“He’s been out looking for Seth. He doesn’t believe he’s on any hiking trip. Look, I’ll get the teapot. You two decide what you want to say to each other.”
But as Cozie headed for the kitchen, she heard her aunt say, “I don’t believe you’re any Daniel Forrest—you’re that Foxworth fellow whose helicopter crashed down in Texas. I knew something wasn’t right about you the minute I laid eyes on you. Just took a while for me to come to what it was.”
Leave it to Aunt Ethel.
“Did you check my references?” Daniel asked mildly.
“I didn’t have access to your references.” Her tone suggested that if Cozie were any kind of niece she would have provided such access. “I just used common sense, which most folks around here are bound to do sooner or later. Everyone but Cornelia keeps up on Vanackern goings-on. Well. You are Daniel Foxworth, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Your family as rich as the Vanackerns—or richer?”
Cozie shot in from the hall. “Aunt Ethel.”
She scoffed. “I don’t know how you can call yourself a newspaperwoman and squirm at an honest question.”
Daniel, however, was looking amused. “I’m afraid I have no idea how much the Vanackerns are worth. I’m not even sure about my own family.”
Aunt Ethel slid the copper kettle onto the hot end of the stove, directly over the fire. “I’ve yet to meet a rich person who doesn’t know how much he’s worth down to the last dime. Cornelia? Just regular orange pekoe tea for me, none of that purple stuff you tried serving me last time.” She turned her attention back to Daniel. “What about you? I daresay you don’t look much like a tea drinker.”
“Just iced tea,” he said.
“You’re out of luck there. We stop icing the tea up here after Labor Day.”
Marveling at her aunt’s nerve, Cozie retreated to the kitchen for the stoneware teapot, a couple of orange pekoe teabags, and two mugs. Daniel was on his feet when she returned, his atlas tucked under one arm. “If you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere else I need to be.”
“Where?” Cozie asked.
He ignored her. “A pleasure to see you again, ma’am,” he said to Aunt Ethel, who plainly wasn’t charmed; then, to Cozie, “I’ll be seeing you.”
His words held a double meaning that in no way was lost on her. He went through the back porch and out, and she breathed again.
“Don’t let me keep you from following him,” her aunt said.
“It wouldn’t do any good.” She set the tea paraphernalia on the chest between her father’s chair and the couch. “He thinks Seth tried to blow up his helicopter.”
“Well. My goodness. Do begin at the beginning.”
Chapter
10
Cozie had always loved the expression “fair play’s turnabout” because it usually helped her justify things her other favorite expression, “two wrongs don’t make a right,” told her she shouldn’t be doing.
Like breaking into the renovated sawmill she’d rented to Daniel Foxworth.
“Breaking into,” she reminded herself, was an exaggeration. It wasn’t as if she had to smash a window or kick in a door. She was, after all, a landlady with a key.
Shortly after returning an unusually pensive Aunt Ethel to town, Cozie had taken the path along Hawthorne Orchard Brook, trotted up the front porch, stuck her key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the front door as she had countless times in the past.
She wasn’t entirely sure what she thought she’d find. Something incriminating against her brother—or at least something Daniel would consider incriminating? Maybe she was just looking for proof he really was on the level and her attraction to him wasn’t completely insane.
Just inside the door, she found a black leather jacket hanging on the pegboard instead of her barn jacket or one of her sweatshirts. In the kitchen, the coffeepot and a mug were rinsed and turned over to dry on a towel on the counter. A stick of butter, unmarred by crumbs or gobs of jam, was in a glass butter dish she’d forgotten she owned. A partial loaf of homemade bread was neatly encased in plastic wrap. The compost bucket under the sink was empty. The living area was equally tidy, a copy of her book and last week’s Citizen the only indications Daniel had even moved in. She had no interest in his belongings beyond anything that would help her make sure he’d told her absolutely everything about why he’d come to Vermont. Forget her instincts. If he needed facts, she needed facts.
Peeling off her field jacket, she ventured up the uncarpeted stairs to the loft, where she’d built a small bathroom and bedroom, both with skylights in the slanted roof. The double bed was made up with her hunter green flannel sheets. Towels in the bathroom were hung. Clothes were put away.
“My, my, Major Foxworth,” she said, just to relieve some of her own tension, “aren’t we the neatnick.”
Maybe it was his military training.
She peeked out the loft window overlooking the driveway. No sign of him. Probably he was out combing the countryside for her brother. She wouldn’t blame Seth if he’d ducked out expressly to avoid Daniel Foxworth. She wouldn’t put it past her brother to give Daniel room to figure out he’d had nothing to do with the downing of his helicopter. Once he was back in Texas, Seth would turn up.
Cozie exhaled, suddenly sensing the silence of the sawmill, its uniqueness. Daniel Foxworth, she thought, did not belong in Vermont. He would leave.
She pulled herself away from the window and started with the maple chest of drawers she’d found at an auction, her first real piece of furniture. On top, she picked through loose change, a stack of Vermont brochures and maps, and a small leather address book she’d check later if she had time. The top drawer contained items decidedly male in origin and she skipped right past it. The second drawer was equally, if less interestingly, personal, containing a couple of stacks of shirts and sweaters. Next, logically, was a drawer of jeans and sweats.
What a great criminal she’d make, she thought sarcastically.
The telephone rang, sending her sprawling back on her behind and damned near giving her a heart attack. She immediately decided to ignore it.
Then she wondered: who would be calling Daniel Foxworth?
The bill was still in her name. Heck, she had rights. She jumped up and flopped across the bed to pick up the extension on the night table. “Good afternoon, Cozie Hawthorne speaking.” What else was she supposed to say?
Silence on the other end. She tensed, anticipating her caller’s disembodied voice. But a decidedly male voice with a strong Texas accent said, “You cough up your little brother yet?”
She sat up slowly. “Who are you?”
“The bad-ass Texan he put in the hospital.”
“J. D. Maguire.”
“Danny said you were a smart lady.”
Danny?
There was a brief, suspicious pause before Maguire went on. “You addling his brain?”
“Am I what?” Then she got it. “No, I most certainly am not.”
“Ha.”
But she remembered their lingering kiss in her kitchen: her brain certainly had been addled. It wasn’t, however, something she had any intention of sharing with the man on the other end of the line. “Mr. Maguire, I suggest instead of plotting against my brother, you and your partner start considering who else could have sabotaged your helicopter. From what I can gather, you two have quite a list of enemies yourselves.”
The Texan grunted. “You talk to Danny like that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because one of these days he’s going to turn you over his knee and give your behind a good swat, that’s why.”
Cozie was incensed. “Excuse me? How dare you—”
“Hey, this is on my nickel. I’ll dare what I damned well please. Put him on.”
Right. Now you’re caught, you idiot. She had to remind herself that J. D. Maguire was thousands of miles from Woodstock, Vermont, and in no position to be intimidating anyone. “I’m
afraid Daniel isn’t here.”
“Ah-huh. And you wouldn’t be cooking dinner for him, would you?”
“I would not.”
He coughed, a racking, pain-filled cough he finished with a string of curses that sounded well-practiced. “I’d love to be there,” he went on hoarsely, “when Danny catches you. He hates sneaks.”
She couldn’t let that one slide. “That’s a street that runs two ways, Mr. Maguire. Did you want to leave him a message?”
“You’d give it to him?”
“Sure. I have nothing to hide.”
Maguire chuckled. “If I were you, sweet cheeks, I’d get my fanny out of there before he comes home and finds you. I’ll probably go back to sleep and forget we even talked.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Mr. Maguire.”
“I don’t do anybody any favors. You tell Danny Boy,” he said, “that this time he’s bit off more than he can chew, and I’m not talking about who tried to kill us. Afternoon, Ms. Hawthorne. You thank your lucky stars I’m hooked up to tubes and shit and can’t take the next plane north.”
He hung up.
Cozie replaced the receiver, her face hot. J. D. Maguire had sounded lucid and every bit as difficult and relentless as his partner, if, indeed, more offensive. She pictured the two of them cruising the world for oil fires. A couple of macho, nomadic Texans, one of them also rich. How different their lives were from her own, she thought, sliding off the bed.
An engine sounded in the driveway. It was too much to believe it would be someone other than one Daniel Austin Foxworth. She peeked out the window and through the gathering gloom saw the black truck and its Texas license plate.
She could hide under the bed. No: with no dust ruffle he would see her the moment he came up the stairs.
She could stand there and face him. She hadn’t, after all, found a damned thing of interest.
But J. D. Maguire’s assessment of his partner—whom he knew better than she did—echoed in her head and she thought maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Not that she was a coward, of course. She just preferred to choose her own battles.
She ducked into the loft closet, pushing past a battered soft-leather duffel and an oilcloth coat right out of Bonanza. It would be just her luck if Daniel were in for the night.
The porch door opened and shut, and he headed straight for the loft, his footsteps heavy on the stairs, then on the six-inch pine floorboards she and her father had laid one blustery spring weekend.
Two seconds later he tore open the closet door. “Out.”
“I can explain—”
“Out,” he repeated.
She examined her options, not a time-consuming task since she had few. “Move aside first.”
“You’re in no position to be making demands.”
“I can stay in here and rot. Once I had a field mouse die in between the walls and the smell—”
“Cozie.”
“Well, I can’t go through you, you know.”
He opened the door wider and stepped back, giving her a partial escape route. His idea of moving aside and hers, however, were clearly two different things. “Okay. Out.”
Noting that she was feeling less mortified than she would have expected, Cozie pushed her way out of the closet without tripping over his damned duffel. “I suppose,” she said, adjusting her shirt, “just because you’ve had POW training and have put out zillions of big fires you think you’re tough enough to intimidate an innocent woman.”
“You’re not intimidated, Cozie Hawthorne, and you’re damned sure not innocent.” He shut the closet door. He was, she observed, in a rather uncompromising mood. His eyes could shred steel. “Tell me what you’re doing here.”
She refused to turn away from his hard gaze. “Well. I see you can dish it out but you can’t take it.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you’ve searched my brother’s place, you’ve searched my place—”
“I was looking for an intruder.”
She made a dismissive sound. “The break-in just gave you an excuse.”
“How did you get in?”
“I used my key.”
He put out his palm. “Give it to me.”
“I most certainly will not. This is my property.”
His eyes darkened, capable of melting steel now instead of merely shredding it. “Then I’ll get it from you myself.”
“The hell you will,” Cozie said, and bolted.
She got approximately half a step before an iron arm clamped around her middle and she was swung up off her feet and tossed onto the bed like a sack of laundry.
The moment he released her she shot upright. “You bastard!”
He smirked. “Tell me you wouldn’t have taken a poker to me if you’d had the chance when you caught me at your brother’s place last night.”
“If it’d been a hot poker.”
He started muttering things under his breath that she had a fair idea were uncomplimentary to her. His hair was damp from the misting rain, and he had a masculine scent about him that reminded her of his mouth on hers, his hardness pressed up against her.
She cleared her throat, and he smiled nastily, as if reading her mind. He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t move.”
“Or you’ll what?”
Right away she knew it was a dumb question. Dumb, dumb, dumb. He leaned over and caught up a length of her hair in his hand and tilted her head back, not ungently, so that they were eye to eye. “You’re a complication I don’t need, Cozie Hawthorne.” His sandpaper voice was low and hoarse with an intensity she could see in his eyes, in his stiffened muscles. “Did you find anything of interest?”
“No, but J.D. called.”
Daniel pulled back, once more the remote, controlled professional. “We talked earlier. He’s having a good day—he hates it that he’s not here.”
“I got that impression.”
He gave her a mild look, the passion he’d displayed only a moment before no longer in evidence, buried somewhere deep inside him. “He thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”
“If that’s because I’m insisting you think twice before damning my brother, then I hope I am.”
“That wasn’t it,” Daniel said, an unexpected, sardonic smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “J.D. operates on a more elemental level than that.”
She swallowed. “Oh.”
“I’d better call him before he runs out of energy. You,” he said, “stay put.”
He went around the bed and picked up the extension, dialing J.D.’s hospital number from memory.
But Cozie quickly decided there was no advantage in sticking around for their conversation. Daniel would have to crawl over the bed to get to her. Even he wasn’t that good.
Seizing the moment, she lunged for the stairs, bounded down them in two well-practiced leaps, and was out the door, onto the porch, and up and over the rail, scurrying down the path toward the brook like a panicked squirrel.
But why? She hadn’t really done anything wrong. Besides which, if Daniel were going to throttle her, he would have done so by now. She groaned, stopping. Running would accomplish nothing—a point she’d make to her brother when she found him.
She walked back up the path. There was a cold, steady drizzle now, the kind that penetrated to the bone. In her haste, she’d left her field jacket on the stair rail, which, she belatedly realized, must have given her away. Being an ex-military type, Daniel was more than up to the challenge of figuring out she was hiding in the closet.
He was standing in the doorway when she climbed back onto the porch. “J.D. gave me permission to go after you.”
“I’ll bet he did.”
“Change your mind about running?”
“I decided running would only make you think you had the upper hand. And you don’t.” She paused, giving him a chance to respond. But he didn’t. He merely leaned against the doorjamb and waited for her to go on. “Did J.D. tell you what he wanted?”
“From his hospital bed?”
“It gives him something to do,” Daniel said neutrally.
Cozie acknowledged his words with a small nod. “You feel responsible for him, don’t you? I don’t mean just for his injuries.”
“I know what you mean. J.D. and I go way back.” His tone shut off further questions. “I’ll get your coat.”
She debated following him inside but decided she’d pushed her luck enough for one day. When he returned, he held the jacket for her to slip into, and she did, feeling his solid presence so close to her, a part of her wanting just to fall back against his chest and let his strong arms envelop her. But she quickly drew away from him and said, “If your salvage crew can bring up your helicopter, do you think they’ll find evidence of what caused the explosion?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re hoping.”
“I’m not hoping anything. I haven’t closed off any options. Believe it or not, I am trying to keep an open mind.”
She registered her doubt with deliberately raised eyebrows. “My brother is your chief suspect, though, isn’t he?”
“I’d like to talk to him about his trip to Texas. I’m not saying what he’s done or what he hasn’t done. I haven’t got a shred of evidence against him.” His tone was all business, with no hint he was in any danger of letting her—or anyone else—provoke him into doing something not directly related to getting what he wanted. “I suggest if you know where he is, you at least tell him he’s got some explaining to do.”
Cozie buttoned her jacket, just to have an excuse to avoid Daniel’s probing gaze. “I don’t know where he is.”
“I’ll bet if you thought real hard you could come up with some ideas.”
She ignored him. “I’ll see you around, Major Foxworth.”
“You use your key again,” he said as she started down the porch steps, “it had best be for reasons you and I both can understand. No more sneaking around.”
“That goes for you, too, bub.”
Finding You Page 15