Ex Marks the Spot (Harlequin Next)

by Merline Lovelace

  “How sad,” she said after a moment. “And how ironic considering it was the endless succession of long days and empty nights that convinced us to call it quits.”

  “Convinced you to call it quits,” he reminded her quietly. “I wanted to hang in there.”

  “I know.” Sighing, she aligned the salt beside the pepper. “I guess you put your finger on the underlying problem. We never really blended our lives. We were both too independent, too self-sufficient.” She lifted her gaze to his. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Doesn’t mean it can’t. Just something to think about,” he added as the waitress approached with two steaming platters.

  DAVE HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT the impetus behind Andi’s call to his office earlier that afternoon. He didn’t remember the camera until he’d seen her into her house and retreated to his own. The camcorder sat on the hall table where he’d left it, waiting patiently. Retracing his steps, he delivered it to her front door.

  “We forgot this in all the excitement.”

  “So we did.”

  “You’ll need to charge the battery. I haven’t used it in a while.”

  More than a while. He hadn’t had the thing out of its box since the Christmas she’d given it to him. They’d split soon afterward, and Dave hadn’t felt the urge to record home movies in the years since. A digital still camera more than suited his needs.

  Burying the painful memories, he waited while she unzipped the case and extracted the camera.

  “Got a minute to show me how it works?”

  “Sure.”

  He followed her into the high-ceilinged great room. As he had the night he’d joined her and her guests for dinner, he searched the room for mementos from their shared past. She’d rented the place furnished, he knew, and put most of her household goods in storage. But he recognized the framed watercolor of Bangkok’s floating market. They’d bought it on the first of three days and two steamy nights they’d spent in that fascinating city.

  He also recognized several of the critters in her crystal menagerie. He’d brought the penguin with him as a homecoming gift after a session of highly specialized Arctic training. The unicorn he’d picked up during a layover in Ireland. The blowfish, he remembered with slicing regret, had joined the ranks after a deployment had forced him to cancel a long-scheduled vacation in Hawaii.

  Andi had worn the same uniform, was subject to the same short-notice deployments and disruptions of personal plans. She’d groused a bit but hadn’t whined or complained about the cancellation.

  Would things have turned out differently if she had? If either of them had put the other’s needs before those of their troops or their service or their country? If they hadn’t been so damned independent and self-sufficient?

  His glance shifted to Andi, hunkered down on the sofa with the camera and its peripherals spread out before her on the coffee table. She’d claimed at the café that nothing had changed. His response came back to haunt him.

  Doesn’t mean it can’t.

  She looked up then, a black bud pinched between her fingers. “This is the remote mike, right?”

  “Right.”

  “How do you activate it?”

  “Beats me.”

  He joined her on the sofa. Knee to knee, they went through the instruction manual.

  “Why do you need the remote?” he asked, frowning at the complicated diagrams. “The built-in mike picks up all sounds within a reasonable range.”

  “I might have to place the camera some distance from my subject.”

  “Are you taking shots of the store?”

  “Some shots in the store. The building inspector who’s holding up my occupancy permit is doing another walk-through tomorrow.” Flicking to the next page, she skimmed the instructions. “Wayne Jacobs, my leasing agent, says the guy won’t approve the permit until we slip him some cash. I’m hoping he tries to put the squeeze on me tomorrow.”

  “Whoa! You want this camcorder to record a crooked inspector soliciting or accepting a bribe?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You can’t do that, Andi.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “No, you can’t!”

  He yanked the instruction book out of her hands to get her attention.

  “There are laws against secretly recording or disclosing private conversations.”

  “Give me some credit, Armstrong. I went online and checked the statutes. Under Florida law, you don’t need consent to record an oral communication uttered by someone who doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

  “I doubt your inspector expects his oral communications to be made public.”

  “He may not, but if more than two people are present during the discussion, he’s screwed.” Smug satisfaction laced her reply. “Technically a three-party conversation is no longer private.”

  Dave struggled heroically to hang on to his temper. They’d just made a trip to the ER, for God’s sake. She should be taking it easy, recouping her strength after those dizzy spells. Instead she was plotting the downfall of a crooked building inspector.

  “Who’s your third party?”

  “Wayne Jacobs, my leasing agent. He and I are meeting the inspector at two tomorrow, in my shop. Although…”

  Frowning, she clicked her nails against the camcorder’s case.

  “So far Wayne’s refused to cough up a cent. The target might get suspicious if he does an abrupt about-face.”

  Target. Christ!

  Dave was marshaling all the reasons she shouldn’t set herself up as the next James Bond when she slanted him a speculative glance.

  “What are you doing around two tomorrow afternoon, Armstrong?”

  “Get real, Andi. You think this guy will talk with a stranger present?”

  “Not a stranger. My business partner. Or we could go with the truth and say you’re my ex-husband. You’ve invested a bundle,” she improvised, “staked me to part of the start-up costs because you still feel guilty about walking out on me. Now you just want to get me off your back.”

  “Weak. Very weak.”

  “Hey, it can work.”

  Springing off the sofa, she threw herself into the role of abandoned wife.

  “You’ve been paying alimony, but it stops when—if— I begin earning income from the shop. You want that to happen. You need it to happen, since the twin stepkids you inherited when you remarried just entered college.”

  “Care to tell me which college?”

  Magnanimously, she left the choice to him. “You pick the school. Make it private and out of state, though. The tuition costs are busting your balls.”

  Something certainly was, and that something stood just a few feet away, her entire body alive with the vibrant energy she brought to every task, big or small. Dave gave up all thought of trying to rein her in.

  “Just out of curiosity,” he drawled, “how does my current wife feel about having you for a neighbor?”

  “She’s pissed. Really pissed. But you’ve got orders, so you’ll depart the area in a few months. Before you leave, you want to make sure I get the shop up and running.”

  “You missed your calling, woman. You should have specialized in undercover ops.”

  “It’s never too late to develop new skills.” After a few more embellishments, his coconspirator shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “Think you can remember all that?”

  “Ex-wife. Alimony. Twins. Private university. Got it.” Pushing to his feet, Dave made for the door. “This is just lame enough to work. See you at fourteen hundred tomorrow, Armstrong.”

  “Not if I see you first.”

  HER MIND SPINNING WITH the details of her plot, Andi went back to the camcorder. As Dave had warned, the battery was stone-cold dead.

  She plugged the charger into a wall outlet and connected the other end to the camera. The instrument beeped to life in her hands.

  “Okay, sweetheart, let’s see what you can do.”

 
Following the instructions, she opened the viewing screen and switched from still to movie mode. Activating the remote mike required additional references to the manual.

  Now to see if it worked.

  Aiming the telescopic lens at the far corner of the great room, Andi slipped the supersensitive mike into her shirt pocket and crossed to the far corner of the room.

  “Testing, one, two, three.”

  For good measure, she opened the sliding glass doors to add a chorus of night sounds to her test. Cicadas chirped, the bug lights popped as an unwary mosquito got zapped and the sea murmured restlessly in the distance.

  “Testing, one, two, three.”

  When she went to review the test, the sound played back with astonishing clarity, but the video screen remained blank.

  Hell! She must have hit the wrong setting. Not hard to do, since the minicam came packed with enough variations to record a full-length animated feature film. Wondering how engineers managed to cram so many options into such a small case, Andi reread the manual and tried again. This time the tiny viewing screen lit up.

  “Yes!”

  She hit the reverse button, saw a blur of colorful scenes whir by and had to search for the stop button. She was about to fast-forward again when the three-inch screen filled with bright, colorful lights.

  “What’s this?”

  A Christmas tree, she saw as the camera zoomed out, its lights twinkling against stressed-oak paneling. With a jolt, she recognized the paneling. She’d picked it for the den of the last home she and Dave had shared.

  Have you figured it out yet?

  Her disembodied voice floated through the camcorder’s speaker. Dave’s deep baritone followed.

  I think so.

  The camera panned, jerked to a stop and zoomed in on a creature sitting cross-legged amid a pile of unwrapped presents, her hair in wild tangles and a Santa Claus coffee mug poised halfway to her lips.

  Smile, Andi. Better yet, wave and sing “Jingle Bells.”

  Uh-uh! You know I can’t carry a tune in a duffel bag.

  Be a sport, Mrs. Claus. Croon for the camera.

  No.

  The woman in the video made a face and hid behind her Santa mug. The woman watching her blinked away the prick of hot, stinging tears.

  Jeez, you’re stubborn. Guess I’ll have to mount this on the tripod and get in the shot with you. We’ll make it a duet.

  Walls and floor tilted as the camera swung crazily. A thump sounded. The view leveled. Dave had plunked his Christmas present on the coffee table, Andi remembered, her throat tight and aching.

  As he rustled through boxes and wadded paper for the tripod she’d bought to go with the camera, the camcorder’s sensitive mike magnified the sounds. Every crack and crackle seemed to stab into Andi’s chest.

  How do you hook up this thing?

  How do I know?

  There was a rattle, a whoosh of pneumatic legs telescoping, then floor and ceiling upended again. Finally Dave connected camcorder and stand. Seconds later he waded into Andi’s nest of wrapping paper and dropped beside her.

  Dashing through the snow…

  Belting out the old standard at the top of his lungs, Dave tried to get her to join him.

  In a one-horse open sleigh…

  Oh, God!

  Cradling the camera in both hands, Andi slid off the sofa cushion onto the floor. Her agonized gaze stayed locked on the small screen. She knew what would come next.

  Dave mugging for the camera.

  Finishing his solo with a hearty ho-ho-ho.

  Tugging her onto his lap for a kiss.

  Plucking the mug out of her hand and setting it aside before he tumbled her into the mounds of paper.

  He’d tried hard to patch things up that Christmas. So had she. Their last desperate attempt to make their marriage work had only delayed the inevitable.

  “Dammit!”

  Her palm hit the screen, snapping it shut. The camcorder bounced to the carpet. She couldn’t watch any more.

  She’d put the past behind her. Or thought she had. Now Dave was back in her life and determined to try again. Could she let him in? Did she have the will to keep him out?

  She knew the answer before she retrieved the camera. They’d tried long-distance marriage once. It didn’t work then. It wouldn’t work now…unless they took a lesson from past mistakes and figured out how to blend.

  Pushing to her feet, she zipped the camcorder into its case.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Morning, sir.”

  Captain Acker snapped to attention. Returning his greeting, Dave snagged a mug of coffee and made a beeline for his office.

  “What’s on the agenda today?”

  Acker followed, toting the morning file. “Stand-up at seven. Briefing on the accident board’s preliminary report at eight. Colonel Johnson’s on for ten-twenty to go over CINCSOUTH’s request for an additional combat controller team for Operation Southern Watch. This afternoon you wanted to observe the Navy’s new protocol for underwater egress training at Pensacola. I’ve scheduled a staff car to pick you up at thirteen hundred.”

  “Cancel the staff car and reschedule the visit. I have some personal business to I need to take care of this afternoon.’”

  Like playing an exasperated ex-husband.

  Dave wouldn’t have to dig very deep for the role. He still hadn’t quite recovered from last night’s trip to the ER, precipitated by Andi’s idiocy in forgetting to eat.

  “What about the major’s selection board, sir? The colonel’s group needs to know if you’ll take it or if we’re sending Colonel Heath instead. We promised them a reply no later than this afternoon.”

  Dave gulped down a swig of coffee. Sitting on a promotion board was both an honor and an obligation. Dave and his fellow board members would review thousands of sharp young captains and select only the best and the brightest for promotion to major. More to the point, Dave would be representing the Special Ops community. He owed it to the promotion-eligible officers in his command to share his knowledge of their unique skills with the other colonels on the board.

  Yet the board would run for a minimum of three weeks. Hard on its heels was a swing through the Pacific, where Dave was supposed to tour Combat Rescue units assigned to bases in the Far East with the new PACAF commander.

  That was five weeks minimum away from his office. Away from Andi.

  He took another swig of coffee and skimmed the stark black-and-white photos mounted on the wall. Those were his troops in the pictures, his responsibility.

  Other images kept superimposing themselves over the photos. Andi on the floor of her garage. Andi with a green hospital gown slipping down one shoulder. Andi peeling off sticky-backed electrodes.

  “Tell the colonel’s group we’re sending Colonel Heath.”

  DAVE PARKED HIS PICKUP outside Andi’s shop at one-forty.

  She’d been on the lookout for him. Glancing up from the camera she was concealing behind some boxes on one of the bookshelves, she noted with approval that he’d changed out of his uniform.

  Good thinking. In boots, BDUs and beret, with his eagles bristling on his collar, he came across as authoritative and more than a little intimidating. Since their script called for exasperation and impatience rather than intimidation, it would play better in civvies.

  Not that Dave Armstrong looked all that much less threatening in cords, a Hawaiian shirt and an Atlanta Braves ball cap. With his square, uncompromising jaw and don’t-mess-with-me stride, the man was a walking billboard for macho.

  Once inside the shop, he paused by the refinished counter and searched the rows of bookshelves. “Andi?”

  “Right here.”

  Angling the lens to make sure she had him squarely in the viewfinder, she switched the camera to Off to save the battery and joined him at the front of the store. His gaze skimmed her snug jeans and gauzy leopard-print top before locking on her face.

  “Any more dizzy spells?”

&nb
sp; “None.”

  “What have you eaten today?”

  “Breakfast, lunch and a PowerBar.”

  With a small grunt, he splayed his hands on his hips. Andi assumed the inarticulate sound signified approval of her improved dietary habits and launched into her prebrief.

  “The inspector’s name is Kevin Talbot. Wayne Jacobs, my leasing agent, says he goes by Bud. Reportedly Buddy boy retired from the…the…”

  She stumbled to a halt, her startled glance drawn to the gold band on his left hand. The brushed gold stood out like neon against his tanned skin. Its unique basket-weave pattern was achingly familiar.

  “You’re…” Dragging in a quick breath, she fought the tide of memories threatening to swamp her. “You’re wearing your wedding ring.”

  He flexed his hand and glanced down at the ring. “I’m supposed to be married. Thought I’d better dress the part.” He looked up, snagging her in a hard vise. “Do you still have yours?”

  “It’s, uh, in the box that holds my ribbons and rank insignia.”

  None of which she wore any longer. Feeling suddenly adrift and cut off from the lifelines that had anchored her for so many years, Andi swiped her tongue over her lips and picked up where she’d left off.

  “Our boy Bud retired from the construction business up in Michigan five or six years ago and moved to Florida. Since Gulf Springs is too small for a full-time building inspector, Talbot fills in part-time at the request of the mayor and town council.”

  “Supplementing his retirement income with a bribe or two.”

  “That’s our working theory. I’ve reconfirmed the two o’clock appointment. Wayne was going to arrive then, too, but I told him to come late. I want Buddy boy to walk in on you and me slinging barbs at each other about alimony, tuition costs and the delays in getting the shop open.”

  “Right. The twins are attending Duke, by the way.”

  “Duke. Got it.”

  “Jenny’s pulling straight A’s. Jake fell for a cute little freshman and is barely scraping through this semester. Trish is really torqued about that. The current Mrs. Armstrong,” he added at Andi’s blank look. “She’s a redhead, in case you’re interested.”