The Unmistakable Scent of Gardenias (Haunted Hearts Series Book 6)

by Denise Moncrief

  A scene from long ago filled his mind. He tried to evict the memory, but it had moved back in and taken residence. Like a squatter.

  Audrey’s expression projected her contempt. “You really think I’d lie about being pregnant?”

  “You’ve lied about everything else.” Dylan lifted his suitcase from the bed.

  “You can’t leave me.” She wasn’t begging. She was commanding.

  He turned to glare at her. She’d done enough damage. It had all been a game to entrap him. And he let her do it. He hated himself for that. What Audrey had done to him was unforgivable, but what he’d done to Sophia was worse.

  “Goodbye, Audrey.”

  Her voice took on a malicious edge. “I mean it, Dylan. You aren’t going to leave me.”

  “How are you going to stop me?”

  She dared to place her hand on his cheek. Her smile dripped with hatred. He flinched and leaned back from the deranged gleam in her eyes.

  “If you don’t stay with me, I will go to the cops and tell them everything.”

  Dread filled him from the bottom up. “What are you talking about? Tell them what?”

  “About Sophia’s hit and run accident. The one she never reported to the police. Have you ever wondered why she didn’t call the cops? Maybe it wasn’t an accident.”

  He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Stop lying.”

  “You think I’m lying? Look it up. It happened last year. The cops are still looking for the person who killed that man. Once I tell the cops what she did, her life is over.” She paused, no doubt for the purpose of driving the knife in deeper. “Is that what you want, Dylan?”

  The fact that she had used Sophia’s freedom to keep him with her told him everything. Audrey knew he had never cared for her the way he loved Sophia. She knew it and she hated him for it. There was no better way to make him do what she wanted him to do than to threaten Sophia.

  He would have never believed that he would be the victim of emotional blackmail.

  “Why do you want to do this, Audrey? Now that you’ve made a threat like that, you know I can never trust you. You might as well stop this now. I’ll never love you.”

  “You mean the way you love her?” She stroked his cheek. “You’re wrong. I think you’ll change your mind.” There was an unspoken or else on the end of her sentence.

  He jerked away from her touch, kept his eyes locked with hers. In one swift motion, he dropped his suitcase on the bed and wrapped his fingers around her neck. “If you ever do anything to hurt her, I will kill you.”

  “Go ahead. Then the cops will find the evidence I left behind.” She licked her lips as if she’d just tasted something delicious.

  He released her and backed away toward the door.

  She smiled, and sugar dripped from her words. “Don’t be late tonight.”

  The next day he had done the research just as Audrey had suggested. The description of the car that had killed a man matched the car that Sophia drove.

  Funny. The evidence that Audrey held never appeared after her disappearance. Either she wasn’t dead or the so-called evidence never existed. He groaned at how he’d fallen for her deception. Sure, there was never any proof that Sophia ran over the man. There were tons of cars that matched the description of the vehicle.

  The soft padding of footsteps behind him yanked him out of his wide-awake nightmare.

  “Dylan, are you still awake?” Her trembling voice busted his heart.

  He jumped from the sofa and rushed to her. She stood in front of him, her hand over her heart, her eyes wide with fear. He halted his actions, pushing back the strong desire to comfort her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  She held out her cell phone to him. He glanced at the text on the display, and his blood froze in his veins. A familiar number burned from the screen, a number belonging to the man who pretended to be Les Wakefield.

  The flowers were from me, you ungrateful whore, so why are you sleeping with him?

  He wanted to curse. To scream. To rush out the door and annihilate the bastard. The words he needed to say to ease her fears gummed up in his throat.

  “What am I going to do?” Her voice cracked. “The guy is psycho.”

  He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her. His chin rested on the top of her head. The warmth of her cheek pressed against his shoulder as her body trembled next to his. He experienced every shock wave with her.

  “He must be watching us.” She whispered as if she thought Brandon Wakefield could hear them.

  Dylan released her and moved across the living room, pushed the curtains aside, and peeked through the slats of the blinds. Nothing. As far as he could tell, no one lurked in the shadows outside.

  His cell phone vibrated on the coffee table, startling them both. He grabbed the phone and answered the call before it quit vibrating. “What do you want?”

  To his surprise, Moreau had called. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m across the street and—”

  “A psycho is stalking Sophia. Why aren’t you out looking for him?”

  A long pause. “Because I can see him parked outside your place.”

  “Were you following him or watching me?”

  “I followed Sophia.”

  “Why are you following her?” Was his tone sufficiently indignant?

  He hoped the man wasn’t looking at Sophia in connection with Audrey’s disappearance, but he feared Moreau had found the thread and had begun tugging on it.

  Moreau shot back a reply that made perfect sense. “Wakefield didn’t return to his office and hasn’t shown up at his house. If the guy is stalking her, what better way to find him? Even you can see the logic in that, Hunter.”

  He stuffed back his rising anger. “So you’ve found him. Why aren’t you arresting him?”

  “If I could arrest a man simply because I think he’s a criminal, then you’d be behind bars. I have to wait until he makes a move on Sophia. Then, I can arrest him.”

  Relief surged up from Dylan’s fears. Maybe Moreau didn’t have Sophia under investigation for Audrey’s disappearance after all. His relief was short-lived. The cop was using Sophia as bait to catch Wakefield.

  “Sophia just got a text from him. I was going to tell you he was probably watching us, but it seems you already know that.”

  “What did the text say?”

  “He accused her of sleeping with me.”

  A scowl spread across her tense mouth. What he wouldn’t give to kiss the tension away? He shook the stray thought out of his head.

  “Well?”

  Dylan balled his fist. “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He couldn’t take it any longer. “We aren’t sleeping together. She hates my guts. I don’t think that’s ever going to change. Okay?”

  Sophia’s head popped up. Surprise registered on her features.

  “I offered her a place to stay because it appeared that you weren’t going to do anything to protect her from this nut job that has a fixation on her.”

  “I never said I wouldn’t protect her.”

  “Yeah, you did. You were there for the conversation, Moreau. Is your memory failing?”

  “He can see your front window is dark. Turn on a lamp. Stand in front of the window with your arms around her. Maybe that will be enough to make him act.”

  “Are you nuts? If I suggested that, she’d slug me.”

  She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “What does he want you to do?”

  Entreaty filled her eyes, and he read the emotion flickering in them. She was willing to do whatever it took to rid her life of Brandon Wakefield’s stalking.

  He understood her fear. “Okay, we’ll do it.”

  He pulled her into the front room and parted the curtains so that only the blinds blocked the view of the outside. After he turned on the lamp next to the sofa, he pulled Sophia into his arms. “Let’
s make this look real.”

  Her lips met his before he could take another breath. No questions. No hesitancy. No resistance. She’d read the situation and acted upon it without a hint of objection.

  At first the lip lock seemed like just what it was. An act. But as the kiss lengthened, his emotions surged. If she was pretending, she was a better actress than he thought. She had never been able to conceal her emotions enough to play a solid hand of poker. It seemed her passion for the kiss had met his more than halfway. Had she wanted his kiss as much as he had wanted hers? Was their relationship really so dead it couldn’t be resurrected?

  For the first time in a long time, a tiny ray of hope lit his fire, flickering and licking at the charred remains of what once had been their love.

  He expected her to break the kiss any moment, but she didn’t. Her fingers laced behind his neck, pulling his lips closer to hers if that was possible. His mouth explored every bit of familiar territory, tasting not-so-forgotten memories of the way things had been for them. She pulled back and whispered something into his mouth. He strained to hear. His hands pressed the middle of her back, imagining their bodies melding until they were one being.

  The words were on the tip of his tongue. Hope had filled him to the point he dared to tell her he had never stopped loving her. That his affair with Audrey had been a horrible mistake. That he begged her for forgiveness. The crash of metal on concrete broke the moment, shattering the mood. She bounced back from him, and her eyes darted toward the front door.

  The doorknob rattled.

  Her grip tightened around his arm, squeezing until he thought she’d break a bone.

  The door shook so hard the wood frame began to splinter.

  “Wakefield, put your hands up.”

  The assault on the door continued.

  “I’m warning you, Wakefield. Let go of the door and put your hands up.”

  Crashing, bumping, and banging disturbed the quiet outside. A single shot rang out followed by a groan and the pounding of one set of footsteps in retreat.

  Dylan peeked through the blind. “Moreau’s on the ground.” He shoved his cell phone at Sophia. “Call 9-1-1.”

  ****

  The far off wail of a siren grew louder with each passing second.

  Dylan pressed a blood-soaked rag against Moreau’s upper arm. As it turned out, his wound was little more than skin deep.

  A strip of grass fronted the section of joined condominiums with a parking lot adjacent. Sophia shifted her gaze from one end of the common area to the other, certain that Brandon Wakefield was watching their every move. She shivered at the now familiar pall of malicious intent that surrounded her. What had only been faintly annoying at first had turned into a living nightmare.

  “I guess you were hoping I’d bleed to death and stop harassing you?” Even in pain, Moreau was a jerk.

  “Don’t be stupid.” Dylan’s muttered response nipped at the ridiculousness of Moreau’s attempt to be sarcastic.

  Dylan lived in the unit on the end. From around the corner and out of the shadows emerged a woman with spiked blue hair. Sophia recognized the woman as the bartender that had served her a Long Island Iced Tea the night Les… No, Brandon Wakefield had accosted her in the bar. It was still hard to think of him as Brandon when she’d thought of him for weeks as Les.

  “What are you doing here?” Moreau’s raspy question startled Sophia and made the bartender jerk as if she’d just been slapped out of a trance.

  The woman swallowed hard, but couldn’t seem to respond. Moreau shifted a bit and groaned before giving up his efforts to rise into a slouched position next to the brick wall. The gunshot wound might be superficial, but the man had taken a pounding before Wakefield left the scene.

  The woman was on her knees next to him in a heartbeat. “Is it bad?”

  Moreau flinched when the woman placed a hand on his cheek.

  Dylan answered for him. “Just a flesh wound. It’s not serious. So who are you?”

  The woman ignored his question and kept her focus on Moreau. It seemed her words were only for him. “I had a vision.”

  Moreau’s eyes widened with apparent fright. “About me?”

  The woman nodded. A single tear glistened on the edge of her lower eyelid.

  “What did you see?” It appeared Moreau hated asking the question.

  “I saw you fighting with a man. Then you fell. I knew you were hurt.” She shuddered and pushed the hair from her eyes. “It’s all fuzzy. I don’t know how I got here.”

  Moreau licked his lips. “You can’t remember? Like last time?”

  She sniffed back a sob and shook her head.

  The sirens drew near. Sophia had little time to make sense of the woman’s presence, so she dared to interrupt their private conversation. “I’ve seen you before. At the bar in the Quarter. Are you a friend of Brandon Wakefield?”

  The woman raised her gaze to Sophia and sympathy flashed in her blue eyes. “You mean the man that was bothering you? No. I’ve never met him. But I couldn’t let you leave with him. If you had, you wouldn’t be…” She glanced at Moreau. “I’m glad Nick stopped him.”

  “Jerilyn, this is serious. You can’t just make this stuff up.”

  She fell back from Moreau. “You know I’m not making this up. How else would I know to come here if I was just making it up? And don’t call me Jerilyn.”

  “You have some explaining to do.” Moreau’s eyes flashed with a strange mixture of derision and confusion coupled with a splash of desire.

  Interesting.

  Jerilyn bounced to her feet and backed away from the scene just as the emergency vehicles screamed to a halt in the adjacent parking lot. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  As she rushed away, Moreau shot her one parting comment. “I’ll decide that.”

  Jerilyn stopped and twisted on her heel. “Some things are out of your control, detective. The sooner you learn that lesson of life, the better off you’ll be.”

  And she was gone as quickly as she had appeared.

  Chapter Ten

  Sophia groaned at the irritation that attempted to nudge her from drowsy early morning slumber, that part of the sleep cycle that is the sweetest. She rolled onto her side and ignored the ray of sunlight shoving bright beams through the blinds on…not her bedroom window. One eye opened and then the other. She bolted upright and clawed the covers until she caught a solid enough grip to cover her upper body.

  Dylan sat on the side of his bed, grinning at her as if he knew an enormously delicious secret about her. Had she spent the night snoring or something? Did she talk in her sleep? She lifted the blanket to check her clothing. It still covered her, so she hadn’t revealed more in her sleep than she intended or done something the night before she couldn’t remember in the morning.

  He had an arrogant expression on his face much like a cat evaluating an inferior being. “Are you going to sleep all day?”

  She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Past noon. She shook her head.

  “I made you some breakfast, but it’s cold.”

  She shivered as if his words were ice water poured down the back of her shirt.

  “We’ve got to make some decisions, so you need to get up and get yourself together.”

  The thought of making decisions with Dylan Hunter scared and thrilled her into one big ball of anxiety. Every nerve pinged with anticipation.

  She finally found her words. “What kind of decisions?”

  “Moreau called this morning.”

  His comment danced in the air between them. There was more and he obviously planned to drop each piece of information on her one bit at a time.

  She loosed a growl from deep in her throat. “Just tell me, Dylan. I’m not in the mood to drag it out of you.”

  A smile erupted on his handsome face. “You’re still grumpy in the morning. Let me get you a cup of caffeine, and then I’ll tell you what he told me.”

  She wiped the crust from
the corners of her eyes. “Coffee would be good. I might approach human after a couple of cups.”

  “Yes, I remember that about you.”

  He rose from the edge of the bed and made it as far as the open door before she asked the question that blazed like a lightning bolt through her still sleepy mind. “He’s disappeared, hasn’t he?”

  Dylan turned and the easy-going smile had dropped from his face. They both knew she meant the man pretending to be Les Wakefield.

  He nodded.

  She pushed the covers off and dropped her legs over the side of the bed. “Okay, coffee first.”

  Dylan disappeared into the hall.

  Twenty minutes later, she had showered and changed clothes. Sleep hadn’t come easily for her the previous night. Well, actually, that morning. It had been after midnight before the police had wrapped up the scene where Moreau had been shot. Once the lights of the emergency units had quit glaring through the front windows of the condo, she had retreated to Dylan’s bedroom without saying goodnight. He hadn’t bothered her, but a tangle of emotions had kept her mind zooming for hours after the crime scene people had left.

  Most of her thoughts had been about Dylan.

  His back was to her when she entered the kitchen, his gaze focused out the kitchen window. She cleared her throat, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  She raised the normal volume of her voice hoping to get his attention. “So Moreau was well enough this morning to call you?”

  He startled and turned. “Oh, Soph. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  For a moment, she believed he would keep his thoughts to himself, and when he spoke she wished he had.

  “I was just thinking about the mess Audrey made.”

  Sophia crossed her arms over her chest. “She had a little help making that mess.”

  His eyes flashed with sudden heat. She could almost feel the scorch of it on her skin. Why did the truth make him angry? He had no right to be angry. She was the one their actions had hurt.

  “Okay, I get it. She’s obviously a topic we can’t discuss.” He bit out every word.

  “I don’t want to talk about her. Not now. Not ever.”

  A splash of defeat reflected in his eyes. He motioned toward a chair. Just as she scooted up to the table, he slid a hot cup of coffee in front of her.