The Big Heat

Jennifer Labrecque

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Rhonda Nelson. You’ll get the dead body call.

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

1

“SUNNY TEMPLETON needs a decent man,” Marlene announced as Cade Stone stepped through the door of AA Atco Bail Bond.

The office manager pinned him with a speculative look, causing Cade to consider turning around and walking right back out. He had no interest in being slotted into the decent man role, even if it was Sunny Templeton. His brother, Linc, had fallen into that trap and he’d wound up engaged. Not just no, but hell no.

Cade tracked down FTAs—failures to appear—those folks who decided, for whatever reason, to skip their court dates. Once he found them, he hauled them back to jail. They weren’t always nice and they were never glad to see him. But if he could handle them, he could certainly handle Marlene…even if she was in matchmaking mode. The glass door finally swung shut behind him, muffling the noise of Memphis traffic along Poplar Street.

“Perfect timing,” Linc said with a smirk from where he stood propped in his office doorway.

“Don’t look at me,” Cade said. “I don’t have a decent bone in my body.”

“Ha! You’ve got more decency in your little finger than some people have in their entire body,” Marlene said. “Have you seen this?” She waved a flyer at him.

“It’s Cecil. He’s playing dirty.” Linc nodded toward the flyer, looking uncharacteristically sheepish. He held up his hand. “I know. I got us into it and it was a bad idea.”

The hair on the back of Cade’s neck stood up at the mention of Cecil Meeks, incumbent city council member. Cade possessed excellent people instincts and those instincts had not been happy when he met Cecil. Unfortunately, he hadn’t met the man until after Linc had cut a deal to endorse the city councilman in his reelection campaign.

When competition in the form of True Blue American Bail Bonds had moved in down the street, AAAtco’s business had taken a sizeable hit. Linc’s fiancée, Georgia, had suggested billboard ads featuring Linc and Cade. According to Georgia, they were hot, good-looking guys, and it didn’t hurt that they’d brought in top dollar at a bachelor charity auction they’d been roped into the year before last.

Since it was mostly women bailing men out of jail, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to follow her reasoning. Unfortunately, with business down, they didn’t have the money to buy the billboard space…and that was where Meeks came in.

Cecil Meeks was a media whore whose face was everywhere. And while AA Atco wasn’t looking at the political side of it, they definitely needed the exposure. A couple of cable-TV ads and four huge billboards that caught commuter traffic later, they’d gotten it. There had definitely been a change in their bottom line thanks to the publicity. But Cade hadn’t liked Cecil from the minute he’d met him. There hadn’t been anything specific, just a general dislike and mistrust.

So, Linc’s announcement that Cecil was playing dirty didn’t surprise Cade in the least.

Unlike Cecil, though, Marlene was good people. She’d been a classy addition to AA Atco when she’d taken on the job of office manager six months prior, following her husband’s midlife crisis with a Vegas showgirl and their subsequent divorce.

“Just take a look at this,” Marlene said, bristling with outrage.

Cade took the offered sheet of paper. Ever since they’d done the ads with Cecil, Cade had followed the city council race and the candidates. Sunny Templeton had an impressive record. She’d brought a lot of energy and good ideas to the various committees she’d served on in the past couple of years and was campaigning on the same. As of yesterday she’d pulled slightly ahead of Cecil in the polls.

A red banner across the top of the flyer shouted, “Do you want this party girl for city council?” The rest was obviously a page lifted directly from a singles’ Web site. A quarter-page picture of a blonde in a bikini holding what appeared to be a mixed drink in her hand smiled at the camera with the most startling, amazing eyes.

At that moment, Cade felt as if he’d just been jolted with a stun gun, the impact ricocheting through him all the way to the soles of his feet in his black flak boots. It was as if she stared straight into him, through him. And every protective instinct he possessed—and that was more than a few—was roused.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked, putting the flyer back on Marlene’s desk.

Linc pushed away from the doorjamb. “I met Georgia at the mall during her lunch hour to look at china patterns—”

“China patterns? You were looking at dishes?” Cade stared at Linc. A month ago, the man would’ve gouged out his eyes before he went to look at china patterns.

Linc shrugged nonchalantly. “Hey, if it makes Georgia happy…”

That his brother had been reduced to this was just…sad. Cade was at a loss. His siblings were obviously losing their respective minds. In the span of three months both his sister, Gracie, and Linc had gotten engaged. The office had become damn wedding central.

Lately, too, he’d caught Gracie and Marlene looking at him like his single status was a problem to be solved. No, thanks. He’d stick with the dating rule they’d picked up from their father. Keep it light, keep it simple and never date a woman for more than four weeks.

It wasn’t the wedding part that was so bad, but the falling in love business. Gracie he could almost understand, she’d only been eight when their mother died. But he didn’t know what the hell had happened to Linc. Linc knew better. He’d been twelve, old enough. He’d seen the way their father had been crushed when their mother died in a car accident. If Cade hadn’t stepped up to the plate, God knows what would’ve happened to them while Martin spent three months buried in a bottle. It’d been a harsh lesson that love could damn near destroy you and Cade had tried his best to watch out for Gracie and Linc over the years. All he could do now was shake his head over Linc doing something as stupid as falling in love. He worried about both of them leaving themselves so vulnerable.

“So, you were picking out china at the mall?”

“Yeah. When we finished we found the flyer shoved under the windshield wiper. It was on every car in the parking lot.”

“I hope she’s got someone in her corner to back her up,” Marlene said with a pointed look in Cade’s direction.

Despite the fact that Marlene’s comment was manipulative, Cade did feel protective. It was his nature. Even though it was damned inconvenient at times, he couldn’t even pass a stranded motorist without stopping to help. Plus, he never should’ve ignored his gut with Meeks. He felt damn guilty that they’d campaigned against Sunny by endorsing Meeks.

“I wish we’d never endorsed him,” Marlene said, uncannily echoing his thoughts. “You boys are better than that.” At thirty-four and thirty-two, Cade and Linc weren’t exactly boys but Marlene liked to refer to them that way and they let her. She pursed her lips. “Do you think he made it up?”

Cade shook his head. “I’m not a Meeks fan but I don’t think he wrote it. It’d be too easy for him to get caught.”

“How embarrassing for poor Sunny,” Marlene said, slanting a look at Cade. “Like I said, she needs a decent man.”

The phone rang and Marlene took the call, sparing Cade the need to reply.

He picked up the flyer again and studied it. Shoulder-length blond hair, nice smile, okay figure but nice legs, average height. Not knock-you-down gorgeous but those eyes…And why’d he have a gut-clenching sense of recognition deep inside him?

He shifted from one foot to the other and deliberately looked away from her picture. According to the flyer, her interests were running—that explained the nice legs—stained-glass design and urban revitalization.

Linc looked over his shoulder. “Looks like a nice woman.”

“Yep.” Attraction—intense, irrational, unwelcome—stabbed at him. “Not my type,” Cade added, just to set the record straight. He liked his women laid-back, easy-going. Marlene had used the word shallow, which he considered a bit harsh. This woman, despite her easy smile, struck him as intense. No, thanks. Instinct told him she’d be trouble with a capital T. “I’m just looking.”

“You and every other guy in Memphis,” Linc said.

A totally alien, proprietary feeling swamped Cade. What a piss-him-off idea that every other guy in Memphis was looking at her picture and feeling the same feeling of…he didn’t even know how to describe it. He just knew he didn’t like it.

Linc canted his head to the side. “Those are some nice legs. Not that I’m actually looking, ’cause Georgia would have my ass.”

“Yeah? Then maybe you shouldn’t look. She might drag you out to pick china patterns again.”

“Easy, bro.”

“We all have to vote for her,” Marlene said, jumping back into the conversation after hanging up the phone. “I, for one, don’t appreciate and am not taken in by a smear campaign. Boys?”

Linc threw up his hands. “Hey, I’m there. Count me in.”

Cade put the flyer back on Marlene’s desk. “Sure. But we might as well piss in the wind. She’s screwed.”

And in the meantime, he’d make a phone call. He didn’t want to get involved and he sure as hell didn’t want to meet her, but maybe he could help from behind the scenes.

“WHAT A SPINELESS TOAD,” Sunny Templeton fumed.

“If you think you’re going to faint, put your head between your knees,” Sheila, her mentor, friend and campaign manager instructed.

Sunny stared at the flyer. “I’m not going to faint but my head may very well explode.” She sucked in a deep breath, trying to control the temper that occasionally got her in trouble.

“Exploding heads aren’t good,” Sheila said.

“Nope. And exploding heads don’t figure out where to go from here.” She rested her head against the steering wheel of her ’67 ragtop Mustang and calmed herself. “Actually, I’m not sure whether I’m more angry with him or with me for not anticipating he’d do something like this when I pulled ahead of him.”

Well, there was no use sitting in the parking lot of the community center where she’d just made a campaign speech. The stupid flyer had been on every windshield in the parking lot when she and Sheila had left the building.

She cranked the car. It turned over the first time. The body and interior might desperately need restoration but it ran like a dream. The early November sun slanted through the windshield like a soothing balm.

She felt calmer, more rational once again. “We need a plan. Something more constructive than me suggesting Cecil do something anatomically impossible.” Okay, maybe she wasn’t totally rational just yet.

“I think the best way to handle it is to ignore it,” Sheila said. “Meeks is looking for a reaction and I say we don’t give him one.”

“Good idea.” Sunny nodded her agreement. “This—” she nodded toward the flyer crumpled next to the gearshift “—has nothing to do with the campaign or my qualifications.” Her temper escalated all over again. “Can you believe he called me a girl?”

“Of course he did. You’re a thirty-year-old successful entrepreneur with a strong civic track record. He’s desperate to invalidate you and party girls don’t run for city council. He knows people have responded to your sincerity. They know you genuinely care about this city.”

Sunny knew that was true. Granted there were some really dirty parts and nobody was naming it the most beautiful city in the U.S., but she loved Memphis with its rich history and diversity. Running for city council wasn’t about the power or ego gratification—she sincerely believed she could make a difference. If she thought Cecil would do a better job for the district and the community she never would’ve stepped up to the plate. “Well, we’ve run a clean campaign based on the issues. Let’s hope voters are turned off by his stunt.”

“Sunny?”

“Yeah?”

“Um, I’m not being critical, just curious.” Sheila was always so careful not to offend whereas Sunny tended to be much more blunt and plain-spoken. “Why’d you do a singles’ ad on the Internet?”

“I guess for the same reasons everyone else does. It offers a much broader base of men to choose from. You can sort of get to know them and if they’re creeps, you just don’t write back anymore. Plus, since I design Web sites, it just seemed like the natural technology fit for me.” It was mostly the truth. Sunny offered a rueful laugh. “It never occurred to me that it could come back to bite me in the butt.”

“Have you met anyone?”

“Not yet.” It was a dismal state romantically—well, sexually, to be more accurate—that she was in.

Speaking of which, she made a right onto Tolliver and caught the red light directly across from the looming billboard.

There he was, Cecil Meeks, unfortunately larger than life, plastered on the billboard for the city, or at least the portion driving by on busy, congested Tolliver Boulevard, to see. Even more unfortunate, he was flanked by The Bounty-hunting Brothers, as she’d mentally tagged them. Cade and Linc Stone. The caption proclaimed, “We’ve Got Your Man.”

Sheila sighed. “He may be a toad, but he’s a smart toad. Those billboards were a good move.”

“Yep. Very smart.” She thought it was big of her to give credit where credit was due, even if she did despise Cecil Meeks. She hadn’t liked Cecil when she’d joined the race. She knew by the end he’d either earn a grudging respect from her or she’d despise him. She was ready to be signed up for the latter.

“Those two looked fully capable of hunting down and hauling back pretty much anyone. Probably over half the female population in the city would do the crime and skip a court date just to have one of those two haul them back,” Sheila said, with a semidreamy look on her face. Sunny knew the feeling.

“I’m counting on Memphis women voting with their brains instead of their hormones.”

She supposed there were enough women who would find Cade’s tawny-eyed, piercing, I’ll-kick-your-ass-and-enjoy-doing-it stare sexy, or swoon over Linc’s longer hair and devil-may-care smile. Sunny sniffed and wrapped her fingers tighter around the steering wheel. If you liked those kinds of looks in a man, that was.

She never had. She’d always preferred more intellect than brawn. And those muscle-bound types tended to have control issues and since she liked being in control it was pretty much an oil and water situation. Plus, not long after the billboards went up she’d overheard two campaign volunteers discussing the Stone brothers. Both of them had a reputation for changing women almost as regularly as their underwear.

Which was why it was confounding that she’d developed a thing for Cade Stone. Tall and dark with those golden eyes, that sensual, unsmiling mouth and an element of the untamed about him, he’d been a shock to her system from the first time she’d laid eyes on that offensive billboard.

Even now, driving past the image, with Cecil launching his dirty offensive in the campaign’s eleventh hour and Sheila riding shotgun in her car, she tingled from head to toe. Heat coursed through her and left her wriggling in her car seat.

It was nutty that she felt such an intense physical, mental, emotional response to a he-man photo…and it was every dang time she drove past. And lately she’d become so…entangled that he’d shown up, brimming with muscle and testosterone, in her dreams. She’d imagined his kisses in exquisite detail—his mouth on hers, the scrape of his sexy scruff as he slid his lips down her neck and across her collarbone, the bunching of his muscles beneath her fingertips as she grasped his broad shoulders, the feel of his hands mapping her body. And then she’d wake up, gripped by restlessness, her body humming with arousal. It was just so damn weird to be sexually fixated on someone she’d never met and most likely wouldn’t like anyway.

It had been sheer desperation then, that drove her to take out that singles’ Web ad. If a man on a billboard could leave her hot and bothered, why not a guy on the Internet?

Unfortunately, none of her Internet dating responses had bumped Cade Stone out of the fantasy hot seat…yet. And that was the part of the truth she’d left out for Sheila. No one else had an inkling that a simple drive-by sighting left her nipples hard and her hoo-ha wet.

She turned right off Tolliver and half a block later bypassed the alley that housed the garage behind her house. She always opted for the on-street parking in the front.

Rats were fond of the back alley and her rodent aversion bordered on phobic. And if the rats gnawed through the Mustang’s wiring, she’d be hard-pressed to cough up the bucks to fix it after sinking her savings into her campaign fund. She’d rather jockey for on-street parking any day.

“You know, Sunny, I think this flyer’s not going to be a big deal,” Sheila said. “People will get it and toss it. I don’t think anyone’s going to pay a bit of attention.”

Sunny turned left onto her street and immediately braked.

She looked at Sheila. “I hope it’s true that there’s no such thing as bad press—” news vans sat double-parked in front of her row house, midway down the block, which also doubled as her campaign headquarters “—because they’ve definitely paid attention.”

She squared her shoulders. She’d talk to them for a few minutes and then it would be over.

How bad could it be?

2

One month later…

“HOW ARE YOU?” Sheila asked as Sunny settled opposite her onto the familiar hard laminate seat at Melvina’s Soul Food.

“I’m starving. How about you?” Sunny inhaled the aroma of collard greens, corn bread and candied yams, ignoring the deeper implication of whether or not she had fully recovered from the debacle following her election loss.

Melvina’s soothed her with its juxtaposition of stark but clean concrete floors, laminate seats, bars over the windows and rich comfort food. After the last four weeks of hell—and without being a whiner, it had truly been hellacious—she was getting back on her feet, but her soul could use a healthy dose of culinary comfort.

“I didn’t think I was hungry until I smelled the food and now…yeah,” Sheila said, leaning across the table a bit to be heard. “And I’ll let you slide now, but we’re going to talk before lunch is over.”

Melvina’s was always noisy and today was no exception, with conversation vying with a blues Christmas CD playing over the loudspeaker—Sunny was pretty sure that was Memphis’s own Koko Taylor belting out “Have You Heard the News.” A thirty-year collection of baby Jesus ornaments adorned a Christmas tree in the middle of the small restaurant. According to Melvina, Jesus was the reason for the season and there wasn’t room on her tree for anything else except the star on top.

Melvina herself delivered two sweet teas to the table. “Look at what the cat done drug in,” she said with a wide smile. “We sure have missed you.”

“Not nearly as much as I’ve missed y’all.” Melvina, her son, TJ, and his wife, Charity, were old friends. She’d known them all since she’d “discovered” Melvina’s when she was a University of Memphis student along with TJ and Charity ten years ago.

The older woman gave Sunny a bone-crushing hug—who’d have thought such a small, seemingly frail woman could hug so hard—and Sunny squeezed back.

Melvina and Sheila exchanged greetings and Melvina crossed her arms over her chest, her mouth settling into a disapproving frown. “That was just wrong what that man did to you and wrong what them news folk did after that.”

Sunny smiled and shrugged, determined to put it behind her. “It seems to be over now.” It wasn’t good when the flyers had been spread around town but she’d never dreamed it would explode the way it had. In one of those weird, totally unwelcome quirks of fate, the election and flyer had been picked up by the AP and Reuters and mushroomed into a gargantuan tabloid/Internet nightmare of humiliation. Sunny clad in a bikini had become the election flyer seen around the world. And she’d learned an important lesson. No one ever actually died from humiliation or harassment. She was still-living proof.

Melvina’s lips thinned to a hard line. “TJ saw your picture on a late-night TV show.” Who in the world hadn’t would be a shorter list. Sunny, or rather her attendant flyer, had made number three on the Top Ten Stupid Things To Do When You’re Running for Public Office list. “And Charity saw some stuff on the Internet.”

Not hard to imagine since Sunny had been the butt of innumerable jokes circulating on the blogo-sphere. She’d tried to avoid them, but couldn’t help reading each and every one. It was like watching a train wreck—the train wreck that had become her life. She’d thought after a few days of infamy it would die down. That was the way those things worked, right? Wrong. Just when it looked as if things were dying down, it flared back up. But now…four weeks and counting, it finally seemed over. Sunny considered it a minor miracle she’d managed to maintain her dignity and her temper through it all.

“I think it’s finally over.” No one had pointed or stared at her in at least two days since she’d ventured out of her house once again. No one cheered, jeered or tried to take her picture. No more Web design contracts had cancelled on her except the one. And since she’d disconnected her home phone after changing the number three times in as many weeks, the harassing phone calls had ceased. Her cell number was only available to a select few.

“That Meeks ought to be horse-whipped for starting all this,” Melvina declared.

“Too good for him,” Sheila opined.

“He’ll get his one day,” Sunny said. She wasn’t sure how or when, but he would. She was ready to get on with her life, but that included settling with Meeks. Revenge would be hers.

Melvina glanced around and lowered her voice. “Me and TJ, we know people. You want Meeks taken care of, whatever you want, we know people.”

“You’re a good friend, Melvina. I’ll keep that in mind.” Having him beat up wasn’t what she intended but it was good to know your friends had your back. In a darker, less lucid, PMS moment she had fantasized that Meeks’s penis would fall off in a very public place and then a group of rogue rabid squirrels would attack him and gnaw his nuts off. However, chocolate had helped and she’d moved on. Now she just wanted the dirt on him she knew was somewhere to be found. She’d been working some contacts, asking around. Patience and perseverance would yield results in the end.

“You just say the word,” Melvina said, nodding. “I better get back to the kitchen.” She turned, wiping her hands on the ever-present apron knotted around her waist. “I’ll send TJ out with corn bread and two vegetable plates.”

Melvina hurried off, yelling for her son along the way.

Sunny took a long swallow of the sweet tea. Sheila scraped her nail down the condensation gathered on the outside of her glass. “So things are back to normal?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it normal, but it’s not what it has been for the past few weeks.”

TJ dropped off a plate of Melvina’s corn bread, which was actually fried like a big corn bread pancake, and two pale-aqua melamine plates piled high with collards, candied yams and fried okra. “Enjoy, ladies,” he said. “This is on the house.”

“But—” Sunny protested.

TJ cut her off. “Hey, I’m the finance whiz with the college degree, remember?” He winked at her. “I say Melvina’s can afford to comp a couple of friends now and then.”

The last month had severely frazzled her nerves and pushed her to the edge, but TJ’s offer made her teary-eyed. She sucked it up. If she hadn’t cried then, she darn sure wasn’t going to lose it now. “Thanks, TJ.”

He smiled, “Just enjoy it, okay?” He moved on to the next table with his laden tray.

“That was nice,” Sheila said.

“Very.” Her mouth watering in anticipation, Sunny broke off a crispy edge of the corn bread and popped it into her mouth. Heavenly.

“I wanted to wait until the dust settled but have you given any thought to what you’re going to do next? You aren’t going to just go to ground, are you?”

“No. I’ll continue my committee work.” She’d thought about it a lot. It’d be easy to just toss in the towel but the easy thing to do wasn’t necessarily the right thing to do. Even though it meant working with Cecil, she wasn’t giving up her committee work. “If I quit altogether then Cecil’s really won.”

“Atta girl,” Sheila said with an encouraging smile.

And honestly she was sick and tired of Cecil Meeks and his fiasco consuming her life. The worst of it was that Cecil hadn’t won because he was the better candidate. If she believed he’d do his job properly, all of this wouldn’t really matter. Well, that was a lie. It’d matter but she’d feel better about him being in office.

She took a deep breath. She wanted to talk about something else, think about something else. She’d much rather talk about Sheila and Dan’s twentieth-anniversary trip to Key West. They were flying out as soon as Dan finished work today. Monday struck her as an odd time to leave but apparently the hotel offered a discounted Monday to Monday package. “You all packed for Florida?”

“I’ve been packed. I can’t wait. One glorious week of sun, snorkeling and boinking my husband senseless. And not necessarily in that order.”

As far as Sunny could tell, Sheila and Dan, both in their mid-forties, had their moments like any other couple, but unlike many others, they still seemed to genuinely enjoy one another’s company in and out of the bedroom. It was the kind of relationship she’d like to have one day, if she ever stumbled across Mr. Right.

Sunny laughed. “I’d opt for nearly senseless. He’ll be useless if he’s senseless.”

“Nah. He’s a man. The two brains operate independently.” Sheila smiled like the cat with the canary. “At least I hope so because he’s guaranteed to lose his mind.” She leaned across the table and dropped her voice, even though none of the other customers were paying them any attention. “Did I tell you about the package I shipped ahead?”

“Honestly, if you did, I don’t remember with everything that’s been going on. Do tell.”

“I wasn’t sure about getting it through security at the airport, so I shipped a toy box to the hotel.”

“A toy box?” Sunny was pretty sure she knew where Sheila was going.

Sheila leaned farther across the table, barely avoiding sticking her boob into her yams, and lowered her voice. “I ordered a selection of sex toys online. A couple of outfits for me. A couple for him. Some gels, some lotions, a collection of body jewelry and a couple of other inventive things.” She sat back with a wicked smile.

Sunny laughed, her imagination running with that scenario, casting herself and her billboard man in the starring roles. At this point, the only way to get over her thing for Cade Stone required either professional help or to seriously get laid. Sure he had that I-can-rock-your-world-baby look, but he also had that I’m-in-charge look and after growing up with her overbearing parents, Sunny didn’t need anyone else in charge of her. Ever.

“I want him to know that twenty years doesn’t mean things have to be boring.”

“Have things gotten boring?” she asked as Sheila munched corn bread. Sheila gave her the wait-a-minute-while-I-chew-and-swallow-my-food sign, so Sunny sampled the yams.

She’d been there, done that, got the T-shirt for boring sex. Maybe it’s because you always pick men you can push around, an annoying little voice whispered inside her.

Sheila took a sip of tea. “Not exactly boring. Maybe a little routine. Proactive is better than reactive.”

“I’m sure Dan will enjoy your proactive stance. You don’t need for me to look after your plants while you’re gone or check the mail or anything?” Sheila had done so much for her, giving advice and time freely, Sunny wanted to do something in return.

“Dan’s cousin’s got it covered.” Dan’s cousin would spend the next week refinishing the hardwood floors in their house and remodeling the bathroom while they were gone. “The only thing you need to look after is yourself. Are you sure you’re okay? I’ve been worried about you.” Sheila shot her an admonishing look. “And you know I would’ve dragged you to the Kincaids’ with us last week if I’d known you were staying home alone on Thanksgiving.”

Sunny grinned. “Which is precisely why I didn’t mention it. I was infinitely happier at home working on my wolf than enduring another round of disapproval and I-told-you-so’s at the Templeton family table.”

Actually, working on her stained-glass wolf had kept her sane and grounded in the last month. It had given her a creative outlet to focus on and lose herself in. She smiled to herself. Her wolf had stood guard for her, against the rest of the world. Her, her semiconstructed stained-glass wolf, and a take-out dinner from her grocer’s deli had suited her Thanksgiving just fine. Traipsing along to Shelia’s in-laws’ during a family holiday or intruding on any of her other friends hadn’t felt right.

“I just don’t get your family. They drive me crazy.” Poor Sheila. They did drive her crazy. It frustrated Sheila that Sunny’s parents and her sister, Nadine, weren’t more supportive. It didn’t particularly bother Sunny anymore. She’d moved beyond needing their approval years ago, which was a damn good thing, all things considered.

They disapproved of her job as a Web designer—no stability in computer-related self-employment, according to her dad. They disdained the row house she’d bought as an investment in a rundown section of the city on the edge of revitalization. According to them, a new cookie-cutter house in a cookie-cutter subdivision was what she should’ve bought as a surer return on her money. Actually, in their book, marrying an accountant the way her sister, Nadine, had was the real bankable investment. They considered Sunny’s volunteer work a waste of time. And they’d never understood her running for city council since they’d been sure she’d lose to Cecil Meeks.

“Please tell me they’ve risen to the occasion during all of this,” Sheila said.

Sunny shrugged. “They’ve been embarrassed.”

“I can read between those lines.”

Growing up, she’d been the odd man out, determined even as a child to walk her own path. Her overbearing parents, however, had never embraced her independence, spontaneity or free thinking. “Remember the Pearls of Wisdom. It is what it is.”

“Okay, okay. I’m letting it go based on the Pearls of Wisdom.”

The summer she’d been ten, they’d moved and her life had changed. Despite their disparate ages, she’d found a kindred spirit in an elderly widow next door. Mrs. Pearl had spent a lifetime studying Native Americans and particularly the Chickasaw of western Tennessee.

Sunny had spent hours in Mrs. Pearl’s backyard and at her kitchen table absorbing Native American culture and developing a deep and abiding love for nature and community.

Sunny had been particularly fascinated by and seemed to have a gift for understanding and identifying animal totems, her own and others. On Sunny’s twelfth birthday, Mrs. Pearl had given her a hummingbird ring—the hummingbird being Sunny’s animal totem. Sunny treasured the simple sterling-silver design of a hummingbird drinking from a flower. Her long-standing favorite piece of jewelry, she’d resized it twice as she’d grown and always wore it on her right hand.

Mrs. Pearl had exerted the most influence in shaping Sunny’s life. She’d helped her move beyond her need for her parents’ approval, teaching her to embrace who and what she was, and likewise accepting her parents in the same vein. It was a gift Sunny had carried with her into adulthood even though the dear woman had died during Sunny’s junior year in college. She’d dubbed Mrs. Pearl’s life lessons Pearls of Wisdom, and she’d shared them with Sheila on several occasions.

She sure didn’t want Shelia worrying about her on her anniversary trip. “Go. Have a good time. I’m fine.” She was done wallowing in this disaster. From here on she was employing positive thinking. “The worst is behind me, now it’s smooth sailing.”

“ANY NEWS YET?” Cade propped the phone against his shoulder as he leaned back in his near-ancient office chair.

“I’ve had a couple of leads that wound up to be dead ends. Meeks is a slippery guy,” said Danny Jones, the private eye Cade had contacted the day Sunny Templeton’s flyer had hit. Every once in a while he and Linc needed a little private eye help, and Danny was their go-to man—one of the best in the business. If there was dirt, Danny’d dig it up. “It’s been a month. Want me to give it a rest?”

“Nope. Stay on it. Sooner or later he’ll slip or something will turn up.”

“You’re the boss. I’ll touch base with you next week.”

“Good deal.”

He hung up and found Linc leaning against his door frame. “Did you sic Jones on Meeks?”

“He’s just doing a little digging.”

Linc grinned. “You couldn’t stand it, could you?”

Cade shrugged. “Just nosing around.” His brother knew him as well as anyone. And no, it was genetically impossible for him to sit around and do nothing to help Sunny Templeton when he felt responsible for aiding and abetting Meeks in defeating her. His guilt and sense of responsibility had escalated with every incident reported in the paper, on the Internet, and each damned late-night show.

And honest to God, she was driving him crazy. She’d looked like trouble the first time he’d seen that damn flyer. How he felt about her was…complicated…which was stupid considering he’d never met her, didn’t want to meet her. He’d found it impossible to toss that sheet of paper. Instead he’d stuck it in his desk. Every time he opened his drawer and saw it, something inside him shifted. He didn’t like things shifting inside him. He ought to just toss it but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. Sunny Templeton had become a phantom PITA—a real Pain In The Ass.

The sooner Jones found something on Meeks, and his gut told him there was something to be found, the sooner he could turn it over to Sunny Templeton to use and then wash his hands of her. Then he’d toss the flyer.

“By the way, Georgia wanted me to remind you that you need to stop by the formal wear shop to be fitted for the tux. My best man’s got to be jam up on the big day and she says we big boys are gonna require special orders.”

Okay, once upon a time he and Linc had known one another well but his brother in love was something of a stranger at times. Linc was yet another cautionary tale in Cade’s life. This was what love reduced men to. He was tempted to ask Linc if he still actually had a dick but that would only piss him off. Instead Cade stood and stretched. “Yeah, I’ll get by there sometime this week.”

“I’ll let Georgia know,” Linc said, wandering back to his office, doubtless to call Georgia.

Cade supposed if Linc had to be an idiot in love at least he’d chosen well. Cade liked Georgia. He also liked Gracie’s fiancé well enough. He grabbed the paperwork on his latest FTA apprehension off his desk and walked it out to Marlene.

“Thanks,” she said, without looking up from the computer monitor. “You know, I’m thinking about signing up for one of those online dating things.”

Cade shook his head. That was random. Had he just heard her correctly? “Did you say online dating?”

“Yeah. You know, one of those Internet matchmaking things.”

He had heard right.

“The hell you say!” Martin bellowed from his office. Apparently his father had heard, as well. Great. Martin stomped out to join them, a bottled Coke in his hand. At six foot six he stood two inches taller than Cade and still didn’t carry an ounce of spare flesh. “What’s wrong with you, woman?”

Marlene merely quirked an eyebrow at Martin’s outburst. “I’m ready for some excitement. All my friends want to introduce me to boring men.”

Linc strolled out of his office. He didn’t like to miss out on anything.

Marlene eyed all of them. “What? We’re not exactly overrun with eligible men walking through the door here. Online dating seems a reasonable vetting process. I want excitement, romance.” Martin started to smirk. “I want to get remarried,” she tacked on the final installment. Cade’s cringe echoed Martin’s.

Had everyone lost their minds? Between Linc and Georgia and Gracie and Mark and all the wedding mumbo jumbo floating around the office, Marlene had got caught up in it.

Linc shook his head. “You got rid of one rat-bastard husband. What are you thinking, Marlene?”

Maybe Linc wasn’t as far gone as Cade had thought. He did still have an ounce of sense left.

“I’m not cut out for one-night stands. I’m not a love ’em and leave ’em kind of woman. But I have to tell you boys, I miss sex.”

Martin snorted his swallow of Coke through his nose, choking and coughing. “Now I know you’re one can shy of a six-pack if you want to get remarried so you can have sex.”

Cade disagreed with Martin more often than not. In fact, they’d coexisted in an uneasy truce the past twenty years since Cade’s mother died, but he had to throw his towel in with the old man on this one.

Marlene shot Martin a withering look. “It’s the way I’m made. Some of us aren’t emotionally or mentally built to indulge in casual sex.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the room except for the ticking of the big wall clock. It had worked well enough for three of the four of them present.

Cade spoke up. “If you’re going to do this online dating thing, promise me you won’t go out with anyone until we approve them.” He crossed his arms over his chest. She hadn’t done such a good job with the first husband and there were some real pieces of crap out there. Someone had to make sure she didn’t strike out if she was determined to go round two. And Marlene might not be family, but she worked for him and no one screwed with anyone under his domain unless they wanted a serious ass-kicking.

Linc nodded. “Good plan. We can make sure you don’t hook up with any creeps.”

Marlene looked from him to Linc and back. “Fine. You boys can approve them.”

“And I’ll help you put together your Web page,” Martin announced.

“I don’t need any help putting it together.”

“Sure you do. You want to make sure you don’t put out any casual sex signals and I know all of those.” Martin crossed his arms over his chest in a perfect imitation of Cade. “I know what men your age are looking for.”

“But I don’t want a man like you,” Marlene shot back with a sweet smile.

Linc raised an eyebrow at Cade and Cade answered with a faint shrug. Martin’s scowl deepened. Was Martin’s scowl more territorial than protective? Cade hoped the hell not.

Martin and Marlene would be a disaster. Once Martin had pulled himself up by his bootstraps after Lucy’s death, he’d taken up serial dating. Martin liked women and he treated them with respect, but he made sure they never got too close.

Marlene wasn’t the kind of woman who’d go for the four-week wooing she’d get from Martin. Plus she was damn good at what she did and they didn’t need to lose her when things went south at week five.

Martin gritted his teeth. “Then I’ll put down the opposite of everything I’d look for in a woman.”

“That might work then,” Marlene shot back. She looked at the three of them, ringing her desk. “If I pass out from the overdose of testosterone in here, someone just drag me out to the sidewalk.”

Marlene promptly ignored them, returning to the computer screen, humming that old seventies tune “Love is in the Air.”

Cade headed for the door. He was getting the hell out before he caught whatever was going around. He’d rather face down hardened criminals than get caught up in this love business.

3

SUNNY SANG ALONG with Lena Horne’s “Stormy Weather,” her radio set to classic jazz, on her way to the grocery store after lunch. The remainder of her meal was packed in a to-go box next to her but her kitchen at home was dismally empty. Taking advantage of being alone in the car, she sang louder. Sunny couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but she loved to sing. Sometimes when she sang at home, the cat next door yowled.

She felt better than she had in days. No, make that weeks. She’d run a gamut of emotions—depressed, pissed, violated, humiliated. Yep, that about summed it up. But now she felt good. No, make that great.

Despite the rain clouds gathering overhead, she was setting her personal course for nothing but sunny skies from here on out.

She pulled up to the four-way stop at Jackson and Hull Streets. A man in a Santa suit stood on the corner, ringing a bell, holding a donation can for a local food bank. Blue car went. The car to her left should go next.

Her head whipped around in a double-take. No. Was she hallucinating? It couldn’t be. It was.

Cecil Meeks sat at the stop sign on her left in his shiny, black, chrome-trimmed, late-model Cadillac DeVille. All the emotions she thought she’d processed and worked through in the past four weeks swamped her.

She sucked in a deep breath aimed at calming. Problem was she didn’t feel calm. Hold on to your temper, hold on to your temper, hold on to your temper, she silently chanted.

Meeks spotted her and the son of a bitch actually smirked. Full, in-your-face smirking, despite the fact that he was in one car and she in another. She sucked another lungful of air in on the one before, determined to be the bigger person but it didn’t seem to help.

His turn to drive.

Meeks accelerated and waved. And laughed.

He’d made an international laughingstock of her and now he was laughing in her face. One second she was sitting there, the next she just…floored it.

Bam. Her Mustang plowed into the rear door of his Caddie, the impact jerking her against the seat belt. She didn’t have an airbag to go off, but her horn did.

She sat there. She’d just rammed Meeks’s car…with hers.

He jumped out of his car, screaming and waving a cell phone but she couldn’t hear him over the blaring of her horn. Stunned by her own behavior, she sat and stared at him. Unfortunately, his penis didn’t fall off in the street and no rabid squirrels came running. She did, however, hear the approaching wail of a police siren.

Santa wrenched her door open, his beard askew, his bell still in his hand. “Are you okay? Are you trapped in your car?”

She unbuckled her seat belt, her hand amazingly steady even though she felt as if she were shaking all over. “I’m fine.”

She climbed out, her legs barely holding her upright.

“Hey, aren’t you the lady—” he looked over at Cecil jumping up and down like a maggot on a stick “—isn’t he—”

“I am. He is.”

Suddenly the clouds opened up and it started to pour. Not the soft gentle rain of a summer shower but a cold, driving, early-December deluge that stung.

Sunny tilted her face upward. Maybe she’d just drown before things got any worse. If she was lucky.

Luck, however, didn’t seem to be running her way.

“WHAT IN THE HELL was Sunny Templeton thinking?” Cade muttered to himself as he watched the five o’clock news’s lead story over Marlene’s shoulder on her computer monitor.

Meeks had a bandage wrapped around his head and a sling supported his right arm as he played to the camera. “It was terrifying. I didn’t recognize her until I drove past. It was the rage and hate filling her eyes that caught my attention and then the next thing I knew she attacked me with her vehicle. She clearly tried to kill me. I’m lucky I walked away with only the injuries I sustained.”

“Is this your first interaction with Ms. Templeton since the election?” the reporter asked.

“Mercifully, yes. And I hope my last. The woman’s definitely deranged.”

The female reporter quirked her eyebrow. “Some people believe you crossed the line when your campaign put out that flyer.”

Cecil adopted a sanctimonious demeanor. “Absolutely not. I considered that a public service. When you put yourself up for public office, there can be no distinction between public and private life. The public had a right to know what they were getting with Ms. Templeton.”

The reporter faced the camera. “Ms. Templeton is currently being held at the Memphis Police Department pending bail. We’ll bring you updates as available. Back to you now, Gretchen.”

The camera cut back to the in-studio news anchor and Cade filtered out the rest, his attention still focused on Sunny Templeton and Cecil Meeks.

“That man ought to be ashamed,” Marlene said, switching to another screen with one click of her mouse in evident disgust. “I’m sorry we had anything to do with him.”

Cade straightened. “That makes two of us. Meeks is a worm. It’d be kind of funny that she wrecked his new Cadillac, if it hadn’t landed her in jail.”

Marlene sighed. “I’d go over there and help her if I could.” Marlene had turned Sunny into a regular Joan of Arc in the last month. He’d be hard-pressed to believe Sunny Templeton had a more staunch supporter anywhere in Memphis than Marlene. “I’m sure True Blue will handle the bond.” She shot him a look that made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck quiver. “It’s a shame. I think she’s a nice girl. Pretty. Smart. Nice figure in a bikini.”

“Don’t look at me that way.” Marlene might’ve decided to look for love in all the wrong places herself but she could leave him out of her matchmaking schemes. She’d considered herself the matchmaker extraordinaire when Linc and Georgia had wound up together. She was barking up the wrong tree, however, with him and Sunny Templeton.

“I’m not looking at you any way.”

“Yes, you are.” His single-man-in-danger-of-being-fixed-up alarm was going off.

“You’re paranoid.”

“Go figure,” he said. Marlene obviously had decided in her single-minded brain that Sunny was the woman for him. Not by a long shot. God help him if Marlene ever got wind that he’d put Jones onto Meeks to dig up dirt for the woman sitting across the street in a jail cell.

Unfortunately, Marlene could ride this for hours. Fortunately it was time for him to head home. He wanted a nice dinner and a glass of wine or a cold beer.

“I’m outta here. If you’re through, I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. The upside to their location was they were right across from the jail. The downside to their location…they were right across from the jail. Yeah, that meant a bunch of cops were around, but it also meant a lot of slime was around. Throughout the years, they’d made it a habit for one of them to always accompany the office manager to her car.

Marlene unplugged the miniature Christmas tree she’d insisted on buying for her desk corner but left the chili-pepper lights outlining the front window turned on. She’d turned AA Atco into the most festive bail bond office on Poplar Street—hell, probably the entire city of Memphis.

“Let me get my coat,” she said.

“You can go ahead, Cade,” Martin called out from his office. “I’ve got a couple of things to go over with Marlene. I’ll walk her to her car.”

“Thoughtful,” Cade said in a sarcastic aside to Marlene. Martin knew what time she left. Why wait until it was time for her to leave to go over things?

“I heard that,” Martin groused.

“Good. Remember she’s been here all day and she’s supposed to go home now,” Cade said, stopping by Martin’s office door. Martin wasn’t the most thoughtful employer. Come to think of it, Martin wasn’t thoughtful. Period.

“I’ll take her to dinner to cover the overtime. Happy? And I’ll help her with that Web page.”

What was Martin up to? “Only if Marlene wants dinner.” Cade looked at Marlene. “You want dinner?”

“Sure.” Marlene’s smile was just a tad too honey-sweet. “There’s a new sushi place I’ve been wanting to try.”

Cade grinned at Marlene’s neat turn of the table and Martin’s look of disgust.

“I was thinking something with real food.”

Marlene leveled a guileless look at Martin and Cade made for the door. The two of them would figure it out. He had a feeling Martin would dine on sushi tonight. Marlene could be relentless.

Before he reached the door, the jingle bell wreath on the glass jangled as a woman stepped inside. Average height. Dark hair. He’d guess early to mid-thirties. There was something vaguely familiar about her. Cade never forgot a face, which came in very handy in his line of work, but he couldn’t quite place this woman.

The woman looked at Marlene. “Hello. I’m Nadine Axmoor. My sister is Sunny Templeton and I need to post bail for her. I’ve never done this. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”

That’s why he recognized her. There was a family resemblance in the chin and the line of her jaw.

Marlene’s mouthed gaped for about two seconds before she recovered her usual aplomb. “Sure. You know that we’re the company that campaigned with Cecil Meeks. Are you sure you want to go with us?”

“Marlene,” Martin bellowed from his office, “just do it.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The woman waved a dismissive hand. “You’re right across from the jail and I need to get this taken care of.” She shrugged. “I didn’t vote for her, either.”

What the hell? Cade’s hackles rose. She didn’t vote for her own sister? With family like her, who needed enemies like Meeks?

Marlene’s lips tightened into a thin disapproving line but she efficiently processed the paperwork. She slid the bond form across the desk to the Axmoor woman who stared at it as if was a snake. “What do I do with that?”

Marlene looked back at her as if Nadine Axmoor were something stuck on the bottom of Marlene’s shoe. “You take it across the street and the officer at the front desk will tell you what you need to do from there to get Sunny out.”

Nadine pushed the paper back across the desk with one manicured finger. “Oh, no. I have to meet my husband for dinner. It’s a business affair with some of his associates. I’m already running late. And have you seen the media waiting on her across the street?” Cade glanced out the front window into the burgeoning twilight. Sure enough, media vans lined the street in front of the jail. “I’ve gone to the trouble to come down and post bail. I’m done. Sunny got herself into this mess. She can figure it out. Maybe she’ll learn to think things through.”

Every protective instinct in him surged. He barely bit back a growl of disapproval.

What. A. Bitch.

“We’ll handle it from here,” Marlene said, standing, practically shoving the other woman out the front door. “If you hurry, maybe you can avoid the worst of rush-hour traffic.”

Cade didn’t catch the woman’s closing comment on the way out, but he had no trouble hearing Marlene once the sister was down the sidewalk. “What a hideous, odious woman.” She brushed her hands together. “Good riddance.”

“She was a piece of work,” Cade agreed.

“Poor Sunny.” Marlene inclined her head toward the melee of reporters across the street. “They’re going to eat her alive.” She very pointedly stared at Cade.

Sunny did need help. He nominated Marlene. “You’ve got your wish. You can go over there and bail her out.”

“No, I can’t. You just heard your father ask me to work late.”

He was doing what he could on the private-eye front with Danny Jones. That was enough. “Sunny Templeton is not my problem.”

“Who would you call to bail you out if you landed in jail?”

“First off, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to land in jail—” Marlene cut him off with a look. “Okay, okay. Linc. I’d call Linc. And if I couldn’t get him I’d call Gracie. If I couldn’t get those two, I’d call you. And after those three strikes I’d be dialing Martin.”

“And do you think any of us would leave you to make your way through those sharks waiting outside?”

“I’d lay money Martin might.” He didn’t count on Martin for shit.

“Watch it, boy,” Martin grumbled, but it lacked any real thunder. They both knew there was too much truth backing Cade’s words. Martin, his father, the man who should be his staunchest advocate, wasn’t altogether a sure thing.

“Sorry, Martin. I call ’em the way I see ’em.”

“He wouldn’t.” There was a quiet firmness, a surety about Marlene’s simple statement. “I think he’d lead the way for you, carve a path between them for you. No one that you called would leave you to face that alone.” Okay. Okay. “That woman that just walked out of here was the best Sunny Templeton had to call and that’s just plain sad.” Unfortunately, that was true. “You’re on your way out anyway. It’ll take ten, maybe fifteen extra minutes out of your day to handle the bail.” She examined the fingernails on her right hand. “Linc says you’ve got Jones looking for something on Meeks.”

Dammit to hell. Linc had a big mouth.

Every internal radar he possessed was going off. Sunny Templeton would be trouble. He knew it. He was working behind the scenes, doing what he could to fix the fact that he’d gone along with Cecil when all his instincts said he shouldn’t.

“You know she needs you,” Marlene said softly.

The instinct to protect her was even stronger than his instinct of self-preservation. That was his undoing. He couldn’t just walk out the door and leave her hanging. He’d go get her out. But it didn’t mean he had to like it.

He held out his hand for the paperwork. Marlene beamed at him but didn’t relinquish the form. Instead she pointed toward the back closet with the paperwork. “You might want to grab a jacket and take it with you for her. The temperature’s dropped about twenty degrees since midafternoon. There’s a cold front moving in.”

Between him, Linc and Martin, there were always a couple of extra jackets in the closet. Mostly because they just wound up leaving them at work, but sometimes they came in handy as a disguise.

“Fine, I’ll grab her a jacket. Go ahead and call a cab and have it waiting around the back. That’ll at least avoid most of the melee out front.”

A fine frown settled between Marlene’s arched brows. “A cab? But—” she glanced at the pink copy of duplicate paperwork on her desk “—I think this address is only a block or two out of your way. Weren’t you heading home? Seems like it shouldn’t be a big deal to just drop her off on your way.”

“Will you be happy then? Will I have thoroughly atoned for my sin? Will you finally concede Sunny Templeton’s not my problem?” And would he finally feel as if he could walk away with a clear conscience? That he’d done his best by her?

“Yes. Mostly. Maybe.”

He sighed and crossed the room to the back closet. He dug out a well-worn orange and white University of Tennessee jacket from Linc’s college days. He also snagged a ball cap off the top shelf.

“Feel free to nominate me for sainthood when I’m through.”

Marlene smiled sweetly and passed him the paperwork. Martin snorted from his office. Cade paused in the doorway on his way out. “Enjoy the sushi dinner,” he said, closing the door on Marlene’s laugh and Martin’s grumbling.

The wind held a sharp edge and carried the smell of old grease and hickory smoke from the barbecue shack on the corner. Cade avoided a wadded fast-food bag blowing down the sidewalk and rounded the corner of the building to the small, potholed parking lot beside AA Atco.

He just wanted to get this over with. Done.

He unlocked his car and tossed the jacket and cap onto the passenger seat. Marlene was right, he could take fifteen minutes out of his day to do the woman a good turn. He cranked his car and pulled past the media to an unlit corner of the parking lot close to the back entrance.

He was about to encounter Sunny Templeton in the flesh. No flyer. No newspaper article. No Internet blog. His heart pounded the way it hadn’t since he’d apprehended his first skip sixteen years ago.

He had to get a grip. He brought in hardened criminals, for chrissakes. Just how much trouble could it be to bail Sunny Templeton out and drop her off at home?

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