With This Kiss

by Susan Meier

  Rayne’s stomach growled again.

  “Aha. You can’t say you aren’t hungry.”

  She was starved. Absolutely starved. And if the sandwich smelled any better she’d eat it without taking it out of the paper bag. Still, if she believed he was being honest and fair with her about his inability to help her look for her dad, then he was here because he felt sorry for her. She couldn’t accept charity.

  “I was just about to break for lunch—”

  “Good,” Jericho said, making a move to step into the back room, but she put her hand on his chest to stop him. Pinpricks of awareness danced up her arm. She was touching him. After decades of having a crush on him, she was finally touching him…and it was to block him from getting into her building. Her life just sucked.

  “I was on my way to my house to open a can of soup.”

  “A sandwich is better.”

  She gaped at him. “Soup is better on a cold day.”

  “Whatever. Look, I’m going to do some cursory investigating for your dad whether you help me or not. If you let me in you can give me some direction. If you don’t and I start cold, nine chances out of ten I won’t find him.” He caught her gaze. “Is that what you want?”

  He knew how badly she wanted to find her dad, so he also knew he had her. She took a long breath and blew it out slowly. “I want him found so we can tell him I paid off his debt.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  He stepped into the back room and Rayne turned her back on him, leading him into the office area. She walked to her desk and sat on her chair as he took the seat behind the desk across the aisle in front of hers.

  “I got this week’s edition of the paper.”

  Rayne took a breath. “It’s a little small.”

  “Paper’s never been big,” he said causally as he handed a roast beef sandwich across the aisle to her.

  Her pride desperately wanted her to refuse it. Her common sense knew she couldn’t. As casually as he handed it, she reached for it.

  “I also brought coffee.”

  “I could have made a pot.”

  He brushed her off. “This is simpler. I only have a half hour for lunch.” He caught her gaze. “Basically, I’m doing this on my own time. It can’t be official.”

  Mesmerized by his beautiful green eyes, Rayne was struck again by how unfair her life was. Here was the man she had always wanted and instead of being able to put her best foot forward she was a needy fool with an irresponsible father.

  Gripping the container of coffee he handed her, Rayne said, “I’m not sure what you want from me.”

  Jericho finished chewing the bite of sandwich he’d taken before he said, “First, I’m assuming you did the usual checks of things like his credit cards to see if he’d used them.”

  Unwrapping her sandwich, Rayne nodded. “He hasn’t used them.”

  “Do you think he had any secret, private credit cards you don’t know about?”

  With the scent of roast beef wafting to her nose, Rayne shook her head. “Not unless they’re under an alias.”

  Jericho brightened. “Did he have aliases he used to get stories?”

  She laughed. “No. At least none that I knew of. My dad didn’t even cover regular stories anymore, let alone do undercover work.”

  “But he did at one time?”

  “He was a very well-respected journalist in D.C.”

  “No undercover work then?”

  Rayne frowned. “You know, he only ever talked about his beginnings at the Wall Street Journal and then his time at the White House before he took over the Chronicle for my mother’s family. If there was something he did in between those two, he never mentioned it.”

  “That would be a good place for you to start looking. See if you can find out what he did in between those two jobs or who his contacts were at the last job he held.” Jericho paused. “You’re not eating. Don’t you like roast beef?”

  “I love it.”

  “Then eat. I’ve got to be back in a few minutes and we need to get as much done as we can.”

  Rayne glanced down at the sandwich then across the aisle at him. Though it was hard, she quietly said, “Thanks.”

  “Hey, you’re welcome. As I said, I was bored. Looking for your dad will be a good way to keep up my investigative skills.”

  He dismissed the sandwich so easily that Rayne almost believed it really was the afterthought he intended her to think it was. She took a bite of sandwich and struggled not to groan as the flavor exploded in her mouth.

  “You said you had checked to see if he’s using his social security number.”

  She nodded. “My dad’s broke, but he’s also a planner. So, I can’t believe he just left without having a job to go to. Which means his social should have activity, but it doesn’t.”

  “Which brings us back to the probability that he’s using an alias.”

  Taking another bite of her sandwich, Rayne nodded. “Oh, this is good.”

  “It’s the homemade bread,” Jericho said, again casually.

  But Rayne knew the sandwich tasted like heaven because it was manna from heaven. Having eaten nothing but canned soup for a week, she was starving.

  And Jericho was the only one in town who had seen that.

  “If you’re really looking for my dad,” she said, trusting him a little more, “you should also know that he put the payroll for the last two months on a credit card, along with the taxes. This month’s bill for that card hasn’t come in, but I’m guessing there will be another cash advance against it.”

  Jericho grimaced. “Ouch! That’s going to be a hefty balance.”

  She nodded. “It also means he had a grub stake for leaving.”

  “And that he left you with another debt.”

  She shook her head. “Credit card’s in his name, not the Chronicle’s. I’m not responsible for it.”

  “You may not be responsible, but if the creditors get nasty enough you might be forced to sell your dad’s house to settle his scores.”

  She shook her head. “He put the house in my name a few months ago.”

  “He certainly made sure his ducks were in a row.”

  “I told you he was a planner.”

  She watched Jerico absorb all that. From the look on his face, his next comment didn’t surprise her.

  “Rayne, he walked away from a business, gave away his house.” He caught her gaze. “It almost seems that he doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Of course he doesn’t! He thinks the loan shark is after him, but I paid that debt. He can come home.”

  “You might have paid the loan shark, but your dad still owes what’s on that credit card. He no longer owns his house. He abandoned the paper.” He caught Rayne’s gaze and held it. “If he put his affairs in this much order, the rest of his plan could be equally detailed. You need to face the possibility that we aren’t going to find him.”

  Chapter Three

  That night Rayne was too sick at heart to eat the second half of the sandwich Jericho had brought her for lunch. She tried to eat it for breakfast the next morning, but it was no use. Her dad wasn’t coming home and he’d planned it. He’d planned never to see her again.

  She could understand his running from a debt and even abandoning a little newspaper that was failing, if only because he was tired of being a failure. But she could not understand his leaving her.

  She listlessly dressed in her usual blue jeans and T-shirt, but knowing she’d have to turn down the thermostat in the newspaper offices, she also pulled on a heavy sweater. She walked to the Calhoun Corners Chronicle building even forgoing coffee at the diner. At her desk, she began organizing her notes for a day of writing articles about the lives of the residents of her small town and placing telephone calls to businesses hoping to get them to buy advertising or pay the bills for last month’s ads.

  She had just finished organizing her work when she heard the muffled knock at the paper’s back door again. Confused
, she glanced at the clock, thinking the guy who usually knocked should be at work himself. Then she realized Jericho might have good news about her dad.

  She bounced from her chair and ran through the maze of boxes in the storage room and yanked open the door.

  Jericho stood before her wearing jeans, a plaid work shirt and a leather jacket. His hair had been cut and was now too short to be tossed by the wind that raced down the corridor created by the backs of the buildings of Main and Second streets. His green eyes were wary, cautious, but he looked so sexily male that Rayne caught her breath.

  Before she could stop herself, she said, “You don’t have good news.”

  “I don’t have any news.” He waved a brown paper bag. “I brought coffee and doughnuts because I have to ask a favor.”

  It stung that she was so desperate, and her pride swelled defensively. “You don’t have to bribe me with food.”

  “No. But it never hurts to be in a person’s good graces when you ask for permission to look through her dad’s office.”

  Her mouth fell open slightly.

  “You and I realized yesterday that your dad had carefully planned his disappearance and that he’s probably using an alias. So our only recourse now is to hope he left something behind in his office. Something that will give us a clue about where he went or what name he’s using.”

  After the way they had left things the night before, Rayne had thought Jericho was done investigating. But he’d never actually said he was through, only that her dad might not be found. She didn’t know whether to be relieved he had returned or depressed because looking through her dad’s office was a fool’s errand, but she wasn’t going to tell him no.

  “Come in.”

  She moved away from the door and Jericho stepped inside. “You don’t sound very enthused.”

  Leading him to the main room, Rayne said, “You also mentioned yesterday that my dad probably doesn’t want to be found. He might have his loan shark paid off, but he left behind the credit card debt and a failing business.”

  “He also left you behind.”

  Ignoring the pain in her heart, Rayne flippantly said, “Yeah, he sure did, and rather easily.”

  “You know,” Jericho said, setting the brown paper bag on the desk across the aisle from hers. “We’ve been making a lot of assumptions about your dad because that’s what investigators do. But one wrong conclusion can spiral until we’re going so far in the wrong direction we’re nowhere near the truth. So though it’s okay for us to realize that your dad may not want to be found in order that we don’t get our hopes up too high, we still have to work with what we have.”

  “A credit card debt and a failing business.”

  “No, we have fear of a loan shark and a daughter he was trying to protect.”

  “Protect?”

  “Sure, he put his house in your name to assure that he didn’t leave you out in the cold. A man doesn’t protect a daughter he wants to lose. We can’t dismiss the possibility that he wants to come home, but he thinks he can’t. That makes it more important than ever that we find him.”

  Feeling her spirits brighten, Rayne smiled. “I’d like to think that.”

  “Good. Eat this.”

  She glanced down at the chocolate doughnut he was handing her.

  “Chocolate stimulates production of endorphins. I want you happy so that if I find something I need to ask you about you’ll be thinking positively.”

  She laughed.

  Jericho laughed, too.

  But when they stopped laughing and she caught his gaze, the mood shifted. Staring into his eyes, she felt like the adult version of herself standing face-to-face with the adult version of the rebel she had so loved when he was just out of high school, bumming around, thumbing his nose at authority by refusing to go to college. The dynamic of their conversation had changed too quickly for him to control his reaction and she saw something in his eyes that she’d never thought she’d see back then. He found her attractive.

  Attractive? In her blue jeans and bulky sweater? With her hair in a ponytail and her big glasses always falling off her nose?

  She didn’t think so.

  Until she looked into his eyes again and there it was, as plain as day. Attraction. Her skin became hot and prickly. His breathing shifted. The color of his eyes sharpened. Difficult as it was for Rayne to fathom, they had chemistry.

  He cleared his throat and turned away, reaching for the second cup of coffee he’d set on the desk. “This is yours, too.”

  She smiled. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He waited a heartbeat then he said, “Do you want to come into your dad’s office with me while I search or would you rather wait out here?”

  She nearly told him she wanted to be with him as he rummaged around in her dad’s desk and closets, but just as quickly she stopped herself. The idea of them having some sort of chemistry was too new to her, and with the way her emotions had been stretched to the limits lately, she couldn’t risk that she’d say or do something totally foolish.

  She caught his gaze again. “You go.”

  Jericho nodded and walked into Rayne’s dad’s office. As with everything else at the newspaper, the little room was crowded and cramped. Papers were stacked everywhere. Copies of magazine and newspaper articles had been clipped and sat in a bin by the big metal desk. Dust clung to the metal lamp bowed over the desk blotter. A knotted cord bulged from the phone.

  Jericho sat on the wooden captain’s chair behind the desk and it creaked. He shook his head. This did not feel right. Well, actually, that wasn’t true, either. The office “felt” exactly the way he would presume the office of a man who had escaped would feel. There was an air of desperation in the room. Unfinished work sat everywhere. The phone was outdated, the desk old, the chair hard and unyielding. With surroundings as uncomfortable as these, Jericho could easily understand why Mark Fegan had no compunction about leaving.

  Rather than flip on a desk lamp, Jericho rose and opened the blinds on the side-by-side windows behind the desk. Dust burst from the slats of the blind as they separated and danced in the incoming light. Stifling a cough, he batted it away, then took the seat again.

  Opening the drawer on the lower right side of the desk, he heard Rayne talking on the phone. Polite and professional, she reminded the person she had called that he owed her money. Jericho stopped the movement of the squeaky drawer, listening to her plea. She didn’t come across as desperate or even needy. She sounded like a business owner asking for payment of an overdue account, even as she tried to wheedle a new ad sale. By the way she said goodbye, Jericho knew she didn’t believe she’d been successful on either score.

  He took a quiet breath and returned his attention to the desk drawer. After the moment they’d had in Rayne’s office, he knew it wasn’t wise to be around her so much. But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t turn away a person who was struggling. He knew what it was like to be alone and hungry.

  Rifling through the contents of the drawer, he reminded himself that her finances weren’t his concern and neither were her personal battles. Even if the town lost its little newspaper, that wasn’t his worry, either. And if he didn’t watch himself, he was going to get himself into trouble.

  He picked up a tape recorder he found buried under two file folders, rewound the tape and listened to Mark Fegan dictating what sounded like a to-do list. He turned it off and set it on the desk so he could pull the pad and pen from his shirt pocket, then he turned it on again and wrote the list as Mark dictated it.

  All of the items were instructions he would be giving to different members of his staff, such as creating ads and following up on stories. Though nothing seemed noteworthy or connected to Mark’s disappearance, Jericho returned the tablet to his shirt pocket. He would more closely study the list later.

  Trying to focus on the contents of the drawer, Jericho’s attention was again caught by Rayne’s voice.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s me.”
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  He straightened in his seat.

  “I know it’s been a long time since I called,” she continued, sounding as if she were leaving a message on an answering machine, “but I’ve been kind of busy. Especially since Dad left two weeks ago. He wrote a note, but didn’t say where he was going and I was just wondering if he’d contacted you.” She paused. “If he has, would you give me a call? My number is…” She recited her number and Jericho leaned back in his chair, once again feeling very odd.

  Years ago, when Jericho had made his escape from Calhoun Corners, he’d left his family. They hadn’t deserted him. At the very point in his life when he had all of his roaming out of his system, his dad had called him and asked him to come home. He had even given him a job.

  Conversely, Rayne’s mom hadn’t wanted her. She made no bones about it. She made no excuses, save to say that some women weren’t cut out to be mothers. She left her daughter with a dad who loved her, but her dad had never remarried, so Rayne had no siblings. At least none that Jericho knew of. She only had her dad. Was it any wonder that when her dad lead her down a path she followed?

  Jericho shook his head, telling himself that her personal problems weren’t his concern, but a little voice inside his head disagreed. His family might have very good reason to mistrust Rayne, but his secret crush on her after the party in Baltimore had sustained him through some ugly times. Now here she sat in the worst position of her life and he had the knowledge that could probably help her. If he were the kind to believe in fate, then he would almost have to assume she was the reason he had been brought home.

  It might sound stupid. It might even sound egotistical, but no matter how many times or ways he tried to argue himself out of helping her, he felt called to help her and he refused to think it was because he wanted to sleep with her.

  Although he did. He really did. Any man who had seen her with all that floating blond hair, wearing a red dress that fit like a glove, would want to sleep with her. But that made his fantasy irrelevant. The flesh-and-blood woman he felt called to help wasn’t the woman he remembered from all those years ago. If finding Mark Fegan seemed like his destiny or a duty, it was for reasons other than his foolish crush.