“I’ll text you and we can get together for a tasting and to place your trial order.” Manny held out his hand and Harper shook it.
He looked around and shook his head in wonder. “Black Law and pirates. I had no idea. I’m going to have to look into the town when I get home. Have a good rest of the day, you two.”
Dare and Harper said their goodbyes and Harper let out a nervous breath when the door closed. “You did great,” he told her as he slid from the stool and wrapped her in a hug.
“How do you know? I felt as if I was too quick to provide answers.”
“I was at the top of the storage door in the kitchen listening. You were perfect. Thank you for helping with my cover. Undercover work can be tricky. You go in solo and it can raise eyebrows, but with your long standing in the community and meeting them through you, it prevents too much attention on my back story.”
Dare kissed the top of her head as a thank-you. Harper found herself leaning into him even more, coming to rest her head against his chest. “What else can I do to help?” she asked as her lips moved against his chest. It felt so good being in his arms.
“You’ve done more than I should have asked of you. I don’t need you to do a single thing. You don’t need to meet with Manny again.”
Harper pulled back and looked up at him. “What? Of course I’m going to meet with him. You said it yourself. I helped you. I can continue to do so.”
Harper felt her temper rise when Dare shook his head. “I don’t want you hurt. These aren’t nice guys I’m going to ticket for jaywalking. People have been killed. People have been attacked. I’m not putting you in that position.”
“I can take care of myself. Do you know how many bar fights I’ve broken up? I dare you to handle the bar during the Clemson versus South Carolina football game,” Harper challenged as her hands moved to her hips.
Dare didn’t get mad. He didn’t seem impatient. He also didn’t seem intimidated as Harper tried to pull herself up to appear a little taller. Instead, he reached over and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “I have no doubt in your abilities, Harper. I respect the hell out of you, but this is my job. You’ve already helped me so much. It’s time I finish what we started. Okay?”
Well, dang. That was really sweet. Harper didn’t know how to argue with it. “At least keep me in the loop?”
“Harper, our dates were very real to me. I hope they were to you too. I don’t want to just keep you in the loop. I want to see you and talk to you when we both can. What would you like, Harper?” Dare asked.
Harper was quiet for a moment and she saw Dare’s face fall. “Sorry. I’m not thinking about it. I was just surprised because I assumed we would continue to see each other.”
Dare’s worried lips turned up into a grin. “Landry will be excited.”
Harper let her head fall back as she laughed. She stopped, though, when the door flung open. Dare pulled her to him and instantly put his back to the door shielding her.
“Harper Faulkner!”
Harper groaned and let her head fall against Dare’s chest. “Hide me.”
“From the fairy-like woman? Yeah, she looks dangerous,” Dare whispered sarcastically.
“You have no idea,” Harper muttered against his chest as she did her best to hide from her cousin.
The door closed and Harper heard Tinsley stomping toward them.
“Excuse me, do you . . .?” Dare turned his head around, still providing cover for Harper to talk to Tinsley.
“Ma’am?” he asked in his slow Texan drawl.
“Oh, goodness. You’re not from Shadows Landing.” Harper’s shoulders shook with silent laughter at Tinsley’s comment. “I’m looking for the owner. She’s my cousin.”
“You’re the artist,” Dare said with a nod of acknowledgment while Harper pinched him on the stomach for engaging.
Tinsley was quiet for a moment and then Harper could hear the suspicion. “How did you know that?”
“You have paint on the side of your hand and shoes.”
“Oh,” Tinsley said as Harper envisioned her looking down.
The door flew open again, which was actually hard to do since it was solid wood and weighed a ton.
“Where is she?” asked another voice Harper recognized.
“I don’t know yet. This man,” Tinsley paused, expecting Dare to give his name, but he didn’t, “was just about to tell me where we can find her.”
“What are you doing here? The bar doesn’t open for another ten minutes.”
“You must be Edie,” Dare said and Harper pinched him harder. All it did was make him smile.
“How did you know that?” Edie asked defensively.
“Because he’s Harper’s beau, and I’ve learned a little more about him since I last saw him. Things he should have disclosed,” said a man’s voice from near the door.
“Dammit, Granger!” Harper finally snapped. She hadn’t heard him come in with Edie.
Granger didn’t drop his cop face as he stared at Dare, who was now wearing an almost identical expression of his own. The stare-off lasted until Tinsley rushed passed Granger to shake Dare’s hand.
“Tinsley Faulkner,” she said as Dare’s hand engulfed hers in a handshake. “It’s so nice to meet you. Great-Aunt Marcy has said such wonderful things about you. So, tell us all about yourself.”
The door opened again and the rest of Harper’s family burst in. “Sorry I couldn’t get here quicker,” her brother Gavin said to them, “I had a patient.”
“I had to drive from Charleston,” Ellery, Gavin’s wife, added.
“We were on the boat,” her cousin Wade said as his wife, Darcy, nodded. She was still in a wetsuit, fresh from one of her aquatic archaeology dives.
“Ridge is in a meeting for some architecture thing. He wants me to video call him,” cousin Ridge’s wife, Savannah, said as she pulled up her phone.
“I was in my workshop and missed the text,” Trent told them with a shrug as he looked curiously at Dare before turning back to Harper. “He suits you.” Trent held out his hand to Dare. “Trent Faulkner.”
“Dare Reigns,” Dare said, returning the handshake.
“What are your intentions with my sister?” Gavin asked. Harper threw a damp bar towel at him, hitting her brother square in the face.
“Gavin, what the devil are you thinking asking that?” Harper was fuming. Her brother had never been the super-protective sort. He’d been the supportive, don’t-do-something-stupid type.
“I was going to ask that too,” Wade said, crossing muscular arms he’d developed as a Coast Guard swimmer.
Harper rolled her eyes, and when Dare chuckled, she realized she might have growled in frustration too.
Gavin shrugged. “Our Keeneston family is rubbing off.”
Dare was more amused than anything. He grew up with rough ranch hands, was one himself, truth be told. Even pirates had nothing on cowboys and Harper’s relatives were certainly not pirates. They seemed like a nice, close-knit family.
“What you are laughing at,”asked the quiet one who had managed to slip in almost undetected. Dare had spotted him the second he slid into the shadows, but he didn’t think anyone else noticed him. When everyone turned in surprise, Dare knew he’d been right.
The man pushed off the back wall and into the light. His hair was dark, his face was serious, and his suit expensive. “I’m laughing because I know your Keeneston family. Ryker, isn’t it?”
Ryker didn’t respond. His arms hung casually as he slid his hands into his pockets. Ryker Faulkner had a reputation as a cutthroat businessman. It was up for debate if he had actually cut any throats.
“I swear to all that is holy, Ryker Faulkner, and all the rest of you, I’ll get payback the likes of which none of you have seen since high school. I will make my senior prank seem like amateur hour,” Harper warned.
Dare tried not to smile at Harper’s threats. Some of her family looked amused, but those were just the i
n-laws. Her actual family paled noticeably. He’d have to ask her about that next time they were alone.
Dare would have liked to stay and meet everyone, but as he was getting ready to talk more to Ryker, his phone went off in his pocket. “Excuse me,” Dare told them as he answered his boss’s call.
“We found out who the manager is,” his boss said tightly.
“Hold on.” Dare lowered the phone and turned to Harper and her family. “I’m sorry, I need to take this outside. It was nice meeting you all.”
“Wait!” Tinsley called out. “We have questions.”
Dare smiled at her. She was a cute little thing but not what he’d call intimidating enough to stop him from taking his call. “Next time.”
“So, there will be a next time?” Gavin asked as if he’d just discovered a clue.
“I’m sure there will be. I plan to be around as much as I can.”
Dare smiled as Harper blushed. Interesting. Saving someone’s life, working somewhat undercover with him, yet it was a public declaration of wanting to be with her that made her blush. It changed his perception of her completely. Suddenly he saw that soft, vulnerable side she was so successful at hiding. It only made him more intrigued as he opened the door and headed over to his motorcycle.
“Okay, I’m back. Who is she?” Dare asked his boss.
“Isabella Crowne is actually a Coronado,” his boss told Dare. “Does Roberto Coronado ring a bell?” Alec asked.
“The Coronado family? As in the head of the Malvado Resorts that we’ve had our eyes on for so long? Who is she to Roberto Coronado?” Dare knew Roberto was the head of the family and the one the ATF and the FBI had long suspected of using tainted alcohol at his resorts along with bribery to keep it undercover. It was rumored that he was a childhood friend of the Colombian president. Because of that friendship and vast wealth from his alleged illegal activities, Roberto Coronado was a dangerous man who believed he was untouchable. There were whispers of forced child labor, domestic abuse, assaults, the deaths of those who pissed him off, and assassinations of competitors.
“His daughter,” his boss said, dropping that bombshell.
“Daughter? I didn’t know he had a daughter.” There were three sons. They each ran a resort in Mexico and rumor had it Roberto thought they were weak. But a daughter?
“Her mother was American and it appears to have been an extramarital affair. Isabella was born in Los Angeles with Robert Crowne listed as the father on the birth certificate. That’s why we never connected her to Roberto. She attended the best private schools before being shipped off to boarding school and then college. After college she spent a year showing horses across Europe. By all accounts, she’s clean as a whistle. There are no pictures of her and her father together. There’s no evidence she works for him at all.”
Dare’s brow furrowed. “It’s too much of a coincidence that she’s running a resort like her father’s and using the same distributor that her father uses.”
“I think so too, but right now we have no idea how to legally connect them,” his boss told him.
“Then why do you think she’s his daughter?” Dare asked.
“The horse she showed in Europe was in her name. However, the previous owner was sure Roberto Coronado paid for it. He said he received a phone call from a man in Columbia saying he wished to purchase this horse for his daughter. He didn’t give his name. When the owner accepted the sale, he was shocked to find a truck with a horse trailer outside the farm with a groom in it. The man handed the owner a bag of cash. The registration went straight into Isabella’s name, and the horse was loaded into the trailer immediately and taken away.”
“Again, how do you know it was Roberto?” Dare asked as he followed the strange but entirely circumstantial story.
“The owner thought it was odd and wrote down the phone number in his file on the horse. He gave it to us. It traces back to the main resort owned by Roberto.”
“That’s not enough evidence,” Dare told him.
“That’s where you come in. I need you to get that evidence.”
“I’m on it.” Dare hung up and then turned around when the door opened. Harper stepped out slowly as to not disturb him if he’d still been on the phone.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“It is. I have to get to work, though.” Dare stepped closer to her and wrapped his arms around her. Harper fit perfectly against him. He felt complete the second he had her in his arms.
“Be safe,” Harper whispered before tilting her head back to look at his face.
It felt perfectly normal to bend down and kiss her as if they’d been doing it forever. Not that the kiss was routine. The way his body ignited at her touch told him that. It was more that he felt he would be happy to kiss her goodbye every morning for the rest of his life.
“We’re being watched,” Harper said against his lips.
Dare pulled back from the kiss and looked back to the bar. There were faces plastered to the window watching them. When he looked up, they suddenly got very interested in something else and disappeared from the window.
“They’re not watching anymore,” Dare said, puffing up his chest. One look and they’d scattered.
“Not my family. I knew they were watching. I’m talking about the women’s group at the church. It’s their weekly potluck lunch and they’re all staring,” Harper sighed. “They’re so much worse than my family.”
Dare turned around in time to see several white- and silver-haired women shuffling toward them from across the street. The women were all carrying various cookery and monogrammed casserole containers.
“Yoo-hoo!” a woman who strongly resembled a chicken called out. Her pale skin dangled from her skinny neck as she flapped her thin arms at him.
Dare lifted an arm and waved slowly as a woman in a sweater adorned with cats in different poses took the lead in the senior stampede—until a picture-perfect example of a rounded grandmotherly sort knocked her out of the way with a body check the hockey league would be proud of.
“How do you do, young man?” the body-checking grandma asked as she and the old chicken won the race in a dead heat and claimed his attention first.
“Better now that I smell what you’re holding. You ladies must be the blue ribbon winners of church cookouts.” Dare gave them a wink and they all blushed and tittered happily. His mama raised him right, after all.
“This is Miss Winnie.” Harper introduced the chicken. “And this is Miss Ruby,” she said, gesturing to the body-checking grandma.
Dare smiled at them both as the other women got in line for the introductions. He leaned forward to Miss Ruby. “If your pie is half as good as that body check, I’ll marry you right now,” he whispered.
There was a flush of color making her warm brown skin glow. Dare wasn’t sure if he’d embarrassed Miss Ruby or not until she leaned toward him and with her voice just above a whisper said, “You’re going to look mighty fine in a tuxedo after one bite of my apple pie.” She winked at him and Dare laughed out loud.
“I believe it,” he said with a smile on his face before turning to Harper. “I’m sorry. It’s over. Miss Ruby and I will be getting married as soon as I can find a tuxedo.”
Miss Ruby laughed and pinched his cheeks as if he were a three-year-old boy. “Nonsense. You couldn’t handle me. Besides, I would never get in the way of such a cute couple. You two are a couple, right?”
Dare would have sworn he heard the feedback from ten hearing aids all being turned up at once. “If Harper will have me.”
“I don’t know. I can’t bake half as well as Miss Ruby. You might leave me after you’ve had her pie.”
“I’d never leave you for someone else’s apple pie,” he said, dropping his voice. The way the seniors’ cheeks all began to warm made him realize his attempt at the hidden innuendo wasn’t so hidden. Dare leaned over and, regardless of the seniors, kissed Harper goodbye.
He heard the women sigh and one of th
em—he thought it was Miss Winnie— whispered, “Wouldn’t mind a naked selfie of him.”
“Shh! God is listening,” he heard from the direction of the cat lady.
“God’s work should be admired fully as it was intended,” Miss Ruby whispered back.
Dare felt Harper’s lips curve up into a smile as she battled laughter, thus ending their kiss. Dare moved his lips to her ear and whispered, “I’ll sext you later.”
He was on his bike putting on his helmet when Harper suddenly laughed.
“Took you a second,” he called out to her. He’s purposefully tried to make it sound casual as if he’d said text and not sext.
“I expect you to live up to your word,” she called out right as he began to drive away. A feeling came over him as he rode away from Shadows Landing. He was happy.
12
Harper had sweat running down her back. She’d stripped down to her tank top even though it was a cold night out. The Clemson game had started at three and the South Carolina game started at seven. She’d been running nonstop all day. It was almost eleven and still she hadn’t had time to take a break.
She’d been bartending and serving all by herself. Her part-time, weekend-only cook had been too busy to help serve. Harper had been running, literally, all afternoon and night from table to bar to kitchen and then repeat.
“You ain’t looking too good,” Skeeter told her as he squinted and peered over the bar. “You’re all flushed like.”
“You have a fever? The flu is goin’ around,” Turtle told her as he took a step away from where she was filling six pints of beer.
“No, I’m not sick. I’m overworked,” she snapped. Harper closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Sorry. Not your fault. I should have hired someone as soon as Evie left. I’ll put an ad out tomorrow for more help.”
“I’ll work for free beer,” Skeeter offered.
“I always seem to come out on the short end of that offer,” Harper teased but gave Skeeter and Turtle a free drink anyway.
There was a cheer from the crowd and when Harper looked up she saw that the game was over. Thank goodness! Some people left as she served up the six drinks she’d just poured. Over the next hour, the room thinned until finally it was just the diehards. The door opened and Tinsley and Edie came in with giant smiles.
Fierce Shadows: Shadows Landing #4 Page 9