Better Watch Out

by Dani Sinclair

  Her chin lifted. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not crazy.”

  “Good, I’m relieved to hear it.”

  Once again, the lights flickered. He saw the flash of raw fear that exposed her vulnerability.

  “Rain, sleet and snow are a bad combination,” he told her. “We could easily lose power for the night.”

  Apprehension haunted her eyes. He crossed the room and touched her arm. Her delicate features weren’t classically beautiful, but she was a pretty woman—or she would be if she skipped the phony glasses, did something with her hair and wore something besides the baggy clothing he’d seen her in to date.

  She quivered beneath his fingertips. He knew then, he couldn’t just walk out the door and leave her here alone.

  “Jackie, I think you should come home with me.”

  She drew in a short, sharp breath. “No.”

  “You’d rather sit here in the dark by yourself?”

  A shiver spasmed along her length. Her “no” was nearly inaudible. He checked an urge to draw her into the protection of his arms.

  “Come on,” he said gently. “I saw your purse on the hall table. We’ll grab it on the way out. If you don’t want to stay with me, you can tell me where to drop you off.”

  Seconds passed while she made up her mind.

  “You’re right, of course. I wasn’t planning to stay here tonight. I just…I can’t seem to think clearly right now. Let me get a few things.” She turned, the limp more pronounced as she started back down the hall.

  Shock, he suspected. Whatever had happened here tonight had left her in a mild state of shock.

  “What did you do to your leg?” It wasn’t any of his business. None of this was his business. She’d made it clear she didn’t want or need his help, and frankly if she was in some sort of trouble, he should go home. He had the children and Aunt Dottie to think of.

  But he couldn’t just walk away when she was hurt and scared. She’d been kind to his kids. He owed her for that much, at least.

  She paused halfway up the steps. “I twisted my ankle when I jumped off my neighbor’s porch. It’s okay. Just a little sore. I’ll be right back.”

  J.D. waited impatiently at the bottom of the stairs until she reappeared, a small bag in one hand.

  “You don’t need to drive me. Bessie doesn’t live far from here. I can drive myself.”

  Reluctance mingled with relief. She appeared calmer now. More in control. Her shock was fading, he decided, watching her come down the steps favoring the sore ankle.

  “You can drive with that foot?”

  “My car’s an automatic and it’s my left foot. I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and headed for the hall closet. “I’m sure, but thank you.”

  She put on her jacket before he could offer to help and they stepped outside. Snow buffeted them instantly. At least an inch now powdered the world and it was falling so fast visibility was nil. J.D. wasn’t sure he could safely drive the five blocks to his place under these conditions.

  “Maybe we’d better wait until this slows down,” he suggested as she locked the door.

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him.

  Headstrong, he decided as Jackie started for the steps. J.D. joined her, hunching slightly in his coat against the cold. They stepped down and instantly discovered the layer of treacherous ice hidden beneath the snow.

  Jackie slipped, grabbing for the icy railing to prevent her fall. J.D. landed with a jolting thud on his rear end on the top step. Snow swirled in his face, blinding him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  A hiss of pain was his answer. J.D. uttered a string of epithets under his breath as he stood and moved carefully back from the edge to offer her his hand. “The steps are solid ice.”

  “I noticed.” She grimaced, using his arm and the railing to make it back onto the porch.

  “How bad are you hurt?” he asked.

  “Let’s just say my ankle is good and sore now and leave it at that.”

  “Well, we aren’t going anywhere for a while.”

  Her expression became stricken, clearly visible in the light reflecting off the snow. “We can’t stay here! Once we reach the car we should be all right”

  “Are you nuts?”

  Fear pinched her face. She stared into the blinding snow as if expecting something horrible to pop out at them. “We have to go,” she said on a shaky breath.

  J.D. shook his head. “Look, Jackie, I know you’re nervous and upset, but go where? We can’t even see the damn cars from here. There’s no way we can drive with an inch of ice underneath the snow. It’s foolish.” Wind swept the porch with icy snow to add emphasis to his words.

  “Be reasonable. I had no idea conditions were deteriorating this fast. Let’s go back inside and wait it out. As hard as it’s blowing, this should die down in a couple of hours.”

  She looked from the dangling keys in his hand to his face and back again. Then she turned without a word and fumbled with her house key. It promptly jammed in the lock.

  “You need to replace this old relic,” he told her as he nudged her hand to one side and forced the front door open again.

  “I know.”

  He stared at her. This was a woman used to facing things alone, he realized. Her delicate features were nearly translucent in the eerie light reflecting off the snow—haunting and terribly fragile. Yet he’d witnessed the strength of her will tonight. He had the strangest impulse to lean over and taste her pale lips.

  Whoa. What was he thinking? And he was standing much too close to her.

  J.D. drew back and pushed open the front door with the flat of his hand, shaking off the sensation that had gripped him. Jackie hesitated a moment before preceding him inside.

  “Mind if I use your phone again?” he asked quickly. “I want to call the kids and let them know I might not make it home tonight.”

  “Wait a minute. You can’t stay here all night!”

  Her chin tilted in that determined manner he was becoming familiar with. J.D. rocked back on his heels. “I don’t know that we’re going to have a choice in the matter.”

  “But you can’t”

  “Why not?”

  Her gaze darted about the hall, landing on his left shoulder. “Because.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Now there’s a definitive answer.”

  She glared at him. “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  He leaned back against the door frame. “Who, me? I’m just the schmuck who stopped to rescue you, remember? Now that I’m the one who’s stranded, you want to toss me out into a freak winter storm.”

  “You said it would clear up in a couple of hours,” she argued.

  “And it might. If it does, I’ll gladly leave your gracious hospitality and go home where I belong.”

  They both heard the sound of sleet pattering against the side of the house. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone playing more tricks on her tonight.

  “This can’t be happening,” she muttered weakly. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Well, this seems like the perfect time to get acquainted,” he responded with exaggerated politeness.

  She was understandably scared. Scared and prickly and defiantly independent.

  “May I use your telephone?”

  She nodded wordlessly. J.D. headed toward the kitchen, only pausing when he noticed a door that must lead to the basement.

  Warning bells clanged in his head. He moved forward slowly, hand reaching for the knob. Locked. He stared at the anomaly for several seconds, deeply uneasy for reasons he couldn’t define.

  Maybe while they were getting to know one another, he could ask Jackie why she had such a flimsy lock on her front door, but an expensive dead bolt on the inside door leading to her basement.

  Chapter Three

  The weather showed no signs of improving. In fact, conditions deteriorated as
the evening wore on and snow alternated with sleet. Though the pain in her ankle was atrocious, Jackie pulled together a simple meal while J.D. opened the living-room couch and made up the sofa bed.

  “So explain something to me,” he said finally, putting down his fork and pushing aside his plate. “Why do you have a dead-bolt lock on your basement door when the rest of your locks are so puny my kids could get past them?”

  Jackie worried her lip and cast a look in that direction. She hadn’t given the basement a thought tonight. Not surprising, really, since she’d only been down there once and that had been months ago when she first came to view the property. After Donnie’s death, Bessie had been unable to find a key to that lock.

  “I don’t know. Donnie had it installed.”

  “I thought this house belonged to his mother.”

  Jackie pushed aside her own plate. “It does. Donnie rented it from Bessie. He helped her get it ready to sell.”

  “By putting a dead-bolt lock on an inside door? What’s down there, the family jewels?”

  Jackie shifted. “The usual stuff—washer, dryer, furnace.” Her cheeks warmed as her uneasiness grew. “I haven’t been down there since I moved in.” She explained about Bessie’s missing key. “All of Donnie’s keys were destroyed in the fire. I meant to call a locksmith yesterday, but I’ve been a little busy.”

  His mouth dropped in astonishment. “What do you mean, you don’t have a key?”

  A sudden vision of the dead elf waiting to be found in her basement accelerated her breathing. Was it possible? The horrible suspicion grew to epic proportions.

  “You think that’s where the body is!”

  “No,” he said tersely, chopping off that idea with a movement of his hand.

  “But the police couldn’t have searched the basement, and the body wasn’t anywhere else.”

  “Of course they searched the basement. Thompkins said they searched the entire house. The body’s not in the basement.”

  Vehemently, she shook her head, feeling a new sense of panic swell in her chest. “That door has been closed and locked since I moved in four days ago.”

  They both stared at the offending object.

  “No. It must have been open,” J.D. insisted.

  “I told you—”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “But that means the police did some awfully sloppy work, which doesn’t compute with what I know about Thompkins. The other officer even looked in your garage, remember? Trust me, they wouldn’t overlook a locked door inside the house.”

  Jackie didn’t bother pointing out that the two policemen hadn’t believed a word she’d said. How hard did he think they had searched when the body wasn’t where she claimed? And now she couldn’t stop thinking about that basement door.

  She barely repressed a shudder. “He has to be down there, J.D. Someone put the body in my basement! I told you we shouldn’t stay here tonight.”

  J.D. gripped her arm when she would have pushed back her chair and jumped to her feet. “Don’t go working yourself into a panic.”

  His calm voice steadied her racing heart. She looked at his large hand resting on her sweatshirt sleeve. There was something soothing about his touch.

  “I never panic,” she told him.

  He grinned, displaying those surprising dimples. “Right. I forgot.”

  Jackie lifted her chin and met his dark gray eyes. “But what if someone is down there?” she asked quietly.

  The grin disappeared. J.D. turned his gaze to the door. Without a word, he stood and walked over to the telephone on the wall.

  “Who are you calling?”

  He lifted the instrument, pressed the disconnect button, listened again and glared at the object before setting it back down. “Apparently, no one. The phones are out.”

  Jackie shoved back her chair. Standing brought a cry of pain as soon as she put weight on her bad ankle. She collapsed back onto the chair.

  “Hey, take it easy. I should look at that leg.”

  “We have to get out of here!”

  J.D. laid a hand on her shoulder. “Jackie, there’s no reason to panic.”

  “But the phone doesn’t work.” Couldn’t he see the danger? Larry had cut the phone lines.

  “The phone doesn’t work for the same reason we can’t go anywhere,” he said calmly. “There’s an ice storm outside, remember? The ice probably brought some lines down. They’ll have it repaired by morning.”

  That rationale brought little comfort to a mind clenched in fear. J.D. crouched in front of Jackie’s chair, stroking her arm in a soothing gesture. “It’s okay. I promise. There’s nobody in the basement and no body, either. If you want, I’ll break down the door and go look.”

  “No!”

  “Thompkins is not a sloppy cop, Jackie. I know him. Somehow, they looked in that basement. If they hadn’t, you can be sure they would have asked you about the lock.”

  “But they didn’t believe me.”

  He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. They would have done their job. I promise.”

  She wanted to believe him, but she knew that door hadn’t been unlocked. Jackie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Panic wouldn’t solve a thing.

  “You still don’t get it, do you, J.D.? I’m all for the idea of an empty basement But how did the police check it out if no one has a key to unlock the door in the first place?”

  J.D.’s eyes darkened thoughtfully.

  “I don’t know what happened here tonight, but we’ll get some answers as soon as the phone lines are working again.” He rose, grabbed the back of one of the kitchen chairs and propped it under the doorknob on the basement door.

  “I’m a light sleeper, Jackie. I’ll be down the hall in the living room. No one’s going to touch that door tonight without me hearing them. In the morning, we’ll call the police and a locksmith.”

  “Assuming I have a phone.”

  “We’ll have phones,” he promised. “Trust me.”

  “Right” But oddly enough she did.

  Adrenaline still coursed through her system, but she had the fear under control. Jackie knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink after all that had happened. And she couldn’t possibly face the night in her bedroom. No matter what anyone else believed, a dead man had lain across the end of her bed.

  She spent the restless night on the small bed in the upstairs office with the light on—ostensibly so she could read. In truth, fear had sunk its talons so deep she couldn’t even lift a book, let alone face the darkness of the house.

  A knot of dread lay in the pit of her stomach, unraveling a bit at every strange sound. And there were plenty of those as the ice built on the eaves and the branches of nearby trees. Having J.D. in the house was both a curse and a blessing. While she felt safer on one level, having him in her living room wasn’t conducive to sleep, either.

  She liked J.D., but she was unprepared to deal with the sudden glimmer of interest he’d shown in her outside. Men didn’t come on to her any more. That was the way she wanted things. But she felt the pull of attraction all the same. She stared at the ceiling, wondering how he would taste and how he would feel against her body. And that was the worst part of all. Her reaction, not his.

  The last thing she needed was another man in her life. She wasn’t sure she’d gotten rid of the first one. That terrifying thought only added to her sleepless night.

  What if Larry had found her again? A shudder made her tighten her hold on the blanket.

  He hadn’t.

  She must believe that he hadn’t. Even Larry wouldn’t murder someone just to place a corpse on her bed. Now the teddy bear and the menu…she could see him doing things like that, but not killing someone just to frighten her.

  So who was the elf? What had he been doing in her bedroom? Was he part of the gang of burglars plaguing the area lately?

  Right. The burglars were hitting expensive places, not houses in the midst of a modest neighborhood. But then, who was he? A
nd where was he now?

  The police hadn’t taken her seriously. In a way, she could understand. What proof did she have to offer them? If only she hadn’t thrown away that menu…or could find the teddy bear.

  What did J.D. believe? She didn’t want him to think she was a crackpot—even if his opinion didn’t really matter. Tomorrow she’d turn the store inside out until she found that bear.

  Morning brought relief from her chaotic thoughts, but no telephone. She heard J.D. use the bathroom downstairs and then go outside. A frivolous stab of disappointment lanced through her when she thought he was leaving. Then, she heard the scraping noise and realized he’d only gone out to shovel the steps and the walk.

  Motion, she quickly discovered, equaled agony. She couldn’t put any weight on her ankle. She managed to dress, but getting downstairs proved an exercise in pain. J.D. found her sitting on the bottom step, tears in her eyes as she contemplated the impossibility of walking to the kitchen.

  “Hey, what happened? Did you fall?” J.D. strode across the floor, reaching for her. His coat and gloved hands were cold against her skin and his cheeks were ruddy from his exertions outside.

  She shook her head.

  Dark gray eyes studied her in concern. “Let me see your ankle.”

  “Unless you number a medical degree among your accomplishments, I don’t think there’s much you can do.” She tried for a light tone, when what she wanted to do was howl in agony.

  He pulled off his gloves and knelt in front of her before she realized his intention. Icy fingers skimmed up the leg of her sweatpants, giving her no chance to pull away.

  “Looks great,” he told her, mock serious. “Just like the Hindenburg right before it blew.”

  “How reassuring.” She tried to wiggle free, more disturbed by his touch than the pain in her leg. She didn’t need him to tell her the ankle was badly swollen.

  “What do you say to a quick trip to the hospital?” he offered.

  “There’s no such animal.”

  He grinned and she was startled anew by the sight of his dimples. They dissolved the harsh planes of his face, giving him a youthful, carefree appearance that only added to his disturbingly sexy charms.