The Girl's Guide to (Man)Hunting

by Jessica Clare

  Colt glanced over. “Why didn’t you say something? ’Bout you and Miranda?”

  His jaw tensed. Dane stared out the window, his mood black. “I was going to tell Grant first. Get the bad shit over with. Then I was going to let you know.”

  There was a long moment of silence in the cab. Then Colt spoke again. “You know I don’t care who you’re fucking around with as long you keep it on the DL.”

  Unusually chatty for Colt. Dane knew his friend was pissed that he hadn’t been looped in. When he got mad, he got talky. “Yeah, and as soon as Grant finds out I’ve been sleeping with a client, he’ll blow his lid.”

  “He’s concerned about the business, that’s all. You planning on fucking all our clients?”

  Dane scowled at his friend.

  “Exactly my point. So this ain’t a big deal. Just tell the man and be done with it.”

  He should have. Of course, now Miranda was gone, and it was too late.

  Bluebonnet boasted exactly one place that served alcohol. It was a Tex-Mex restaurant in a converted house, but it had a bar, and that was good enough for most of the residents of Bluebonnet. After hours, the men in town showed up to drink a few beers, watch sports on the TV on the wall, or rack up a few balls in the town’s only pool table.

  Dane walked up to the bar, ordered a longneck. He chatted with the bartender for a few minutes. The man—who’d likely been tending the same bar since Dane was last in town nine years ago—was all too eager to hear stories of Dane’s time in the NHL. He told a few stories, had the men at the bar smiling, and then eased into other topics.

  “Seems like everyone still lives here in town.”

  “Yup. Seems like.”

  “Chad Mickleson still live around here?”

  “Yup.”

  Dane nodded, took a sip of his beer, tried to act casual. He had a guess as to who had taken those pictures, and he wanted to talk to the guy. “You know how I can get ahold of him?”

  “Sure do.” He gave vague directions to a nearby car garage and Dane made a mental note to visit there in the morning.

  “What about Miranda Hill?” He asked casually, almost afraid of what he’d hear. “You know anything about her?”

  “Ol’ boobs? Yeah, She’s legendary around here,” the man said, grinning. “Turned into a hot little librarian. Why? You planning on tapping that?”

  “That’s my girlfriend,” he growled.

  The conversation ceased.

  “You know who took those pictures of her?”

  “Well,” the bartender said slowly. “Kinda thought you did.”

  Minutes passed like hours, and Dane tossed and turned in his bunk. His own house was a small cabin on the edge of the Daughtry Ranch, and he normally liked it just fine, but tonight it was too quiet. He missed Miranda, her warm breath tickling his chest as she slept, the soft curve of her body against his.

  How quickly he’d gotten used to having her in his life. How hollow he felt right now since she’d run away from him. He was filled with the same helpless rage he always felt when thinking about it.

  When the sun came up, he was in his jeep and heading to the garage, his mind full of grim determination and Miranda’s sad hopelessness. The directions the bartender had given him were dead on, and he pulled in.

  A mechanic came out to greet him, wiping his hands. “Need an oil change?”

  “I’m looking for Chad Mickleson,” Dane said. “He work here?”

  “Yup, he’s just inside,” the man said, then broke into a wide grin. “Hey, aren’t you—”

  Shit. “Yes.”

  “I’ll be damned,” the man said, following him in. “Hey, Len! You’ll never guess who just drove up! The local legend himself.”

  Dane ignored him, striding into the garage, looking for a face he only vaguely remembered. Sandy brown hair and big eyebrows—that was all he remembered of the guy.

  One of the mechanics turned around and boom, there he was. Dane’s hands instantly clenched to fists—if he’d have had his hockey gloves on, he’d have dropped them.

  The other man’s eyes lit up. “Holy shit. Dane Croft. How are you, man?”

  Dane punched him square in the jaw. The man went down like a light and dropped to the floor of the garage. Someone yelled.

  “You and I have a lot of talking to do,” Dane said in a low, dangerous voice. “Now get up.”

  SEVENTEEN

  One Month Later

  M

  iranda stared at her Outlook calendar in dismay. She clicked on the meeting, then buzzed her secretary. “Shirley, could you come in please?” The woman—easily three decades older than Miranda—hefted in and gave her a patient smile. “What can I help you with?”

  Miranda pointed at her computer monitor. “Why do I have a three-hour conference call on Saturday?”

  “Oh, that.” Shirley picked a piece of lint from her black cardigan. “You have a meeting with the CFO of the fabrication division.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  Shirley blinked. “Your Friday and your Monday are booked solid.”

  They were? Miranda clicked on the calendar again and swore under her breath. Sure enough. They hadn’t even left her enough time to run to the restroom or catch lunch. She’d seen a few women wear their headsets into the bathroom stalls and had thought they were absentminded.

  Perhaps they’d simply had too many meetings.

  “Thanks, Shirley,” Miranda said, feeling a little bit sour. Life at HGI was definitely…fast-paced. They loved projects, and collaborations, and meetings. They loved meetings. She’d half joked with someone that they needed meetings just to determine if they needed meetings or not, but no one had laughed. Probably too close to the truth.

  She stared out the window of her tiny corner office and down the busy streets of downtown Houston. It was just a big change, she told herself for the hundredth time. Once she settled in, she’d start to like her job. Maybe she’d even appreciate the constant stream of meetings.

  Eventually.

  With a sigh, she turned and swiveled in her ergonomic chair. A meeting invite flashed onto her screen and she ignored it, feeling the sudden urge to rebel. Loosening one of the buttons of her severe black-jacketed pantsuit, she stared at the only picture on her desk—of her and Beth Ann holding up beers while boating at the lake. She picked up the picture and stared at it for a good long minute. The setting sun on the water made her think of that week in the woods. And that week in the woods reminded her of Dane, and camping, and that last night at her campsite, where it had been just the two of them in her tiny lean-to. That evening had been so perfect; they’d had sex, laughed, cuddled, and they hadn’t worried about others discovering them. It had been just the two of them in a small slice of paradise. She’d felt so at home, like she’d waited nine years for a missing part of her to come back.

  Which was stupid, really. But a sudden pang of homesickness shot through her and she picked up the phone and began to dial.

  “California Dreamin’,” a cheerful voice answered. “This is Beth Ann.”

  “Hey,” Miranda said softly. “It’s me.”

  A pause, then a girlish squeal on the other end. “Oh my God! Miranda! Hang on, let me set Bessie Roberson under the dryer.” The phone clanged against something on the other end of the line and Miranda heard a soft murmur of conversation, and then the buzz of the dryer in the background. The phone picked up again and Beth Ann returned. “Dang, girl! I’ve missed you. How are you?”

  “I’m good.”

  “How’s the new job? Your mom and I have been wondering how it’s going over there.”

  “It’s good,” she said, then sighed. “Just really different.”

  “Uh-oh,” Beth Ann said in a teasing voice. “Different as in good, or different as in ‘Oh mercy, what have I gotten myself into?’”

  “It’s hard to say,” Miranda confessed. “It’s everything I thought it would be—corner office, amazing benefits, and everyone here is so dr
iven…”

  “But?”

  “But they’re driving me crazy,” Miranda confessed. “I have four more meetings today. Seven tomorrow and one on Saturday. Then I start over again on Monday. I’m starting to see PowerPoint slides when I close my eyes at night.”

  Beth Ann laughed.

  “I’d laugh, too, except it’s too pathetic,” Miranda said caustically. “It’s just…I don’t know. It’s not what I expected on that point. I thought I’d do more stuff myself. Instead, I’m just advising everyone else and making sure projects stay on task, and then turning around and reporting to the big guys.”

  “You miss your library?”

  “I do,” Miranda said softly, thinking of the slightly dusty smell, the silence-but-not-silence, the rows and rows of books. “I didn’t realize how much control over things I had there until I got this big fancy job…and now it feels like I have no control.” After a minute, she blurted, “And, well, it’s not the only thing I miss.”

  “You miss me, too, right?” Beth Ann said with a grin. “And your mom? We miss you like crazy, honey, but we’re proud of you.”

  “I miss you guys,” Miranda admitted. Then she added, “And—”

  “You miss Dane, don’tcha?”

  Miranda swallowed, the knot in her throat making it hard to speak. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

  Beth Ann chuckled. “Let me tell you a little story, Miranda Jane. Seems I had a couple of visitors that night you left town.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep. One big pissed-off ex-hockey player and his buddy showed up, demanding to know where you went. And when I told him you’d gone and skipped out of town, well…you could have knocked him over with a feather.”

  Miranda smiled at the visual.

  “He couldn’t imagine why you’d lied to him, so I tried explaining to him that he’d ruined your life, and you know what he told me?”

  Her throat ached, it was so tight. “What?”

  “The boy didn’t know what I was talking about,” she said. “I had to pull up the pictures to show him because he didn’t believe me. And when I did show him, he asked me who the guy was in the photos!”

  A cold chill shivered over Miranda. “What do you mean? How did he not know?”

  “I know! That’s what I said. When I told him that it was him, I thought he was going to fall over in shock. And then he got real mad, Miranda. Real mad. I’ve never seen a man get so angry. He didn’t put his fist in the wall or anything, but he looked like someone had just shot his dog or something.”

  Dane had been…angry? And confused? He’d seemed so confused at her anger the last time she’d seen him, too, when he’d been handcuffed to her bed and her heart had been breaking with every moment. She’d thought he’d been playing stupid to defuse her anger, but…what if he was telling the truth? It didn’t make sense…did it?

  “So you aren’t going to believe what happens next, right? Tommi Jo told me that he went to Maya Loco asking how he could find Chad Mickleson. And when someone brought up your name and the boobs thing, he shut them down, real polite-like, and told them you were his girlfriend and not to be talking about you.”

  Her heart gave a funny tingle. “He…did?”

  “Oh, it gets better, girl,” Beth Ann said, pleasure in her voice. “So…the next morning, he shows up at the garage where Chad’s working, walks up to the man, and punches him flat.”

  She gasped. “What?”

  “It’s true! Said they needed to have some kind of talk. I don’t know what about, but I hear from Tommi Jo that Dane was plenty, plenty mad at Chad and had to be talked down a few times.”

  “Did someone call the cops?”

  “Not from what I heard. Tommi Jo said that the guys talked for a long time, and then Dane came out and signed some autographs and gave some of the guys invites to a free class or two, and that was that.”

  So strange. “I don’t understand.”

  “Me either,” Beth Ann said sweetly. “But I do know your pictures aren’t on the Internet anymore. I checked. It’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Unbelievable. She grabbed her smart phone and punched in the URL. Sure enough, it didn’t come up. Was it possible? Hope and joy surged in her chest. Dane had realized it was hurting her and had taken the pictures down? “They’re not there anymore?”

  “Nope. Tommi Jo thinks Dane was defending your reputation. She said your name came up a few times, though she couldn’t hear everything that was said.”

  Damn Tommi Jo. Why hadn’t she gotten more than just pieces of the conversation? Her curiosity burned in her chest. “I wonder what they were saying.”

  “Don’t know. But I know what I do know. Someone mentioned that you had a big collection of teen books at your library that you’d bought out of your own pocket, because the city wouldn’t give you the money for that vampire stuff, right? Well, Dane overheard that at your mom’s store, and I heard he went down to the library the next day and donated ten thousand dollars of his own money. Isn’t that something?”

  It was dizzying. Why had he done that? Why was he so generous on a pet project of hers at an old job that she wouldn’t be returning to? She thought of all the books that would buy. The teens in town would flock to the library for more than just the Internet. Oh, she’d love that. The big-city libraries carried so many books that she couldn’t possibly compete, but with that…she could start a reading club, just for teens, maybe get a manga section…

  “Wait,” she said, something registering in her brain. “Did you say he heard that at my mom’s store?” She cringed at the thought. “Mom hates Dane. Even the mention of his name will send her into hysterics.”

  “You should ask your mom about that,” Beth Ann said slyly. “I hear Dane’s been at her store almost every day lately.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes about inane things, and then promised to check in with each other again very soon. As soon as Miranda hung up the phone, Shirley was on the line, buzzing in.

  “Miranda? They’re waiting for you in the Indigo Conference Room.”

  “Be right there,” Miranda said. Then she added, “And I need you to clear my Saturday. I’m going out of town.”

  “Out of town?” Shirley repeated disapprovingly. “But the meeting with—”

  “Can wait,” she said firmly. “I’m going back to Bluebonnet for some unfinished business.”

  When she drove into town, nothing looked different. She’d been away for a whole month and it was like she’d never left. Well, one thing had changed—there was a big banner on the gazebo in the town square for the upcoming Hill Country Spring Festival, but they trotted that thing out every year.

  So why was it that when she looked at the too-small, overly intrusive, Podunk town she grew up in, it no longer filled her with helpless anger? Why did it fill her with nostalgia instead?

  Surely she didn’t miss Bluebonnet, of all places.

  She drove down Main Street—her mom’s shop had several cars in front of it, which meant she was busy. Miranda opted to head to her library instead, see how things were going.

  Because Bluebonnet was a small town, the library was sandwiched into City Hall, squished between the Water Department and the police station. When she walked in, the smell of the place made her heart flutter with longing. The faint scent of dust and old paper made her senses tingle, and a possessive surge came over her. This was her library. She’d missed it. She moved to the new releases section and ran a hand over the spines, looking for new books purchased with Dane’s donation. Nothing—they were all books she’d purchased. She glanced over at the checkout counter—it was stacked high with books waiting to be returned to the shelves. Perhaps old Mrs. Murellen, her replacement, was running a bit behind. Well, she had a little time to kill. Miranda picked up a few books and began to shelve them. As she did, she noticed that when she put them on the shelves, even more books seemed out of place, and she continued to put books in their proper homes, frowning as she
did. She’d never let her library get so sloppy when it had been hers.

  You didn’t want it, though, did you? she reminded herself. You wanted to be a corporate big shot, and now you are.

  Right. She shelved the last book and resisted the urge to dust and straighten. That was someone else’s job now. She turned the corner and nearly ran into a student.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Miranda said with a smile, recognizing Trisha Ellis. “I didn’t see you there.”

  The girl’s face widened into a smile, and for a moment, Miranda thought she was going to hug her. “Ms. Hill—I am so glad to see you. I can’t find the teen books!”

  Inwardly, Miranda groaned. Not again. “Did you check in our normal hiding place under the nine hundreds?”

  “They’re not there, and the fake slipcovers you made are gone,” she said, her expression crushed. “I think they took them off the shelves again.”

  It had been an ongoing battle with the city council, who thought the books that teenagers were reading were trash. They didn’t seem to understand how wonderful it was that they were reading at all, so Miranda had purchased her own small library of popular teen novels and shelved them with fake jackets that a few of the students had helped her create. They were the most popular section in the library.

  “I’ll check with Mrs. Murellen,” Miranda said, heading toward the counter. Trisha trotted on her heels close behind.

  There was no one at the counter, books stacked everywhere, the return bin overflowing. Trisha immediately started to pick through the return bin, looking for missed favorites. Miranda slipped behind the counter and went to the back office, knocking softly. No response. She opened the door.

  Mrs. Murellen sat behind her desk, chin propped on a hand, snoring.

  “Mrs. Murellen,” Miranda said, her voice sharp. “Wake up.”

  The older woman snorted awake, and peered at Miranda. “Oh my goodness. Did you come back for your job?”

  “No—”

  Mrs. Murellen looked sad. “Oh.”

  “Someone here is looking for the teen reading books. Where did you move them to?”