Secrets of Bella Terra

by Christina Dodd

  “Thank God you got that bitch.” On-screen, Darren actually did pull his hair. “I was sweating bullets here, trying to figure out how to tell you I’d screwed up.”

  “I wouldn’t say you’d screwed up.” The path toward Brooke’s cottage wound through artful plantings. So Rafe cut across the lawns.

  He needed to see Brooke now.

  “I would. The thing was, she kept coming back into the security room, and she’d sit there in the chair with the webcam pointed right at her, and she’d fluff her tits. And it’s not like I can’t see that every day on some porn site, but this was like . . . She didn’t know I was there so it was . . . Oh, geez, this is so embarrassing.” Darren was babbling, making no sense. “It was, like, naughtier than porn and at the same time cleaner, if you know what I mean.”

  Rafe had been without sleep for thirty hours. On the plane back from Washington, he had been totally focused on what he should say to Brooke. Right now, he felt fuzzy brained and stupid; he knew Darren was telling him something important, but he wasn’t catching on. “Jenna, you mean? Jenna Campbell? She came into the security room some more. To play games?”

  “She was playing games, all right. She was playing me big-time. She knew I was there all along, probably saw me on the computer that first time she walked in.” Darren sounded disgusted and his face was bright red. “So she’d fiddle with her boobs, and while I was drooling, she’d substitute a whole new security program that muffled the alarms wherever she wanted.”

  “How could she do that? She’d have to be an expert computer programmer.”

  “An expert with a gambling habit.”

  Darren wasn’t making any sense. “How is that possible?”

  “I know. She’s a girl! A girl! Girls don’t hack. Most of them don’t know how to save a file.”

  “You have a lot to learn,” Rafe mumbled.

  “I never suspected her. God, Rafe, I apologize. I never suspected her at all. But I’ve been checking her records all night. She got kicked out of college because she was so into gaming—playing them, developing them—she cut classes. The only reason she was there for two semesters was because she went into the college computer and changed her grades in the system. She wasn’t as good then as she is now, so they caught her. She still games, still cheats, too, and when those guys finally traced the money, she was totally screwed. If she doesn’t pay them back, she’s dead.” Darren rubbed his forehead. “But you got her. Okay. As long as she didn’t kill anyone else.”

  Rafe stopped walking. “What in the hell are you talking about? Jenna Campbell isn’t the one we trapped. We trapped Josh Hoffman.”

  “The gardener?” Darren sounded absolutely incredulous. “He’s nobody. I mean, he’s vicious and everything, but he’s dumber than a board.”

  “So you’re saying Jenna Campbell—”

  “Jenna Campbell is the brains behind the whole operation.”

  Rafe heard a gunshot.

  He threw the phone to the ground and started running.

  Wood and Sheetrock sprayed Brooke as she dived low toward Jenna. She landed on the area rug and skidded into Jenna’s legs, taking her down like a bowling pin. Brooke heard a second blast of the pistol, the crash of the table, and the explosion as a lightbulb blew, and she kept rolling. She came to her feet, saw Jenna flat on her back, and kicked the pistol out of her hand. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Brooke shouted. “Did you let Josh talk you into doing this? Hurting Sarah Di Luca? Killing Hernández? Destroying the wine wall?”

  Jenna grabbed Brooke’s foot and pulled it out from under her. Fortunately the pistol was still out of her reach.

  On the way down, the back of Brooke’s head slammed the end table. Black spots swam before her eyes.

  Jenna jumped on her. Took her by her throat. Squeezed as hard as she could. “You stupid bitch. Josh! Josh is nobody. A good fuck. So what? I did it all. I did.”

  Brooke grabbed handfuls of Jenna’s hair and pulled. Hard.

  Jenna screamed like a scalded cat and clawed at Brooke’s face—her tender, swollen face.

  Brooke yanked her head back. Catching one wrist, she twisted, knocking Jenna off and yanking her arm up and behind her back. Placing one foot on her spine, Brooke considered whether a good hard yank would dislocate Jenna’s shoulder.

  After all, Jenna deserved a little pain. Because Brooke still ached from Josh’s attack.

  But she didn’t want Jenna screaming. Not yet. “What’s wrong with you? What are you whining about? Ever since I hired you, you’ve undermined me. Been a handful of thorns.”

  “Working for you. God, there is no justice. I’m smarter than you. Prettier than you. Even in high school, you didn’t realize what I could have done—changed your grades, given you a prison record, or falsified your medical records.” Jenna laughed hoarsely. “In fact, I did. According to your doctor, when you were sixteen, you had the clap.”

  Outrage made Brooke see red. “I was a virgin!”

  “Yeah, but no one would ever believe it.” Jenna’s voice turned ugly again. “I could have brought you down anytime. Should have, but I wanted to see you suffer.”

  Incredulous, Brooke asked, “Suffer why? Why? As far back as I can remember, you always had everything. You were popular. You were a cheerleader. You were the head of the class. You made me miserable in high school.”

  “I didn’t have everything. You had him.” Was that bitter envy in Jenna’s voice?

  Brooke’s raging headache eased. “Him? Rafe?”

  “I had him. I kissed him.” Jenna lifted her head, looked sideways at Brooke. “You didn’t know that, did you? He didn’t confess what we did in the library, did he? He was so horny because you—”

  Brooke yanked on Jenna’s arm.

  Jenna flung herself sideways, knocking Brooke onto one knee. Grabbing Brooke’s sore shoulder, she slammed her face-first to the floor. “Kiss your ass good-bye!”

  Chapter 50

  Rafe raced up onto the porch, let himself into Brooke’s cottage—and stopped short.

  A bruised and bloody Brooke Petersson knelt on Jenna Campbell’s back, holding her wrist twisted in a very simple, very controlling karate move. She looked up at him and with a cool that would have made any one of his operatives proud, said, “Rafe, good timing. Could you take over for me? I need to get a towel—my nose is bleeding again.”

  “Of course.” He walked over, his heart hammering, sweat trickling down his spine.

  Brooke transferred Jenna’s wrist to him. “I know one thing—if I wasn’t buzzed on pain pills, I’d be out cold.” On that preternaturally calm pronouncement, she staggered into the kitchen.

  Jenna turned her head. “The bitch is crazy,” she whispered. “She attacked me. Let’s sneak out of here before she gets her gun and kills us both.”

  “I don’t think so.” He smiled evilly down into her face. “I’ve talked to Darren.”

  “Darren? Who’s Darren?” She fluttered her lashes and pretended ignorance.

  “The foolish boy hacker you seduced.”

  Brooke wandered back in, a dish towel pressed to her face. “Look at this mess,” she muttered.

  He looked around. End table knocked over. Area rug crooked. Lamp on the floor, shade broken, bulb shattered. “Yeah, you women had quite a fight. Sorry I missed it.”

  “She attacked me.” Jenna tried to struggle.

  He tightened his grip a little bit.

  She stilled.

  “I know about your gambling debts.” He was talking to fill Brooke in . . . and to push Jenna a little farther toward the edge. “I know that the collection agency is after your blood, and if you don’t pay them back, they’ll kill you.”

  As Jenna realized she was well and truly trapped, her color changed from pale to red and back again. “Now I’ve got the wine psycho after me, too. I don’t even know who he is, but he said he’d kill me if I didn’t deliver that wine. Because of you two, I’ve got nothing!”

  Jenna
was blaming them for her addiction, her stupidity, for the consequences she would face. Rafe couldn’t believe her gall.

  “I don’t know.” Brooke sounded nasal, and her eyes drooped. “I think you’ll have three meals a day and a very nice exercise yard in the correctional facility.”

  “You stupid cow,” Jenna hissed. “I won’t live through the correctional facility. The collection agency will take me out.”

  “You should have thought of that sooner.” Brooke flinched as the door swung all the way open, then relaxed as her mother banged her walker into the screen door. “Hi, Mom.” She wavered where she stood.

  Rafe wanted to hurry to her side.

  But she paid him no attention. If he didn’t know better, he would say she had a grudge against him.

  Yeah. Probably she did.

  “Would you call the police?” she asked her mother. “I’m going to go lie down with this ice on my face.”

  Kathy Petersson entered and took in the chaos with her typical unflappable demeanor. Pushing her walker ahead of her, she went to the phone. “You bet, honey.”

  When Brooke woke up in her own bed in her own bedroom, it was dark, she was cold, she was hungry, and she had to pee.

  She flipped on the light. She changed into her nightgown and put on her robe. She took care of matters in the bathroom. She headed toward the kitchen and heated up lasagna and made a salad. Taking it into the living room, she put it on a tray and curled up on the couch.

  There. She’d fixed all her immediate worries.

  Well . . . except she was alone, too, and that problem wasn’t easily cured.

  A woman, after being battered two days in a row, would think that someone would hang around. Her mother. Rafe . . .

  If she felt better, she’d start packing for Sweden. Instead, she ate heartily—the lasagna was good!—found Masterpiece Theatre’s Jane Eyre on her DVR—it was sweepingly romantic and Toby Stephens was hot—and settled down for an evening alone—one of far, far too many.

  Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she should put the moves on one of the guests at the hotel. She was pretty sure Gagnon would oblige her. Although—she maneuvered around until she could look into the round, gold-framed mirror on her wall—perhaps for her already battered ego’s sake, she should wait until the swelling had disappeared and the bruising faded a little more.

  Tonight, she’d spend a lovely three hours with Mr. Rochester.

  She was cuddled onto the couch, comfortable, full, and warm, watching him beg Jane to stay with him, when someone tapped on her door. Before she could stir, someone swung it open, easily and without undue effort.

  Rafe walked in carrying a bag from the restaurant.

  “Come on in.” She was pleased to realize she felt well enough to be sarcastic.

  He didn’t notice. Or he didn’t care. “Hey,” he said softly. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay.” Great. He was going to be solicitous.

  Too late, buster! She refused to forget that he’d scooted out of town as soon as he dropped her at the hospital.

  He examined her. “You look better. Bruised, but not so exhausted.”

  “Ice and sleep. Lots of it.”

  He’d disappeared while she was in the hospital . . . but he had come back, and if she was going to be logical, she would correctly remember he had arrived in time to handle the Jenna situation, and for that she was glad. She didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t appeared when he did. She hadn’t had many more rounds with Jenna left in her.

  And he looked tired, a man who’d had too much work and too little sleep for too long.

  “Did you hear from your team in Kyrgyzstan?” she asked.

  “You remembered!” He looked touchingly pleased. “Yes, they’re out, everybody’s safe, and if I tell you anything more, I’ll have to kill you.”

  She laughed unwillingly, and just as unwillingly examined him as closely as he examined her.

  His hair was damp. He was wearing a black tee that cut a line across his sculpted biceps, and a pair of black jeans that hugged his . . . Brooke brushed her hand across her eyes.

  Obviously, she had been enjoying Mr. Rochester’s seduction a little too much, because, well, not that Rafe didn’t always look good, but right now, he looked delicious.

  She needed to remember who he was, who she was, and act sensibly.

  Sitting up, she tugged the belt of her robe tight and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “What have you got?”

  “Dessert. I figured with your pain pills, you couldn’t have a glass of wine, so I’d bring an offering of chocolate, fruit, and cream to the kick-ass goddess.”

  Rafe had a way about him. With any other man, Brooke would call it flattery. But Rafe had that admiring gleam in his eye, and that both warmed her and made her explain, “Jenna and I spar during kickboxing. We’re pretty evenly matched, but today she really, really made me mad. She never had a chance.”

  “Remind me not to make you mad.” He headed into the kitchen, disappeared from sight. Brooke could hear plates and silverware rattling as he called, “I had to go down to visit with DuPey, fill him in on developments, have him fill me in. He said the soil tests were done on Hernández. Josh and Jenna buried the body right here among Eli’s vines—”

  Knowing Rafe as she did, she felt free to interrupt. “When Eli finds out, there’ll be two more bodies buried there.”

  Rafe stuck his head out of the kitchen and looked at her quizzically. “I said exactly the same thing.” He disappeared again. “If you hadn’t gotten into that Dumpster, chances are no one would ever have found Hernández’s body.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “DuPey wanted to talk to you. I told him he could have you tomorrow. Nonna called Eli and gave him the deets about Massimo’s bottle of wine. He was flabbergasted, and I think he’s forgiven me for letting Josh take out his wall of wine, although it’s a huge loss for the winery.” Rafe came back out with a single dinner plate, two forks, and a six-layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, decorated with berries and grapes, and served with decorative whipped cream on the side. He took her dinner plate and put it on the table, pulled up a chair, and sat facing her, knees touching. “Chef said this was your favorite.”

  “I love it, but I don’t eat it!” He looked confused, so she explained. “I mean, not on a regular basis. The calorie count is about a million.”

  “There has been nothing regular about this last month.” He offered her a bite of cake.

  He was right. The scent of chocolate rose heady and rich in her nostrils. There’d been nothing regular about the last month.

  So she took the cake in her mouth. The texture was porous and hearty; the thick frosting melted sweet and dark in her mouth. She closed her eyes to fully savor the flavor, and when she opened them, Rafe was staring at her, fork suspended in midair . . . and he wasn’t thinking about the month’s events.

  He was thinking sex, deep and carnal.

  She was not. She had control. She was absolutely not thinking about sex. She was thinking about the day’s events. “Thank you for covering for me. I don’t think I could have gone down to the police station and given any kind of coherent report.”

  “I, um . . .” Rafe put the fork onto the plate. It rattled against the china. “DuPey was sadly disappointed to discover both criminals were not only lethal, but local. He’s looking at Bella Valley in a whole new way.” Taking a glob of whipped cream on his finger, he held it to her lips.

  What was he trying to pull here?

  When she stared at him, eyes narrowed, he touched it to her lips. “Eat it. It’s melting.”

  She took his hand, held it still, and licked the whipped cream off. Somehow his finger found its way into her mouth, and that made the whole experience suggestive and—she pushed his hand away and took a long, slow, deep breath—erotic.

  She was involved with him again. She didn’t want to be, but she was, the two of them tangled up in love and strugg
ling to get away.

  At least, she was struggling to get away.

  He was plucking red, round grapes off the stem and offering them to her one by one.

  She chewed the fruit; it was slick and sweet against her tongue. She swallowed and said, “Rafe, I’ve got to tell you something.”

  “About Sweden?” A smile quirked his mouth.

  She leaned back in a huff. “Noah has a big mouth.”

  “He’s my brother. His loyalty is to the family.” Rafe smeared a strawberry through the frosting and offered it to her.

  The scent of ripe red fruit teased her, and when she took a bite, she moaned with pleasure.

  Rafe froze, his expression that of a man tied to a stake with the flames licking his legs.

  Good. She was right: He was tangled, too. She relaxed, satisfied and feeling as if she had won at least one battle in this war of love.

  Then Rafe said, “You could have Noah’s total loyalty, too. All you have to do is marry me.”

  Chapter 51

  Brooke slowly and deliberately chewed and swallowed. Contemplated Rafe and his sneak-attack dessert, and tried to decide whether he was serious. “Marry you? Because I beat up Jenna Campbell? You know, guys who get turned on by girls fighting are pathetic.”

  “Nothing about Jenna Campbell turns me on. Only you turn me on. I love you. Always have. Always will. And I want to marry you.” He sounded, looked sincere, leaving her to wonder whether he’d reached into his past and called upon his acting ability, or if he meant what he said. And if he did . . . why now?

  “It’s never worked out before, you and me,” she said. “And I’m going to Sweden.”

  “Okay.”

  He yielded so easily, she was suspicious.

  Rightly so, for he put a dab of chocolate on her lower lip. Leaned into her . . . and licked it off.

  The scent of chocolate and Rafe. The heat of his body. The texture of his tongue. Suspicion skidded away to be replaced by . . . lust. Hot, grand, burgeoning lust.