Secrets Rising
Suzanne McMinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.

“I was just about to clean that up.” She disappeared for a minute into the next room then came back with a broom and dustpan. She bent down, picked something up, and he saw what he’d missed at first—some sort of small package. It was wrapped in silver foil and he read the label.

“Somebody’s birthday?” There, his contribution to chitchat.

“Mine.”

She glanced up from sweeping the shattered bits of cream and blue pottery. Her eyes looked huge in her slender face, and as he watched, she chewed on her full, unpainted lip. He looked away from her, to the box. Happy Birthday, Baby. She had a gift from somebody who called her Baby.

He carefully returned his gaze to Keely. “It’s your birthday today?” he asked, and told himself he was not going to look or even think about her nibble-on-me lips. Maybe she was married. He didn’t know why he’d assumed she lived way out here in the sticks alone. It didn’t matter to him anyway.

“Tomorrow. The present was inside the cookie jar. It fell down off the shelf.” She waved her hand vaguely toward the ledge over the cabinets. It was full of decorative glass items and various pieces of pottery. “I guess he was hiding it there. My husband, I mean. A branch must have hit the roof. I guess the jar was too close to the edge of the shelf. The house really shook and—” She stood, the pottery bits tidily swept into the dustpan in one hand. “I forgot. I need to get up in the attic and check it out. If rain’s coming in, I’m in real trouble.”

So she was married.

“You’ll be in trouble when your husband finds out you stumbled onto his surprise.” He was feeling suddenly much lighter, more in control.

She propped the broom in the corner of the kitchen and dumped the shards of pottery in the trash before replying. “He’s not going to find out. He’s dead. And he left me plenty of surprises. Most of them weren’t good.”

The look she gave him was flat and emotionless, then a shadow slid across her expression. She looked away quickly, as if afraid he had some kind of laser vision that would see something she didn’t want him to see. Jake felt more uneasy than ever, and he wasn’t certain if it was because she wasn’t married after all or because he wanted to know what her deceased husband had done to hurt her, and he shouldn’t want to know anything about her at all.

The muted patter of raindrops on the roof filled the kitchen. The storm was slowing down. Or at least, the rain was slowing down. Wind gusted against the house, strong as ever. The clapboard farmhouse creaked a bit in the storm.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, I am. I shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.” She grabbed the wrapped box off the table and turned away, pulled open a wide kitchen drawer, shoved it inside and slammed the drawer shut.

He heard a noise like thunder and suddenly the house shook so hard, he felt the floor move under his feet. The drawers in the kitchen banged open and Keely stumbled on her feet. Automatically, he shot up, grabbing hold of her upper arms. Glass hit the floor around them from the shelves over the cabinets. He heard pictures fall in the parlor.

“Oh, God, I knew I should have had that maple tree taken down.” She sounded panicked. “It’s too close to the house.”

“I don’t think that was a tree.” He hadn’t heard anything strike the roof.

There was no sound for a long beat, as if even the wind held its breath, and then came a roar. The house seemed to roll under them in waves. Jake fell against the table, still holding Keely, and together they crashed onto the floor. The sting of glass cut into his back. He could feel her breasts against his chest, her quivering belly and thighs, her breaths coming in shocky pants near his cheek. He stroked his hand down her spine, only meaning to soothe. She was soft—

The floor rocked violently beneath them. “We have to get out of the house,” he grunted, pulling her up with him, both of them staggering as if they’d been transported to the deck of a storm-tossed ship. At the same time he realized the roof was coming down over them, the floorboards beneath them ripped apart and all he knew were eerie flashes of blinding red light, then plunging darkness.

Chapter 3

Darkness closed in on her with terrifying completeness. Keely heard the boom of her heartbeat, the harsh sound of her breaths, in the sudden, awful quiet. Oh, God, oh, God. She waited for the rest of the kitchen, the rest of her house, to fall down on top of her.

Something shifted overhead, and crashed a foot away. She nearly jumped out of her skin.

Arms she hadn’t realized were holding her tightened, as if ready to shield her from anything. She couldn’t see a thing, not even the man she was clinging to. Fingers reached up, touched her face. She was on top of him, she realized. They’d hit hard, him protecting her with his body.

“Are you all right?” He was little more than a deep, disembodied voice in the terrible blackness.

“I think so.” Her voice wobbled. Was the world still shaking? She bit her lip to keep from hyperventilating.

Jake Malloy grunted in pain, and she scrambled off him, pulling him up with her till they sat on debris. She could feel nothing but debris surrounding them.

“Where are we?” he asked her. “We fell into some kind of basement. Is this a cellar?”

She nodded, swallowed thickly, realizing then he couldn’t see her.

“Yes. It’s the cellar.” Her head reeled. The kitchen ceiling had started coming down and the floor had opened up. The cold dampness of the cellar seeped through her then and she shivered. Shock. Maybe she was in shock. The cellar was low-ceilinged. They’d only dropped maybe seven feet.

And the ceiling boards from the kitchen must have covered the gap in the floor above. She felt as if her heart might pound out of her chest.

“There’s a door, over here.” She pushed to her feet, stumbling slightly on the uneven piles of wreckage she couldn’t see. “The ground slopes down this way and the cellar’s reached by a door below the rear of the house.” In the thick darkness, she felt him reach for her hand. His hold felt strong and warm on hers. Oddly safe. Together, they took baby steps across the debris, guided only by her sense of direction, which was, at the moment, rocky.

She reached out with her hand, feeling her way. Her fingers brushed against the rough, peeling paint of the wooden door to the cellar. She pulled her other hand from his, heart thumping as she grabbed the handle. Debris in the cellar made opening the door nearly impossible.

“Wait.”

She could feel the brush of Jake beside her, hear the sound of broken boards being tossed out of the way.

“Try now,” he said.

The door creaked as she pulled it inward, still scraping across smaller bits of rubble. She pushed around it, reaching forward into the pitch-black. And stopping short at the sensation of rough, jagged material blocking the way.

No, no, no. There had been no light around the door, it hit her suddenly. No light not because it was dark outside but because part of the house must have fallen this way!

And who knew how much weight there was in wreckage blocking them from climbing back up into the kitchen. “We’re trapped,” she whispered in horror.

“We’ll be all right. We’ll get out of here.”

He sounded so sure of himself, she almost believed him for a minute.

She swallowed hard. “How?”

“Rescue workers will be coming—”

“Do you know how long it will take them to get here, this far out of town?” If they even could. They’d have to wait to even try if the low water bridge was flooded. What was happening in the town? What about her store? What about her house? It was gone, clearly gone. And yet she still found that impossible to grasp. She loved her house in all its faded glory, from its American gothic farmhouse architecture to its walls teeming with family history. “Gemini” tea roses were her grandmother’s favorite, that’s why she was planting more of that specific variety. She was supposed to be planting roses right now. A normal day, planting roses, waiting for her truck to be done at the shop. She’d have fixed herself a sandwich for dinner, maybe a bowl of soup, and watched the news, followed by the latest season of her favorite amateur singing competition, and the new medical drama. She’d have gone to bed in her antique spool feather bed covered by a hand-sewn block quilt and read a magazine till she went to sleep.

Her life was boring, maybe, but she liked it. It was quiet and sensible.

Nothing made sense right now, especially how much she didn’t want this stranger to let go of her. She clutched blindly at his shirt as she felt him turn.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Did you cut yourself on anything?”

She felt his hands moving down her shoulders, her arms, as if checking. “No. I mean, yes. I’m all right. What happened? What could do this to my house?” She could barely stretch her mind around the horrifying reality of it. “Oh, God. That was—”

“An earthquake.”

We don’t have earthquakes in West Virginia. She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud till he answered her.

“Not very often. But if we weren’t just at the epicenter of that one, I don’t know what it was.”

Her mind stumbled from the realization. That first time she’d felt the house shake and the cookie jar had fallen off the shelf had just been a precursor of what was coming.

There had been no tree hitting the roof at all.

“My house—”

One hundred years old, and it was in pieces over her head. Everything that had been in her family for generations—Her parents, Howard and Roxie Bennett, preferred their spacious home with all the modern conveniences and close to town. Her older sister and two brothers already had their own homes, too, by the time Granny Opal had died. Keely and Ray had needed a place, and so the farmhouse had gone to Keely, who had gladly accepted it. But now…What was she going to do without a house?

Another thought struck her. “What was that red light? Did you see it? Oh, my God. Was that fire?” No, it couldn’t have been fire. They’d know if the house was on fire above them. So what—

“I don’t know. Probably electricity snapping, who knows. Forget your house.” A beat stretched, taut. “I’m sorry,” he added, gentler. The unexpected kindness in his touch and voice sent her into a panic. She’d been hesitant to so much as ask him for a favor not too many minutes ago. Now she wanted to climb up his powerful, hard body and beg him not to leave her for a second in this pitch-black nightmare. He was the only other human being in her world, her touchstone to reality.

“You’re okay, and that’s all that matters,” he continued. “Come on. You can worry about your house later.”

As if he sensed she was an inch away from royally flipping out, he stroked his hands up and down her arms again. His touch was warm and strong and she didn’t want him to stop. Probably, he didn’t want to deal with a hysterical woman. He hadn’t seemed this kind and patient earlier.

She was on fear overload, and she hated that. She was used to taking care of herself by now. She didn’t need anyone, especially not a man. Get it together.

“I’m okay,” she repeated back to him. The aching of her bones hit her, surfacing through the adrenaline. She was lucky she hadn’t broken anything in the fall, even as short as it had been. Lucky he hadn’t broken anything, either.

“You’re okay, too, right?” she asked, to be sure.

“I’m fine. Tell me what’s in here. Do you keep a flashlight somewhere?” He sounded steady, composed, organized.

“No such luck. But matches—maybe.” She worked to catalog the cellar in her mind, recall what was where. She had to be strong now. Not fall apart.

One wall of the cellar had been lined with glass canning jars. Some empty now, others still packed with the fruits of last summer’s gardening. Some old wooden stools. Boxes and antique trunks filled with forgotten items that had worked their way out of the farmhouse at one time or another. Tools that hadn’t been used in ages. A couple of old tables. Basically, junk. The cellar was full of junk. The wall on the other side was storage. There were some candles somewhere, stashed on one of those over-packed shelves….

Vanilla-scented. They’d been a gift from a Christmas exchange party at church last year. She hated vanilla candles and she’d stuck them in the cellar, not able to bring herself to just throw them out. If they were still here…

She’d absolutely love, adore and worship the scent of vanilla right now.

Hadn’t she left an old box of matches here somewhere? And a can of gasoline. She’d used the matches and gas to burn the brush pile last summer.

“This way.” She moved along the wall to the right of the door. Away from the center of the cellar, there was less debris from above, but there was shattered glass everywhere. She walked carefully, but stumbled anyway when something creaked overhead.

Jake caught her as she made a strangled cry and she found herself dragged up against that hard, powerful body of his.

“Whoa.” He held her for a long beat.

She couldn’t see him, not even his eyes and they had to be only inches away. He smelled good. She hadn’t noticed before, but she did now. He smelled really good. Woodsy and male. She was ready to cling on to him like he was some kind of life preserver. He definitely exuded some kind of raw masculine energy that was messing with her mind, which was hardly stable as it was. Her head was all over the place, reeling.

“Careful,” he murmured.

“I’m trying.” She’d better try harder.

The air in the cellar was suddenly thick with an odd tension. They were practically buried alive down here. He could be the last human being on earth she’d ever know. She was scared, terrified really, of dying before they were rescued. She’d lost her house, maybe her business for all she knew. But in the face of losing her life, suddenly it didn’t amount to much.

Her family and friends—She had no idea what had happened to them. All she could do was desperately hope and pray. Images of her parents, her friends, flashed like photos in a slideshow in her mind.

A sob choked her throat and she swallowed it down. She couldn’t do anything for anyone now but herself and this stranger beside her. She didn’t realize she was crying till she felt something wet and cold trickle down her cheek.

“Hey. Come on. Let’s find those matches.”

She nodded, then tried to find her voice.

“Okay.” She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to stop the tears.

A hand touched her face. Jake Malloy’s hand.

“Aww, now,” he said, softer now, brushing at the tear.

Instinctively, she curled her arms around him, her hands sliding under his jacket, letting him pull her tight and comfort her there in that black void under her ruined house. She didn’t understand how she could trust him like this, but it didn’t matter. His arms wiped out that horrific fear.

Her head rested against his chest and she could hear his heartbeat, steady and sure as hers was not. He kept right on being rock solid even with the world falling apart around them.

And in the back of her mind, a crazy thought entered. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. He moved against her, just slightly, as if checking his balance, and she shook herself and started to pull back.

Something cold and hard stuck out of the waistband of his jeans, beneath the cover of his jacket, as she drew her hands down and away. Something cold and hard and metal…

Her heart stopped and total fear slammed back in on her. She felt him freeze, and she moved quickly before he could, grabbed it in one hand and stumbled back, knowing what she held. Not needing any light.

She was holding a gun.

Chapter 4

He felt the cold metal slide away from the waistband of his jeans and before he could move, she was gone, nothing but a ragged gasp in the darkness. He lunged forward then stopped cold at the low, fearful, shaking sound of her voice.

“Don’t come near me. I’ll shoot.”

“No, you won’t.” He hoped she wouldn’t. Hell, he didn’t know. He didn’t move.

He could feel his heart thumping hard against his ribs. And he could have sworn he could hear hers, thumping, too. She was scared and he didn’t blame her, but he needed to get back in control of the situation. Scaring her more wasn’t the way.

“I know how to use a gun,” she said, that soft, low voice of hers still uneven. “What I don’t know is what you’re doing with one.”

“It’s licensed,” he told her, keeping his voice steady, reassuring. “I have a right to carry it. There’s no need to be afraid.”

“I’m trapped here with you and a gun. I think I can decide for myself if I should be afraid or not.”

“You already pointed out that everyone in town knows I’m here. My car is still outside. Rescuers will get here eventually. Why would I want them to find me here, in a cellar with a dead body and my gun? I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not stupid, remember?” Reason, he had to use reason on her. She was already frightened, for good cause, by the quake and the destruction of her house and their desperate situation.

She was silent for a beat and he could hear the house creak over them again. She could hear it, too, and he heard her feet shift on the rubble, knew she was unnerved even more, wondered if she was trying to decide whether she needed to hold his gun, or hold him, to feel most safe.

“Do you think I want to spend God knows how many hours alone down here, waiting for help, with a dead body?” he asked quietly. “I don’t want to shoot you, Keely. I—”

His throat closed up a bit and the next words were hard to admit, but he had to make a choice, too. Risk a little of himself, or risk his life if he let a very frightened woman continue to point a gun at him. Situations got out of hand sometimes. He knew that too well.

“I like you,” he finished finally. “Why would I want to shoot you?”

She didn’t say anything for long seconds. He felt the electric pull of her even through the dark. She was thinking, he knew. Thinking about whether she could trust him or not.

It appeared she wasn’t so naive, after all.

“You walked up to my door with a gun,” she said. “And I want to know why.” Her voice strengthened.

She was pulling herself together. That hadn’t taken long, and it occurred to him that she had a tough spine inside that very sweet, hot, bombshell-quality body of hers.

He did like her, he realized with a shock, even though she had annoyed him quite a bit, from the first time he’d spoken with her on the phone about the rental, with questions he didn’t want to answer. He liked her in spite of himself because she was nice. Even when he was rude to her, she was nice. In fact, she was too nice. Too nice for him. His instinct to get away from her as quickly as possible had been a good one.

Now he couldn’t get away from her and she was going to take her opportunity to ask questions again, and he was going to have to give her answers whether he liked it or not. And he didn’t like it at all.

“I’m a cop.”

The house lay so still around them, he could hear the very low intake of her breath, sense the tension emanating from her body as his words sunk in. His gut tightened, waiting for her to respond.

“A cop?” She didn’t sound like she really believed him.

He figured she’d thought he operated on the opposite side of the law, based on his appearance. He’d worked undercover most of the past few years and his wardrobe had suffered in keeping with his cases. Not that he cared or that it mattered. He was supposed to be resting and relaxing, not dressing for success.

In truth, he was just biding his time. He didn’t need rest and relaxation. He needed to get back to work. The damn thing was, the chief wouldn’t let him. The department shrink had said he wasn’t dealing with his grief. Go to the country, the chief had ordered. Get some perspective. Unwind. One month. Then he’d let him come back to work. He’d suggested Haven. The chief had grown up here.

Jake had thought he was dealing with his grief just fine. How the hell was someone supposed to take it when they were responsible for their partner getting blown up right in front of them? And people had called him a hero. He’d just wanted to get back to work. He still wanted to get back to work. He wanted to bury himself in work. No thinking. No feeling. And certainly no consorting with the locals. He didn’t want any entanglements.

But here he was in Haven, trapped in a cellar with a beautiful woman. How had that happened?

“Charleston Police Department,” he told her.

“And I’m supposed to know that’s the truth how…?” she asked.

“Because I’m telling you it’s the truth….” he said. “I’m one of the good guys, Keely. I promise.” He waited a beat. “If you don’t mind, I don’t really like it when people point guns at me,” he said. “It makes me worry about whether I’m going to get to keep breathing. You stop pointing the gun at me and we find a candle, then I’ll show you my badge and ID. Deal?”

He heard the soft click of the chamber pushing open.

“I’m going to take the bullets out. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

She hadn’t lied about knowing how to operate a weapon. And she might believe him—or might not—but she wasn’t going to leave the gun loaded. Again, not so naive, after all.

It wouldn’t do her a whole lot of good if he wanted to wrestle the empty gun away from her and find the bullets, but it would buy her time. Better, he supposed she was figuring, than letting him wrestle the gun away from her loaded.

She’d probably just put the bullets in her back pocket. There weren’t a whole lot of other options available.

He heard the gun drop on the debris behind her.

“I know you can pick it up,” she said then. “I know you can get the bullets away from me. But,” she added dryly, “I suppose you’re right. You’re pretty stuck if help comes and I’m laying here in a pool of blood. Wouldn’t be too smart on your part. I just don’t like loaded guns, so let’s not keep it that way. Okay?” She still wasn’t completely trusting him.

“Okay.”

Tentative truce. Fragile, very fragile, he’d guess.

He’d take it.

“They’d know you did it,” she added.

“Yes.”

“You’d go to prison.”

“Definitely.”

“For the rest of your life.”

“Probably.”

“Or get the death sentence.”

“There’s no death sentence in West Virginia.”

She was silent for a long beat. Disappointed, probably.

“You know what they do to guys like you in prison,” she said finally.

In spite of himself, he felt a slow lift to his mouth. He actually almost laughed.

“Are you saying I’m cute?” What the hell was he doing now? Flirting with her?

He heard her blow out an irritated breath. Yeah, she thought he was cute. She probably hadn’t meant to give that away.

“I’m not saying you’re cute,” she said tensely. “I’m not saying you’re anything but on your way to the slammer if you try to hurt me.”

He reminded himself that it wasn’t important what she thought of him as long as she stopped holding a gun on him.

Sobering, he said, “I’m not going to shoot you, Keely. I don’t want to hurt you in any way.”

She was silent for another long stretch.

“I’d probably never find the candles and matches without you,” he tacked on. “Plus, I’d be lonely down here waiting for help.”

“Oh, yeah.”

He heard her move, slowly, carefully, toward one wall of the cellar. Good. Back to business.

“There’s a trunk over here, somewhere,” she said.

He followed the sound of her voice and her footsteps. She’d knelt, was clearing debris from something. He went to work with her, removing boards and bits of plaster and who knew what else.

“This is it,” she said, and her voice rose, confident, hopeful. The trunk lid creaked open and she fumbled around inside. “Here they are.”

The box opened with a soft sound then she struck a long match, held it up.

She wasn’t just a voice in the dark anymore. Her eyes glowed in the light from the flame, wary and still scared. He knelt there, close to her, close enough to fill his nostrils with her heady scent, feel overpowered for a second by the vulnerable look on her face.

Apple. She smelled like apple. Deliciously sweet.

He reached for his wallet, flipped out his ID and badge for her to see.

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” he said quietly, tucking the truth of his identity back in his pocket. “I really don’t want to hurt you, Keely. I’m not going to. I promise.”

She stared at him, and time locked, forever, it seemed, then she blinked and turned her gaze down, away from him.

“I don’t believe in promises,” she said so softly, it was nearly a whisper. “People lie all the time. So cut it out with the promises. I’m not interested.”

The heart he wasn’t supposed to feel tightened a little at the break in her voice. She’d been hurt, badly, he had no doubt now. Probably by that dead husband of hers.

But he wasn’t responsible. It bothered him, anyway. That look in her eyes, that pain in her thready voice, bothered him. This was more than police instinct to read and study people. This was about her. And that wasn’t good.

“I’m sorry anyone ever lied to you,” he said, and it was too late to bite the words back even if he really wanted to.

She glanced back up and he saw emotion shining in her eyes. She cleared her throat, blinked back tears. “There are candles over there somewhere.”

The long match was half-burned when she stood, moved to the other wall. Broken canning jars lay everywhere and she crouched again, searching. He went after her.

“Here they are.” The joy in her voice was catching. “We have light!” She stuck one of the thick candles inside one of the intact jars and lit it with the match, then stood. The scent of warm vanilla rose around her, mixing with the ripe apple scent. She smelled good enough to eat and his libido was taking his brain in directions he didn’t want to go.

He stood in front of her when she turned, the candle in the jar in her hand. He wanted to kiss her. Her mouth was right there, inches away. It was crazy, ridiculous. Her hair fell around her face in shimmery strands, like spun gold, wildly sexy and just begging for a man to tangle his fingers into it, pull her face close and—The strength of his very vivid fantasy shocked him and left him with a weird, edgy feeling as he reminded himself that he wasn’t interested in any kind of relationship, with Keely Schiffer or anyone else.

“We’re going to be okay, right?” she said then.

“Help will come. Your friends and your family will make sure of that.” And he was sure she had friends and family that cared about her. He could just tell. She was all apple pie goodness through and through. A nice, wholesome country girl.

She couldn’t have been more foreign to his experience if she’d hailed from another continent. Maybe that was the trouble. He was used to women who wielded their sexuality like a weapon. She was innocently sensual, naively seductive. She was killing him.

“If they’re even okay.” She bit her lip and he could hear the fear in her voice. “I don’t know if they’re okay.”

“Faith,” he offered. “You have to go on faith for now.” He didn’t know where that came from. He hadn’t had much faith lately. He wanted her to have it, though. “We were lucky, you know? We may be trapped here, but we’re all right. They were lucky, too. Just believe that for now. There’s nothing else you can do.”

He smoothed the hair back from her face even when he knew he shouldn’t touch her more than necessary. He couldn’t seem to stop touching her, but he forced himself to. He dropped his hand back to his side.

What the hell was wrong with him?

“You’re right, I know,” she whispered, her eyes holding him. “Stop being so nice,” she said suddenly. “It’s freaking me out.”

He laughed, surprised by her remark, and loved it when she smiled through the shine of tears in her gaze. It was an unexpectedly satisfying reward.

“Sorry. I can go back to being an asshole if you want.”

She laughed now. “No, I guess I don’t want you to do that. I’m stuck with you here, after all.” She cocked her head, studied him. “We’re stuck with each other.”

He nodded. “Looks that way.”

“For who knows how long,” she added. Her gaze moved, swept the cellar. In the flickering candlelight, the wreckage was stunning. “What now?”

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