“And the food? Is your steak too rare? Because if it is, I can send it back. Treva can give it another minute or two on the fire—”
“Gerald,” Brooke inserted forcibly.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Isn’t there something you need to do?” She jerked her head at the toilet seat behind her, hoping he’d get the hint.
Gerald’s face turned beet red. “Oh, right. I’ll just pull the curtain for you, and leave you alone to do your, ah, business.”
When the hastily strung sheet was firmly in place across the bars, Brooke sank onto the cot and glanced at the plate of food Gerald had brought from Treva’s Diner.
She had requested a salad to mollify him, but he’d brought her a thick, juicy steak, a steaming baked potato heaped with butter and sour cream, and hot crusty rolls. There was even a little crock of whipped butter and a dish of peach cobbler for dessert.
Too bad she wasn’t hungry.
Her glance strayed from the queenly feast to the small television set, then to the half-open door. So much for locked cells, hard cots, open toilets, and frozen TV dinners, she thought, her lips twitching. If Alex could see me now.
Transferring the plate to the top of the television set, Brooke made herself comfortable on the cot and tucked her arms behind her head. She wondered what Alex was doing right now, and if everything was going the way he’d so carefully planned.
And if he felt as replete, yet drained.
Her smile grew as she recalled every delicious detail of their lovemaking. Alex had not only knocked her fences down, he’d knocked her socks off. When she thought of how much time she’d wasted fighting her own feelings, she wanted to kick herself. Instead they could have been spending the evenings and nights making love. Hell, she could have taken a vacation and spent the days with him as well! So what if he was her boss? Secretaries married their bosses all of the time—
Brooke came upright on the cot, sucking in a sharp, dismayed breath. Whoa, girl. Nothing was said about love, or marriage.
The cautious voice was right; Alex had insisted they were making love...but he hadn’t said, ‘I love you’.
Thank God she hadn’t made a fool of herself by confessing her own growing feelings for Alex.
Did she love him?
She frowned, easing back onto the pillows. It was a good question, and one she supposed she should be asking herself so that she could prepare her heart for the day Alex left town.
It didn’t take her long to come to a conclusion: she did love Alex. Loved him so much it made her ache. It had to be love, because being in lust couldn’t possibly make her heart throb at the thought of his leaving.
The way it was throbbing now.
Damn. Brooke bit her bottom lip, shaking her head. She’d gone and fallen in love with her boss. Not only inexcusable, but hopeless.
“Brooke? You decent?”
It was Sheriff Snider. “Rake back the sheet and have yourself a seat,” Brooke was tempted to sing out. Suspecting the good sheriff wouldn’t appreciate humor at a time like this, she sat up and tried to look suitably ashamed before answering. “Yes, I’m decent.”
The sheet scrolled to one side and the cell door creaked as Sheriff Snider stepped into view, filling the tiny space with his imposing presence. He tipped his hat, but his face remained stern and censorious.
“I came to tell ya that I gave young Bradshaw a call and told him what we found. His secretary said he’d want to deal with this personally.”
Brooke’s heart skipped a beat, then settled into a slow, heavy chug-chug. She had to tilt her head to look at Sheriff Snider. “What—you mean they found Alex Bradshaw?” It wasn’t in the plans, but she supposed Alex could have decided to make an early—
“Guess it’s okay to tell ya, since you’re, um...” Sheriff Snider trailed away and scratched his chin. His brows furrowed in a fierce frown. “He’s been found. Never was lost, in fact. The day after he disappeared, his secretary called in and told us to call off the search. Said he was close by doing a little undercover work concerning the factory. We were told to keep quiet.”
The day after...
Shock was a mild definition of what Brooke felt at the sheriff’s revelation. Alex had lied to her. He’d deliberately, cruelly held the kidnapping charge over her head to keep her at the cabin, and to force her into helping him investigate.
He had used her, all the while steadily luring her into his sensual web...to relieve his boredom? To prove that he could? After finding out the ugly truth, Brooke found it hard to believe that he cared. He could have told her the truth any number of times, but he hadn’t. Instead, he had bared her to the bone, revealing old wounds and forcing her to confront her grief over the loss of her parents.
She had been foolishly honest with him, but Alex obviously didn’t believe in two-way streets.
“Brooke...? Are you all right? You look pale all of a sudden.”
“I’m—I’m fine.” She resisted the urge to feel her chest for blood. “Just peachy, but I’m a little tired. If—if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a nap.”
“Okay, but when Bradshaw gets here, I expect he’ll want to talk to you.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll want to talk to him, too.” Talk. Shout. Curse. She expected she’d be doing all three until her throat turned raw.
Her burning, furious gaze landed on the plate of food. With a snarl, she turned her back on it. Paper. Gerald had brought her a useless paper plate. What she wouldn’t give for a good, breakable piece of china right now.
And Alex Bradshaw’s head for target practice.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It wasn’t a big surprise to Alex when Luther returned empty-handed. The tall Texan was shaking his head as he slid into the driver’s seat. He removed his Stetson and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Nothing about a Landco company in his files. There wasn’t a key above his door, either,” he added with an accusing frown. “But I did find the key to the file cabinet—taped to the underside of his desk.”
“I certainly wouldn’t have thought to look there,” Alex drawled, thinking that Lotus and Gloria had something in common; they both watched too many movies. But Gloria would never do anything so obvious.
Maybe Lotus wasn’t as smart as he thought.
Luther started the engine, glancing at Alex. “Where to next...boss?”
“Brandy Clevenger’s house.”
“That good-looking chick who tests the condoms? And what if she’s there?”
“Then we’ll bind her, gag her, and throw her in the closet until we’re finished with our search.”
The P.I. laughed...until he realized Alex was serious. He gulped. “Alex, you’re talking about assault, here.”
Grimly, Alex said, “It will be a thief’s word against ours.” He gave Luther directions to Brandy’s house, and instructed him to hurry. He wanted this entire fiasco over and done with so that he could rescue Brooke from jail.
Afterward, he wanted to get her alone and naked, and after the heat of their bodies had cooled, he wanted to talk to her about weddings, honeymoons, and babies. More than ever, he felt she was the one and only woman for him.
Thinking of Brooke reminded him of something vitally important. He flipped open his cell phone and called Gloria. “Gloria, it’s Alex.”
“No kidding. I was just about to call you.”
“Did you find the hubcaps I asked for?”
“No.” She waited a cruel moment before adding, “But Derrick did. Mint condition.”
“They’ve got to be the originals,” Alex stressed.
“They are. Alex, are you all right? I haven’t heard from Luther in a while—”
“That’s because he’s with me, doing important things instead of spying on Brooke Welch.” Now was the time for Gloria to apologize, he thought.
He was wrong.
“Alex, I hate to tell you this, but Miss Welch is in jail. Sheriff Snider called to report they’d found a shipment o
f Safe & Secure condoms stashed at her house. Apparently she’s been stealing the condoms and selling them wholesale.”
Alex moved the phone to his shoulder to give Luther further instructions. “Make a right at the light, then a left on Turnbeau Street. It’ll be the fourth house on the right.”
Gloria’s raised voice regained his attention. “Alex? Did you hear what I said? Your thief has been right under your nose all along.”
His secretary’s words evoked an erotic image of Brooke moaning beneath him. The best part was that it was a memory, not a fantasy.
“Look,” Gloria continued in a soothing voice, “don’t beat yourself up over it, okay? You certainly aren’t the first guy taken in by a pretty face, and you probably won’t be the last. Take James Bond, for instance. Most of the women he fell for ended up being spies sent to kill him. Even Matt Dillon was tempted a few times, although he always remained faithful to Kitty.”
“Gloria...what did you tell Sheriff Snider when he called?”
She went silent for a moment, apparently sensing the sudden tension in his voice. “Well, I told him this sounded like something you’d want to deal with personally.”
Out of respect for her sex, age, and loyalty, Alex held the phone away from his mouth so that she wouldn’t hear his vicious curse. If Sheriff Snider repeated Gloria’s message to Brooke, he was in deep cow manure.
His secretary meant well, he reminded himself for what seemed like the thousandth time.
The self-reminder was getting old.
With great effort, he managed to say in a calm, controlled voice, “If anyone other than myself calls from Quicksilver again, do me a big favor.”
“Name it,” Gloria said, unsuspecting.
“Don’t...answer...the...phone.”
This time the silence lasted so long he thought she’d hung up. Finally, he heard a long, dramatic, self-pitying sigh.
“Okay, Mr. Bradshaw. Silly of me to forget that I’m just a secretary.”
As always, Alex felt a stab of guilt for hurting her feelings. And that pitiful sniff never failed to make him feel even worse. “You’re more than a secretary. You’re also my friend, but trust me, you don’t know what’s going on up here.”
“Well, nobody tells me anything, so I have no choice but to rely on Luther to keep me informed, and he saw a truck deliver—”
“Gloria...”
For once in her life, Gloria heeded the warning and shut up.
Alex saw they had arrived at Brandy’s house and hurriedly ended the conversation. “Ship those hubcaps FedEx to the local post office here, will you? Bye, Gloria.”
He disconnected the line and turned to Luther. “Let’s get going. I promised Brooke I wouldn’t leave her in that hellhole any longer than necessary.”
If they didn’t find the file, he knew he’d have no choice but to reveal himself and explain everything to the sheriff, and they might lose the opportunity to prove how Lotus was embezzling factory money.
The thought made his lips tighten with determination.
Firing Lotus wouldn’t be enough. He wanted to catch the bastard red-handed. After the trouble they’d gone to, he wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less.
****
“So Alex sent you to keep me company?” Brooke asked Elijah as she flipped through the channels on the muted television. Acting on Sheriff Snider’s orders, Gerald had added a VCR to her collection along with several newly released movies bearing the logo, FAMILY VIDEO. She suspected that Brenda Pearson, the owner of the video store, had sent them over as an expression of her support.
She hated to be ungrateful, but after finding out about Alex’s deception, she wasn’t in the mood to do anything but brood.
With her blessing, Elijah helped himself to the cold steak and baked potato. He eyed her with shrewd, calculating eyes as he chewed. “I ain’t on Bradshaw’s payroll, Brooklyn. Now, you gonna tell your old friend what’s bothering you? Your sour face reminds me of my first wife. That woman always looked as if she’d been eating green persimmons.”
Brooke kept her gaze on the screen, but her mind was elsewhere. Out of politeness, she asked, “So why did you marry her in the first place?”
Elijah cleared his throat, and from the corner of her eyes, she saw him blush. Her interest perked.
“Um, it was a few days after we got hitched before I noticed her face. She was, um, um—”
“Stacked?” she supplied helpfully, surprised to find herself grinning at Elijah’s obvious discomfort. “Elijah! I’m surprised at you. You never struck me as a chauvinist.”
“I was seventeen,” he explained hastily. “We were only married a couple of years.”
“So you left her because she was ugly?”
Elijah looked offended. “Hell, no. I left her because I wasn’t the only one who was attracted by her—her—”
“Breasts?” Brooke flashed him a mischievous grin, throwing his own words back at him. “It isn’t as if I’ve never heard the word ‘breasts’ before.”
“Speaking of chauvinist,” Elijah said, grimacing. “I had the pleasure of detaining Kyle today.”
Kyle. Not that Lotus fella, but Kyle, as if Elijah knew him. Acting on a sudden instinct, Brooke went fishing. “I wasn’t aware that you knew Kyle.” At Elijah’s sudden, guilty look, she turned off the television and sat up. “Do you know him?” When Elijah looked away and began to fidget, Brooke prompted, “Elijah? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Blowing out a sigh, Elijah confessed, “Yep, I know him. Not proud of it, but he’s my sister’s boy.”
Brooke’s jaw dropped. “Kyle’s your nephew? And you never told me? But—but why would you not tell me?”
Elijah scowled. “Because he ain’t worth mentioning, that’s why. Ain’t been back to see his poor mama since he left Shreveport. She keeps writin’, asking about him, and I keep writin’ back and lying to her. Today he kinda surprised me, though.” He scratched his jaw as if still stunned by the unexpected fact. “Gave me a package to send to her, since he don’t have her address. Said it was money for her birthday. He claimed he was comin’ out to see me later this evening to get her address.”
The flash of intuition hit Brooke hard. Kyle had no idea Elijah knew anything, or was involved in any way. Dry-mouthed with growing excitement, she jumped from the cot and grabbed the straps of Elijah’s overalls.
He yelped in surprise. “Gal, you’ve got a bad habit of scaring the doodle out of me. You forget my heart ain’t as strong as it once was.”
“Sorry. Elijah—have you already mailed the package?”
“Hell, no! I don’t figure it’s his money to give away, and besides, I don’t have her address just floatin’ around in my head, you know. My heart ain’t the only thing failing. Sometimes I can’t remember my own address.”
“Elijah, you don’t have an address,” Brooke reminded him gently. “You have a post office box in town.”
“Well, then I can’t remember my box number half the time, when I remember to check it. I have to ask that smart-mouthed girl working at the post office—the one with the God-awful purple hair. She’s got enough earrings in her ears to open a jewelry store.”
Still holding his straps, she shook him lightly to get him back on track. “What did you do with the package?”
“It’s out in the truck.”
“Go get it!” she urged. “And hurry back. I think we may have found the evidence we need.”
Still bemused by her excited outburst, Elijah went to get the package. Brooke paced her small cell and chewed her thumbnail to the quick.
When he returned, she said, “Open it.”
Elijah frowned, staring at the package as if it contained something lethal. “Ain’t that against the law?”
Suppressing an exasperated sigh, Brooke snatched the flat package from him and grabbed the tab.
But she found she couldn’t open it, either. She’d kidnapped Alex, had broken into Lotus’ apartment, an
d confiscated files from the secretary’s office.
Yet she couldn’t open the package. It would be like tampering with evidence, or something along those lines, and if Kyle was smart enough, he’d realize it was a loophole he could jump through.
She didn’t want him to have a loophole.
Scaring Elijah for the second time in a day, she shouted for Sheriff Snider. The sheriff could open it—if he had probable cause.
And that could be arranged.
When Sheriff Snider came running into the cell, Brooke handed the startled lawman the package—minus the return address label she’d managed to peel off and stuff into her jeans pocket. “Do you have the authority to open this package if you think it contains something illegal?” she demanded.
Sheriff Snider nodded. “Yeah, but—”
“Well, we think you’d better open it.” Brooke glanced at Elijah for support, relieved when he gave a vigorous shake of his head.
But the sheriff wasn’t entirely convinced. “Where did you get this?”
Elijah answered. “A suspicious-looking fart—er—man dropped it by mistake. He didn’t hear me calling after him, so I brought it here.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me when you came in?”
Brooke groaned inwardly. She knew better than to underestimate Sheriff Snider...
“Well, I meant to, but it plum slipped my mind.” Elijah scratched his head and looked convincingly disgusted. “I was just telling Brooklyn here that my memory ain’t what it used to be. It’s damned aggravating sometimes.”
After another glance between the two, Sheriff Snider grabbed the tab and slowly peeled it away from the envelope. Brooke and Elijah crowded close.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“There’s nothing here.”
At Luther’s disappointed remark, Alex rose from his crouched position beside the sofa. “Well, she’s got a good supply of Good Housekeeping magazines.”
Luther frowned as he surveyed the messy room. “Apparently she hasn’t read them. Well, I guess that’s the end of the road, boss.”
“I think not. There’s still his car.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a damned minute! I draw the line at messin’ with a man’s horse.”
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