by Jill Shalvis
Annie looked over at Dennis, sure and happy and spoiled and…just a little arrogant. Then she thought of Ian, with his intensity and affinity for being his own man, and knew there was no comparison. “You and Dennis,” she said slowly, trying it out on her tongue. Other than that one little stab of pain, she felt nothing. Truly nothing.
“I told her you’d probably thank her,” Dennis said dryly. “But she was so worried.” He slid his arm around Jenny and looked down into her face with a fierce love Annie had never even guessed he could experience.
“I wanted you to know the truth,” he said. “I just didn’t want to push it. Or her. And then there’s the money issue—”
“Dennis.” Jenny’s eyes filled as she set her head on his chest briefly. Then she straightened and looked miserably at Annie. “I need to tell you the rest. Oh, Annie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear. I…lost everything in day trading. Everything. So I panicked. For about one second I considered getting out of Annie’s Garden for the money, but that was it, I swear. I never really meant it, but—”
“Stop.” Annie tried to put it all together. “You and Dennis, and you didn’t tell me. You lost all your money and you didn’t tell me. Stella offered to buy your stock and you didn’t tell me…” She shook her head. “Honestly? That’s a lot of omissions. Maybe what you should tell me now is why I shouldn’t hire an attorney and a tribe of accountants to see what else you haven’t told me.”
“No, that’s not necessary. Honest…” Jenny looked miserable. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I’d do anything rather than hurt you. Trust me when I say what’s happened is all personal. The day trading was an addiction. Is an addiction. I need help, I know that. I’ve been…desperate.”
“So desperate you tried to scare me into accepting all this with the calls, the tires, the threatening notes?”
Jenny wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said slowly. “I didn’t do any of those things.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No, really.”
“Jenny.” Dennis lifted a brow.
Jenny looked horrified. “Oh, my God, I’d almost forgotten.” With a wince, she turned back to Annie. “Okay, we called you from a pay phone. Once—No, make that twice. Probably two weeks ago now.”
“We were at a park, talking,” Dennis said, taking Jenny’s hand. “I had convinced her to tell you she needed help. The reception was bad, and we couldn’t use the cell, remember, Jenny?”
Jenny nodded. “I thought you answered, and I said I have to talk to you, or I’m going to die.” She winced. “Dramatic, I know, but that’s how I felt. Then I realized we’d been disconnected. I tried one more time to get you, but I lost my nerve…I kept losing my nerve.”
“So you didn’t send me crushed makeup with a note that says I’m next. You didn’t call me, just a little while ago, from some new cell phone and say an ‘eye for an eye?”’
“No!”
Annie searched both their faces but saw nothing even close to such a deception. Was it really possible just those first two crank calls had been from them? But who’d been responsible for all the rest—the slashed tires, the crushed makeup, the note, the footprints outside her window? She looked at Stella, who raised her hands.
“Don’t look at me,” she said firmly. “That’d all take far too much effort.”
“Look,” Dennis said. “All we’re guilty of is not telling you about what happened between Jenny and myself. Jenny losing money on the market was none of your business until she made the mistake of thinking about selling out of Annie’s Garden to solve that problem. She never intended to do anything so drastic. But, my God…” He let out a disparaging breath. “No one ever broke any laws here.”
“But you broke some serious trust,” Annie said to Jenny, her heart physically hurting.
“I know,” Jenny whispered. “God. I know, I just—I’m not like you. I don’t have the confidence—”
“No.” Annie shook her head. “Don’t turn this on me.”
“I’m not. I won’t. But Annie…how can I make this right? Tell me and I’ll do it.”
I’m not like you. The words ran through Annie’s head.
She wasn’t that different from everyone else. She needed affirmation, relationships. She needed love just like everyone else.
Where had she gone wrong, that no one saw that? Couldn’t she be strong and self-sufficient, and still let love in?
Yes, maybe at times she’d been a little too strong. A little too self-sufficient. But that wasn’t a crime. “I don’t know how to fix this,” she said. “What are you doing about money?”
“This morning, Dennis asked me to marry him.” Jenny’s voice hitched. “He’s going to cover the debt for me.”
“I…I’m happy for you.”
At that, Jenny flung her arms around Annie in such a great, big bear hug, Annie staggered back a step.
“Oh, Annie, I’m just so sorry. I’ve just been so scared. I’ll never hide another thing from you again. Never, never, never.”
“Hello, people…have we forgotten moi?” Stella tapped her expensive heel on the floor. “Can we bring this back to me?”
“Oh! Yes…” Jenny pulled back and looked at Annie. “I should have told her no right up front.”
“Actually, I think selling your stock is a good idea,” Annie said.
Stella beamed.
Jenny’s mouth dropped.
“If you sell them to me.” Annie drew in a deep breath. “As you should have done in the first place.”
Stella’s smile fell to mimic Jenny’s mouth.
Dennis reached for Jenny’s hand. “It’s okay. I told you, she likes to be in control. Let her have it all, you don’t need to work.”
Annie wanted to smack him but controlled herself, barely.
Stella didn’t. “Jenny, honey, don’t let him hang on you like that.” She eyed Dennis like she would pond scum. “If you need a man that bad, just get a good vibrator. You’ll never look back, trust me. So…who the hell is stalking Annie?”
They all stared at one another.
Annie’s stomach felt queasy at the reminder. “Stella—”
“I could squash you like a grape in sales any day, any time, you know that. I have no need to mess with you. But call my attorney if you want to persist, I don’t have time for this. See you on the shelves.” Stella sauntered toward the elevator. “Oh, and I suggest serious therapy for all of you,” she called back over her shoulder. “Immediately.”
When Annie turned back to Annie and Dennis, the two of them were making out right there in the hallway.
Definitely time to go. Past time.
She just wanted to be home. She was halfway down the hall when Jenny’s voice reached her.
“Annie?”
The last thing she wanted to do was turn around, but at least her soon-to-be ex-partner was no longer lip-locked with Dennis, but staring after her with worry in her eyes.
“What are we going to do?” Jenny whispered.
Annie wasn’t feeling the “we” at the moment. “I’ll let you know.” For the first time in her life, she felt like a stranger to her own hometown, and couldn’t wait to get back to her real home. Cooper’s Corner.
* * *
ANNIE WENT TO THE DOCTOR’S office to get Aunt Gerdie. On the short drive, she convinced herself that her tires had indeed been slashed by a kid in town, that the footsteps in the snow beneath her window had been put there by the cable guy who’d come out to adjust her reception, and that the other calls were just a crazy mistake. The note she hadn’t exactly figured out yet, but it all seemed so farfetched. She’d manufactured a stalker when there was none. There was no danger. Unless she counted the danger to her heart over how she felt about Ian.
Aunt Gerdie had finished with the doctor in Annie’s absence and had been given a good bill of health, though she was to stay away from pickles.
Ian was nowhere in
sight.
“He came back,” Aunt Gerdie told her. “Left in a bit of a hurry.”
“Work related?”
Aunt Gerdie bit her lip. “Uh…” She blinked in surprise as Annie helped her up. “Shouldn’t we wait, dear? I’m quite certain he expects you to wait.”
Waiting would only prolong her misery. He had work, he had a life, and soon enough, it wasn’t going to include her. The only reason it included her now was the fact he was worried about her. But with Stella, Jenny and Dennis all innocent—sort of—she had a hard time believing there was any need to worry at all. “He has his own vehicle. He knows where we’ll go. Besides, he’s probably already headed back.”
Aunt Gerdie tsked all the way out to the car. “What about that last crank call?”
“Someone has the wrong number, that’s all.”
“Ian’s going to be mighty unhappy. I really think he expected you to wait. He expected—”
“Aunt Gerdie, Ian isn’t a part of our family. He’s not anything to us, so—”
“But isn’t he everything to you?”
Annie stared at her, then looked away. Yeah. He was everything to her, but she certainly didn’t have to admit that. “I want to go home.”
“Fine.”
There was that word again. Fine. She hated that word.
“But don’t blame me if he’s furious when he catches up to us,” Aunt Gerdie said.
“I won’t.”
The drive was a long one, punctuated by an unexpected snowstorm that made the roads slippery. Ice stuck stubbornly to Annie’s windshield, making the challenge even greater.
“We should have told Ian we were coming back to Cooper’s,” Aunt Gerdie said for the tenth time in an hour.
“Well, I would have,” Annie said with what she thought was remarkable patience. “But he took my cell phone.”
“To check out your last crank call.”
Annie nearly steered the car right off the road at that. “You told him?”
Aunt Gerdie made the motion of zipping her lips and turned away to look out the window.
“Oh, now you want to keep your mouth shut?” Annie sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, we’re almost home. Soon as we get there and I get a hot fire going, we’ll call him, okay?”
“And apologize for shoving him out of your life like unwanted garbage?”
“What?”
“If you’d only admit you love him, dear, everything else would fall into place. I know you’re not like me, but—”
“If one more person tells me I’m not like them, I’m going to scream.”
“Well, if the shoe fits…”
“And I did not toss him out of my life! He’s going to walk out, any day now, to go back to his work.”
“Are you sure he’s going to walk away? In my opinion, he cares for you more than that.”
“Everyone walks away,” Annie heard herself say, and horrified at how pathetic that sounded, she clamped her lips tight.
“Oh, sweetie.” Aunt Gerdie’s eyes filled. “You’re talking about your father. Your mother. Your siblings.”
“Half siblings.” Annie shrugged, her throat so tight she could hardly breathe. Which was just as well since they were fogging up the inside of the car at rapid speed. She passed the Welcome to Cooper’s Corner sign. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And then there’s me,” Aunt Gerdie said. “I’ve been so much trouble. You probably wish you could walk away from me.”
“No.” Annie said this with fierce certainty as she turned past Main Street toward home. “You’re my entire family. And I love you.”
“Oh, I know you do. I know. But I also know there’s room in your heart for more love, if only you’d get past your fear of it.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Of course you are. With good reason. Love’s never been especially good to you.”
“That doesn’t mean I should give up.”
Aunt Gerdie smiled warmly. “Bingo.” She leaned forward and wiped some of the fog off the windows, squinting out as they pulled up the driveway. “Wish we’d left a light on. And had a remote control to push a button and poof…have the fireplace click on, too.”
“I knew I forgot to ask Santa for something.” Annie parked the car, ducked outside and ran around the car to help Aunt Gerdie out. Her feet sank into six inches of freshly fallen snow, freezing her toes. Around her the snow fell thickly, making it difficult to see, but the way it hit with such utter silence was both eerie and startlingly beautiful.
“Home,” she breathed, helping Aunt Gerdie inside, flipping on the kitchen lights. “Feels good.”
“Oh my, it does.” Aunt Gerdie patted Annie’s arm. “But I’m exhausted. I think I’ll just take myself up to bed.”
“Are you sure? I can make hot chocolate—”
“No, thanks, dear.” She started out of the room. “Don’t forget to call Ian.”
“How about tea and cookies—” Annie started desperately, but Aunt Gerdie just shook her head.
Annie watched her aunt leave and sighed. She hadn’t wanted to be alone, not with the way her thoughts were going, but it appeared it didn’t matter what she wanted.
She was alone.
And it was her own doing.
She glanced around the kitchen, which had seemed so much like home only a minute before. The warm walls, the plants in the window. She’d meticulously mopped the last time she’d been in here, and could still smell the lemon scent, except… She moved toward the back door, squatted down and inspected a smudged, slightly muddy footprint.
Probably from earlier, she told herself, and she’d just now noticed. She moved into the living room, but again went utterly still as the hair on her arms rose.
Was that…the sound of someone breathing?
She cocked her head to be sure but heard nothing now. “Aunt Gerdie?”
No answer. No doubt her aunt was already in bed, out cold.
Annie glanced at the phone, then moved toward it, driven by an overwhelming need to call Ian. She was going to apologize for being such a fool, she was going to tell him she was unreasonably spooked out of her mind, and she didn’t know why she’d left without him.
Or why she hadn’t told him she’d fallen for him, and fallen hard. She didn’t care about the distance between New York and here, surely they could work out a schedule to see each other. They could—
Halfway to the phone she heard the distinctive sound of a boot on her hardwood floor. With a gasp of terror, she leapt toward the phone but was caught from behind.
A rough hand slammed over her mouth, an unforgiving, burly arm wrapped around her middle, and then she was hauled back against a hot, hard body. “Gotcha” came a male rasp in her ear. “Finally gotcha.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BY THE TIME IAN GOT TO Annie’s Garden, Annie had already left, which didn’t improve his temper or fear factor. Racing back to the doctor’s office only made things worse, as he missed her again.
Knowing time was critical, he went straight to his work and barged into Richards’s office, interrupting a group of suits standing around drinking coffee. “Where’s Steve?”
“Excuse us, McCall, in case you didn’t notice when you shoved your way in here without knocking, we’re in a meeting—”
“Where is he?”
“He’s off.”
“How did his brother die?” he demanded, his heart pounding, his blood pumping through his ears so loud he was surprised he could still hear himself think.
Richards sighed. “Some sort of infection from a wound in his leg.”
Ian had just uttered one foul oath when his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. Steve’s home number.
“Ian,” Steve said in his ear a little hoarsely. “I have to talk to you.”
“Go ahead,” Ian said carefully.
“My brother…” Steve’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I just didn’t know. I don’t know how I missed
it all this time…. But I’ve been in his apartment, just now, and I found papers…. Ian, he’d taken an assumed name.”
“Your brother was Tony Picatta.”
“Not was.”
Ian sank to a chair.
“I went to set up funeral arrangements today,” Steve said. “My sister and parents wanted to cremate.”
“Tell me you have a body, Steve.”
“We don’t. I think he faked his death because we’d gotten so close—or you had—to bringing him down. I think he’s been tapping my phone and going through my papers for the information he needs, and I think he’s stalking you now because you’re the one who shot him.”
Ian let out a slow breath. Unbelievable.
“Ian…are you hearing me? I think he started this group thing right after I got paired up with you, going from informant to vigilante. He used us the entire time. And now he’s got my notes, my cell phone, everything. I think he’s coming after you.”
“No, he’s going after Annie. Get in here, we’re going to need you.” He disconnected and turned to his commander. “Tony Picatta is Steve’s brother.”
Ian had the rare experience of seeing his commander speechless, but he couldn’t deal with that now. “And he’s not dead.” God. Tony was going after Annie for revenge. He’d lost his cover, and was bound to see Ian lose something as well.
Or someone.
Annie had picked a hell of a time to be pissed at him and take off on her own. He dialed Steve’s cell phone, the very number that Picatta had called from and left the “eye for an eye” message with Annie.
“The answer to your first question is yes,” Tony answered very softly, very silkily. “I’ve got her. We’re having a lovely time together in Cooper’s Corner. The answer to your second question is absolutely, positively, yes, she’s going to suffer, just as slowly and painfully as I did when you shot me.”
The unmistakable sound of a gun cocking filled Ian’s ear.
“Tony.” Ian’s palms went icy. “You’re a vigilante. A man who wants justice served. Hurting Annie isn’t justice.”
“It is for me. You’ve made my life a living hell.”