by Rachel Lee
She felt a welcome stiffening of her spine as she put away the leftovers, including two big stacks of fresh tortillas, and washed the pans. If she was going to work on breaking down her walls with men, Austin was the last man on earth she ought to try it with.
He had secrets upon secrets. He might not even be sure who he really was any longer. Gage had sort of warned her, hadn’t he, with that stuff about finding the person he’d left behind. Well, Austin would never be who he used to be. Some things changed a person forever, as well she knew. He certainly hadn’t had time to settle on the man he’d become.
He’d admitted that he didn’t trust anyone anymore, and she wondered if his distrust included himself. It might. Six years undercover had probably taught him some things about himself that he didn’t like. She couldn’t imagine it wouldn’t. Now he had to deal with that along with everything else.
In short, the guy was a mess. Gage had warned her. So why the hell had she begun to lie awake at night fantasizing about him? It hadn’t happened right away, but at some point in the past couple of days, the initial attraction she had felt then squashed had returned big-time.
But maybe that was because he was safe in a way. He wasn’t going to be here for long, he’d expressed no interest in her, other than an occasional look quickly turned away that she couldn’t mistake even in her inexperience. So, yes, he’d evinced small moments of attraction to her, purely physical, but that was meaningless. She gave him credit for not acting on them.
Which left her exactly where? Indulging in fantasies as she lay in her lonely bed at night, fantasies that probably bore no resemblance to reality because she’d never even kissed a man, let alone gone any further.
Then she had a really ugly thought about herself. This whole tortilla thing. Had she done it to be neighborly or because she wanted his attention?
If she wanted his attention, was it only because he’d be gone in a relatively short time? Was she dancing close to the fire because she felt reasonably certain she couldn’t get burned?
Was she using him?
She sat on the edge of the bed, surrounded by her comforting projects, and tried to figure herself out. Could she really be trying to batter down an old wall without regard to what that might do to him? Because he was pretty much in an emotional blender himself.
A wave of self-loathing rose in her. There were a lot of things she didn’t like about herself, but now she had a new item to add to the list. She didn’t like the way she was cowering from much of life. She knew she was a prisoner of her own fears, and it didn’t make her very proud of herself.
In fact, sometimes it disgusted her, but not even disgust was enough to get her over the hump. Over time she had come to trust a small circle of men, like the sheriff and a number of others. Men she’d interacted with frequently for years. She could talk to them, share coffee with them, even invite them in once in a while as she had with Gage.
She was comfortable in this town, or comfortable enough, because the faces had become familiar over the years, but she’d let them just so close and no further. She only ever entirely relaxed with women.
It was a mental and emotional prison that not even a few years of therapy had been able to banish. Honestly, if she had seen Austin walking down the street before Gage had introduced him, she would have turned and walked the other way.
She didn’t like being this way. It just was, and she had adapted as best she could.
So what was with the tortillas? She’d brought them home from Melinda’s bakery when she could have just left a note for Austin that Melinda had made them. He could have picked them up tomorrow.
But no, she had decided to be nice, mainly to Melinda, who had gone out of her way to make them and deserved to sell them promptly. She’d brought them home, intending to put them in the refrigerator and leave a note for Austin.
Instead, for some unknown reason, she’d decided to try cooking some of them. Had she been hoping Austin would show up? She certainly hadn’t expected it to turn into him cooking dinner and the two of them eating together.
All her reasoning at the time had seemed perfectly innocent, but it had ended in the most intimate time she had spent with a man ever: the two of them sharing a meal.
Maybe the most surprising part was that she hadn’t run when he started cooking, rude or not. She wasn’t incapable of it, although she was slowly getting better about it.
Still. She looked at herself and wondered if all her superficial reasons had been just that, superficial. There was no question that her subconscious controlled a huge part of her life. It made her afraid of strange men. It controlled her level of comfort or discomfort with people.
So how did she know what she’d really been thinking when she asked Melinda to make those tortillas, or when she had picked them up?
If it had been purely friendly, then she’d leaped a big hurdle and should be proud. If some other reason had been involved...
She sighed, her head whirling, and reached for her knitting. Was she ever going to get herself sorted out?
She’d been doing without many of the things that were part of a normal life ever since her mother’s killing. Some of that was understandable, but after eighteen years, shouldn’t she have come further?
And if she was trying to go further now, why had she picked the one man who posed the most threat in every possible way. She didn’t really know him, and he’d leave before long, which was a dangerous emotional game to play.
But maybe that was part of what she was doing here: trying to prove that she had good reason to avoid men, and any involvement with them. To prove that she was right to stay hunkered in her safe little hole.
It wouldn’t surprise her. Not at all. But she had no business drawing Austin into whatever she was trying to do here. He had enough problems of his own.
She resolved then and there to firmly reestablish the distance between them. They’d both be better off.
Chapter 4
The Viking princess was driving him nuts. The thought amused Austin, but only mildly. After the tortilla thing, she’d pulled back into her tower and had taken to avoiding him as if he had the plague.
None of it made sense to him. He got her fear of men, which had led him to stay away as much as possible, then she’d reached out to him in the most traditional way imaginable: through his stomach. With food.
And now she was gone again. She worked long hours at her shop, but she seemed to have lengthened them. Unlike her baker friend, Melinda, she didn’t have to get to work before the sun rose. But as soon as he stirred in the mornings, he heard her leave. By the time he came back in the evening, she was already hiding in her bedroom.
He didn’t mind the long hours alone, walking around town and the countryside. They were settling him. But it was bothering him to be bothering Corey so much.
It also troubled him that he kept wanting to see her because she appealed to him so strongly. Physically, mentally, even emotionally, everything about her attracted him.
She was certainly beautiful. But apart from that, she was in desperate need of something. So, was he stupid enough to imagine that he could rescue her? No, he didn’t think he was that much of a fool. The kind of rescuing she needed was beyond him.
But that dinner...that bugged him. For a little while it seemed as if her fear had been gone. As if she’d been enjoying herself with him. Why should that frighten her back into hiding?
He tried to think of what he might have done wrong, but he couldn’t imagine. She’d seemed willing enough to let him take over her kitchen. Not even the faintest sign of protest. She’d enjoyed the meal. She’d laughed and she’d smiled.
So what the hell?
Mahoney had a room over his bar he was willing to rent. If he could stand the constant odor of stale beer and the noise at night, anyway. So it would be
possible to move out.
But he resisted the idea, mainly because he felt that whether or not Corey really wanted him in her house, she’d feel hurt or offended if he moved across town. He wouldn’t be able to blame her for that. Nice place, kitchen privileges, reasonable rent...sacrificed to move above Mahoney’s? Anyone would be offended.
But something had sure set her off. He wished she would talk to him, but she was staying so far away they’d need semaphore flags to communicate.
He still found her desirable, but he was long past the stage of life when that was a primary driver for him. Sex was fun, but laden with problems if you and your partner weren’t on the same wavelength. Clearly, he and Corey weren’t even at the same end of the spectrum.
He shook his head a little. Night was falling, he considered stopping at Mahoney’s to play darts and have a few, but then decided he wasn’t in the mood for it tonight. Nor was he in the mood for the backroom poker game.
Sometimes, he thought wryly, he wasn’t too fond of the company of men, either.
He turned the corner and almost froze as he saw Corey at her front door. She was juggling a stack of mail and her keys. Oh, well, he thought, and closed the distance, anyway.
She started at the sound of his approaching footsteps, and some of the mail slipped from her grasp.
“Just me,” he called out. “Let me help with that.”
“Thanks.” Her voice sounded a little wobbly.
Concern instantly filled him, and he quickened his step, trotting up onto the porch. “Are you okay?”
“Fine...” But her voice sounded thin. Then she gave an uneasy laugh. “I just got unnerved.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t you.”
Curious, but keeping his questions to himself, he gathered the fallen mail from the porch planks while she unlocked the door. He followed her inside and when she dropped her armload on the hall table, he followed suit before he closed the door behind him.
Then he looked at her in the hall light. Her face was pinched and tight. “What’s going on?” His tone made it clear that he wasn’t going to let her get away without answering.
Her blue eyes finally settled on him and he couldn’t mistake the worry in them.
“Corey?”
“It’s probably a joke,” she said.
“What?”
She picked up an envelope from the stack and passed it to him. Then she headed to the kitchen and he heard her making coffee.
He checked the envelope, noting that it had no return address but had been mailed locally. Then he stuck his fingers in and pulled out a small rectangle of paper.
I know about your mother.
If that was a joke, he thought, it was an unkind one. In fact, it was cruel. Disturbed, he followed Corey into the kitchen. The coffeemaker was already brewing and she was sitting at the table with her head in her hands.
“Are you okay?” he asked, not knowing what else to ask that wouldn’t sound even stupider. He needed her to talk, explain. Say something.
“Yes. No. I—” She broke off and raised her head, looking absolutely haunted. “It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not funny at all. Not even a little bit. In fact, it’s cruel. I can’t imagine why anyone would do this.”
Her lips trembled. She covered them with her hand, then said in a muffled voice, “I thought the first one was a joke.”
“There’s another one?” He felt everything inside him skip into high alert. “Do you still have it?”
“Drawer in the hall table.”
He went to get it and found it immediately on top of some other papers. It looked exactly like the one that had just come, but he could see why she had thought it a joke. Alone, it would have seemed innocuous. Joined with the second note, it became anything but.
He carried both into the kitchen. “How long ago did you get this first one?”
“The day you moved in. I put it in the drawer just after Gage brought you here.”
He put the letters facedown on the table, and without waiting for the pot to finish brewing, he poured her a cup.
“Here.”
“Thank you.” She cradled it without drinking, though, as if she needed to warm her hands. He sat across from her and turned the notes and envelopes over. “I should just burn them,” she said.
“No, don’t.”
“Why not? They don’t really say anything. Whoever the writer is just wants to upset me. I don’t know why, but that’s all they do. They bother me. It’s not a threat.”
He hesitated, reluctant to worry her more, finally settling on something relatively innocuous. “They’re like puzzle pieces. If you get any more, we may figure out what this is about. Or who is doing it.”
She shuddered and finally sipped some coffee. “I don’t know if I want to know who’s doing it.”
“I think you do,” he said firmly, wishing he had more to offer her. Given the way she looked right now, he’d have loved to give her a hug and tell her everything would be all right. It might be a lie, but the hug might comfort her. If he weren’t a man, anyway.
“Why?” she asked, showing some of her normal spark.
“Because they’re being mailed here in town.”
He watched understanding wash over her. Her pale skin paled even more as she realized her castle was no longer a safe place. “It’s got to be a joke,” she whispered.
“I sure as hell hope so. But anybody who’d think this is funny deserves a good lesson.”
“We’ll never know,” she insisted quietly. “No return address. Fingerprints? If any are left, do you think the sheriff is going to waste time on something like this?”
Probably not, he thought as he studied the notes and envelopes. She was right, there was no threat here. It could just be a sick joke. This might be the end of it, too.
He looked at the notes side by side. Ink-jet printer, unrevealing. Cheap paper. Cheap self-sealing envelopes that you could buy just about anywhere. Self-adhesive stamps. Lifting the envelopes, he sniffed them, smelled only paper and glue. The notes themselves were no better. Paper often picked up odors but this offered none.
Which, he supposed, could be a clue itself. A useless clue at this point. No aftershave, no tobacco odor, no scent of marijuana, not even a cooking aroma. Then he sniffed the newest note again, and caught a faint whiff of something.
“Corey? Is there a smell on this paper?”
Surprise widened her eyes, but she took it from him and brought it to her nose. “No. Why...” Then she paused and sniffed again. “Beer?” she asked finally. “But it’s so faint I’m not sure.”
“Me, neither.” A bazillion people drank beer. Useless. When she handed the paper back to him, he tucked each note in its proper envelope. “It was worth a shot,” he said more to himself than her.
“It’s just somebody’s idea of a sick joke,” she said again. “Probably some teenager with a warped sense of humor who just heard about what happened to my mother. It’s been a long time, Austin. There’s no reason anyone else would bring it up now. Anything people wanted to say about the murder was said a long time ago. It’s practically forgotten.”
Except by one person, he thought, looking at the envelopes again. No, make that two. How likely was it that some teen would be hearing the story at this late date? Eighteen years was a long time. Corey was right about that. Collective amnesia had probably set in among the people of this town quite a while ago. Yesterday’s news, and all that.
Eighteen years didn’t even add up to any kind of anniversary to be recalled, unless someone remembered it every year. The only person likely to mark that anniversary annually was Corey herself.
His apprehension should have been easy to dismiss unless something else happened, but some instinct wou
ldn’t allow him to let go of it. Too many years of living a paranoid life? Maybe.
He studied Corey again, deciding he didn’t at all like the way she looked. He had to do something to lift that cloud from her face, but the distrust that lay between them, especially on her side, wasn’t going to make it easy.
That part of him that had been so carefully nurtured all these years undercover reminded him that she could have sent these notes to herself. To what end, he wasn’t sure. Looking at the postmarks, he could clearly see that the first one had been sent two days before he arrived in town. So it couldn’t be to get his attention.
Or the sheriff’s, it seemed, because if it were, she’d be on the phone to him right now. So what purpose would she have in doing this herself?
He hated thinking this way, but this kind of thinking had kept him out of a wringer more than once. Very little was what it seemed, including Viking princesses. Everyone had a public face and a private face. He knew that as well as anyone, and he knew very little about this woman. How could he, when she avoided him?
All right, then. He didn’t know what was going on here. He had no idea if this woman had the kinds of problems that would cause her to seek attention this way. No idea why anyone else should want to upset her.
Lacking information wasn’t new to him, but it never made him feel comfortable. So he’d hang and watch, and see what developed, if anything. In the meantime, he could do himself some good just by finding a way to try to bring her smile back.
“Quesadillas,” he said.
She stopped staring at the envelopes long enough to give him a confused look. “What?”
“I’m going to make some quesadillas. They’re easy. And it just so happens that my favorite baker sold me some very nice tortillas this morning. They’re in the fridge.”
She started to rise, reaching for her coffee cup. “I’ll get out of your way.”