Undercover Fiance

by Sheryl Lynn

  “You are blaming me!” She slapped her hands atop his desk. “Go ahead, admit it. You think this is my fault. I know you’re thinking it, so go ahead and say it.”

  His nostrils flared. Hot color rose on his throat. Anger billowed around him like a thundercloud. Good, she thought with dark satisfaction.

  “You must admit,” he said quietly. “You do have a history of mistreating men. Look at what you did to Eric.”

  Her mouth snapped shut. If he’d jammed a twelve-inch butcher knife into her chest she couldn’t hurt any worse.

  All of her accomplishments meant nothing. All her successes may as well have never happened. She’d divorced precious, perfect, pathetic Eric, and that, as far as he was concerned, made her forever a failure.

  Hatred rose with such heat and fury it left her shaking. She loved her father desperately. She lived for his approval. She yearned for his respect. She compared all other men to him and judged them by his standards of honor, integrity, strength and loyalty. At this moment, facing his disdain, knowing she’d never be good enough for him, she hated him.

  She stormed out of the office and slammed the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Daniel rarely lost his temper. He had better things to do than stomp around while anger burned holes in his gut. In this instance, however, he wanted to take the colonel outside for the Daniel Tucker version of slap and tickle.

  Struggling for control, he reminded himself that some genuinely nice people, through ignorance, said extremely stupid things. Why did you lead him on? He was only being nice. You shouldn’t have hurt his feelings. He’s sending nice presents and sweet letters, you should be flattered. Why did you make him so angry? He must be sick to act that way, you didn’t have to be mean. Even cops, judges and probation officers who witnessed firsthand the damage stalkers wreaked on innocent lives could be appallingly insensitive.

  “She is not to blame, sir.”

  “This is not your concern. You are dismissed.”

  The colonel must have put the fear of God in every soldier who ever stood before him. But Daniel had faced down enraged men armed with guns or knives. He’d been questioned by attorneys who used such slimy tactics in court that he’d felt sick for days after testifying. He’d even faced down self-righteous fathers.

  “Only Pinky knows why he selected Janine as a target. He knows why he’s compelled to control her. He knows how he lied and fooled her into hiring him. Only he. To think otherwise victimizes Janine as much as Pinky does.”

  The colonel’s gnarled hands clenched into meaty fists atop the desk. He sucked air like a racehorse.

  “I know how stalkers operate,” Daniel continued. “It’s a game to them. They feel a right to harass. They manipulate and lie. They strip away a victim’s privacy and sense of safety. Because they want something, they give themselves a license to destroy an innocent life.” He leaned both hands on the desk.

  “As if having a nut terrorizing them isn’t enough, victims have to put up with crap from friends and family. They suffer at the hands of a justice system more concerned with the rights of criminals than with the suffering of victims.”

  “Point taken,” the colonel said through gritted teeth.

  “Nobody asks to be stalked. Nobody wants it Nobody who hasn’t been stalked can understand the kind of hell your daughter is going through right now. She needs your support, sir.”

  “You’re a brash young man.”

  “I’ve been called that and worse.”

  The colonel drew in a lungful of air and forcibly relaxed his hands. His eyes softened, slightly, and so did his mouth. “I get the distinct impression you care about my daughter.”

  At the moment he didn’t feel so good about that caring. He wasn’t used to being rebuffed and found it astonishing when she told him no. His persistent pursuit of her seemed suddenly, uncomfortably close to stalking behavior.

  “Yes, sir, I do care about her very much.” She had a right to say no. He had an obligation to accept no.

  “I do not approve of the way she’s handling this matter.”

  “Considering the circumstances, she’s doing a good job.”

  Elise Duke burst into the room. Daniel spun about, reflexively grabbing his pistol and placing himself between the door and the colonel. At recognizing Elise, he relaxed, but his heart pounded. Didn’t any of these people know how to knock?

  “What in the world is going on? Chef is saying Nazis dragged Brian away, and Janine is gone.”

  “Where did she go?” Daniel pictured Janine alone in the surrounding forests, vulnerable to Pinky’s attack. Short hairs lifted on his neck. “What direction?”

  “I have no idea where she went. I tried to catch her, but she drove away. Will somebody please tell me what is going on?”

  “THANKS FOR MEETING ME on such short notice,” Janine said. “I really needed to talk to a friend.”

  Brow twisted, lips pursed, Elliot looked her up and down. “You look awful, darling. I’ve never seen you like this.”

  She wore a grubby sweatshirt and jeans. Her hair was a mess. She wore no makeup. His disapproval annoyed her, but she passed it off as his normal fussbudgeting. “That’s why I asked you to meet me here. I’m not dressed for anyplace nice.”

  His face skewed in an expression of open distaste as he looked around the diner. A hostess led them to a booth. Elliot brushed off the bright orange plastic bench seat. He unbuttoned his jacket and held his tie so it wouldn’t touch the table when he sat down. “Coffee,” he told the hostess. “We don’t need menus.”

  “I’d like a menu,” Janine said. “I’m starving.”

  “They use frozen food here. And I imagine the kitchen is none too clean.”

  Janine smiled apologetically at the hostess. She accepted a menu. She studied the brightly illustrated selections and sensed she’d made a mistake in asking him to meet her here. Elliot despised fast food and chain restaurants. He also despised being interrupted at work. They were not a spontaneous couple. He generally made dates a week or more in advance. She rarely called him at work. He disliked having his routines disrupted.

  She slipped a hand into the side pocket of her purse where her cellular phone rested silently. She should call home, or at the very least turn on the phone so her family could call her. She’d hoped the long drive into the city would give her time to calm down and think rationally. She’d hoped to defuse some of her stress. With every mile she’d traveled, misery and hurt deepened over the colonel’s unfairness. She didn’t care if she never returned home.

  The coffee arrived and Elliot declared it wretched. He didn’t like the little plastic containers of creamer. He mused aloud about whether children with sticky, germy fingers had played with the sugar packets. Janine ordered a cheeseburger, then, more to annoy Elliot than from desire, asked for a side of onion rings.

  “You don’t like onion rings.”

  What did he know? She loved greasy, gooey, to-hell-with-watching-her-weight food. She rarely indulged, but that didn’t mean she didn’t like it. She wished Daniel were here. He’d eat onion rings with her and relish the taste. He wouldn’t be prissily flicking minuscule crumbs off the tabletop, either.

  Elliot was usually a charming date, always impeccably dressed with impeccable manners to match. In appearance he reminded her of the actor William Hurt. Nice looking, but not particularly handsome. He was pleasant, a good conversationalist, and never pressured her. Compared to Daniel, he was an insufferable prig.

  She’d never seen him so irritable before. Daniel never got irritable. “Thank you for being here.”

  “You sounded so distraught, I canceled a very important meeting for you. What is the matter?” His expression said, This had better be worth it.

  Her chin began to tremble and her eyes burned with impending tears. She unrolled the paper napkin from the knife, fork and spoon and pressed it against her eyes. She breathed deeply until certain she wouldn’t cry. Elliot stared fixedly out the window.
Daniel would have offered comfort. She dabbed the napkin at her lips and wondered if they looked as well-kissed as they felt. Elliot’s kisses felt like the dry busses of a favorite uncle.

  “My whole life is the matter,” she said. “Oh, Elliot, everything has gone wrong. Everything!” Encouraged by his silence, she told him about Pinky and Daniel. She spoke haltingly, slowly, trying as much to make sense of what was happening to herself as to make Elliot understand. The cheeseburger and onion rings arrived. She dumped ketchup on her plate.

  “Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “Who is this Daniel Tucker again?”

  “He owns some martial arts studios here in town. A friend of my cousin’s. He’s also an expert on stopping stalkers.”

  “And you hired him to provoke Pinky?” Elliot polished a spoon with a napkin. “I find it difficult to believe that you don’t know who this Pinky fellow is.”

  “He won’t let me know who he is.”

  “You’ve been accepting his letters and gifts for over a year and you don’t know who he is?”

  His skepticism appalled her. She paused with a mouthful of cheeseburger. She chewed hastily and washed it down with water. “I haven’t accepted anything. He tried to murder me!”

  “You’re being rather melodramatic.”

  She wondered how melodramatic he’d feel if he’d been trapped inside a dark, smoky, flame-filled garage. She touched the remains of the scratch on her forehead. If it had been Elliot, rather than Daniel, in that garage, she’d be dead.

  “You lead men on, darling. Look at what you do to me.”

  “Pardon?” Appetite gone, she pushed the plate aside.

  “You run hot and cold, and send mixed signals. How am I supposed to act when you’re smiling one second then acting as if I’ve trod on your toes the next? Now be truthful. You’ve flirted with this man and now you’ve wearied of his attentions.” He smiled as if they shared a secret joke. “I doubt Pinky appreciates being twisted around your little finger any more than I do.”

  As hurtful as it was, she understood her father’s position. Since she’d never been able to tell her father exactly what had happened between her and Eric, he’d been left to think the worst. But she didn’t understand Elliot at all.

  “I have never led you on.”

  “From day one you’ve set the terms for our relationship. It’s always whatever you want, and how you want it. You never take my feelings into consideration. You’re more than happy to let me buy you dinner, but you give nothing in return.”

  “That is not true!”

  “And now I find out you’ve been carrying on some kind of fling. What am I supposed to think?”

  She grabbed her purse and pawed through it in search of her keys. “I can see this is a mistake.”

  “Are you living some sort of double life? You never visit my home. You won’t allow me to visit your home. What is it you’re hiding from me?”

  She snatched the bill off the table, grabbed her coat and purse and scooted out of the booth. “Goodbye, Elliot.”

  “I canceled a meeting for you.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll never do it again.”

  He rose, towering over her. She resented him using his height in an attempt to intimidate her. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “It means,” she replied quietly, “I thought you were my friend, but I now realize you are not. So, goodbye.” Head high, she crossed the restaurant and presented the bill to the girl behind the cash register. Ignoring Elliot, she paid the bill and walked outside. A headache pounded in her temples. She missed Daniel with a yearning so powerful she ached down to her toes. He never spoke hatefully to her. He never accused. He sympathized without pitying her.

  Elliot followed her to the Jeep. “We need to talk about this.”

  “I’ve known you for years, but now... I don’t know you at all.”

  “What do you expect from me? I find out you’re carrying on with some deranged boy who sets fires. Then you hire some martial arts fanatic to live at the resort, but you never even called me.”

  She blinked slowly. Hadn’t Elliot listened? Perhaps he’d been thinking about the meeting she’d forced him to miss and had heard only enough to feel jealous. She climbed behind the wheel. “Goodbye.”

  He caught the edge of the door. “I love you, Janine. There, I’ve declared myself. All I need from you is a promise that you will stop seeing other men.” He challenged her from behind his wire-rimmed eyeglasses.

  Uncertain whether to laugh or cry, she jerked the door out of his grasp and hit the door locks. She drove out of the parking lot.

  Love, she thought bitterly. Elliot hadn’t the faintest idea what love was. He was as deluded as Pinky.

  “HERE.” Kara handed Daniel a small cardboard box. “Put the colored bulbs in here. Leave the clear ones on the strings.”

  Daniel popped colored minilightbulbs off the strings of Christmas lights. Every few seconds he glanced at the open door and listened for the crisp clicking of Janine’s heels on the floor. Janine hadn’t called, so either she didn’t carry a telephone or it wasn’t turned on. Throughout the long day he’d surreptitiously checked on the locations of Jason, Lanny and Ellen to assure himself Pinky hadn’t followed Janine.

  No word yet on Brian. Criminals, he mused. Cops took homicides and attempted homicides very seriously. Suspects were always astonished by how much information a determined investigator could dig up.

  “She’ll be okay,” Kara said.

  “Huh?”

  “Janine. That’s why you keep looking at the door, right?” Kara had done a good job of cleaning up after Pinky’s temper tantrum, and now made progress in restoring some of the decorations.

  “I’ve never seen her so upset.”

  Kara idly opened and closed a pair of scissors. Glitter sparkled on her face and hands. “She doesn’t do stupid things. If that’s what you’re worried about.” She lowered her voice. “What did the colonel say to her? I know he said something. He’s the only person who can tick her off like that.”

  He concentrated on the lightbulbs. Kara had brought up nearly a hundred strings of minilights. All of them needed their colored bulbs replaced with clear bulbs. He didn’t want to gossip about the colonel and Janine. Still... “Who is Eric?”

  Kara nearly dropped the scissors. “Eric Collins?”

  “Your father mentioned Eric, and Janine went off.”

  “Oh.” She held up a pasted-together heart. “Eric is her ex-husband. The colonel only mentions him when he’s really mad. No wonder she left.”

  Hurt pinged his innards. She’d never told him she’d been married. “She was married? When?”

  “Long time ago. She never, ever talks about Eric. So whatever you do, don’t bring him up. She’s really touchy about it.”

  He had figured out that part already. “What happened?”

  Kara set the heart aside and busied herself with a sheet of gold poster board. “Only she knows. They started out perfect. Eric was a captain, a West Pointer.” She rolled her eyes. “Gorgeous. I was only a kid, but man! And the colonel thought Eric walked on water. He actually encouraged them to get together. If you know my dad at all, you know that doesn’t happen very often. He hates everybody we girls date.”

  “Was he one of your dad’s soldiers?”

  “An officer,” she corrected with a smile. “The colonel was a battalion commander, and Eric commanded one of his companies.” She sighed dreamily. “Their wedding was like a fairy tale, so romantic. All the men in dress blues. Guys with sabers. Megan and I were bridesmaids.

  “Then Eric got transferred to Germany. I thought they were the perfect couple. But then Eric had an accident.”

  “What kind?”

  “He was a Cavalry officer, on border patrol. His driver wasn’t very experienced. He rolled the Jeep down a mountain.” She touched the side of her face. “Eric’s face got smashed and he lost a leg. He almost died.”

  Daniel suppressed a r
eflexive shudder. He liked his body, his body liked him. Imagining mutilation and the loss of limbs gave him the willies.

  “They brought him back to the States.” She frowned. “I don’t know what happened exactly. We were living in Kentucky. Mom flew up to D.C. all the time to help Janine out. Eric was getting better. But one day Janine showed up and said she’d left him. They got divorced.”

  Daniel sifted the information through his brain. No matter how he looked at it, he kept coming to the same conclusion: Janine had deserted her invalid husband. Her mutilated, wounded - in - the - line - of - duty, no - longer - handsome-and - perfect husband.

  “I asked her what happened. Once. Never again. She won’t talk about him.” She hung her head, looking abashed. “I shouldn’t have told you. Don’t tell her I told you, okay?”

  He wished she hadn’t told him, too. He didn’t want to make the mistakes his parents made, and he didn’t want to hang around people who acted like his parents. His mother allowed no one other than herself to be the center of attention. Refusing to admit her age, she insisted Daniel call her Marie, never Mom. His father collected beautiful, flaky wives whose amorality and penchant for affairs matched his own. Deep within that old storage locker of childhood hurts he could still hear the shrieking, weeping, accusatory battles of adults who refused to grow up.

  Dumping an invalid husband was something his mother would do. In fact, she had dumped husband number three when he got cancer. She couldn’t handle the stress, she’d claimed.

  He finished a string of lights, coiled it neatly, then picked up the next. Janine dazzled him. Dazzled him enough, perhaps, for him to attribute qualities to her he only wished were there.

  He sensed a presence a second before Elise appeared in the doorway. She looked tired and deeply concerned. Forty years of marriage, Daniel thought. She was what he’d been imagining Janine would be like in forty years. Lovely and serene, proud of her children and still deeply in love with her husband.

  “Daniel? Janine is on the telephone. She wishes to speak to you.”