Letters to Jane (Mississippi Book 1)

by Brooke Miller

  She turned in her swivel chair,

  “Oh and Jon…”

  He turned around, a cautious look on his face.

  “Don’t go bothering Alex; she doesn’t need someone sniffing around her right now, and stay away from my little sister. Unlike me, Simone is always bitchy and has no qualms about kicking your ass up and down the Mississippi River.” She turned back around and went back to reading the file she had been assigned.

  Chapter Five

  Alex kept her mind occupied the whole day with Luke and exhausted him by mid-afternoon. She was trying not to think about Sim and her reason for being in Mississippi. She grimaced as she remembered the details to the case Simone was working on; she thought she left that behind when she walked away from the force and moved down here. Looks like trouble followed you whether you wanted it to or not.

  Jane grumbled as she walked through the automatic doors of the local grocery store and grabbed a buggy, heading in the direction of the canned aisle. Alex called her just as she was leaving the station and said she needed a quick dinner since she burnt the chicken she was cooking. She shook her head, “I swear for her birthday this year I ain’t getting her those boots she’s been wanting, I’m getting her friggin cooking lessons. Maybe then I wouldn’t be stuck making a last minute run to the store!” she muttered to herself.

  The woman was twenty-eight, fixing to be twenty-nine and still didn’t know that the smoke alarm did not count as a timer.

  She found the boxed dinner she was looking for in seconds and by the time she was at the end of the aisle, her buggy was full of ready-made meals and canned goods. She was about to head up to the front to check out when she remembered Luke drank the last of the milk this morning. She sighed, “I might as well pick up a pizza while I’m back there.” She turned back around only to swing her buggy into someone else’s; the force of them hitting jarred her arm and made her look up, a apology on her lips. But never made it as she saw who she ran into, the floor shifted beneath her and felt the world around her spin. “P-Peter? Is that you?”

  The buggy’s driver looked back at her with wide eyes, “Jane?”

  Before she knew it she was swept up into his arms in a tight embrace, his mouth slanted over hers. Her eyes stung behind closed lids as she fought back tears and smelled a scent that was so familiar to her. Sandalwood and apple blossoms; an odd combination but never failed to sooth her. They broke apart when a giggle sounded behind him, she saw the shocked eyes of a pretty brunette, before he blocked her from view, when he turned back around to face her, and the teen was gone.

  He held her face in his hands, looking down at her with an intense expression, “Can you meet me at ‘MC Diner’ in an hour?”

  She nodded, “Yeah, I can leave and be back down here fast.” She held his hand in hers and saw the scars on his knuckles from a drunken fight when he was seventeen. She looked back up at him, “It really is you.”

  ***

  Peter was showered and dressed and back out before thirty minutes had passed. He now sat in a back booth in the diner, refusing another cup of coffee. He shook his head as the waitress left; he was wired enough as it was. He had waited for a long time to see her in real life, face-to-face. And now it was happening. And was scared witless; what if the Jane he remembered didn’t match to the new Jane?

  It was too late now, the bell over the door chimed and he looked up to see her coming in. Gone was her suit and in its place dark jeans and a old, but fitted Anderson PD t-shirt, she looked amazing. He couldn’t help but watch her walk across the diner and over to the booth he was at. Standing silently by the table, taking him in. He did the same.

  “I almost didn’t think you’d meet me.” She gave a little smile, taking a seat across from him.

  “I almost didn’t. I spent about twenty minutes freaking out, wondering if I had finally cracked and had imagined you.”

  She gave a chuckle, “Then Alex came in, bitch-slapped me and told me to and I quote, ‘get your melodramatic ass down there and find out if he’s really Pen-Pal, Petey.’

  The blush gracing her cheeks was adorable, and very contradicting to the tough, hard-as-nails woman he knew her to be. He also knew from her letters over the years, Alex was not the hard-ass she was sounding to be; she was Jane’s balance just as she was Alex’s, they were what the other one need to be, whether it be a shoulder to cry on or a swift kick if need be.

  The waitress came by again to take Jane’s order, like him she was too wired to eat or drink anything.

  They sat in silence for a long moment before either spoke, “Jane-”

  “Pete-” They spoke at once. He chuckled and she gave a light laugh that broke the awkward tension.

  She leaned forward, “How was last night’s shift?”

  He leaned forward on the table, his head down shaking it. “Not so good, head-on collision with a drunk driver, driver walked away, and kid in the next car wasn’t so lucky. Died last night an hour after we brought him in.”

  She reached over the table, her hand reaching for his, taking it in hers. He looked down at them, seeing the difference between them. His large pale, calloused hand grasping her dark, dainty one.

  He took a breath and took a chance, “Jane would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” She sat across from him, looking into his eyes and he swore she was looking into his soul as well.

  Several moments passed before she spoke, “Yes, I’d love to have dinner with you.” She glanced around the room, “Why not right now? I mean we are in a restaurant.” He let out a sigh of relief and flagged down the waitress from earlier.

  After she left, he looked over his menu at her, “So, how’s your day been?”

  She laid her menu down and looked at him with a smirk, “Well, today at the store I could have sworn I saw a guy I’ve seen before….”

  ***

  Alex looked across the table to Sim, calmly eating her slice of pizza. She knew Sim; she’d talk when she was ready. Dinner was finished and Luke was in the living room eating his dessert before Simone finally spoke.

  “I take it you saw my notes for this case.”

  Alex looked up from the plate she was scrubbing, “I noticed the lack of notes, yeah. And that you didn’t have the firm’s standard recorder there. But your personal one.”

  She sat the plate on the rack and turned the water off, facing her as she dried her hands, “What’s going on that you don’t want Cole to know, Sim?” Simone’s eyes widened; “How did-“

  Alex shook her head, “Simone Brandon, I’ve know you since we were teenagers; I can’t think of the last time you were keeping something from Cole. You two don’t have secrets.” She took a step toward her, gesturing between them, “We don’t keep secrets, that was the deal all those years ago when we were all trying to make sense of things and survive threw it. No matter what, we didn’t keep secrets between us. Is this case you’ve taken dangerous to us?” Sim was quiet for a while then spoke, “No. But this case is personal to me, and has the potential to be dangerous. That’s why I’m not involving any of you.” She got up and left Alex standing there, stunned.

  ***

  That night when Jane came back from dinner to pick up Luke, she could feel the tension between Alex and Sim, but was unable to figure out why. She looked up from brushing her teeth to see her phone had an incoming text, she finished and picked up reading the text:

  Had a great night, think you can meet me for lunch tomorrow?

  It was funny how they hadn’t seen or talked either one in years, but already they had went back into the mode that had started them out as such good friends. She sank down onto the bed and replied, ‘I did too. Sure, you want to meet at the little deli place on the corner from the precinct?’ In seconds his reply came in, ‘Absolutely!’ she smiled at his answer.

  With that, she powered her phone down, and dragged her current case file out and began reading over it and her notes she had begun making.

  Meanwhile, a tall redhead was s
itting in the combined backyard of Alex and Jane’s home, looking up at the stars from her position on the back porch steps. Thinking back over the last few years, both the good and the bad.

  She was drawn out of her thoughts by the sound of a back door shutting, footsteps coming across the porch as she turned to see Alex coming to sit by her on the steps. Handing her a glass of red wine, before taking a sip of her own. Sim looked at her friend in curiosity; none of them really drank but Alex especially stayed away from the stuff. She took another sip before she spoke, “I wasn’t asking if the case was dangerous because I was afraid. I was asking because I don’t want you taking on a job that could hurt you, physically or emotionally.”

  Simone felt a small flash of anger at that and started to tear a strip off her, when Alex held up her hand, “Cool it, Sim. I’m saying this as both a friend and a sister.”

  She looked over at her, brushing bangs out of her eyes, her blue eyes swimming with worry, “You’re our baby sister, whether you like it or not. That means you are always going to be henpecked and watched over. You don’t have to like it, just accept it.” She looked ahead again, taking a sip of wine, “I know things in yours and aunt Red’s past were less than ideal; that’s why I worried when you said it was a personal case.”

  She gestured to the untouched glass by her side, “Drink. If this case is a bad as I have a feeling it is, we both are going need it, so start talking. Where are you at on it?” Simone knew this was Alex’s way of helping.

  Sim took a sip before speaking, her voice low and no heat behind her words, “I didn’t ask for help, Ali.” Alex chuckled at her childhood name for her, she wrapped an arm around the younger woman, and “I know, Simmi. I was offering it. There’s a difference. Now tell me about the case.” The two women talked well into the night, neither noticing the time or realize the events that were starting to take shape.

  Over the next two weeks a very different Jane was coming out. And Peter; when they weren’t working, they spent every spare moment they had together. Lunch or dinner was at the MC diner or near their jobs. Texts and phone calls were nightly, and despite Pete’s decision to lay their past friendship in the past and move on. He found himself calling or texting her, just like old times. He didn’t realize until recently how much he missed their friendship. She had been a friend for the shy, but highly intelligent boy when he needed one and understood him in ways no else could.

  Last night was a changing point; for both of them. Jane invited Peter over to her house for dinner tonight; just the two of them. She smirked into her coffee cup, and possible Sim or Alex after one of them ‘forgot’ her purse, car keys, or whatever excuse they could come up with to check Pete out.

  She shook her head and put her empty cup into the sink, rinsing it before grabbing her bag and headed out the door, only to stop at the package sitting on her step. She looked over the plain white flat box, but there was no return address, only her address. Cautiously she nudged it, but when she heard nothing from inside; she picked it up and set it on the patio table beside the door.

  Taking her pocket knife out of her back pocket and carefully silt the tape wrapping the box. Opening it she found the green tissue paper of a florist and found a beautiful bouquet of white lilies and roses. Or rather, what would be a beautiful bouquet except it was brown and she could smell the faint smell of decay. She dropped the box back on the table and stepped back to her bag, taking out a pair of latex gloves. Cautiously, she walked back to the box and used her pocket knife to carefully shift threw the flowers. Finding no card, she looked around the neighborhood; curious where the flowers could have come from.

  She saw no flower delivery van in the area; she had to shrug off the creepy feeling of seeing those dead flowers as a mistaken delivery and grabbed the box tossing it into the garbage can by the porch, her gloves too before setting the lid back on the can. Grabbing her bag, she started back to her car and got in, but was unable to shake the uneasy feeling she could at seeing those dead flowers, and what they meant.

  Chapter Six

  Despite the ominous flower arrangement that morning, Jane’s day continued on like usual. She finished a case that afternoon; her first cold case she had been able to close since starting her new unit. It had felt good to close the decade old missing person case; she knew unlike many missing persons’ cases-this one got a happy ending.

  She ran to the store for some last minute items for dinner that night after leaving work that day, eager to start on the meal. She quickly started the hen she prepped the night before and started it in the oven. Twenty minutes before the bird was to come out of oven, the doorbell rang.

  Wiping her hands on her apron, she walked through the living room and opened the door to let Peter in.

  Peter stood on Jane’s front porch, his nerves betrayed by the slight tremor in his hand as he rang the doorbell. He stood in sight of the door, and could make out a blurry shadow moving toward the door through the stained glass panel. The door opened and Jane stood on the other side. Once again he was struck by the simple beauty that was Jane. She was one of a few women that could make a pair of jeans and a worn police department t-shirt look sexy. A throat cleared, breaking his train of thought and met a pair of laughing dark brown eyes.

  “You know, if your mouth is open any wider, I’d be scarping your jaw off my porch,” she snickered before standing aside to let him in.

  He entered and blurted out, “You’re beautiful.” To his horror, he felt his cheeks flush as she stared at him in surprise; she blinked, and then laughed taking the bottle of wine from him before shutting the door behind them and leading him into the kitchen.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere.” He shuffled to the bar and sank into the cushioned barstool, taking a bite of carrot from the platter, before he shoved his foot in his mouth any further. He grunted when she said the chicken was nearly done; reaching for another carrot before he could say another word.

  Jane turned her attention back to the stove, biting her lip to keep from laughing at his expression. Poor Pete, and she thought she had no people skills. A distant thought came up that maybe that was why they clicked so well; they were two loners that gravitated to one another.

  She was drawn from her thoughts by Pete’s voice, “So far dinner looks good. A lot better than the last time you tried to cook me dinner.”

  She started to ask how he knew, and then she remembered-the small motel suite she had been staying in for the month she was receiving her academy training.

  The second night he arrived she tried to show off how good of a cook she was. She smiled at the memory, she ended up burning the simple chicken casserole she made and ended up serving cheese sandwiches.

  Suddenly she was feeling very flushed and it had nothing to do with standing over a hot stove. She felt her cheeks flush as she sneaked a look out of the corner of her eye at Pete.

  She remembered also remembered the only thing she had been able to salvage had been dessert, vanilla ice cream with homemade chocolate and caramel sauces.

  She felt her breath catch as she remembered them laughing and painting one another with the chocolate sauce. And Pete spreading her out on the old rickety kitchen table and slowly licking caramel sauce off her.

  As if reading her mind, Peter walked over to the stove, his hands lightly resting on her shoulders and leaned in, disturbed the hair at her ear, making her shiver; “I remember the night you burnt the chicken. You were so embarrassed that you brunt dinner and had to feed us cheese sandwiches.” His breath was hot over the skin of her neck as he leaned into to speak, “I remember the dessert best, and you made that awesome caramel sauce.” He moved back from her, taking a plate from the stack off to the side, a shy grin gracing his face, “I still blush when I see a jar of caramel sauce.”

  She didn’t say anything as he moved back, but remembered that night and the shared shower that happened later.

  Distracting herself, she grabbed a plate and begun to plate the food, neither ate m
uch of the delicious meal. Both were too busy staring at one another, talking about their day, about Luke, any and everything to dilute the rising tension they could feel in one another.

  He looked out over the neighborhood; watching one home in particular threw his binoculars. A duplex, to be precise; in one side, a man and woman could be seen having dinner threw the kitchen window. On the other side, a blonde woman was sitting at the coffee table, writing something with a young boy beside her. A red-haired woman with a bowl of popcorn came into the room. He watched them; he knew she was a threat to everything he worked for. He fought too hard to bury his past and couldn’t have it come back to bite him in the ass now.

  If he couldn’t scare her off the case, he would have to be more creative in getting her off the case.

  Two days after her dinner with Peter, Jane was dropping Luke off at Xander’s ranch. After talking with much of her additional family, she finally took them up on their offer. Alex had a appointment with Connor this morning and wouldn’t be free to watch Luke until the afternoon. When Jane got called in early, she took Xander up on his offer to bring Luke out to the ranch and teach him how to ride. They were on the porch and about to ring the doorbell when the door opened and to her surprise, Peter stepped out.