Joy burst inside her. When she looked into his eyes it threatened to blossom and she had to beat it back. “You’re asking me on a date?”
“Technically, I’m asking you again. You’re the one who insisted on calling this a work meeting, but this time I’m betting you’re willing to take the risk of being seen with me if it keeps you from crawling all over me.”
“I didn’t crawl . . .” She stopped when he pointed to the fingernail marks on his arm. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”
He broke into a full hottie smile. The kind that said he knew he wasn’t going to have to work that hard to close the deal. “Not to me.”
“So, you figured out my ‘not a good idea to be seen with you’ concern?”
“I know your dad would blow. I’m not an idiot. You might want to remember that for the future.”
“It’s not what you think.” She followed Declan into the family room, looking around for her blazer. As she walked past the bedroom hall, her gaze went to the paper on the floor. Now she knew why she had slipped earlier. A newspaper article. She knew which one without reading the headline. It was about Charlie’s arrest, one of them. The same article she had in her hand when Declan found her walking his property.
She kept moving so the newspaper wouldn’t be seen behind her. Having Declan discover it now would be devastating. And she had to make her point before the moment slipped away. “I really was trying to protect my dad, not hide you. You’re not the only one trying to navigate family bullshit.”
“If he’s there, we’ll leave.” Without any fanfare, Declan held up the sweater hanging over the back of the family room chair.
She slid her arms in, hesitating for just a second to lean back against his solid body. She would have sworn she felt him sniff her hair.
She lifted her hair out of her collar and turned to face Declan again. “Actually, if he’s there, I’ll do the talking.”
“You think you need to rescue me?”
As her gaze traveled over his broad shoulder, she knew the truth. “Everyone needs help now and then.”
“I can’t deny that.”
“But can you accept help from me?” She wondered if she could if the roles were reversed.
“I’m getting there.”
Chapter Eight
An hour later, Declan concentrated on the hamburger that just landed in front of him and ignored the thunder of whispers around them in the diner. He sat with Leah in a booth in the back, complete with a torn fake leather seat held together with packing tape.
No one yelled at him or threatened to spit in his food. He figured that was either Leah’s influence or proof the good people of Sweetwater hadn’t figured out who he was yet. Maybe paying with cash on his previous visits had bought him a few more days of anonymity. But he’d met people, so the word had to be spreading.
Since they spent most of the first fifteen minutes of dinner not talking, some folks who might not know them could get the impression they were married. Even now Leah ignored her turkey club and twirled the ketchup bottle around in a circle against the table top. Ten more seconds of that and his brain would blow.
With a dramatic sigh that could only mean trouble, she put the bottle back in the holder. Her shoulders rose and fell as if she were steeling herself for some sort of fight.
He’d been hoping they were done with that part of the evening. He’d already said too much, opened up more than was comfortable. But that damn kiss had him reeling. Hot mouth. Curvy ass. The way her body moved under his hands had him itching for an encore.
He grabbed the hamburger. It was either eat or carry her out of the diner over his shoulder. The second option, while the clear front-runner in his mind, guaranteed gossip. Once that started, everyone would know his identity and he hoped to keep that under wraps a little longer.
She fell back against the seat, her sandwich forgotten. “We can find a number.”
If he didn’t put a stop to this, she’d start asking around for a calculator. “Leah?”
“What?”
“No.”
“Huh?” She actually frowned at him like she had no idea where they were or what they were supposed to be doing.
Looked like he was going to steer this ship or he wouldn’t get dinner until midnight. “We’re going to sit here like normal people and have dinner. No real estate talk. No career talk. Nothing job or negotiations related.”
She shoved her plate away and leaned on the table on her elbows. “This is a business meeting.”
“That stopped when we kissed.”
“I’m not sure we agreed on that.”
“How many other guys have you kissed like that during town council meetings?” When her face blushed bright red he figured he’d finally hit upon an interesting conversation topic.
The first few minutes of her response consisted of stuttering and clanking silverware. Finally, she said something that sounded like a sentence. “That’s not the point.”
“It’s exactly the point. Kissing is personal.” Declan nodded to the older gentleman who shot him a smile as he got up from the booth behind Leah. Seemed some of the incredibly honest people of Sweetwater had an eavesdropping problem. Not that the issue was limited to small towns. She looked around before crouching closer to the table. “Maybe you could keep your voice down.”
He waved his finger back and forth between them. “This is date.”
“I never agreed to that.”
“You actually did.” He snagged the waitress’ attention and pointed to his water glass. With a wink she was off to grab a pitcher.
“Declan, I think we should—”
Leah refused to get it, so he pushed the issue. The best way to do that was to put her focus back on her sandwich. He slid her plate closer until she had to sit up or risk having him dump her food in her lap. “Eat.”
“But I—”
He ripped a napkin out of the holder and set it on the table right near her hand. “Pick a safe and non-financial topic.”
“Like what?”
“What do you usually talk about on dates?” He got a blank stare in return for that question. “You do date, right?”
She was hot and young and . . . definitely hot. Beck was right. The combination of light red hair and sexy gray eyes, along with the smoking body and husky voice that licked at a man’s dick, was the stuff of fantasies. She knocked Declan on his ass. He looked at her and wanted to know if that smooth creamy skin covered every inch of her body.
“Of course I do. Sometimes.” She stared at her plate as she gave her answer.
He had no idea what that meant but one answer was sure to take his temper into the firing zone, so he cut right to it. “Anyone right now?”
She looked up, frowned, then frowned again. “You, apparently.”
That tension building in his gut disappeared. “Right answer.”
Whatever else she was—difficult, bossy, single-minded—she wasn’t a liar. She didn’t try to fight her attraction to him. Ignore it? Oh, hell yeah. She beat the attraction off with a stick. And she wasn’t alone in that, but he sure was struggling to keep up the fight.
“Tell me what you do for a living.” He figured that was fairly safe.
“Head of Business Affairs.”
“You said that before and I don’t understand what it means any better now.”
“I work for the mayor and town council. My job is to market and promote Sweetwater.” She picked up the top piece of toast on her sandwich but didn’t eat. Next came the pushing around of the french fries.
“To whom exactly?” he asked, mostly to get her to stop playing with her food.
“Tourists. Businesses. Small conferences. With Sweetwater’s proximity to the coast and open space, it has huge potential.” She wiped her hands on the
napkin. “If we can capitalize on that, we can pump money into the town and build an impressive service economy.”
The more she talked, the more his head spun. This all sounded so familiar. “That’s what—”
“Charlie promised all those years ago?” She nodded as a small smile played on the corner of her mouth. “Yes, I get the irony.”
It was Charlie’s first con, or the one that took him from petty thief to full-fledged grifter. He sold the town a line of bullshit then ran with the money he collected, leaving Declan’s mom and Grandmother Nanette behind to handle the fallout. The women blamed each other and neither believed back then that Charlie could really do all the horrible things claimed. Rather than lean on each other, they ran to opposite corners. His mom’s burden included three young fatherless boys with no income to feed them. Grandmother Nanette had an ailing husband and the pain of having her baby boy ruin the town.
And Leah’s work assignment consisted of trying to run a legitimate version of Charlie’s old plan. That was just about the worst fucking news Declan had heard today. Helping her forget the past would be pretty tough since she picked a career that had her wading into it every single day.
He exhaled. “So much for a small talk. We should stick to kissing.”
“You took business talk off the table. I’m taking kissing away.”
He didn’t agree to that at all. “But as a conversation topic only, right? The actual ‘act of’ is still fair game.”
She motioned her chin toward his plate. “Eat your food before it gets cold.”
He’d almost gotten the hamburger the whole way to his mouth this time when a shadow fell across the edge of the table. “Are you Declan Hanover?”
The woman looked to be somewhere in her late forties, pretty and blond in a hangs-out-at-the-park-and-not-a-strip-club way. She wore a long skirt and an oversized sweater, and if the way she was nibbling on her thumb were any indication, she wasn’t exactly happy to be talking with him.
He didn’t expect to be taken down by a woman who could pass as Earth Mother, but it looked like that was about to happen. Goodbye anonymity. Hello blame.
This is going to be bad. He lowered his hands and shoved his plate along with the forgotten food to the side. “Do we know each other?”
“No.”
Declan glanced at Leah but she just shrugged. Since she’d waved to and greeted almost every person in the diner when they came in, the idea of her not knowing someone made him even more twitchy. A nerve at the back of his neck thumped as he debated whether to stand up as he handled the newest round of accusations.
“Is Callen in town?” the woman asked.
Not what Declan expected. “Why?”
The woman leaned against the edge of Leah’s side of the booth. “I need to talk with him. He’s been ignoring my calls.”
“Not to be rude, but maybe that’s on purpose?”
Leah frowned at Declan then held out a hand to their table visitor. “I’m Leah Baron. I didn’t catch your name.”
He vowed to thank her for that assist later. Right now he was too busy pretending the number of stares around the room hadn’t tripled and that he wasn’t dreading whatever this woman said about Cal.
“I’m Kristin Accord.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. From the way Leah wrinkled her brow he figured she was at a loss, too.
Best just to jump in and get it over with. “How do you know my brother?”
“Through family.”
The conversation got weirder and weirder. “Since his family is my family, do you mind being more specific?”
“This is something I need to speak with him about first.”
Confusion quickly gave way to frustration. If she wanted to be cryptic, she was succeeding. The woman could win an Olympic medal in evasion. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Before Declan burst out of his skin trying to control his anger, Leah reached her hand out and covered his. Her thumb traced over his knuckles as her voice stayed warm and welcoming. “Are you staying in town, Ms. Accord?”
When he started to talk, Leah’s fingernails dug into the back of his hand. As far as messages go, this one was delivered and received.
Kristin kept glancing around the open dining room. “At the Severn Motel.”
Declan recognized the name. It was the historic place in the center of town. It spanned the short block and stretched around the corner with a huge wraparound porch downstairs and matching balcony above. The building sat next to the firehouse and Declan hadn’t seen anything but a vacancy sign out front since he arrived in town.
Kristin opened her hand and something was in there. She slid the small piece of paper across the table. “Please have your brother call me.”
“How long are you here?” Leah asked.
“As long as it takes.” Kristin nodded to both of them. “It was nice to finally meet you, Declan.”
She took off. Skirt or not, she almost sprinted across the room. The bell clanged against the door as she scurried out to the sidewalk. Staring over Leah’s head, Declan watched as Kristin turned left and disappeared down the dark street. Interesting choice since the motel was in the opposite direction.
Leah turned and stared out the window for a few beats before facing Declan again. “What was that about?”
He turned her hand over, threading his fingers through hers and enjoying the simple touch far too much. “I have no idea. I assumed she was one of Charlie’s victims ready to spring on me, but she didn’t fit into any of the usual victim categories.”
“Categories?”
“Women he was married to, engaged to or pretended to be one or the other. Businesspeople he bilked. Town managers he convinced he was a financial guru as he stole the bank account balances. Older people he screwed out of their saved income. Anyone missing expensive jewelry.”
“That’s quite a list.”
Declan had given the broad strokes only. The desperation came in the details. The real-life stories behind all of those references, the trail of pain and destruction, proved just how heartless Charlie had been.
Declan brushed his thumb over her palm. “There are subcategories, but you get the idea. His wives probably have more details, but you get the hint.”
She tightened her grip on his hand. “How many times do you think he was married?”
“Think?” The phrasing struck him as odd but he let it go. “Four, including my mom.”
“Four?”
This time he grabbed onto the faraway sound in Leah’s voice. “Do you think it’s another number?”
The waitress popped up at the end of the table. After a quick look at their joined hands, she refilled his water glass. “You two need anything else?”
That fast, Leah let go. She pushed both plates to the edge of the table. “To-go boxes.”
The waitress nodded then was off and running, dropping a bill at a nearby table and calling out a welcome to the older couple walking in the door.
“The date’s over?” Declan asked.
“Hand-holding and kissing? I think we need to put a stop to this now.”
“See now, I had the exact opposite idea in mind.”
“We need air and time to think this through, whatever ‘this’ is, and I assume you need to go find your brother and tell him what just happened.” Leah picked her purse up off the seat and dumped it on her lap, holding it in a death grip. “How often do things like this happen to you?”
He got it. No more public hand-holding. Damn, she was prickly. “Like what?”
Before she could whip out a wallet, he grabbed for his. If she paid, she’d probably insist this was an extension of their ridiculous business meeting instead of an actual date. For some reason it was really important to him that she recog
nize the date part.
“Women walking up to you. Scaring you.”
Leah insisted on seeing him as some sort of simpleton. Since joining the Army at nineteen, transforming his body with a thirty-pound muscle gain within the first year, no one had viewed him as an underachiever or guy who needed a hand. Except her. “I don’t scare easily.”
“Declan, I’m serious.”
“When this sort of thing happens from the time you’re five, you get used to it.” That was a bold-ass lie. Just because something shitty happened all the time didn’t make it any less shitty. “And, for the record, I’m still not a victim.”
“I got the point the first time.”
He slid out of the booth as he dropped cash on the table. “Let’s go.”
Leah could barely concentrate as they walked the gossip gauntlet to the door. The weight of his hand on her lower back and touch of his shoulder against her arm were not the problem. Kristin Accord was.
Hearing the name started Leah’s blood pumping. A tickle of a memory. The name meant something but the pieces wouldn’t come together. Leah would go home and check and recheck, and make a few mental leaps to get there, but she would figure it out eventually. One thing she did know was that the Accord woman showing up now was probably bad news for the Hanover brothers.
They made it to the door before she noticed the sudden silence and felt Declan’s hand tense against her. He grumbled something she couldn’t make out as he reached around and pushed the door open for them. A second later Leah stared into a face she knew very well. She’d seen it across the breakfast table for years and in the resemblance around her mouth every morning when she looked in the mirror.
All hell broke loose. Not the screaming angry kind. The blistering, right on the verge of violence kind.
Leah tried to calculate the chances of running into her dad and the police chief at the diner then realized the odds were probably pretty good in a town the size of Sweetwater. She’d hoped the later-than-usual dinner hour would give her cover. But running into her dad while Declan’s hand still lingered on her back was just one of those timing-sucks kind of things.
No Turning Back Page 9