This was a man with secrets, she thought, as he hesitated in his answer. A man who could turn a gullible woman's world upside down. But Reva was no longer a gullible woman foolish enough to fall for a pretty face and a hard body. Some lessons only needed to be taught once.
"Atlanta," he said after a pause that lasted a moment to long.
"What are you doing in Somerset?" one of the retired men asked. It was clear to everyone that Dean Sinclair was not on vacation.
Again, he hesitated. "I'm thinking of opening my own business here."
Reva stared at him. "What kind of business?" Sharply dressed businessmen did not come to Somerset on a regular basis.
He looked at her, really truly looked at her. His eyes met hers and he took a deep breath. Good heavens, he almost smiled. He gave her that same half smile she'd seen last night, as if he were reluctantly amused. "I'm a contractor, a handyman specializing in updating and repairing older houses. I've always had an interest in nineteenth-century architecture."
So much for hoping to go unnoticed. What had given her away? Her fingers twitched slightly, her throat constricted. Maybe she was reading too much into his smile and he didn't recognize her at all.
Then again, what did it matter? Yes, it had been an embarrassing moment, since she'd threatened him and he'd apparently been innocent of any wrongdoing. But he had been where he should not, well after dark. She had no reason to be embarrassed.
A contractor! Reva forgot all about Dean's fabulous eyes, his sculpted jaw, his wedding-ring-free hand and her own unnecessary chagrin. Instead, she thought of the rotting banister upstairs, the crumbling brick in the old kitchen fireplace and the sagging back porch. "Really?"
"I'm not sure we'll locate here," he said quickly. "We're just taking a few days to visit the place. Get to know the town and the people."
"We?" Perhaps there was a wife, after all.
"My business partner made the trip with me."
Reva gave the man a real smile. "You'll have to bring him with you for lunch one day. I'd like to meet him." The partner must be the one with the potbelly. Goodness knows Sinclair didn't have one. His entire body was likely as hard as that jaw.
An unexpected ripple shimmied up her spine. She pushed the reaction down, forced it from her mind. Edna and Frances were not right. She did not need a man.
Especially not one like Dean Sinclair.
* * *
"Do I own what?" Alan was not yet completely awake. He squinted and leaned toward the window, where Dean sat.
"You know, tools," Dean answered. "A hammer, a screwdriver, maybe a drill."
Alan shook his head. "Why?"
Dean kept his eye on Miss Reva's, even though the last of her customers had left a little while ago. "I paid a visit to the restaurant while you were sleeping." And he was still obscenely stuffed for his trouble. It was like going to your grandmother's house and being overwhelmed by all the choices laid before you. He'd eaten too much.
Everything had been perfect. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten such a fine meal. It didn't help matters any that neither of his sisters-in-law or his sister, Shea, were what one could call great cooks. Holidays were always interesting, but no one fed him the way Reva had. And Patsy's idea of eating at home had included a delivery of some kind.
"It was great," Dean finished.
"Okay," Alan said, not sounding at all surprised. "What does that have to do with my tools?"
"They put the customers at these big tables," Dean explained, "and the first thing they did was have everyone tell who they were and where they were from and … what they did."
"Hi!" Allan said in an overly animated voice. "I'm Deputy U.S. Marshal Dean Sinclair, here to keep an eye on your hostess in case her felon of an ex shows up."
"Not likely," Dean grumbled. "She was sitting right next to me." He remembered Reva Macklin with an unexpectedly sharp intensity. Her hand had brushed against his once, and it had been nice. Much nicer than it should have been. She was soft and warm, fragile and strong in that way some special women were.
And she was lovely, far more beautiful than her old grainy picture or the too-brief sight of her through a telescope. No picture or long-range glimpse could do justice to that flawless skin or the sheen in her hair or the depth of her dark-brown eyes. And the way she smelled—like cinnamon and strawberries and soap—was still so real he could close his eyes and…
"So?" Alan prodded. "What did you tell her?"
"That I'm a handyman."
Alan guffawed. "You?"
"It's not that funny."
"Yeah, it is. You don't fix your own car when it breaks down. You live in an apartment and have never even had to mow your own yard, much less fix anything. Face it, you are definitely not mechanically inclined. Do you even know what a hammer looks like?"
"Of course I do," Dean snapped. "It's not that ridiculous."
"Yeah, it—"
"I was caught off guard," Dean interrupted. "Besides, she was the one who caught me snooping around last night."
"You mean legs is Reva Macklin?"
"Yep. I knew it the minute she opened her mouth. She's got this husky voice." The kind of voice a man did not forget. "Since I'd already told her I was checking out the architecture, I had to come up with something that made sense. My brother-in-law's a contractor and he fixes up old houses. That's one thing Somerset has in abundance—old, creaking, falling-down houses in desperate need of repair. It was the first logical explanation that came to mind." Dean glanced over his shoulder. "You're my partner, by the way."
"Great," Alan said flatly.
Dean couldn't get Reva Macklin off his mind. She wasn't what he'd expected. Eddie Pinchon was crude, a lowlife if ever he'd met one. What on earth had a woman like Reva ever seen in Eddie? He glanced at the old picture of another Reva. Either she'd changed in the eight years since that picture had been taken—in the seven years since Eddie had been sent away—or she was putting on a show. Was she that good an actress?
Dean was adept at reading people. Lies didn't get past him and he could spot a phony a mile away. The Reva he'd met today was no actress. She'd been friendly without sharing too much of herself, maintaining a professional distance without coming off as a snob. She possessed a quiet gentility that was the hallmark of a real Southern lady.
Again he glanced at the old photograph of another Reva.
"If you can get access to the house as Reva Macklin's new handyman, you can plant a bug or two," Alan said thoughtfully.
"We don't have a court order."
"Unofficially," Alan said quickly. "And if you could plant one in the guest house…"
"No," Dean answered. "Not without authorization."
Allan shook his head. "We can't see every entrance to that big house, and we can barely get a glimpse of the guest house from here. There are only two of us on this detail! Pinchon can walk in any time he feels like it, and if we're not looking in the right place at the right time, we're screwed."
Dean knew Alan was right, and still he didn't like it. His partner gave him a hard time about being such a stickler for the rules, when some other agents broke them without a second thought. He wanted to catch Pinchon, but he didn't want to compromise his standards to accomplish the task.
"Give it a couple of days. Miss Macklin's got a good, steady business here. She's not going anywhere. If Eddie does show up, we'll get him."
"I still think a bug is the way to go," Alan grumbled.
Dean stood. He and Alan would never agree on this point. "I'm going to walk to town," he said. Since "town" was three blocks of redbrick buildings half a mile down the road and the path was shaded sidewalk the entire way, it wasn't exactly an arduous expedition.
"Bring me something to eat," Alan said with a yawn.
It was nice to get out of the house. The streets were quiet now that all of Reva's customers had left. Dean was rarely subjected to such serenity. It was so quiet he could hear the breeze in the trees. His pa
ce was slower than usual, as if to hurry would be wrong in this place.
Even downtown, with its small shops and quaint old buildings, was slow-paced. The everyday necessities were all right here. A small grocery, a dress shop, a barbershop and a beauty parlor. And a hardware store.
An hour and to much money later, Dean headed back to his temporary home. The bags he carried were heavy, but he figured he now had everything he needed to get started. In his shopping bags were a couple of pairs of heavy denim pants, a few cheap T-shirts, work boots, thick white socks, a baseball cap—and a hammer.
He'd looked at the selections and asked himself, What would brother-in-law Nick buy? That had made the process quick and easy. Everyone he'd talked to had wanted to know who he was and why he was in Somerset, and he'd given them all the same explanation he'd given Reva Macklin.
He was Somerset, Tennessee's newest handyman, and he'd never in his life so much as driven a nail.
One of the bags he carried contained supper for Alan. He had stopped at the Somerset Bakery and Deli, which was situated just past the beauty parlor and was really not much of a deli at all. They offered lots of baked goods and a few sandwiches. The small place closed at three o'clock, so he'd barely gotten there in time. The somewhat plump woman behind the counter, who had introduced herself as Louella Vine, had been delighted to see him. Maybe business wasn't so good and every customer was a pleasant surprise. Then again, maybe she was just one of those exceptionally outgoing women who never met a stranger.
The sound of pounding feet alerted Dean to the fact that he was about to be run down. He glanced over his shoulder to see two little boys, one white and blond, the other black and half a foot taller, gaining on him fast. Dean stepped to the side of the walkway, giving them room to pass.
They didn't.
"Hi!" The little blond boy practically skidded to a stop at Dean's feet. "Who are you?"
The taller child stayed behind his friend, quiet and watchful.
Dean glared at them both. "Don't you know better than to talk to strangers?"
"Are you strange?" the blond kid asked, wide-eyed and not at all perturbed by Dean's tough manner.
"No."
The little boy grinned, shooting Dean a decidedly disarming smile. "My name's Cooper. I know everyone who lives on this street, but I don't know you. This is Terrance," he said, jerking a thumb back at his friend. "He's my best friend. We're in the first grade." Each sentence ran directly into the next in childlike, breathless fashion. "Last year we were in kindergarten, that's when we got to be very best friends, but I've known him all my life. Almost all my life. As long as I can remember, anyway. But we just got to be best friends last year. Last year we were just little kids, but now that we're older we're still best friends."
The kid talked a mile a minute. When he stopped to take a breath, Dean asked, "Do you live on this street?"
"Yeah!" Cooper answered.
Great. "Well, Cooper, my name is Mr. Sinclair. I'm new. Now run along and don't talk to strangers." Dean resumed his walk toward home. Cooper and Terrance did not "run along" as instructed.
"Do you have any kids?" Cooper asked.
"No," Dean answered curtly.
"That's too bad. We need some more kids in Somerset. We have a T-ball team, but it's not very good. We could really use a good first baseman. Why don't you have kids? Don't you like kids?"
Dean bit back a brutally honest, Not really. "Kids are fine, I guess." As long as they're not mine. "I have a niece and three nephews."
"Will they come visit you sometime?" Cooper asked.
"Probably not. Besides, they're too young to play T-ball."
"Oh," Cooper said, sounding dejected at the news.
Dean thought about his growing family for a moment. Shea's Justin was two and a holy terror. All two-year-olds were holy terrors, right? Bone's little girl, Miranda, was not yet a year old, and she was spoiled rotten. Absolutely rotten! She had Boone wrapped around her little finger and had since the moment she'd come into this world.
Clint's twin boys were still at that wriggly, wrinkled, useless age. Infants. Why on earth did people insist that they were so cute when, in fact, they resembled big, pale, squalling bugs?
Dean had taken one look at the tiny babies, who had arrived almost a month early, and had told Clint to give him a call when the kids turned into humans. So he wasn't a warm and fuzzy uncle. The world had plenty of warm and fuzzy without him. Especially now that his siblings were all married and making families.
Somehow the kids had bracketed him, Terrance on one side, Cooper on the other. Terrance was trying, very diligently and not quite secretively, to see what was in Dean's bags.
Fortunately he was almost home. "What about you?" he asked Terrance.
The kid jumped back from the bags as if he'd been caught snooping. In fact, he had been. "What?"
"Are you anxious for more kids to come to town?"
The boy gave the question a moment of serious thought. "Not really. I have my best friend Cooper and my second-best friend Johnny, and two brothers and my mama and my daddy. That's enough," he said, sounding satisfied with his young life.
"Smart boy," Dean said in a lowered voice.
"But we could use a first baseman," Terrance added thoughtfully.
Dean came to a halt. "This is where I live," he said, wisely withholding the Shoo that wanted to leap from his mouth.
"This is Miss Evelyn's place." Cooper looked at the old house and nodded his head. "Don't eat the sugar cookies," he said in a quiet voice tinged with horror as he delivered the dire warning.
Dean was about to ask why not? when he was distracted. Reva Macklin had stepped outside. She walked in the shade of the trees that lined the sidewalk. So why did she look as if she carried the light with her? She was sunshine and cinnamon, strawberries and … heaven help him, this was the kind of woman who could work her way under a man's skin and make him crazy. She walked toward him, and for a moment, just a moment, Dean didn't see anything else. Dangerous. Very, very dangerous. She didn't dress provocatively. In fact, she was clothed to suit this town. Quaint. Old-fashioned.
He couldn't take his eyes off her as she crossed the street. She walked straight toward him, hair released from the thick ponytail she had worn earlier to fall past her shoulders. It wasn't curly, but it wasn't completely straight. It waved. It caught the little slivers of sunlight that found their way through the thick foliage of the trees.
A lesser man would have dropped the bags and drooled, but not Dean.
She gave him a brief, sweet smile, and he wondered what would happen next. Why was she here? Maybe something in her house needed his immediate attention. Faulty plumbing. A rotting board or two. Maybe a lose stair. So he wasn't any good at repairing anything—he was willing to try.
It crossed his mind briefly that maybe Reva was approaching him for a much more personal reason. He barely knew her; there was nothing personal between them. And yet—
"Cooper Macklin," she said sharply, turning her attention to the child. "You're late."
"I had to stay after school."
Reva reached their side of the street and crossed her arms as she stared down at Cooper. "What was it this time?"
"I was just trying to help Mrs. Berry," he explained. "She was reading us a story, but she had it all wrong. I have that book and I know she wasn't telling it right."
"Cooper!" Reva said, sounding properly horrified.
"I was trying to help," he explained passionately. "But she just didn't want me to help. She wanted to tell the whole story wrong."
"I stayed, to," Terrance said in a soft voice that managed to cut through the tension. "So Cooper wouldn't have to walk home alone."
Dean was taken aback. That was putting it mildly. His reaction was physical, as well as emotional. His heart pounded too hard, his mouth went dry. He looked from Reva to her son, from Cooper to Terrance and then back to Cooper again.
First grade—that meant the kid was six y
ears old. Blond hair, blue eyes, dimples. Fearless.
Cooper Macklin, Reva's child, was Eddie Pinchon's son.
* * *
Chapter 3
« ^ »
Reva closed her eyes and shook her head. "Cooper, how many times have I told you—"
"This is my new friend, Mr. Sinclair," Cooper interrupted in an overly bright voice. Her son was a master at changing the subject, and had been since the age of three. "He doesn't have any kids, so he's probably lonely. We should ask him to have dinner with us. Tonight!"
Reva avoided looking directly at Dean Sinclair. There was nothing quite like being put on the spot, and she hadn't yet decided how to respond to Cooper's unfortunate suggestion.
"You're always telling me to have good manners, Mom, and inviting Mr. Sinclair for dinner is good manners, right?" Cooper's innocent blue eyes remained wide and hopeful.
"I'm sure Mr. Sinclair has plans for dinner," Reva responded calmly.
"I bet he doesn't," Cooper said, turning his eyes up to their new neighbor. "Do you have plans?"
"Well…" Sinclair began.
"Pleeeze!" Cooper whined. "I want you to tell me about your niece and all those nephews, even if they're not old enough to play T-ball."
"Thank you for the invitation, but I don't think I can eat another bite today." Sinclair glanced at Reva. "I ate too much at lunch."
"Dessert, then," Cooper insisted. "You could come over and have dessert with us."
"Don't annoy Mr. Sinclair," Reva said.
"I'm not annoyed," Sinclair replied.
She made herself look at Dean Sinclair. He still wore the shirt and pants to his conservative suit, but the tie and jacket had been discarded. The top button of his shirt was undone, the sleeves of his shirt had been turned up and rolled away from his wrists. There was something about a man's well-shaped neck that could be fascinating in the right circumstances. It was so different from a woman's neck, so solid and strong. And a man's nicely muscled forearms could be just as interesting. Just as tempting.
ON DEAN'S WATCH Page 3