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And she was staring at him with pure malice.
“Bad day, huh?”
“You could say that.”
“So, uh, why do you need a gun?”
“To shoot someone,” she snapped, looking at him as if he were stupid. “Two someones, actually.”
He quickly scanned the woman’s features, looking for her true intent. He’d met a lot of criminals in his seven years on the force, and he knew angry, frustrated threats from legitimate ones. This one, judging by the resigned irritation in her tone—rather than rage—was all bark and no bite. At least, he hoped. But he still thought about his service weapon, and wondered if he was going to have to use it to stop her from following through on her threats.
Wouldn’t be the first time he’d stepped between a murderous woman and her intended target. Just the thought of that incident made the scar in his right shoulder ache…and the one around his heart grow a little harder.
“Dumb question.” Glancing at the object in her hand, he tried again. “Why are you carrying a tire iron?”
She frowned, appearing puzzled by the ridiculousness of the query. Tilting her head to the side until her long hair brushed her arm, she explained, “Because I don’t have a gun, of course.”
Well, color him stupid for not knowing that. “Is there someone in particular you plan to kill or would anybody do?”
“Don’t worry. You’re quite safe,” she said, that jaw still tense but some of the stiffness easing out of her shoulders. “However, two little old ladies from hell better have gone into the witness protection program before I get back into town.”
“Killing little old ladies.” He tsked and shook his head, growing even less alarmed. But he didn’t let his guard down completely. “That’s not very polite.”
“You don’t know these particular old ladies.”
Something that felt like a smile began to tug at his mouth. “I know it’s against the law to kill them.”
He quickly squashed the smile. Mike wasn’t used to smiling…. He didn’t have a lot to be happy about on the job, and his personal life was almost nonexistent. Having lived for his work for the past few years, he hadn’t developed more than a nodding relationship with anyone outside the force. With his brothers living busy lives, he seldom got together with them these days. He hadn’t laid eyes on Max or Morgan since Max’s wedding in December. And now that his grandfather, Mortimer, had taken up residence in a shoddy town that looked like the setting of a Stephen King story, he never saw him, either. Other than the drooly dog in his Jeep, he was about as unencumbered, serious and solitary as a twenty-seven-year-old New Yorker could be.
“Believe me, it’d be justifiable homicide.”
“You a lawyer?” He tensed, as any cop did at the thought of a defense attorney…almost always an enemy in the courtroom.
“No. I just play one on TV.”
At first he thought she meant she was an actress—because she could be. Not only because she was so attractive, but because she had definite character. Then she rolled her eyes and huffed out an annoyed breath that he hadn’t immediately caught her sarcasm. “I watch Law and Order, the original and all ninety of its spin-offs, okay? Now, unless you have a spare pair of women’s size eight Nikes in your car, I really need to say goodbye.”
As if assessing the chances, her eyes dropped to his feet, and for the first time, Mike realized, she really looked at him. She was finally seeing him. She’d been too ticked off, too frustrated to even spare him a real glance until now.
Now she glanced. Oh, she definitely glanced.
Her unusual eyes darkened to almost charcoal-gray and her lips parted as she drew in a few more deep breaths. He could see the way her pulse fluttered in her neck as she cast a leisurely stare from his boot-clad feet, up his faded jeans, his Yankees T-shirt, then his face. She stopped there, a flick of her tongue to moisten her lips indicating she’d seen the guy women spent a lot of time coming on to until they realized he was interested in nothing more than the few hours he could kill with them.
“Sorry, no spare footwear,” he finally said. He waited for a flirtatious comment, a come-on, a request for a lift.
He got none of those. Just a shrug, a sigh and a frown. Without warning, she swung around and started striding away, saying over her shoulder, “Okay. Have a nice—”
“Wait,” he said, jogging to catch up to her. He put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her in her tracks. But the moment his hand landed on her warm skin he realized his mistake. Looking at her had affected him. Touching her nearly stopped his heart.
Her skin was smooth. Silky. Warm and supple under the sun’s strong summer rays. And though she probably should have smacked his hand away, given that he was a complete stranger, she didn’t. She simply watched him, her eyes leaning more toward blue now, slowly shifting colors like one of those old-fashioned mood rings girls had been so crazy about when he was a kid.
“Yes?” she asked, her voice sounding thick, more throaty than it had before, which was when he knew what mood her blue eyes indicated: Awareness. Interest. Heat.
Definite heat. It was instantaneous. It was mutual. And it was also entirely unexpected considering the woman was a complete stranger…a stranger in need.
Finally, after a long, thick moment, Mike pulled his hand away, noting the whiteness his touch had left against her sunpinkened skin. Her pale, creamy complexion wouldn’t do well for much longer in this heat. He cleared his throat, wondering why his mouth had gone so dry. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?”
She hesitated, as if still affected by his touch, before replying, “Thanks, but I’m not that desperate. I don’t get into cars with total strangers.”
Smart. He didn’t blame her at all, especially considering some of the stuff he’d seen on the job. Still, he didn’t want the woman to keep stubbornly walking down the road until her feet blistered and her soft skin turned apple-red. “Do you want to use my cell phone to call for help?”
She paused, pursing her lips as she thought about it. Then, with a sigh, admitted, “There’s nobody to call. AAA wouldn’t come out unless my car was actually here. And the only family I have in town are the ones who stranded me.”
“The old ladies.”
“My aunts.” Still frowning, she added, “I don’t think I’d want the police to come help me out considering I am planning to kill those two when I get back to town.”
That startled a one-syllable laugh out of him, which he immediately halted. He also made a mental note not to tell her he was a cop. “Don’t you know anybody else in Trouble?”
“Nobody I could call, except maybe just an elderly friend of my aunts’, who we ran into at the store yesterday. I can’t even remember his whole name. It’s Ports, Potter…something like that.”
“Potts. Mortimer Potts.”
“You know him?” she asked, sounding surprised—and hopeful.
“I’m on my way to his house.”
A relieved smile finally appeared on her pretty face. “Are you, by any chance, one of his grandsons?”
“Yeah.” He put out his hand. “Mike Taylor.”
She reached out and put her hand in his, and again he couldn’t help noticing how damned soft the woman was. As if she regularly bathed in some milky lotion that made her skin constantly feel like silk.
“I’m Jennifer Feeney. Jen. Your grandfather mentioned you were coming into town today. He seems like a…nice old man.”
Mike noted the hesitation. No doubt, Mortimer was a nice old man. But that obviously hadn’t been the first word that had come to the woman’s mind. No. People usually described Mortimer as many things other than nice—eccentric, wild, dashing.
Nutty.
Not that Mike or his brothers much cared what other people thought of their grandfather. They knew him; they’d lived with him, traveling around the world on one adventure after another. There wasn’t a single thing any of his grandsons wouldn’t do for the man. Including taking down anyone who ever hurt him.
Though now eighty-one years old, Mortimer was remarkably healthy, except for some arthritis that had limited his physical activities. Anyone who saw him would think he was a sturdy seventy-year-old, with his shoulder-length white hair, tall and lanky frame, and blazing blue eyes. Of course, if he was in one of his moods, and happened to be wearing a 1940s military uniform, an Arabic thobe or chaps and a holster, they might go right back to that nutty part.
“You’re the one who lives in New York?”
He nodded.
“Me, too. I’m just visiting.”
“Small world.” Only, not. Because New York was one big city and he was constantly amazed when traveling by how many people he ran into from there. “So does this mean we’re not strangers, and you’ll let me give you a ride into town?”
She hesitated, then glanced down at her bare feet. She didn’t have much choice—if she stayed on the gravel shoulder, her feet would be torn to shreds. If she moved to the hot blacktop, they’d be fried.
Turning her head to look over her shoulder at the long road winding toward Trouble, she finally nodded. “Okay.” Then she narrowed her eyes and stared at him, hard. “But be warned, I’m keeping the tire iron. I can defend myself.”
The fierce expression was such a contradiction to the soft, silky rest of her that Mike had that unfamiliar impulse to smile again. Instead, he merely murmured, “Consider me warned.”
JENNIFER FEENEY HAD NEVER liked the town of Trouble. Not since the first time she’d laid eyes on it as a little girl. Her parents had brought her here twenty years ago, to visit her father’s reclusive sisters. She’d heard stories about the town of Trouble, and her elderly aunts Ida Mae and Ivy, since she was small. They had come to visit once or twice, but nothing had prepared Jen to visit them in Trouble.
Even as a child, she’d felt the strangeness of the place. From the wary watchfulness of the residents to the tangled bramble where parks had once stood, the town laid out an Un-welcome mat that urged visitors to leave. It was hard to imagine her cheerful, teddy bear of a father had grown up here.
Worst of all had been the two shadowy buildings where the aunts resided. The old Victorian homes hovered over the north end of town, side by side, two dark birds of prey on vigilant watch for fresh meat. Though she’d only been eight during that visit, Jen had already had a good imagination. When she’d seen the two houses, with their sagging facades, shuttered windows and worn siding, she’d immediately thought of them as the sisters.
Ida Mae’s house was dour and forbidding, what was left of its paint the color of a stormy sky, angry and wet. Its jagged railings and the spiky bars over the windows had given it the appearance of a prison. The black front door seemed like an open mouth waiting to swallow anyone who ventured onto the crumbling porch. Unadorned, ghostly against the clouds, the place had perfectly matched its owner, the dark and stern Ida Mae.
Ivy’s was even worse.
It had apparently once been a gentle yellow, but any cheery gentility had long been eradicated. Tangled vines crawled like garden snakes up toward the roof. Cracks in the water-stained walls revealed odd shapes that had looked too much like spiders and monsters to her eight-year-old eyes. And the whole foundation had appeared slightly sunken on the right, as if the house were a stroke victim whose face hadn’t quite recovered.
Where Ida Mae’s house was merely dark and unwelcoming, Ivy’s was a freakish combination of lightness and rabid death. Garish and frightening. Much like the old lady herself.
Of the two of them, Ivy had scared her the most, because she was so terribly unpredictable. At times a charming hostess, then a raging shrew, she was the one Jen should have tried to avoid. But she’d also been the most interesting, so often talking to herself, or to invisible, long-dead friends.
The one-sided conversations and stories the woman told had fascinated Jen. She’d often sat unnoticed, listening, until Ivy snapped out of one of her trances long enough to shoo her away. Sometimes with a threat to sell her to the child catcher who, in Jen’s dreams, looked just like Ivy. Rail-thin, bony and menacing.
She supposed she ought to thank the aunts for one thing: they’d made finding out she was adopted a bit more bearable. She’d taken the news from her parents shortly after her twentieth birthday with surprising good grace. Surprising to them, she supposed. Considering she’d long wished she didn’t share the blood of the aunts, the news hadn’t been all that unwelcome.
Over the years, though she and her parents had lived in Connecticut—not too far away—the visits to Trouble had been few. Until a little over a year ago when her father, after having a massive heart attack, had elicited a promise from her to take over the care of his elderly sisters. She’d promised, of course. She would have promised him anything at that point.
Her father had, thankfully, survived and he and her mother had retired to North Carolina last fall. But because he’d been so weakened by the experience, Jen had insisted on keeping her promise. She loved him too much to allow him to deal with the old witches on a regular basis. That was exactly the kind of stress his doctor said could end up killing him.
Taking over the aunts’ mangled finances, she’d made sure their electricity remained on and their account at the grocery store was paid. Ida Mae and Ivy supposedly had money, each having been widowed by wealthy men—Ivy under suspicious circumstances.
But they were miserly and kept whatever they had well hidden. So it was a good thing Jen’s first two satirical advice books had exploded in popularity: she was supporting the pair.
She sensed her father wouldn’t be happy about that, but she didn’t want to bother him with it. Besides, what else did she have to spend her money on? It wasn’t as if she had a husband and kids. And though she liked nice clothes, she couldn’t see paying a fortune for them. She hadn’t wanted to give up the same rent-controlled apartment she’d been living in since she’d gotten her start as the “Single in the City” advice columnist at Her Life magazine fresh out of grad school. So her living expenses hadn’t gone up after her unexpected success.
And, the aunts lived in Trouble, Pennsylvania, which wasn’t exactly on the top-ten list of towns with a high cost of living. She wasn’t sure it would even hit the bottom ten, since it was a town only by the loosest definition of the word.
Still, she was paying the bills, which was why she’d come on this most recent trip. The aunts were both in their seventies, Ivy so frail she looked as if a falling leaf could knock her down. Jen wanted them to move out of their dangerous, death-trap old houses and into an assisted-living facility where they could torment professionals, rather than each other.
Preferably one far away from New York City.
The minute she’d mentioned the possibility, however, they’d made their position clear. They’d tricked her out of her shoes, out of her car, and stranded her in the middle of nowhere.
“Guess they didn’t like the idea,” she mumbled as she followed the dark, sexy stranger who’d come to her rescue.
“What?” asked the dark, sexy stranger in question as he came to an abrupt halt in front of her.
She almost walked right into him. Except she somehow didn’t, mainly by sticking her hand out so it landed hard on his back, sending him stumbling a step forward. “Sorry.”
“At least you didn’t knock into me with the hand holding the deadly weapon,” he said as he turned around to face her.
Though from some men the comment would have sounded teasing, he sounded very serious. As if he’d wondered if he’d been exposing himself to danger by walking in front of her…As if she might have cracked him over the head and stolen his car.
“I’m really not dangerous, you don’t have to be nervous about giving me a ride,” she said, trying to ease his worries.
Finally, a twinkle appeared in those dark, dreamy brown eyes of his, which indicated the man might actually know how to express good humor beyond that half cough, half laugh he’d let out earlier. “I’m so relieved.”
“I was mumbling about my aunts,” she said, wondering why she suddenly felt flustered.
“Talking to yourself, then?”
Again that twinkle appeared, and she wondered if he was laughing at her. But before she could decide, he swung around and started walking again, leaving her flustered. It was an unaccustomed feeling. And an unwelcome one.
Then she gave herself a break…. How could she not be feeling a little flustered when, for the first time in months, she’d met a very hot guy who didn’t want to throw her in front of a train because of the books she’d written?
A hot guy. Oh, yes, indeed.
Her aunts had consumed her thoughts, but nothing could stop the genuine, feminine response to a man like this one for long. Walking behind him, she couldn’t help noticing the way the man filled out his jeans. Perfectly.
A great male tush was probably the only thing that could distract her from the dark emotions she’d been having about her aunts, and she enjoyed the view during the last few steps to his Jeep. He was, quite simply, magnificent, from the tips of his jet-black hair to the bottoms of his feet.
She didn’t see a lot of sexy, rugged males these days, not since she’d left her columnist job at Her Life to focus on her books. The last two new men she’d met had moved into her apartment building in recent weeks. One, old Mr. Jones, looked like Frankenstein’s sidekick, Igor, and had already been over to borrow everything from the phone book to toilet paper.
Fortunately for anyone he might call, he hadn’t seemed to need them both at the same time.
But at least he wasn’t downright slimy. Unlike Frank, the new super hired by her landlord. At their first meeting, he’d made some pretty revolting come-on suggestions involving his tool belt, some chocolate syrup and a tube of lubricating jelly.
When he’d found out she was a published writer, Frank had started scheming. Claiming his grandfather had been somebody famous once, he swore he had tons of stories he could tell her. She, he proposed, could write the stories and they’d split the money fifty-fifty, getting rich together.
Uh…like she hadn’t heard that before.
But things hadn’t gotten really bad with Frank until he’d recognized her from the picture on the back of her latest book. All pickup attempts had ceased as he’d proceeded to blast her for making his last girlfriend dump him. It seemed the woman had grown a spine. Or some good taste. Or just a distaste for chocolate syrup and lubricating jelly.
Despite having a romantic track record that made Bridget Jones’s look stellar, Jen didn’t long to be standard bearer for hard-ass women. But if her books helped one woman decide to ditch a pot-bellied, greasy-haired guy with onion breath and jeans that hugged the crack of his butt, she figured her job had been well done.
Of course, she’d had to live with leaky pipes, stuck windows and a broken ice maker for the past few months. Not to mention hate mail and, recently, some disturbing phone calls that had forced her to have her phone number changed. Twice.
Despite what some men thought, Jen’s sarcastic books were meant more as black-comedy satires than advice-for-women pieces. Erma Bombeck with snark. Dave Barry with cattiness. That was what the reviewers said, anyway. Even with a master’s in psychology, she’d never set herself up as some kind of marriage counselor. The books were the result of letters she’d received from readers of Her Life, battle stories from friends and coworkers.
And her own experiences with men she’d dated, including four straight Manhattan losers interested only in money until 6:00 p.m. and only in sex until 6:00 a.m.
Women’s romantic misery was, after all, a universal, timeless theme. She’d even included some of her crazy old relatives’ tales. Aunt Ivy was a font of information regarding the battle of the sexes…and if some of the stories were true, she’d been a lethal weapon during that battle for many years.
But some men just had no sense of humor and didn’t get the joke. Probably, despite that tiny twinkle, like this one. The one whose jeans rode his hard body perfectly, hugging lean hips and enfolding some strong male thighs in their faded blue fabric. Those flinty brownish-black eyes might have shown a tiny hint of humor, but his short, barked laugh really hadn’t. It had sounded creaky, as if it didn’t get much use.
Nope, not much of a sense of humor here. Just as well. A jolly disposition wouldn’t go with that rock-hard jaw, wide, tightly controlled mouth and his thick, dark hair cut short and spiky. He looked like the type who should be dressed in army fatigues, holding an AK-47, blowing up buildings on a big screen at a movie theater. Tough enough to be dangerous…Sexy enough to be the next box-office action hero.
With about as much personality as a two-dimensional character. He was so sure of her he didn’t even wait to see if she was coming. Nor was he courteous enough to offer her any help. Her feet could be bloody stumps for all he knew.
This guy obviously hadn’t learned charm from his very eccentric grandfather, who’d been so gentlemanly he’d make a young Cary Grant seem like a bum. And to hear her aunts talk, he was just about as sexy, too.
Don’t go there, a voice in her head screamed as she remembered some of the innuendo the women had dropped after their meeting with Mr. Potts. She did not want to know what went on in the Feeney sisters’ bedrooms, especially since seeing the Kama Sutra sheets in Ida Mae’s washing machine.
Jen didn’t know which bothered her more—the idea of Ida Mae and Ivy sharing a man. Or the thought that her seventy-something-year-old relatives were getting it—wildly—while she hadn’t had even the most basic, boring, twist-push-thrust missionary sex in so long her diaphragm probably no longer fit.
“Buckle up,” her reluctant rescuer said as she got in the Jeep, casting a quick glance at the mixed-breed dog sprawled on the back seat. The animal barely lifted his head in greeting.
Man’s best friend was just as polite as the man in this case.
“Don’t worry, he’s friendly.”
Right. Just like his owner.
“The worst he might do is drool on you.”
Her pretty new Saks sundress was already windblown, grass-stained, and dinged with the gravel and road dirt her car’s tires had flung at her as she’d tried to chase down her aunts. A little dog drool probably wouldn’t hurt much.
“What’s his name?” she asked, mainly to fill the vehicle with conversation as they started to drive toward town.
“Mutt.”
“Mutt,” she repeated. “That’s all?”
The driver shrugged. “I tried other names. It’s the only one he even remotely answered to. So it stuck.”
Wonderful. A guy so cryptic and self-contained he couldn’t even be bothered to name his dog. Good thing he wasn’t in the running for Mr. Personality. And good thing she wasn’t in the running for a man. Uh-uh, no way.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like men—despite her books, she did like them. She especially liked having sex with them. Not that she’d had any recently—like, since her first book had been published and her then-lover had read it. He’d been out the door before she’d done her first book signing. Which had also been one of her last book signings considering the number of men who’d shown up to yell at her for ruining their formerly docile girlfriends and wives. Or shown up to make her see the error of her ways by using smarmy charm to try to pick her up. Ick.
That had been two years ago, and since then, the former Single in the City girl hadn’t had as much as a date. But she sure had made friends with the UPS delivery woman who regularly brought the plain brown wrapped packages Jen ordered from sites like havesexalone.com.
Not that it mattered. Her life was too full to deal with any more complications…male ones in particular. Especially moody, six-foot-two piles of hotness like the one sitting beside her. Whether sex with another person was involved or not.