She squeezed her cell phone more tightly against her ear as fierce disappointment swept through her. “I’ll be ready when you get here.”
She hung up and went into the back room. Jennifer had gone home when Abe had arrived and Michael had come in an hour earlier to work until closing with Abe.
Both of the men were in the front of the store waiting on customers. Sheri walked to a sturdy metal cabinet and unlocked it. She withdrew two boxes of shotgun shells and placed them in a bag, then relocked the cabinet.
She and Abe were the only people who had keys to this particular cabinet and only the local hunters knew that Sheri kept ammunition for sale in the store.
She couldn’t allow a dark-eyed, hard-chested, lush-lipped detective to stay in her house for protection. If she held on to her dreams of the perfect prince eventually finding her, then she couldn’t get any closer to Detective Hottie from Philly.
She was armed and dangerous with the shells for her gun, but she also knew from the single kiss they had shared that he was hot and dangerous to the dreams she’d made for herself long ago.
* * *
Jimmy had dropped Sheri off at the store that morning and then had gone home to sleep, confident that his partners and the other officers would conduct a thorough search of the heavily wooded area behind Sheri’s house.
When he’d awakened and checked in with Frank, he’d been disappointed to learn they’d found nothing of evidentiary value anywhere in the woods.
He’d also spoken with Dr. Cusack earlier, who had told him that Highway’s blood results had come back and the dog had been injected with a near-life-threatening dose of Xanax.
Jimmy had a feeling that whoever had administered the drug probably didn’t have a prescription for it and, in any case, attempting to access that kind of information would mean breaking all kinds of privacy laws. He also knew how easily drugs could be obtained on the streets, on the internet and through friends. The drug was a lead that would be almost impossible to follow.
The only thing he could hope for was that Sheri had made a list of people where they might at least begin an investigation of sorts.
As he pulled up to the front of the Roadside Stop, he couldn’t help the way his heart quickened in anticipation of the sight of her. When she’d left that morning in her tight jeans and a brown T-shirt with gold lettering that emphasized the gold of her eyes, he’d been in a near state of arousal just looking at her.
He didn’t want to care about her. He didn’t want to truly care about anyone, but from the moment he’d met her three months earlier, something about Sheri had touched him in a way that no other woman had ever done before.
Maybe it was because she was so small and appeared so vulnerable, but it also had to do with the way her hair fell in such soft waves around her shoulders, how her amazing golden eyes lit as if with a source from within.
In all honesty, he had no idea why he was so attracted to her, why the very sight of her welled up a protective instinct he’d never felt for any other person. He just felt so good, so right whenever he was with her.
He knew that in following through on his attraction to her, he’d experience heartbreak, rejection and abandonment issues for the second time in his life, and he told himself over and over again that he wasn’t willing to go there again.
Still, as she left the store and headed toward his car, he couldn’t help the way he felt, as if his world was about to be right, at least for as long as he’d be in her company.
“Hey,” she said as she slid into the passenger seat and placed a white plastic bag at her feet on the floor.
“Hey yourself,” he said. “How was your day?”
“Could have been better,” she replied.
He knew she was probably referring to the fact that nothing had been found in the woods to help them in investigating who’d attacked her.
“Did you make a list for me today?”
“I usually try to do what I’m told when a law enforcement agent asks something of me,” she said with a teasing tone.
He thought of all the things he’d like to ask her to do for him, to him, and tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “Then how about I drive through and get Chinese and we go to your house and talk about the list while we eat?” he suggested, shoving the other sexy ideas out of his head.
“Sounds like a plan,” she agreed. “Although I can’t imagine the people I listed having anything to do with what happened to me and Highway last night.”
“We never imagined Steve’s old girlfriend would try to kill Roxy,” Jimmy countered. “Right now as far as I’m concerned everyone in your life except me, my partners and your sisters are potential suspects.”
“Wow, you’re definitely the suspicious type,” she said.
“I prefer to think of myself as the cautious type,” he returned as he headed down Main toward Chang Li’s restaurant.
“And that’s what I like about you,” she said. “Especially when it comes to my safety.”
Forty minutes later the two of them were seated at Sheri’s table, plates full of sweet-and-sour chicken, sesame beef and broccoli, and crab Rangoons before them.
They had decided to eat first and then talk about the names on her list afterward. Their dinner conversation revolved around her childhood with her aunt and her sisters. He found himself laughing again and again as she confessed to the schemes Roxy would talk them into and the chaos that often resulted in the house.
“We definitely were the ornery three musketeers, and Aunt Liz had the patience of a saint,” she said as she reached for a second crab Rangoon.
“Speaking of that, have you heard anything more from Ramona?” he asked.
“No, but Marlene told me today she’d decided to have a meet with her. Roxy is still adamant that she wants nothing to do with Ramona.” She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully and Jimmy tried to keep his gaze away from her mouth, a mouth he knew was not just sweet and giving, but also held a fiery heat that had stunned him.
“Aunt Liz was such a good mother to us, none of us really missed having Ramona in our lives. Did you have any mother figures at all in your life?” she asked curiously.
A hard knot instantly formed in his chest as his thoughts shot back in time, back to when he was eight years old. He’d been so hungry to belong to somebody permanently, so needy of love that would last forever and fate had finally answered his prayers.
“Jane Brickman.” Even her name falling from his lips shot a stunning ache through his chest. “I met her and her husband, Lenny, when I was seven years old. They started coming regularly to my foster home to visit with me.”
He was pleased that his voice remained cool and calm as he spoke of the couple he’d loved so much. “They visited me frequently and then after about a year they began taking me out for day trips to the zoo, to the movies, wherever they took me I was just happy to be with them. They were kind and gentle people and I grew to love them deeply.” His voice cracked slightly.
He paused, swallowing against the emotions he’d suppressed successfully for so many years. He leaned back in his chair and raked a hand through his hair. “Sorry, I’ve never really talked about this to anyone before.” He shoved his plate aside, his appetite gone.
“Jimmy, if you don’t want to talk about it...”
“No, it’s okay.” He straightened in his chair. “It happened a long time ago and I think I need to talk about it. Anyway, it came to the point where I was spending weekends with Jane and Lenny. They’d even decorated a bedroom in their house just for me. It had a bedspread with a big race car on it and shelves filled with books and toys. When they finally told me they were about to begin the adoption process to make me their very own son forever, I cried. I’d never known what happiness was until that day.”
He felt the weight of Sheri�
��s gaze on him as he stared at the wall just above her head. Memories cascaded through his mind, memories of snuggling into that bed beneath the race car, Jane’s gentle kiss good night on his forehead and Lenny tossing him up for an impromptu piggyback ride.
“But something happened,” Sheri said softly. “Something bad.”
The memories shattered as he gave a curt nod and swallowed against a weight of emotions he’d kept suppressed for years. “Jane was on her way to the grocery store when a drunk driver slammed into her car head-on. She was killed instantly.” His stomach twisted, churning the Chinese food he’d just eaten. “My foster mother told me about Jane’s death. I never saw Lenny again.”
He finally looked at Sheri, surprised to see her eyes shimmering with tears that could only be for him. “I had the dream, you know, of having a family, of finally belonging. I was so sure it was going to happen for me and then it was just gone. I later heard that Lenny had moved away and was suffering from severe depression.”
“And after that?” she asked softly.
“After that I was a very angry nine-year-old who became hard to place because of my aggressive, nasty disposition. For the next nine years I was moved from place to place, fighting authority, lost in a rage, until I finally reached eighteen and was given a change of clothing, a hundred dollars and told it was time to make my own way.”
“You didn’t get any counseling when Jane died? Nobody addressed the issue of your terrible grief?” she asked, her voice thick with emotion.
He finally looked at her with a wry smile. “I was lucky to get dinner most nights.”
“Oh, Jimmy.” She reached across the table and covered one of his hands with hers. Her tiny hand radiated warmth to the cold place that had taken up residence in his heart as he remembered the little boy he’d once been. A child who’d almost had what he wanted most of all in the world, and then it had all been snatched away.
“To be honest, I did have some great foster parents, but by the time I was placed with them I was already out of control, running with a rough crowd and trying to be the biggest badass in the whole city of Philly. I wouldn’t let anyone close to me.”
He pulled his hand from beneath hers, already feeling as if he’d said too much, cracked open parts of his heart that he’d never shared. “We have more important things to talk about than my past. You said you had a list of names for us to take a look at?”
Things had become too personal for him. It was time to step back to a level of professionalism where he had the job to try to figure out who had chased her the night before, who would want to hurt her.
For the next three hours they pored over the list she had made, talking about her relationship with the people on it. “No previous boyfriends? Past relationships?” he asked when they’d gone over the list for the second time and come up with no real person of interest.
“I’ve only had one past relationship and that was almost a year ago.”
“Why isn’t his name on the list?”
She shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think about him. I haven’t seen him since we broke up. I can’t imagine he’d have anything to do with this.”
“Who broke off the relationship?”
“I did.” Shutters seemed to fall in her eyes. They went flat, completely unreadable. “I thought he was my blond prince, but he was really just a mean, hateful man who thought it was amusing to make fun of me.”
“Make fun of you?”
“Whenever he was irritated with me, he’d call me S-s-stuttering Sh-Sh-Sheri, too s-stupid to s-speak.” Her cheeks flamed with color. “I put up with it for three months and finally had enough and walked away.”
“How did he take it?”
“Fine. I’m sure he immediately found another woman to verbally abuse.” The color in her cheeks faded and her eyes took on a sparkling life once again. “Jimmy, Eric never had enough passion toward me to love or to hate me. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the man in the woods. Eric was slender and the man in the woods was bigger.”
“I’m still going to check him out,” Jimmy insisted. He didn’t intend to leave any stone unturned until he found out who had attacked Highway and Sheri.
By the time they’d finished talking about each person on the list yet again, it was after nine and Sheri had stifled several yawns.
“Are you sure you don’t want me or somebody else staying out here with you for the night?” he asked after they’d cleared the table.
“I’ve got bullets for my gun and I know how to use it,” she said, a determined glint in her eyes. “I won’t be taken by surprise again, so I’ll be fine here alone.” She walked with him to the front door.
“Then I’ll pick you up in the morning to take you to the store. I don’t want you driving the mountain road alone right now.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in the morning.” She opened the door and stepped back, giving him plenty of room to leave without coming too close to her.
“Good night, princess,” he said, and stepped outside. She closed the door behind him and he heard the reassuring sound of her bolting the door.
He got into his car and drove about half a mile down the road where there was a small area for a car to pull off onto a shoulder easement nearly overgrown and half-hidden by the woods.
He parked, got out of the car and opened his trunk where he had earlier stored a flashlight and a blanket.
If she thought he was going to leave her to her own devices tonight after what had happened the night before, then she was apparently delusional. There was no way he was going to allow her to be in that cottage surrounded by woods all alone.
It took him only minutes to hike back to her house and head to the backyard where he remembered seeing a colorful hammock tied between two trees. It would be the perfect place for him to plant himself.
He’d always been a light sleeper and there was no way if he snoozed in the hammock anyone would approach Sheri’s house from the woods. He also wasn’t concerned about Sheri shooting him. He’d bet his own gun that Sheri Marcoli was incapable of pointing a loaded gun at anyone and pulling the trigger, no matter what the circumstances.
If she’d had the guts to shoot anyone that shotgun would have been loaded the day she’d pointed it at Travis Brooks. He was rather pleased with himself for coming up with the idea of spending the nights right under her nose, in her own backyard until they had the attacker behind bars.
He took a dive into the hammock and it promptly twisted and tossed him on the ground. He landed with an umph and picked himself up and tried it again with the same results.
For a long moment he sat on the ground, wondering why he thought himself capable of guarding Sheri when he was being beaten up by a damned hammock.
He tried one final time, easing into the night-cooled canvas with success. As the hammock swayed to a faint night breeze, he thought of the people Sheri had put on her list.
Was the attacker there? Or was he somebody who hadn’t even made it on Sheri’s radar? What had he wanted with Sheri? There were so many questions and absolutely no answers.
One thing was clear, whoever had been in the woods wasn’t done with Sheri yet. Jimmy felt it in his gut that danger still lurked around her. He could almost feel the malevolent forces that lingered in the nearby woods and he could only hope that when the time came the foster kid from Philly had what it took to save the beautiful princess from evil.
Chapter 11
Saturdays were always the busiest day in the shop and today was even busier than usual. Sheri was grateful for the constant stream of customers that kept her focus away from monsters in the woods, her precious Highway’s recovery and the disturbingly sexy Jimmy Carmani.
For the past three days she and Jimmy had fallen into an easy routine. He picked her up each morning to bring her into work, and then reappear
ed at around five to take her back to her place. They usually picked up fast food to eat at her house while he told her about the progress the police were making on her case, which was basically none.
He left the house by nine each evening and Sheri made sure her newly loaded shotgun was next to her bed when she went to sleep. She’d only had a nightmare once, reliving the wild chase through the woods, terror banging painfully in her chest until she’d awakened gasping for air and grateful to discover that it was just a bad dream. She’d survived the real deal.
Tonight she would sleep easier, for Highway was finally coming home. She and Jimmy were picking him up on their way to the cottage after work and she couldn’t wait to get him back where he belonged.
Dr. Cusack had not allowed her to visit him during his convalescence, insisting that seeing her would only upset Highway and set back his recovery time and adjustment to the cast on his front leg.
It had been agony for her, not being able to see him, not being able to assure herself that he was really okay, but she’d had to trust that Dr. Cusack had Highway’s best interest in mind.
She couldn’t wait to wrap her arms around Highway’s furry neck and to have him sleeping next to her bed, his faint snores creating a nighttime lullaby in the bedroom that gave her a sense of security and hopefully kept any further nightmares at bay.
“You and Detective Carmani seem to be getting pretty close,” Jennifer said as she stood next to Sheri during a lull in customers.
“He’s my guard dog while Highway is at the vet’s,” Sheri explained. “At least I don’t have to let him out to run in the yard occasionally.”
Jennifer giggled. “Personally I think Detective Carmani is panting after you.”
Sheri swatted Jennifer on the shoulder. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
“I’m just saying.” Jennifer moved two steps away so that she was out of swatting distance. “He’s definitely a hunk.”
“He’s short,” Sheri said. And he’s not blond and he doesn’t have blue eyes, she thought.
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