by Sarah Hegger
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Gabby’s cheeks went a dusky pink color.
Bella shook her head. Any more coffee and her back teeth would float. “Actually, I need a bathroom.”
“Oh, right.” Gabby rose. She had that sort of unconscious grace some women did. No doubt about it, pathologically private Deputy Gabby was a knockout. “There’s one back here.”
“Thank you.” Thank God her legs had stopped shaking; she walked mostly straight to the bathroom.
“It’s not you,” Gabby called after her. Shrugging, she stuffed her hands in her pockets. “It’s just . . . I’m out of practice. With people.”
“That’s a pity.” Bella had the insane urge, one that would no doubt get her face smacked in, to give Gabby a huge hug. “If you ever want to get back in practice . . .”
Gabby nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Okay, good.” She hesitated to push her luck, but what the hell? “Liz and I have this thing going for people who spend Christmas alone. If you don’t have anything . . .” Gabby’s face hardened. “No, sorry, stupid idea, you probably have family here and stuff. Pretend I never said anything. Put it down to shock.”
She finished up in the bathroom, taking the time to do something about her mascara-raccoon eyes.
When she got back, Gabby sat with her hips propped on her desk. “If you’re ready, Sheriff asked me to make sure you got home.”
“He’s gone?” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. By the quick flash of sympathy Gabby gave her, she’d failed.
They walked in silence to Gabby’s cruiser.
“When can I get back into the store?” Christmas was still one of her busiest seasons.
“Tomorrow.” Gabby blipped the locks. “We’ll be all done by then. Sheriff Evans already spoke to Hank. They’re changing your locks this afternoon.”
Some women got rings and romance, others got their locks changed. She had the insane urge to giggle.
“What thing?” Gabby started the car and backed out.
“Huh?”
“The thing with Christmas you mentioned.”
“Oh.” With Gabby, you couldn’t really gauge her thoughts. “It’s this list I found on the internet. Ten things to do if you’re spending Christmas alone.”
Gabby nodded.
Bella took that as encouragement to continue. “One was decorating, and we did that. Well, I did. Liz says if she wants to see where Christmas vomited she can always come over to my place.” She leaned a bit closer to Gabby. “Secretly, I think she loves it.”
Gabby chuckled. Sweet, a little bit raspy, and totally adorable.
“Two was to get out and do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. Liz and I went to singles’ night up at Whispering Pines.” Which was where she’d met Adam. “Actually, that didn’t turn out so well.”
Gabby gave her a sympathetic grimace. Or at least she thought it was a sympathetic grimace. It could also be a how-stupid-are-you grimace. “What’s three? On the list. What’s the third thing?”
“Volunteer.” Which reminded her that she needed to speak to Liz. “We need to find something for us to do together.”
Gabby drove down Main, turned into Eighth, her attention on the road. She flicked her forefinger in response to a driver passing with a wave. They drove through the residential streets, quiet at this time of day with the kids in school.
They pulled up outside Bella’s house.
“Sheriff already checked it out.” Gabby nodded at her house. “Said it was safe for you to go in.”
“Oh.” Bella hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Thanks. And thanks for the ride.”
Liz popped onto her porch and hustled over. Clearly, the Ghost Falls gossip lines had been humming.
“I can volunteer.” Gabby poked her head out the car window. “When you do your volunteer thing, I could tag along. I mean, if I’m not busy.”
“Oh my God.” Liz picked her way over on her high heels. “I heard it from everyone. Are you okay? Did Nate find that fucker and pop a cap in his ass?”
She enveloped Bella in a perfume-soaked hug. So skinny, Bella didn’t want to hug too hard. “I’ m fine and no, they haven’t found him yet. Maybe it’s not even Adam.” Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t likely.
Liz made a raspberry. “It’s him all right.” She glanced around her. “Is it too early to drink wine?”
“Maybe a little.” Still . . . “Nah, it’s four o’clock somewhere in the world.”
* * *
Nate tracked Daniel down at his apartment. Hammering on the door helped keep his anger down to a manageable level.
He had every set of eyes he could call on looking for Adam. The guy couldn’t have gone far. But he’d already checked out of his room at the resort and nobody had seen him. Sooner or later, though, he would have to come up for air, and Nate would be waiting for him when he did.
“What the hell?” Daniel wrenched open the door. His frown dropped when he saw Nate. “How’s Bella?”
“She’s fine.” He pushed into the apartment. What he had to say didn’t need to be yelled out in the hallway for everyone to hear. “My deputy took her home.”
“Good.” Gaze steady but wary, Daniel cocked his head. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“No.” Nate shut the door behind him. “And I want you to stay away from Bella.”
Daniel gaped at him and then gave a small, short laugh. “What?”
“Bella.” Nate ground the words out through his clenched jaw. His hold on his temper had gotten more tenuous as the day wore on. “Stay away from her. She doesn’t need any more shit right now.”
“I took her for coffee, Nate.” Daniel folded his arms. “I did what anybody else would do.”
“Seriously?” Temper spiking dangerously, Nate stepped closer. Did Daniel think he could fool him? Shit, they’d grown up together, gotten into enough shit together for Nate to know what the other man thought. Daniel might have changed, but that gleam in his eyes hadn’t. “I saw you today. And I’m telling you, stay away from Bella.”
As Nate had known he would, Daniel stood his ground. Triumph surged through him. He’d stopped by his house and changed out of his uniform before he went looking for Daniel. His official persona went with the uniform. It was him and Daniel now, and the rage burning a hole right through his brain.
“Just what is Bella to you anyway?” Daniel folded his arms.
If Daniel wanted to go there, Nate was more than ready, and he grabbed Daniel by the shirtfront. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s nothing to you. Nothing.”
“What the hell.” Daniel wrenched free of his hold. His shirt tore. “I’m not going to fight you, Nate.”
“Stay away from her.” Some part of his brain tried to grab control and tell him he was behaving like a complete dick. But the anger was louder.
“Is she yours?” Daniel stepped back, putting the tattered sofa between them.
Yes! The word pounded through his brain. He clamped his jaw shut before it spilled out.
“You need to chill the fuck out.” Daniel’s gaze hardened, but he kept his voice calm. “You came here looking for a fight. What happened? You couldn’t find that Adam guy?”
Nate balled his fists. The rational whisper grew louder. If he’d found Adam, he might not be quite so angry right now. Or at least he’d be venting his anger on the right person. Except what did he plan to do when he found Adam? Pound the hell out of him? Yeah, that would be police brutality.
“I’m not gonna fight you,” Daniel said again. “I’m on parole and I’m not going to screw that up for anyone.”
Nate’s shoulders slumped and he dragged in a deep breath. All day he’d been charging around like a crazed man.
Daniel moved closer. “Come on; you need a drink and I’ll keep you company while you have it.”
“Yeah.” Nate nodded. Th
e anger burned away and left him feeling like a prick. He’d come here determined to pick a fight with a man who couldn’t afford to fight back. Driven by some caveman shit to stake a claim on a woman who wasn’t even his.
He shoved the idea of Bella to the back of his mind. Daniel had asked what she was to him and he didn’t have an answer. Not a clue. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he wished he could yank the crap out of his brain and make sense of it.
Following Daniel out of his apartment, he tried to get his head together. Today, the thing with Bella’s store had hit a nerve. A nerve he’d been covering up for so long, he’d almost forgotten it was still there.
“My last job. In Salt Lake.” Talking never came easy to him, but he owed Daniel this much. “Victim was a woman. It was bad.”
Daniel nodded. “And Bella?”
No way in hell was he going there. “Drop it.”
Daniel smirked. “Sure, I can drop it, but I think the real question is, can you?”
Chapter Twenty
Bella opened the door later that night to a pale Pippa clutching a huge bar of chocolate.
“I’ve never seen you eat chocolate.” Bella swung the door wide.
“Don’t start with me.” Pippa charged in and dropped her coat. Beneath it she wore a pair of beautifully tailored charcoal pants with a cashmere sweater. Pippa always looked great. “The chocolate is for you.” She put her hands on her hips. “And oh my God, Bella. What the hell? Why didn’t you call me?”
“You heard about the store?” She didn’t know why she hadn’t called Pippa. Maybe because the connection to Nate felt a little too close for comfort and Pippa was also married, expecting a baby, and hosted the biggest makeover show on television. It made Bella’s problems seem very small town and insignificant.
“Yes, I heard about the store.” Pippa trailed her into the kitchen. “From Matt. Who heard it from Nate. Are you okay?”
“Yeah; a little shaken but fine.” She put the chocolate on the table and grabbed two glasses. She filled both with milk.
Staring at her over the rim, Pippa drank her milk. “Good, because I’m about to be really pissed at you and I don’t want to yell at someone in crisis.”
“Then I’m most definitely in crisis.”
“Too late.” Pippa clanked her glass down on the table. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I have not.” Had she?
“Yes, you have.” Pippa stuck her chin out at a fighting angle. “I know I’m not around as much as I could be, and Liz is, but we’re friends, Bella. At least I thought we were. I shouldn’t have heard about today from Matt.”
Clutching her glass for fortitude, Bella sat. “I haven’t been deliberately avoiding you, if that helps.”
Pippa narrowed her eyes. “Nope. Doesn’t help at all. What’s going on, Bella?”
“You might want to sit down.” Pippa made her nervous standing there looking like a Valkyrie. “You remember that date I made with Liz to go up to Whispering Pines?” She took a slug of her milk. “Well, I met this guy called Adam.”
Pippa listened as Bella told her all about Adam, the possessiveness and the increasingly erratic behavior. Mad as she was, Pippa didn’t interrupt, and then she said, “That really, really sucks.”
“Yes, it does.” Bella topped up her glass. “But Nate has been a huge help.”
Pippa grabbed her hands and gave them a squeeze. “Tell me you’re being careful?”
“I’m being careful. All the locks here and at the store have been changed. Phone numbers, all that sort of thing.”
“Good,” Pippa said. “Because I might be mad at you for keeping me in the dark, but I love you, and this is all very scary.”
Bella had been putting that thought off all day. Circling around it by keeping busy after Liz left. Still, she found herself peering out the window all the time, double checking her locks, picking up the phone to make sure she could still hear a dial tone. “I keep asking myself what I could have done differently,” she said.
“Nothing,” Pippa said. “You know this isn’t your fault, right, Bella?”
Bella avoided her stare by making circles on the table with her glass. “I suppose, but I just keep going over and over it in my head. There was something, the first time I met him, that felt . . . weird. Not off, but not right either. I told myself I was never going to have a normal dating life if I didn’t at least give him a chance.”
“And that’s right.” Pippa rapped her knuckles on the table. “Look at me.” She waited until Bella complied before she continued. “That’s how normal dating works. Men are like dresses. You have to try them on for size. Some look great on the hanger but don’t look great on you. Others are fine but don’t really do much for you, and others are killer.” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Bad choice of word there, but I think you get what I mean.”
“I do.” Along with avoiding thinking about how shaken she was, Bella had been avoiding thinking about her stupidity. “But when he first sent me all those texts . . . I mean, that’s not right. And then the flowers. Nobody sends flowers like that. I even thought that, and still I went on a date with him.”
Pippa fetched herself some more milk and broke off another piece of chocolate. She popped it into her mouth. “I stayed with a man for about two years more than I should have. We hadn’t had sex for nearly eight months and still it shocked the life out of me when I found out he was cheating.”
“Maybe he was really good at hiding it?” Bella took the piece of chocolate Pippa offered. This was a chocolate kind of conversation. “Even with my long dry spell, eight months with no sex while you were in a relationship had to ring all sorts of bells.”
“You would think.” Pippa grimaced. “I think I didn’t see it because I wasn’t looking for it. For whatever reason. Maybe I didn’t want to face the truth. Maybe it suited me to stay in a relationship, however toxic.” She took another piece of chocolate. “My point is this: Hindsight is twenty-twenty. It’s easy to look back and see what you should have done and could have done. But this Adam is sick, Bella, and I doubt anything you would have done differently would have made any difference. He’s fixated on you, and that’s because he’s got things all twisted in his head.” Pippa tapped the side of her head. “His head is twisted. Not yours.”
“Fixated.” Bella shivered as she said the word. She didn’t want any of this, but that wasn’t going to change it or make it go away.
“Listen to what Nate tells you,” Pippa said. “He used to work in a unit that dealt with sex crimes in Salt Lake City. Be careful, and know that we’re all here for you. What did your family say?”
And her night for confessions rolled forward. “I haven’t told them.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want them to freak out and have them come running back here.” Which sounded good but was only half the truth. “And I don’t want the interrogation about how I let this happen.”
Pippa knew Nana and made a face. “Your nana gets things twisted in her head as well.” Leaning forward on her elbows, Pippa pinned her with a stare. “And I gotta warn you, Phi’s in a state about this.”
“You told her?”
“Nope.” Pippa handed her more chocolate. “This is Ghost Falls and she found out. She’s talking bodyguards.”
That was all she needed. “Talk her out of it.”
“I have.” Pippa shrugged. “For now. But you know Phi. When she makes up her mind about something, it takes an act of God to change it.” She settled back in her chair with another piece of chocolate. “Now tell me about Nate.”
Her face heated and Bella cursed herself.
“Hah!” Pippa slapped her palms on the table. “I knew there was something going on. Both of you get all squinty-eyed when you talk about each other.”
“Squinty-eyed?” Bella tried to check her reflection in her glass, but all she could see were a pair of grossly exaggerated hamster cheeks.
“Shifty.” Pippa nodded. “Lik
e you’re keeping secrets. I’m not leaving here until you spill.”
“There’s not that much I can tell you.” Too tired to make up any more lies, Bella went with the truth. “I’m not really sure what’s going on with me and Nate.”
“But there is a something?” Pippa got that look on her face that meant she would keep after this like a ferret.
“We had sex.” Bella got it out in a rush. “And it was incredible, amazing. But that’s all it was. Nate is Nate.”
“Are you okay with that?”
“Yes,” Bella said.
Pippa raised a brow.
“No, actually, I’m not. I thought I would be, but I’m not.” Her head felt too heavy and she propped it on her palm. “I’m making all sorts of super decisions about men at the moment.”
“He’s another one who’s got things all twisted in his head,” Pippa said.
“But I knew that.” Nate had never made any secret of his allergy to commitment. “I knew that and I thought I could handle it.”
“Well.” Pippa sighed. “I think the best thing to do is order pizza and watch a movie.”
“But no chick flicks,” Bella said. “They might be part of why I’m in this mess in the first place.”
They ended up watching an action movie, finishing all the pizza, and going through half a large bag—okay, the whole bag—of M&M’s.
Matt picked up Pippa but came in first to check all her locks for her.
They left after making her promise to call if she needed them.
Locking her door behind them, silence oozed around her, and Bella did another window and door check. She drew all her blinds and drapes and sat down at the detailed plan for her store Matt had left behind.
A dog barked down the street and she tensed. Carefully, she teased out each sound until she could identify it. And the street made a lot of sounds in the night. Liz’s water pipes creaked a bit. The kids three doors over slammed the doors as they let their dog in and out.
She got up, wiped her kitchen counters again, then tidied the detergents and cleaners under her sink. Turning on the TV, she kept it low enough to hear but loud enough to distract.
Tomorrow, she would call her parents and explain why her phone numbers had changed. Or she might make up a plausible lie. She sat down and watched half a reality show without having any idea what it was about.