Beckett's Convenient Bride

by Dixie Browning

  But not his gun. There was nothing wrong with her ears; toy guns didn’t make the same sound as what she’d heard in the churchyard.

  Her hand moved toward his jacket. He opened his eyes, focusing on her face, not the hand that hovered over the flap of his coat.

  “It’s real,” he said as if he’d read her mind. With a smile that looked as if it hurt and disappeared almost instantly, he said, “I’m a few miles out of my territory, but—” He covered his mouth, sneezed, and then groaned.

  “Bless you,” Kit murmured automatically. “What are you—that is, are you looking for someone in particular?” Like me, for instance? She added silently.

  If he was from the sheriff’s department, he’d probably traced her through one of those gizmos people hooked onto their phones. Nine-one-one probably had it for people like her; people who didn’t want to get involved.

  Well, crud. No matter how tempting it was, she couldn’t leave the man lying there. Any minute now a car could come peeling in off Waterlily and crash into his car or run over his legs. Probably cream Ladybug in the process. There wasn’t much room for maneuvering.

  “Look, I’ll help you get up and into your car, but I really don’t know anything more than what I told you over the phone. Told your dispatcher, at least. I heard voices— I couldn’t even tell what they were arguing about. Then I heard a shot, only I thought it was a backfire, and then—”

  There was barely room, but she managed to position herself behind him. Reaching down, she hooked her arms under his. Lordy, what a waste, she thought before she could stop herself. He was a big man. A big, beautifully constructed man, she couldn’t help but notice. With uncombed black hair that was overdue for a trim, a lean, pale face that hadn’t recently seen a razor, he wore western boots, jeans that were worn in all the right places, a black shirt and a buckskin jacket that looked as if it had been through a few battles.

  Get your mind on what you’re doing, you ditz!

  “I’m going to sit you up,” she said, bracing to use herself as a counterweight. “Help me out here, you weigh a ton.”

  “Give me a minute, okay? I’m just winded.”

  “More than that, if you ask me. Well, you didn’t, but I’ll get you back inside your car, anyway. The rest is up to you. If you’re a real policeman, you can call one of your deputies or something. If you’re not—well, like I said, I didn’t see anything. Honestly.”

  By the time they managed to get him on his feet again, Kit had touched him in places she hadn’t touched any man in years. Her palms tingled from the heat of his body. If it turned out he really was a sheriff or a policeman, she would simply repeat what she’d said over the phone—which wasn’t all that much, come to think of it. But this time she would answer any questions he asked to the best of her ability. Then, if he insisted on taking her in to make a statement, she could do that, too, because no crook was going to come near her as long as she was under police protection.

  At least, that was the way it worked in suspense novels.

  Except when the cop turned out to be the villain.

  Well, she wouldn’t think about that. Besides, this one looked more like a hero. Not that he was classically handsome by any means. He had one of those crinkly mouths that looked as if he smiled a lot when he hadn’t just been run off the road. That aggressive jaw that was badly in need of a shave, and a pair of dark eyebrows arched perfectly over beautiful blue eyes. On a woman, she might have suspected tinted contacts, but this man, whoever he was, was too rugged. He looked as if he didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought of his looks.

  Correction: at the moment, he looked as if he were about to collapse.

  “Are you hurting anywhere in particular?” she asked cautiously. The last thing she needed was a lawsuit. That would be all her grandfather needed to reel her back into the family fold.

  He inhaled deeply, shook his head and winced. “Nowhere in particular. My grandmother would have called it feeling all-overish.”

  She didn’t want to hear about his family, she had enough problems with her own. She glanced at her car and then at his larger SUV. “Can you drive? That is, maybe I could drive you home and then come back for my car.”

  “Long walk,” he rasped. She’d been right about his mouth. It crinkled into a quick grin that melted the last of her resistance. If he was one of the bad guys, she could easily outrun him. She doubted if he’d shoot her right in plain sight of the wharf and any passerby.

  “Well, maybe I could follow you to make sure you get home safely. I mean, if you really are a policeman, I guess it would be all right.”

  “Ms. Dixon?”

  Astonished, she said, “You know my name?”

  “Katherine Chandler Dixon?”

  “Who are you?” She edged away. “Did my grandfather send you?”

  “No, mine did,” he said, and then bent double in a fit of coughing that made her throat hurt just to hear it.

  “You’re sick,” she said flatly. “There’s a hospital in Elizabeth City and one on the beach. I think there are some other medical facilities, too. Take your pick.”

  Recovering, he shook his head. Under the dark shadow of beard, his face looked the color of raw plaster. “Don’t need a hospital. On my way to recovering from a few busted bones, I picked up a bug. It’s no big deal—mostly headache. I just need to sleep it off.”

  “Look, if you’ll tell me where you live, I’ll see that you get there, one way or another, all right? The rest is up to you.”

  “Charleston,” he said with another of those twisty grins. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was deliberately trying to disarm her.

  “Where’s that?” And then her eyes widened. “You mean the one in South Carolina?”

  “Yep. Last time I saw it, it was.” He appeared to be breathing easier now that the coughing fit had passed.

  “I’m certainly not going to drive you to Charleston, but if you’re staying somewhere around here, I’ll help you get there.”

  “Nags Head last night. Checked out this morning.” He named a hotel about three mileposts from where she’d worked last summer.

  Shaking her head slowly, Kit made up her mind. Lord, if she ever wrote an autobiography, no one would believe it. Not that anyone would be interested.

  “You’re coming home with me,” she said firmly. Lord knows she’d taken home scruffier-looking creatures. Four-legged ones. Besides, her home was within shouting distance of practically everyone in the village. “It’s not much, but at least you can rest up until you feel like telling me what this is all about.” The man knew her name. She wanted to know what else he knew about her. “You can rest on the couch until you’re feeling better. It opens up and I can let you have a spare pillow.”

  Carson wanted to refuse. Hell, he wanted to be back in Charleston in his own bed, with the telephone off the hook and a solid week to do nothing but sleep.

  At the moment, though, if she’d offered him a doormat, he would gratefully have accepted. “Need to talk anyway,” he said. He could rest up for a few minutes, speak his piece, hand over the goods and by that time he’d be good to go.

  Good enough, at any rate.

  “You wait here,” she said. “I’ll move my car off the road—nobody’ll bother it. I can drive a stick shift, you don’t have to worry about that.”

  He shook his head, winced and said, “Automatic.”

  “Whatever. I just don’t want you on my conscience. You’re in no shape to drive and my car will be all right here. There’s no crime around these parts.”

  Hearing her own words, Kit wondered just when she had stepped through the looking glass. How about murder? And no matter how peaceful it might look on the surface, Gilbert’s Point saw it’s share of drug traffic, not to mention the occasional Saturday night celebration that got out of hand. So far as she knew, the Coast Guard took care of the drug runners and a night in jail took care of the boozers. But murder—that was scary.

  “Give me
the keys,” she growled. “I’ll help you in and—”

  He helped himself in, moving as if he’d been stretched on a rack, but moving under his own steam. That was encouraging.

  “You can take a nap if you want to, I don’t have to be at work until five and it’s only four-twenty. Are you allergic to aspirin? How about chicken soup? Jeff at the Crab House makes really good chicken soup.”

  She could hear her mother now. “Katherine, do you have to drag home every stray creature in the world? I’m not running a zoo, you know,” she would say. At least, she would when she was sober enough. Or when she was home. Perhaps if she’d been home more often, or sober more often, Kit wouldn’t have adopted every stray she saw, from homeless cats to tailless lizards to broken-wing birds.

  It had never worked out, anyway. Her father had seen to that. He made her watch once while he stuffed a litter of abandoned kittens into a sack and drowned them in the Chesapeake Bay.

  And then she’d had to serve her term in the closet for defying his orders. It was usually only a matter of a few hours, but once, after one of her strays had infested the house with fleas and they’d had to get the exterminator in, she’d been locked in the closet for twelve hours straight. She had cried herself sick, then she’d begun making up stories.

  She probably had her father to thank for her career.

  “Hot tea’s supposed to be good for colds, too. And onions. Not together, of course, but…”

  Carson let her babble. All he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes. He never got sick, never. Been busted up a time or two, but he’d never caught any of the bugs going around. Until now.

  By the time she stopped the car in front of a house that was about the same vintage as his own, it was all he could do to slide out of the car. His overnight bag was in the back, but he lacked the motivation to reach for it.

  Passing by an assortment of bowls and pans on the front porch, she opened the door and pointed toward the back of the house. “Bathroom’s back there, last door on the left. Couch is through there, help yourself. I’ll put the kettle on and call to see if today’s chicken soup’s ready. Jeff makes it fresh every day.”

  Her voice had a soothing quality, which was surprising coming from a woman who was at worst a dangerous psychotic, at best, a compassionate flake. “There’s an afghan on the back of the couch. When you’re feverish, you probably don’t need to be chilled. Or is it the other way around?”

  She left, muttering something about starve-a-cold, feed-a-fever, but by that time Carson was down and nearly out. A moment later he could sense her presence, even though his eyes were closed. Don’t talk any more, he wanted to say, it hurts my head.

  “I won’t talk any more, you probably just want to sleep. Why don’t I go get my car now, and I’ll stop by the restaurant and bring you some chicken soup before I go to work.”

  He felt a drift of something light and wooly over his body. She hadn’t tried to remove his coat, but she tugged at one of his boots briefly before giving up. He could have told her that there was a knack to pulling off boots, and she didn’t have it. At that point, he didn’t care.

  Bye-bye, angel. Wake me up in a few weeks, all right?

  Three

  This is the right thing to do, Kit thought in an effort to reassure herself. After running the man down, she could hardly walk off and leave him there. He was injured, possibly even ill. It was only natural to be uneasy—any normal person would be uneasy.

  All right, so she was more than uneasy, she was scared stiff. But she was still functioning, and under the circumstances that was pretty cool.

  With shaking fingers, she dialed the Crab House. “Look, Jeff—I might be a few minutes late coming on shift, but I’m going to stop by first, and could you please have a quart of chicken soup ready to go?” She listened, darting quick glances toward the living room. “Uh-huh—that’s right, he found me.”

  Someone had been asking questions about her? And she’d been fool enough to drag him home with her. Maybe her grandfather was right—she was a clear case of arrested development.

  But the man had known her full name. That had brought her up short, and before she could come to her senses curiosity had outweighed fear, and now she was stuck with him.

  Fortunately, he was out like a light, as she simply wasn’t up to the job of dragging him out and dumping him beside the road.

  Raking her hair from her forehead, she thrust her car keys in her pocket and hurried down the path, wondering if she’d left enough room for Ladybug. Without thinking, she’d parked the Yukon in the place she usually parked her own car. Second thoughts, and third ones, dogged her steps as she hurried along the road. How could she have walked out and left a strange man asleep in her house at a time like this?

  Even under normal circumstances Kit never invited men to sleep in her house. Sleeping over implied involvement, and Kit had a whole series of rules concerning getting involved with a man, starting with No Way and ending with Just Say No.

  Growing up in a family that was everything proper on the outside and totally dysfunctional behind closed doors had left scars that she was still trying to heal—or if not to heal, at least to hide.

  In other words, she mocked silently, you’re a chip off the old block.

  Early on, it hadn’t been quite so evident that once her father left for his office, the whole house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Back then, her mother would wait until just before dinner to take the first drink. During the day they would go places, just the two of them. Movies, museums, shopping…to the zoo. On rainy days they might play Fish or cut paper dolls from old fashion magazines. She’d loved that, making up stories about each one.

  For Kit’s eighth birthday her mother had given her a bride doll. In later years Kit always connected the doll in her mind with a large, gold-framed wedding picture that had hung in her mother’s sitting room. The bride in the picture wore a full-skirted lace gown and pearl-seeded veil, her eyes aglow in a classically beautiful face. Standing beside her, but not touching her stood the groom, Christopher Dixon, looking handsome and chillingly un-involved. That was before her mother’s drinking spiraled out of control.

  Oh, they’d been a pair, all right. According to her grandfather, Betty Chandler had set out to trap herself a rich husband, and in a weak moment, the judge’s only son had allowed himself to be caught.

  So far as Kit knew, her father had never had a weak moment in his entire life. If the judge was known as Cast Iron, then her father, a junior partner in a prestigious law firm at the time of his death, could surely have been called Stainless Steel.

  Three days after her parents’ funeral—they’d died in a plane crash when she was eighteen—she had started making plans to move. They had lived only a few miles from the elder Dixons’ spacious white brick house on the Chesapeake Bay. Her grandparents were more than capable of dealing with the estate. Not that they would have welcomed her input even if she’d dared offer it.

  Poor Grandmother—the judge insisted on the formal titles—had been crushed by the death of her only child, but under her husband’s cold, disapproving eye she had quickly rallied. By the day of the funeral she’d been her old self to all outward appearances, which was all that mattered to the Dixons. Cool, polite and properly withdrawn.

  The next day her grandfather had sent for Kit to discuss her father’s will. Instead of obeying the summons, she had gone back upstairs to her room and started packing, boxing up her collection of books, her paints, her clothes and her mother’s wedding photograph. Then she’d locked the front door and headed south with one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and no prospects.

  And she’d done just fine. Missed a few meals along the way and spent more than a few nights in her car, but she’d learned quickly and been lucky. Before her grandfather could enlist every law enforcement officer in the Commonwealth of Virginia to track her down, she’d called to let them know she was all right. She hadn’t told them where she was, but since th
en she’d continued to call and occasionally drop in for a brief visit.

  She honestly didn’t know why she bothered, since all they did was criticize and try to coerce her into returning to the fold. Her grandmother’s gentle chiding was as bad as her grandfather’s harsh disapproval. According to the judge, Kit was just like her mother—weak, flighty and immoral. Just look at the way she dressed, for one thing—which, of course, had made her dress all the more outrageously. And working as a waitress? No member of his family had ever worked in a menial position.

  She was a darned good waitress. She’d like to see him try and keep up with orders and unruly patrons without losing his cool on a busy night at the height of the tourist season.

  Still, they were all the family she had. Deep down, she probably loved them. At least, she couldn’t bring herself to cut them off completely. One of these days they might even need her, and if that time ever came she would be there for them. But she would never go back and allow them to treat her the way they had treated her mother.

  Thinking always made Kit walk faster. She was halfway along Landing Road when she glanced up to see someone trying to open her car door.

  Her steps faltered. Had she locked it?

  Of course she’d locked it—although as a rule she didn’t bother. Gil’s Point was hardly a haven for car thieves.

  “Hey, you!” she shouted.

  The man glanced over his shoulder. Several men down at the boat dock looked up. Gil’s Point was that kind of place—no more than a mile or so from one end to the other, surrounded by tidal marsh on three sides, the canal on the other. One of the things she liked best about it was the neighborly feeling among the dozen or so families, who were mostly kin and had lived there forever.

  “That’s my car,” she yelled, her red sneakers pounding on the hard-packed marl. If it was in the way—and it was—she would move it. She didn’t need any stranger doing it for her. Ladybug had a ticklish transmission. For ticklish, read desperately ill.