by Lisa Childs
Again. Why did she trust people that she shouldn’t?
But Jake had overwhelmed her—with his good looks, his charm. Her pulse quickened just thinking about him, how he’d looked at her that first time he’d literally bumped into her. His dark eyes had twinkled with amusement, and his sexy lips had curved into that wicked grin of his. He was so damn good-looking with those chiseled features and overly long thick dark hair. And his body.
Tall, broad and muscular.
And powerful.
While she was naive, Lillian had never been romantic or foolish. She’d never believed in love at first sight—until that moment. But it had been like she’d always known Jake and he her.
Of course she had—she just hadn’t realized it at the time, especially since he’d given her a different name. He’d called himself Jacob Williams. If he’d told her Jake Howard, she would have recognized him as the ruthless bounty hunter her family feared. She had felt a flicker of fear at that first meeting—because she’d somehow instinctively known her life was about to change forever.
Her baby kicked her belly, and she moved her hand from the steering wheel to rub over the bump where a little foot pushed against her abdomen. “Shh...”
She needed to calm down; she couldn’t risk her anxiety causing any harm to her baby. She had to think.
Where could she go?
If Jake came looking for her, he was bound to figure out where she was hiding. But he wouldn’t come, would he? After what he’d done, how he’d deceived and hurt her, he couldn’t have the guts to ever face her again.
That was what she was counting on...
She’d also been counting on that flash drive clearing her of all charges, though. And now the flash drive was gone. What the hell was she going to do?
Should she break into the lawyer’s office and look for it? She stared up at the dark building and considered it. What would breaking and entering charges add to her embezzlement sentence? Too long to risk it.
She had to think of something else. But first, she needed some rest. Because she didn’t trust Mr. Kuipers, she’d ignored the judge and the bail bondsman’s order to not leave the state, and she’d gone to Florida and the place her grandmother owned but hadn’t been able to use this winter. To get back in time for the court date in River City, Michigan, Lillian had driven all night.
If only she’d called her lawyer before she’d made the trip...
But she’d waited until she’d been back in Michigan only to be told that the flash drive had never arrived. The lawyer had to be lying. Lillian refused to consider that another person she’d trusted had let her down.
She blinked back the tears stinging her eyes and focused on the street in front of her. She wasn’t far from her apartment, but she’d given that up six months ago, right after she’d been bailed out of jail.
She should have given up the place sooner. All it had done was remind her of Jake, of how he’d cooked for her the first time they’d met, bumping into each other in the tiny kitchen, bodies brushing against bodies, that awareness making her tingle everywhere...
It had reminded her of how he’d grinned at her, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement. She’d thought he was the one man who appreciated her goofy sense of humor. But he’d probably only been amused because he was making a fool of her for falling for him when he was just using her.
And because of how he’d used her, she would always have a reminder of him now. She rubbed her hand over her belly again, and the baby moved beneath her touch.
His baby.
But she didn’t want him to know that, not after how he’d treated her. She didn’t want their child to have a father like him—one so ruthless and uncaring.
He couldn’t find her.
Nobody could.
* * *
“I want her dead!” Tom Kuipers shouted the words at the men gathered before him. Some of them flinched. A couple of them looked away from him.
They might be appalled at his ruthlessness, but they wouldn’t turn on him. Unlike Lillian Davies, they knew what happened to people who crossed him. They were never able to cross anyone again.
He raised his picture of Lillian Davies, blown up from her employee ID badge, and waved it at the group of seven or eight men gathered in the middle of the warehouse between the rows of building equipment and supplies. It was after hours. No one would overhear this meeting. And no one would repeat the contents of it.
He trusted these men because he knew they feared him. He wasn’t a large man or particularly muscular, and at fifty-six, he was no longer as young as he’d once been. But he was so much more powerful than he’d ever been. And they all knew it.
“She might have altered her appearance.” If she was smart.
And Lillian Davies was actually smarter than he’d realized. He’d thought she was so ignorant and trusting. And he had counted on her unsuspecting nature when he’d set her up to take the fall for all that money going missing.
But she wasn’t tumbling down as easily as he’d thought. Instead of showing up in court for the trial that would have sentenced her to prison, she was fighting back.
And he could not tolerate that.
“Whoever kills her and provides me with proof of her death will get a huge bonus for their loyalty,” he promised. It was, like so many others, a promise on which he would probably renege.
Tom had already spent more of that money he’d stolen than he’d wanted to. He had plans for it, plans for a new life.
But they didn’t know he was lying. Just like Lillian once had, they trusted his word.
“Do you have any idea where she is?” one of the men asked him.
He glared at the idiot. “If I knew, she’d already be dead.” He would have taken immense pleasure in doing it himself for all the trouble she’d caused him. Not only had she not taken the fall for which he’d set her up, but she’d recently tried to extort money from him, too.
Did that damn flash drive even really exist?
Once she was found, he would have her searched for it, just in case.
But first, she had to be found. Then she and the flash drive would both be destroyed.
Lillian Davies could not hide forever.
Chapter 2
Jake leaned against the door frame as the elderly woman foraged around her living room. He could barely see over her boxes and stacks of magazines and plastic totes that were so full the lids wouldn’t even snap into place. One day he would probably see her apartment again—on the news or on an episode of Hoarders.
“I know I left her box over here,” she murmured from behind one of the stacks. “She left in a hurry and left quite a bit of stuff behind.”
Of course Lillian had left in a hurry. She had been eluding authorities. She’d had no intention of showing up for that court date. He was surprised that Seymour had been so surprised. She was a Davies. And Jake had warned him.
The landlady shuffled back with a cardboard box in her hands. She peeled back one of the tabs and peered inside. “Yes, this is Lilly’s stuff.” She reached inside and said, “Aha, that’s why you look so familiar. I found these pictures of you in her place.”
Jake took the strip of photos she held out to him. He had a strip of nearly identical photos at home. He and Lillian had taken them in one of those silly photo booths on the pier near the Lake Michigan shoreline. She was smiling up at him in every photo but the last—in that one they were kissing.
His stomach muscles clenched as he remembered leaning down and brushing his lips across hers. She’d tasted so damn sweet, like the cotton candy he’d bought her.
“Those were actually in her trash can,” the woman remarked, then shrugged.
Of course the old hoarder had gone through Lillian’s trash. But it was fortunate for Jake that she had. He noticed some other letters inside the box and, put
together with that strip of photos, he realized exactly where she was hiding.
“I don’t understand why she threw them out,” the woman remarked. “You are a good-looking son of a gun. Tall, dark and handsome...” She offered him a nearly toothless smile.
He forced himself to smile back. Lillian had rented the upstairs apartment from the older woman who owned the old Victorian house near downtown River City, Michigan. Mrs. Truman—that was her name.
“You haven’t been around for a while, but I haven’t forgotten about you,” the elderly widow teased. “I’m sure Lillian hasn’t, either.”
Jake wondered if she’d thought of him as much as he had her. Of course, she hadn’t been happy that he’d brought her dad and brother into custody. Her plan must have been to make him fall in love with her so that he wouldn’t do his job. That must have been why she’d acted so sweet and innocent when she was really anything but.
She was a thief—just like the rest of her family. And she’d nearly stolen his heart all those months ago. He’d thought he was falling for her, but he hadn’t known who she was, either.
“Now, those other men...” The older woman shuddered. “I don’t remember them. They claimed to be her friends.” She shook her head, and the blond wig she wore slipped slightly, revealing the thin wisps of white hair beneath it. “But you were the only guy I ever saw come around, except for her brothers and her dad.”
Her brow furrowed. “But now that I think about it, I haven’t seen her family around for a while, either—even before Lilly gave up the apartment.”
That was because most of them were behind bars. But he didn’t share that information with the elderly woman. He was stuck instead on what else she’d shared with him.
Had Jake been the only boyfriend she’d brought home? As passionate as Lillian had been, he doubted it. The old woman was obviously going senile.
But what if she wasn’t?
“What other men?” he asked.
Damn Tuttle. The old bail bondsman wasn’t just playing Jake; he was probably also playing him off against the O’Hanigans. Those bounty hunters were ruthless when it came to tracking down a fugitive. They would go much further than Jake would in order to collect their bounty. Jake looked more closely at the older woman, making certain they hadn’t roughed her up any.
She chuckled. “Nobody for you to be jealous of, honey. They had nothing on you.”
“Did you show them any of this stuff?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Heavens no, like I said—I didn’t recognize them. I don’t think they were friends of hers at all, not like you.”
He had never been Lillian’s friend, either. For a little while, he’d hoped he could be more. But when he’d done his job and apprehended her dad and brother, she’d sworn she would never forgive him.
What would she do when he apprehended her? Because now he knew exactly where she was...
* * *
He knew where she was. The thought both thrilled and terrified Lillian. Even as much as she hated him, she had missed him. She’d missed seeing his handsome face with the faint stubble that always shadowed his strong jaw no matter how recently he’d shaved. She’d missed seeing his brown eyes go black with desire when they’d made love.
But that hadn’t been love.
That had been deception.
He’d deceived her. That was why she’d been furious with him—not because he’d apprehended her dad and brother but because he’d used her to do it. She didn’t approve of the things her family did, and she never would have helped or harbored any of them once they became fugitives. But when other family members had told her dad and brother Dave that she was getting serious about a man, their protective instincts had kicked in and they’d wanted to check him out—to make sure he was good enough for her.
He wasn’t, because he was a liar and a sneak. All he’d been after was the bounty for her family. The minute he’d seen them, he’d taken them into custody. And Lillian had told Jake, among several other things, that she never wanted to see him again.
She certainly didn’t want to see him now.
She knew he wasn’t looking for her to declare his undying love. Or he would have done that months ago. He would have continued to apologize and beg her forgiveness if he’d wanted to see her again. So obviously, he had never cared about her; he’d only been using her. The only reason he wanted to find her now was to bring her in and collect the bounty on her. And doing that would probably get her killed.
“Thanks for calling me, Mrs. Truman,” she told her former landlady.
The older woman’s voice crackled in the cell phone Lillian had pressed to her ear as she leaned back in the driver’s seat. “I’m sorry I showed him what you left behind, honey, but when I dug those photos out of your trash can, I knew that man was special.”
If he had truly been special, she wouldn’t have thrown the photos away. But she didn’t bother pointing that out to Mrs. Truman. However, Lillian had taken those photos out of the trash several times herself. Every time she’d tossed them, something had compelled her to fish them back out. Maybe she’d been holding out hope that he would come back and beg her forgiveness. She hadn’t been able to completely give up on him or to completely forget about him.
She touched her belly.
And now she never would. Would the baby look like Jake, with those big dark eyes, chiseled features and naturally tanned-looking skin?
The older woman cackled. “He sure got jealous when I told him about the other men looking for you.”
Lillian’s heart stopped beating for a moment before resuming at a frantic pace. “Other men?”
“They said they knew you.” She paused to inject a derisive snort. “But I never saw them around before.”
And Mrs. Truman, despite her age and cataracts, didn’t miss a thing.
So how many people were looking for Lillian? Were these guys Tom Kuipers’s men or more bounty hunters? Or police officers?
But police officers would have identified themselves. No. It had to be someone else. Someone she wouldn’t want to find her any more than she wanted Jake to find her.
“Thanks for letting me know,” she said. And she was glad that she’d given the older woman her new cell number. Mrs. Truman didn’t have any family to call if something happened to her. She and her late husband had never had children, and their extended families had already passed on, too.
Lillian didn’t need to worry about Mrs. Truman right now, though. She wasn’t the one that something was about to happen to. It was Lillian. Had she left anything behind that might have given a clue to her whereabouts? She tried to remember what she’d left and what she’d thrown out.
Since Mrs. Truman had fished out the photos, she might have taken the old letters from the trash can, too. Lillian looked through the windshield at the small cottage her maternal grandmother owned.
Gran was in a nursing home now. That was why she hadn’t gotten down to her place in Florida. But she was just in the rehabilitation part of the nursing home to recuperate from a broken hip. It was taking a little longer than expected, or maybe not since she was eighty-nine, but with as sharp and feisty as she was, she might be able to live on her own again someday.
Or with Lillian, if Lillian wasn’t in prison.
What had happened to the flash drive?
She had to find that evidence—if it hadn’t already been destroyed.
A chill raced over her skin with the thought. What if it had been destroyed? She would never be able to get into the office again, never be able to gain access to the records to prove her innocence.
She shivered. She’d shut off the ignition a while ago, since the car had been making odd clunky noises when Mrs. Truman had called. She’d wanted to be able to hear her, so she’d shut off the car and coasted to a stop on the road just a few yards away from the cottage.
With the heater off, it had grown cool inside the vintage Buick.
Fortunately, it wasn’t her car, so Jake wouldn’t recognize it. Knowing that once she failed to appear in court a warrant would be issued for her arrest, she had left her vehicle at the courthouse. Then she’d had a taxi driver bring her to the lakeshore. From there, she had walked to her grandmother’s cottage. This was Gran’s car, her pride and joy. Like her cottage, she hoped to use it again someday.
“It’s good to hear your voice,” Mrs. Truman said.
Lillian felt a twinge in her heart. The older woman obviously missed her. She missed her, too. She wanted her life back—the one she’d had before the embezzlement charges. The one she’d had before Jake.
Her baby kicked, as if in protest. And Lillian ran her hand over her belly again. She was happy she was pregnant. She wanted this baby. So she didn’t regret making love with Jake. She just wished it had been love and not deception.
“It’s been good to hear your voice, too,” she told Mrs. Truman. Before her landlady hung up, Lillian thought to ask, “How long ago was he there?”
“Who? Tall, dark and handsome?”
Despite her resentment of Jake, Lillian smiled. “Yes.”
The older lady paused as if looking around for a clock. Or her TV. She judged time by her shows as much as the hands on a clock. “He was here during Wheel,” she replied, “so over an hour ago.”
Which was more than enough time for him to have made it to the cottage. Lillian glanced down the street at the little yellow structure, but she saw no other vehicles parked near it. And the inside of the cabin was as dark as it was outside. It looked as empty as it had when Lillian had arrived earlier that day.
Nobody was there.
Was he?
She felt a flutter in her belly and pressed her hand over it. Was it the baby? Or nerves?
Usually the baby kicked hard, and she had no doubt it was him or her moving around inside her—as if the baby felt trapped and was anxious to get out. He or she still had a few weeks to go, though.