Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2016 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  What to wear? Max had promised to come back this morning and escort her down to the police station. She wanted to look her best for him, since she hadn’t exactly been in top form last night.

  Lissa, my dear, she told herself, you have a crush on Mr. Smith. A big, fat, juicy one. And normal women acted on their crushes. They put out signals and feelers, and maybe even asked the men they liked out for a cup of coffee or a bite to eat. He did say last night that the next meal was on him. That meant he was open to the idea of seeing her again, right?

  If only she’d had a more normal life, maybe she would know how to land a man like Max Smith. As it was, she stood in front of her closet and panicked. Then she moved into the bathroom and stared at the mirror over the sink and despaired. She couldn’t do this. He was so out of her league. She was an amateur at romance, and he was obviously a world-class master of the art.

  Master of romance didn’t quite capture the raw magnetism of Max Smith, or whatever his name was. The Max part felt right, but the Smith part felt slightly off. Although now that she was living a normal life, she probably should ignore the intuition and just accept his name at face value.

  Not that all intuition was bad, though. Last night, as he’d walked her to the store, there’d been a moment. The kind of moment she’d fantasized about. That instant of connection as eyes met and instinctive recognition of true love broke over both parties. As angelic hosts sang and heavenly trumpets blared to announce the miracle. Or something along those lines.

  The moment had left her breathless and thinking the kind of racy thoughts she’d rarely had time for before she’d set aside her unfortunate gift.

  Resolutely, she picked up a tube of eyeliner and prayed that it would cooperate with her this morning. The makeup gods were capricious demons from time to time.

  As she carefully accented the roundness and width of her big dark eyes, she allowed herself to remember her other dream from last night. The one about Max. Who knew a girl could make herself blush just by dreaming about a man she’d just met? Except in her dream they’d known each other—or at least had a connection—for a long time.

  She stared critically at herself in the mirror and then down at her pitiful selection of lipsticks. She wanted to come off breezy. Demure but sexy—whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. Why was she going to all this trouble for this guy?

  She’d always subscribed to the notion that any man worth her love would adore her just the way she was, with no makeup and her curls sticking out all over her head and a smudge of paint on her nose. Apparently that notion had flown right out the window at the first sign of a hot guy. He was not out of her league, darn it! She deserved any man she was attracted to.

  But an insidious thread of doubt whispered warnings of what he would think if he knew about the circumstances of her conception and birth. She was tainted. Had bad genes. Her stepfather said once that they would come through in the end. The comment, uttered in anger, had stuck with her ever since. Was he right?

  The sun shone a little less brightly through her window.

  Max was, of course, punctual to the minute. She waited by the shop’s main entrance, picking at the black widow’s weeds she’d opted to wear. The old-fashioned dress swathed her in gloom and made her look at least a decade older than her twenty-six years.

  “Going to a funeral after you make your statement?” he asked drily as he strolled down the sidewalk toward her.

  Rendered speechless by his easy elegance in those flannel trousers and crisply starched dress shirt, she could only stare at him. How had she missed these movie-star good looks last night? She’d noticed that he was hot, but not that he was drop-dead gorgeous. She must have been in worse shock than she’d realized.

  One of his eyebrows twitched. “Everything okay?”

  “Umm, no. Yes.”

  “Which?”

  “I’m a little flummoxed by how handsome you are today.”

  “Oh.” He fingered his jaw. “I shaved this morning. It’s nothing.”

  Right. Because a simple shave had peeled back the troll’s face to reveal this prince beneath. She said lightly, “I believe a sincere yowza is in order, sir.”

  “Well, thank you. And may I say you make a fetching widow.”

  She grinned up at him. “Nice try.”

  He shrugged. “Surely you know how beautiful a woman you are. Great bones. Perfect skin. Striking coloring. I have an eye for these things, you know.”

  “And how’s that?” she asked as they strolled down the street.

  “I have a good eye for beauty. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you so.” He stopped beside a low-slung, sleek sports car and opened the door for her. Startled, she sunk into the plush quilted leather interior. He was wealthy? She hadn’t seen that coming. It disappointed her a little. She wouldn’t want him to think she found him interesting just because he had money.

  “Does your car have a name?” she asked as the vehicle purred away from the curb.

  He frowned. “No.”

  “Every car has one, you know.”

  “A name?”

  “Yes. You’re doing this beauty a great disservice by not taking the time to learn hers.”

  He grinned over at her before accelerating out into a busy thoroughfare. “What would you call my car?”

  She leaned forward to lay both palms flat on the dashboard. She listened for a moment and then broke into a big smile. “Of course. Her name is Lola. She’s Italian.”

  “Most Ferraris are.”

  “You’re making fun of me,” she accused.

  “Are you one of those people who names everything?” he asked, without sounding at all like he was making fun of her.

  She shrugged. “Only the things that need names.”

  “And I suppose you skip people’s and animal’s given names entirely and make up endearments for them?”

  She scowled, sensing that he was subtly poking fun at her. “Yes. And I’d call you Curmy.”

  “Like Kermit the Frog?”

  “No. Short for Curmudgeon.”

  He laughed aloud. “I could live with that.”

  “Fine, Curmy. How long till we reach the police station?”

  “About...ten...seconds,” he answered as he decelerated quickly and swerved into a parking spot in front of a rather nondescript building obviously built in the modern-utilitarian 1970s.

  “Lord, that’s an ugly building.” Of course, it wasn’t just the dreadful architecture. An aura of suffering and human evils hung over the place like a shroud. Hastily, she closed her mind’s eye, snapping it shut like a cheap door.

  “No kidding it’s ugly,” Max muttered fervently as he helped her out of the car. “You’d think in a town like this that the builder would have given at least a tiny crap about his building not looking like a three-story wart.”

  His hand came up to touch the small of her back as he escorted her into the police station, and her breath caught a little at the way her entire being focused on that light contact between them.

  The actual taking of a statement took about two minutes. But then she came to the tricky part. “Officer Leblanc, have there been other girls in the past few years who went missing?”

  “Of course,” the handsome Cajun replied.

  “I mean any who look like me. You know. Similar height, build and coloring. Close to my age. That sort of thing.”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “My attacker. He...” She searched for the right words that didn’t come right out and say she’d picked a vision out of his brain. “He...indicated that I was not his first victim.”

  “What do you mean?” As she’d expected, the cop jumped on her comment aggressively.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” she demurred. “I...” Crap. She had no words to get ar
ound the truth she was determined not to reveal.

  Thankfully, Max dived in and rescued her. Again. “I have to agree with her. I saw the way he was manhandling her. He was no amateur. He knew exactly how to subdue her. Could you just look into other missing persons reports, Bastien, and see if any other petite redheads have gone missing?”

  “Fine. I’ll take a look.”

  They had to wait around for a while as a lineup was prepared for her, and then Detective LeBlanc put her in a nasty little room with no lights and a big window. She knew the drill from watching television. Five surly-looking men filed into the room on the other side of the one-way glass, and she immediately pointed out suspect number four.

  She was led out, and Max was brought into the room. He came out in about ten seconds, as well. She didn’t even bother to ask him which guy he’d picked. They’d both gotten up-close-and-personal looks at her attacker last night. The lineup was purely a formality.

  And then they were done. An odd sense of panic washed over her. There was nothing else to tie Max to her life. He could drop her off at the curiosity shop and drive away, never to see her again. She didn’t even have his real name, let alone his phone number. If only she had more experience with men. Maybe she would know a smooth way to ask him for his contact information. Something that would let her keep in touch with him. She had a serious crush on him and craved more of him desperately.

  They parked down the street from her shop a little before noon. He did not invite her out to lunch as she’d hoped he would. There was no small talk, nothing to indicate he had any personal interest in her whatsoever. That was what she got for dressing like a mortician. She should have gone with her first impulse to dress up for him.

  “Here’s my card,” he announced without preamble. “It has my private cell phone and personal email address on it. If you ever get in trouble, ever need help, give me a call.”

  She took the white rectangle despondently. Not a “Call me if you want to have coffee or go out for a drink.” Just a “If you get in trouble...” It was pro forma polite behavior, not a sincere offer to see her again. Well, hell.

  She climbed out of the car, insisting he not get out and come around to help her. She watched the sleek black car pull away from the curb and dart into the city. And she was alone once more. Except today it hurt even worse than usual.

  * * *

  Max watched the small black figure retreat in his rearview mirror, her shoulders slumped in defeat, her entire spirit shrinking in on itself. He was a horrible human being. She’d obviously hoped he would throw her a social bone and show even the tiniest spark of interest in her.

  Thing was, he was interested. And, furthermore, he did give a damn about her. And that was exactly why he had to stay away from her. To cut off even the most casual contact between them. He had to break any link between them before she got seriously hurt. For he and his dangerous, fake life would do just that if he let her into it.

  He parked in front of his restored French Quarter condo, pulled out his cell phone and placed a call. In rapid Russian, he said, “Hey, Peter. It’s me. There was some trouble last night.” Peter Menchekov was his boss nowadays, ever since the mobster who’d controlled Max initially had been killed in a government raid a few months back.

  At least he no longer worked for the more violent psychopaths who populated the lower rungs of this crime syndicate. He’d finally moved up the ranks to quiet, thoughtful men who wore expensive suits and weren’t prone to fits of temper. But he sensed that he was still far from the top of this sprawling organization. There was someone hiding at the apex of the pyramid. The ultimate predator and mastermind of the whole organization. Until he learned that person’s identity, his work was not done.

  “What kind of trouble was there, Masha?”

  He winced at his childhood nickname. It was the common Slavic shortening of his full name, Maximillian. “The girl, the one whose store you wanted me to watch, is not the person we thought she was. The store’s owner died a month ago, and this girl is the new owner. She just came to town. She knows nothing.”

  “The order I got was to watch the store. Not to watch the store’s owner,” Peter correctly observed. “Continue the surveillance.”

  “There’s a small problem with that. The store’s owner met me last night. It was an accident. A guy mugged her, and I had to stop him from killing her.”

  A pause while his boss considered that. “All the better. Infiltrate her store. Find out everything she knows about what goes on in the store and whether she plans to continue running it the same way as her aunt did in the past.”

  An interesting word choice, that. Infiltration, huh? That smacked of military training. Or espionage school. Who was Peter, really? Max made a mental note and added it to his growing list of suspicions that this was no simple Russian crime gang.

  Why was the crime syndicate so interested in this silly little shop, anyway? What was so special about it?

  He’d figured his boss would want him to stay in direct contact with the store owner, now that he’d met her. Which was why he’d put off making this call. The last thing he wanted to do was play Lissa Clearmont. She struck him as a kind and decent soul, innocent and deserving of an honest man. Not a con-man schmuck like him messing with her for his own nefarious ends.

  “Understood,” he replied shortly. He couldn’t bring himself to say any more politely, and he dared not say any more impolitely.

  “Good hunting,” Peter said briskly, ending the call.

  Max jammed the phone in his pocket. Good hunting, indeed. He’d be hunting a babe in the woods. This was going to be a massacre of that poor girl’s heart.

  CHAPTER 3

  People had a tendency to underestimate her, and Lissa used it to her advantage from time to time. Like the older man in a suit who walked into her store that afternoon, asking after an obscure African fertility statue, almost as though he didn’t expect her to have any idea what he was talking about.

  She’d seen it in the showcases somewhere, but couldn’t remember exactly where off the top of her head. Aunt Cal’s ghost was usually around and happy to point out where to find some trinket or another. Not that Lissa particularly wanted any ghost’s assistance, no matter how helpful it might be. Sure enough, a light hand nudged her down the second aisle and to the right.

  She left the man happily examining the foot-high statue, which she personally considered one of the ugliest items in the entire shop, and returned to the cash register. She was a little disappointed when he didn’t buy it but was encouraged when he said he would send his grandson in to look at it the following day to see if it was the one the younger man had been looking for. She could use the sale.

  Finishing the renovation that Callista had started upstairs was costing a great deal more than she’d anticipated, and she hadn’t even started hiring the various contractors she now knew she would need to finish the job and pass the city building inspection. Yet again, her tendency to leap before she looked had bitten her in the tush.

  Business was slow today, likely on account of the football play-offs, and she closed up early. Mr. Jackson shared a TV dinner with her as she settled in to watch an old black-and-white film noir.

  Which turned out to be a bad choice. When she had herself properly scared and deliciously tingling, the spirits tended to come to her, whether she wanted them to or not. They were different here in the South, whispering of different pasts and different secrets than the ghosts in her art studio in Vermont had. Not that she wanted to hear any of them.

  Desperate to do anything to stave off the insistent murmurs in her mind, she gave in to an urge to read tarot cards. She didn’t consider herself particularly skilled with these sorts of readings, but shuffling and laying out the cards gave her restless hands something to do. She cleared the folding table she currently used for eating,
painting and balancing business ledgers. The cards all but leaped out of her fingers into a traditional spread. They spoke of four men in her immediate future. A lover. A trickster. A villain. And a hero. But the cards stubbornly refused to tell her which one would win out in the end.

  And that was why she didn’t like using cards. She couldn’t bully them into answering her the way she could stubborn spirits. She tried again, doing individual card turns. She turned over the Prince of Cups from the top of the deck. Then she pulled the Prince of Wands out of the middle of the deck. Then the Prince of Pentacles. She chose a fourth card with great reluctance.

  No surprise. The Prince of Swords. What on earth? She would end up with all four men? That didn’t sound like her. She would be thrilled to land one man, let alone four. Although she supposed she could do without a trickster or a villain in her life. She’d already had enough of the influence of those affecting her, compliments of her birth father, whoever he might be.

  Her mother never had remembered anything about the night she was drugged at a party and raped, resulting in Lissa’s birth. Or maybe her mother hadn’t wanted to remember. Not that Lissa blamed her. And not that she actually wanted to know who her birth father was.

  Some people argued that Lissa’s gift was a result of the great trauma in her genetic past, and others said it was a curse visited on her. No matter its source, she would be glad to be rid of it.

  Sometimes, when she’d been little, she’d been able to conjure a shadowy image of a man’s face when she thought of her birth father, but she’d never been able to see more than that. The fates had long made it clear that further knowledge of the man was not for her.

  As she stared down at the four tarot cards on the table, another man’s face swam into view in her mind—this time as sharp and clear as her father’s had been indistinct. He had short blond hair, light green-gold eyes that were reluctant to smile and a world of hurts accumulated on his handsome brow. She would love to know what had added such weight to Max Smith’s spirit at such a young age. He couldn’t be much more than thirty years old. Either that, or the man had the moisturizing regimen of a god.