by Jami Alden
But when Caroline opened the heavy text book to shake the novel free, she wasn’t greeted by a colorful clinch cover.
This book was covered in caramel-colored leather, embossed with a gold monogram on the cover. Heart in her throat, Caroline flipped through the pages and saw that it was a daily planning calendar, the kind that was popular over a decade ago before the advent of the PDA.
She blinked hard and stared at the cover, the stylized letters intertwining.
She knew that monogram.
A.T.
Anne Taggart.
Caroline didn’t remember the planner, but she remembered the purse and the wallet that came with the set. Remembered that Danny’s father, Joe, had given it to Anne for her birthday. And she’d smiled absently and said the custom made set, which must have cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, was “cute,” before setting it aside.
Despite her apathy, she’d apparently used the planner. As Caroline skimmed through it, she saw notes about her schedule, medical appointments, sports practices for her sons.
But nothing in there explained how James Medford had come to possess the daily planner of a woman who’d died eighteen years ago.
CHAPTER 2
“I’m so sorry.”
Danny was grateful his sunglasses hid his eye roll as he braced himself for another hug. His hand was stiff from endless handshakes, his brain numb from the meaningless condolences.
I’m so sorry. That’s what everyone said. But what were they sorry for? That she was dead? That they’d wasted years searching the globe for her when she was dead and buried practically in their own backyard? That Anne Taggart was in such a state when she disappeared that it was plausible—even probable—to most of the people who knew her that she’d walked out on her family?
Danny was really fucking sick of all those “I’m sorries.”
“At least now you have closure.”
Danny bit back a retort and returned his Aunt Cheryl’s embrace after she uttered the only words more annoying and offensive than “I’m sorry.”
He wasn’t sure what kind of closure he was supposed to appreciate when the discovery of his mother’s body raised about a thousand more questions than it answered, starting with how did she end up dead in the first place and who the fuck decided an unmarked grave in a redwood forest was an appropriate resting place?
But he didn’t figure his Aunt Cheryl, whom they hadn’t seen in over a decade, was up to discussing any of those hard questions.
Cheryl, his mother’s younger sister by two years, pulled back and clasped his right hand in both of hers. A niggling ache clutched his chest as he took in her carefully styled, chin length hair, its sunny blond color no doubt aided by a hairdresser, her lightly lined skin and watery blue eyes. Cheryl looked a lot like her older sister, and Danny knew this was the closest he’d ever get to seeing his own mother age.
He fought the urge to yank his hand away, slam himself into his Jeep and haul ass back to his house so he could run for the hills and get good and gone for a few hours, maybe a few days.
He stood firm, returning Cheryl’s affectionate squeeze while he fought the blackness threatening to swallow him whole.
“If you need anything, anything at all, let me know, okay? You have our number, right?”
Danny nodded, humoring her, bending his head so she could place one last, teary kiss on his cheek. He had no doubt she was sincere. In that moment, right that second, she meant he could call her for anything if he or his brothers were so inclined. But Aunt Cheryl and her husband lived outside Minneapolis, near her own children. Other than birthday cards and Christmas cards, they hadn’t had any contact once the initial stir caused by Anne’s disappearance died down. He didn’t blame her—she needed to get on with her life half a continent away. Still, her offer to “be there”—whatever the fuck that meant—rang just as hollow as the endless “I’m sorries.”
Cheryl was followed by an endless stream of mourners, people he’d never met or barely remembered who’d shown up at Menlo Presbyterian, supposedly to mourn Anne Taggart.
Or to rubberneck and rehash one of the biggest local scandals of the last decade was more like it.
He shook infinite hands, endured endless maternal pats as he watched Cheryl walk over to his father. The grim knot in Danny’s gut tightened as he watched his father woodenly return her hug. God, he hoped Cheryl didn’t say anything about closure horseshit to Joe. It was the last kind of closure Joe needed. The kind of closure that was going to drive his father into an early grave if they didn’t find something, anything, to point them in the right direction.
But the case was so cold it bordered on permafrost, and the police seemed content to leave it that way. Danny, Derek, and Ethan had worked nonstop to find something—anything to go on, retracing her last days, going back through every pocket and purse and leftover scrap of paper she left behind.
And Joe had sat by through all of it, saying little, doing less, as he worked his way through a bottle of Ketel One vodka.
Danny was very afraid Joe was going to lose himself in the bottom of a bottle if they didn’t find something soon.
Finally the last of the mourners trailed out, and Danny made his way over to where his father stood with his brothers, along with Toni and Alyssa. Alyssa was doing her best to take one for the team, posing for the cameras and granting interviews to everyone as she tried to deflect the press’s attention away from the family. Danny uttered a curt no comment as he plowed his way through the throng and went to stand at his father’s side.
Like a bunch of good lemmings, the herd of reporters trailed Alyssa out to the parking lot. She threw them a wave over her shoulder, motioning to Derek that she’d call him. As the crowd moved, Danny could see one last mourner exit the dark interior of the church.
He did a double, then a triple take.
No fucking way.
His breath caught and his nostrils flared as he took her in. He knew the thick black waves spilling to her waist, the mouthwatering curves elegantly draped in black wool. Her dress went from neck to wrist to knee and should have been modest, but only served to highlight the lush swell of her breasts, the deep curve of her waist, the sexy flare of her hips. The heels of her black pumps tap tapped their way down the concrete steps and headed in his direction.
He dragged his gaze up to her face. Her luscious mouth was painted red and set in determined lines. Even though the sun was hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, like him she wore sunglasses, her oversize frames hiding half her face. As though, like him, she didn’t want to chance anyone getting a peek into her soul.
Caroline fucking Palomares.
No, he reminded himself. Caroline fucking Medford.
Raw emotion spun up inside him, threatening to take him down. Lust. Anger. And a bunch of other crap he wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.
As she strode toward him, shoulders back, hips swinging like she had every right to be walking back into his life, today of all days, he struggled to put the lid back on the swirl of emotion struggling to break free. He reminded himself savagely of who she was. Caroline Medford.
Wife of James Medford, rich attorney twenty years her senior. The same James Medford who could give her the affluent lifestyle he hadn’t realized she coveted until it was too late.
The same James Medford she may very well have killed to keep herself in fast cars and high fashion.
She was not the seventeen-year-old who’d promised she’d never leave him when she gave him her virginity. She was not the twenty-year-old who’d sobbed when he’d announced his plans to join the Special Forces after he graduated from West Point. She wasn’t even the twenty-two-year-old who’d told him to fuck off one final time before walking out on him without another word.
As she drew closer he focused on those differences. She was thinner, for one, he noticed as she got closer. And older, her mouth bracketed by fine lines that came from stress and age. Not to mention the wardrobe. He bet her o
utfit topped out at over a grand, even more if you counted the purse. A far cry from the wardrobe of a girl from a working class neighborhood who shopped at discount stores and went to private school on scholarship.
She was nothing like the girl he’d known, and he was nothing like the dumb kid who’d entertained romantic illusions like true love and happily ever after.
He took off his glasses, feeling a smile curl his lips for the first time in several days as she stumbled a little.
She was off center. Just the way he liked it. And he was in perfect control. Because Caroline Medford meant nothing to him.
Danny’s gray stare hit Caroline like a blast chiller, freezing the marrow in her bones as she tried to cover up her little stumble. His face was carefully neutral, and it was only because she knew him well that she could read the icy disdain in his eyes.
No, scratch that. She didn’t know him, not anymore. She hadn’t known him for over a decade. He was a completely different person now, as was she. She needed to approach this as a purely business decision. Two adults helping each other get the information they needed, without letting their past relationship interfere.
But as she closed the distance between them that cool gray gaze slid down, then up over her black wool-clad form. Heat unfurled low in her belly as her libido chose that inconvenient moment to wake after a long hibernation. God he looked good. Her Jackie O glasses hid her eyes, allowing her to hungrily drink in every inch of him, all the ways he was the same, all the ways he’d changed.
Danny had always been tall and muscular, even when she’d first met him in high school, but his six-foot-four frame had filled out in the ten years since she’d seen him. He’d packed on a good twenty, twenty-five pounds, and though she couldn’t say for sure with the suit coat hiding his chest, she bet it was all pure, hard muscle. His face was still all planes and angles, his tanned jaw already hinting at a five o’clock shadow. His thick, nearly black hair was cropped short, but not as short as the military buzz cut he’d worn the last time she’d seen him. His blade of a nose was no longer perfectly straight. It now sported a bump on the bridge and pointed ever so slightly to the left, evidence that he’d broken it at least once. It gave an almost menacing cast to a face that didn’t betray an inch of softness.
Except for his eyelashes, which were still so ridiculously long they brushed his eyebrows as he regarded her with his level stare. And his full, sensual lips, which pulled down at the corners as she stopped about a foot in front of him.
“Hi Danny,” she said after he stared at her for what felt like a century without saying anything. Then, because she had no idea what else to say to him, “I wish this had turned out differently for you.”
He flinched a little, and for a split second, almost so fast she missed it, there was flash of pain in his eyes, a peek into the abyss he tried so hard to hide. Tears stung her eyes and she struggled with the crazy urge to throw her arms around him, offer up her body and soul just to make him feel better.
And hadn’t she learned the hard way that was a losing proposition any way you sliced it?
“What are you doing here, Caroline?” he asked, any hint of pain wiped from his face.
“When I heard what happened, I wanted to offer my condolences,” she said, sounding lame even to herself.
He quirked a thick, dark eyebrow at her, and pinned her with another variation of his laser sharp stare. “Really? After dropping off the face of the earth, you decide to show up unannounced at my mother’s memorial service?”
Right. He chose to join an elite branch of the military and participate in some of the most dangerous missions on the planet, but she was the one who had dropped off the face of the earth. In his mind, it was her fault, and always would be.
She squared her shoulders and shoved back the urge to argue and set him straight about what had really sent her marching out his door all those years ago. She had more important things to do than rehash all the ways he’d chased her away.
“Believe it or not, I cared about you and your family. And I felt I wanted to pay my respects. But you’re right. There’s another reason—”
She was cut off as a pair of strong arms wrapped around her from the side, lifting her off her feet and enfolding her in a rib crushing embrace.
“Holy shit, Caroline Palomares.”
On firm ground again, Caroline looked up into the face of Ethan Taggart, the face that dropped a thousand panties, if the whispers in the girl’s bathroom at Peninsula Priory were to be believed. Caroline hadn’t doubted it for a second, then. And she bet it was even worse now. Almost as big and built as his brother, Ethan had a dangerous charm and a look in his blue eyes that said he knew things to do to a woman that she didn’t even know existed.
“Hey Ethan,” she returned his hug, shocked at how good it was to see him again. When she’d been with Danny, she’d always had a semi-big-sister thing going with Ethan, who liked to crash their dates and pick Caroline’s brain for advice on girls. Not that he needed the help.
“How are you doing?” he asked, his blue eyes dark with concern.
No need to ask if he’d kept up on the local news. “I’m coping,” she said, and pushed her sunglasses up onto her head. “But you shouldn’t worry about me, with everything else you have to deal with.”
He nodded grimly and she followed his gaze to his father, who stood several yards away, staring off into space while a woman—she guessed Anne Taggart’s sister from the resemblance—spoke in a low voice as she blotted her eyes with a tissue.
A woman approached on Ethan’s left and curled her hand around Ethan’s arm as her hazel eyes cast a curious look between Ethan and Caroline.
“Hi. I’m Caroline,” she offered her hand to the tall, black-haired woman who had the kind of creamily perfect complexion most women would kill for. “I’m an old friend of the family,” she said, sensing the woman’s curiosity about Caroline’s connection to Ethan.
“I’m Toni,” the woman replied. “New friend of the family.”
“Caroline and Danny used to be engaged,” Ethan said with an evil half smile, and Caroline felt Danny stiffen next to her.
“About a hundred years ago,” Danny interjected.
Toni’s eyes widened with surprise. “You were engaged?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Caroline could feel Danny bristling behind her.
Ethan slipped his arm around Toni’s waist and pulled her against him in a move as natural as breath. Caroline had to give her credit—she didn’t look at all fazed by Danny’s Cro-Magnon routine.
“Nothing,” the woman replied. “I’m just wondering in what universe any woman would find you marriageable.”
“Obviously none,” Danny said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Because Caroline here dumped me and married someone else.”
Toni turned her attention back to Caroline, did a double take, and quirked her head to the side. “Why do you look so familiar to me?” Then her eyes widened and she swallowed hard. “You’re Caroline Medford, aren’t you?”
“You probably didn’t recognize her without the orange jumpsuit and shackles,” Danny bit out.
And just like that Caroline was ruthlessly reminded of her true purpose there. As nice as it was to reconnect with old friends, it was time to get down to business.
“That’s actually why I came to talk to you,” she said, hating how far she had to tilt her chin to meet his eyes. She used to love how big he was, how feminine and protected he always made her feel. Now his size highlighted her lack of control over her fate.
“To talk about prison fashion?”
Dickhead. Still loved to play the deliberately obtuse card when he didn’t want to hear what she had to say. “My husband.”
Eyes that were icy before went downright glacial. The nostrils of his crooked nose flared as though he’d smelled something rotten, and his lips flattened against his teeth. “Why the fuck would you want to talk to me about your husband?”
Eth
an sucked a breath through his teeth his eyebrows shooting straight to his hairline. “Toni and I are going to take Dad home,” he said, with a look at Danny that meant he expected to hear all the gory details. He dropped a quick kiss on Caroline’s cheek and told her to take care as he steered Toni away.
“I want you to help me find out who killed James,” she said.
His eyes narrowed as he took his time answering. “I thought the police already did that.”
Pain stabbed her, stealing her breath, so fierce she took a step back. Did he really believe she was guilty? Or was he taking a jab at her by making her think he did?
“You know I’m not capable of murdering anyone.”
“I don’t know you at all. I haven’t for a long time.” That he didn’t want to renew their acquaintance rang loud and clear.
“Fine. Then you’ll treat me like you would any other client who hires you for your services. I know you run a security and investigation firm with Derek and Ethan. I want to hire you to investigate my husband’s murder since the police aren’t inclined to entertain the possibility that I didn’t do it.”
“I’m sure that barracuda you hired will be able to get you off.”
Caroline didn’t disagree. With her shrewd legal mind and sheer ruthlessness, Rachael Weller had kept dozens of clients out of jail, even the guilty ones. “That’s not enough. Even if I go to trial and a jury finds me innocent, there will always be that stain. People will always wonder.”
“Let them think what they want. You’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”
She winced at his brutal assessment. He really thought she was that shallow. “It’s one thing for people to think I’m a gold digger, and another for them to think I killed my husband. Besides, it’s not just about me. My mom already has one child who’s an admitted criminal. She doesn’t need her neighbors giving her the stink eye when I come to visit, too.” Not to mention, once the DA built his case, she’d have to go to jail to await trial, and no way in hell was she doing that again. Danny made fun of her orange jumpsuit, but he had no idea what it was like to be confined, with only meetings with her attorney and court appearances to break up the monotony. She swallowed back a wave of nausea at the thought of having to spend a single hour back in confinement.