She gripped the steering wheel tightly as she pulled away from the curb and followed his car. She would never again be a punching bag for a man, and she refused to be a booty call, as well.
By the time they reached Frank’s house, her inner strength had reared up and she was determined to make this visit as short and unemotional as possible.
She pulled against the curb in front of his house and he pulled into the driveway. Steeling herself against his charm, against the warmth of his smiles and the steady gaze of his beautiful eyes, she got out of the car and approached where he stood on the front porch.
“Now, I want you to be completely honest with me,” he said as he unlocked the door. “I want to get this place sold as quickly as possible and get into something new.”
“Are you thinking maybe of an apartment?” she asked.
“No, I definitely want another house.” He opened the door and ushered her inside.
The minute she stepped in, she saw that the sofa had been pulled out to make it a bed, and covering it was a bright pink bedspread. In the center of that spread were two familiar take-out bags from Chang Li’s.
Her heart galloped unsteadily as she turned to face him.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, uncertainty riding his features as he held her gaze intently. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m already too late. Maybe you’ve already changed your mind.”
“About what?” The words leaked out of her on a whisper of fragile hope.
“About me...about us.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and reached out to take her hands in his. “You know lots of people refer to you as ‘the ice princess,’ but I came home last night and lay down on the sofa and realized that you weren’t the one afraid to love again, you weren’t the ice princess, but I had become the ice prince.”
He pulled her over to the sofa and they sat down, his hands never releasing their hold on hers. “I kept telling myself that Grace had needed a hero in her life and I’d fallen short, that you needed a hero and I wasn’t the man for the job.”
“Oh, Frank, I don’t need a hero. I just need a man who loves me, a man who wants to build a future with me.”
He squeezed her hands and raised his chin. “I can be that man, Marlene. More than anything I want to be that man.”
He held her gaze steadily, and in the depths of his eyes she saw the love she wanted, the love she knew would see them through good times and bad.
“I want to be your pink bedspread,” he continued. “I want to be your security, I want to be your haven and I want to eat your gooey lemon bars for the rest of my life.”
Tears of joy momentarily blurred her vision. “I want to make gooey lemon bars for you and the children we’ll have. You do want children, don’t you?”
He grabbed her and pulled her close against him, his mouth a mere whisper away from hers. “I want children. We can even get a dog. I want gooey bars and cinnamon bites, but most of all I want you, Marlene.”
His lips took hers in a kiss that promised everything she’d ever dreamed of and more. When the kiss ended, he gestured toward the two take-out bags. “Are you ready to eat Chinese?”
“No, I’m not finished nibbling on the lips of the man I love,” she replied.
“Well, in that case...” He lifted the bags and set them on the floor, then pulled her back into his arms. As she fell back with him onto the pink bedspread, her happiness was tempered only by the fact that her aunt Liz was still missing.
Still, as Frank’s lips plied hers with the tenderness of love, she was filled with a new world of possibilities. She’d found love despite the odds. She would have that bakery on Main Street, and hopefully, eventually Aunt Liz would return home.
Epilogue
She wasn’t going to work out. Liz’s captor had thought that after all this time she would break, she would become needy and subservient, but that hadn’t happened.
She remained as feisty, as combative as she’d been when she’d first been taken and had come to awareness. Like the last one, she was a failure.
It was time to pick a new model, somebody younger, somebody who might be much easier to break and then mold. Yes, it was time to get rid of Liz and replace her with a sweet-natured younger woman, somebody like Sheri Marcoli.
* * * * *
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Prologue
Through the thick fog of a Louisiana autumn morning, Victor Gale watched his prey from an abandoned hunter’s blind. Raising his rifle, he peered through the scope and drew a bead on his target’s head. Hatred gnawed his gut like acid, and his muscles hummed with tension and anticipation. Other men had used this camouflaged blind to hunt deer. Victor hunted a man. A traitor. A liability to his family, his livelihood, his freedom.
Last year, Connor Mansfield had found evidence of Gale Industries’ side business, had stolen company records to show the FBI and had testified for the prosecution at William Gale’s trial. Mansfield’s betrayal had cost Victor’s father everything. For that, Mansfield had to pay. He had to be silenced. He had to die.
Their father had taken the fall for the family to protect Victor and his brother, James, so retribution against Connor Mansfield fell to his sons. Victor relished the duty.
As quietly as the mist curled through the woods, Victor tracked Mansfield’s progress from his truck to the small cabin, a hunting camp deep in the pine forest of central Louisiana, waiting for a clear shot through the trees. He had to take Mansfield out before he went inside.
Before he lost his chance.
Mansfield hesitated at the cabin door as if reluctant to go inside, but a fat cypress obscured Victor’s line of sight. Damn it!
When Mansfield finally slipped inside and out of view, Victor growled his frustration and spit on the ground. He might not get another shot for hours, not until Mansfield left the camp. Unless...
Victor considered approaching the ramshackle cabin, peeking in the window and shooting Mansfield from closer range. But he risked being seen or heard, tipping Mansfield off, leaving evidence near the scene that could trace the kill back to him.
No. Better to have patience. Wait him out. Catch Mansfield when—
A deafening blast rocked the woods as the cabin erupted in a massive fireball.
The concussion of the explosion knocked Victor off his feet. Rang painfully in his ears. Thundered in his chest.
Debris rained down around him, piercing the thin walls of the hunter’s blind and stinging his skin when it hit. When all fell quiet again and his shock eased, he scrambled to his knees to peer out the blind’s slit of a window.
The cabin Mansfield had just entered was in ruin, the remnants ablaze. Stunned by the turn of events, Victor stared, his head buzzing from adrenaline and the dam
age of the loud blast.
Finally he pulled out his cell phone and punched in his brother’s number.
“Is it done?” James asked without preamble.
“Yeah, but...I didn’t do it.”
“What are you saying?”
“The freakin’ cabin exploded. Maybe a gas line leak that went up when he hit the light switch?” Victor shook his head, still gawking at the carnage. “No way he survived that blast.”
Silence answered him.
“Did ya hear me, man?”
James’s sigh rattled through the phone. “Yeah. I guess fate took its own revenge.”
Victor grunted, a tickle of suspicion pricking his neck. “Maybe, but...I don’t like it. I smell a setup.”
“What kind of setup?”
“Don’t know, but...I think I’ll stay and watch the place. See who shows up—whether they recover a body—how this gets handled.” Victor pinched the bridge of his nose, dreading the long hours of sitting cramped in the hunter’s blind, getting eaten by mosquitoes. But he had to be sure.
“Fine,” his older brother said. “I want a full report of everyone and everything that happens out there the rest of the day.”
Resigned to the task and more mosquito bites, Victor stayed and watched as the cops and fire department arrived and put out the flames. Grim-faced men in FBI jackets came next. A coroner’s hearse hauled away a body bag. And an attractive redhead drove up, broke down in hysterical tears and was stopped from approaching the smoldering remains of the cabin by two FBI agents.
When the scene was deserted several hours later, Victor rolled his aching shoulders and dialed James again to report in. “Did Mansfield have a girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” James said. “A redhead. Name’s Darby something. Kent, I think. Yeah, Darby Kent.”
“She showed up. Seemed pretty torn up about his death.”
James grunted, then fell silent again for several nerve-racking seconds.
Victor braced himself. He knew what was coming next.
“Find Darby. Follow her. See if she meets up with him. If the explosion was part of a setup, she’s the key to bringing him outta hiding.”
“You want me to take her out?”
“Naw. She’s nothing to us. But if she meant anything to him, and he’s still alive—”
Victor glanced at the burned-out husk of the cabin. His brother had a point. Family had always been Mansfield’s weakness. But Victor disagreed with James on one point. If Mansfield was still alive, pulling a hoax, Victor wasn’t as squeamish as his brother about collateral damage. If Darby Kent led him to Mansfield, he’d kill them both.
Copyright © 2014 by Beth Cornelison
ISBN-13: 9781460324349
LETHAL LAWMAN
Copyright © 2014 by Carla Bracale
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