Bewitching: His Secret Agenda

by Carla Neggers

  “And the gaps in your résumé?”

  “As I said, I was traveling.”

  All the signs, everything she’d ever learned about being able to tell when someone was lying, said that Dean Garret was just what he appeared to be. Easygoing. Stoic. Confident. A sexy cowboy in need of a job. If he could mix drinks, he’d be an asset behind her bar. Once word got around about him, women would flock to The Summit just to hear his Texas drawl. And he wasn’t so pretty as to put her male patrons on the defensive.

  “I guess that’s all the information I need then.” She stood, and couldn’t help but second-guess herself when he got to his feet, as well. Who knew manners could be such a turn-on? Still, she walked around the table and offered him her hand. “Thank you for coming in.”

  His large, rough fingers engulfed hers, and damn if a crackle of electricity didn’t seem to shoot up her arm and jump-start her heart.

  “When can I expect to hear from you?” he asked, still holding her hand.

  She pulled free of his grasp and stepped back. “I’m sorry, but you won’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Listen, I have to be honest. I’m going in a different direction.” She met his eyes and told him what her instincts were screaming. “You’re just not what I’m looking for.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  DEAN DIDN’T SO MUCH AS blink. Hell, he was so stunned, he didn’t even move.

  He wasn’t what she was looking for? What did that mean? His blood began a slow simmer. Damn it, he was perfect for this job. He’d worked for three years tending bar before joining up. What more did she want? A note from his mother?

  “If anything changes,” she said, the hint of pity in her tone causing him to grind his teeth together, “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  In other words, here’s your hat, get your ass moving.

  He forced himself to smile. “I appreciate your time.” He pulled his coat on and set his Stetson on his head. Though his better sense told him not to, he stepped forward until she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. Until her flowery scent filled his nostrils. “You be sure to let me know if you change your mind,” he said, letting his accent flow as thick as honey.

  Heat flashed in her eyes, turning them a deep, denim blue.

  He tipped his hat. “I’ll find my own way out.”

  He didn’t slow until he’d pushed open the door and stepped out into the blowing snow and mind-numbing cold. He trudged across the parking lot, unlocked his truck and slid inside.

  He didn’t get the job? He slapped his hand against the steering wheel. Unreal. He always got the job. Always got the job done.

  He started the engine and cranked up the heat. Allison hadn’t believed he’d stay in Serenity Springs.

  She didn’t trust him.

  He sat there, resting his forearms on the steering wheel, and stared at the swirling white flakes drifting down. His record of success was a direct result of his tenacity. He’d go back to his motel room and regroup. Come up with a plan to somehow convince her he was the best candidate for the job.

  That she could trust him.

  Even if she really shouldn’t.

  * * *

  “YOU SENT HIM PACKING?” Kelsey asked. “But I wanted to keep him. I’ve never had a cowboy of my very own before.”

  Allie, perched on the top rung of the stepladder, snorted down at her sister-in-law. “You can’t have one now, either.” She climbed down, careful to keep her high heels from hooking on the rungs. Once both feet were safely on the ground, she moved the ladder next to the bar. “I don’t think Jack would appreciate you wanting to keep this—or any—cowboy.”

  They were the only people in the bar. Allie hated this time of day—what Kelsey referred to as the dead zone. The two hours in the afternoon after the lunch crowd left and before people got off work.

  Allie knew she should be taking advantage of this lull to get caught up on the pile of paperwork on her cluttered desk. She had inventory sheets to go over. Bills to pay. Taxes to file. Liquor deliveries to schedule and grocery orders to submit.

  All of which bored her to tears.

  “I guess you’re right,” Kelsey said in mock disappointment, as if she wasn’t completely gaga over Allie’s brother, ever since the day they’d met, right here at The Summit a few months ago. Kelsey tapped her forefinger against her bottom lip. “Hey, I know. What if I slap one of those cowboy hats on the sheriff? And do you think spurs would be too kinky?”

  “Eww. I think my brain just imploded. And if it didn’t, I wish it would.” Allie climbed two more rungs and reached down for the red paper heart Kelsey held up to her. “For one thing,” she said, hanging the heart from a rafter, “could you please refer to my brother by his name? Or better yet, pick a better nickname for him. He’s the police chief, and you calling him ‘sheriff’ is too weird. What about ‘pooky bear’? Or ‘snookums’?”

  “You expect me to get down and dirty with a man called snookums?” Kelsey grimaced. “That is just wrong.”

  Allie glared down at her. “And that’s the other thing. I don’t want to hear anything about you and Jack playing dress up or getting down. Dirty or not. How would you like it if Nina told you all about her and Dillon’s love life?”

  Nina, a mutual friend, had been involved with Dillon since Christmas. Everyone around Allie had paired up. It was like Noah’s ark.

  With her all by her lonesome on a life raft.

  Good thing that’s how she wanted it, or else she’d be depressed as hell.

  Kelsey waved another paper heart in the air. “Nina’s far too sweet to ever discuss something like that.”

  Allie rolled her eyes and descended the ladder. She reached the last rung and slipped, twisting her ankle when she landed on the floor. “Ouch.” She rubbed the sore spot through her boot. “Why don’t you be a real friend and hang the rest of the decorations?”

  “Take your boots off. Why are you climbing a ladder in that getup?”

  “Because I don’t have any other shoes with me. And if you think I’d walk around in here in my stocking feet, you’re more delusional than usual.”

  Kelsey picked up the ladder and moved it to the end of the bar. “There. I helped. But I’m not hanging any froufrou hearts. You know how I feel about decorating for holidays. Especially ones as commercial as Valentine’s Day.”

  What could Allie say? That she needed to keep busy? That if she stopped for even a minute she started questioning herself? Started wondering if she should’ve listened to Evan, her ex-boyfriend, and accepted the partnership at Hanley, Barcroft, Blaisdell and Littleton. Or if her life would’ve been different if she’d never taken Miles Addison’s case.

  But she had taken it. And she’d been so determined to get ahead that she forgot all the reasons she became a defense attorney in the first place—to help people. People who needed it.

  See why she hated this time of day?

  “Hey,” Kelsey said, rubbing Allie’s arm. “You okay? Your ankle isn’t sprained, is it?”

  Allison rotated her foot while she cleared her thoughts. “No. It’s fine. I just can’t believe you don’t like Valentine’s Day, that’s all.” She climbed the ladder again. She was so counting this as her workout for the day. “Are you sure you’re female?”

  “Valentine’s Day is a holiday made by the greeting card companies and retailers to trick poor saps into spending money on a bunch of useless crap.” Kelsey’s voice rose and she began to pace. “I mean, what’s up with sending flowers? They just die. And if I want candy, I’ll pick up a Hershey’s bar at the convenience store.”

  Allie hung a set of pink hearts and climbed down. “What about jewelry?”

  She sneered. “Do I look like someone who wants diamonds?”

&n
bsp; No, she didn’t. Well, except for that gorgeous engagement ring Allie had helped her brother pick out. “You poor thing,” she said, wrapping an arm around Kelsey’s stiff shoulders. “Have you ever gotten a valentine?”

  “I never wanted one,” Kelsey said haughtily.

  “I’m sure Jack will get you something superromantic,” Allie assured her. She gave Kelsey a little squeeze.

  “He’d better,” she mumbled. “And it better be expensive.”

  “At least now I understand why you want to host a speed-dating event on Valentine’s Day. You’re rebelling against romance.”

  Kelsey crossed her arms. “I’m all for romance. The speed-dating thing gives our customers a chance to find true love. And if they happen to find love while helping our bottom line, all the better.”

  Allie grinned and folded the ladder before carrying it back down the hallway to the supply closet. Her good humor faded as she realized what had become of her life. Instead of playing a very important part in the American legal system, she now spent her time hanging cheap decorations, preparing the same meals over and over, and avoiding paperwork.

  She slammed the closet door shut. Well, she’d wanted to change her life. As usual, when she set out to do something, she’d succeeded. And while running a bar might not be as exciting as practicing criminal law, it was a lot less stressful.

  And she wasn’t unhappy, she told herself as she went into the kitchen. She loved Serenity Springs and had fabulous friends and the best, most supportive family a person could ask for. A family that didn’t ask too many questions. Such as why she’d quit her job and moved back.

  She owned her own business, which was growing by leaps and bounds. Plus, she got to do something she enjoyed every day. Even if a year ago she hadn’t considered her love of cooking to be anything other than a fun hobby.

  Hey, she was nothing if not adaptable.

  She gave her pasta sauce a quick stir, adjusted the flame under the pot and picked up her coat.

  “I’m going home to change,” she told Kelsey as she walked back into the bar. “The sauce is simmering, so could you check it once or twice? Oh, and I almost forgot, can you switch the appetizer on the specials board to grilled flat bread pizza? I’ll do a veggie one and a chicken one.”

  Kelsey leaned against the bar and sipped from a bottle of water. “Sure. But hey, before you go, you never told me why you did it?”

  “We’ve offered bruschetta twice this month,” Allie said, pulling on her red leather coat, “and it hasn’t gone over too well. I thought we’d try something different.”

  “No, why did you reject Mr. Tall, Not-So-Dark but Very Handsome? Didn’t he pass your test?”

  Well, damn. And here she thought she’d avoided the subject of Dean Garret.

  “Actually,” Allie said, lifting her hair out from beneath her coat, “he passed with flying colors. He didn’t hit on me once.”

  Although she remembered how, right before he left, he’d stepped closer to her, how his eyes had heated and his voice had lowered.

  Kelsey set her bottle on the counter and crossed her arms. “If he passed the test, what was the problem?”

  Allie shrugged and picked up her purse. “He wasn’t right for The Summit.”

  “Ahh.” She nodded sagely. “In other words, he didn’t need to be saved.”

  Allie narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You only hire the downtrodden, the needy or, in a few memorable cases, the just plain pathetic. You’re like the Statue of Liberty. All you need is a tattoo on your forehead that reads ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your flakes who don’t know the difference between a cosmo and a mojito....’”

  “So?” Allie asked, sounding to her own ears suspiciously like a pissy teenager. “I don’t know the difference between them, either.”

  “Which is why you need to hire a bartender who does. Besides, none of the people you’ve hired since I’ve been here have stuck around. What does that tell you?”

  Allie pulled on her black leather gloves. “That my manager keeps firing them all?”

  “Hey, I only fired three of them—and they all deserved it. The rest quit. And they quit,” she continued, when Allie opened her mouth to speak, “because though you tried to save them from themselves, they weren’t interested. All they wanted was to get on with their dysfunctional lives.”

  “Who was stopping them?” Allie zipped her coat. “You act like I offered counseling sessions as part of a benefits package or something.”

  “Pretty close,” Kelsey mumbled.

  “Relax. I’m telling you, Dean Garret isn’t right for this job. Trust me on this, I’m doing the right thing here.”

  “I hope so,” Kelsey called after her as Allie walked out the door.

  She shivered and hurried over to her car. Yeah, she hoped so, too. And Kelsey was way off base about her trying to save people. She was out of that game.

  Because the last time she’d played, she’d saved the wrong person.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, Dean held his cell phone between his shoulder and ear as he dropped a cardboard pizza box onto his motel bed. “Hey there, darlin’,” he said when his call was picked up, “it’s me. I need a favor.”

  “I’m not that kind of girl,” Detective Katherine Montgomery said in her flat, look-at-me-wrong-and-I’ll-kick-your-sorry-ass New York accent. And people thought he sounded funny. “And don’t call me darlin’.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked up. He’d met Katherine over a year ago when he’d worked in Manhattan. The mother of three teenagers, she’d been married for twenty-five years and was built like a rodeo barrel. She was also one of the most savvy cops working in the anticrime computer network in the NYPD, and she didn’t take crap from anyone—least of all him.

  Was it any wonder he was half in love with her?

  “Now don’t be that way,” he said, flipping the box open and sliding a piece of pepperoni-and-onion pizza onto a paper towel. “I’m betting with the right incentive, you could be talked into being that kind of girl.”

  He could almost see her scowling at the phone as she sat behind her very tidy desk. “If you keep up with the sweet talk, my husband’s going to hunt you down,” she warned.

  Her husband, a skinny, balding postal worker, wasn’t much of a threat and they both knew it. Unless the guy attempted to whack Dean upside the head with his mailbag. “For you, I’d risk it.”

  “Uh-huh.” She made a soft slurping sound—probably sipping her ever-present coffee—before saying, “So, you called me two hours before quitting time on a Friday afternoon in another pathetic attempt to sweep me off my feet?”

  “Well, that wasn’t the only reason.” Dean bit into his pizza, chewed and swallowed before wiping his hand on his jeans. He slid his notebook toward him and flipped it open. “I need everything you can give me about a Terri—T-e-r-r-i—Long.” He gave her Terri’s social security number, date of birth and last known address. “I need everything you can find, the more personal the better.”

  “And you think I’m going to help you why?”

  Dean took another bite of pizza and popped the top of a can of soda. “Because it’d take me at least three days to find out even a quarter of what you could discover in a few hours?”

  “Yeah. That’d be why.” She repeated back to him the information he’d given her. “Who’s Terri Long?”

  He finished his pizza. “At the moment she’s my competition for a bartending job I’m interested in.”

  “Do I even want to know why you want a bartending job?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Uh-huh.” He heard the distinct sound of Katherine tapping at her keyboard. “You’re not doing anything illegal, are you, Dean?”

  “Not at the
moment.”

  Silence filled the line. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing.” He switched the phone to his other ear. “Nothing you need to know about, anyway.”

  Like how he’d broken into The Summit last night and gone through Allison Martin’s office until he’d discovered the name of the person she’d given his job to.

  Technically, yes, breaking and entering was illegal. But he hadn’t stolen anything.

  Other than information, that is.

  And most importantly, he hadn’t been caught. In Dean’s book, that meant he hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “If you get hauled off to jail again,” Katherine warned him quietly, “don’t even think about calling me. Especially if you’re more than one hundred miles away from Manhattan.”

  “Now, you know how much I appreciated you flying down to Atlanta to bail me out. Didn’t you get the gift basket I sent you?”

  Katherine grunted. He would’ve been worried if he hadn’t still heard her typing. “Next time you send me fancy chocolates, send them to the station. By the time I got home, Mickey and the kids had already eaten half the box.”

  “You got it.” He lifted his hips, pulled his wallet from his back pocket and took out his credit card. As soon as he got off the phone with Katherine, he’d call the chocolate shop.

  “Want me to email you what I find?”

  “That’ll do. And thanks. I owe you one.”

  “You owe me at least a dozen. But who’s counting?” Katherine asked with a sigh. “Just promise you’ll be careful.”

  “Always.”

  He disconnected the phone and tossed it aside. Allison Martin needed his help to realize she’d hired the wrong person. Now all he had to do was sit back and wait for Katherine to work her magic. Then he’d make his next move.

  He shot his crumbled paper towel into the garbage can in the corner. Once he had the job, once he had her trust, it was simply a matter of time before everything else fell into place for him.

  He’d make damn sure of it.