by Ann Yost
The scowl dropped off her pretty face when she spotted their visitor.
“I wouldn’t worry about the smell.” He grinned at her. “Remember the words of Napoleon to Josephine: I’m coming home. Don’t bathe.”
His practiced flirtation irritated the hell out of Daisy. “Was that before or after he dumped her for a younger woman?”
Nick spared her a quick glance but his attention soon returned to Daisy’s sister. Why not? Junie was carefree and fun and as beautiful as Caro.
“Mon Dieu.” Junie’s expressive eyes filled with female appreciation, “please tell me you’re not one of the altar-bound.”
“Never.” He grinned at her. “I’m Nick Bowman.”
Junie pretended to smack herself on the forehead.
“Zut alors! I’ve seen you on the internet. You’re even hotter in person.”
“You’re pretty hot yourself.”
Daisy cleared her throat. “Quentin has a problem.”
“Just one?”
Daisy frowned at her sister.
“He needs a bigger codpiece,” Nick put in.
“Can’t he just stuff tissues in his pants?”
Nick flashed his irresistible grin at Junie and Daisy’s stomach clenched. She was well aware that her younger sister was Nick’s type and the reverse was also true. Dark, dangerous and inappropriate he registered right in the fat part of Junie’s wheelhouse.
“I need you to handle Quent and pick up the chairs at St. Mary’s,” Daisy said, briskly.
“St. Mary’s Star of the Sea? The tuna church?”
Daisy glared at Nick. “Don’t you have somewhere to go?”
“Eh bien!” Junie crowed. “He can come avec moi.” The fractured French suddenly turned into a series of short, sharp shrieks.
Daisy sighed. Her sister had finally torn her eyes away from the hunk long enough to spot the corpse.
Mendelssohn sounded again and Daisy had just enough time to watch Junie launch herself into Nick Bowman’s arms before she answered the phone. She covered her free ear with her hand.
“Happily Ever After. This is Daisy.”
“Is this Daisy?” The elderly voice was strident. “ I called to check on Ora.”
“Miss Olive.” Daisy kept her voice kind but firm. “You know the Gray Lady is no longer a mortuary. We’re a wedding boutique now.”
“How utterly ridiculous,” the old lady sputtered. “Ora doesn’t need a wedding. She needs a funeral.”
There was no missing the sense of grief and loss under the tart words but Daisy knew better than to offer obvious sympathy.
“Mister Foote over in Titusville will do a good job for her.”
“Titusville! Impossible!” It was as if Daisy had suggested burying Miss Ora at sea. “Mother and Daddy were buried from Bowman’s back in the fifties. Randolph Bowman ordered rosewood caskets for all of us. Lined in powder blue. He promised we would be buried together.”
Daisy glanced at the coffin. For the first time she realized that someone, probably the Bunson sister’s elderly retainer, Beasley, must have hauled the thing up from the Gray Lady’s cellar.
The cellar.
The underground space ran the entire length of the house but had only one window. Daisy pictured the piles of furniture, boxes and papers, the detritus of past lives that dwelled on its dirt floor, not to mention the leftover caskets. It was a graveyard of memories. She shivered.
“Daisy?”
Miss Olive’s voice recalled her to the present.
“I’ll tell you what, Miss Olive. If you’ll let Elias Foote take care of things, funeral-wise, he is welcome to use the two rosewood coffins.” Daisy winced at her own words. She’d made it sound as if Olive intended to be buried with her sister. She hoped the old lady hadn’t noticed. She needn’t have worried.
“Well.” Disapproval dripped from the single syllable. “You shall deliver it yourself, Miss, along with Ora. Beasley cut up rough last evening. I don’t believe you can count on him.”
“We’ll take care of it. And we want to hold the reception here,” Daisy told her. “Junie can make a special dessert.”
“Mercy sakes, Daisy! There’s no telling what the girl will dream up. That dreadful cake she brought to the Martha Circle last week! I don’t wonder that was what killed my sister.”
Daisy winced. Erotic baking was Junie’s current creative outlet. Daisy couldn’t wait for cosmetology school to start again in the fall.
“She meant to make a relief map of Florida.”
“That’s what Florence Wainwright said but Ora and I weren’t fooled. There was no panhandle.”
“We’ll serve macaroons.”
“Good gracious! Have you forgotten? Ora is deathly allergic to coconut.”
Daisy closed her eyes. “Brownies, then. Goodbye, Miss Olive,” Daisy said. She disconnected the phone.
“It wasn’t Florida,” Junie confided to Nick. She no longer seemed hysterical but she still clung to his strong frame. “It was a giant phallus. The old ladies weren’t supposed to know.”
Daisy felt the color rise in her cheeks. She realized she’d discussed male body parts more this morning than she had in months. Years. Nick didn’t notice her embarrassment, of course. He seemed enchanted with Junie.
“I’ll be happy to help you with the chairs and the codpiece,” he said to the younger woman. When he turned to Daisy, his eyes glittered. They looked almost silver in the morning sun. “I can drive the body over to Titusville. I notice the old hearse is still in the carport.”
“Merveilleux,” Junie murmured.
“No, thanks.” Daisy kept her voice cold. Okay, so Nick Bowman wasn’t the stalker. Anonymous letters were not his style and, besides, if he had been anywhere in Clark County during the past few weeks, Daisy would have known. No, Nick Bowman presented a different kind of danger to the Budd sisters and Daisy did not want him around. “We can handle this ourselves.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow.
“I believe you mentioned a busy day.”
“He’s right, Daze,” Junie said. “We can’t leave Miss Ora here and there’s no time to get anyone else.”
Merde. Daisy unconsciously borrowed her sister’s favorite phrase in her silent curse. Junie took her brief silence as consent.
“I’ll go get the keys.” She scampered off.
Daisy decided it was time to issue a warning. “I appreciate your help but I want you to stay away from my sister.”
A dark eyebrow lifted. “Why?”
Why? Wasn’t it obvious? She frowned at Nick. “Because she’s dangerous. The last man she got involved with wound up married to her and dead. The two events were not unrelated.” That was a bit of a lie but Daisy was desperate. She couldn’t think of anything worse than an affair between Junie and the Bowman family’s Prodigal Son.
Nick’s hard lips twitched. “You don’t need to worry about my safety, darlin’. I can take care of myself. If, on the other hand, you’re worried about your sister, don’t. I won’t be around here long enough to hurt her.”
Daisy stuck out her chin. “I’m sure you can take care of yourself, Nick Bowman. And I’m sure I can take care of my sister. Hurt Junie and you’ll answer to me.”
Nick answered with a slow, seductive grin that turned her inside out. Daisy felt a flash of dismay. In the months since she’d returned to Mayville, Daisy had encountered financial challenges, emotional issues with her sisters and now a stalker but she didn’t try to fool herself. Every instinct screamed that she was now facing the biggest threat of all.
Nick Bowman.
Chapter Two
By one o’clock the mercury had topped eighty degrees. Nick blinked the sweat out of his eyes and looked at the neat rows of chairs and the bevy of elderly ladies wearing broad-brimmed bonnets as they draped garlands of flowers on the bushes and trees. Dozens of colorful banners hung limp in the heat. The only relief came from the errant spray that spewed from Cupid’s arrow.
�
�Merde,” Junie said. “I feel sorry for Mayor Hotchkiss.” She indicated the short, stout man covered with a red, ermine robe, his face already the color of boiled beets.
“Why doesn’t he take that thing off?”
“He’s waiting for the press.”
“What press?”
“The Clark County High Cougar Tracks. They may send a photographer. C’mon. Let’s set the butterflies up by the archway.”
Nick carried the wooden box they’d retrieved from the post office. The butterflies were scheduled to emerge at the exact moment when the officiant pronounced the couple, husband and wife. Or, in this case, lord and wench.
Would any of the butterflies survive that long?
Nick considered it doubtful but he grinned at Junie. The girl reminded him of a butterfly, light and flighty. Taller than Daisy and reed-slim, her pretty, regular features were set off by a white-blonde ponytail. She looked like an adorable extra from Bye-Bye, Birdie.
Her sister, on the other hand, had dressed for the event in the drab brown skirt of a fourteenth-century scrubwoman. A white handkerchief obscured the flame-colored, corkscrew curls but her eyes were wide and intelligent and the color of aged whiskey.
“Why’re you staring at Daisy?”
It was an excellent question and one he had no wish to answer, even to himself.
“I’m looking for a family resemblance.”
Junie laughed. “Gran called Daisy a changeling. Caro and I, though, could be twins.” She made a face. “Except she’s a lot more elegant. But you already know that, right? Didn’t you go out with her for awhile?”
“Yes.”
“She’ll be here soon. She picked up Stevie from camp this morning.”
Stevie must be the biscuit queen’s son. As soon as he saw Junie he’d remembered Caro. They’d dated for a couple of weeks right before his world exploded. He remembered meeting the grandmother, too, a feisty old lady with the same golden eyes as her middle grandchild.
“Where’s your grandmother?”
A shadow passed over Junie’s expressive face.
“She died last year. That’s why Daisy left her job in Grand Harbor and came home to stay.”
That didn’t make much sense. “Her job? Was she a wedding planner there?”
“Mais non. The boutique is a pure leap of faith. Gran left us each some money and Daisy bought the Gray Lady with her portion. She insisted on Caro keeping her inheritance for Stevie, and me for my education.
Nick frowned. He wondered what made Daisy Budd tick and that curiosity annoyed him.
“Daisy wanted to start a business that would keep us all in Mayville.”
“Do you want to stay?”
“Sure. I mean, most of the time. Besides, I owe Daze. She kinda saved my life.”
It was hyperbole. Had to be. In any case, Nick didn’t want to hear any tales of heroism. Daisy Budd was the enemy. He dropped that topic and moved on to another. “What kind of job did she have in Grand Harbor?”
“She worked at the Gazette. Daisy was their police reporter.”
Dammit to Hell. The last thing he needed was a nosy journalist poking into the scandal that connected the Bowman family patriarch to Nazi loot. Shit.
“Junie,” Daisy called to her sister. “Nadine needs help with the pasties.”
“Okay, okay. I’ve got to get my dress on anyhow.” She gave him a little wave. “See you later, Nick.”
Daisy rounded on him as soon as her sister was out of earshot. “Why are you still here?”
He indicated the box. “Butterflies.”
“Well, thanks for all your help today but you must have somewhere else to be.”
“Oh, this is undoubtedly the most interesting spot in town today.” He let his gaze drop to her peasant blouse. “Nice décolletage.”
The whiskey eyes narrowed on him and she planted her fists at her waist.
“You’re wasting the flirting with me. I’m immune.”
He stepped close enough to touch the hollow at the base of her neck and dropped his voice to an intimate whisper.
“Don’t challenge me, sweetheart. You aren’t up to my weight.”
A certain unexpected breathiness accompanied his words. Her skin was soft and faintly moist and Nick had to resist a sudden urge to touch more of it. He lifted his fingers away and spoke before she could order him off the property. “What do you say to a truce? I’m back in town for a few days to tie up some loose ends for my grandfather.”
Her face was so expressive. He knew exactly what she was thinking without her saying a word. Where were you when Theo was sick? Why didn’t you attend the funeral? What kind of grandson is only interested in his inheritance?
It was easy to resist the urge to explain. Nick had learned the hard way never to explain his actions to anyone. “I’m not here to ravish the local beauties,” he added. “And, I told you. I won’t hurt your sister.”
The clear, hazel eyes met his. “I still need to know why you’re in my backyard.”
Nick sighed. Trust a journalist not to lose sight of the bottom line.
“Daisy, dear, where do you want these lilies?”
He was saved from making another excuse by the old lady’s question but he knew it was a temporary reprieve.
Nick stared at the old house. It rankled that Daisy considered him a debaucher. Sure he liked women, but he stuck to the type who valued him for his wealth and reputation in the racing community. He did not run around seducing teenagers, for God’s sake. Why the hell was she so prickly?
Damn Theo anyway. Why hadn’t he taken care of this before he died or, at the very least, left the business to Buzz, Mayville’s golden boy? A lump formed in Nick’s throat but he ignored it. He’d given up his family seven years ago. He’d only taken on this mission because of a lull in his schedule.
Nick stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and wondered when he’d started lying to himself.
He frowned when he remembered Daisy’s odd reference to anonymous letters. Was somebody else aware of the loot? It seemed a pretty big coincidence that the letters should start arriving at this house at the same time he planned to search the place.
Was there another party involved? Had this irksome chore turned into a race?
He walked down to the trellised archway that separated the courtyard from the shallow field and wooded area on the other side of which lay Bowman’s Biscuits, Inc. Nick’s former legacy. Just for a moment he felt something like regret but he banished the sensation. He’d built himself a good life on the coast. He’d fulfilled his childhood dream. He didn’t need Bowman’s Biscuits or anything else in Mayville.
Insects buzzed in the honeysuckle bushes and the air filled with voices of new arrivals. He turned back to survey the courtyard and the back of the shabby Victorian house. Seven years ago he’d rejected this kind of small town charm in favor of the anonymity of a glass and steel high rise in Southern California. To be fair, it had rejected him. Or at least Theo had. He reminded himself it had been the right move.
He wished he could search today but he’d have to exercise a little more subtlety than that. For maximum accessibility he’d have to make friends with the little dragon who guarded her fortress with such ferocity.
He watched her greet her guests and his breath caught at the warmth of the smile on her face. It wouldn’t be easy to breach her walls but he’d already identified her weakness. Daisy couldn’t deny her sister anything. Junie was the key. And Junie was already a fan.
A moment later the youngest Budd sister rejoined him. She wore a sky blue gown and pointed cap a la Sleeping Beauty and her first words were straight out of a Nick’s fondest fairytale.
“Could you help me carry a box of costumes up from the cellar?”
His lips stretched into a slow smile. Luck was on his side. “Yeah, I could.”
The cellar ran the length and breadth of the house. A long, steep staircase descended to a dirt floor. The faint light allowed by the singl
e window received little help from the naked bulb that swung on a rope from the ceiling and cast eerie shadows over the row of caskets against one wall. Assorted furniture and stacks of boxes covered with sheets created a ghostly effect. Nick noted the presence of several doors and speculated they led to storage rooms or pantries or perhaps a wine cellar, although Uncle Randolph hadn’t been much of a drinker.
Somewhere down here there was a piece of priceless treasure stolen from the Nazis. That it had never been found was a testament to the excellence of the hiding place. Few people would think to search the cellar of a funeral home. Even fewer would have the stomach for it.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Junie confided.
“You ought to clean it out. “ He nodded at the coffins. “You could probably sell those.”
“How? On eBay?”
Nick grinned. “I’d be willing to call some funeral homes. If we find a buyer I can deliver ’em in the hearse.”
“That’d be awesome,” she said. “But, Nick, are you sure you have time?”
He chuckled. “Believe me, if the choice is spending time with my Bowman relatives or moving coffins with you, there’s no contest.”
She flashed her impish smile.
“You’d make a lot of points with Daisy. She’s dying to get this place cleaned up.” Junie sighed. “She doesn’t trust you, you know.”
“Is she suspicious of all guys?”
Junie shook her head. “She’s usually nice to everybody. I think you’re in a special category because you hurt Caro.”
He stared at her. Had he missed something here? He’d barely known her eldest sister. They’d had, what, two, maybe three dates?
He reminded himself it didn’t matter whether or not Daisy trusted him. He had a job to do and Miss Junie Budd was going to help him do it. He smiled at her. “Where’re the costumes?”
With their arms laden, they stepped outside. The sun’s warmth was welcome after the dank air of the cellar. Junie shivered.