by Darcy Burke
Damn, where had that come from?
Her overactive, undersexed imagination that found him totally hot; wasn’t it obvious?
“I’m not sitting in my car with you.” She turned to go and realized she didn’t have her keys. She bent over and scanned the pavement. “I dropped my keys.”
“Let me help you find them.”
She cast him a dubious glance. “I don’t think I want any of your ‘help.’ ”
He joined her in searching anyway. “Hey, I already apologized. A lot. I’m really, really sorry.”
She widened her search area. “Do you stalk lots of women?”
“Nope, you’re my first. Usually it’s the other way around.”
She nearly laughed but reminded herself she couldn’t get cozy with this guy.
“I don’t see them,” he said.
“Me neither.”
“Maybe they’re in your purse?”
Maybe. She’d thought they were in her hand, but it was possible she’d dropped them into her purse, which was a bottomless pit. She could dump it out, but then he’d see what a mess it was—five million receipts, twelve pens, three tubes of lip balm, perhaps even Jimmy Hoffa.
She went to the light and opened her purse as wide as she could. “You keep looking on the ground,” she said as she rifled through the pockets of the abyss of her handbag. After a few minutes, she gave up. She couldn’t see, feel, or hear them anywhere. “They have to be on the ground somewhere.”
“Did you leave them upstairs?” he asked.
“No, I had them in my hand.” Her finger had already been poised on the unlock button on the fob.
He stopped his search, setting his hands low on his hips. “Are you sure?”
“You’re going to second-guess me after scaring me senseless? You really are a class-A jerk.” She pulled her phone from the front pocket of her purse and punched in her password.
“What are you doing?”
She glared at him. “Calling a cab. I’m tired. I want to go home. And thanks to you, I have no way to get there.”
“What about finding your keys? Maybe they fell into the bushes.” He gestured to the thick junipers next to the walkway.
“Unless you have a flashlight, don’t bother. I’ll get them in the morning when I can be sure I’m not sticking my hand into a hobo spider’s hideaway.” Although the idea of him putting his hand within reach of a nasty spider with a poisonous bite maybe wasn’t a bad idea . . .
He took a step toward her. “Let me drive you home.”
She glanced up at him before continuing her search for a cab company. “No.”
“It’s the least I can do. I’m trying to do the right thing here. You could at least acknowledge that.”
“No, thank you.”
He moved closer and peered at her phone. “You can’t take a cab. That’ll take forever, and you’ll spend at least seventy-five bucks. Please let me drive you home?”
As much as she wanted to refuse him, she recognized that waiting for a cab all the way out here would probably take an hour, and it would cost a fortune.
“Fine—since it’s your fault I’m even in this mess.”
“So it is.” He turned toward the parking lot and gestured toward a black SUV, one of only a handful of cars remaining at this hour. “Honda Pilot, over there at two o’clock.”
She stepped off the curb, and he walked beside her.
“Now that I have your attention, why don’t you help me figure out where Alex got his drugs?”
She glanced at him, the parking lot lights illuminating the rugged planes of his face in profile. “I already told you, several times, that I don’t know anything that would help you.”
“Who did he talk about besides the family? Any friends or people he saw?”
“That’s all confidential information.”
They’d arrived at his car, and he remotely unlocked the doors. “You mean to tell me that you really don’t care to bring the person who sold him these drugs to justice?”
“Of course I care.” The desire to help him, to do something positive, was overwhelming, but Amy’s words of caution sounded in her head.
Kyle opened her door for her, and she stared at him blankly for a moment. “Who opens car doors anymore?”
“My mother insisted that my brothers and I behave like gentlemen.”
She scowled at him. “I guess you forgot about that when you jumped out at me from the shadows.”
He rolled his eyes. “I already apologized. I should’ve realized from the other day that you’re oversensitive.”
Overemotional is what her mother would say, but that was beside the point—which was that he’d really scared her. Continuing to harass him about it covered up just how much. Ignoring his comment, she climbed into the car. He shut the door and circled around to the driver’s side.
He slid into the seat and started the engine, then turned to look at her. “Where to?”
His face was shadowed, but the light closest to the car filtered through the windshield and made his eyes glimmer like the ocean in Hawaii. She’d gone for a college graduation trip and now felt the heat of the sun—or maybe it was his presence. Despite the fact that he was Alex’s brother, probably hated her guts, and had just scared the daylights out of her, she found him incredibly attractive.
“Dr. Trent?”
“Call me Maggie.” Damn, why had she said that? Because she’d been distracted by his hotness. Pull yourself together, Maggie! “I live over on Adams. Do you know where that is?”
“Sure. I’ll just shoot up Third Street.”
He knew his way around Newberg, which wasn’t surprising. If you lived in one of the small towns dotting the northern valley, you could likely navigate them all.
He backed out of the spot and drove through the parking lot to the highway. “Is there anything from your sessions with Alex that you’d consider sharing? I don’t need to know what he said about me or the family.”
“Good, because I couldn’t tell you that.” Part of her wanted to let him know that Alex had admired him and looked up to him, even when everyone else had seemed to write him off. She looked at him askance and wondered how he dealt with his family. He didn’t seem depressed or maladjusted. Maybe their opinion didn’t matter to him. Families were a tricky business—something she knew better than most.
“You had no inkling he was going to kill himself?”
She’d been asked this question by a variety of people—colleagues, friends, her mother, his sister—but hearing it never got any easier. “No. He was depressed, and we constantly worked through it, but there was always an underlying sense of acceptance in him that I interpreted as hope.” Misinterpreted. She now believed the acceptance came from him deciding that his life was going to be short and that by choosing his own death, he would finally have some control. “I was wrong,” she said softly. “I should have known.”
Kyle didn’t say anything, and she didn’t blame him for his silence. No one could blame her more than she did.
“Have you looked through his phone or his laptop?” she asked, surrendering to the need to help. She shoved Amy’s warning to the recesses of her mind.
“That’s how I found you,” he said, turning left onto Third Street.
“Are there any names you don’t recognize?”
“Loads.” He cast her a quick glance. “Maybe you should look at them with me.”
She couldn’t. She shouldn’t. “I could maybe do that.” The words came out slow and uncertain.
“You don’t sound very convincing. Are you going to brush me off again?”
Like that had worked the first time. “Would you let me?”
He chuckled as he took a right onto Adams. “Where’s your house?”
“Next block. Second on the right.”
“Nice neighborhood,” he said.
The street was lined with early twentieth-century homes, most of which had been thoroughly remodeled within the last ten years.
&nb
sp; He drove through the intersection with Fourth Street and then slowed as he approached her driveway. The streetlight illuminated the two-story craftsman.
“That’s a big house for just you,” he said, throwing his SUV into park.
Was he trying to determine if she lived alone? “If you’re digging for information, you’re not helping to convince me that you aren’t a stalker.”
He gave her a bemused look. “I assumed you lived alone because you were going to call a cab instead of someone to come pick you up.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t actually a stalker. Of course he wasn’t. He was just a grieving man who was desperate for something that would make sense of his brother’s death. Someone she ought to stay far away from.
She opened the door. “Thanks for the ride.”
He got out and followed her to the walkway that led to her front door. “Your yard is really nice.” He gestured toward the riot of purple and pink petunias she’d put in the ground the day before.
She turned, waiting for him to leave before going to fetch her spare key from the magnetic container stuck to the back of the drain spout on the corner of the house. “I like to garden.”
“Looks like it.” He shoved his hand in his jeans pocket. “Listen, do you need a ride to work in the morning?”
She was a little surprised he was being so nice. Wasn’t he supposed to despise her? She would. “No, I’ll call a colleague. Or I’ll walk. It’s not that far, and it’ll be daylight.”
He nodded. “Let me know if you need help finding your keys in those bushes.”
“I’ll have security help me. I have a spare car key anyway.” Not that she didn’t plan on finding her keychain.
His eyes widened. “Shit! Do you have a key to get into your house? If not, I can probably help you break in.”
She couldn’t help the shot of derisive laughter that escaped her. “First you scare the hell out of me, then you make me lose my car keys, and now you want to vandalize the house I’m renting? You’re a piece of work.”
“Yeah, well I’m trying to be helpful.” There was an acidity to his tone that made her feel instantly contrite. Knowing what she knew about him, she regretted making him out to be a total clusterfuck. “At least I’m not the world’s shittiest therapist,” he said.
She couldn’t stop her sharp intake of breath, which was stupid. She was the world’s shittiest therapist. That didn’t mean she wanted to hear it from him. Maybe he wasn’t so nice after all. “If your opinion of me is so low, why do you keep asking for my help?”
“Because you knew my brother, and the way I see it, you owe me and my family.” He took a step toward her and leaned in close enough that she caught a whiff of his aftershave or cologne or whatever it was that smelled like spice and sandalwood. “And I mean to collect.”
He turned and headed back toward his car. When he got to the driver’s door, he looked at her. “I’ll call you about the names in the laptop. Pick an evening when I can take you out for a drink.”
No invitation, no polite query, just an expectation that she’d jump to do his bidding. Yeah, nice was not how she’d describe Kyle Archer. Nice-looking, for sure . . .
A minute passed, and he didn’t leave. She stood there and watched him, waiting for him to go so that she could get her key and go inside. And pour a giant glass of pinot.
She finally strode to the passenger side and rapped on the window.
He rolled it down and arched a brow at her. God, he was sexy. That really sucked.
“Aren’t you going to leave?” she asked.
“I was waiting until after you went inside.”
“Let me guess, another lesson in gentlemanliness from your mother?”
His mouth tried to smile, but he suppressed it. “You don’t have to sound so annoyed by it. Any other woman would be impressed.”
Her purse strap slipped down her arm. “Is that what you’re trying to do, impress me?” Was she flirting with him? Why in the hell was she flirting with him?
“Hell no.”
Stung, she swung her purse over her shoulder and backed away from the car. “There’s no way I’m getting my key out in front of you so that you can let yourself into my house and search it for clues that don’t exist.” Wow, paranoid much? Yes, ever since she’d come home after breaking up with Mark and found her entire bedroom covered in red rose petals. She hadn’t been able to move out of that apartment fast enough.
Kyle leaned over the console and glared at her. “I think I already established that I could break in if I wanted to, but I also thought I’d proven myself to be a gentleman. Since that’s gotten me absolutely nowhere, I give up trying to be nice.” He started the car. “Don’t forget to call me.”
She watched him back out of the driveway and take off down the quiet street. Exhaling the tension that had bottled up during their bickering, she retrieved her spare key and let herself into the house. She quickly locked the deadbolt, not because she was scared, but because it was an ingrained habit. No, Kyle Archer didn’t scare her. At least not the way that Mark had. The fear she felt about Kyle had nothing to do with her safety and everything to do with her emotional well-being. In any other circumstance, she could see herself liking him, maybe even wanting to date him.
She blew air through her teeth as she went into the kitchen and set her purse on the built-in desk. Pouring a glass of her favorite Oregon pinot noir, she took a fortifying sip and tried to think of how she could avoid seeing him again.
Unfortunately, she was certain he wouldn’t give up. And she was just as certain that she didn’t want him to.
Chapter Three
HOLED UP IN his office Friday morning, Kyle scrutinized the names in Alex’s laptop for the hundredth time. He knew a lot of them—family, friends, Ribbon Ridge business associates and acquaintances. He didn’t know others, however, and those taunted him from the screen. Maybe it was time he included the family in this quest.
Not Dad because he wanted to give Dad satisfaction, not frustration, which was all Kyle felt at this point. He didn’t want to involve Sara. She was too busy with the renovation project, Derek and Chloe’s wedding, and Dylan. Kyle had never seen her so happy—a burst of warmth nudged through his dissatisfaction.
He also didn’t want to include Tori. She was the likeliest candidate, but she’d seemed distracted the past couple of weeks, and he wondered if she needed to get back to her job in San Francisco. He made a note to talk to her about it. He’d missed his siblings while he’d been in self-induced exile. Being here with them made him realize just how much, and he was eager to make up for lost time.
Except with Derek.
He heard his former friend-slash-current almost-brother moving around in his office next door. He was truly the heart and soul of Archer Enterprises. Dad was a good CEO, but he was a brewer at heart. Derek, on the other hand, loved all aspects of the business, and Kyle fully expected him to be the one to take over some day. The irony that his last name wasn’t Archer would’ve made Kyle smile in years past, but now it made him feel unsettled. Like Derek was more an Archer than he was. And that it was Kyle’s fault.
He shook the unpleasant thought away and stared at the names again. Why wouldn’t Maggie help him? Even the smallest thing could point him in the right direction. Hell, any direction. Maybe he should call her again.
No, he didn’t want to be a stalker. Especially after scaring her last night. He still felt really bad about that. And about calling her a shitty therapist. He winced. How did he expect her to help him when he came off all creepy and rude? He thought of the flowers Natalie had wanted to send his mom. Maybe he should send some to Maggie as an apology—she clearly liked flowers.
What the hell was he thinking? Send flowers to his dead brother’s therapist? Pull your head out, Kyle.
Not for the first time, he thought about meeting her in different circumstances. Asking her out for real. Working to make her smile and laugh—he sensed she needed to do more of that.
A knock on his door interrupted his thoughts. It was a good thing because he couldn’t actually contemplate dating Maggie. Taking out Alex’s therapist would guarantee he didn’t earn anyone’s forgiveness. “Come in,” he answered, closing Alex’s laptop and setting it to the side of his desk.
Natalie poked her head inside and smiled. “Hey.” Her long, dark hair hung past her shoulders, and she tucked a strand behind her ear. “You have a visitor. Shane Dawkins?”
What the hell was his bookie doing here? Had anyone seen him? Would Derek or Dad even remember what he looked like? They’d only met him the one time.
Wanting to get Shane out of the office as soon as possible, Kyle shot to his feet. “Thanks.”
Natalie opened the door wider and moved out of the way.
Kyle glanced at Derek’s and Dad’s doors. Both closed. With a jolt of relief, Kyle turned to his one-time friend and bookie. Shane was a gym rat with close-cropped dark hair. His arms and chest were as beefy as ever and filled out his fitted black tee. He grinned as he sized up Kyle. “Damn, brother. Florida agreed with you.”
“Hey, Shane. Let’s get a cup of coffee downstairs and take a walk.” Archer Enterprises boasted a small café on the ground floor, and there were walking paths around the building. They’d stick to the one that circled the parking lot so that they wouldn’t be in view of Dad’s or Derek’s offices.
Kyle led Shane down the wide, open staircase and over to the café bar, where he asked for a black iced coffee while Shane ordered a caramel latte. Shane reached for his wallet, but Kyle swiped his card first. “I got this.”
Shane laughed. “You’ve changed, man.”
Kyle’s shoulders bunched with tension. “What brings you all the way to Ribbon Ridge?” Shane lived in Northeast Portland, a good hour and forty-five minutes away.
“Heard you were back in town. I’m headed to the beach for the weekend, and I wanted to stop in and say hi. It’s been a long time—what, four years?”
“Something like that, yeah.” As if Kyle could forget. That night almost four years ago was crystallized in his brain. He’d been out of time. Owed Shane and his boss thirty grand. Was in danger of being thrashed to within an inch of his life if he couldn’t sell them on his repayment plan. Cold sweat dappled the back of his neck as the barista handed him his coffee.