was the look of a man who might be interested, maybe even intrigued, by a woman. It made her feel warm and vulnerable in a whole different way and she yanked on the belt of her robe, pulling it tighter. The worn material rubbed against her nipples and she was grateful for the darkness, grateful that he couldn’t see that his look affected her.
She jerked open the kitchen drawer and pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She grabbed a tissue box and carried both back to the coffee table. She placed them next to the burning candle. “You should probably clean that scrape. There’s no water but this will be better anyway.”
She moved back to her spot in the kitchen. He grabbed a few tissues and tipped the brown bottle to its side. After taking a couple swipes across his forehead, he got up and tossed the bloody tissue into the waste can at the end of her kitchen counter. Her stomach jumped in response. She hated blood. Could never quite forget the sight of it running down her arm, dripping onto the floor.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Sure,” she managed. Think about something else. It was generally good advice. However, when he rubbed his hand over his jaw and, like a crazy woman, she felt the answering response low in her belly—as if he’d rubbed the palm of his hand intimately against her—she realized it was a mistake. He was a stranger. A cop. She had no business thinking about warmth against warmth, about callused skin against absolute softness. About what it might be like to be held again.
“About my truck?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. “Of course. Toby Wilson owns the local garage. He sells gas and does some basic body work. Some nights he works late so you might get lucky.” She reached to dial the telephone just as it rang.
“Hello,” she said tentatively. She rarely got calls.
“Tara, this is Frank Johnson. There’s been some trouble in town.”
She gripped the receiver more tightly. “What kind of trouble?”
“Looks as if somebody damaged your front door, broke out the glass, anyway. It doesn’t look as if they got in but I’m not sure.”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She’d been in Wyattville all this time and nothing had happened. Why now?
“Tara?” Frank prompted.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Tara hung up and whirled around, almost bumping into the new chief.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“I own a restaurant in town. There’s been some damage.”
“From the storm?”
“No. At least that’s what Frank Johnson said. He owns the drugstore next door.” She tried to speak slowly, calmly, but it was impossible. Fourteen months ago, in a rage, Michael had shredded dresses and slashed artwork. Had he found a new way to torment her by vandalizing her business?
She didn’t want to have to run again.
“Tara?”
She stared at him.
“You looked as if you were a million miles away.”
Thirteen hundred miles. But was it far enough? “I have to go.” She glanced around the dark kitchen. Where had she dropped her purse? It didn’t matter. She grabbed her keys off the counter and took a step toward the door.
“You might want to get dressed first,” he suggested.
Of course. What she needed to do was stop freaking out. If Michael had found her, she’d need her wits about her. And she needed to get rid of Jake Vernelli. “I can drop you off in town,” she said.
He shrugged. “I think I’ve gathered enough to know that my first day on the job just started early.”
“But what about your truck?”
“Trust me on this. It’s not going anywhere.”
She wasn’t going to be able to shake him. But she couldn’t worry about that now. She lit another candle, kept her keys gripped in her hand while she found another glass and then used it to light the way up the stairs where she pulled on underwear, jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt. When she came back to the living room, he was standing by her back door. She slipped her feet into the still-wet sandals that she’d shed earlier. When she reached for the door, he put his hand on her arm. Heat shot upward, settling somewhere around her collarbone.
“Are you okay to drive?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He didn’t argue. Instead, he blew out both candles. Then they ran through the rain, dodging puddles. He opened the garage door before she had a chance to. “Pull out and I’ll close it behind us,” he said.
* * *
SHE DROVE FAST and they arrived in the small town just minutes later. A police cruiser, its lights flashing, sat crossways in the middle of the street, keeping cars from getting past. The streetlights were on, and lights shined through windows up and down the street, telling Jake that the power outage hadn’t included Wyattville.
Tara jerked the wheel to the right, pulled into a parking spot and bolted from her car. A man pushing sixty, standing in front of the drugstore, saw her and waved. She took four steps before Jake caught up with her.
“Stay behind me,” he said, stepping in front of her.
Jake could see the momentary indecision and thought he might just have to tackle her. Given the curves he’d glimpsed under her thin blue robe, the very same ones that were hugged tight by her white shirt and jeans, it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice. Knowing his luck, though, she’d bring her damn knee up again and hit pay dirt and he’d start his job walking funny for days.
“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth.
He moved quickly, Tara on his heels. Fortunately most of the businesses had awnings, so they could stay out of the rain as they ran toward the man standing on the sidewalk.
“Mr. Johnson?” Jake asked.
“Yes. Who are you?”
“I’m Jake Vernelli.”
The older man smiled. “The new guy. I’m on the city council and let me tell you, we’re damn glad you were available. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here. Generally, Wyattville is a pretty quiet place.”
Tara stepped out from behind him. “What happened, Frank?”
“Officer Hooper drove by around nine and everything was fine, but when he cruised through at ten, he saw that the front door of Nel’s looked odd. I was at the store late and saw him outside. I called you right away.”
Jake could tell by the slump of Tara’s shoulders that everything definitely wasn’t okay. He adjusted his angle slightly. Nel’s Café had a big door that was wood on the bottom and frosted glass on the top. Two inches above where the wood stopped and the glass began was a round hole. Bigger than a golf ball, maybe the right size for a baseball. Around it, the glass had splintered in a semicircle, with cracks shooting upward. It looked similar to how a first grader might draw the sun on a pretty summer day.
Jake walked closer, leaned down and attempted to peer through the hole. It was dark inside. There were two large windows on either side of the door. Unfortunately, the blinds were down, completely eliminating any assistance the streetlights might have given.
“Crazy night for somebody to be out causing trouble,” Frank said. “Probably just some kids without anything better to do.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. And Jake wouldn’t have thought much about it if she hadn’t followed up the comment with a quick but deliberate look over her right shoulder, then her left. It was her eyes that pulled at Jake’s gut. She had the look of someone waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A young officer dressed in a khaki uniform approached. His brown buzzed hair looked official, but the flushed face and sweat stains under his arms didn’t inspire confidence. Green. That was how Chase had described Andy Hooper. He covered the evening shift and would share call with Jake for the night shift.
Frank Johnson stepped forward. “Andy, this here is your new boss, Jake Vernelli.”
Andy stuck out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you. Mayor Montgomery said good things about you, sir.”
Chase must have left out the part about shooting his partner. Jake returned the shake. “Good to meet you,” he said. “What happened here tonight?”
The young officer flipped open his notebook. “Front door is damaged. Back door appears untouched. There are no witnesses. It does not appear that entry was gained. I was waiting for Tara to get here with a key so I could check out the inside.”
The kid had needed to consult his notes for that? It was going to be a long six weeks.
With her keys in hand, Tara started toward the door. Jake knew it was unlikely there was any danger. An intruder would have needed to manage getting his or her arm through the hole, enough to flip the lock from inside. That would have been difficult to do with without causing more glass to break. However, he’d seen a lot of odd things in his career.
Jake held out his hands for her keys. “Not until Officer Hooper and I check it out,” he said. He pulled his gun from the waistband of his jeans and he saw the immediate question in Frank Johnson’s eyes: Is that really necessary?
Hell, he had no idea. But it hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been almost too slow to pull his gun, and he didn’t intend to make that mistake again. When Officer Hooper hurried to get his own weapon, Jake fought the instinct to duck and run.
Jake unlocked the door and kicked it open with his foot, wide enough that they could enter. With the door open, there was enough light that he could quickly scan the dim interior. There were tables on one side, booths on the other. An aisle down the middle led to a long counter with six stools. Behind the counter were the pop machine, milk machine and stacks of glasses. “I’m going to check the kitchen,” he whispered. “Stay here.”
He walked toward the swinging door at the rear of the restaurant. However, instead of opening it, he veered behind the counter and walked toward the service window that was cut into the rear wall. It was chest high, three feet long by eighteen inches high, perfect for getting the hot food from the stove to the table in an express manner. He peered through the opening.
Toward the back, a light burning over a three-compartment sink made it possible to see the grill, stove and steam table on one side, refrigerator and worktable on the other. Across from the sink, behind a half wall, was the dishwasher. Beyond it, a rear entrance that looked undisturbed.
“It’s clear. Tell Tara that she can come in.”
By the time he got to the front of the restaurant, she was standing next to the cash register. The drawer was open and the slots were empty. “You keep any money in here?” he asked.
Tara shook her head. “After we close up in the afternoon, I make a deposit at the bank. I hold back enough to start the drawer out in the morning but I keep it in the kitchen.”
“Freezer, right?”
She smiled and it reached her eyes—her very pretty moss-green eyes. They went nicely with her hair—a rich, more strawberry than blond mix that touched her shoulders.
