She stopped dead in her tracks. Her stomach knotting, Lissa glared at the figure sitting with one boot hooked on the lower rung of a chrome bar stool, his spoon raised over a half-empty bowl of Charlie’s infamous armadillo and green chili stew.
“What are you doing here?”
Henderson swung his head, a dark brow lifting at her sharp tone. “At the moment, I’m trying my best to convince myself this is really chicken I’m spooning down.”
The smooth reply came with a lazy smile that had no doubt enticed more than one eager female down the path to perdition. Lissa had already traveled that road. She wasn’t about to make the trip again.
“I thought you were heading back to San Diego.”
“I am. Eventually.”
Evan pushed around with his heel, wondering why the devil this woman irritated and intrigued him in such equal measures. He could have told her that he and Charlie had manhandled the Harley out of the ditch and into his truck. That they’d gotten lucky and found a replacement wheel rim in a junkyard in LaGrange. That he’d called his road service and canceled his request for a car, intending to hit the road again as soon as Charlie finished changing the old rim for the new.
Instead he leaned an elbow on the chipped Formica and tried to recover from the gut-clenching impact of Melissa James all combed out and cleaned up. Evan couldn’t quite figure out how, but her long, swirly skirt and demure little vest carried even more of a kick than the thigh-skimming cutoffs and bare midriff she’d worn earlier.
Dusty and windblown, she could have modeled for a bust of a bronzed desert goddess. Now, she looked like every man’s dream of the girl next door grown to sensual, stunning womanhood. Her dark gold hair fell in a sleek curve to her shoulders. Under her veil of bangs, wide brown eyes flashed a message of unmistakable wariness.
Once again, the feeling that he knew her tugged at Evan’s mind, like the refrain of an old, half-remembered song. He wished to heck he’d called Sharon back for the results of the background check before settling down to a bowl of this dubious stew. He’d do that later, after he voiced the apology he’d been chewing on for most of the five hours since she’d driven off in a whirl of dust.
“I’m sorry I offended you this afternoon.”
“Not everyone expects payment for a simple act of kindness.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he said again.
She unbent a little. Not enough to smile, but at least the suspicion faded from her face. “Apology accepted.”
Without the sharp edge, her voice rippled with low, musical notes. Like a trickling mountain stream, Evan thought. Or a satin ribbon fluttering in the breeze.
“At the risk of putting my foot in it again, can I buy you a beer or a soft drink? Or—” he cast a doubtful glance at his bowl “—some dinner?”
That did the trick. Her lips tugged upward. A glint of laughter danced in her eyes. The physical change was so slight, yet the overall result so profound, that Evan forgot to breathe.
“You’re braver than I am,” she confessed. “I’ve never had the nerve to try Charlie’s stew.”
“It’s not bad…if you don’t let yourself think about it too much while you’re eating.”
A perverse and wholly unexpected urge gripped Lissa. To her surprise, she found she wanted to take him up on his offer. Wanted to slide onto the stool next to his, plop her elbows on the counter and let down her guard an inch or two. It had been so long since she’d relaxed. So long since she shared a conversation with a man her age who didn’t regard her as either a superstar selling sex with her songs or a criminal.
With some effort, she repressed the traitorous urge. She knew she had to turn around and walk out. Right now, before she said or did something to destroy the fragile cocoon she’d spun for herself these past few years.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass on both dinner and a soft drink. I just stopped in to drop off Charlie’s mail.”
Depositing the advertisements on the counter, she turned to leave.
A ridiculous sense of disappointment spiked through Evan. She’d almost unbent. Almost laughed. For some absurd reason, he wanted to see her do both. Never one to give up without a fight, he tried one more time.
“Look, I know I came across as a jerk when I offered to pay you this afternoon. I think you should give me a chance to recover. I’m not always that gauche.”
“You didn’t strike me as gauche,” she admitted. “Maybe a touch…”
“Cynical?” he supplied when she hesitated. “I guess maybe I am. I’ve spent too many years prosecuting the bloodsuckers and leeches who prey on others. Dealing with scum like that tends to give you a jaundiced view of human nature.”
Before his eyes, she stiffened up again. Too late, Evan remembered his earlier suspicion that she must have come down on the wrong side of the law at sometime in her past. He cursed his slip when her teeth came down hard on her lower lip. Cursed again when an emotion very close to pain flashed across her face.
He searched for some way to blunt the effect of his careless comment, but before he found it, she whirled and headed for the door.
“Lissa, wait!”
She palmed the screen with a thump and sailed outside.
Calling himself ten kinds of a jerk, Evan started after her. He yanked open the screen and strode into the blinding light, only to collide full force with a stiff, rigid Lissa. She’d stopped again, was standing rooted to the spot like a pillar of salt until Evan crashed into her.
Some fancy dancing and a quick arm around her waist kept them both from going down. As soon as he’d found his feet, she twisted furiously in his arms.
“Sorry,” he began for the third time in as many minutes. “I didn’t mean to…”
“You snake!”
“What?”
Her eyes spit fury. The color that had drained from her cheeks only moments ago rushed back with a vengeance.
“You low-life sidewinder! You couldn’t wait to sic the hounds on me, could you?”
She wrenched out of his hold, or tried to. Belatedly Evan realized he was hanging on to her with the same wary grip he’d once used to pick up a hissing, spitting bobcat kitten.
“What hounds? What are you talking about?”
She jerked away, her face flushed with fury. “I supposed I asked for it when I picked you up.” Scorn and self-disgust darkened her eyes to almost black. “One of these days I’ll learn.”
Her bitterness lashed Evan like a whip. It didn’t help that she’d directed it as much at herself as at him.
“Learn what? What are you talking about?”
“That!”
Flinging out her hand, she indicated the van parked at the rusted gas pump. Decorating its side panels was the colorful, instantly recognizable NBC peacock.
“I’m going out the back way,” Lissa spit out furiously. “If either you or the driver of that van try to follow me, I’ll…I’ll make you wish you hadn’t!”
Chapter 4
A furious Lissa retreated into Charlie’s Place, leaving Evan staring blankly at the van. While he debated whether to follow her or check out the vehicle, a fragmented conversation reached him.
“…seen her?”
“No.”
That was Charlie. Gruff and rusty as a leaking pipe. Evan started forward.
“But…”
“No, I said.”
“I had a report she might be somewhere in this area,” the unseen speaker pressed. “I just want to ask her a few questions.”
Evan rounded the front of the van, his eyes narrowing on the pencil-thin, hunch-shouldered reporter in tan Dockers and a blue knit shirt sporting the call letters of a California TV station.
“Ask who a few questions?”
The newcomer spun around. “Missy Marie,” he said eagerly. “The country singer who scammed all those people a few years ago. Have you seen her?”
With the mental equivalent of a thunderclap, the pieces tumbled into place. Melissa James… Melissa Marie.
The tousle-haired sex kitten who fell from the galaxy of country singing stars with a crash.
A burst of TV images from her sensational trial flashed through Evan’s mind. The accused’s strained, heavily made-up face. Her hollow statement that she didn’t know anything about the deals worked in her name. The angry recording magnates, the music video producers, the disillusioned fans, all demanding their money back.
Evan recalled, too, the shots of her slick, absent manager. Evidently the jury believed he’d engineered most of the illegal scams, since they’d let the star herself off with a suspended sentence.
Evan hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the details of the case, other than to skim the summaries in the monthly Department of Justice report. The trial had been handled by federal prosecutors out of the Nashville district. His own workload kept him busy enough without getting sidetracked by cases outside his jurisdiction.
“I got word she might be around here somewhere,” the reporter repeated. “Have you seen her?”
Beyond the thin, eager man’s shoulder, Evan caught Charlie’s stare. He didn’t need the warning in the mechanic’s black eyes. Lissa had paid her debt to society. She’d also stopped to rescue a stranded biker this afternoon. He owed her.
“Missy Marie?” he replied with a shrug. “No, I haven’t seen her.”
It was the truth, if not exactly truthful. Even now, knowing who she was, Evan had a hard time connecting the kittenish singing sensation sporting mountains of teased hair, spiky fake eyelashes and overdone stage makeup to the woman with the scrubbed, freckle-splashed face who’d picked him up this afternoon.
“Why are you looking for her?” he asked slowly.
“I did a piece on her when the case first broke. I want to do a follow-up. I’m Dave Hawthorne, by the way. I work for WKML in L.A.”
He fished around in his shirt pocket for a business card. Evan skimmed it, then handed it to Charlie.
“I got a tip a few months ago from a Nashville affiliate that Missy had settled somewhere in southern Arizona or California,” the reporter continued. “I’ve been trying to track her down ever since. As I said, I want to do a follow-up. You know, a sort of before and after to see if the gospel singer-gone-bad has found forgiveness and redemption. Although…”
He shoved his tiny round sunglasses up his sweat-slick nose and glanced around.
“I guess she wouldn’t be hanging around here if she had. Particularly not if she made off with any of the millions she and her manager raked in from all those suckers.”
Evan dragged his memory for the details of the sensational case. “I thought the defense established that she hadn’t received any of the money.”
“Yeah, well, maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. You know how juries are. A pretty woman turns on the tears, they believe anything.”
Evan could speak to the vagaries of juries with a heck of a lot more authority than Hawthorne, but he wasn’t about to get into a debate over the judicial system.
“Just out of curiosity, what made you think Missy Marie was here in Paradise?”
“I can’t reveal my sources.”
The pompous reply nicked Evan’s temper. Judging by the way Charlie’s lip curled, it nicked his, too.
Hawthorne realized he wasn’t winning any points with either of them. Abandoning the high ground, he plastered a conspiratorial smile on his face.
“Actually I’ve got a buddy who works for the IRS. He put a flag on Missy Marie’s computer file. Her address is blocked in the system per a court order, but anytime there’s an inquiry about her, my friend calls me with a heads-up.”
“Convenient,” Evan commented.
“Yeah, isn’t it? An inquiry came in this afternoon, giving her last known location as Paradise, Arizona. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I thought I’d drive out to poke around.”
Well, hell! The routine background check Evan asked Sharon to run would’ve included a financial status query. Lissa was right, after all. All unknowing, Evan had sicced the dogs on her…just as she’d accused him of doing! Guilt nipped at him, and he decided he’d better throw this particular dog off the scent.
“In case you’re not aware of it,” he drawled, “accessing IRS data systems without proper authorization is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and possible jail sentence of six to nine months.”
Hawthorne’s smile slid right off his face. His glance dropped to the roadrunner racing across a field of neon yellow on Evan’s chest, then back up to lock with cool, unfriendly eyes.
“Are you a cop?”
“I’m an assistant U.S. district attorney with the 3rd Circuit, Southern California district.”
The reporter paled, but quickly recovered. “The Southern California district? That’s San Diego, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“So what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Like a ferret digging furiously into the burrow of his prey, the reporter’s narrow face sharpened. “Is the D.A.’s office hunting for Missy Marie, too?”
“No.”
Only one particular person in the D.A.’s office, and right now he was kicking himself royally for allowing his curiosity to pry the lid off Pandora’s box.
“Then why are you in Paradise?” Hawthorne demanded.
“I’m just passing through,” Evan replied with deceptive casualness. “On my way back to San Diego. When I get there, I might just ask my staff to check into this buddy of yours at the IRS.”
“Hey, c’mon. I told you that off the record.”
Charlie weighed in then, his voice as gritty as desert sand. “Well, this here’s on the record. There’s no one ’round here like this Missy Marie person you describe. A girl passed through yesterday, some sassy blonde drivin’ a flashy Jag XJS, but she only stayed long enough to gas up and use the john.”
“Did she say where she was headed?”
“I didn’t ask. We don’t go pokin’ and pryin’ into other folk’s business here in Paradise.” His black eyes bored into Hawthorne. “Unlike some people, who don’t mind breakin’ a few laws while they’re at it.”
“Look, I didn’t… That is, I don’t usually—”
Ruthlessly Charlie cut him off. “You’d better not start diggin’ into my tax records, boy, or I might just have to drive into L.A. with my 12 gauge and take the matter up with you personally. Now do you want some gas for this van or are you just wastin’ both our time?”
“I don’t need any gas.”
“Then git.”
Hawthorne got. The van door slammed behind him. The engine gunned.
Evan stood shoulder to shoulder with Charlie until the van was nothing more than a small speck against the blazing red ball of the sun. As soon as the vehicle disappeared, their united front crumbled.
Charlie turned to Evan, his weathered face set. “I s’pose you figured out that Lissa is this Missy Marie. Or used to be.”
“Yeah, I figured it out.”
“Why didn’t you tell Hawthorne?”
“I owed her for the favor she did me this afternoon.”
“And you always pay your debts?”
“Always.”
Scrunching his lids to filter out the sun’s slanting rays, Charlie studied the man standing before him with legs spread and boots planted wide in the dust. The mechanic had been around some in his sixty-plus years, enough to go with his gut when it came to other folks. He’d taken Henderson’s measure this afternoon during the drive out to retrieve his bike. Sensed he could trust him. The past few minutes had proven him right.
Maybe the Almighty had sent that jackrabbit skittering into Henderson’s path for a purpose. Maybe this man was the answer to the worry that had grown in Charlie like a cancer these past few years. Wasn’t right, a young woman like Lissa hidin’ herself away in the desert. Wasn’t right she had no one to look out for her ’cept him and Josephine Jenks and the few other residents of Paradise, all of them with one foot in the grave.
<
br /> Charlie believed all things happened for a purpose, including a bent motorcycle wheel rim. He rocked back and forth on his heels, thinking, while Henderson reached for his wallet.
“Speaking of payment, what do I owe you for the stew, the shirt and the bike?”
“Well, now…” Dragging a rag out of his back pocket, Charlie rubbed at the grease on his palms. “I’ve been wrestling with that rim we got over to the junkyard in LaGrange. I’m afraid it’s dented some, too. I’ll have to straighten it out before I can put it on your bike.”
“How long will that take?”
“Can’t say for sure. Couple of hours. Maybe longer.” He took a final swipe and tucked the rag back into his pocket. “You might as well plan on bedding down here in Paradise tonight.”
“In Paradise?”
His brows soaring, Evan shot a glance down the deserted main street. The empty buildings and boarded-up windows didn’t promise much in the way of accommodations.
“Widow Jenks has a spare room she rents out to the EPA inspector when he comes out to check the mine,” Charlie informed him. “She can put you up for the night.”
Evan swallowed the protest that jumped into his throat. He’d spent enough time in the mechanic’s company this afternoon to reject the idea that he was trying to hold him up for more money to fix the Sportster. If Charlie said he needed more time, he needed more time.
Evan needed time, too, to apologize to Lissa. Again.
It was becoming a habit, he thought ruefully.
Widow Jenks lived in a cement block fifties’ era house at the far end of main street.
Instead of the kindly, white-haired lady Evan had envisioned, his hostess greeted him at the door in rhinestone-trimmed glasses, a low-cut black leotard showing massive mounds of wrinkled bosom, and leopard-print capri pants that matched the color of her frizzy orange hair. The overall effect was awe-inspiring, but Evan soon discovered that Josephine Jenks’s personality overpowered even the capri pants.
“Charlie called and said it was okay to take you in. Do you like cats?”
“It depends,” he answered warily. “Will I have to sleep with one?”
The Harder They Fall (Intimate Moments) Page 4