Kitabı oku: «Confessions of a Small-Town Girl», sayfa 3

The wall wasn’t there.

Her heart gave a sick little jerk as she swept the circle of light everywhere the wall should have been. The paneling had been ripped away. All that remained of the wall and her hiding place were the upright studs that ran ceiling to floor a foot and a half apart, and a few horizontal pieces of a two-by-four that had been hammered between them for stability. The one in the center was undoubtedly the little ledge Michelle had told her was there. The one her diary had slid straight past.

Feeling a nightmare coming on, she started toward where it would have landed, only to stop at the squeak of wood behind her. The sound stopped when she did. Infinitely more concerned with where her diary might be, she ignored what she assumed where only the creaks and groans typical of old houses settling in at night and raised the flashlight to see more clearly into the room beyond the studs.

The instant she did, the hairs at the back of her neck rose. The sensation had barely registered before something hard clamped around her wrist. A gasp caught in her chest as her cap was yanked from her head. The sting of her hair being yanked with it hadn’t even registered before she was spun like a rag doll, her back slammed into the stud behind her and her air cut off by what felt like a bar of steel across her throat.

Somewhere in that startling split second, the flashlight had been snatched from her hand. Its beam was aimed straight at her face, leaving her totally blinded—and so frightened as she struggled for oxygen that she couldn’t even scream.

Chapter Three

Sam didn’t know what had wakened him. After spending fourteen months sleeping with one ear open because he never knew when his identity would be discovered and he’d find himself seconds from being dead, it could have been anything. He still woke a dozen times a night. Every night. And when he did, his first thought was that he’d blown his cover and that someone had identified him as an undercover cop.

Logic would eventually remind him that he was no longer playing the role of a down on his luck bartender and working nights in a dive in the seediest area of the city. Members of the gang he’d sought to bust were either no longer among the living, or in jail awaiting trial and a trip to prison. He was in Maple Mountain. Quiet, peaceful, boringly uneventful Maple Mountain. Yet, the thought that he was as safe here as he could be anywhere failed to form.

Logic tonight told him someone was out there.

In the dark, trusting nothing, pure instinct took over. That instinct had him easing open a window of his trailer. The faint sound of metal bumping wood had been all he’d needed to hear before he’d jerked on his pants, shoved the gun he’d kept under his pillow into the back of his jeans and slipped as quiet as a breath into the night.

Years of living on a blade-thin edge, of knowing how desperate and vengeful people could be, allowed his mind to work only one way. He always assumed the worst. To do anything less left him open and vulnerable to whatever mayhem he might face. If a threat proved minimal, he could always back down. It was infinitely more difficult, and more dangerous, to walk into a scenario expecting minimal conflict and have to gear up under assault. It was how every cop he knew survived.

He’d been locked in that mindset when he’d crept around the house to see a dark figure slip through the second-story window. In his mind, the intruder could only want one of two things. Tools to fence for drugs, or payback. He never discounted the possibility that he had been ID’d by a suspect who’d escaped a bust, and that someone he’d helped put in jail might look to get even by having a buddy nail him.

Now, primed for survival, his only thought as the intruder’s identity registered in the beam of the blinding light was that he was crushing Kelsey’s windpipe.

She looked terrified.

He was hurting her. The knowledge that he was a hair-breadth from hurting her more shot a sharp, totally unfamiliar pang of fear through his rigid, adrenaline-charged body.

He swore even as he jerked away his arm. The gun in his hand glinted dully as it passed through the beam.

He swore again, adrenaline still surging as he swung the light from her eyes.

“God Almighty, Kelsey.” His voice held fury, his words as close to a prayer as he’d been in years. He could have snapped her neck. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

Blinking to clear her vision, she sagged in relief against the post when she recognized Sam’s voice. She couldn’t see him. All she could see were spots as she lifted her shaking hand to her throat. “I’m…”

“Do you have any idea what I could have done to you?” He was nowhere near ready to hear from her just yet. Furious with her for jerking around with his adrenaline, equally upset with the thought of the force he’d used on her, he slammed the end of the flashlight down on the sawhorse beside him. As it rocked on its base, its light formed a wavering circle on the ceiling. “You should never sneak around a cop. Ever. Do you understand me? What in the hell were you thinking?”

Kelsey’s heart beat furiously against her ribs. She wished he’d stop swearing at her. She wished he’d stop yelling. Mostly she wished he’d move. He’d only backed up a couple of feet. As near as he stood, it seemed she could actually feel the tension radiating from his body. That tension roped around her, making it hard to breathe even without his arm jammed against her neck.

“I wasn’t sneaking around you.” She forced insistence into her voice, along with a bravado she truly did not feel. What she did feel was a little sick from an adrenaline rush of her own. Her knees were shaking. Locking them, her chin edged up another notch and she focused through the fading spots. “You were the one who snuck up on me.”

“You were breaking and entering—”

“I didn’t break anything! The window wasn’t locked.”

“It’s a term.” He growled the words as he jammed his hands onto his hips, his stance now even more imposing as the he glared down at her. “You’re trespassing on private property in the middle of night. You climbed through a second-story window to get in here. That’s called breaking and entering,” he informed her, clearly familiar with the technicalities. “What you haven’t said is why.”

She would rather avoid that.

Ignoring the sore place on the back of her head where it had bumped the stud now supporting her, she dropped her glance to the cleft in his chin. The night-time stubble shadowing his face made the carved angles look as inflexible as granite. His voice sounded as hard as tempered steel. “I was just looking for something that I’d left here.”

“This afternoon?”

“Before that.”

In the dim glow of the flashlight, he abruptly turned away. A few frantic heartbeats later, she saw him flip on the overhead light—a single bulb waiting for a new cover—and head back to where she remained rooted in the sawdust.

He had been easier to take without the harsher light. Then, he’d been a huge, menacing shadow with eyes that seemed to penetrate the dark. As he walked toward her now, she could clearly see the rugged, unyielding lines of his face, his broad—and naked—shoulders and chest, and the silver-white scar that slashed at an angle from his collarbone to the rippled muscles six inches below one flat male nipple.

Her glance slid down, only to dart back up when it reached the patch of dark hair that arrowed below the band of his unsnapped jeans. A quarter-size circle of puckered flesh showed faintly pink above his left biceps. The sight of all that cut, carved and scarred muscle was disturbing enough. The glimpse she’d caught of the handgun he tucked into his waistband below the small of his back was even more so. It was only then that she realized he’d had it drawn.

She jerked her glance from the six-pack of muscle forming his abdomen to the disconcerting light in his eyes. It was clear he no longer regarded her as any sort of a threat. It seemed equally obvious that he was in the process of calming himself down. His fury had subsided to something more like controlled irritation, aggravation or whatever it was that had his jaw working as he jammed his hands back onto his hips.

“What is it?”

Shaken beyond belief, she shook her head. “What is…what?”

“What you left here.”

The nature of her distress abruptly changed quality. “It’s just something that’s…mine.”

“If it’s yours, what is it doing here?”

“It wasn’t always here,” she explained, the faint ache at the back of her head making her rub there, anyway. “I’d kept it at the gristmill until I heard that some of the boys from school had started hanging out there, too. I was afraid they’d find it, so Michelle let me put it in the hiding place in her room.”

She let her hand fall, brushing back her hair on the way, and crossed her arms protectively around herself. “I’d only meant to leave it there for a while. But it fell past the ledge she’d said was in there and we couldn’t get it back out.”

For a moment, Sam said nothing. He just stood with his eyes narrowed on her decidedly pale features. The knot of hair she’d wound near the top of her head had loosened when he ripped off the cap laying on the floor. Strands of that flaxen silk fell against her cheeks. One lock tumbled over her shoulder.

Not trusting himself to touch her to push it back, not sure if he wanted to ease the disquiet in her eyes or shake her, he stepped back instead. He couldn’t believe the trouble she’d gone to to retrieve something she could have simply asked him for.

Feeling as if he’d wound up in Oz, he moved to where he’d left the book he’d found that afternoon. The thing had been between the walls dividing the rooms, along with a tube of dried up lipstick and a pile of candy bar wrappers. The only reason he hadn’t tossed it along with everything else was because of the name on its pale pink cover. Kelsey had been written out in hot pink glitter. Much of the glitter was gone, but the looping outline of the name remained visible enough.

More concerned at the time with how he was going to reroute the electrical wiring in the wall, he hadn’t considered much about his little discovery. The only thought he’d given it was to mention it to the Kelsey, who’d brought him the pie that was now nearly gone, in case it belonged to her, since she’d known the Bakers, or some relative of theirs who shared her name.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

Kelsey’s eyes widened on what he held.

“That’s it,” she confirmed, and was halfway to him when she lifted her arm to grab it from his hand.

“Not so fast.” Remaining by a pile of panels he’d salvaged, he held the diary up out of her reach. “I want to know what’s so important about this that you’d do what you did to get it.”

The nightmare Kelsey had felt coming on began to materialize.

“It’s just a diary I kept in high school,” she insisted, minimizing drastically as she tried again to reach for it.

He held it higher.

She was inches from his bare chest. Looking past the hair shadowing his armpit and the sculpted muscles along the underside of his arm, she breathed in the scents of soap and something warm, vaguely spicy and totally, undeniably disturbing. He’d showered before he’d gone to bed.

Not sure if the heat she felt radiated from him or from a purely primitive female awareness of his big body, she swallowed hard and backed away.

“It’s nothing. Really. It’s just…sentimental stuff.”

“A lie detector would be wasted on you.”

Kelsey opened her mouth, only to close it because she couldn’t decide if she should beg or just try again to snatch for what he’d just lowered. He had an easy six inches on her, and a decidedly longer reach. Even if he hadn’t been so much taller, and bigger, the thought of getting up close and personal with the rock wall of his chest definitely gave her pause. It also added a new element to the anxiety clawing at her when he stepped back, took a small piece of wire from the toolbox and deftly popped the lock guarding the pages between their faux-leather covers.

A new form of panic surged. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t believe it’s ‘nothing,’” he said simply. “There’s something in here. Since you just took ten years off my life breaking in to get it, I want to know what it is.”

“No!”

A sense of impending humiliation made her grab for the book again. He promptly stuck it back in the air. Already in motion, she raised on tiptoe, stretching her arm the length of his, getting far closer than she would have intended had she felt she had any choice. With her breasts pressed to his chest, she reached over him, her stomach flattening against abdomen and his zipper as he edged the book farther back.

Catching her glance, one dark eyebrow slowly arched. Something dark glittered in his quicksilver eyes.

Her breath went thin. Their bodies were molded from chest to thigh. Something liquid gathered low in her belly. Totally disconcerted by the way his heat moved into her, she lowered her heels and jerked back.

Looking totally unfazed by their contact, and her desperation, he stepped back himself to move beneath the lightbulb. Opening the paperback-size book, he flipped through the pages of small, looping script.

When Sam had found the little volume, it had simply looked like a girl-thing to him. Preoccupied with his project and the constant and nagging knowledge that he had weeks to go before he could leave, it had been of no real interest at all where he was concerned.

Aware of how uneasily Kelsey watched him, he conceded that he was definitely interested now. On a number of levels. The feel of her tempting little body arched against his had seared itself into his brain. As conscious of her effect on his long-neglected libido as he was the pages themselves, he started reading a page toward the front. The date was April 23.

The math test was awful, she’d written. I think I passed it, but I was so not ready for cosigns. Tommy M kept trying to look over my shoulder. He’s such a jerk. I helped Mom in the diner before homework. Bertie Buell came in to have another slice of mom’s coconut pie. Mom says Bertie is trying to figure out her recipe and is all bent because she won’t give it to her. I told her Mrs. Buell is always bent. I overheard Carrie’s mom say its because she’s never had sex.

Seeing nothing incriminating there, he flipped to the middle.

I’m at the mill. Carrie is grounded. She sneaked off to see Rob again. Shell has to baby-sit her sister. I wish I could live here. I could fix up the old miller’s quarters and plant flowers in the window boxes. The building seems sad sitting here with nothing to do. It’s like it’s just sleeping and waiting for someone to wake it up and put it back to work.

He’d never thought of a building being sad. And just that afternoon, she’d said the house they were in seemed lonely. He had no idea what made her think such things about inanimate objects, but other than a bent toward sentiment he couldn’t begin to relate to, nothing he read accounted for why she looked as if she were holding her breath.

Or so he was thinking when he skipped forward a few more pages.

His own name stared back at him, written in a half dozen ways.

Sam. Sam MacInnes. Samuel MacInnes. KES + S?M. Mr. and Mrs. Sam MacInnes. Kelsey MacInnes.

Frowning, he turned the diary toward her. It was out of her reach, but still close enough for her to see.

“What’s this all about?”

Heat moved up Kelsey’s neck. “It’s just something teenage girls do. It doesn’t mean a thing,” she insisted, reaching for the diary again.

He immediately lifted it away, leaving her to back off once more as he flipped ahead a few pages.

“‘I dreamed about Sam again,’” he began aloud, only to pause, glance up, then start reading more slowly. “‘It was just like on The Tame and the Torrid when Jack kissed Angela’s neck and backed her into her bedroom. My heart was pounding when I woke up and my stomach felt weird. Just like when I’m around him. I’d give anything if he’d kiss me. Really kiss me. The way Jack did Angela.’”

Thinking this was definitely getting better, he turned back a few pages to see what he’d missed, skimmed over an entry that began with I haven’t seen Sam for four days, then began again when he noticed his name once more. “‘Carrie asked what I like best about Sam,’” he read. “‘I didn’t know where to start. I like his smile and the way he twists his mouth when he seems to be thinking about something. And I like his eyes and how big his shoulders are—’”

Kelsey heard him cut himself off as he read the rest of the line to himself. A moment later, he looked at her with a grin that would have stopped her heart had she not been so busy being mortified.

“You thought I had a great butt?”

He watched her press her fingertips to her forehead, and slowly shake her head as she lowered it. Her cheeks had turned a telling shade of pink. If he had to guess, he’d bet she was burning with embarrassment from the inside out.

He should put her out of her misery, he thought, and give her back her diary. It would be the decent thing to do, given how uncomfortable she clearly was. She really did look pretty thoroughly humiliated. But he wasn’t ready yet. He honestly couldn’t have imagined anything that would have so completely diverted his focus from what he’d nearly done to her.

He also couldn’t remember the last time anything had made him genuinely feel like smiling. Especially after his perusal of a few more pages revealed him to be the subject of a few more rather specific fantasies. Very specific, actually.

“I can see why you wanted this back.”

Kelsey was dying inside. “May I have it now? Please?”

She couldn’t remember exactly what else she’d written. All she knew for certain was that whatever she’d felt toward him had been fueled by a huge romantic streak—and that whatever he was now reading must be fairly provocative. His eyebrows had risen just before his mouth formed a thoughtful upside down U and he gave what looked very much like an approving nod.

She noticed, too, that the tension had left his face, allowing his smile to reach his eyes when he finally looked to where she stood wishing she could evaporate.

“Do you still have erotic fantasies?”

“No,” she insisted, not about to give him any more insights than he already had. “That’s nothing but the imaginings of a teenager who used to watch a lot of soap operas.” And read a lot of romances, she thought. She and her girlfriends had devoured them. Sam had been every hero she’d ever fallen in love with. No doubt she’d written something about that in there, too.

“You mean you’re repressed now?” he asked, still grinning.

Her tone went heavy with forbearance. “I am not repressed.”

“Then, you do still have fantasies?”

He was having entirely too good a time at her expense. Even the rich tones of his voice held a smile. “Of course, I do. Right now, I’m fantasizing about a hole opening up under my feet. Or yours.”

“Hey, I wasn’t the one who wrote this stuff.”

“It was meant to be private.”

“I don’t mind that you shared.”

“I didn’t share. You picked the lock.”

“A technicality,” he murmured and, still grinning he finally, mercifully, held out the diary.

She practically snatched it away.

“Thank you,” she muttered, so relieved to have the incriminating little volume back in her possession that she didn’t bother wondering what else he’d read. All she wanted now was to leave. Better yet, to get on a plane back to Phoenix and forget she’d even come to Maple Mountain.

She wasn’t at all inclined to give Sam points for sensitivity. Yet, he actually seemed to take pity on her rather desperate need to escape.

The floor creaked beneath his weight as he walked over and closed the window she’d opened. “You might as well go out the door,” he said, nodding toward the stairs on his way back. “No need to risk your neck on the ladder.” He flipped on the stairwell light, turned off the one overhead.

“Thank you,” she murmured again, and was down the stairs and halfway across the living room before he stopped her.

“The back door is open. You can go that way.”

She changed direction as the beam of a light arrowed over her shoulder. “Don’t forget these.” Coming up behind her, undoubtedly still grinning, he handed her the flashlight she’d borrowed from her mom’s and the stocking cap he’d tossed to the floor.

She didn’t bother to thank him this time. Taking them, she clutched the cap in her hand with the diary and followed the flashlight’s beam through the kitchen to the back door. She’d made it across the porch and down the steps when his deep voice stopped her again.

“Where’s your car?”

From a dozen feet away, she turned to see him close the door and descend the steps. Bathed in the pale moonlight, his body gleamed like hammered bronze. Broad shouldered, bare-chested, scarred, he looked like a warrior to her. Heaven knew he’d had the training of one.

“It’s at the mill.” Not sure if she was compelled by the thought or disconcerted by it, she motioned behind her. “I walked over from there.”

“It’s dark. I’ll walk you to it.”

The offer caught her off guard, the chivalry behind it. A warrior and a gentleman. The combination held a certain lethal quality of its own. “You don’t have to do that. Really,” she insisted, backing up. “I know the way.”

For a moment, Sam said nothing. He simply watched as she kept going, glancing behind her so she wouldn’t trip over a tree root or a stray piece of lumber. She clearly wanted nothing other than escape. The thought that it was him she wanted to get away from kept him right where he was.

“Be careful then,” he finally allowed.

“I will,” she assured him, and turned, her movements as quick and silent as a deer’s as she headed for the trees.

Sam watched her disappear in the direction of the footbridge, but he stayed where he was until he heard the distant sound of her car engine when she started it up. Only then did he move the ladder from where she’d propped it beneath the window, shaking his head at the thought of her wrestling its cumbersome weight in the dark, and return, smiling, to the trailer and bed.

Kelsey buried the diary in the bottom of her travel bag the moment she slipped back into her room, locked the bag and dropped the key into her purse. Any relief she felt having it back in her possession was pretty much buried beneath the embarrassment she’d suffered listening to Sam read from it.

She didn’t know how long she lay with her head under her pillow after she’d crawled into her old twin bed trying to block the inescapable feeling. But the tenacious sensation was still there when her mom knocked on her door a little before 5:00 a.m. and started loudly humming “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” which had always been her way of telling Kelsey it was time to wake up. That awful discomfort remained, unbudging, as she threw together batches of blueberry and carrot raisin muffins, fired up the griddle and made herself smile at the morning’s first customers, all the while dreading the moment Sam would walk through the diner’s door.

From what she’d learned yesterday, he ate there every morning. Usually around seven-thirty.

The Fates apparently decided to toy with her a little more. Seven-thirty came and went, which left her feeling that much more anxious each time the door opened because each time it did, she thought it was him. There was something a tad distressing about facing a man who knew she’d once obsessed about him. Especially since he now knew that what she’d wanted was for him to get up close and very personal. But that had been a lifetime ago, back when she’d been all imagination and no action. Not that she was into action that much now. Or ever had been, actually.

She could honestly say that no man had ever consumed her thoughts the way Sam once had. She could also swear on every bible the Gideons had ever printed that she had not written down her thoughts about a man since her last entry in that diary, whatever it had been. She hadn’t looked. As rattled as she’d been, still was for that matter, she’d been in no hurry to read what else she had written and further embarrass herself.

By ten o’clock, Sam still hadn’t shown up. Desperately hoping he’d chosen to avoid her, and finding a certain humiliation in that, too, she busied herself peeling apples for pies since the breakfast rush was over while her mom scurried past to answer the ringing telephone. Within seconds of her mom picking up the dated instrument on the wall by the stainless steel fridge, Kelsey’s agitation was joined by an entirely different sort of distress.

“It’s for you,” her mom announced, leaving the receiver dangling by its black cord. “It’s Doug Westland.”

Doug wanted a decision. Unfortunately she was no closer to making one now than she’d been when she’d left the day before yesterday. Because Sam and that damnable diary had totally occupied her, she’d thought of little else. “Tell him I’ll call him back, will you?”

Her mom’s forehead pinched as tightly as the coil of her intricate bun. “This is the second time he’s called since you’ve been here. He sounds very nice, dear. You should talk to him.”

She had talked to him. Yesterday afternoon, she’d returned the call he’d made while she’d been at the Baker place. He’d wanted to make sure she hadn’t yet accepted the offer from the Regis-Carlton so he could overnight the contract and offer they’d talked about rather than wait for her to return. She’d told her mom that. What she hadn’t mentioned was how he’d assured her again that he knew they would work well together and repeated what he’d maintained before, that they would make a great team, a great partnership.

You have no idea how passionate I can be about what I want, Kelsey. And what I want right now is you.

He’d first informed her of that in the beautifully appointed bar of his most successful restaurant to date, the restaurant he and all the critics predicted soon would be surpassed by the endeavor he’d invited her to join. It had been midmorning, the restaurant wasn’t yet open and he’d made the offer over coffee and pie-charts illustrating parts of his proposal at the long granite bar.

It had been strictly a business meeting. In her mind, anyway. Yet, the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d sounded, had made it clear that his words could be taken however she chose. There had been times in her meetings with him since then, too, when he’d subtly let her know he was interested in more than business. She would concede that she cleaned up fairly well when she bothered with heels and a skirt rather than the comfortable baggy pastry chef shirt and clogs she worked in. But the man was a hugely successful entrepreneur. He was smart. He was wealthy. He oozed charm. He had gorgeous single women on his staff and hanging around his establishments. He could easily have the pick of any one he wanted.

He was a player. She was not.

At the moment, however, all she cared about was not being pushed. When her mother’s refusal to pass on her message resulted in her having to take his call, she told him that, too. Nicely, because the professional opportunity he’d offered was incredible and it was entirely possible that her own insecurities were playing with her head. As she stood at the back of the room, holding the phone to her ear with one hand and rubbing at the little knot at the back of her head with the other, she told him she wasn’t signing anything with anyone until she returned to Arizona. She also assured him when he asked that she wasn’t stalling as a ploy for a larger salary or bigger percentage of the partnership. And that, yes, she was enjoying her visit with her mom.

It seemed like a good news/bad news sort of morning to her. The good news was that she would only be in Maple Mountain for less than a week, which meant she only had less than a week to go before she never saw Sam MacInnes again. The bad news was that at the end of that time, she really did need to make a decision about her future employment. She just didn’t know which position was the better move for her career. Or her personal life.

Listening to Doug—who sounded as if her coming on board was a done deal—and thinking of how the Regis-Carlton’s manager assumed the same about her accepting the promotion, she could feel a headache brewing. With a silent sigh, she pulled off the chef’s cap covering her hair and rubbed once more at the little knot on her skull.

From where he’d just sat down at the counter, Sam caught the pinch of Kelsey’s brow and the tentative motion of her hand.

He had arrived late on purpose. He wanted to talk to Kelsey. He just didn’t want to do it with the regulars around. He knew how nosey the locals could be. Proof of that had been evident less than two hours ago when Charlie had stopped by to see why he hadn’t been at the diner that morning. Amos had driven by two minutes later and stopped when he’d seen Charlie’s pickup.

When Amos had asked why he hadn’t shown up for breakfast, Sam had told him the same thing he’d invented on the spot for Charlie. That he just hadn’t felt all that hungry when he woke up. The explanation seemed inconsequential enough, until Charlie proceeded to confide that the last time he’d lost his appetite, he’d been coming down with a summer cold. According to him, the best remedy for that particular ailment was lemonade spiked with whiskey and honey. Heavy on the whiskey.

Amos swore by chicken soup. Homemade. Not store bought.

Sam promised to keep the prescriptions in mind simply because both men had bothered to be concerned. He’d also made sure they both understood that he really felt just fine. He knew how the grapevine worked in Maple Mountain. If he hadn’t declared himself healthy, it wouldn’t have been long before word of him being ill made it out to his aunt and she or one of her friends showed up with broth and a poultice. Concern seemed to run as deep as the granite mines in people’s veins around there.