Blogger Bundle Volume VIII: SBTB's Harlequins That Hooked You

by Jennifer Crusie

  “Nothing, I just pricked my finger on a thorn.”

  Dane lifted her injured finger, brought it to his lips and kissed the tip.

  “She said there was a card.” Annie glanced down at the wreath.

  Dane released her hand, bent over and jerked the card off the spray. He ripped it open. Annie grabbed it out of his hand and read it quickly. All color drained from her face.

  Dane caught the card as it fell from her limp fingers, then scanned it quickly. “You’re next” was the succinct but frighteningly clear message.

  Chapter 11

  “The florist said the arrangement was paid for in cash and the money was delivered by a messenger,” Dane told Annie when he hung up the phone. “She said that she and her assistants were so busy with flowers for Halley’s funeral that they didn’t have time to question an odd request. Neither she nor any of her employees even remember what the messenger looked like.”

  “Another dead end.” Fingering the bloodred roses on the wreath, Annie’s hand trembled.

  She had made it through Halley’s funeral without collapsing, without giving in to her emotions and crying her heart out, the way she’d felt like doing. Having Dane at her side had made it easier somehow. Strange as it seemed to her, she had felt as if she’d been drawing from his strength.

  Don’t fall into that trap, she cautioned herself. Strong men make it easy for you to lean on them. But in return they want your undying adoration and obedience. Father had demanded it and Preston had expected it. And Dane was cut from the same cloth, wasn’t he?

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. Annie glanced out the windows. Gray rain clouds swirled around in the sky, forewarning of the approaching storm.

  Dane lifted the wreath away from the wall in the den where he’d placed it while he phoned the florist. “I’ll dump this out back by the trash,” he said. “Why don’t you go on upstairs and take a bubble bath and I’ll put on a pot of coffee and—”

  “Don’t give me orders!”

  Dane stared at her, puzzlement in his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t intend for my suggestion to sound like an order.”

  Annie hung her head, smoothed her hands over her forehead and back over her hair. Then she glanced up at Dane, who had picked up the wreath and was carrying it toward the kitchen. “Dane!”

  He paused, but didn’t turn around. “Yes?”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry. I overreacted. I know you weren’t giving me an order.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Annie slumped onto the sofa, forked her fingers through her hair, tugged down on the ends and growled a cry of disgust and aggravation. Why did she keep doing that to Dane? Maybe he was an old-fashioned Southern gentleman. Maybe he was a member of the good ole boys’ club. But that didn’t mean he was a carbon copy of her father. And she knew he wasn’t an imitation of Preston Younger. Just having known Dane for less than two weeks, she could see the differences in him and her ex-husband. She sensed that there was an honesty and goodness in Dane that had been lacking in Preston. And not at any time during their marriage had Preston made her feel the way Dane had the night they’d made love. Preston had known how to take, but not to give. Dane, on the other hand… Annie sighed.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Dane called from the kitchen.

  She took a deep, relaxing breath. “Yes, thank you.” She rose from the sofa, took a few tentative steps toward the kitchen, then paused. “I think I will go upstairs and take that bubble bath you suggested.”

  “I’ll have the coffee waiting for you,” he said without glancing her way.

  Dane listened to her footsteps as she left the den and went out into the hall. After removing his coat and tie and loosening the first button of his shirt, he began preparations for the coffee.

  A smart man would get himself out of this assignment any way he could, he told himself, even by hiring a replacement from another security firm. A smart man would never have made love to a client.

  Why am I sticking around, taking Annie’s verbal attacks, when I know I should leave?

  Because you don’t trust anyone else to take care of her, an inner voice acknowledged. You cannot bear the thought of anything happening to her. You’ve committed a bodyguard’s unforgivable sin—you’ve become emotionally involved with your client. Hell, you’ve done more than that—you’ve made love to her.

  And you want to make love to her again.

  Just as he flipped the switch to start the coffeemaker, the phone rang. He lifted the receiver from the wall base.

  “Harden residence.”

  “Dane?” the feminine voice asked.

  “Yeah. Is that you, Denby?”

  “I’ve got some information on Martin Edwards,” Ellen Denby said.

  “Have you found him?” Dane asked.

  “In a manner of speaking. But, Dane, I’ve got to warn you—”

  “Martin Edwards is somehow connected to the Hughes family.” Dane felt as if a large lead weight had dropped into his stomach.

  “How did you know? Anyhow, it seems that Martin Edwards is dead. He’s been dead for twenty years.”

  Dead for twenty years! Dane did some swift calculations in his head and came up with the answer—twenty years ago, Dickie Hughes had been only eighteen. What kind of mischief had Dickie been into back then?

  “So Edwards is dead,” Dane said. “What’s the connection?”

  “Edwards was the plant manager for Hughes Chemicals and Plastics in Florence, Alabama, which is one of four companies your former father-in-law owns in the southeast.”

  “Right. And?”

  “And twenty years ago, that particular plant in the Shoals area did a little illegal dumping of PCBs into a nearby river, thus causing death to wildlife and illness to some residents.” Ellen paused, took a deep breath and continued. “Hughes paid some hefty fines on behalf of the company, but Martin Edwards was the one held legally responsible for what happened and shortly thereafter, he committed suicide.”

  Dane’s mind whirled with the information, processing it and combining it with other things he knew—and with his gut instincts. Why would Halley Robinson have been interested in a twenty-year-old suicide? And no one would have been interested in a PCB dumping scandal that had been resolved so long ago. If this was the story that had cost Halley her life, there had to be more to it.

  “Did Edwards have a family?” Dane asked.

  “A wife and daughter,” Ellen replied. “They moved out of state a few weeks after Edwards’s death.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “We’re working on it,” she told him. “I expect we’ll have that information for you by tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. By the way, have y’all unearthed anything interesting about Clay Boyd?”

  “Not so far,” she said. “It appears that Mr. Boyd is as clean as a whistle. But we did find out something about Royce Layman that may or may not have anything to do with this case.”

  “What?”

  “It seems Mr. Layman and several prominent Florence businessmen own quite a bit of stock in Hughes Chemicals and Plastics.”

  “Yeah, I knew. Jennifer Harden owns some Hughes stock, too. Any leads on the other two stories Halley Robinson was working on?” Dane had hoped that one of the other stories would remove any suspicion from his former father-in-law. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe that Richard was involved in Halley’s murder or in the attempts on Annie’s life. Lorna had adored her father, and Dane had become fond of him. And more importantly, he had learned to respect him and trust him. If there was any connection between the Hughes family and Halley Robinson, then Richard Hughes Jr. was the person involved. Dane would bet money on it.

  “The other two stories were pretty cut-and-dried,” Ellen said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything suspicious about either.”

  “I want y’all to do a little more digging into Dickie Hughes’s life, especially what was going on with him twenty years ago. See if there’s a personal connect
ion between Dickie and Martin Edwards.”

  “I’ll get on it right away.” Ellen cleared her throat. “Dane?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Murdock will be winding up his case in a couple of days, about a week sooner than he thought, so if you still want another agent to take over—”

  “Annie’s family wants me to stay on the case,” he said.

  “Mmm-hmm. And what does Annie want?”

  Damn Ellen Denby! Dane thought. The woman had a sixth sense when it came to reading between the lines. “Annie agrees with her family.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Give me a description of Annie Harden.”

  “What! Give you a— Stop being a smart-ass, Denby.”

  “A sweet Southern belle, is my guess. Fragile and dainty and very helpless. And, of course, old-fashioned. And probably beautiful, to boot.”

  “You’re out of line,” Dane said.

  “Did I describe her to a T or not? I can’t see you giving up a long overdue vacation for a woman who wasn’t—”

  “Annie Harden is nothing like you described her.” She’s nothing like Lorna, he thought. “Annie’s her own person—tough, smart and independent. And before you say it, no, she isn’t my usual type. But then, Annie is a client, not my date for the cotillion.”

  Dane grimaced when he heard Ellen’s smothered laughter. He realized too late that he had overreacted. Ellen had added two and two and come up with a definite four.

  “Annie sounds like just the kind of woman…er, client, you need right now. I’ll give you a call when we get that information on Edwards’s wife and daughter.”

  Dane hung up the receiver, poured two mugs of coffee, doctored Annie’s to her tastes and headed for the stairs. When he reached Annie’s room, he found the door closed. He paused, lifted his foot and tapped several times.

  “Coffee’s ready,” he said.

  “Be right there,” Annie called through the closed door. “Who was on the phone?”

  “My office.”

  Annie swung open the door and ushered Dane into her bedroom. His gaze skimmed her quickly from head to toe, taking in everything, from the towel wrapped around her head to the gleaming red of her toenails. He couldn’t help but wonder just what she had on beneath that red-and-gold-striped silk robe. He knew her body intimately, every sweet curve, every tempting inch. His sex hardened at the memory of their lovemaking.

  “Any news?” Annie reached out and took the mug from Dane’s hand.

  “Martin Edwards was the plant manager at Hughes Chemicals and Plastics here in Florence, about twenty years ago.”

  Annie sat in one of the two pink-and-white-checked upholstered chairs in front of the window alcove. She lifted the mug to her lips and sipped. “Where is he now?”

  “Dead.” Dane crossed the room and sat across from Annie in the matching chair. “He committed suicide after he was held legally responsible for the company dumping PCBs into the river.”

  “I was only a kid then, fourteen, but I vaguely remember hearing my grandparents talking about that one summer when I visited them here. But I didn’t remember any details or names of the people involved.”

  “I’ve got Denby checking on Edwards’s family. He had a wife and daughter.” Dane leaned back in the chair, spread out his legs then crossed his ankles as he relaxed and drank his coffee.

  “You still don’t think Richard Hughes could possibly be involved in Halley’s death or—”

  “Richard is one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”

  “I agree that Richard is a fine gentleman, who seems to be just what he presents himself to be,” Annie said. “But everyone has their dark side. Very few people live to be Richard’s age without having a secret or two buried in their past. Or at the very least, something they would prefer the rest of the world not know.”

  Dane knew Richard Hughes’s secret—the one thing he didn’t want anyone else to know, something he hadn’t told his wife or his son. A sad, heartbreaking secret that only Richard and Dane shared.

  Dane placed his coffee on the table. He sat up straight, bringing himself to the edge of the chair. Dangling his arms between his parted legs, he thumbed his fingers together in a repetitive beat. “If Martin Edwards has any connection to Halley’s death, then I’d say the Hughes we need to investigate is Dickie.”

  Annie noticed the change in Dane’s facial expression and the faraway look in his eyes. “Dickie couldn’t have been much more than a kid himself when Edwards died,” she said.

  “He was eighteen.”

  “You know something about Richard Hughes, don’t you? Something no one else knows.” Annie focused on Dane, narrowing her gaze to center on his profile.

  Without answering her, Dane stood and turned toward the shuttered windows. He opened one of the shutters and looked outside at the front lawn.

  “It’s nothing that has any connection to this case,” he said, his voice distant and forlorn.

  Annie sensed some great sorrow weighing heavily on Dane’s shoulders, some tragedy that still resided in his heart. She rose from the chair and moved toward him. When she came up behind him, her hand raised to touch his back, he turned abruptly and stared at her. Instinctively she took a step backward. The look on his face told her that he was in pain, but he didn’t want her comfort.

  “What I’m about to tell you must never go any further,” Dane said. “Do you understand?”

  She nodded. What secret did Dane share with his former father-in-law that could be so terrible that Dane was still suffering from its aftereffects?

  “Lorna…” He paused, as if saying her name hurt him. “My wife was beautiful and kind and gentle. She was so delicate and fragile and sensitive. She was everything I’d always wanted in a wife. I thought she was a lot like my mother—a genteel Southern lady. And in that respect she was. But…” He hesitated, as if he couldn’t bring himself to speak ill of the woman he had loved. “The first couple of years after we married, Lorna was very happy, making a home for us and participating in all the clubs she belonged to and enjoying life in Alexandria, where we had bought a house.”

  “Dane, if this has nothing to do with the case—my case—then you don’t have to tell me.” She grabbed his arm. She didn’t think she wanted to know any more about Lorna Hughes Carmichael. Dane’s beautiful, perfect, beloved wife.

  Dane pulled Annie’s hand off his arm and clasped it in his. “After we’d been married several years, she decided she wanted a child. Nothing could have pleased me more, so… She couldn’t get pregnant. We tried a dozen different doctors, went through numerous procedures. The more she tried, the more obsessed she became with getting pregnant.

  “I watched my wife slip from unhappiness into a deep depression. Richard assured me that all she needed was time to accept the facts, mourn her inability to have a baby and…he said she needed a child. So we started adoption proceedings. And Lorna began seeing a psychiatrist. I’d insisted that she needed help. But nothing helped. Nothing.”

  Annie squeezed his hand. The fine sheen of moisture in Dane’s eyes tore her apart inside. Here was this big, strong man almost in tears. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and comfort him. “Dane, you don’t have to tell me. Please, I really don’t want to know.”

  He grabbed her chin and forced her to look directly into his eyes. “Lorna killed herself.” He spoke the words calmly, with no emotion, as if he’d been reading the sentence from a book.

  “Oh, God! Oh, Dane.” Unable to go against her need to comfort him, she reached out and wrapped her arms around him.

  “I came home from work and found her in our bedroom. She’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills.” Dane stood there in Annie’s arms, the pain inside him tightening harder and harder until he could barely breathe.

  Tears formed in Annie’s eyes. “My poor, poor Dane.” Standing on tiptoe, she kissed the side of his face.

  He ached with the memory, dying inside once again, the way he had when he’d found Lorna that evening te
n years ago. “She looked so pretty, so peaceful, lying there on our bed.”

  Annie clung to Dane as his big body trembled, memories flaying him, slicing into his heart, cutting deeply into his soul. He pulled Annie closer, holding on to her, sensing that this woman was his lifeline. He had never told another soul the truth about Lorna’s death. Not even his own family.

  “I called Richard.” Dane’s voice became quieter, calmer. “Before I called the police. Even though he was in Georgia and we were in Virginia, he told me not to do anything, to leave it all to him. And so I did exactly what he told me to do.

  “I don’t know how long I sat alone in our bedroom, at Lorna’s side, but eventually a doctor—someone Richard had contacted—came to the house. He handled the entire situation. Lorna’s death was ruled an accidental overdose of prescribed medication.”

  “Why did Richard want Lorna’s suicide covered up?” The moment she asked the question, she felt Dane’s body tense in her arms.

  “I suppose I was in shock at first and then in some sort of grief-stricken fog later,” he said. “Otherwise I might have questioned Richard sooner. But it was weeks later before we really talked about what had happened. I felt so guilty because I hadn’t been able to do something to prevent Lorna from taking her own life.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Annie held Dane like a fierce tigress protecting an endangered cub. “I know you did everything you could have done.”

  “That’s what Richard told me.” Dane eased out of Annie’s embrace, turned away from her and closed his eyes. “You see, Lorna’s mother—Richard’s first wife—had a history of mental problems and, when Lorna was just a little girl, she killed herself. She hung herself in her bedroom and—” Dane swallowed hard. “Lorna was seven years old when she found her mother.”

  Cold shivers washed over Annie. “Richard covered up his wife’s suicide, too, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Dane rubbed the back of his neck, then opened his eyes and turned to Annie. “Richard’s secrets are personal tragedies.”

  “I’m so very, very sorry.” Annie had never wanted anything so much as she longed to encompass Dane in a safe, loving circle of peace and happiness. She wanted to erase the pain she’d seen in his eyes, longed to help him forget the past, to help him let it go and forgive himself for crimes he’d never committed.