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MILLS & BOON
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In tribute to my great-aunt Ruby
and her farmhouse—my haven.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Chapter 1
There was a skull in her rose bed.
Keely Schiffer swiped the hair out of her eyes, felt the damp, cool smear of fresh dirt she’d applied to her cheek in the process, along with the sensation of her insides starting to crawl. The shovel dropped out of her other hand.
That wasn’t really a skull, was it? It was probably just a rock. A big one. With gaping eye sockets—
Somebody screamed.
She realized that somebody had been her and that somehow she’d ended up about three feet back without being aware of her feet moving. Yes, that was a skull, a human skull. She should call the police. She hated calling the police. She’d called the police too many times lately. And they’d called her too many times to count. That’s what happened when your husband had a lot of secrets you didn’t know about and then got himself killed doing something stupid—
Oh, God. Was this another one of Ray’s secrets?
It was Ray who’d had the bright idea of digging up this bed. Plant some roses, he’d said. Then he’d dug the crap out of it, torn out the old boxwood hedges, and left it in a big mess last fall right before—
Keely staggered back a few more steps then forced herself to move forward again to the hole she’d dug. She stood on trembling legs, her heart beating fast. Do something.
It took her ten seconds to decide. As if there was a decision to make.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. A sudden whip of wind tore through the West Virginia mountain hollow, buffeting leftover dead leaves from winter across the short grass. Another spring storm was on the way. She wasn’t going to get the gorgeous hybrid tea roses planted in time. She wasn’t going to get them planted today at all, not until the police were finished…. And she’d been so looking forward to this one day off to play outside in the dirt and sunshine. She looked back at the neatly lined-up roses, ready for planting. They had a short growing season here in the mountain region. She needed to get her bushes planted. That thought had seemed really important just about five minutes ago.
Her head reeled. She ran for the back door of the house, burst inside and reached for the phone. She punched 911 before the reality of the silent air hit her.
The phone was out.
The old house settled still and heavy around her. The farm was five miles outside Haven on a road so narrow, to pass another car one vehicle or the other had to pull over on the weedy shoulder. Sugar Run Farm had been in her family for four generations. It wasn’t unusual for the phone to go out, storm or no storm. Inconveniences were par for the course in the boonies. There was no cell signal, no cable. They were lucky to have satellite TV. Dickie the mechanic provided personal service…. Including picking up his customers’ vehicles on site then dropping them back off.
The windows on her ten-year-old Ford pickup weren’t operating properly. Dickie had picked it up first thing this morning, promising it back by tonight. No phone. No vehicle. Not too big of a problem normally, especially on her day off.
Except for the skull in her rose bed and some really scary thoughts about how it might have gotten there.
But it wasn’t an emergency, was it? It had been there since last fall…. Probably. And she’d been living right here all this time, sleeping soundly in spite of it. No reason for alarm now….
And yet, she was alarmed. Creeped out. She’d never minded being alone all the way out here.
Till now.
Row after row after row of timeworn family photographs stared down at her from the parlor walls as she cradled the portable phone back on its base. Through the large front window, she could see the day darkening swiftly. Wind crackled through the leaves on the two maple trees out front. Rain poured down, then the house gave a sudden shake.
Something crashed in the kitchen.
She ran the short distance, pulse thudding. A large cookie jar shaped like a windmill lay shattered on the floor, jostled off the shelf over the cabinets. Staring down at the broken cream-and-blue ceramic jar, she realized something small and shiny sat in the middle of the shards.
She paused for a long beat, glancing up at the ceiling. Had a tree struck the house? Nothing else made sense…. Dammit, she’d have to go check, make sure there wasn’t water coming into the attic just in case it had been a tree.
Glancing down again, she reached for the foil-wrapped box. She had a second’s instinctive temptation to play the childlike game of shaking it lightly, trying to guess what was inside. Her chest tightened. It was silver Christmas wrap with a tone-on-tone pattern of bells and ribbons, but the peel-and-stick holiday label with the bright caricature of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer on one end said Happy Birthday, Baby.
In Ray’s writing.
So like Ray to not buy any real birthday wrapping, just use what he found in the house then stick something of possible value where probably even he would have forgotten it.
So not like Ray to buy her a gift that he had to have wrapped six months in advance since he’d died last fall and her birthday was tomorrow….
A pounding had the small wrapped box falling out of her hand and rolling onto the shards. It took her a minute to realize the noise was coming from the door, not the roof. God, she was on edge.
Finding a skull in your rose garden did that to a person. She didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry at that thought. As for the gift from the grave from Ray…
That was just weird. And sad. She’d figured out a long time ago that her marriage had been a result of youthful stupidity. But she had loved him nonetheless, in the way you can love a troublesome child, and she was determined to forget and forgive and move on. She hadn’t been a perfect wife, either—
Whoever was at the door banged on it again. Impatient. She ran across the slightly slanted parlor floor—the foundation of the one-hundred-year-old farmhouse had shifted off-kilter more years ago than she knew about—and grabbed the handle. The carved wooden door swung inward, revealing a broad-shouldered figure, his profile shadowed on the porch overhang in the storm-darkened afternoon. Rain splattered down behind the man, puddles already forming in the yard. A very late model, very expensive-looking, very not-often-seen-around-these-parts sports car was pulled over and parked under the old oak by the cracked and crumbling concrete walk leading up to the house.
She found herself looking into the deepest green eyes she’d ever seen, fringed with incredible lashes. Near-black hair, on the long side, was plastered to his head, fanning the collar of his T-shirt. He hadn’t escaped the burst of rain before he’d made it onto her porch.
“Keely Schiffer?”
He looked—and sounded—a little tense, even angry. Stubble shadowed his strong, well-defined jaw. He was dressed casually in faded jeans with a rip in one knee and a black tee under a leather bomber jacket, but there was nothing laid-back about his hard-edged demeanor.
He looked dangerous. And not in a good mood.
A shiver rippled up her spine and she couldn’t decide if it was trepidation or, shockingly, attraction.
“Yes?” And you are—
“Jake Malloy,” he said without her having to voice that question. “I was up at the Foodway and they said you hadn’t left the keys to the Evans house. I was under the impression they would be there for me to pick up. Today.”
Now she knew why he was mad. She’d set up the rental last week when he’d called. It was her fault for forgetting to leave the keys as arranged. And very out of character.
“Spring fever must have taken over my brain. I’m so sorry—”
He cut off her attempt at apology. “And I’m wet, miles out of my way, and I have other things to do. Do you have the keys?”
Well, now they had established that he was an ass. Good thing she hadn’t noticed that he was also heartthrob material, especially since she was all done with men anyway. Not that she didn’t like men. She liked plenty of males, mostly the ones who were related to her and were under the age of twelve. And yet she found herself remembering that she probably had dirt smeared on her face and she definitely had dirt on her jeans and the bright-yellow Haven Honeybees high school booster club T-shirt she was wearing.
He was probably six foot two, which had the effect of making her feel unusually feminine and petite at her five foot eight. That’s all it was. And there was that bad-boy heartthrob thing, of course, that made her think of mindless sex.
Mindless sex with a stranger. Hot and raw and wild. One fantasy before she died.
Her pulse raced a little. Stop it, she warned herself. Really, she didn’t even like him so far and she was thinking about having sex with him? Was she losing her mind? She had enough problems at the moment without making any new ones up.
Like, that skull in her rose bed….
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. He could be rude; she couldn’t. She had exactly two ways to earn money since Ray died—she’d taken over the small Foodway store in town he’d made the monumental mistake and command decision to mortgage her inheritance against, and she also handled local leasing properties as a sideline. Well, she let one of the neighbors run cattle on the farm and put up hay twice a year. But that didn’t cut it, with the farm slipping through her fingers because of the store’s sliding profit margin since the big warehouse-style grocery outlet had opened in the next town over last summer. “I have the keys. I forgot to leave them up at the store. I’ll get them. It’ll just take a sec.”
She left him standing there and ran back to the kitchen. “So what kind of work do you do?” she called back to him through the screen. She’d left the main door open. Maybe he couldn’t hear her over the rain lashing down, but he didn’t answer. She remembered asking him why he was coming to Haven when he’d arranged the lease. He’d changed the subject then. And now—
The keys were on a hook on the wall with a little paper tag that read Evans. The rental house was, in fact, straight across the road from the Foodway, so no doubt he was extra annoyed that he’d had to drive all the way out in the country to find her. Or he was just an impatient ass and if he wasn’t pissed off about one thing, he’d be pissed off about another.
She headed back to the door. “What brings you to Haven?”
“Business,” he said briefly.
“What kind of business?” Did she really want to know or was she just being passive-aggressive at this point? She wasn’t really sure. He didn’t want to tell her anything, she was sure of that.
“I need to get going if you’ve got those keys.”
She felt as if he’d smacked her hand. And maybe she just didn’t really want him to go, even if he was an ass. She’d be alone again, just her and that skull and Ray’s gift from the grave.
“Here you go.” She leaned out between the doorjamb and the screen door just enough to pass him the keys. Their fingers brushed oh-so-briefly and she told herself to ignore the crackle of waking female libido that had no place in her life.
He was good-looking—so what? Good-looking and a little secretive. Even if she was interested in dating, which she was not, she’d had enough of the mysterious type. And he was surly to boot. And really, maybe he was a criminal. Drug activity had leaked out of the city, into rural communities. Maybe he was a thug. He certainly looked like one.
“My phone’s out,” she went on. “So if you tried to call from the store—” Not that she would have been able to drive the keys up there anyway since she didn’t have her truck.
“Thanks for the keys.” He didn’t sound like he meant that and he was already turning away.
“Wait!” Keely bit her lip. How was she supposed to say this? “My phone is out, like I said, and my truck is in the shop—”
He stood there, still looking annoyed and impatient. Mr. Tall, Dark and Pissed Off didn’t look helpful, and she really didn’t want to tell this stranger why she needed to get the authorities out to her farm. I think my husband might have buried a body out back…. No. Not saying that.
“Never mind,” she finished. “I hope you enjoy the house. You know what they say about Haven—it’s just one letter short of Heaven.” She gave him a polite smile that he didn’t return. Jerk. She still didn’t like him leaving, though.
She let the screen door shut. Alone again, just her and the dead body out back. The man turned to step off the porch.
Did it really matter if she contacted the police today? Her phone would be back, eventually. Or her truck would.
The skull and whatever else that went along with it in the garden wasn’t going anywhere…. Not that this was a particularly comforting thought. She was just going to have to be a grown-up about the situation. She didn’t need a man to take care of her, or so she’d decided. That meant handling anything that came her way.
Another huge gust swept down the mountain hollow and a crack tore the air, followed by a loud smack. And she realized Mr. Tall, Dark and Pissed Off wasn’t going anywhere, either.
Not unless he was Superman and could pick an entire oak tree off his very expensive and probably very totalled car.
Chapter 2
He couldn’t believe his eyes. The car was going to be a complete loss.
Sort of like his day so far. And most of the past several months.
Jake Malloy tore his stunned gaze from the mangled vehicle and glanced back at the woman banging out the doorway of the farmhouse in that eye-popping yellow T-shirt of hers. Shoulder-length gold hair framed her suddenly pale face, making her milk-chocolate eyes stand out all the more.
She was sexy as hell and she’d been annoying him since the first time he’d talked to her on the phone last week about the rental. She asked too many questions—then and now. And he wasn’t interested in providing any answers no matter how sexy she might be.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Your beautiful car! I’m so sorry!”
“Stop apologizing. You’re not in charge of the wind, you know.”
He sounded cold and rude, he knew. He was too filled with anger, too much negative emotion, for social niceties, that was all. Not too long ago, he’d had a successful career in the Charleston P.D. and he’d been a pretty decent guy. Then one fateful case had blown his life to hell and he’d spiraled into a black hole he was just beginning to dig his way out of. Supposedly, a little R&R was going to help.
“It’s not your fault.” He kept his voice ruthlessly hard as he went on. All he wanted now was to get the hell out of there and back to town. He moved, causing her to drop her hand from his arm, and turned to step off the porch. “I’ll see if I can get my cell phone out of there and—”
“Cells don’t work here. No signal.”
He swore under his breath and wheeled back. She was staring at him, her pretty face and clear eyes looking fresh and innocent, and a little wary. If Haven was one letter short of Heaven, she was an angel.
But she was no angel, no matter how sweet she looked. And Haven was turning into sheer hell and he’d only been in town an hour.
“And my truck’s in the shop,” she reminded him.
“Where’s the closest neighbor?”
“A mile that way.” She nodded in one direction. “A mile and a half the other way.” She indicated the other direction.
Rain poured in sheets. Wind blasted down the damn hollow, rattling leaves and jangling chimes hanging from one end of the porch. The warmer temperatures from earlier in the day were dipping quickly.
“And when it rains like this, the low water bridge flash floods,” she added. “It’s very dangerous, even if you wanted to get yourself soaked hiking off to find someone who would give you a lift. It wouldn’t be smart to try it. The water rises fast, faster than people expect sometimes.”
She looked fragile and worried suddenly. A little bit haunted. Generally, he was good at sizing people up. Decoding body language—every movement, every look and expression—was his business, which was also why he knew that the clues could be unreliable as hell. People smiled for all sorts of reasons and happiness was only one of them, and pathological liars could lie with flawless eye contact. The more information that could be gathered, the more likely the decoding would be accurate.
His instincts had him wondering what had brought that pained expression to Keely Schiffer’s face, but he reminded himself that he didn’t need to know and pushed the question aside.
Looking away from her, he stared out at the wild weather for a heavy beat. He didn’t really give a rat’s ass about the car other than its function as transportation. It used to be important to him, his pet, his baby, and he’d invested a ridiculous amount of his modest income in it. It didn’t seem important now. But he did care about being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, and for God knew how long. Another one of life’s fun twists….
Jake breathed deeply, summoning the strength and willpower to push back his own pain and control the razor-sharp edge of his temper. She didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of emotions that weren’t her responsibility, though he had to wonder why the hell anyone lived out here in the sticks. He was a city boy, born and bred. This little trek to Haven hadn’t been his idea, but he’d do anything, anything, to get his life back.
He looked back to find her still staring at him.
“If it doesn’t keep up like this too long, the creek’ll go down in a few hours,” she said. “Dickie—he’s the mechanic—will be back with my truck then, or the phones’ll come back on. Or we can find you a ride.”
She was talking as if this was her problem, too. For some reason, that stabbed him with a slice of hot hurt.
Wind blew a piece of her sunshine hair in her face. She brushed it out of the way, tucked it behind her ear. He could almost feel the small, soft curve of the shell of her ear beneath his fingertips…. And those eyes of hers. They were compelling, private yet vulnerable.
He forcibly reminded himself that he wasn’t interested. Period.
But he wasn’t getting away that easily. Not yet.
She waved him into the house. “Come on. Come inside. It’s getting cold out here, and you’re going to get wet. Wetter,” she corrected.
He was already plenty wet, but she was right about one thing. Rain was blowing sideways onto the porch. And was he imagining it or was there something beseeching about her expression? As if she wanted him there. Almost as if she was relieved that he was stuck there for some reason.
She was hard to read, even for him, and that was bugging him.
“I’m a complete stranger. You don’t know me from Adam.” He had the stupid urge to tell her not to trust people. At all. Ever. He could go inside her house, and do anything he wanted to her after that. Not that he would. But a woman like her, alone out in this godforsaken countryside, shouldn’t be asking strange men into her home. She seemed…nice. Genuinely nice, even if slightly annoying and nosy.
He felt an unexpected and uncomfortable sense of protectiveness toward her that he fought to shake off. It wasn’t his concern if she was hopelessly naive about human nature.
“You don’t look like a serial killer,” she said flippantly, even as her sweet chocolate eyes studied him. “You’re not in the big city now. You’re in Haven. We’re friendly here.” She shrugged. “The people at the store sent you over here. You’re not going to hurt me unless you’re stupid. You’re not stupid, are you? Anything happens to me today, my friends’ll be looking for you, not to mention my family. Especially with your car sitting right out front.”
His car that wasn’t going anywhere. She had a point, but it was unrelated to why he really didn’t want to go inside her house.
“I’ll fix you something to drink,” she said cheerily. “I owe you anyway for all the trouble of driving out here to get the keys, and if you hadn’t had to do that, you wouldn’t be stuck out here now with a tree trunk on top of your car.”
She was already walking into the house, leaving the screen door to bang behind her and the front door open. Her slim, sexy figure disappeared through the shadowed parlor even as she kept talking, seeming to simply expect him to follow. He opened the screen door and stepped inside in spite of himself.
“You want water or tea?” she called back to him. “Or I’ve got some Coke.”
He walked through the front room, a parlor with a slanted, scuffed hardwood floor. Rows of antique-looking photographs filled the room, solemn-faced eyes following him from the walls. The house smelled good, like cinnamon and sugar. Homey. Not that it was anything like the home he’d grown up in on the seedier streets of Charleston. Homey like…you saw on The Andy Griffith Show. He half expected to find Aunt Bea in the kitchen, pulling fresh-baked coffee cake out of the oven.
He arrived in the open doorframe between the kitchen and the parlor. She’d gotten down an amber-colored glass from a cabinet and was pulling every beverage known to man out of the fridge. Coke, iced tea, lemonade, milk…She’d probably offer him a cookie next.
And she was still talking.
“I’ve got sweet tea made, but if you don’t like sweet, I can make some unsweetened. I don’t mind.”
“I’ll just take some water.” He didn’t really care, truth be told. The whole scene suddenly felt terribly domestic. When was the last time he’d been in a kitchen with an attractive woman?
He didn’t want to remember, but of course he could. Sheila had lived with him for two years in their nice, newly-constructed, cookie-cutter condo in South Charleston. She’d wanted to get married. He’d been in no hurry. Maybe he’d known all along it wasn’t going to work out.
Sheila hadn’t wasted any time when things had gone bad. Sooner was better than later, he figured. He and Sheila would have never made it anyway. She’d just been…convenient, for a while. He’d scarcely looked at a woman since. He liked being alone, detached.
And yet he found himself watching Keely Schiffer with a sort of odd and uneasy longing. Ghost pain, he thought wryly, like a patient who felt sensation in an amputated limb. He didn’t think he missed Sheila, or her constant pressure.
He hadn’t realized till now that he’d been missing anything at all other than work.
“Please sit down,” she said when she finally gave him the glass. “Well, I hate to say it, but this rain is a good thing because we’ve had an awfully dry spring. I’m just so sorry about your car. Some welcome to Haven for you, huh?”
She pulled out a chair when he didn’t. He scooted it around a pile of broken pottery he noticed on the floor as he sat. He placed the glass on the table.