by Tee O'Fallon
“Okay, okay,” Jesse conceded. “But you might as well quit fightin’ it. She always did win every argument.”
“See?” Eric held his arm in Jesse’s direction. “Even he thinks we’re arguing.”
“I give up.” She threw her hands in the air. “Let’s compromise. How about we spend a few minutes in that little shop on the corner we passed on the way in? You might find it liberating to do something outside your comfort zone.” The man really was too rigid and needed to loosen up. Even if he didn’t know it yet.
Eric’s chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath then let it out. “Fine.”
Ignoring his churlish tone, she playfully punched his bicep, which was rock hard. “Don’t be such a baby. Who knows? You might actually like antiquing.”
“Doubtful,” he muttered behind her back as she started toward the building that was actually a small Victorian house, painted light blue and with purple shutters the color of violets.
Doubtful was a word he used a lot. A sign of negativity and a sure sign the man was in dire need of a yoga intervention. Yoga always left her with positive energy flowing through her body. Maybe it could do the same for him.
Something I can help him with while I’m here.
A sign on the shop window said Going Out of Business. Everything on Sale. She tugged on the wood-framed glass door and was rewarded with the delicate tinkle of tiny brass bells. Jesse started past her when Eric grabbed his shoulder, stopping him.
“Ladies, first,” Eric admonished.
“Sorry.” Her brother hung his head a few degrees, then stepped aside for her to enter first.
She suppressed her laughter, appreciating not only Eric’s chivalry but his willingness to teach her little brother basic courtesy. He would certainly never get that from their stepfather. The mere thought of that man again threatened to drag her mood back into the mud, but she took one look around the shop and all thoughts of him vanished.
Passing a round oak table laden with pretty colored soaps and lotions, she inhaled scents of roses, lilac, lavender, and lily of the valley.
A sign on the far wall got her blood pumping faster. Stangl. “I knew it.” She hitched her bag higher to avoid knocking anything off the shelves that were crammed with the beautiful dishware. The few pieces in her cupboard she’d gotten on sale because they were either chipped or cracked, but she loved them nonetheless.
“Oh, my. Look at all the Stangl.” Her heart beat faster. It was a joy to see so much of it and so many patterns in one place. Blue cornflowers. Yellow lilies. Pink thistle… Every pattern was stunning, and she vowed one day—when her business raked in enough cash—she’d buy an entire set.
Eric’s shoulder bumped hers. “They’re not bad.”
“Told ya.” She batted her eyelashes and was rewarded with the subtle narrowing of his eyes, but she took it as a good sign.
Next, she moved on to a brightly colored collection of beaded silk scarves hanging from several hooks on the wall. “Ohhh,” she breathed, sliding her fingers along a particularly eye-catching pink, purple, and mauve scarf. “I love beaded scarves.” Eric’s huge hand plucked the scarf from the hook and draped it over her shoulders.
“It looks good on you.” He tugged the edges of the scarf around her neck, and she had to agree.
“I’m sure I can’t afford it.” Sure enough, when she checked the price tag, even on sale it was far more than she could afford. When she tried slipping it from her shoulders, the dangly beaded fringe caught in her curls. “Ouch.”
Eric’s deep voice came from behind her. “I’ve got this.”
That phrase—I’ve got this—she’d quickly come to learn was used by all the guys in Nick’s K-9 circles. It was their way of taking charge of a situation, no matter how small, and making it better. Making it right.
With the gentlest touch, he began extricating the scarf from her hair, and as he did, his fingers repeatedly grazed her cheek and neck. His brows bunched in consternation as he finished untangling her hair. He was so close, she breathed in his freshly showered scent. Soap, shampoo, and a hint of woodsy aftershave. When his hands stilled, she looked up to see him watching her intently, a muscle in his jaw working. Heat flooded her face.
“Get. A. Room.” Jesse covered his eyes as he walked past. “I’ll wait outside.”
Ignoring her brother’s snark, Eric tugged on the scarf until it slipped free, then turned and headed for the cash register.
“Wait.” She hustled after him, but by the time she caught up, he’d already shoved his credit card into the machine. The elderly woman behind the counter neatly folded the scarf and slipped it into a bag. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” He signed the charge slip then handed her the bag containing the scarf. “Let’s go. I’m hungry.” He gave her an odd look then practically charged down the aisle and out the door. From his rigid posture, she could swear he was angry.
Men. Maybe one day she’d develop a better grasp of what testosterone did to the male brain. Today isn’t the day.
“Thank you,” she said to the woman. The doorbells tinkled again as other customers entered the shop. “Your store is so beautiful. I could spend all day in here.”
“I could, too.” She looked lovingly around her shop. “I’ve been here for over twenty years.”
“Forgive me if I’m being too nosy, but why are you going out of business?” Tess asked.
She sighed. “I’ve been thinking it’s time to retire, so when the owner of this building put the place up for sale, I took it as a sign. There are no guarantees the new owner would want to rent out the bottom floor anyway.”
Tess took one last look around. “It’s lovely.”
The woman smiled. “Thank you, dear.”
She went outside to find Eric checking his phone and Jesse with an impatient look on his face.
“Can we eat now?” her brother asked.
“Yes.” This time, it was her turn to roll her eyes. “We can eat.”
They stopped at a brewery for an early lunch, and from there to a superstore for extra clothes and toiletries she and Jesse would need, and some kind of food she could eat that hadn’t been packaged in a slaughterhouse.
Eric pushed the cart to the register line and began unloading. She smiled as he hastily tossed her boxes of tofu and herbal tea on the conveyor belt, as if touching them would give him a bad case of the cooties. He’d been only slightly less horrified by the cans of beans and lentils she’d added to the cart. She didn’t know who was more of a carnivore, Eric or his dog.
When it was time to pay the cashier, she pulled a stack of cash from her wallet. Granted, it wasn’t a thick stack, but it was enough.
Before she could hand over her money, Eric shoved his credit card into the reader. “I’ve got this.”
“No, you don’t got this.” She tried yanking his card out before the chip reader did its thing, but his hand shot out, closing over hers. His grip was firm, yet gentle, and she wished his fingers didn’t feel so good closed around hers. “We aren’t your charity case,” she insisted, not wanting to be beholden to him. By letting them stay with him, he was being generous enough as it was.
“Just go with it, Tess.” Her brother nodded to the line of customers behind them. “People are waitin’.”
Eric strategically positioned his big body between her and the chip reader. “Humor me.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” she muttered, shoving the cash back in her wallet. “Nick says that all the time, and I hate it when he does.”
“Where do you think he got it from?” Eric smirked then retrieved his card.
Again. Men.
Her and Eric’s personalities were as different as night and day. It was just as well he’d never asked her out while they’d both lived in Springfield. They would have killed each other before getting through their first date. If that weren’t enough reason to give him a wide berth, there was always the inescapable fact that he was
an ATF agent. Just because he’d bought her a beautiful silk scarf she couldn’t afford and enough groceries to feed a small army was insufficient grounds to forget that.
She went first out the automatic door, holding her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. She looked in the direction of Eric’s Tahoe then froze. Every muscle in her body tensed. It’s not possible. It had to be the sun playing tricks on her.
Halfway down the row of cars, a man holding a plastic shopping bag pulled open the door of a dark blue SUV and got in. The door closed, and the tinted windows prevented her from seeing inside.
Oh no. No, no, no, no!
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her shoulder bag, and her heart pounded faster. She had to be mistaken. Please, let me be wrong.
The SUV backed out of the parking space. A New Jersey license plate, not Alabama. Then again, he could have rented a vehicle, or stolen one, or purchased one locally so the Alabama plate wouldn’t stand out.
It can’t be him. This man was too old, but it did kind of look like him. Not her stepfather, but someone just as bad in his own sick, twisted way.
Mark Pritchard.
Her eighteenth birthday… Horrific images of what her life would have been like if she’d stayed in Alabama flashed before her eyes. The roasted veggie wrap she’d enjoyed so much at the brewery roiled in her stomach, and she had to swallow repeatedly to keep from throwing up.
Not wanting to give whoever was in that vehicle a better look at her, she spun and plowed headfirst into Eric.
He clasped her upper arms. “You okay? You’re as white as a sheet.”
Which was saying something, considering she had a typical redhead’s pale complexion to begin with.
“You really are,” Jesse commented as he came to stand beside them.
“I’m fine. I think I ate too much.” For effect, she placed her hand on her abdomen, hoping to draw his focus away from the parking lot behind her. It wasn’t working.
He stood motionless, his gaze methodically sweeping the area where the dark blue SUV had been. She really needed to stop wearing her emotions on her sleeve, because nothing got past this guy. “Please, can we just go home?”
“Yeah. Sure.” His eyes softened, although there was a slight glint of something else there as well.
Suspicion.
As Eric rolled the shopping cart onto the curb, she caught Jesse mouthing the words, What’s wrong? Making sure Eric wasn’t watching her, she gave a brief shake of her head, sending him a look of warning. When they were alone, she’d fill him in on whom she’d seen. Correction, whom she thought she’d seen. Whoever it was, he’d appeared to be shopping. Not following them.
Her heart sank. She’d been a naive idiot to let herself enjoy even a single moment of her time in Flemington. If she’d been paying closer attention to her surroundings, she might have been able to determine without question whether the man she’d seen was a real threat to her and Jesse.
What she needed to focus on was keeping her guard up. If she lowered it again for even a moment, she could miss something critical. Something that might get her and Jesse dead.
Chapter Nine
From the backyard, Eric watched through the glass door as Tess prepared dinner at the cooktop. If anyone could actually call that dinner. Tofu veggie sauté.
His balls began to shrivel just thinking about eating that meatless concoction of plant matter. There wasn’t enough melted cheese in the world to make it palatable. Even Tiger would turn his nose at it.
When he’d pulled a couple of steaks from the refrigerator so he and Jesse wouldn’t starve to death, the look she’d given him was as subtle as a nuclear bomb. If he’d been Superman, the Kryptonite shooting from her green eyes would have melted every one of his internal organs. Starting with my balls.
“Zit.” When Tiger sat obediently at Jesse’s feet, the kid grinned then referred to the Dutch cheat sheet Eric had given him. “Af.” Tiger lay down.
“Good job.” He was pleased at how quickly Jesse was picking up all the K-9 commands. Tess’s brother really did have a way with dogs.
“Staan.” Tiger leaped to his feet, sunlight striking the varied shades of brown stripes on his flanks, making them stand out with even more definition.
When Jesse flipped the card over, Tiger’s head snapped up, following every motion of the kid’s hand. Considering Jesse had, according to Tess, a real prick for a stepfather, Eric thought he was a good kid. He’d enjoyed going into town with Tess and Jesse, and he was getting a kick out of teaching him Tiger’s routines, something that surprised him.
Blaring music made him turn to find Tess doing a little dance as she stirred something on the cooktop. For someone so tiny, she was as graceful as a gazelle, her body swaying gently to the rhythm. On anyone else, all those vibrant colors, crystals, and clacking beads might have seemed chaotic or over the top. But they suited Tess’s personality perfectly.
She’d tied the silk scarf he’d bought her around her waist. He didn’t know why, but he’d wanted her to have it for no other reason than he knew it would make her happy.
Fuck. What was wrong with him?
He’d bought women gifts before, but always on birthdays, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day…all perfunctory, boyfriend-required, gift-giving days. Unlike today.
Buying that scarf for Tess had actually made him happy, which was freaky and scary as hell. Aside from being Homo sapiens, they had exactly zilch in common and never saw eye-to-eye on anything. Tess would undoubtedly smack him for saying it, but “arguing” with her was a hell of a lot more fun than “conversing” with anyone else he’d dated.
Not that they were dating.
She turned to look out the door, and he caught the surprised look in her eyes. For several seconds they stared at each other. The spoon in her hand dripped something onto the floor, and he snorted as she jumped away from the falling dribble of tofu-tinged whatever.
“Hey, Eric!” Jesse shouted. “You gonna quit droolin’ over my sister and show me how Tiger sniffs things out?”
He glared at the kid, annoyed that he’d been caught making eyes at Tess, something he really needed to quit doing.
Am I really so obvious?
Yeah, he was. There was something about her, and other men picked up on it, too. All those times at the Dog Park Café, and today at the brewery, he’d had more than one urge to mash his fist in another man’s face as they’d glued their eyes to her perfectly shaped backside or ogled the way her breasts filled out that damned green tank top. She was a siren, silently calling to him, luring him in. Didn’t matter that he was convinced she was hiding something.
“Give me a sec.” He pulled out his phone and shot Dayne a quick text to meet him at the office tomorrow to go over the ops plan. While they were there, he’d run a quick background check on Tess.
He hated the idea, but her behavior was triggering too many red flags, and he was going far enough out on a very shaky professional limb by letting her and Jesse stay with him. If only he weren’t so damned attracted to her.
The quick background he’d run on Jesse after arresting the kid was practically worthless. No priors, no address history, and no known associates. Conceivable for an eighteen-year-old, but considering she was about ten years older, Tess’s history should contain more information.
No matter how much he liked her, letting his personal feelings distract him to the point where his dick was calling the shots over his brain was just plain stupid. He knew virtually nothing about her past. Until yesterday, he hadn’t even known she was from Alabama. Jesse’s accent was clearly Deep South, but Tess had no identifiable accent.
He opened the heavy plastic case he’d brought out containing experimental K-9 training scents his agency was testing, chose ammonium nitrate, then scented one of the rolled towels in the kit and shoved it into a stash tube. While Jesse kept Tiger busy, he hid the tube in one of half a dozen cinder blocks he’d strategically placed around the yard for training
purposes.
“Hier,” Eric said. Tiger charged to his side and sat. “Revieren.” He pointed to one of the cinder blocks, and Tiger charged forward.
His dog processed the odors surrounding each block Eric pointed to. At the very last one, Tiger sat and stared at the cinder block. “Good boy.” He patted Tiger’s side then extracted the tube from the block and handed it to Jesse. He gave his dog a chicken-flavored treat he’d stashed in his pocket.
“That was awesome!” Jesse eyes were wide with excitement as he pulled the towel from the tube. “What’s on this?”
“Ammonium nitrate.”
The kid’s smile faded as Eric had known it would. They both needed a reality check.
Jesse handed the tube to Eric then knelt at Tiger’s side, resting his arm on the dog’s back. “Am I goin’ to jail after the controlled delivery?”
“Not if I can help it,” he answered honestly, wishing he could give the kid more assurances. Knowing he couldn’t. “Do your best on Monday and it’ll go a long way with the prosecutor and give me more to bargain with.”
Jesse stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts. “Why are you doin’ this? I mean, lettin’ us stay here with you and bein’ so nice to us?”
“I want to nail the people putting this bomb together. And your sister is a friend of mine.” Both aspects of his response were true. She would never be anything else to him, but he was sure they were friends.
Who was he kidding? Friends don’t drool over friends.
Jesse cocked his head. “Are you screwin’ my sister?”
His jaw tightened. It was obvious the kid was protective of Tess, but hearing him talk about her that way pissed him off. “Don’t ever be disrespectful of her like that. Not that it’s any of your business, the answer is no. We’re friends, nothing more.” Not that he’d been thinking about it, but if he slept with her, she’d want more than he was capable of giving. Unlike every other woman he’d dated and taken to bed, he couldn’t see doing that with Tess and then walking away. The only safe option in Springfield had been to keep his distance and not go there at all. The same held true now. Maybe more so.