Sinister Secrets

by Colleen Gleason

  Before Declan realized it, he’d been replaced at the front of the tea line by other eager customers and was back to navigating through the crowd with Emily alongside him.

  He couldn’t believe how many people were here for a high school football game. It was a mob scene. Wall-to-wall people. He didn’t ever remember it being like this when he was in high school…though, come to think of it, he’d been on the field playing tight end, so he wouldn’t ever have experienced the crowds—except what he saw in the stands.

  Shortly after he and Emily managed to find two seats in the bleachers—really, it was so packed it was more like one and a half seats—she asked casually, “Who was that with Cherry and Orbra back there?”

  Warning bells jangled in his mind. This was not a good sign—this subtle possessiveness, the taking of his arm and directing him away, this questioning—no matter how casual. She was a nice woman, Emily, and great looking, and their daughters were friends…but they hadn’t even been on a date. Or kissed.

  And, well…there was Leslie.

  Who may or may not be seeing a hotshot lawyer named Eric from Philadelphia.

  And who was his employer, he reminded himself. Well, a client, really.

  Who was mostly interested in him getting some work done for her—

  Not that kind of work, he told his hormones when they leaped to attention at the double entendre.

  “That’s Cherry’s niece, Leslie Nakano. She bought Shenstone House.”

  “She’s Cherry’s niece? Oh, right. I saw the article in the paper the other day.” Emily sounded less than enthused. “She doesn’t look anything like the photo that was in the article.”

  He had no idea what she meant by that, so didn’t comment.

  “I’m restoring the wrought iron stairway for her in the front foyer,” Declan said, then realized maybe he should have just changed the subject. Because now he felt Emily stiffen a little next to him, and then move a little closer. Even though they were already thigh to thigh on the hard bleacher seat.

  “I’d love to come over and see you working sometime,” she said, looking up at him with a very warm smile. She was wearing a warm hat, too, with a big POM MOM stitched on the front of it in silver glitter. Her cloudlike blond hair sprang in soft, perfect curls from beneath the hat. Little pompom earrings dangled from her ears, and her lips were expertly colored in with a subtle shade of pink. She—or maybe it was her coat and scarf—smelled like some very nice expensive perfume.

  “Sure,” he heard himself saying before he could stop himself. “Come by anytime. I’m usually in the smithy from noon till four or so, depending how things are going.”

  “Great. How about I come by on Monday? The salon is closed on Mondays, and then I could cook you dinner after. I make a mean lasagna. The girls can do their homework together.”

  “That might work,” he said cautiously. “I’ll have to see what’s on my schedule that evening. You know how it is with teenagers—they always have things going on they don’t tell you about, then spring it on you at the last minute.” Please have something going on, Steph. Anything.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like Emily. It was just that…whatever twinge of interest he might have had before meeting Leslie Nakano had somehow fizzled out. And now he felt like crap, because clearly Emily was very interested, and thought he was too.

  Had he given her that impression?

  Hell, how was a guy to know where the line was between being friendly and being interested? Dammit.

  Their daughters carpooled, so of course he was friendly and hospitable to the woman who drove his daughter around. He wasn’t an idiot. Somehow, suddenly becoming the father of a teenaged girl had made even his personal life more complicated. And for all he knew, Stephanie might have helped exacerbate the situation by encouraging her.

  Emily was about to say something else when the sounds of the marching band reached their ears, and everyone bolted to their feet to welcome the musicians—who were followed by the cheerleaders and pom squad. The football team was introduced to the roar of the crowd, the national anthem was sung, and then the home team kicked off to their visitors.

  After that, Declan made certain to be very interested in the game (which was easy, because it was a good game against a nearby rival school), and to talk to everyone around them instead of limiting his conversation to Emily. He exchanged knowledgeable comments and some lamentations over bad plays with a few parents of both genders, all of whom were rabid football fans and not just there to watch the marching band, cheerleaders, or pom dancers.

  The game clock showed ten seconds left in the first half, and the home team had possession. The ball was hiked and the quarterback caught it just as the clock ran out.

  “Halftime!” squealed Emily, grabbing Declan’s arm just as everyone else in the stands surged to their feet to watch the Wicks Hollow quarterback complete a beautiful pass to one of his running backs in the end zone.

  “Touchdown!” shouted the announcer as Declan and the other football fans went crazy, high-fiving at the last-minute score. “And WH is up by ten at the half.”

  “Halftime!” exclaimed Emily again. “We get to watch our girls!”

  Declan was still talking with the guy on the other side of him about that perfect touchdown pass when the squad came out onto the field with their shiny pompoms and long, slender legs.

  “Here they are!” said Emily. “Watch, Dec!”

  He was watching, but apparently he wasn’t allowed to talk at the same time—at least, according to Pom Parent Code. Some unrecognizable rap song blared from the speakers, distorted and half-muted at the same time, as the girls shimmied and kicked in time.

  “That’s my daughter there, in the front row,” he said apologetically to the man next to him. “The tallest blond with the highest ponytail.” It was hard to differentiate between the girls, but that was the best way.

  “Stephanie Lillard’s your daughter?” The man next to him smiled and offered a hand. “I’m Greg Hammady.”

  “Hammady? You’d be—uh—Paul’s father, right? Nice to meet you. I’m Declan Zyler. I guess I would probably have met you tomorrow night anyway. I understand I’m to be at your house for pictures for the Homecoming Dance at six o’clock, right?”

  “I think so. Nancy, the photos are at six tomorrow night, right?” Greg turned to the woman next to him, obviously his wife and clearly the keeper of the family calendar. “This is Stephanie’s father, Declan.”

  “Great to meet you,” she said, offering a mittened hand. “Yes, we’ll feed the group—I guess there are five couples going—and then we’ll do pictures at six. Then off to the dance by seven.”

  “Oh, you’ll be there too?” Emily asked, looking up at Declan. He could already see the invitation forming on her lips, and he swiftly turned back to the Hammadys.

  “Thanks so much for hosting everyone,” he said. “It’s a lot different than when I was a teen.”

  “Watch them, Dec!” Emily gave him a gentle nudge from the other side. “This is my favorite part.”

  As soon as the pom squad finished their routine, Declan excused himself to go up to the press box and say hi to Baxter. Somehow, he managed to get away without Emily insisting on going with him. As he jogged up the bleachers, taking two steps at a time as he dodged the people who were descending, he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about blowing her off.

  He knew what it was like to be blown off. To think there was something going on, but really there wasn’t.

  Although he hadn’t really done anything to make Emily Delton think they were together…unlike Margie, who’d teased and flirted and made herself very available to him until he finally succumbed and went to bed with her in between sessions working on the wrought iron railing of her Antebellum gazebo.

  He’d done some very fine work there, at her charming Charleston home—both on the railing and in the bedroom. Even now, he couldn’t contain the ghost of a smile. Fine work indeed. But Margie ha
dn’t been interested in anything more than a fling, and once she was finished flinging, Declan had been relegated to nothing more than laborer status.

  He’d learned his lesson, no doubt about it. New rule: no sleeping with the client. Made things a helluva lot easier when it came time to collect his check and move on to the next project.

  Which was why it wasn’t the greatest of ideas to be noticing Leslie Nakano’s dark, liquid eyes, the way her jeans cupped such a nice ass, and how she softened the minute he mentioned the stray cat and its broken tail. Not to mention the way she got all businesslike and frosty when she was explaining about hiring his daughter. An interesting woman, to say the least.

  “Yo, Dec!” Baxter was glad to see him. And, to Declan’s pleasure, their friend Ethan Murphy was up there too.

  “How goes it, bud? Hey doc,” Declan added, shaking Ethan’s hand. “Didn’t know you were back in town.”

  Ethan Murphy was a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and a semi-famous non-fiction author, so he spent his summers and whatever weekends he could up here at his log cabin on Wicks Lake. Thanks to Baxter, Dec had gotten to know Ethan last summer shortly after moving here, when Ethan was caught up in the break-ins and other problems at Jean Fickler’s house—which had been inherited by Jean’s niece Diana Iverson.

  “Came up for the game tonight,” Ethan said. “Diana’s neck-deep in a case she’s litigating, and she said I was breathing too much of her air while I’m around—whatever the hell that means—while she’s trying to think.” He grinned and shrugged. “I figured I’d give her some space, come up and sample Bax’s latest and get over to East Lansing tomorrow for the bigger game.” He whistled the Michigan State fight song, then ducked when Baxter smacked him with his University of Michigan ball cap.

  “Don’t be contaminating my press box with that tune,” Baxter groused.

  “Things are still going well with you and Diana, then?” Declan asked, remembering his brief meeting with the elegant, dark-haired rising-star attorney from Chicago. She and Murphy had had so much sexual tension between them at Maxine’s birthday party last summer, he’d sworn he felt it sizzling across the patio.

  “Couldn’t be better. And now that no one’s trying to kill her or break into her house, I thought I might be able to get her to come up next weekend. She can check out the restoration at the farmhouse and see how the cats are doing—Doc Horner’s keeping them at his place when neither of us are in town.” Ethan took a swig from the water bottle he carried. “Though with my sister going to be in town here, maybe she’ll be able to take care of them.”

  “You mean Fiona?” Declan asked, vaguely remembering a gorgeous redhead with long, wild hair. He’d met her maybe once, briefly, since moving to Wicks Hollow. She’d reminded him of one of those women who’d look at home in a corset and long skirts at a Renaissance Festival.

  “Yeah. Damnedest thing happened,” Ethan said with a glance at Baxter. “You, being the town journalist, probably heard about it.”

  “Can’t say,” replied Bax. “Might if I knew what you were talking about—and hurry, because halftime’s almost over.”

  “Fiona gets a call from a lawyer up in Grand Rapids about a month ago that an old, rich man—a guy she maybe met once—left her some property. Turns out it’s that old antiques store at the north end of town. You know, on that little winding street near the lake? On Gertrude?”

  “Oh, yes, I know the place,” Baxter replied. “Your sister is the new owner? God, I hope she cleans the place up. It’s kind of an eyesore.”

  “Well, she’s just waiting to get through probate and then she’ll have the keys—another couple weeks probably. And, presumably, she’ll be here in town a lot more often.” Ethan cut a glance at Declan. “Don’t get any ideas about FiFi, bro.”

  “Who, me? Don’t you think I’ve got my hands full enough with a teenager? I don’t need another woman disrupting my life,” Declan replied with a laugh.

  Besides, he had his eye on a sexy, dark-haired innkeeper, not a lush, red-headed gypsy. “Anyway, I’m glad to hear that things have remained calm around here and with Diana since all those incidents up at Jean Fickler’s house, Ethan. Sounds like Wicks Hollow is back to being its quiet, sleepy self.”

  Which was the way he liked it, having a fifteen-year-old daughter to raise in it. “So, hey, Bax, mind if I watch the rest of the game up here?” Declan asked. “You’ve got one hell of a view going for you.”

  And best of all, there weren’t any clingy pom moms breathing the air.

  Leslie was so busy serving free tea samples she completely missed the halftime show—which included pom squad, marching band (playing a bunch of eighties songs that had been re-popularized by Glee), and Mayor Underwhite announcing the Homecoming court.

  Fortunately, things settled down once the game started again, and she was able to take a break, leaning a hip against one of Orbra’s tables as she tried out a sample of the tea herself. She’d been working so hard that she’d taken off her down vest and handwarmers after a while, but now that she wasn’t moving as much, Leslie pulled the vest back on.

  “You’re going to have to get moving on things,” Cherry said to her as she picked up her own cup of tea. “Or you’re going to miss the boat.”

  “What are you talking about?” Leslie was genuinely confused.

  “With Declan. That was Emily Delton with him when he came up to the table—didn’t you see her? The tall-ish blond with the big boobs?” Cherry said. “She practically dragged him away—did you see that?”

  Leslie shrugged. “Well, it sounds like they’re seeing each other. I’m not going to step on anyone’s toes, you know. Remember, I’m new in town and I’ve got a business to start up. No sense in pissing off another business owner.”

  Nevertheless, she had to admit a twinge of disappointment at having her suspicions confirmed. She had noticed the pretty woman standing next to Declan, but that was only after she’d met his eyes and felt a delicious sizzle of connection there. Her lady parts still tingled at the memory.

  And besides, he hadn’t really seemed with Emily. He was just standing next to her; there was a subtle difference. But maybe Cherry had seen something Leslie missed.

  “So, how did it go today?” Orbra edged over and inserted herself into the conversation. Like Leslie and Cherry, she was wearing a warm sweater, gloves, and a hat. But she also sported a frilly pink and white apron emblazoned with Orbra’s Tea House: The Hot Pot Spot. “Did Iva come over this morning? Did she sense any ghosts? Did you show her the speakeasy?”

  “She claimed she felt a definite chill in the air, and some sort of presence,” Leslie replied, her tone very neutral. She wasn’t about to raise a brow at anyone who claimed they sensed a supernatural presence—not after what she’d seen last night. “But that was it.”

  Nor was she ready to tell anyone else about the ghostly figure she’d seen. She was almost regretting having confessed it to Declan, even though he’d been so chill about it.

  “Did John Fischer come today too?” Cherry asked in a sly tone. “If you lose your chance with Declan, you can always go for him.”

  “I thought you were interested in being a cougar to the younger novelist,” Leslie retorted. What was up with her aunt interfering in her love life? “I’m not going to stand in your way. He is very nice, and not bad looking. Go for it, auntie.”

  “And—he’s famous. And rich. And he probably knows Tom Cruise because of all those action movies,” Orbra said.

  As Leslie was pretty much over Tom Cruise, and she had had her own brush with being famous—not to mention somewhat rich—none of these reasons made John Fischer particularly appealing to her. However, she didn’t deny he was charming and pleasant, and when he’d showed up today at Shenstone House, she noticed his beard had been trimmed into something less bushy and wild. He’d looked less like a mountain man and more like a college professor, even though he’d been wearing a plaid flannel shirt and jeans.<
br />
  Though he didn’t have the muscular build Declan had, John Fischer was tall and lanky—without an ounce of fat on him. She wondered how he managed that if he was a writer and spent all day on the computer.

  In fact, she thought he’d been about to ask her out when Iva interrupted and changed the subject, giddy with her exploration of the speakeasy. Not that Leslie could blame her.

  “Did you ask him about his books?” Orbra demanded. “Did you find out what he’s working on next? I’m dying to know whether Bruno Tablenture is going to find out who set him up to die in the last book.”

  Leslie shook her head, laughing. “No, we didn’t talk about his books at all. Are you sure he’s really Jeremy Fischer? It seems like he’d at least drop a few hints.”

  “You know how writers are. All reclusive and secretive,” Orbra told her. “Anyway, maybe if you get to know him well enough—hint, hint—you could sneak a peek and see if he has any notes in his bedroom.”

  “Geez, Orbra.” Leslie was appalled. “I hardly know the man and you’ve already got me in his bedroom?”

  “Well, if you aren’t going to jump in the sack with that massive piece of hotness Declan Zyler, you might as well go for Jeremy Fischer.” The tea hostess grinned as Leslie rolled her eyes and turned away.

  “You two need to find something else to occupy your time besides my love life. I’m not really interested in getting involved with anyone right now,” Leslie said—even though it wasn’t quite true. If the right guy came along, she’d get involved.

  Now that she had a life, she was ready for a partner to share it.

  The problem was, she wasn’t sure if she’d know the right guy even if he showed up on her doorstep with flowers and a puppy. She hadn’t had a long-term relationship since college; every man she’d dated since had been more a convenience than offering a real soul-deep connection.