Dead Again: A Romantic Thriller

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “Can you fix it?” Sophie asked, overriding his farewell.

  “Hey!” Maurice protested.

  Jack turned back to face her and she saw a light of hope flicker in his eyes. It was gone almost at once but nothing disguised the warmth in his smile.

  “I can fix it,” he said, his voice low, magical.

  That smile and that voice did strange things to Sophie’s innards. They flipped.

  “Hey, you gave me the job!” Maurice said.

  “And it hasn’t done me any good so far, has it?” Sophie returned, her voice serene and at total odds with what her insides were doing. You’re crazy! Crazy! She was a total fool if she went through with the reckless idea that had just popped into her mind.

  “Did Val give you a job last night?” she asked Jack.

  “Morning shift. I started this morning.”

  Sophie nodded. She really hadn’t expected anything less. Not with Jack. He could turn his hand to anything and make it work.

  “I can give you a bed and all the food you can eat, if you find and fix the problem with my wiring.”

  “That seems like overkill for such a little problem,” Jack answered slowly. He hadn’t sat down again.

  “Not exactly. I’ve got an old house up on the hill. It’s mid-nineteenth century. The wiring in that place is part of the deal.”

  “The whole house?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “Aren’t you going to ask for my references?” he asked.

  Sophie moved slowly down the length of the counter toward him. “I don’t need to see your references. Val gave you a job and I assume you’ve managed to hold onto it, so I know you know how to work hard. The work you do for me isn’t finished until the inspector certifies the work—and if it isn’t up to scratch you either fix it, or pay for someone to get it right.” She stopped in front of him. “Is it a deal?” She deliberately kept her face pleasantly neutral, the face of a bare acquaintance.

  Jack’s gaze swept over her features. It was the same deep, assessing stare she had grown accustomed to after the crash.

  He seemed to hesitate for a moment more, then moved back to the counter. “We have a deal.” He held out his hand and Sophie took it. Her hand was enveloped in warm, smooth skin and the contact sent sparks flitting up her arm.

  “Sophie Kingston,” she said, deliberately introducing herself as one would a stranger. His deep brown eyes seemed to be growing larger…it was uncanny. “You said your name was Martin, last night, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Martin Stride.”

  “Hi.” Sophie offered.

  “Hello.”

  Sophie was aware that she had just made an unspoken agreement to play along with Jack’s inexplicable game. She had no idea why she had agreed to it, other than a desire to keep him near.

  Her hand was in his. Abruptly, she let go and swallowed convulsively. “Ah…um…”

  “Well, if you’re really going to let him do this, I’m out of here,” Maurice said from behind her.

  “Yeah, fine,” Sophie murmured distractedly. Her heart was scudding along hurriedly and her skin prickled. She heard the shop door shut with a slap.

  “’Bout time you got rid of that parasite, Sophie.” It was Cal’s voice. Sophie looked at the old man, who winked at her. “Think you’ve made yourself a better deal here, honey.”

  She reached for his coffee cup and under the counter for the coffee carafe, wanting to give her hands something to do and somewhere to avert her gaze, because she didn’t want Cal to see her hands shake or read panic in her eyes.

  She slid the cup back next to him. “Here you go,” she murmured and looked back at Jack.

  He was looking at her, the brown eyes patient. “If I’m to earn my keep, I’d better get going. If I can have the run of the shop…?”

  “Now?” Sophie asked, the panic swirling closer to the surface.

  “Now,” Jack confirmed.

  Sophie stared at him mutely, the panic raging through her system. She suddenly realized exactly why she had engineered this situation. She wanted to get Jack alone—somewhere where he was free to talk without fear of being overheard. Somewhere where she could ask some of the questions that had circled through her mind without cease since she had first suspected that the stranger in town was indeed Jack.

  And now she had managed it. She had involved him in her life in such a way that time alone with him was virtually guaranteed…and the idea frightened her. Did she really want to know the truth?

  “I’ll go check out the basement, first, okay?” Jack suggested.

  “Uh, yeah. Okay,” Sophie responded. She watched as Jack walked to the end of the counter, pulled the flap aside and headed back into the old house.

  “Useful looking fella,” Cal commented. “Looks like he’s skin and bone but I reckon that’s deceptive.”

  “Mmm,” Sophie said noncommittally, thinking about tonight. It was Jinni’s night off tonight. When Georgia and Morgan were in bed, she would be going out with the boyfriend of the season and Sophie would be alone with Jack.

  Time to get some answers.

  Eight years ago she had known Jack for five whole days. She hadn’t seen him since and had been led to believe he was dead, yet the effect he’d had on her life was profound.

  What if she got the answers to her questions…and what if she didn’t like them? Was she prepared to find out that she had based the decisions and judgments of most of her adult life on a lie?

  Chapter Eleven

  Sophie found herself alone with Jack much sooner than she had anticipated—barely three hours later, as she was closing up the shop for the night.

  For once she didn’t have to pry the coffee cup from Cal’s hands, for Jack had somehow coaxed him out the door. The two of them had been laughing at some private joke, probably another one in the long series of one-liners they had been trading for the last hour or so, as Jack had traced the wiring throughout the shop. Cal had even slipped off his stool in order to stay within speaking distance as Jack moved slowly around the place, inspecting, testing, a screwdriver and wrench in his hands.

  When Cal had been gently shepherded toward home, Sophie realized she was alone with Jack and would be for the ten-minute stroll home. She shivered into her coat.

  The first few minutes were silent. She found herself tongue-tied and bashful, unable to form a sentence that didn’t sound totally inane. What she really wanted to do was look him straight in the eye and demand an explanation. This was her big chance—now was the time to learn the truth. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to open up the subject. The risk of finding out things that she didn’t want to know weighed heavily.

  Instead she cleared her throat and murmured, “Jack—” not sure where she was going to start but hoping an avenue would open up for her if only she got some sort of conversation going.

  “Martin,” he corrected, his voice low but perfectly clear.

  Sophie looked around, sure he had seen someone within hearing distance and was merely preserving the illusion in front of strangers.

  There was no one anywhere close. It was dusk and the street stretched out before them, dipping down into a broad, shallow slope before rising up again to the crest that marked the town limits, where Sophie’s house sat within its copse of pine trees. There wasn’t a single person to be seen along its entire length.

  Sophie looked back at Jack, studying his face, looking for an explanation. He kept his gaze firmly on the way ahead.

  “Martin?” she repeated, letting her disbelief color her tone.

  “My name is Martin, remember?” he said, glancing at her quickly before snapping his gaze back to the sidewalk.

  “I remember you had a different name once,” she said, her irritation growing. “You’re not going to keep this up when we’re alone, are you? Surely not.”

  “Keep up what?”

  Sophie stared at him, her amazement growing.

  “Jack—”

  “Martin,” he
said firmly.

  “Goddamn it, just you stop for one minute!” She grabbed at his sleeve and dug her heels into the pavement, halting him. She stepped in front of him as anger and bafflement swirled through her. “I don’t understand what game it is you’re playing, even though I’ve played along with it so far but enough is enough. Don’t do this to me. Not to me, Jack.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and down along the street past her head, then reached out and pushed her gently around and tucked his hand under her elbow. “Keep walking,” he murmured.

  Sophie obeyed, keeping up with his shortened stride. The fact that he didn’t want anyone to see them standing in the middle of the street confronting one another gave more weight to her conviction that Jack was playing a game for reasons she didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  “Why are you persisting in this?” she demanded, keeping her voice down.

  “Persisting in what?”

  “Damn it—”

  “No, don’t fly off the handle. I asked you a genuine question. What am I persisting in?”

  “This…this game of ‘let’s pretend’! This lonely-stranger-passing-through-town crap. You don’t really expect me to believe you just happened to be passing through, do you?” Her anger was swelling, pushing all the frustration and puzzlement of the last twenty-four hours to the top. “Just why the hell did you come here, Jack—”

  “Martin,” he said again, his voice flat.

  “Martin, goddamn you!” His correction ripped away the last restraints of her anger. “And don’t tell me you were just passing and decided to drop into Serenity on a whim!”

  Jack could hear her anger shaking her voice, her body. He could feel the tremors through the hand he had on her arm. Although he didn’t like either, he much preferred Sophie to be angry than hurt, or upset. Anger was the first step to fighting back.

  “As a matter of fact,” he told her, his voice low, “That’s very nearly what did happen to me. I was passing by. I saw the turn off for Serenity Falls and took a fancy to the name. So I came into town.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t believe him. “That’s a pretty big coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” he said flatly. “Not anymore.”

  “Then how do you explain how you just happened to turn up here?” she snapped.

  “People meet new people all the time. It’s not even unusual.”

  “‘New people’,” she repeated flatly.

  He could hear the tired disbelief creeping back into her voice and clenched his jaws together against the wish to help her. The truth wouldn’t help her, he reminded himself. And because he didn’t dare open his mouth in case the truth slid out, he remained silent.

  Sophie was staring ahead, frowning. Jack could almost hear the cogs in her mind turning, seeking another angle, another way out. When she finally spoke her voice was casual.

  “So…Martin…you just happened to be passing and just happened to come into town on a whim.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where were you before?”

  “On the road.”

  “How long have you been on the road?”

  “Nearly nine years.”

  “Nine years?” She looked at him, surprised. “That’s a long time to be always on the move. Why did you go on the road in the first place?”

  “I seduced the daughter of the town mayor. He didn’t like it.”

  Sophie suppressed a smile. “And he’s been hunting you for nine years? That seems a little…excessive.”

  “I was caught in flagrante.”

  Again the smile twitched her lips. “But these are modern times,” she pointed out.

  “Did I mention that the mayor’s wife was there at the same time?”

  Sophie gave a snuffle of laughter and Jack hid his own grin.

  “And so the Mayor has been chasing you ever since,” she concluded.

  “With a shotgun,” Jack added flatly.

  He felt her stiffen against his hand, as the flatness of his tone conveyed more than the moral of the tale he had spun. She turned her head to look at him, her eyes wide, horror dawning.

  “Oh Jack…Martin… Surely not?”

  Jack mentally kicked himself. He’d forgotten just how intuitive she was…or had he? If there really was no such thing as coincidence, or accidents, then for reasons he wasn’t aware of yet he had purposely let her glimpse that much of the truth.

  Sophie tore her gaze away from his face, back onto the sidewalk in front of her. “This…mayor…if he thought I knew where you were, would he come after me with a shotgun too?”

  Too damn intuitive. Too quick to put things together. Jack cursed himself even more. He should have remembered this about her. It was one of her facets he had admired so much, one that had ultimately saved both their lives.

  Desperately, he searched for a response to her question, one that would wipe away the horror in her eyes. Then he reconsidered. Now he’d let this much slip, she deserved the unadorned, truthful answer.

  “This mayor, he has connections everywhere. He’d eventually learn that you’d met me and he’d want to ask you where I’d gone.”

  “And he’d bring his shotgun, wouldn’t he?” Her voice was ethereal, distant.

  “Yes, Sophie,” Jack answered gently. “He’d bring his shotgun.”

  * * * * *

  From the outside, Sophie knew she and Jack looked just like any other couple strolling along the road, leaning forward a little to climb Lakeview Hill.

  But chaos raged inside her and she could vent none of it. The questions—dozens of them!—stewed inside her in an unhappy mess. Why was Jack doing this? Why was he here? Why did he not use his real name? Why was the unnamed man, the “mayor,” looking for him and after so many years? Why?

  Why, why, why?

  What happened next was entirely her own fault—entirely the result of listening to her thoughts rather than watching her feet.

  At the top of the hill, right in front of the house where the sidewalk just began to even out, there was a crack. One winter long past, the concrete had snapped and the portion on the lower side of the hill had decided to sink, sharply enough to leave a mini-step in the pavement. She knew that step well. It was sneaky and it knew just when she wasn’t paying attention. Often, when she walked home, she would be carrying armloads of food or paperwork, or both and would be worrying about the business, or something the kids were doing, or both. The step would make sure she tripped, because she wasn’t watching where she was going.

  It didn’t fail tonight, either. It caught the toe of her boot, just as she tried to bring her foot forward to take her weight as she transferred it from the other leg. She was leaning well forward, ready for her leg to thrust out and take the weight and it didn’t happen. She felt her boot being held, just like the pavement had grown hands and grabbed it.

  She flailed with her arms, knowing she was going to fall. She cringed, waiting for the colossal thud that would follow.

  And his arms were there, around her, catching her and bringing her back upright.

  Impressions bombarded her. The hard, hurting panicky beat of her heart as adrenaline surged through her and just how shaky she had suddenly become. The strength of his arms. She was no lightweight and he had caught and pulled her upright like a puppet.

  Overall, though, were three overwhelming sensations—the incredibly soft, sensuous feel of his suede jacket against her fingers and the slightly yielding hot, hard body beneath…and his scent.

  She was wrapped in his arms and his scent and it permeated her.

  In the five days they had lain on the narrow shelf in that rocky ravine, he’d never touched her for anything other than necessary aid and assistance, except for one brief moment. He’d disappeared from her life after that, gone like a ghost. Even though her memory of him influenced every major decision she’d made since then, even though she lay awake nights, recalling his voice and the line of
his jaw and the way he had of smiling where it started at one side of his mouth, the lines creasing, as if he was giving into the humour under protest, even though she dreamed of him and woke to find herself crying…she hadn’t felt this before.

  Pure wanting. It whispered through her.

  The world, for a moment, was motionless around them.

  His dark eyes were studying her and they widened a little. That single betraying reaction made her a little giddy.

  It was not just her feeling this swirl of feelings, then….

  She silently willed him to acknowledge the feelings, to take the kiss she knew he wanted to take.

  A flying vee of geese passed overhead, so low that the rushing wind of their passage and their honks startled her.

  It restored time to its proper function and the moment passed.

  “Are you all right?” he asked and his voice was rougher, lower than usual.

  Sophie stepped back out of his arms, which fell away from her without resistance. “Fine. I’m fine,” she said hoarsely.

  But she wasn’t. Neither of them was. She could see the knowledge in his eyes and she was suddenly afraid—not of the nameless dangers he had hinted at, but of him. And herself.

  I have asked him to live with us.

  Unease touched her.

  He was just standing there, watching her, waiting for her to turn and lead him to the house.

  She was on the verge of telling him the deal was off. She opened her mouth to explain she had changed her mind, that she didn’t think it was a good idea, when the screen door on the front of the house slammed open and Georgia and Morgan rushed down the path to greet her.

  “Mom! Mom, I’ve got something to show you!” Morgan shouted, tugging on her coat sleeve.

  Georgia simply wrapped her arms around Sophie’s waist and hung on tight.

  Morgan turned to face Jack. “Hi. Who are you?”

  “I’ve come to fix the wiring in your house.” Jack held out his hand. “I’m Martin.”

  “Hi, Martin. Will you be using the drill and stuff? Can I help?”