скачать книгу бесплатно
“I tell her all the time.” His mouth curved in a wide, reckless grin. “One taste of her apple pie, the woman owned my heart. If she would dump A.C. and run off with me, I’d die a happy man.”
Regan was sure that glib talk and grin tumbled women like bowling pins. There had been a time in her life Josh McCall would have had the same effect on her. And, yes, she admitted, there was something about him that, despite her panic, her fear, had her heartbeat kicking hard. But she would ignore that something—easily ignore it—because she’d learned too well that you never knew, not for certain, what was under a cop’s smooth words and smiles.
With the glasses washed, she retrieved a rag and began drying. “I guess you haven’t heard about Etta’s accident.”
He set his beer aside while what looked like genuine concern settled in his eyes. “What accident?”
“She broke a bone in her foot when she slipped and fell at the marina.”
“Is she okay?”
“Well enough, considering she has to stay cooped up in her house with her leg in a walking cast. She can hobble around using a cane, but the doctor doesn’t want her on her feet for any length of time. He’s banned her from work because he knows she’d start tending bar the minute she got here. Just to make sure she follows the doc’s orders, I confiscated her car. That’s why it’s parked out back.”
“I’ll stop by her place when I leave here. Find out if she needs anything.”
“It’ll be dark out by the time you finish dinner,” Regan said. “Sundown’s got a prowler running around, so people are nervous. I’ll call Etta to let her know to expect you.”
He frowned. “What kind of prowler?”
“Beats me. He wears black and creeps around at night.” She brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “Etta mentioned him the day she hired me, so he’s been at it awhile.”
Regan felt a rush of relief when Deni stepped to the bar with a tray heaped with empties and a pad of orders. She’d spent enough time talking to McCall. Far too long in his presence that was unsettling on numerous levels. She planned to spend the rest of her shift—and his entire time in Sundown—avoiding him.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Let me know if you need a refill.”
“Sure. Before you go, tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“Your name.”
She hesitated. “Regan.”
“Nice name. Unusual.”
She’d thought the same thing when she saw it on a tombstone. She scooped a bag of peanuts from beneath the counter. “I’ve got work.”
“Okay. Nice to meet you, Regan.”
With dusk melting into darkness and the mellow notes of a guitar sliding from the stereo, Josh steered his red Corvette convertible along the road that ringed Paradise Lake. His mind wasn’t on the night air that flowed like warm water across his face, the soothing music or the shadowy groves of oaks and glimpses of shoreline that zipped by.
His thoughts centered on the bartender.
Although a booth had opened up just as Deni served his hamburger and fries, he had remained at the bar. While eating, he watched Regan draw beers, mix drinks and refill bowls of peanuts with single-minded intensity.
She was petite, slim and sleek. The white blouse she wore had been tucked into the waistband of jeans snug enough to whet a man’s appetite.
Her hair was as black and shiny as the lapel of a tuxedo, and it hung straight to her shoulders. She had wispy bangs that ended just above brown, gold-flecked eyes. Eyes that had reminded him of a cat’s—watching and waiting.
For what? he wondered.
When a yellow warning sign blipped in the high beams of the car’s headlights, Josh downshifted. Seconds later, the ’Vette reached the razor-sharp bend in the road the locals had dubbed Wipeout Curve.
He felt the ’Vette’s raw power as it whispered through the treacherous turn. Any other time he would have cleared his mind, eased back and savored the ride. Tonight, his thoughts remained on a slim, dark-haired stranger.
He had noticed her the instant he walked into the tavern. Noticed, too, that while she worked the register and straightened liquor bottles, she surveilled him in the mirror behind the bar. He was used to feeling a woman’s gaze, but instinct told him Regan’s study of him had nothing to do with hot-blooded attraction, and everything to do with cool-eyed suspicion.
“Interesting,” he murmured while the guitar’s soothing notes mixed with the night air. It was also of interest that she’d failed to give him her last name, nor had she revealed where she was from. It hadn’t been lost on him that every question he’d asked about her, she’d turned back on him.
Just because he’d been on suspension didn’t mean he’d gotten rusty when it came to spotting some nifty evasion tactics.
His mood darkened as the reminder of the past month threw a mental switch, rerouting his thoughts. The bitterness over having been accused of planting evidence in a rapist’s apartment was still there, simmering with a foul taste he’d almost grown used to. What he would never get used to was how his nearly losing his badge and the job that defined him had hurt his family. A law enforcement family, in which cops were the majority and wearing a uniform was a matter of pride.
He respected the badge and the law. He had just found it sometimes necessary, while coming up through the ranks, to circumvent the letter of the law in order to get what he needed to take down a guilty bad guy. No harm, no foul…until he’d been at the right place at the wrong time, and his reputation for stretching the rules had gone far in having a hell of a lot of cops suspect the worst of him.
And, yeah, he had looked guilty—who knew better than a sex crimes detective what evidence was needed to score a slam-dunk conviction on a rape? The whole squad had known he’d spent uncountable off-duty hours trying to track down the vicious six-time rapist. And stretching the rules innumerable ways just to get the bastard’s scent wasn’t something he’d shy away from—but crossing the line wasn’t one of those ways. The finger-pointing in Josh’s direction, the insinuation that he’d planted evidence had him close to quitting the force in a rage. And then he’d thought about his family and what the badge meant to him. So he’d swallowed back that rage and in the end managed to clear himself.
Now that he was back in the department’s good graces, he intended to toe the line a little closer when he reported back to duty.
Another mile down the road Josh steered into the drive of what he’d considered his second home for his entire life. The three-story structure was an architectural masterpiece. Built on a sloped, heavily wooded lot and made entirely of cedar and glass, it had a broad wraparound porch and a wide chimney built of local rock that had been weathered to a soft gray. Beyond the lush back lawn lay Paradise Lake, its rambling shoreline coiling like a snake across the Oklahoma-Texas border.
Josh climbed out of the car. Instead of heading for the house, he strode across the drive and skirted the hedge that separated McCall and Truelove property.
Although only a single porch light glowed beside Etta’s front door, Josh knew from memory that the two-story house was painted a pale blue with white shutters. A wooden swing suspended on chains dangled from the porch’s ceiling.
The air around him sparked with fireflies as he headed up the walk lined by plants that formed shadowy shapes in the night. By the time he reached the porch, the front door had swung open.
“Joshua McCall, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes.”
The woman standing behind the patched screen door, soft light glowing behind her, was tall and lean with a helmet of iron-gray curls framing a square-jawed face. She wore a short-sleeved yellow cotton dress that hit her midcalf.
“So are you.” Frowning at the snow-white cast on her right leg, he jogged up the porch steps, gripped the screen she held half open and dropped a kiss on her forehead. He couldn’t remember when he’d actually met the gregarious tavern owner and her late husband. They had just always been permanent fixtures during his summers at the lake. As had their two sons who had wreaked havoc with the McCall brothers.
“How’s your foot, Etta?”
“Healing too slow for my liking.” Her scowl emphasized the network of lines around her eyes and mouth. “Come in and sit, Joshua. I can use the company.”
“You’re sure it’s not too late?”
“Not for this night owl.” Leaning on a cane, she limped across the living room filled with furniture positioned on an earth-toned rug. Colorful candles and crocheted throws added to the room’s sense of comfort.
“Who’s this?” Josh asked, pausing to stroke a finger over the jet-black kitten curled on the recliner.
“Anthracite. She’s a stray who wouldn’t leave.”
“Especially after you fed her, I bet.”
“What else was I supposed to do? Poor thing was starving.”
Josh scratched behind one furry ear, and was rewarded with a purr. “You named her after coal?”
“Scotty did,” Etta said, referring to her youngest grandson. “When he saw the kitten, he decided she looked like the coal he’d learned about in science class.”
“Good call.” Leaving the kitten sharpening its claws on the recliner, Josh followed Etta along a hallway. When they neared the kitchen, he raised his chin. “Do I smell apple pie?”
“You do. I decided to bake tonight and just took the last of the pies out of the oven. Could be I had a premonition you’d show up, looking too thin for your own good.”
Blame that on his suspension, he thought.
He followed her into the kitchen, painted in soft yellow, its white-tiled countertops sparkling beneath the bright overhead light. “Have I told you I’m crazy about you?”
“Every time you want pie.” She waved him to the small metal table. “Have a seat and I’ll cut us some.”
“You sit.” Placing a hand on her bony shoulder, he nudged her to a chair. “Everything still in the same place?”
“Nothing’s changed.” Etta shifted a stack of mail to one corner of the table. “There’s tea in the refrigerator.”
Minutes later, he had slices of pie and glasses of iced tea on the table. Josh settled into the chair across from hers, lifted his fork and dug in. The warm pie tasted like heaven.
“How’s the family?” Etta asked before taking her first bite.
“Mom and Dad are rocking along. Everybody’s married now, except Nate and myself. He’s fallen for a gorgeous ex-cop from Dallas. He and Paige just moved in together.” Feeling a tug on his sock, Josh looked down in time to see Anthracite attack his shoe. Chuckling, he scooped her up, settled her onto his lap and went back to his pie. “I figure it’s only a matter of time before Nate calls and tells me to rent a wedding tux.”
Etta regarded him over the rim of her glass. “Think it’s time you found a girl of your own?”
“I got tons of ’em,” he drawled.
“You’ll settle down when you find the right woman.”
“She’ll have to find me because I’m not looking for her.” The simple fact was his life had always run more efficiently solo. After Nate moved out of the house they’d shared, Josh had discovered how much he savored living alone. Made things less complicated. Just like women whose idea of the perfect relationship was a good time, a fast ride and a friendly parting.
As he popped the last bite of pie into his mouth, his gaze settled on the stack of mail on the corner of the table. “Is that a digital recorder?” he asked, plucking up the long silver piece of metal that sat on top of the stack.
“Michael bought me that gadget,” Etta said, referring to her eldest son. “I use it to record reminders. Like when to take my medicine. I call it my memory box.”
“Smart.”
“The thing tends to startle me when my own voice comes out of the blue, telling me to take my pills. There’s already enough going on around Sundown to make a person nervous.”
Josh set the recorder aside. “I heard about the prowler.”
“Whoever it is has been peeping in windows for months now. Chief Decker hasn’t had any luck catching him.”
Josh frowned. From working sex crimes, he knew that prowlers sometimes turned out to be Peeping Toms, who had the potential of escalating to indecent exposure, then more serious sex crimes. Like rape. His own career problems had been due to one man’s zeal to take down the six-time rapist.
“How were things at my tavern tonight?”
Etta’s question diverted his thoughts. “The place was packed.” Leaning back, he watched the kitten climb up his chest, wincing when her razor-sharp claws stabbed through his shirt. “Howie’s burgers are still gold. Deni’s as big a flirt as ever. Your new bartender is…interesting.”
“Regan’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she? All that dark hair and those big brown eyes.”
Cat’s eyes, he thought again. Watching and waiting. For what?
“I baked an extra pie for her,” Etta added, sliding her plate aside. “The girl’s way too thin. She hardly ever sits still and she eats like a bird.”
“And brings to mind a raw nerve.”
“How so?”
“Cops get used to people getting fidgety around them—goes with the job. But what I do for a living didn’t come up, so it wasn’t that.” He sipped his tea. “I can’t put my finger on why I made Regan nervous. Yet.”
Chuckling, Etta patted his hand. “Joshua, men who are all rakish charm and promise of trouble to come have given women the jitters since the beginning of time. You’re no exception.”
“You think that’s it? My charm made Regan itchy?”
“What else could it be?”
“Yeah, what else?” He thought about how effectively she had evaded his questions, divulging next to nothing about herself. “Does Regan have a last name?”
“Doesn’t everyone? Hers is Ford.”
“Regan Ford,” he said, trying it out. Regan Ford, hailing from no particular place, yet sounding to him more like the deep South than anywhere else. “I take it you checked her employment record and references before you hired her?”
“I didn’t need to. My instincts told me to take a chance on her. She’s living in the apartment over the tavern.”
With the kitten now propped on his shoulder, Josh crossed his forearms on the table. “You gave her a job and a place to live without running a background check? That’s not wise, Etta.”
“My late husband had a philosophy about the tavern business. Never water down the whiskey and, when it comes to employees, follow your heart.” She raised a shoulder. “I had a good feeling about Regan, so I offered her the job. The apartment over the tavern was empty, so why not let her live there?”
“Why not check her out first?”
“Like I said, I had a good feeling about her. Anyway, I had her work the same shift I did the first month she was here. Time has proven me right about Regan. She works like a trooper. The register has never come up short on her shift. Now that I’m stove up, Regan adds up all the receipts, makes the bank deposits and balances the books. She handles the ordering. You think either Howie or Deni, or any of my day workers could do that without making a mess of things?”
“I doubt it.” Like most cops, he had a healthy distrust of all mankind. Knowing that Etta had turned over her bank account to a woman she hadn’t checked out didn’t sit well. At all.
“Regan’s got a caring soul,” Etta continued. “The day cook makes me lunch and Regan brings it here. She takes the time to sit with me on the porch and visit. She runs the vacuum and dusts. Does my marketing. And cooks dinner for A.C. and me here every Sunday on her night off.”
“You ever ask Mystery Woman where she’s from? Where she’s worked?”
“No.”
He settled his hand on Etta’s. “You’re letting a woman you know nothing about handle your money and basically run your business. Who’s to say she won’t empty your bank account and disappear? Let me look into her background. Check her references. I can call Nate, have him run her through the national crime database.”
Etta’s blue eyes met his squarely. “Joshua McCall, do you own a part interest in my tavern?”
He sighed. “No, ma’am.”
“Then leave my business to me. I may not know everything about Regan, but I know what matters.”
