Beckett's Convenient Bride

by Dixie Browning

  He’d figure out where they were going later.

  She spoke after half an hour of silence, in answer to God only knows which question. “It just seems…I don’t know. Fishy,” she said thoughtfully.

  Fishy? His mind raced back over the past half hour, trying to connect the dots. Trying to connect anything.

  “Well, think about it. I report finding a body, the body disappears, and then it’s found again. It has to be the same one, don’t you think? I mean, Gil’s Point is just too small for two bodies in as many days.”

  He nodded slowly as a few dots connected.

  She continued. “And then, right after all that, my house burns to the ground.” She looked at him then, her face too pale, her features too finely drawn. Shocky, but hanging in there. “You know what I think? I think someone deliberately set that fire to hurt me.”

  Smart lady. “We can’t be certain if that’s true. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to think defensively until we find out a few facts.”

  “You’re a policeman. What would you do if you were me?”

  By then they had turned off onto Highway 158, headed generally west. He was a cop; she had that much right. But even on his own turf it wasn’t always possible to walk the line without stepping in something sticky. In a case like this, where he was clearly out of his jurisdiction, he was operating at a slight disadvantage. Better to work from a safe distance. If she checked in again with the local law and tried to tell her story—and knowing the way Kit’s mind worked, it would involve a few embellishments—she might end up being held as a material witness. Especially if that young jerk deputy had anything to do with it. He was a little too impressed with his shiny new badge and that big .45 strapped to his porcine hip.

  Carson made a mental note to run an unofficial check on the county law office. Until then, he wanted her out of range.

  “Citizens have a duty,” Kit said out of the blue, and then seemed to lose her chain of thought.

  “Look, you followed the unwritten rules.” He tried to sound reassuring.

  “I don’t know any unwritten rules.”

  “That’s because they’re not written down anywhere.” With one hand on the wheel, he reached for a body part to comfort, found her thigh, and patted. “Rule number one, you move away from what’s going down. Don’t get involved. You pegged that one, right?”

  “Hmm.” A sidelong glance revealed her face in the faint glow of the dashboard. She was looking only slightly more relaxed. Maybe his tactics were working.

  “Okay, next you notify the proper authorities, report only what you saw or heard—no more, no less—and you do it promptly.” To the best of his knowledge, she had complied to the letter.

  She drew in a shuddering breath.

  “I can turn up the heat,” he suggested. It was North Carolina, not North Dakota. It was March, for Pete’s sake. They were already a day or two into spring.

  Suddenly she leaned forward and said, “Slow down.” They were nearing the turnoff that would take them to Highway 17. “See that service station up ahead? That’s where one of the deputies lives—the newest one. I don’t know his name—I don’t even know what he looks like. He could’ve been one of the men there tonight—at the house, I mean.”

  Where the house used to be, Carson corrected, but had the good sense to do it silently.

  “Anyway, when I wanted to rent the house on the other side—the little brick bungalow? The rental agent said he’d just leased it to a new deputy sheriff.”

  Fortunately, traffic was light, otherwise he might get hauled over as a navigational hazard. Carson slowed down and studied the place, reluctant to stop for no real reason other than the instinctive need he felt to get her away from there. “Guy’s probably still at the fire.”

  “Did you see any deputies there?”

  “A couple.” Neither of them, including the jerk with the attitude, had looked old enough to shave, but then, that might be his own personal bias. He didn’t need the reminder that Kit was closer to their ages than to his. “Seen enough?”

  “Wait, there’s a light on,” she said, bracing herself on his thigh to see past him. The house in question was on the left. There was a big fig tree close to the highway that partially blocked the view. “Maybe I should just…”

  The security light from the service station spilled over onto the yard. Ignoring a nagging sense of reluctance, he was about to pull into the driveway when he heard her gasp. The fingers on his thigh dug in. “Go, go go!” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t stop!”

  What the devil—?

  After a swift glance into the rearview mirror, he veered back onto the highway. Fortunately, the only headlights in sight were a safe distance behind, but something had sure as hell spooked her.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here?” As a rule he was pretty much a by-the-book man. Saved time and trouble in the long run. But ever since she’d nearly run him down, he’d been operating on instinct, and now even that was going haywire. Like trying to steer his way through an iron foundry using an old fashioned compass.

  He had a feeling he knew what to blame, too. Didn’t want to know. Couldn’t afford to think about it. He’d sooner rack it up to a side effect of the twenty-four-hour virus that had caught up with him in Nags Head and followed him to Gilbert’s Point.

  But this particular symptom had little to do with the flu and even less to do with a possible drug-related murder. It had everything to do with the woman beside him, her short, unpolished fingernails digging into the muscles of his thigh.

  Did she even know she still had her hand there? She couldn’t possibly know how it was affecting him—how everything about her affected him.

  Hell, it didn’t make sense.

  He revved up to five miles above the limit, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror while he did his best to ignore the steely grip that was digging in mere inches from ground zero. When he was pretty sure he could speak calmly, he said, “You want to tell me what just happened back there?”

  She removed her hand, raked it through her hair and took a deep breath, turning to face forward again. “That truck. Carson, it’s the same one.”

  He waited. Details at eleven, folks.

  She unclipped her seat belt, twisted around and came up on her knees to stare at the scene fast falling behind. When she braced herself with one hand on his shoulder, he reached down and angled a vent to blow on his face. He was sweating. If he’d thought a vehicle this size could safely hold two adults without either of them infringing on the other’s personal space, he’d thought wrong. This woman could be at the opposite end of the damned county and she’d still manage to mess up his concentration.

  And if that made any sense, he’d eat his boots. Minus catsup.

  Finally she turned around and settled back into her seat. He growled, “Fasten your seat belt. Don’t do that again, all right?”

  Dutifully, she sat down again and clicked the buckle. He shot her a suspicious look. “You want to tell me what it was all about?”

  “I told you. Weren’t you even listening?”

  “You didn’t tell me one damned thing, you just yelled, go, go, go!”

  “I did so tell you.” She sounded affronted.

  Which, he reluctantly conceded, was better than sounding terrified. A whole lot better. “So tell me again, I’m a little slow on the uptake.”

  “I know, you’ve been sick and then you got all mixed up in my—my—” She tugged at her seat belt to loosen it. “I’m sorry as I can be that I got you involved, but that truck back there—Carson, it’s the same one. You know, the man who was messing around with Ladybug when I thought he was planting explosives? And I yelled at him and he ran?”

  He knew about a truck. At least, he remembered hearing her disjointed account of what had happened when she’d gone to retrieve her car the first time. He never lost details, but sometimes when data came piling in too rapidly, he simply crammed it into a mental heap to sort out later
.

  They were on a narrow straight stretch of highway through wide-open farmland. Carson pulled off onto the shoulder beside a newly planted field. “Listen, before we go any further, I want you to tell me everything you know.”

  She swallowed audibly. “Everything?”

  “No frills, just the facts, ma’am.” He waited, but she was evidently too young to remember Sergeant Friday on the old cop show. “You said the guy who was messing around with your car drove off in a pickup.” He’d been a bit feverish at the time, his head threatening implosion, but he did remember that much.

  “It was the same one. I was already scared, so I noticed. It was red, with one blue fender, like he’d had to replace it or something. And the sound it made—remember I told you about the truck at the church? Vroom, vroom, and then this funny whine?”

  Details began slotting into place. He nodded.

  “Well, I knew I’d heard it before when I heard it again, and I’m sure it was the same truck, even if I didn’t see the license plate. But of course, I didn’t see it the first time, either, so that didn’t matter. I can’t actually swear on a stack of Bibles that it was the same truck that was in the church parking lot, but Carson—you know what I’m thinking?”

  He knew what he was thinking. Unfortunately—not to mention inappropriately—it had nothing to do with pickup trucks, with or without blue fenders and muffler packs. He marked it down to a heightened stress level on top of a long, dry spell, sexually speaking. For good measure he threw in that provocative scent she was wearing. Fruity, spicy, with overtones of smoke.

  She was shivering again. If he turned the heat up any more, he’d have to shed some clothes. Under the circumstances, that wasn’t advisable. Middle of the night—shut up together in close confines, heightened emotions—it was a conflagration waiting to happen.

  He was three years shy of forty, for crying out loud, not seventeen! Evidently that concussion he’d sustained five months ago had done more damage than he’d thought.

  “Look, we never did eat lunch, and I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get anything to eat at your folks’ party. You want to find a drive-in and fill up?”

  On any other woman, the look she shot him could have been called indignant. On Kit, it was…

  Simply Kit. A unique woman with a unique set of problems. Problems he seemed to have taken onto his own shoulders.

  They drove for several miles before finding food that didn’t come out of a vending machine. By the time he pulled up to the gas tanks, Carson had remembered the napkins full of party food he’d tossed onto the back seat. Whatever that was wrapped in bacon—chicken livers, probably—he figured it wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, he needed to fill his gas tank, and they could both use the facilities. Too much had happened since he’d showered, shaved and set out to attend an anniversary celebration at a fancy estate on the Chesapeake Bay.

  Kit hurried inside, teetering on those ridiculous shoes. He filled his tank, then went inside. Before heading to the men’s room, he placed an order for two Italian subs on whole wheat, with everything, reasoning that any woman who ate weeds would probably go for whole grain bread.

  His face, the collar of his shirt and the edges of his hair still damp, he was just putting away his billfold a few minutes later when she emerged from the ladies’ room, looking so pale her freckles stood out in relief.

  And so damned appealing it was all he could do not to open his arms. How was it possible for a woman to look that good wearing an ugly dress, a man’s coat that was about six sizes too large, and hair had evidently been groomed by a hay-rake?

  Those shoes would have to go, he thought, watching her make her way past the popcorn and potato chips. Even exhausted and stressed out, she had an in-your-face way of walking that was sexy as the devil. Here I come, world, get the hell out of my way.

  Only she didn’t curse. He’d noticed that about her, along with a few thousand more details.

  “Want your coat back?” she asked, eyeing the thick six-inch subs that were just being wrapped.

  “Keep it. I’d lend you my boots, but they’re probably half a size too big.”

  “Ha. Try five sizes too big.”

  She was game, all right. Strung out like a thread of molten glass and about as brittle, but she was hanging in there. He said, “Did you know you toe out when you walk?” Trivial Pursuit had its purposes.

  “It’s the shoes. I have to scrunch my toes to keep them on.”

  “We’re going shopping first chance we get.”

  “You forget, I don’t have—”

  The clerk was eyeing them as if they might be from another planet. Or maybe he was eyeballing Kit, who was definitely worth the effort. “Let’s go.” He cut her off before she could remind him that she didn’t have any money. Hell, he knew that. She had ten grand, but it wouldn’t do her much good until she could get to a bank. Even then she might have trouble. He didn’t know how much identification she had in that postcard-sized purse she’d carried with her to Virginia, but he had an idea it might not be sufficient.

  All the more reason to take her home with him.

  He ushered her out the door, thinking, okay, Beckett, what are you going to do with her once you get her to Charleston? Show up on your mama’s doorstep with a stranger in tow? He’d spoken impulsively at the party, thinking to give her an easy out. It wasn’t like him to do anything impulsively. He was a plodding, by-the-book kind of guy, for the most part.

  Even so, it might have worked just fine a year ago, but not now. Things were shaky enough around there without adding someone like Kit Dixon to the equation.

  What now? Find a hotel near a shopping mall, pay for a week’s rent and lend her his charge card? The only other option he could think of was taking her home with him. To his two-bedroom, semi-furnished house outside Charleston proper.

  “My feet hurt. I wish I’d worn my sneakers tonight instead of these things.”

  “We’ll look for one of those 24/7 places that sells everything from truck tires to lady’s lingerie.”

  She nodded, unwrapping her sub. “Thank you. I always wear sensible shoes—well, usually. You might not believe me, but I’m actually a very sensible person.”

  Surprisingly enough, without a scrap of evidence, he did believe her. Kit’s notion of sensible might not agree with his, but she had walked away from security and made a life for herself. A successful life, considering she was a published author.

  She took a big bite, closed her eyes and chewed. “Just what I needed,” she said when she could speak again. “I don’t have a toothbrush or a hairbrush, either. Or toothpaste or deodorant. Maybe I’d better make a list.”

  “Eat first.” He’d pulled over into a space near the back of the lot, away from the brightest lights. Not that he wasn’t capable of multitasking, but not driving and eating—when he was already distracted.

  What was his family going to make of her? he wondered. “If you don’t like hot peppers, take ’em out,” he said.

  “Love ’em.” She took a bite of sandwich and reached for the milk he’d bought to put out the fire.

  What was she going to make of his family?

  And why did it matter?

  He didn’t know the answer, he only knew it mattered.

  Ten

  Kit took another bite of her sandwich, then carefully wrapped the remainder and placed it on the dashboard just as lightning flickered across the sky. She counted off the seconds, waiting for the sound of thunder, then yawned and said, “Ten miles. Maybe twelve, I count fast. The book I was working on? It’s gone, you know. All three drafts and all the sketches I’d done.” Her voice threatened to break, but steadied. “And my other books. There were only two, but I had a full shelf of authors’ copies of each one. The first one’s not even in print any longer.” She took a deep breath. “Oh, well—I can probably find a few copies in a secondhand bookstore once I get settled again and have time to search.” She flashed him a smile that was too qui
ck, too brittle and faded far too soon.

  “Don’t you have a backup?”

  “You mean like on a computer?” She shook her head. “I don’t use a computer, I write in longhand and then hire the last draft typed. My stories aren’t really long enough to require word processing.” The truth was, she’d started out using a computer, but when the hard drive crashed, she couldn’t afford to replace it. With only the outlay for legal pads and pencils, she could easily afford to hire the last draft typed. Any excess funds she accumulated could better be spent on art materials.

  Carson started to speak, and she shook her head. “I know, everyone uses the things, but just let me touch a keyboard and all sorts of weird things start happening. Messages pop out of nowhere. Stupid icons I don’t understand hop all over the screen and this wicked genie flashes a red error message telling me I’ve committed some criminal offence and the computer police are already on the way to arrest me.”

  He chuckled as if he knew exactly what she was talking about. Maybe he did. Men’s brains were different from women’s. “I’m okay with computers,” he said. “Mechanical stuff, though—not too swift there.”

  “Well, as long as we’re comparing inadequacies, I can’t even program my clock radio without having it go off in the middle of the night. Give me a simple, logical set of instructions and I do just fine.” If she bothered to read the instructions, that was. Usually, she didn’t. Not enough plot to waste her good reading time on.

  More lightning flashed in the southwest, followed by a long rumble of thunder. Rain, Kit told herself, might put out the rest of the fire but it was far too late to do her poor old house any good.

  Carson reached over and covered her hand with his, as if he knew what she was thinking. He couldn’t possibly understand, but along with all the other things he was—which she couldn’t afford to think about right now—he was kind and caring. Far more than most men she knew. Even Jeff had his limits.