Everywhere She Goes
Everywhere She Goes
Janice Kay Johnson
Standing between her…and dangerReturning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man he’s so tempting Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.
Standing between her…and danger
Returning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor, he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man, he’s so tempting that Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.
The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.
If he hadn’t decided to follow her out here…
Cait would be dead.
The knowledge slammed into Noah, a kick to the chest that felt as if he’d been shot.
But she was unharmed. Somehow she had escaped being shot at and having her car forced off the road.
When Cait started to struggle to her feet, he reached down to help her. She wasn’t wearing heels, he saw; she had changed to athletic shoes before she headed out on this expedition. The rusty red dirt coated the gray-and-white leather and mesh.
Churning with emotions he had no ability to decipher, Noah couldn’t help himself. He yanked her back into his arms, with no consideration for her fragile state. If she noticed, she didn’t protest. She leaned as if she belonged right there, resting against him. Was that a very distant siren? He didn’t care.
“Cait,” he said hoarsely.
She looked up, her eyes dark, and the power of all that rage and helplessness and tenderness overcame him.
He kissed her.
Things are not as they seem in Angel Butte, Oregon. Read on to find out how Noah Chandler can protect Cait McAllister from the threats escalating against her in this second book of Janice Kay Johnson’s latest series!
Dear Reader,
It’s always been my opinion that women are more self-aware than men.
Of course I know some major exceptions to that rule (well, let’s call it an observation), but still. My guess is that it’s part and parcel of what makes women talk about experiences and emotions, even embarrassing ones, so much more readily than men do. In real life, a guy who never seems to quite get what he’s feeling can be aggravating.
Writing fiction—I love men who blunder along, falling in love and even developing other kinds of relationships without exactly knowing what’s going on, and who are genuinely flabbergasted when they discover they’re in over their heads and haven’t a clue how it happened. Noah Chandler is such a man. He’s really smart, a successful businessman and politician, blunt and even ruthless, but convinced emotional crap is for other people. Leading him along gave me enormous pleasure, I have to tell you. Hmm. If only guys like that could be led along so easily in real life…. Come to think of it, there’s a reason I write fiction!
Truthfully, one of the joys of writing romance is finding the two perfect characters who will both clash and mesh with each other.
Jayne Anne Krentz wrote, some years back, about how, on some level, the hero should also be the villain—i.e., a threat to the heroine. I think it works the other way around, too. Certainly, Cait McAllister is a major threat to the even tenor of Noah’s life, and he is self-aware enough to know that from the very beginning. Meanwhile, he’s the scariest kind of man to her…when he isn’t making her feel safer than she ever has.
I hope you like these two people as much as I do. I’ve discovered some really great men live in Angel Butte, Oregon!
Janice Kay Johnson
Everywhere She Goes
Janice Kay Johnson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.
Contents
Prologue (#ud6ee2716-4244-54f9-acca-f4ad9b55d93f)
Chapter One (#u2f0eb4b3-562c-5936-a93d-e2dff4358fd0)
Chapter Two (#u519daf1a-c0ec-5d83-8569-a29e1b7dc253)
Chapter Three (#u0ac4bb65-144a-5cfe-8016-ecf74cd39770)
Chapter Four (#uaa8569e0-2c21-53fe-9fe2-ce5403eb3865)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
NOAH CHANDLER GLOWERED at the file that lay open on his desk. Failure was unacceptable. He still couldn’t figure out how and why the bunch of fossilized, mule-headed, self-serving jackasses that constituted his city council had shot down his candidate for the job of police chief and chosen someone so ill-qualified—compelling him to make the offer.
By God, he was going to choke on it.
Noah had been trying to tamp down his anger since the vote after last night’s meeting. When he had won the election in November and had taken over the mayor’s office, he had known he would have to deal with a council composed primarily of good ol’ boys incapable of objective, forward thinking. So far he’d succeeded in manipulating them into voting his way whatever their original inclination. What he couldn’t figure out was why the rebellion had come now, and over something so critical.
Corruption ran deep in the Angel Butte Police Department, and this town needed someone fully competent to root it out, not a yeehaw cowboy who knew Southern California gangs and hookers but had next to no administrative experience and probably thought small towns were good only as a place to get off the interstate and fill up the gas tank. Had the city council members been thinking at all? Or were they interested only in thwarting him?
A third option had presented itself, and Noah liked it least of all. What if a couple of those fine citizens serving on the council, influential with their peers, had real personal motivations for ensuring the investigation into drug trafficking and illegal payoffs floundered?
Fuming, he picked up his phone and dialed.
Three rings and a brusque male voice answered, “Raynor.”
Noah unclenched his jaw. “Lieutenant Raynor.” His voice came out as a growl. “This is Mayor Noah Chandler in Angel Butte, Oregon. I’m calling to offer you the position of police chief. You were the final choice of our city council.”
There was a moment of silence that lent him hope. The weather had been bitterly cold when Alec Raynor, a homicide lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department, had flown into Angel Butte for the interview. A blizzard had shut down the airport, delaying his departure for a day. Maybe in the past week he’d rethought the whole idea of accepting the job here. For all the line of bull he’d fed them during the interview, his motives for wanting the job were still a mystery to Noah.
“What about you?” Raynor asked unexpectedly. “Was I your choice?”
Noah swiveled in his desk chair to stare out the window at a partial view of Angel Butte, one of the small cinder cones that dotted this volcanic country in central Oregon. A nineteenth-century marble statue of an angel, imported all the way from Italy, crowned the crater rim. Back some years ago, before Noah’s arrival in town, the angel had been given a granite pedestal to hoist her higher, maybe so she could keep a better eye on errant townsfolk.
“No,” he said, blunt as always. “I was in favor of a candidate who had significant administrative experience. The job here doesn’t have much in common with what you do down there in L.A. We don’t have a lot of homicide cases to close. Our problems have to do with recruitment, staffing, training, scheduling, budget and morale.” Keeping our probably too-low-paid cops honest, he thought but didn’t say. “Politicking to bring in the money. Do you know how to do any of that, Lieutenant?”
“On a smaller scale, yes.” There was a pause. “Did you have experience in city government when you won the election, Mayor?”
Noah rubbed the heel of his hand over his breastbone to settle the burning coal beneath it. “I’m a businessman. Running a city isn’t all that different from running a business.”
Raynor didn’t have to say, In other words, no.
“This may not be what you want to hear, Mayor, but I accept your offer.” The steel in Alec Raynor’s voice sounded like a challenge to Noah. “As I indicated, I need to give notice here. Is your acting police chief willing to stay on for another month?”
That was the next call Noah had to make: the one to Colin McAllister, to let him know he wasn’t being offered the permanent position. The news would not go over well. McAllister had every reason to think he had it in the bag.
“We’ll work it out one way or another,” Noah said. “Let us know your arrival date when you can.”
“I will.” Irony threaded the deep, crisp voice. “I’ll look forward to working with you, Chandler.”
Noah didn’t have to manufacture any upbeat remarks; dead air told him the call was over. He grimaced. He’d liked Raynor better during this phone call than he had during the interviews. Noah preferred direct give-and-take, and that’s what he’d gotten.
And, damn, he owed it to McAllister to tell him the decision in person, not over the phone. With a grunt, he pushed back his chair and rose. He’d walk. The route from the historic courthouse that now housed his office to the new public safety building would take him right past Chandler’s Brew Pub. Wouldn’t hurt to stop by, surprise his employees. Since going into politics, he had been forced to trust them more than made him comfortable. He might even have lunch there, he decided. Today was downright balmy for the beginning of March, which was still the dead of winter in central Oregon. He might as well enjoy the deceptively springlike weather. He wouldn’t even have to wear a coat.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d walked into the police chief’s office and said his piece.
Colin McAllister’s face had gone hard the minute Noah had started. He listened in silence, not rising from his chair behind the desk. “I deserve to know why I wasn’t hired.”
Only thirty-four years old, he’d been with the department since he’d started as a rookie right out of college. He had risen fast, making captain—only one rank below chief—two years ago. Noah understood him to be well liked by his officers, although he also had the reputation as a tough son of a bitch when being tough was called for. He was the one who’d uncovered the corruption in the Angel Butte P.D. and brought it to Noah. It was thanks to McAllister that Noah had been able to ask for the former chief’s resignation. McAllister had handled the beginning stages of the investigation into the deeper layers of corruption well, as far as Noah could tell.
“I blocked your hiring,” he said.
A man as tall as Noah if not quite as bulky, McAllister stood now, his hands flat on the desktop. Fury glittered in his steel-gray eyes. “Why?”
“I can’t take the risk that you’re part of whatever crap is infecting this police force,” Noah said bluntly. He held up a hand to silence his acting police chief. “I have to ask myself how could you have worked here this long without seeing that something was wrong. You’re young to make captain, even in a department this size. You’ve been rewarded with promotions a hell of a lot faster than is the norm. I’m making no accusations, but I also can’t ignore the possibility that you got where you are by sharing information or worse. Even a willingness to turn a blind eye to illegal activities might have won you brownie points. I like you. I still had to make the best choice for this town.”
“No accusations?” The gray of those eyes made Noah think of gun barrels now. “Sounds to me like you just made some. Tell me why, if I were dirty, I’d have been stupid enough to open this department to a top-to-bottom investigation.”
“You might have thought you could get rid of Bystrom, step into his office and then block some turns of the investigation.”
“If you’d asked, I would have shared my financials with you.”
“You might be honest enough not to have accepted bribes, but not so honest you weren’t willing to look away when fellow officers did.”
The sound that came out of McAllister’s mouth could have been a snarl. “You know you’ve opened yourself to a lawsuit.”
Noah met that burning stare. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision if you were in my shoes.”
“So now you want my resignation.”
“No, I don’t. My gut says you’re clean. I want you to stay on as acting chief for the next month and to return to captain of investigative services after that.”
Colin McAllister gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re a son of a bitch. You know that, Chandler?”
Yeah. He could be. Today, a son of a bitch who felt like he was developing an ulcer. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision,” he repeated.
“I wouldn’t have made the same decision.” Muscles knotted in the other man’s jaw. “Are we done here?”
“Think about what you want to do.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be thinking.”
Noah nodded. “Then we’re done.”
He walked out, deciding he might have a beer with lunch, something he never did. He was also thinking he’d just made an enemy—and the new police chief and he weren’t set up to be good friends, either.
Leaving the building and ignoring curious glances, it occurred to him that Colin McAllister and Alec Raynor were unlikely to have a real cordial relationship, either, not when one was taking over the job the other had wanted, and thought he’d earned.
Had earned, Noah admitted, if only to himself.
He paused on the sidewalk to let two lanky boys on skateboards shoot by before he turned back toward downtown.
Half the city council members despised and feared Noah, who despised them in turn and was plotting to get rid of them as soon as he could.
His mouth tilted up at the black humor. Yep, city government, as usual.
This called for two beers with the burger and fries he intended to have for lunch.
CHAPTER ONE
“GOOD WORKOUT,” a woman called from down the row as Cait McAllister slammed her locker door closed and picked up her gym bag.
Smiling her agreement, Cait lifted a hand. “See you Thursday.”
Today’s class had combined step aerobics with what the instructor called “butt and gut,” exercises aimed at core muscles. Cait was currently alternating this class with kickboxing. Conscious of a pleasant ache, she liked that she was getting stronger all the time.
She especially liked the feeling because Blake sneered at women wanting to be muscular.
Swiping her card to check out at the front desk of the health club, Cait grimaced. Oh, sure, show how defiant you are now.
The truth was, Blake hadn’t liked much of anything that took her focus away from him. With every day, week and month since she’d broken up with him, she had realized how much she’d surrendered. Friends, activities, even time to herself. She still couldn’t believe she’d let it happen.
Problem was, he thought their relationship had been perfect, with only the little flaw that she’d left him. Five months down the line, he still couldn’t believe she had meant it when she’d said, “We’re done.” In fact, she paused now at the door, uneasy to be going out into the dark parking lot. In the glass she could see the reflection of the bright interior: herself, two guys leaving one of the racquetball rooms, laughing and wiping sweat from their faces, an employee behind the desk. Outside: nobody.
She could ask for an escort to her car.
Ridiculous. She’d moved a few weeks ago and was bunking with another grad student, so her name didn’t appear on a lease anywhere. She was on a second new cell phone number. She’d changed health clubs again—this was only her third week coming here. She’d found yet another new favorite Thai restaurant, stopped at different coffee shops. Taken to varying her parking on campus when she needed to use the library at the university or talk to her adviser, rather than automatically heading for a certain lot. Shopped at a different grocery store each time. Tried to become unpredictable in as many ways as she could.
Blake actually did have a job. He couldn’t possibly be stalking her 24/7. Plus, she really thought he’d freaked even himself out when they’d had that last fight in November and he had hurt her badly enough she’d had to be hospitalized overnight. So far, when he tracked her down, he’d been coaxing, not threatening.
Even so...it was April now, and he hadn’t given up. To him, her “no” meant “I’m still mad at you, but I’ll come around eventually.” His frustration and anger had been thinly veiled the last time she’d seen him, when he’d suddenly fallen in behind her with his shopping cart in the cereal aisle at Whole Foods and stayed with her until she drove away. He had pulled out right behind her, too, and tailgated until she’d darted onto the freeway and then off, so last-minute she’d heard brakes squealing behind her and caught a glimpse of his furious face when he couldn’t make the exit, too.
Cait squared her shoulders. He couldn’t possibly know she was here. She refused to huddle at home every evening. Between her thirty-hour-a-week job and work on her dissertation, her days were full.
Nobody else seemed even to be close to ready to leave, so she pushed open the door and went out.
She was parked just around the corner of the building. There were pools of darkness, but really the lot was well lit. Lights of a passing car on the street washed over her, momentarily blinding her and leaving her trying to blink away dancing spots.
Even so, she was still a good ten or fifteen feet from her car when she saw that a man leaned against the hatchback. She stopped, and he straightened at the sight of her.
“Hey,” Blake said, totally friendly. “I was passing and saw your car.”
He couldn’t have seen her car from the road. He’d either followed her or taken to prowling the parking lots of health clubs she might conceivably have joined.
Cait stayed where she was, wishing someone—anyone—else would come out. A couple of guys would be really good. Poised to run, she also eased her hand into her purse, groping for her phone and praying he couldn’t see what she was doing.
“I’ve asked you to leave me alone, Blake.” Thank God, her voice was calm and confident.
He took a step toward her. “I can’t even say hello?” He sounded offended, as if she’d been rude.
Bad moment to be hit with how really skewed his perspective was. He was not normal. Of course, she’d already known that, but...
Later.
Refusing to retreat, she lifted her chin. Her fingers touched a smooth, flat surface. Her phone, thank God. Now, could she dial without being able to see what she was doing?
“No,” she said. “I don’t even want you to say hello. I really don’t want you cornering me in dark parking lots.”
“I didn’t corner you—I waited for you!” Anger was making his voice more guttural. “How can I say I’m sorry if you won’t listen to me?”
“You’ve said it.”
“Yeah, and how many times do I have to? I’m sorry! Goddamn it, I’m sorry, okay?”
She licked dry lips. “Thank you for saying it. That’s better than not saying it. But no. It’s not okay.”
“You love me. I know you do.” He took a couple more steps toward her, his voice now low and persuasive. Warm, affectionate. “Jesus, Cait. I’ve gotten your message, loud and clear. I swear I won’t do anything like that again. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Maybe because you swore two other times that you wouldn’t hit me again? And, oh gee, you did?” Making a decision, she yanked her phone out and dialed 911 really fast.
“You knew you were pissing me off!” The guttural, furious note was back. He seemed oblivious to the phone.
In the yellow light of the overhead lamps, she saw that his hands had knotted into fists. The sight made her pulse rocket. She slid one foot back, then the other. Please, please, please, let somebody come outside. A car pull in.
If she said no often enough, he’d eventually have to believe her, wouldn’t he?
“I don’t love you anymore. You killed what I felt for you. You need to accept that.” Cait brandished the phone so he couldn’t miss it. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police. If I have to scream, a dozen people will come running out of the health club.”
His face was ugly, transformed by shock and rage. She was shaking, and she hated knowing he could make her so afraid.
I should run.
He’d be on her before she could round the corner of the building.
She was still frozen with indecision when he snarled an invective and turned to her small car, then kicked the bumper until the car rocked.
“You bitch!” he yelled, and used his booted foot to crumple the fender. As she watched in shock, he circled the car, kicking, smashing, doing to it what he wanted to do to her.
Backing away, gasping for breath, she tore her gaze from him long enough to look down at the phone. Just as she reached the corner of the building, she pressed Send.
At that very moment, he went still and stared at her across the distance separating them. His voice floated to her, quiet compared to the invectives. “I will never accept that you’re not mine.”
Terrified now, Cait ran for the lighted front of the health club.
* * *
“TODAY’S MAIL,” RUTH LANG announced and plopped a pile in front of Noah. Of course, she’d already slit each piece of mail open and paper-clipped the correspondence to the envelope.
He grimaced. “Thanks, Ruth.”
His assistant’s predecessor had retired when Mayor Linarelli lost the election. In the first week after he’d taken office, Noah had chosen Ruth, middle-aged, brisk and efficient, from internal applications. There’d never been a moment of regret. Choosing the right personnel was one of his strengths, although he was beginning to realize that hiring a bartender wasn’t quite the same as hiring a city engineer or attorney. He’d been glad to have the chance to do both, but there were days he thought all he did was hire. Half the long-timers had decided to retire when they saw the way the wind blew with Linarelli gone.
Ruth smiled sympathetically. “That’s what you get for advertising two jobs at once.”
Yeah, it was. He wanted to get somebody competent in the job of city recorder, but his real interest was in filling the position of director of community development. Angel Butte had stagnated compared to comparable towns within a three-county area. The only significant move to alter that before his tenure had been the annexation that doubled the size of the city while leaving it struggling to provide expected services. Like too many city employees, the former head of planning had been an old crony, unimaginative and more interested in hanging on to the way things had always been done than he was in new trends in the field. Noah had been hoping that, at sixty-two, he was starting to think retirement. What happened instead was a heart attack. The guy had survived, but he’d admitted to Noah that his wife had put her foot down and refused to hear about him returning to work.
Noah had hoped for more applications than he’d received so far. He supposed Angel Butte seemed isolated to most potential applicants, a backwater with a lousy climate. But the area was booming economically thanks to tourism. It was beautiful, and there had to be some people in the field who loved to ski or hike or fish. Or, hell, just wanted to breathe air that wasn’t yellow with smog, or commute five minutes to work instead of spending two hours a day crawling in heavy traffic on the freeway.
He’d already received three online applications that morning. Now, he flipped through the day’s mail, which included several more résumés for people interested in the city recorder job and five for the community development one. Two of those he tossed in the recycling bin after barely a skim. Two were possibles, but not exciting. The fifth... He couldn’t quite decide. In one way, she was overqualified, apparently only months from receiving an interdisciplinary PhD in urban design and planning. Actual work experience was somewhat scantier—after getting her master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Washington, she’d worked as a planner in community development in Kitsap County, on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle. From there she’d gone to Spokane, where she’d spent a year completing a special position as parks project manager, preparing an updated plan for the city’s parks and open spaces. She’d included excellent letters of recommendation, as well as one from her dissertation adviser at the UW. Noah had advertised for someone with a minimum of four years’ experience in a position of comparable seniority to the one in Angel Butte. This woman didn’t quite have that—although close if he added in her various internships—but she shone if he wanted someone with cutting-edge knowledge of the field.
He glanced again at her name. Caitlyn McAllister. As it registered, a frown gathered on his forehead. The last name had to be coincidence. Didn’t it? He went back to the first page of the résumé to see when she’d received her degrees. BA in political science from Whitman College... The date of graduation likely put her in her late twenties now. Thirty at most, if she’d been a slow bloomer.
He had no idea whether police captain Colin McAllister had a sister. If this Cait was related to him, that might explain why someone of her education was interested in a town so off the beaten path. On the other hand—as pissed as McAllister was, as undecided as he was about his future in Angel Butte—surely his sister wouldn’t have applied to work closely with his sworn enemy, the man who had in his eyes betrayed him.
Damn it, if she was related to McAllister, did he even want to consider hiring her?
Noah read her qualifications again and, impressed, thought, Why not? By the time they reached the interview stage, he might have half a dozen other strong candidates. So far, though, she was the cream of the crop.
He reached for his telephone.
* * *
CAIT’S EYE CAUGHT the blue-and-white roadside sign. Entering the City of Angel Butte, Population 38,312.
Oh, boy. She hadn’t expected to be so nervous. She didn’t even know why she was. Some of her memories of the years before her mother had taken her away weren’t so good, but she also had happy ones. So it wasn’t the town, per se.
Seeing her brother, maybe? The farther she’d gotten down the road, the more she wished she’d called to let him know she was coming. It was just that she didn’t know how he’d feel about her moving back here, and really their relationship was so stiff and distant, she wouldn’t blame him if he was less than thrilled.
My fault.
Yes, it was. He had tried. She knew he would have liked to be closer to her. Her feelings had been so complicated, her memories so muddled, she was the one to keep him at arm’s length. At the same time... Well, she remembered him walking her to school, holding her hand. With seemingly endless patience, Colin had taught her to ride a bike, not Dad or Mom. When she’d started playing soccer, he’d kicked the ball with her by the hour. He’d teased her, and put up with her trailing him around like a hopeful puppy even though he was six years older than her. He’d been sixteen when Mom had hurriedly packed her own and Cait’s things one day, loaded her in the car and driven away. By then Colin was a man, with a stubbly jaw come evening and a man’s muscles, capable of such terrifying anger and violence.
The tumble of images and memories running like YouTube videos were so vivid and frightening, she put on her turn signal and pulled to the shoulder of the two-lane highway leading into town. Stopped, she clutched the steering wheel, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
Her father had hurt her mother. Hurt Cait, sometimes. Colin and Dad had fought viciously, even sometimes punching holes in walls or breaking furniture. How, growing up in that kind of environment, had she let herself get sucked into an abusive relationship? Shame rose in her, making it hard to breathe.
Why? she cried inwardly, and had no answer.
There was no way she could ever tell Mom. Cait didn’t know if she could bring herself to tell Colin, either. Except...if there was any chance at all that Blake were to follow her to Angel Butte, she’d have to, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t she there to interview for this job because of Colin? Because he was a cop, and she knew he’d protect her? Because he’d persisted in saying, “I’m your brother”?
Yes. But...she could wait to see if Blake appeared, couldn’t she?
Why did she care what Colin thought of her?
Because. Because he was her brother. Because he loved her, and she knew it.
The last time she had seen him, this past November when he’d come to Seattle for some kind of law enforcement conference, she had wanted to really talk to him, maybe even tell him she was in trouble. But Blake, of course, had insisted on going with her when she had dinner with her brother, so she’d found herself being stiff as always, struggling for anything to say, letting Blake dominate the conversation.
There it was again, a burst of the shame. She didn’t understand herself at all. She was a professional, for heaven’s sake, smart, assertive on the job and in the classroom, well educated. Likable, with lots of friends—until she quit having time for them, because her boyfriend wanted all her time.
Was achieving understanding of her own horrible choices too much to ask?
Her breathing had grown calmer and her grip on the wheel more relaxed. She put on her turn signal, looked in the rearview mirror and pulled back out on the highway when there was an opening.
She’d printed out directions to her brother’s house from the internet. Since it was only midafternoon and she assumed he wouldn’t be home, she took the time to drive first through the urban sprawl on the outskirts of the old town, then through downtown and marvel at the changes. A multiplex movie theater? Really? And Target and Staples and Home Depot and just about every fast-food chain restaurant in existence? In Angel Butte?
On the main street, she spotted the old theater, where the whole family had occasionally seen movies, and where Colin had more often taken her. At least it still existed, although it looked as though it was a playhouse now. Which, come to think of it, was probably how it had started, so maybe that was fitting. Cait couldn’t believe the number of coffee shops and bistros, art galleries and boutiques. This was like a mini-Aspen or Leavenworth without the schmaltz. In early May, ski season was past, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still plenty of obvious tourists window-shopping and going in and out of restaurants.
Cait’s stomach growled, and it occurred to her that she couldn’t exactly drop in at her brother’s at dinnertime and announce, Guess what! I came for a visit. Especially since he’d gotten married only two months ago. Cait had read about his new wife, Madeline Noelle Dubeau, although the wedding invitation had made it plain that she went by Nell. Even in far-off Seattle, it had been impossible not to read about Maddie Dubeau, miraculously found after she’d disappeared when she was fifteen. Cait even remembered Maddie. She kind of thought they were in a class together. Third grade? Fourth, maybe? She was a skinny, shy girl, but really smart. Cait and she were in the top reading and math groups together. It was Colin who had brought Maddie home to Angel Butte and protected her when someone tried to kill her. Cait found herself really hoping that Maddie—no, Nell—truly loved Colin.
The whole idea of showing up out of the blue was a horrible one. What had she been thinking?
Ahead she spotted an obviously new, redbrick public safety building that, according to the sign, housed both police station and jail. Colin was likely in there right this minute.
Cait grabbed the first open curbside parking spot, then took out her phone. Scrolling to Colin’s cell phone number took only a few seconds. Working up the courage to actually call him—that was harder.
* * *
FILLED WITH CONFLICTING emotions, Colin turned into his driveway. He stopped long enough to hop out and grab the mail and newspaper, but he didn’t even glance at the headlines.
Cait was here. In Angel Butte. Dazed, he shook his head. Damn, better than that, she was really here, meeting him at home. Potentially, home to stay.
He only wished he understood why. The familiar reserve had been in her voice when she’d called, and he couldn’t get a good read on her, but she had admitted that she hadn’t made hotel reservations and, when he’d asked her to stay with him and Nell, she’d accepted. Not until they set a time and ended the call had it hit him what job she had undoubtedly applied for.
Director of community development, working right under that slimy bastard Noah Chandler. Of course, since Colin and Cait hadn’t talked since she’d called with an excuse for not attending his wedding, she didn’t yet know what kind of man Chandler was. And might not care what Colin thought, he realized; why would she, given the barely-there state of their relationship?
A strange car sat in front of his garage. A peanut like Nell’s, this hatchback differed in being shiny and new-looking. He pulled in next to it, and his sister got out of the driver’s side.
He met her near their rear bumpers. “You look good,” were the first words out of his mouth.
She smiled, and suddenly that smile was wobbling and there were tears in her eyes. “Colin.”
He took a couple of steps, she took a couple and then they had their arms wrapped around each other, and he laid his cheek against her hair.
“Damn, Cait,” he murmured. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
She gave a choked laugh. “I’m not sure I can believe it, either.”
They separated slowly, reluctantly on his part. He couldn’t be sure how she felt, although something was different about her from the last time he’d seen her. Her face was more open. She was looking him over as frankly as he studied her, her gray eyes a match for his.
One thing that had changed was her hair. Lighter than his, almost blond, it had flowed damn near to her waist the last time he’d seen her. Now it was pixie-short, highlighting the delicacy of her features. He’d kind of known his sister was beautiful, but he hadn’t been hit with it like this before. She was also thinner than she’d been in November, he thought, but not in an unhealthy way. She looked leggy and athletic.
“How’s the married state?” she asked.
He grinned. “I recommend it.”
Her eyes seemed to darken, as if a cloud had momentarily covered the sun, but all she did was nod. “I’m glad for your sake.”
“You haven’t taken the plunge without telling me, have you?”
“You mean get married?” Her laugh held no hint of real amusement. “No. In fact...” Momentarily she pressed her lips together. “I’ve broken up with Blake. Um...you remember him, right?”
“I remember him.” Colin hadn’t much liked the guy, although he hadn’t been able to put his finger on why and suspected he had a mental block when it came to liking anyone who shared his little sister’s bed.
She nodded, her gaze sliding away from his. “Thing’s didn’t end that well, so...” The sentence drifted into the ether.
Colin’s eyes narrowed. Had the bastard ditched Cait? The way she was wringing her hands together, “not well” had to have been pretty damn hurtful.
“How long ago?” he asked.
“As it happens, only a few days after we had dinner with you.”
So November. Six months hadn’t been long enough for her to start healing? That sent up a flare. But she’s here, he reminded himself. They had time to relax with each other, talk. Pushing too soon would be a mistake.
“Hey,” he said. “Come on inside. Do you have a bag I can carry?”
“Oh. Sure.” She grabbed her purse from the car, then went around to the back and unlocked it. His surprise at seeing two enormous suitcases, as well as a smaller one, must have showed, because she explained, “I was staying with a friend whose boyfriend is suddenly moving in. So, well, I packed everything.” She shrugged.
“You must have furniture, kitchen stuff...” He floundered.
“In storage. I’ve been sort of on the move a lot lately.”
Since she and Blake had split up, he diagnosed. But that sounded as if she’d moved a couple of times or more since then. More flares shot into the sky. Still too soon, he told himself.
“I only need the small one,” she said. “I can get it—”
“Don’t be silly.”
As he gave her the tour of his home, she seemed genuinely impressed with the house, its open spaces, river rock fireplace and vast windows, which let in a flood of light and a view of the surrounding ponderosa and lodgepole pine forest, as well as some raw outcroppings of lava.
Colin carried her suitcase to the spare bedroom, pointed out the bathroom and left her to settle in while he went to put on coffee. Cait joined him only a minute or two later, perching on one of the tall stools at the breakfast bar as if she’d been there a thousand times. Colin leaned back against the cabinet, hands braced on the countertop edge to each side. Again they studied each other.
“You finish your dissertation?” he finally asked.
“Mostly.” Cait wrinkled her nose. “I’m at the cross-checking and polishing stage. I can do that long-distance as well as I could in Seattle.”
“Why this job?” He made sure his voice was quiet, nonthreatening.
“Why not?” his sister challenged him.
“You’ve never expressed any interest in coming home before.”
“I don’t think of Angel Butte as home. Why would I? I haven’t so much as set foot in town in eighteen years.”
“So why now?” he persisted.
“The job’s really perfect—”
He didn’t let her finish. “I thought you were aiming for a career in academia. Isn’t that why you went back for the PhD?”
Her shrug was jerky. “I’m not so sure anymore. No matter what, I want more real-life experience before I consider going into teaching. And, like I said, getting out of Seattle seemed like a good idea right now.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked gently.
Her eyes met his. Hers were bright with...something. Anguish? Fear? Nothing he liked. But she only shook her head. “Not right now, okay?”
His fingers tightened on the tiled edge of the countertop, but he tried to hide his reaction from her. “You know I’m here for you.”
Her head bobbed. Her “yes” came out as a whisper. “I suppose...that’s why I came. Because you always said that.” She tried to smile. “I’m hoping you aren’t dismayed to have me take you up on your offer.”
“Never,” he told her, making sure she heard how serious he was. “You’re my family.”
After a moment, she nodded again, then cleared her throat. “So, what can you tell me about the mayor and city council and everyone else I’d be working with if I take this job?”
His grunt wasn’t quite a laugh. “That’ll take me all evening. But let’s start with the mayor.”
CHAPTER TWO
RUTH KNOCKED LIGHTLY and stuck her head around the door. “Ms. McAllister is here, Mayor.”
Noah looked up from Cait’s résumé, which he’d been reviewing. “Good. Send her in.”
He hoped she wasn’t a disappointment. He’d interviewed two candidates so far and been underwhelmed by both. Her, he had a good feeling about—unless she was Colin McAllister’s sister, a relationship bound to taint their association.
He rose from behind his desk just as she walked in. Tall, slim and beautiful. Stunned, he probably gaped. Hair cut short to lay in feathery wisps around her face was darker than honey and sun-streaked. She wore heels, black trousers and a formfitting, short royal blue blazer over a simple white camisole. Gold hoops in her ears. Her stride was lithe, her smile pleasant and luminous gray eyes wary.
And—hell—he knew those eyes, color and shape.
“You have to be related to Captain McAllister,” he said.
Her smile didn’t falter. “That’s right. He’s my brother.”
“Ah.” He held out his hand anyway.
She studied it for a moment that stretched a little too long before allowing him to envelop her much more slender hand. It was unexpectedly chilly to the touch. Resisting the temptation to hold on, maybe take her other hand and warm both, Noah let her go and nodded toward the grouping of chairs around a low circular bird’s-eye maple table that gave him a comfortable place to hold long conversations.
“Coffee?” he asked. “Or tea or water or...?”
“I’m good, thank you.”
He waited until she chose a chair and sat before doing the same himself. They looked at each other for a long minute. He wondered how she saw him. He wasn’t a handsome man. The face he saw in the mirror every morning was downright ugly, in his opinion. Maybe unfortunately, it suited his aggressive, straight-to-his-goal, probably brusque personality. On the other hand, he’d never had any trouble getting women. This one had to have heard an earful from her brother, though.
Yeah, so? he asked himself, irritated. This was a job interview, not a date. If he didn’t hire her, she wouldn’t stay in town. If he did, he’d be her direct supervisor. Coming on to her wasn’t an option.
Ignoring the inconvenient attraction, he started with the usual chitchat. She had lived in Angel Butte only until she was ten, she explained, at which point her parents had divorced and she had moved away with her mother. Yes, she had to admit that her brother’s residence here had something to do with her interest in the advertised position.
Noah hesitated, but he decided to get this out of the way before either of them wasted any more time. “Are you aware that your brother and I have our differences?”
“Yes.”
That was all. Yes. Even her expression didn’t alter.
He pushed a little harder. “Is that going to be a problem?”
One sculpted eyebrow quirked slightly higher than the other. “It won’t be unless I take the position and you fail to back me up when I need your support.” The emphasis on “me” was there, but subtle enough he couldn’t call her on it.
Annoyed for a different reason now, he met her challenging stare. He’d have had no trouble labeling her as an ice princess, except that her eyes were the furthest thing from cold. There was one hell of a lot going on in her, but she was repressing it. Only those big, shimmering gray eyes gave her away.
He didn’t see what he could do but nod although he felt his jaw muscles spasm. “All right. Let’s talk about your background.”
They dived right in. Her dissertation had to do with the cultural assumptions that led, and sometimes misled, urban planning. She had the academic stuff down pat—she talked about natural resources, engineering, public decisions, leadership and the conflicts inherent in those elements.
Insofar as he understood what the position entailed, he aimed his questions at finding out how practical her knowledge was versus ivory-tower theory and idealism. She got right down to the nitty-gritty, talking about planning, sure, but also code compliance, her ability to evaluate complex data, read and interpret plans, specifications, maps and engineering drawings. They ended with a heavy focus on the people-management component. She would be directly supervising an assistant director, chief of building inspectors, administrative services manager and others. She claimed understanding the real needs of citizens was her first priority, followed by balancing the goals she set with the reality of dealing with politicians, developers, landowners, protesters. They talked about the frequent presentations she’d be giving to city council committees, civic groups and more.
She asked about those committees, and he tried to give her a sense of city council personalities and how they related to the Infrastructure Advisory Board, the Arts, Beautification and Culture Committee and Economic Development Committee, all of which would demand her involvement.
Cait McAllister remained poised, articulate and knowledgeable. She never faltered. She was so damn cool, he tried to shake her, jumping topics from zoning to budgets, EPA requirements, water reclamation, citizens versus tourists. Nothing. She jumped with him.
She’d driven around town this morning, she told him, and already had some observations.
“I admit,” she commented, “that I was dismayed by the, er, shopping strip that was my first impression of Angel Butte.”
“All that was county until an extensive annexation took place a year ago.”
“I imagine that was good for the tax base.”
“Yes and no.” He ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the scrape of whiskers. “The campaign for the annexation was intelligently run. Unfortunately, nobody did any planning to speak of for handling the newly annexed areas. Your brother may have talked to you about the challenge it provided the police department. Our former mayor and a good part of the city council were opposed to expanding the number of officers in the department. Instead, they were spread so thin, in no time problems arose. I imagine it goes without saying that we’ve had plenty of other similar issues.”
Her eyes had widened. “I can imagine. Sewer, water, fire department... I’ll bet there’s a huge backlog in approving building permits.”
Noah smiled grimly. “Two city council members are major local developers. You’d think they’d have foreseen the problems, but apparently not. Now they’re unhappy.”
A flash of humor on her face almost took his breath away. “I have yet to meet a happy developer,” she murmured.
He chuckled, a rusty sound. “Now that you mention it...”
Her smile lit her face. He stared for too long; the smile died and her gaze became wary.
“What do you see as priorities for new projects?” he asked gruffly to cut short the moment.
“I can only address the obvious,” Cait pointed out. “There may be urgent need for storm-water projects or the like. I see Bend is expanding their water reclamation facility, for example.”
He nodded. “We have some of the same issues. I’ve been looking at possible sites for a new sewer treatment facility. But go with the obvious. What jumps out at you?”
“Some visual mitigation of the less than appealing approach to town,” she said bluntly. “Broader streets, landscaping, at the least. It’s great to have those kinds of businesses, both for the convenience of citizens and visitors alike and from a tax standpoint. But it’s ugly. Not an appealing first impression of what proves to be a charming town. We might even consider a bypass route.”
He nodded. That was on his list, too.
“Second, if Angel Butte is to continue to draw tourists in the numbers I saw this morning, I’d recommend major infrastructure work aimed at improving bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Right now, parking downtown is an exercise in frustration. You’ve got people jaywalking everywhere, and I’d be scared to ride a bike on most of the existing roads. You don’t want people staying at local resorts and inns to have to get into a car to go out for dinner, for example. They may end up irritated, and they may even decide to drive up to Sunriver to eat instead. Looking to the future, I’d argue that this would be an economically intelligent direction.” A wry smile flickered. “You might prevent some traffic fatalities besides.”
“I came close to taking out a tourist myself the other day,” he admitted. “And as it happens, I own Chandler’s Brew Pub on the main street. Parking is grossly inadequate. That’s part of why receipts lag behind my locations in Sisters and Bend.”
He saw no surprise on her face, which meant she’d done her research on him in advance. He had expected no less.
“You must have questions.”
She did. Some he’d anticipated, some not. All of them gave him a good idea of how smart she was.
When she seemed satisfied, he considered her for a minute. She withstood his scrutiny with no more than a slightly raised chin. He was amused to see that her chin was on the square side. When she jutted it out, the effect was pugnacious.
“Would you take the position if I offer it?” he asked abruptly.
Even that didn’t shake her composure. “Assuming compensation is adequate, I believe I would.”
“When would you be able to start?”
A ghost of some emotion showed in her eyes. He wished he had some idea what she was thinking. Not knowing worried him.
“Immediately,” she said after a moment. “I plan to stay with Colin for a few days, at least. I can continue work on my dissertation without being in Seattle. I’ll need to make a few trips back, of course, but...I find myself at loose ends right now. This job would suit me very well.”
Right now? “I’m looking for someone who will be making a long-term commitment, not taking the job as a brief fill-in.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest I was thinking short-term.”
Noah nodded. “I’ll need to follow up on your references. I can promise to get back to you within a matter of days.”
She rose gracefully to her feet. “Thank you for your time. You have my phone number.”
He stood, too, aware that he physically intimidated many people but also sure that, for some reason, she wasn’t among them. “I do,” he agreed.
They shook hands again. Hers was a little warmer this time. He squeezed gently and let her go sooner than he would have liked. He walked her to the outer office and watched as she strode away toward the elevator or stairs, the swing of her hips subtle but sexy as hell.
Not until he turned did he realize that his PA had been watching him. He saw curiosity in her eyes.
“How did the interview go?” she asked, just as she had after all the previous ones.
He grunted. “Good. If her references pan out, I think she’s the one.”
She cleared her throat. “You do know—”
“That her brother is Captain McAllister? I know.” He frowned. “How do you know?”
Ruth smiled. “We chatted.”
“Did you chat about anything else I ought to know?”
She tilted her head while she thought. “No, I don’t think so,” she said after a moment. “She seems like a lovely young woman.”
Lovely was definitely one word for Cait McAllister, Noah reflected as he returned to his office. Sexy was another. The fact that he was thinking that way about her had the potential to be a huge problem. Did he really want to hire a woman likely to distract him the way she had today?
Muttering under his breath, he went to the window and stared out. Not, he told himself, because he might be able to see her walk out to her car—although there she was, and he couldn’t have taken his eyes off her if the most aggravating of city councilmen was tapping on his shoulder. Looking toward the cinder cone usually clarified his thinking.
Somehow that didn’t happen with him focused on Cait McAllister’s long-legged stride, the sway of her hips, the gleam of spring sunlight on her hair.
Not until she got into a little blue car that, a moment later, joined the traffic on the road and passed out of his limited line of sight could he look away.
“Damn,” he said aloud, but quietly.
There were other words he could use as descriptors for the woman who had just left his office. Brilliant, he suspected, was one. Definitely highly qualified.
Which made him blessed that, for whatever reason, she wanted a job in Angel Butte, Oregon.
What he’d really like to know was why she was willing to take it. His gut said she was desperate for a change. He wondered if her brother would know what she was trying to leave behind.
Maybe the bigger question was whether he could quit noticing how lovely and, yes, goddamn it, sexy she was and see her as a professional.
If not...
Noah sank heavily into his desk chair and gazed, unseeing, at one of the paintings that hung on his office wall.
Who was he kidding? Of course he was going to hire her. And, no, he wasn’t going to be able to turn off his libido. He’d have to aim for reining in his response. If he was really lucky, her personality would begin to grate on him and he’d quit caring what she looked like.
* * *
“I KNOW COLIN is estranged from your mother.” Nell poured balsamic dressing from the little plastic cup over her salad. “He seems to think you’re still close to her?”
Cait and her new sister-in-law had spent the morning browsing shops and were now eating at a café owned by a friend of Nell’s, who had come out when they arrived to say hi and inspect Cait with obvious curiosity.
So far, Cait really liked Colin’s wife. If Nell was being nosy...well, who could blame her? She was, after all, married to a man with major family issues. Who knew better than Cait, who had issues, too, if different ones from her brother’s.
What’s more, Nell wasn’t a casual acquaintance. Strange as the realization was, they were family.
“Not so much,” Cait admitted, answering the question about her relationship with her mother. “Once I hit my teenage years and rebelled, things went downhill. We’ve never quite recovered.”
Nell nodded. “Does she know you’re here in Angel Butte?”
Cait winced. “No. If I get the job, I’ll have to tell her eventually.”
Nell didn’t say anything. Tiny lines on her forehead suggested she hadn’t raised the subject only in a casual, get-acquainted way. Good lord, Cait thought; Mom is her mother-in-law. Cait knew Colin hadn’t invited their mother to his wedding.
“I suppose Colin’s told you that...our father was abusive,” she said carefully.
“Yes.”
“He and Colin fought a lot.”
“He told me that, too.” Nell still hadn’t reached for her fork. “He thought he’d probably scared you and your mom both toward the end. He was trying to draw your father’s anger away from the two of you, but he admits he was filled with a lot of rage, too.”
“That last couple of years were really horrible. I remember getting off the school bus and dragging my feet because I dreaded going home.” Cait tried to smile. “Anyway, if Mom was ever happy here in Angel Butte, she’s long since forgotten. I think she feels guilty about Colin, too.”
“She should,” Nell said sharply, after which she made an apologetic moue. “That was tactless, wasn’t it? I won’t take it back, though. I don’t mean to offend you, but the truth is, she abandoned him. Having his own mother leave him behind with the father he hated... He has scars.”
“He seems so...together,” Cait said hesitantly. “Except...I guess I could always tell that he wanted more from me than I knew how to give.” Her laugh was sad. “Family life at its finest.”
Nell’s laugh held a similar note. “My family is no better—I assure you. One of these days, I’ll tell you more about our soap opera.”
“I’d actually like that.” Cait smiled. “Misery loves company.”
“Absolutely.”
They both chuckled and, as they began to eat, turned the subject in other directions. They were talking about a women’s self-defense class Nell had taken over the winter when Cait’s phone rang. Of course it had sunk to the bottom of her too-roomy bag, but she snagged it by the fourth ring. The number was local, and not Colin’s, unless he was using a landline at the police station.
“I’d better take this,” she murmured to Nell, and answered.
“Ms. McAllister.” The gravelly voice was unmistakable. “Noah Chandler.”
Her heart raced. Truth time. “Mayor.”
“Why don’t we progress to Noah and Caitlyn? I’m calling to offer you the position.”
The relief was out of proportion, especially considering her mixed feelings about her return to Angel Butte. A journey back in time, she thought flippantly. “I go by Cait,” she said, sounding completely collected and mildly pleased. She impressed herself sometimes.
“Cait it is. Do you have a minute to talk?”
She grimaced apologetically at Nell, who waved her understanding and eavesdropped with interest.
A minute was all the conversation took. Mayor Chandler did not believe in beating around the bush. He laid out compensation, medical and dental benefits, retirement and vacation package with a take-it-or-leave-it curtness. She told him, equally briefly, that his offer was acceptable. He asked when she could start. Cait took a deep breath. “How about tomorrow morning?”
The momentary silence suggested she’d surprised him. But when he said, “Good. Let’s meet in my office at nine,” his voice didn’t confirm that impression.
Cait felt more than a little dazed as she dropped her phone back in her handbag. “Wow. The job’s mine.”
Working with him.
She didn’t let herself linger on that vague sense of apprehension. Only that wasn’t quite right.
She didn’t have time to, anyway, since Nell jumped to her feet and hurried around the table to give her a quick hug. “I’m glad. Having you close will really make Colin happy, and I think you and I are going to be friends.”
“I think so, too,” Cait agreed. From their first meeting, she’d had the feeling she and Nell already were friends. Maybe that was because her face was so disconcertingly familiar—Nell/Maddie hadn’t changed as much as most people did from when she was a child. With that pointy chin, sharp cheekbones and disarmingly high forehead, she looked thoroughly adult and yet still like the little girl Cait remembered, scattering of freckles, big brown eyes and all. She had claimed to vaguely remember Cait, too, but sounded more uncertain. Cait knew her own face was nowhere near as distinctive.
It wasn’t only familiarity that made Cait feel comfortable with this new sister-in-law, though. Nell had an air of reserve that reminded Cait of her own. Even after several months together, Nell seemed surprised by Colin’s smiles, touches and the intimate way they sometimes looked at each other. Or maybe, Cait reflected, Nell was surprised by her own response to him. Cait knew enough from what she’d read about Nell’s ordeal to be sure she understood self-doubt—and why trust could be hard.
Cait insisted on paying for lunch, which Nell finally accepted. They were walking out when Nell asked if she’d mind stopping to grocery shop on the way home.
“Of course not—” Head turned, she walked smack into someone. A man who asked if she was all right at the same moment she exclaimed, “I’m so sorry!”
And then she really looked at him. Shock seemed to squeeze her throat. “You,” she whispered.
Echoing shock showed on his fleshy but still handsome face. He was middle-aged, the auburn of his short hair muted from what she remembered by a substantial sprinkling of gray. He’d softened some around the middle, too, but...she did know him. Oh, why hadn’t it occurred to her that he might still live here?
“Cait,” he said, sounding rueful. “I’m surprised you recognized me. What were you? Nine, ten, when you moved away?”
“Ten.” Her voice was a little too high. “Jerry, that’s right, isn’t it?”
“Jerry Hegland.” His gaze flicked to Nell, who was watching the odd encounter. “Aren’t you—?”
“Nell McAllister.”
He looked momentarily confused.
“My sister-in-law,” Cait contributed.
“That’s right.” He was apparently putting the pieces together and realizing Cait’s companion was Maddie Dubeau. “I heard you’d married the police officer who found you. Ah, I knew Cait and Colin’s mother,” he explained. His gaze traveled back to her. “We were getting to be good friends, weren’t we, Cait?”
She managed a nod, her usual social skills having totally deserted her. This man had been her mother’s lover. Of course, she hadn’t known the truth until years later. Back then, she’d thought he was a nice man who Mommy and she happened to run into really often. He’d bought them lunch several times.
“I’ll bet you remember me best for the handprints I left in your concrete slab,” she blurted.
He stared at her. “What?”
“You didn’t know it was me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Suddenly he was as brusque as Mayor Noah Chandler at his most impatient. He looked over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m meeting someone.”
“Of course.” She wouldn’t lie and say, Great to see you. It wasn’t, even if she wasn’t being fair. After all, Mom was the one who’d been married.
Unless he had been, too?
She didn’t care.
I am angry at her. Had been, still was. She had been only sixteen—and an already confused sixteen, at that—when she’d found out her mother had had an affair.
An affair? Who knew? Maybe she’d been screwing around on Dad for years. Cait wanted to think the betrayal explained his rage.
She didn’t look back as Nell pushed open the door and the two of them exited.
* * *
DINNER STARTED WITH them all clinking wineglasses in a toast to her new job. Cait was still feeling the glow, if also a whole lot of trepidation, when Nell glanced at her.
“So, who was that guy we ran into at the restaurant?” She transferred her gaze from Cait to her husband. “Please pass the butter.”
He did so automatically, but he was looking at Cait. “I didn’t think you’d remember anyone from that long ago.”
Here was where she could say, He wasn’t anyone important. But Colin likely knew him, she realized. Her brother had been enough older than her to be aware of relationships and undercurrents to which she’d been oblivious. In fact, she’d nursed some anger at him, too, for leaving her in ignorance even though, all grown-up now, she could see why he hadn’t said anything to his little sister.
“Jerry Hegland.”
He frowned. “Who?”
She set her fork down. “You don’t know him?”
“The name is vaguely familiar.” He seemed to be searching his memory. “Wait. Something to do with the airport?”
“I don’t actually know.” But, yes, once Mom and she had gone out there to watch planes take off and land. Angel Butte Regional Airport wasn’t all that exciting, of course; at least in those days, aside from privately owned small planes, traffic had consisted of no more than a couple of flights a day to Portland and Seattle using turboprop commuter planes that carried something like fifteen or twenty passengers. Still, she remembered standing beside the runway as one of those planes tore by, gaining momentum and then lifting into the air. She had been amazed. Her family had never flown anywhere.
That had been one of the occasions when the nice man bought lunch for her and Mom, at the café in the airport terminal.
“Then how do you know him?” Colin asked.
“Mom.” She sounded like a crow. Harsh. “He and Mom...”
Her brother’s expression gradually changed with dawning horror. “He and Mom what?” he asked in a hard voice.
Cait was distantly aware that Nell’s mouth hung open. She’d had no idea what she was starting.
“They had an affair. Didn’t you know?” she begged.
“Hell, no!” He gave his head a shake. “I can’t believe— How did you know?”
“I always assumed... Wow.”
“Cait.”
“Don’t snap at me!”
Now they were glaring at each other.
Well, what difference did it make? she reasoned. Colin and Mom never talked anyway.
“I had no idea back then. I thought he was a friend of Mom’s. But when I was sixteen, I was rooting in her closet looking for something.” She’d been snotty, and Mom had taken away her cell phone in punishment. The minute Mom left for work the next day, Cait in a fury had dug through all of her mother’s dresser drawers, looked inside coat pockets in her closet, then taken down every box on the closet shelf. In the second one, she’d found a couple of photo albums and letters and been distracted from her search. She remembered sitting on the bed turning pages in the albums. Already her memories of her dad and her brother were fading. But here were Colin’s and her school photos, as well as lots of family snapshots. Mostly those weren’t all that great—people were squinting against the sun or looked posed and uncomfortable. There were first-day-of-school pictures, when Colin or she were stiff in their new clothes. And some of Dad laughing with his arm around one of them. She’d felt strange, seeing those.
She hadn’t paid much attention to the letters, beyond dumping them out on the bed so she could look at the loose photos. There had been a bundle tied in ribbon with handwriting she’d recognized as Nanna’s. But then she saw that a picture of a man she had recognized was bundled with a few notes that weren’t in envelopes.
“I found some notes he’d written Mom,” she said. “They were...um, kind of explicit. And then in one he was pleading with her to leave Dad. He said he’d take us, too. In the last one, he said, ‘Why won’t you call me? You’re wrong, whatever you think.’” She remembered it word for word. “It freaked me out. I guess Mom slept with him, but then she ditched him when he got serious about her. Which made me wonder if there hadn’t been other men, too.”
Colin hadn’t moved. “Mom?” he finally said in a low, dark voice.
Cait bobbed her head. “I always thought...”
His eyes focused on her.
“That you must know. I mean, you were older—”
“No. I had no idea. What does he look like?”
She did her best to describe the Jerry she remembered from back then and the one she’d encountered today.
“That son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s still mostly Mom I stumble over. I mean, she was married. She had us to think about.”
“You mean, she had you to think about,” he said, with less emotion than she suspected he really felt about being deserted by his own mother. But then his eyes narrowed. “Why would she have introduced you to him?”
“I guess sometimes they wanted to get together and she didn’t have any place to leave me. Or maybe they were playing family. I don’t know. I was a kid. I thought we ran into him by accident.” She told him about having lunch with the man, and the treat of getting to go practically out onto the runway to watch planes take off and land. “One time we had a picnic. I don’t remember where. We swam. I remember the water being really cold, but it was fun.” She shrugged. “All innocent, until I found out it wasn’t.”
“Goddamn it,” her brother said bitterly.
“Do you think Dad knew?”
Colin’s face was transformed by anger, his eyes the color of storm clouds. “I have no idea. I tried not to listen when they were screaming at each other.”
She nodded her understanding; sometimes she’d run to her room and pulled her pillow over her head. The yelling so often ended in crashes and grunts and sobbing. She hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near her parents then.
Right now, she was feeling something of the same choking sense of anxiety.
A muscle ticked beneath Colin’s eye. “I may have to meet this Hegland.”
She seemed to have quit breathing. “You look like Dad right now.”
“I don’t look anything like him,” he said in a low growl. But he did. He did. Dad’s face had always been so flushed when he lost his temper, worse when he’d had too much to drink, of course. Right now, dark color suffused Colin’s face and tendons stood out in his forearms. His hand had fisted around his bread knife.
Just like Daddy’s.
“Yes, you do.” She bent her head so she didn’t have to see him. Oh, God. This was what she’d felt every time Blake started to get mad.
“Colin, you’re scaring her,” Nell said softly. When Cait sneaked a worried peek, she saw that her sister-in-law had laid a hand on Colin’s arm. He’d turned his head and was looking at her.
After a minute, during which Cait didn’t dare move, he said, “Cait.” His voice was gruff but also somehow gentle. “I know what you saw back then, but I’m not like Dad. I’ve never wanted to be anything like him. I fought with him to keep you and Mom safe, but I’m not a violent man.”
She looked up to find him regarding her ruefully.
“Seeing you look scared of me,” he said, “that’s one of the worst things you could do to me.” He made a rough sound in his throat. “I would never hurt you.”
She gave a quick little nod, and, after a moment, he answered it with one of his own.
“All right,” he said.
Embarrassed at her over-the-top reaction—could she call it a past life regression?—she told him she was sorry. Colin insisted she had nothing to be sorry for.
Nell interceded by getting them talking about something else, and later, when they were alone in the kitchen, she apologized to Cait for mentioning Jerry.
“No, it’s all right. I just had this sort of flashback.” Cait even managed a small laugh. “The perils of coming home.”
“Which I fully understand.” Nell bumped her shoulder against Cait’s. “You should go figure out what you’re going to wear tomorrow.”
“Oh, boy.” New anxiety instead of anticipation, and Cait didn’t even know why. Because this was Angel Butte? Because, in running away from Blake, she’d made a sharp right turn in her life? Or because she would be seeing Noah Chandler at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, and had no idea why he made her feel so edgy?
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN NOAH AND Cait walked into Chandler’s Brew Pub, a host rushed to greet them, and what other employees Cait could see were suddenly very busy. Cait would have been more amused if she didn’t now work for him, too.
He’d been nothing but agreeable all morning, from the minute he had walked her to her new office. After barely giving her a chance to glance around, he’d hustled her back out so he could introduce her to half the people who worked for the city. Within an hour, names were running together in her head. Perhaps seeing that her smile was growing strained, he had decided to drive her around in his truly enormous SUV so she could see ongoing projects.
“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he had then declared.
She felt a flutter in her chest at the idea of having to look at him over a table for an hour and make conversation. She found herself wishing he was married, maybe had a couple of kids she could ask about. Knowing he was single was part of what had her on edge.
Noah Chandler was an incredibly sexy man despite the fact that he was the next thing to homely. Or maybe that wasn’t it, she’d found herself thinking as she stole glances at him while he drove. Colin had said he was an ugly bastard, but Cait couldn’t imagine any woman agreeing with that assessment. No, he only surprised her because, except for the very sharp blue eyes, he looked like a laborer, not a politician. He ought to be operating a forklift or heaving heavy loads in and out of trucks or railroad cars, not wearing a beautifully cut suit and running a city. She wondered how he kept that powerful physique. Certainly not by scowling at his computer monitor and hammering the keyboard, the way he’d been when she had stepped into his office that morning.
He wasn’t a physical type that had ever attracted her, for which Cait gave thanks. Surely she’d become inured to the intensity that seemed to be as much a part of him as his raspy voice and tendency to be abrupt when he forgot he was trying to give the impression he was an easygoing man.
They had barely been seated by the eager host when a pretty blonde waitress magically appeared with menus. She wore a tight little black skirt and a crisp white shirt that strained over generous breasts.
“Mr. Chandler,” she purred.
He glanced at her with scant interest and nodded. “Jess.”
Looking disappointed, Jess retreated with their drink orders, walking more like a model prowling a catwalk than a busy waitress.
Cait was mildly surprised that her new boss had asked for iced tea rather than a beer.
“You said you have three locations,” she said.
He hadn’t even opened his menu. “This was the first.” He looked around, as if appraising the place. “The one in Bend is the busiest. We have live bands playing three or four nights a week. Comedians do better than music in Sisters, for some reason. Here?” He shrugged. “The Friday-and Saturday-night crowd like entertainment. Otherwise, food and drinks seem to be the appeal.”
Curious despite herself, she had to ask, “You were so bored, you decided instead of expanding your business or finding a new hobby, you’d run for mayor?”
His grin gave her a few palpitations she should definitely ignore. Cait was a long way from even thinking about getting involved with a guy again, and if and when she ever did, she was looking for gentle, funny, intellectual. The reasons she’d always been drawn to domineering men were not subtle. Now that she’d faced them head-on, she would make better choices. All she had to do was remember her father. The terrifying fights he and Colin had had.
Blake.
Never again.
And even if she had been attracted to Noah Chandler, she now worked for him. Would, in fact, be working closely with him. So knock it off.
All that intensity was being trained on her right now, though, which made it hard. His eyes were a startling blue, especially considering his hair was dark.
“What’s good to eat?” she asked, hiding behind the menu.
He laughed. “Now, what do you expect me to say to that? Everything, of course. I usually have a burger or one of the potpies, but I’m thinking pizza today.”
They agreed to share one called “The Farm Kitchen” that had a delicious-sounding combination of roasted red peppers, black olives, artichoke hearts and more with a roasted garlic tomato sauce. Jess took their order of pizza and salads and again retreated, with a last, sulky glance over her shoulder.
“I think your waitress has a crush on you,” Cait observed.
His eyebrows climbed in surprise. “I can’t imagine. What is she, nineteen, twenty?”
“And you’re such an old man?” Oh, teasing him wasn’t smart. Professional, she reminded herself. Keep it professional.
“Thirty-five. Not quite old enough to be her father, but close enough.” Those vivid eyes stayed on her face. “Now that I’ve hired you, am I legally safe to ask how old you are?”
“Twenty-nine. The same age as Colin’s wife. Have you met her?”
“In passing. I’ve read plenty about her.”
Cait nodded. “It’s funny, because I remember her from third or fourth grade. Or maybe both. Do you think I’d recognize a single other kid from that long ago?”
His rough chuckle felt like a touch. “No? But I understand why you did. The paper printed plenty of pictures from when she was a kid and then when she appeared last year. Not much change.”
Cait laughed. “She claims to remember me, too, but I think she’s making it up.”
“What about you? How much have you changed?”
Something about the question froze her in place. She wanted to believe...oh, that she was nothing like that timid ten-year-old. But everything that happened with Blake had made her realize that she couldn’t shake her past.
“I was a beanpole,” she told him, keeping her voice light. “Taller than all the boys at that age, and ridiculously skinny. I had white-blond hair then, too. You wouldn’t have recognized me, I promise you.”
“I’m not so sure,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “Why did you look so unhappy when I asked you that?”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
He shook his head, impatience on his face. “Never mind. None of my business.”
Silence enveloped their table. Cait looked down at her place setting to avoid his too-keen gaze. Oh, why not? she asked herself. Blake was the only secret she had.
“We weren’t a happy family,” she said, probably startling him.
He’d been scowling toward the cluster of employees who hovered near the check-in at the front entrance, but his head turned sharply when she spoke. Without looking at them, she knew they had to be sagging in relief. She would have been.
When he said nothing, she gave a one-shouldered shrug. “In those days, I mostly tried to disappear into the woodwork. I was safest if no one noticed me, you see.”
“Safest?” He sounded out the word. “Were you abused?”
“Our father was violent.” Now her voice sounded small and tight. “Mostly when he was drunk. Unfortunately, he owned a bar and, by the time he got home, he was almost always drunk.”
“I had no idea.”
“Why would you? You and Colin aren’t exactly friends, and I doubt he talks about it anyway.”
“No.” Noah sounded disturbed. “No, I don’t suppose he would.”
“Men don’t like to, do they?” What made her say that? she wondered, appalled. Was she hinting he tell her his background?
If so, he didn’t take her up on it. Their salads arrived, saving them from awkwardness. Noah asked how much seemed familiar here in town, and she was able to reminisce about the much smaller town from her childhood.
“I was remembering going to the movie theater.” She smiled at memories that were good. “Colin took me sometimes when Mom or Dad wouldn’t. He’s five years older, you know. I hate to imagine the kinds of movies he sat through for my sake! And just think if one of his friends had seen him.”
Noah’s mouth curled up on one side. “Death to a guy’s reputation,” he agreed. “Just think, now you can choose from half a dozen movies or more any Friday night.”
He admitted, when she asked, to attending the community theater’s productions on a regular basis. He had even acted in high school. “I was always the villain, of course.”
“Of course?” she echoed in surprise, then flushed when again his eyebrows rose.
“Not even my mother would call me handsome,” he said drily. “I did a hell of a job with Iago, though, if I do say so myself.”
What could she do but laugh?
The pizza, when it came, proved to be fabulous. Prompted by her questions, Noah was willing to talk about opening his first brew pub. “I still okay every menu item,” he admitted, “but I was never a cook. I have a recurring nightmare about drowning in beer, though. Kegs breaking open, and I’m trying to get them stacked but meantime the beer is pouring down on me, into my nose and mouth.”
She chuckled but had a feeling this was black humor for him. She wanted to ask if he liked his product as well as her father had his, but she refrained.
“Lucky I’m a workaholic,” he said finally.
Cait could have guessed that. “What made you run for mayor?”
He eyed her, and she suspected he was trying to decide how honest to be. “Frustration,” he finally said. “That’s probably what drives most businessmen to get involved. You discover too many factors are out of your control.” He tipped his glass of iced tea to her. “Traffic. Zoning, taxes, the adequacy or otherwise of local law enforcement. In my case, once I started expanding, I had a chance to compare how three different cities operated. I’d lived here too long to want to pull up roots, so I decided to remake Angel Butte instead.”
That really made her laugh. Answering amusement in his eyes told her he at least recognized his hubris.
“Colin said you moved here about ten years ago?”
“Nearly eleven, now.” He hesitated. “I learned that my father was here. Hadn’t seen him since I was a kid, but for some reason I decided to look him up.”
She wondered if he really didn’t know why he’d felt the need to track down his father. Studying that rough-hewn face and the intelligence in his eyes, she thought, no, of course he knew.
“So you found him and stayed.”
Noah shook his head. “I never did find him. He’d disappeared.” His expression closed. “I guess he’d moved on.”
Cait didn’t believe in his outward indifference, but clearly he was done sharing confidences. She could take a hint.
They kept chatting, but more like the employer and employee they were. He asked that she attend the city council meeting the following Tuesday, told her about his second hire of the week, the new city recorder who’d be starting in June.
He paid, and as they walked out, wanted to know if she’d yet found a place to live.
Cait shook her head. “I haven’t even started to look. If you’ll recall, it was only yesterday you offered me the job.”
He gave her an odd glance. “I guess it was.”
It was a little silly that they had to get back in his big SUV for a whole two-block drive, but earlier he hadn’t suggested parking at the city hall/courthouse complex and walking back.
She looked straight ahead as he maneuvered out of the slot. “Did you have any suggestions? I mean, about where to live. I’ll have to rent for now.”
“I suppose you don’t want to stay at your brother’s.”
“No-o.” She drew that out. “He actually has an apartment above his garage. So I might stay there.” She liked the idea of having Colin close if Blake showed up in town. On the other hand... “I’m not sure I want to be accountable to him for my comings and goings.”
“It would be a little like moving back in with Mom and Dad,” Noah mused.
Cait rolled her eyes. “It might be worse.”
“Your brother the cop.” He was highly amused; she could tell. “I guess it might be.”
“Well.” She shook herself. “No hurry to decide.”
“There are some new town houses available for rent in a nice location,” he said after a minute. “I hear they’re decent.”
When she asked why he sounded grudging, he admitted they had been built by Earl Greig, who sat on the city council.
“One of the not-so-happy ones.”
“That would be him.” Noah’s tone was sardonic.
“Not-so-happy means they’re more likely to support you in making changes, doesn’t it?”
“In theory.” He made an indecipherable sound. “You should be welcome, at least.”
This was really out of line, but... “Earl doesn’t like you?”
“Earl can’t bring himself to forget that I used to wear my hair in a ponytail.”
Cait choked.
He flashed her a grin that was so devastating, he might as well have kissed her.
“Yeah, stubby little thing.” He reached up to his nape as if fingering hair that wasn’t there anymore. “Shocking, I know.”
Smiles like that—they were shocking. And, dear God help her, she had to pretend they had no effect on her at all.
“Lucky Earl doesn’t live in the big city,” she said.
“Earl is daily torn between his greed and disapproval of all newcomers as well as tourists. Makes his votes kind of chancy.”
He pulled into the parking slot reserved for the mayor, set the emergency brake and turned off the engine. Cait scrambled out, not wanting to take a chance he’d turn his head and gaze at her with that thoughtful look that made her wonder whether he saw straight through her.
She felt him glancing at her as they walked through the garage, but he didn’t say anything until they were on the elevator and it was rising, floor numbers pinging.
“I’ll let you have the afternoon to yourself,” he said, his tone distant as if he’d almost put her out of his mind already.
“Thank you for taking so much time for me,” she said formally when they reached her floor and the door slid open.
He dipped his head, a frown making his features harsher. Whether he looked after her as she exited, Cait had no idea. She didn’t dare glance back.
* * *
NOAH TRIED LIKE hell to stay away from his new director of community development for the rest of her first week of work. That didn’t mean he didn’t hear constant reports about her and have to field a couple dozen phone calls asking about her. It also didn’t mean he didn’t catch glimpses of her entirely too often. There was one day he swore he couldn’t step out of his office without seeing her hurrying down the hall or engaged in conversation in a doorway or walking out to her car.
Earl wasn’t real happy that a woman had been hired instead of a man, a hidebound attitude that didn’t surprise Noah at all. Noah listed her qualifications for possibly his most contentious city council member, who grumbled but went away. Beverly Buhl, chair of the Arts, Beautification and Culture Committee, called to burble her delight about how “forward-thinking” Ms. McAllister was.
“And charming,” she enthused, to which he growled agreement; something about his voice momentarily silenced her.
Taking Ms. Cait McAllister out to lunch had been his mistake, he concluded. He’d done fine up until then. Lunch might have been fine, too, if they’d stuck to business. Instead, they’d sounded each other out about their pasts, their likes and dislikes as if they were on a first date.
Damn it, she’d made him laugh!
He wanted to be grumpy because she didn’t dress professionally enough, but the truth was, she did. She went so far as to wear a suit the second day. Unfortunately, she never seemed to wear the kind of colors that would have allowed her to blend in. The suit was lemon-yellow, the skirt reached only midthigh and the jacket was short and fit snugly over very nice breasts and a slender torso. She even wore high heels in a matching shade of yellow. When he spotted her down the hall in that one, he was blitzed by the thought that she looked like a sexy ray of sunshine. Furious at himself, he blundered into the men’s room, stared at himself in the mirror with incredulity and took a piss when he’d rather have whacked his head against the wall.
Day three of her tenure, he almost walked into her as he was heading out midafternoon. Today she wore linen slacks and a thin sweater set the color of the ocean off Belize. He nodded; she offered a single, distracted smile and returned to conversation with her assistant director.
His mood darker, Noah stalked the several blocks to the public safety building for a meeting with Alec Raynor. As he was ready to go into the building, Cait’s brother happened to be coming out.
McAllister stopped, his eyes narrowed on Noah.
Since the one hostile scene back in March when Noah had admitted he had chosen not to hire McAllister for the head job, they had managed to hold semicivilized conversations; they had to, once McAllister made the decision to stay on as acting police chief and then captain of investigative services. Enmity was never far below the surface, though.
Today, McAllister stepped aside rather than continuing on his way.
Seeing no choice, Noah did likewise. If he were prone to regrets, he’d be sorry about the tension between them. But he did what he thought was best, and he didn’t allow himself second thoughts.
“Before the rumors hit,” McAllister said tersely, “I thought I’d tell you I’m running for county sheriff.”
Noah digested the announcement. The current sheriff was on a par with Mayor Linarelli, as far as Noah was concerned. In other words, lazy and very possibly crooked. “Interesting,” he mused. “Are you asking for my support?”
McAllister snorted. “That did not cross my mind.”
“It should have.” Noah was given to making decisions fast—as he’d done where his police captain’s sister was concerned. “You have it,” he said.
The other man stared at him. “Why?” he finally asked.
“We both know you’re good at your job. I think you have what it takes to clean up the sheriff’s department.”
“Just not Angel Butte P.D.”
“You know why I didn’t want to take a chance.”
McAllister gave a half laugh, shaking his head. “Do you have any idea how badly I want to tell you where to shove your support?”
An involuntary grin twitched at Noah’s mouth. “I can guess.”
“Unfortunately, I’m too ambitious to actually do that.”
Noah thrust his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He waited while a cluster of women came out of the building, their heads turning at the sight of the mayor talking to Captain McAllister. To his credit, the guy had kept his animosity quiet, but there had to be talk anyway.
When they were out of earshot, Noah asked, “You and Raynor getting along okay?”
His expression veiled, McAllister shrugged. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Noah nodded, even though that was no answer. “Let me know when you want a statement from me.” He pushed his way inside and continued up to Alec Raynor’s office.
The new chief’s PA waved him in. “He’s expecting you.”
In fact, the door stood partially open. Talking on his phone, Raynor half sat on his desk, a foot braced on the floor. He glanced at Noah and lifted one finger. Noah nodded and wandered over to study a new painting on the wall.
It was disturbing, he decided, not the usual government-office pretty. Even he had gone for pretty in decorating his own office, figuring his role was to be a booster for the city and area in general. He’d bought local artists and photographers. This—he couldn’t imagine a local had done it.
From a distance he’d seen that it was some kind of street melee. Closer up, components broke into shards and you didn’t see the overall scene. Faces stood out, though they were far from realistic. No matter how simply these faces were constructed, though, anger and despair jumped out.
“The artist is a friend of mine,” Raynor said behind him.
“I was thinking that most of us go for decorative.”
Raynor’s laugh sounded like rusted gears grinding. A little like Noah’s own, he reflected. They had that in common.
Not looks, though. His new police chief was whipcord-lean and not much above average height. Five foot ten, maybe. He had dark hair and eyes as dark a brown as Noah had ever seen. By this time of day, he already needed a shave. During the interview in February, Noah had thought he looked Italian. Now, with the Southern California tan fading, the effect was diminished. Unless the guy took up skiing this coming year, he was going to turn pasty white like the rest of them who didn’t have the time or inclination for winter sports.
Raynor circled his desk and sank down in the big black leather chair. He looked weary. “I fired two officers today,” he said bluntly. “A sergeant on the patrol side and a detective who was one of our representatives to CODE.” CODE was the coalition of police agencies, including the DEA and FBI, that fought drug trafficking.
“Damn.” Noah lowered himself into a chair facing the desk. He’d known this was coming but hated to have his assumptions confirmed anyway. “Tip-offs to drug dealers?”
“That’s what it looks like. No question they took bribes. Maybe even offered guard service. Hard to be sure. We’re still working on who the money came from.” His eyes met Noah’s. “We’ve traced one payment for sure to the same source that paid off Bystrom.”
Gary Bystrom was the former police chief whose corruption had been uncovered almost by accident in McAllister’s investigation of a murder that had taken place in the city park the same night his now-wife, Maddie Dubeau, had been abducted when she was a teenager. Found along with the boy’s bones was a backpack that contained, among other things, a snapshot of the police chief shaking hands with a known drug dealer and a bank deposit slip for a hefty sum into his account. The Drug Enforcement Agency had mostly taken over digging into the source of those bribes, a real challenge. Raynor was stubbornly refusing to let go entirely of the investigation, with the result that the DEA agent in charge was kindly deigning to keep them informed. Noah and, he suspected, Colin McAllister in particular were getting damn frustrated by the snail’s pace of inquiries that left Bystrom free as a bird. Probably putting away his winter clothes right now and getting out his fly-fishing gear. The only consolation Noah could find was that, at the very least, the feds had him for tax evasion.
What they’d known all along was that he had to be getting tip-offs from officers in the department about police raids. McAllister had found the first two; these were the next to fall.
“It’s still only the beginning, I suspect.”
Noah grunted. He wanted to see some trials and prison cell doors clanging shut.
The dark eyes were direct. “You know most of the work on this was done by McAllister.”
“You’re asking why he isn’t sitting in your chair?” Noah rolled his shoulders and then told him.
“I think you misjudged him.” Raynor’s smile was razor-sharp and came and went swiftly. “To my benefit, of course.”
“Is it? I still don’t know why you wanted this job.”
Still eyeing him, his police chief ran a hand over his darkly shadowed jaw, maybe to give himself a moment. “I was looking for a peaceful town. Not for me.” He hesitated. “My brother was special forces, killed in Afghanistan. I’ve been stepping in to help his widow with their kids. The boy’s thirteen, gotten to a rebellious stage. L.A. wasn’t the place for him.”
“I didn’t know you’d brought family with you.”
“They’re not here yet. Took a while for Julia to sell her house.” He shrugged. “Now she’s waiting out the rest of the school year. They’re moving up here as soon as the kids are out the end of June.”
Noah was unexpectedly relieved to have the answer to the questions he’d asked himself. It was even one he could understand, although this was a big change of direction for a man to make for his sister-in-law and her kids.
“Are we as peaceful as you thought we’d be?” he asked.
Raynor gave a bark of laughter. “Sure. There’s only been one murder since I arrived, you know.” That had been a domestic. “Now, honesty, that’s another story.”
Noah laughed. “Okay,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “Keep me informed.”
Raynor stood, too, presumably from courtesy. “Will do.”
Noah left, thinking that the past hour had been exceptionally informative. Now all he asked was that he make it back to his office without so much as another glimpse of his new director of community development.
* * *
COLIN SET ASIDE the newspaper when he saw Cait come out of the guest bedroom. “You going out this evening?” he asked with deceptive casualness.
“City council meeting,” Cait reminded him.
“Oh, right.”
She grinned at his tone. “Isn’t there such a thing as a county council?”
“Don’t remind me.”
She gave him a saucy look. “You could come keep me company.”
“A fate worse than death.”
Chuckling, she twirled in a circle, arms outstretched. “Do I look all right? I want to dazzle ’em.” She didn’t mention who in particular she wanted to dazzle. The suit was one of her favorites, a deep rose she’d worn over a yellow shell. These were about her highest heels, too, saved for occasions like this when she wouldn’t be on her feet for eight hours.
Her brother did relax enough to smile. “Can’t fail,” he assured her.
“Good. Don’t wait up, I don’t know how late I’ll be.”
He frowned, rose to his feet and followed her to the door. “Why don’t you park right by the front porch when you get in instead of off to the side of the garage?”
“You let Nell park in the garage even though she has to scamper all the way across the yard when she gets in at night.” This was one of those evenings when Nell was working at the library in Sunriver until nine, which meant she didn’t get home until close to ten. Cait knew her brother didn’t like these evenings but had resigned himself.
“I listen for her,” he said simply.
Cait sighed. She liked his protective streak. She did. She just wasn’t sure she could live with it. Maybe cops were always like that with their own families, given what they saw on the job. She admired how patient Nell was with him, although, come to think of it, in her case it was only a few months ago that someone had tried to kill her.
Cait had a flash of memory: Blake smashing his booted foot into the fenders and doors of her small car, the screech of metal giving. His last, quiet words before he melted into the night.
I will never accept that you’re not mine.
She was careful to hide her shiver from Colin. She should hope he decided to wait up for her, too, so she didn’t have to be afraid when she let herself into the dark house tonight.
She hadn’t been in Angel Butte that long. How would Blake find out where she’d gone?
But she didn’t kid herself. Short of assuming a new identity, disappearing wasn’t possible in the modern world. Within the next few days, the city website would be updated with her name and bio. Blake might not even have had to wait for that. He’d met Colin; he knew where he lived.
He could show up anytime.
So, for now, she would be grateful for her brother’s watchful eye, Cait promised herself. She kissed his cheek and said, “I’ll park so close to the front steps you won’t be able to squeeze by in the morning yourself,” and hurried out the door to the sound of his chuckle.
The council had their own chamber in the city hall wing off the historic courthouse, she had discovered her first day during the whirlwind tour Noah conducted. She’d seen the agenda for tonight and knew there were no very exciting decisions facing them, so she wasn’t surprised to find the audience thin. Noah had a place at the raised semicircular table along with the nine council members. He wasn’t sitting yet, although he stood behind the table talking to a balding, potbellied man and a woman who looked to be in her forties and wearing a fire-engine-red suit Cait admired.
Either he was keeping an eye on all arrivals or watching for her, because his gaze flicked to her the minute she walked in. He’d been in the middle of saying something but stopped midsentence, seeming momentarily paralyzed by the sight of her.
Feeling unwarranted satisfaction at the idea that she’d dazzled him, Cait gave herself a stern talking-to. Repeat to self—I do not want a man, especially a man as overbearing as this one. Who so happens to be my boss.
Without looking at him again, she strolled up to the curved table and held out a hand to the city councilman at the end.
“Hi, I’m Cait McAllister, new in the Office of Community Development.”
Two hours later, she was struggling to hold on to her expression of eager, or even polite, interest. She had been introduced at the beginning and received with reasonable cordiality. From that point on, much of the discussion concerned possible alterations to the noise ordinance. The citizens who did appear mostly wanted to hog the microphone as they vented about a neighbor’s barking dog or teenagers who were apparently free to party until all hours almost nightly. Nobody showed up to say, “Screw the ordinance! I have a constitutional right to make all the racket I want!” A police captain named Brian Cooper droned on with statistics relating to noise violations and possible repercussions should the projected change be voted through. Cait couldn’t decide if he was really that boring or whether he was trying to put everyone to sleep. To prevent a vote? she wondered, momentarily amused. She’d have to ask Colin about him.
Cait found herself surreptitiously watching Mayor Chandler. Patience was not one of his virtues, it appeared. Expressions flowed across his face—disbelief and exasperation alternated with the expected boredom. He eventually started either making notes or doodling. Cait leaned toward the doodling explanation.
Once he lifted his head unexpectedly, and his eyes met hers. They stared at each other for long enough to excite comment if anyone had been paying attention. There was an openness in his eyes and, she was afraid, in hers, as if they hadn’t had time to shield themselves. Even so, she wasn’t quite sure what he was thinking. She discovered, when he suddenly turned his head, that she must have quit breathing. She hoped the gasp wasn’t obvious when she sucked in air.
She probably should have lingered when the meeting ended, but she couldn’t make herself.
Oh, God. I shouldn’t have taken this job, she realized as she fled. She couldn’t keep dodging Noah. She either had to get inured to him, or...she didn’t know.
Joining a cluster of five people who got on the elevator together, she pushed the button for the parking garage and watched as someone else did for the lobby. There was no conversation; everyone stared politely straight ahead.
She stood aside when the doors opened at the lobby. To her dismay, everyone but her got off. As the doors shut, she weighed the possibility of going back up and hovering until the next group was ready to depart. Nothing but the city council meeting had been happening tonight. The lot would be deserted.
But the doors were already opening, and she saw that the space was well lit. With relatively few cars left, there weren’t a lot of places for anyone to hide. Nonetheless, she reached in her purse for both her car keys and her pepper spray.
She walked confidently, heels striking on the cement floor. She had the passing thought that four-inch heels were not a good choice for a woman alone this late in the evening. Unless, of course, she took one off and used it as a weapon.
Picturing herself brandishing a pink high heel in self-defense almost made her smile.
No dark figures stepped out from between parked cars. She reached her Mazda unscathed and was dropping the pepper spray back into her purse when she saw the rear window. A lopsided heart speared by a huge arrow had been drawn on it in some kind of greasy red paint.
Shocked, she stopped, her gaze involuntarily surveying first her surroundings again, then the rest of her car. Dear God, what was that on the windshield? A crack? Or...?
She backed up, peeked around her car to be sure no one hid there, then took one slow step at a time until she could see what had happened to the windshield.
The same smeary red paint had been used to write in foot-tall letters:
MISS ME YET?
“Is something wrong?” a man asked from behind her.
CHAPTER FOUR
HAVING EXPECTED CAIT to hang around to talk to council members, Noah was taken aback when he realized she was gone. He had nothing to say to anyone—what a waste of an evening this had been—so, nodding to Brian Cooper, he left the council chamber.
The elevator doors were just closing. Behind him, voices spilled out of the room. He shot a hunted look behind him. Damn it, if he waited for the next elevator, he’d get stuck making conversation, the last thing he had the patience for tonight. Reversing direction, he escaped into the stairwell in the nick of time.
Noah emerged into the parking garage to echoing silence. He could see only one person—a slim woman in a deep rose suit that revealed mile-long legs enhanced by heels that had to add four inches to her height. Cait McAllister wasn’t a woman who worried about deferring to men, he figured, or she wouldn’t wear shoes that made her taller than most of them.
He was halfway across the bare concrete space before he started wondering what she was doing, just standing there staring at her car. No—her head turned, almost surreptitiously, and then she ducked around to the passenger side. Hiding from someone he couldn’t see? Damn it, from him?
But she reemerged from the space between a concrete pillar and her little hatchback and kept staring at her car. Had she locked her keys in it or left the lights on and killed the battery?
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She gasped and whirled, one shaking hand holding out some little gizmo. Mace, Noah realized belatedly, or pepper spray. He also took in the shock that dilated her eyes. And then his gaze went past her.
“What the hell...?” he murmured.
She seemed to sag. “It’s...the windshield, too.”
He walked around her car and saw.
MISS ME YET? in enormous capital letters. The writing reminded him of the Just Married he’d sometimes seen in the back windows of cars also festooned with dangling cans or streamers.
“Never given a woman a valentine before,” he remarked, “so maybe I’m not an expert, but I can’t say this one strikes me as very romantic.”
Cait’s laugh sounded semi-hysterical. “No,” she agreed. “Romantic is the last word I’d use.”
He looked at her. “Do you know who did this?”
She closed her eyes. After a moment, she gave a stiff little nod.
She was not only shocked, but scared, Noah diagnosed. “No sign of him?” he asked.
“No, but I didn’t exactly mount a search.”
“I’m glad to hear you had the sense not to poke around all by yourself in a deserted parking garage for the asshole who’d do this,” he said grimly. “Stay put.”
He didn’t consider her a meek woman, but she nodded in acquiescence.
It didn’t take him long to determine that they were alone down there. Had been alone. As he walked back toward her, the elevator disgorged five people, two of whom separated from the pack, going straight for their vehicles, while the other three stood talking.
“Oh, God.” Cait sounded frantic. “I don’t want them to see this.”
“No.” He took an experimental swipe over the heart and discovered the color didn’t come off on his finger. “You can’t drive the car like this.”
“No. I’ll call Colin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll take you home.” He frowned. “I’ve got a tarp. I can toss it over your car.”
She thanked him.
He wasn’t parked far away. It took him only a minute to unlock the rear of his Suburban and grab the heavy canvas tarp he’d been using to keep the cargo space clean when he hauled construction materials. Returning, he found her staring at that damn pierced heart as if she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Noah pulled the tarp over her car, glad to hide it from her gaze.
“I thought you were new in town.”
Her mouth twisted as her eyes met his. “I am.”
Seeing how frail she suddenly looked, he shook his head. “Come on.”
He circled around in case she needed a hand getting in with those damn heels. Or maybe so he could catch a glimpse of an extra few inches of thigh as she hiked herself up.
Once in, he started the engine but didn’t release the emergency brake. “All right, what’s the deal?” he asked.
Her glance was swift. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah, I think it does. Was this meant to be fun? Some kind of prank? Or should we notify the police and have your car fingerprinted?”
Staring straight ahead, she chewed on her lower lip. Finally she let out a long breath. “I’ll tell Colin and see what he thinks. I hoped...”
Noah waited.
She still didn’t seem to want to look at him. “An ex-boyfriend has been stalking me. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to stay in Seattle to finish my dissertation.”
Anger balled in his gut. “Define stalking.”
“Mostly following me. Popping up everywhere I went. I changed health clubs. He’d show up at my new one. Trail me through the grocery store. That kind of thing.”
Mostly following? The tension in her voice told him there was substantially more.
She turned her head, her eyes still dark with unhappiness. “I could tell he was getting mad. The last time I was coming out of my health club after an evening class and he was waiting at my car.”
“Tell me you hadn’t gone out alone.” His voice sounded like the crunch of gravel.
“Well, I did,” she said with a spark of defiance. “Until then, he really was just a nuisance.”
He gripped the steering wheel hard. “Until then.”
Her eyes shied from his. “When I said no again, that I didn’t love him and he needed to accept that, he, well, sort of threw a temper tantrum.” She paused. “Did throw a temper tantrum. He was wearing heavy boots, and he kicked my car, over and over. He did a lot of damage to the body.”
Goddamn. The thought of those boots slamming into her little car had Noah’s whole body rigid with the need to do battle. Useless, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He didn’t have to be a psychologist to know the ex-boyfriend had wanted to hurt her, not the car.
“And while he was doing this?”
“I dialed 911, of course! What do you think, I’m stupid?”
“Was he arrested?”
“Some people were coming out of the health club, and he took off. The police did charge him later and he did some kind of plea deal. But, um, the last thing he said was that he’d never accept losing me.”
“And that’s when you decided coming home to your cop brother was a good idea.”
“Well...yes.”
“Does Colin know about this creep?”
She visibly winced. “Um...no. I really did hope Blake wouldn’t follow me. He has a job. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking!”
“How long had this been going on?”
“Like...six months?”
He swore under his breath and reached for the gearshift. Having backed out, he then punched in the code to open the iron grill of the gate, closed at night. Within moments, he was driving through downtown, which had gone pretty well dead except for a few places like Chandler’s that stayed open until eleven on weeknights.
Cait was quiet for close to five minutes. Then, “Do you know where Colin lives?”
“Someone pointed his place out to me.”
Another couple of minutes passed. “Will you say something?” she burst out.
“Better if I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d give you hell for not taking precautions!” Despite his best intentions, his voice had risen. “What were you thinking, going down to your car all by yourself tonight?”
“I was thinking he was in Seattle!” she yelled back. “And...and I did look around the garage before I got out of the elevator.” That part came out more subdued. “I’m not stupid,” she said again but softly, as if she was trying to convince herself.
Feeling like he had grit in his chest that scraped when he breathed, Noah grasped her fine-boned hand in his. Cait gave a little jerk, as if he’d startled her, but after a very still moment, she squeezed back. Holding on, he thought.
“Your hand is cold,” he said quietly.
“My hands are always cold.” It was a poor excuse for a laugh, but Noah admired the effort. “My feet, too. Lousy circulation, I guess.”
He was betrayed into imagining himself sandwiching her cold feet between his shins at night, warming them.
No. Don’t go there.
Neither of them said another word until he had to take his hand back to steer into the dark driveway leading through a tall stand of pines to her brother’s house. He was glad to see that the front porch lights were on. A floodlight over the detached garage lit up, too, presumably motion-sensitive. He drove as close as he could get to the front steps and then braked.
“Thank you for the lift,” she said, already releasing her seat belt and reaching for her purse. “And for listening.”
“I’m coming in with you.”
Door halfway open, she swiveled back to look at him. “What?”
“You heard me.”
By the time he turned off the engine and walked around, her brother stood on the porch looking down at them. “Cait.” His eyes narrowed. “Chandler.”
“You really don’t have to...” she tried.
Noah gripped her elbow and started her up the porch steps.
“Your car break down?” Colin asked.
At the top of the steps, she shook free of Noah’s hold and glared at him. “No. I’m going to have to get someone to clean it in the morning. It suffered from...I guess you could call it graffiti.”
“Shall I tell him about it?” Noah asked.
She’d gotten over being scared and was mad. “This is none of your business!”
“It happened in the city hall parking garage. While you were attending a city council meeting.” He put some extra weight on the word city. “You work for me. That makes it my business.”
Her brother’s narrow-eyed gaze moved back to his sister. “Cait?”
“Oh, fine.” She stomped past him into the house.
Colin glanced back. “You coming in?”
Surprised at the invitation, he said a firm, “Yes.” He was damned if he’d leave her alone to make light of the whole story to her brother.
Only a single lamp was on in the living room. A newspaper lay open on the hassock. He’d been waiting up for her, Noah guessed. Or for his wife?
“Is Nell home?” Cait asked.
“She’s taking a shower and getting ready for bed.” Although she’d perched on the sofa, Colin still stood, arms crossed. “Quit procrastinating.”
Her mutinous expression amused Noah despite his dark mood.
She sniffed. “You remember Blake.”
“We already established that I did,” her brother said slowly.
“Well, he’s been stalking me.” She told the story briskly, not minimizing but not revealing the fear Noah had seen. He didn’t comment, however.
Colin, he suspected, wasn’t deceived.
“And you didn’t tell me about this.... Why?”
She had a pretty mouth, but Noah wouldn’t have called it sultry until now, when her lower lip protruded. “I really didn’t think Blake would follow me.”
“That son of a bitch. If he thinks he’s going to terrorize you here in my town—”
“He’s convinced that he can talk me into going back to him,” she tried to explain.
“Is there a chance in hell of that happening?” Colin asked, the timbre of his voice roughening.
She scowled at both men. “Of course not!”
“All right,” Colin said. “He’s got to be staying somewhere local. We’ll look for him in the morning. I want to see your car.”
Cait nodded unhappily. “You’ll have to drive me to work anyway.”
“For now, it might be better if I drive you and pick you up every day.”
Noah approved.
“You’re overreacting. He painted a heart on my back windshield. It wasn’t a threat.”
“Yeah, it was.” Noah had been content to allow her brother to grill her until now, but her intransigence was beginning to annoy him. “He’s letting you know he’s in town and watching you. Given his history, that’s a threat.”
“Do you have a restraining order?” Colin asked.
“I didn’t think I needed one.”
Noah stared incredulously at her, and realized Colin was doing the same. Cait’s expression grew mutinous.
“We’ll get a restraining order first thing in the morning,” Colin said.
“Good,” Noah agreed.
Colin cast him a not-so-happy look. “Say good-night to Mayor Chandler,” he said. The momentary accord had apparently dissolved. “He’s leaving now.”
She rose and thanked him politely again, talking to their backs as Noah found himself being hustled out by Colin. On the porch, Noah balked.
“Your sister is trying to play down any threat. Don’t let her.”
The police captain’s jaw tightened, but to his credit, he also nodded. “I noticed. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”
“It’s ugly.” More urgency than Noah wanted to feel infused his voice. “The arrow is way bigger than the heart. It’s not piercing it—it’s stabbing. She’s more frightened than she’s letting on.”
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Janice Kay Johnson
Standing between her…and dangerReturning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man he’s so tempting Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.
Standing between her…and danger
Returning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor, he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man, he’s so tempting that Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.
The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.
If he hadn’t decided to follow her out here…
Cait would be dead.
The knowledge slammed into Noah, a kick to the chest that felt as if he’d been shot.
But she was unharmed. Somehow she had escaped being shot at and having her car forced off the road.
When Cait started to struggle to her feet, he reached down to help her. She wasn’t wearing heels, he saw; she had changed to athletic shoes before she headed out on this expedition. The rusty red dirt coated the gray-and-white leather and mesh.
Churning with emotions he had no ability to decipher, Noah couldn’t help himself. He yanked her back into his arms, with no consideration for her fragile state. If she noticed, she didn’t protest. She leaned as if she belonged right there, resting against him. Was that a very distant siren? He didn’t care.
“Cait,” he said hoarsely.
She looked up, her eyes dark, and the power of all that rage and helplessness and tenderness overcame him.
He kissed her.
Things are not as they seem in Angel Butte, Oregon. Read on to find out how Noah Chandler can protect Cait McAllister from the threats escalating against her in this second book of Janice Kay Johnson’s latest series!
Dear Reader,
It’s always been my opinion that women are more self-aware than men.
Of course I know some major exceptions to that rule (well, let’s call it an observation), but still. My guess is that it’s part and parcel of what makes women talk about experiences and emotions, even embarrassing ones, so much more readily than men do. In real life, a guy who never seems to quite get what he’s feeling can be aggravating.
Writing fiction—I love men who blunder along, falling in love and even developing other kinds of relationships without exactly knowing what’s going on, and who are genuinely flabbergasted when they discover they’re in over their heads and haven’t a clue how it happened. Noah Chandler is such a man. He’s really smart, a successful businessman and politician, blunt and even ruthless, but convinced emotional crap is for other people. Leading him along gave me enormous pleasure, I have to tell you. Hmm. If only guys like that could be led along so easily in real life…. Come to think of it, there’s a reason I write fiction!
Truthfully, one of the joys of writing romance is finding the two perfect characters who will both clash and mesh with each other.
Jayne Anne Krentz wrote, some years back, about how, on some level, the hero should also be the villain—i.e., a threat to the heroine. I think it works the other way around, too. Certainly, Cait McAllister is a major threat to the even tenor of Noah’s life, and he is self-aware enough to know that from the very beginning. Meanwhile, he’s the scariest kind of man to her…when he isn’t making her feel safer than she ever has.
I hope you like these two people as much as I do. I’ve discovered some really great men live in Angel Butte, Oregon!
Janice Kay Johnson
Everywhere She Goes
Janice Kay Johnson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.
Contents
Prologue (#ud6ee2716-4244-54f9-acca-f4ad9b55d93f)
Chapter One (#u2f0eb4b3-562c-5936-a93d-e2dff4358fd0)
Chapter Two (#u519daf1a-c0ec-5d83-8569-a29e1b7dc253)
Chapter Three (#u0ac4bb65-144a-5cfe-8016-ecf74cd39770)
Chapter Four (#uaa8569e0-2c21-53fe-9fe2-ce5403eb3865)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
NOAH CHANDLER GLOWERED at the file that lay open on his desk. Failure was unacceptable. He still couldn’t figure out how and why the bunch of fossilized, mule-headed, self-serving jackasses that constituted his city council had shot down his candidate for the job of police chief and chosen someone so ill-qualified—compelling him to make the offer.
By God, he was going to choke on it.
Noah had been trying to tamp down his anger since the vote after last night’s meeting. When he had won the election in November and had taken over the mayor’s office, he had known he would have to deal with a council composed primarily of good ol’ boys incapable of objective, forward thinking. So far he’d succeeded in manipulating them into voting his way whatever their original inclination. What he couldn’t figure out was why the rebellion had come now, and over something so critical.
Corruption ran deep in the Angel Butte Police Department, and this town needed someone fully competent to root it out, not a yeehaw cowboy who knew Southern California gangs and hookers but had next to no administrative experience and probably thought small towns were good only as a place to get off the interstate and fill up the gas tank. Had the city council members been thinking at all? Or were they interested only in thwarting him?
A third option had presented itself, and Noah liked it least of all. What if a couple of those fine citizens serving on the council, influential with their peers, had real personal motivations for ensuring the investigation into drug trafficking and illegal payoffs floundered?
Fuming, he picked up his phone and dialed.
Three rings and a brusque male voice answered, “Raynor.”
Noah unclenched his jaw. “Lieutenant Raynor.” His voice came out as a growl. “This is Mayor Noah Chandler in Angel Butte, Oregon. I’m calling to offer you the position of police chief. You were the final choice of our city council.”
There was a moment of silence that lent him hope. The weather had been bitterly cold when Alec Raynor, a homicide lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department, had flown into Angel Butte for the interview. A blizzard had shut down the airport, delaying his departure for a day. Maybe in the past week he’d rethought the whole idea of accepting the job here. For all the line of bull he’d fed them during the interview, his motives for wanting the job were still a mystery to Noah.
“What about you?” Raynor asked unexpectedly. “Was I your choice?”
Noah swiveled in his desk chair to stare out the window at a partial view of Angel Butte, one of the small cinder cones that dotted this volcanic country in central Oregon. A nineteenth-century marble statue of an angel, imported all the way from Italy, crowned the crater rim. Back some years ago, before Noah’s arrival in town, the angel had been given a granite pedestal to hoist her higher, maybe so she could keep a better eye on errant townsfolk.
“No,” he said, blunt as always. “I was in favor of a candidate who had significant administrative experience. The job here doesn’t have much in common with what you do down there in L.A. We don’t have a lot of homicide cases to close. Our problems have to do with recruitment, staffing, training, scheduling, budget and morale.” Keeping our probably too-low-paid cops honest, he thought but didn’t say. “Politicking to bring in the money. Do you know how to do any of that, Lieutenant?”
“On a smaller scale, yes.” There was a pause. “Did you have experience in city government when you won the election, Mayor?”
Noah rubbed the heel of his hand over his breastbone to settle the burning coal beneath it. “I’m a businessman. Running a city isn’t all that different from running a business.”
Raynor didn’t have to say, In other words, no.
“This may not be what you want to hear, Mayor, but I accept your offer.” The steel in Alec Raynor’s voice sounded like a challenge to Noah. “As I indicated, I need to give notice here. Is your acting police chief willing to stay on for another month?”
That was the next call Noah had to make: the one to Colin McAllister, to let him know he wasn’t being offered the permanent position. The news would not go over well. McAllister had every reason to think he had it in the bag.
“We’ll work it out one way or another,” Noah said. “Let us know your arrival date when you can.”
“I will.” Irony threaded the deep, crisp voice. “I’ll look forward to working with you, Chandler.”
Noah didn’t have to manufacture any upbeat remarks; dead air told him the call was over. He grimaced. He’d liked Raynor better during this phone call than he had during the interviews. Noah preferred direct give-and-take, and that’s what he’d gotten.
And, damn, he owed it to McAllister to tell him the decision in person, not over the phone. With a grunt, he pushed back his chair and rose. He’d walk. The route from the historic courthouse that now housed his office to the new public safety building would take him right past Chandler’s Brew Pub. Wouldn’t hurt to stop by, surprise his employees. Since going into politics, he had been forced to trust them more than made him comfortable. He might even have lunch there, he decided. Today was downright balmy for the beginning of March, which was still the dead of winter in central Oregon. He might as well enjoy the deceptively springlike weather. He wouldn’t even have to wear a coat.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d walked into the police chief’s office and said his piece.
Colin McAllister’s face had gone hard the minute Noah had started. He listened in silence, not rising from his chair behind the desk. “I deserve to know why I wasn’t hired.”
Only thirty-four years old, he’d been with the department since he’d started as a rookie right out of college. He had risen fast, making captain—only one rank below chief—two years ago. Noah understood him to be well liked by his officers, although he also had the reputation as a tough son of a bitch when being tough was called for. He was the one who’d uncovered the corruption in the Angel Butte P.D. and brought it to Noah. It was thanks to McAllister that Noah had been able to ask for the former chief’s resignation. McAllister had handled the beginning stages of the investigation into the deeper layers of corruption well, as far as Noah could tell.
“I blocked your hiring,” he said.
A man as tall as Noah if not quite as bulky, McAllister stood now, his hands flat on the desktop. Fury glittered in his steel-gray eyes. “Why?”
“I can’t take the risk that you’re part of whatever crap is infecting this police force,” Noah said bluntly. He held up a hand to silence his acting police chief. “I have to ask myself how could you have worked here this long without seeing that something was wrong. You’re young to make captain, even in a department this size. You’ve been rewarded with promotions a hell of a lot faster than is the norm. I’m making no accusations, but I also can’t ignore the possibility that you got where you are by sharing information or worse. Even a willingness to turn a blind eye to illegal activities might have won you brownie points. I like you. I still had to make the best choice for this town.”
“No accusations?” The gray of those eyes made Noah think of gun barrels now. “Sounds to me like you just made some. Tell me why, if I were dirty, I’d have been stupid enough to open this department to a top-to-bottom investigation.”
“You might have thought you could get rid of Bystrom, step into his office and then block some turns of the investigation.”
“If you’d asked, I would have shared my financials with you.”
“You might be honest enough not to have accepted bribes, but not so honest you weren’t willing to look away when fellow officers did.”
The sound that came out of McAllister’s mouth could have been a snarl. “You know you’ve opened yourself to a lawsuit.”
Noah met that burning stare. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision if you were in my shoes.”
“So now you want my resignation.”
“No, I don’t. My gut says you’re clean. I want you to stay on as acting chief for the next month and to return to captain of investigative services after that.”
Colin McAllister gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re a son of a bitch. You know that, Chandler?”
Yeah. He could be. Today, a son of a bitch who felt like he was developing an ulcer. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision,” he repeated.
“I wouldn’t have made the same decision.” Muscles knotted in the other man’s jaw. “Are we done here?”
“Think about what you want to do.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be thinking.”
Noah nodded. “Then we’re done.”
He walked out, deciding he might have a beer with lunch, something he never did. He was also thinking he’d just made an enemy—and the new police chief and he weren’t set up to be good friends, either.
Leaving the building and ignoring curious glances, it occurred to him that Colin McAllister and Alec Raynor were unlikely to have a real cordial relationship, either, not when one was taking over the job the other had wanted, and thought he’d earned.
Had earned, Noah admitted, if only to himself.
He paused on the sidewalk to let two lanky boys on skateboards shoot by before he turned back toward downtown.
Half the city council members despised and feared Noah, who despised them in turn and was plotting to get rid of them as soon as he could.
His mouth tilted up at the black humor. Yep, city government, as usual.
This called for two beers with the burger and fries he intended to have for lunch.
CHAPTER ONE
“GOOD WORKOUT,” a woman called from down the row as Cait McAllister slammed her locker door closed and picked up her gym bag.
Smiling her agreement, Cait lifted a hand. “See you Thursday.”
Today’s class had combined step aerobics with what the instructor called “butt and gut,” exercises aimed at core muscles. Cait was currently alternating this class with kickboxing. Conscious of a pleasant ache, she liked that she was getting stronger all the time.
She especially liked the feeling because Blake sneered at women wanting to be muscular.
Swiping her card to check out at the front desk of the health club, Cait grimaced. Oh, sure, show how defiant you are now.
The truth was, Blake hadn’t liked much of anything that took her focus away from him. With every day, week and month since she’d broken up with him, she had realized how much she’d surrendered. Friends, activities, even time to herself. She still couldn’t believe she’d let it happen.
Problem was, he thought their relationship had been perfect, with only the little flaw that she’d left him. Five months down the line, he still couldn’t believe she had meant it when she’d said, “We’re done.” In fact, she paused now at the door, uneasy to be going out into the dark parking lot. In the glass she could see the reflection of the bright interior: herself, two guys leaving one of the racquetball rooms, laughing and wiping sweat from their faces, an employee behind the desk. Outside: nobody.
She could ask for an escort to her car.
Ridiculous. She’d moved a few weeks ago and was bunking with another grad student, so her name didn’t appear on a lease anywhere. She was on a second new cell phone number. She’d changed health clubs again—this was only her third week coming here. She’d found yet another new favorite Thai restaurant, stopped at different coffee shops. Taken to varying her parking on campus when she needed to use the library at the university or talk to her adviser, rather than automatically heading for a certain lot. Shopped at a different grocery store each time. Tried to become unpredictable in as many ways as she could.
Blake actually did have a job. He couldn’t possibly be stalking her 24/7. Plus, she really thought he’d freaked even himself out when they’d had that last fight in November and he had hurt her badly enough she’d had to be hospitalized overnight. So far, when he tracked her down, he’d been coaxing, not threatening.
Even so...it was April now, and he hadn’t given up. To him, her “no” meant “I’m still mad at you, but I’ll come around eventually.” His frustration and anger had been thinly veiled the last time she’d seen him, when he’d suddenly fallen in behind her with his shopping cart in the cereal aisle at Whole Foods and stayed with her until she drove away. He had pulled out right behind her, too, and tailgated until she’d darted onto the freeway and then off, so last-minute she’d heard brakes squealing behind her and caught a glimpse of his furious face when he couldn’t make the exit, too.
Cait squared her shoulders. He couldn’t possibly know she was here. She refused to huddle at home every evening. Between her thirty-hour-a-week job and work on her dissertation, her days were full.
Nobody else seemed even to be close to ready to leave, so she pushed open the door and went out.
She was parked just around the corner of the building. There were pools of darkness, but really the lot was well lit. Lights of a passing car on the street washed over her, momentarily blinding her and leaving her trying to blink away dancing spots.
Even so, she was still a good ten or fifteen feet from her car when she saw that a man leaned against the hatchback. She stopped, and he straightened at the sight of her.
“Hey,” Blake said, totally friendly. “I was passing and saw your car.”
He couldn’t have seen her car from the road. He’d either followed her or taken to prowling the parking lots of health clubs she might conceivably have joined.
Cait stayed where she was, wishing someone—anyone—else would come out. A couple of guys would be really good. Poised to run, she also eased her hand into her purse, groping for her phone and praying he couldn’t see what she was doing.
“I’ve asked you to leave me alone, Blake.” Thank God, her voice was calm and confident.
He took a step toward her. “I can’t even say hello?” He sounded offended, as if she’d been rude.
Bad moment to be hit with how really skewed his perspective was. He was not normal. Of course, she’d already known that, but...
Later.
Refusing to retreat, she lifted her chin. Her fingers touched a smooth, flat surface. Her phone, thank God. Now, could she dial without being able to see what she was doing?
“No,” she said. “I don’t even want you to say hello. I really don’t want you cornering me in dark parking lots.”
“I didn’t corner you—I waited for you!” Anger was making his voice more guttural. “How can I say I’m sorry if you won’t listen to me?”
“You’ve said it.”
“Yeah, and how many times do I have to? I’m sorry! Goddamn it, I’m sorry, okay?”
She licked dry lips. “Thank you for saying it. That’s better than not saying it. But no. It’s not okay.”
“You love me. I know you do.” He took a couple more steps toward her, his voice now low and persuasive. Warm, affectionate. “Jesus, Cait. I’ve gotten your message, loud and clear. I swear I won’t do anything like that again. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Maybe because you swore two other times that you wouldn’t hit me again? And, oh gee, you did?” Making a decision, she yanked her phone out and dialed 911 really fast.
“You knew you were pissing me off!” The guttural, furious note was back. He seemed oblivious to the phone.
In the yellow light of the overhead lamps, she saw that his hands had knotted into fists. The sight made her pulse rocket. She slid one foot back, then the other. Please, please, please, let somebody come outside. A car pull in.
If she said no often enough, he’d eventually have to believe her, wouldn’t he?
“I don’t love you anymore. You killed what I felt for you. You need to accept that.” Cait brandished the phone so he couldn’t miss it. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police. If I have to scream, a dozen people will come running out of the health club.”
His face was ugly, transformed by shock and rage. She was shaking, and she hated knowing he could make her so afraid.
I should run.
He’d be on her before she could round the corner of the building.
She was still frozen with indecision when he snarled an invective and turned to her small car, then kicked the bumper until the car rocked.
“You bitch!” he yelled, and used his booted foot to crumple the fender. As she watched in shock, he circled the car, kicking, smashing, doing to it what he wanted to do to her.
Backing away, gasping for breath, she tore her gaze from him long enough to look down at the phone. Just as she reached the corner of the building, she pressed Send.
At that very moment, he went still and stared at her across the distance separating them. His voice floated to her, quiet compared to the invectives. “I will never accept that you’re not mine.”
Terrified now, Cait ran for the lighted front of the health club.
* * *
“TODAY’S MAIL,” RUTH LANG announced and plopped a pile in front of Noah. Of course, she’d already slit each piece of mail open and paper-clipped the correspondence to the envelope.
He grimaced. “Thanks, Ruth.”
His assistant’s predecessor had retired when Mayor Linarelli lost the election. In the first week after he’d taken office, Noah had chosen Ruth, middle-aged, brisk and efficient, from internal applications. There’d never been a moment of regret. Choosing the right personnel was one of his strengths, although he was beginning to realize that hiring a bartender wasn’t quite the same as hiring a city engineer or attorney. He’d been glad to have the chance to do both, but there were days he thought all he did was hire. Half the long-timers had decided to retire when they saw the way the wind blew with Linarelli gone.
Ruth smiled sympathetically. “That’s what you get for advertising two jobs at once.”
Yeah, it was. He wanted to get somebody competent in the job of city recorder, but his real interest was in filling the position of director of community development. Angel Butte had stagnated compared to comparable towns within a three-county area. The only significant move to alter that before his tenure had been the annexation that doubled the size of the city while leaving it struggling to provide expected services. Like too many city employees, the former head of planning had been an old crony, unimaginative and more interested in hanging on to the way things had always been done than he was in new trends in the field. Noah had been hoping that, at sixty-two, he was starting to think retirement. What happened instead was a heart attack. The guy had survived, but he’d admitted to Noah that his wife had put her foot down and refused to hear about him returning to work.
Noah had hoped for more applications than he’d received so far. He supposed Angel Butte seemed isolated to most potential applicants, a backwater with a lousy climate. But the area was booming economically thanks to tourism. It was beautiful, and there had to be some people in the field who loved to ski or hike or fish. Or, hell, just wanted to breathe air that wasn’t yellow with smog, or commute five minutes to work instead of spending two hours a day crawling in heavy traffic on the freeway.
He’d already received three online applications that morning. Now, he flipped through the day’s mail, which included several more résumés for people interested in the city recorder job and five for the community development one. Two of those he tossed in the recycling bin after barely a skim. Two were possibles, but not exciting. The fifth... He couldn’t quite decide. In one way, she was overqualified, apparently only months from receiving an interdisciplinary PhD in urban design and planning. Actual work experience was somewhat scantier—after getting her master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Washington, she’d worked as a planner in community development in Kitsap County, on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle. From there she’d gone to Spokane, where she’d spent a year completing a special position as parks project manager, preparing an updated plan for the city’s parks and open spaces. She’d included excellent letters of recommendation, as well as one from her dissertation adviser at the UW. Noah had advertised for someone with a minimum of four years’ experience in a position of comparable seniority to the one in Angel Butte. This woman didn’t quite have that—although close if he added in her various internships—but she shone if he wanted someone with cutting-edge knowledge of the field.
He glanced again at her name. Caitlyn McAllister. As it registered, a frown gathered on his forehead. The last name had to be coincidence. Didn’t it? He went back to the first page of the résumé to see when she’d received her degrees. BA in political science from Whitman College... The date of graduation likely put her in her late twenties now. Thirty at most, if she’d been a slow bloomer.
He had no idea whether police captain Colin McAllister had a sister. If this Cait was related to him, that might explain why someone of her education was interested in a town so off the beaten path. On the other hand—as pissed as McAllister was, as undecided as he was about his future in Angel Butte—surely his sister wouldn’t have applied to work closely with his sworn enemy, the man who had in his eyes betrayed him.
Damn it, if she was related to McAllister, did he even want to consider hiring her?
Noah read her qualifications again and, impressed, thought, Why not? By the time they reached the interview stage, he might have half a dozen other strong candidates. So far, though, she was the cream of the crop.
He reached for his telephone.
* * *
CAIT’S EYE CAUGHT the blue-and-white roadside sign. Entering the City of Angel Butte, Population 38,312.
Oh, boy. She hadn’t expected to be so nervous. She didn’t even know why she was. Some of her memories of the years before her mother had taken her away weren’t so good, but she also had happy ones. So it wasn’t the town, per se.
Seeing her brother, maybe? The farther she’d gotten down the road, the more she wished she’d called to let him know she was coming. It was just that she didn’t know how he’d feel about her moving back here, and really their relationship was so stiff and distant, she wouldn’t blame him if he was less than thrilled.
My fault.
Yes, it was. He had tried. She knew he would have liked to be closer to her. Her feelings had been so complicated, her memories so muddled, she was the one to keep him at arm’s length. At the same time... Well, she remembered him walking her to school, holding her hand. With seemingly endless patience, Colin had taught her to ride a bike, not Dad or Mom. When she’d started playing soccer, he’d kicked the ball with her by the hour. He’d teased her, and put up with her trailing him around like a hopeful puppy even though he was six years older than her. He’d been sixteen when Mom had hurriedly packed her own and Cait’s things one day, loaded her in the car and driven away. By then Colin was a man, with a stubbly jaw come evening and a man’s muscles, capable of such terrifying anger and violence.
The tumble of images and memories running like YouTube videos were so vivid and frightening, she put on her turn signal and pulled to the shoulder of the two-lane highway leading into town. Stopped, she clutched the steering wheel, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
Her father had hurt her mother. Hurt Cait, sometimes. Colin and Dad had fought viciously, even sometimes punching holes in walls or breaking furniture. How, growing up in that kind of environment, had she let herself get sucked into an abusive relationship? Shame rose in her, making it hard to breathe.
Why? she cried inwardly, and had no answer.
There was no way she could ever tell Mom. Cait didn’t know if she could bring herself to tell Colin, either. Except...if there was any chance at all that Blake were to follow her to Angel Butte, she’d have to, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t she there to interview for this job because of Colin? Because he was a cop, and she knew he’d protect her? Because he’d persisted in saying, “I’m your brother”?
Yes. But...she could wait to see if Blake appeared, couldn’t she?
Why did she care what Colin thought of her?
Because. Because he was her brother. Because he loved her, and she knew it.
The last time she had seen him, this past November when he’d come to Seattle for some kind of law enforcement conference, she had wanted to really talk to him, maybe even tell him she was in trouble. But Blake, of course, had insisted on going with her when she had dinner with her brother, so she’d found herself being stiff as always, struggling for anything to say, letting Blake dominate the conversation.
There it was again, a burst of the shame. She didn’t understand herself at all. She was a professional, for heaven’s sake, smart, assertive on the job and in the classroom, well educated. Likable, with lots of friends—until she quit having time for them, because her boyfriend wanted all her time.
Was achieving understanding of her own horrible choices too much to ask?
Her breathing had grown calmer and her grip on the wheel more relaxed. She put on her turn signal, looked in the rearview mirror and pulled back out on the highway when there was an opening.
She’d printed out directions to her brother’s house from the internet. Since it was only midafternoon and she assumed he wouldn’t be home, she took the time to drive first through the urban sprawl on the outskirts of the old town, then through downtown and marvel at the changes. A multiplex movie theater? Really? And Target and Staples and Home Depot and just about every fast-food chain restaurant in existence? In Angel Butte?
On the main street, she spotted the old theater, where the whole family had occasionally seen movies, and where Colin had more often taken her. At least it still existed, although it looked as though it was a playhouse now. Which, come to think of it, was probably how it had started, so maybe that was fitting. Cait couldn’t believe the number of coffee shops and bistros, art galleries and boutiques. This was like a mini-Aspen or Leavenworth without the schmaltz. In early May, ski season was past, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still plenty of obvious tourists window-shopping and going in and out of restaurants.
Cait’s stomach growled, and it occurred to her that she couldn’t exactly drop in at her brother’s at dinnertime and announce, Guess what! I came for a visit. Especially since he’d gotten married only two months ago. Cait had read about his new wife, Madeline Noelle Dubeau, although the wedding invitation had made it plain that she went by Nell. Even in far-off Seattle, it had been impossible not to read about Maddie Dubeau, miraculously found after she’d disappeared when she was fifteen. Cait even remembered Maddie. She kind of thought they were in a class together. Third grade? Fourth, maybe? She was a skinny, shy girl, but really smart. Cait and she were in the top reading and math groups together. It was Colin who had brought Maddie home to Angel Butte and protected her when someone tried to kill her. Cait found herself really hoping that Maddie—no, Nell—truly loved Colin.
The whole idea of showing up out of the blue was a horrible one. What had she been thinking?
Ahead she spotted an obviously new, redbrick public safety building that, according to the sign, housed both police station and jail. Colin was likely in there right this minute.
Cait grabbed the first open curbside parking spot, then took out her phone. Scrolling to Colin’s cell phone number took only a few seconds. Working up the courage to actually call him—that was harder.
* * *
FILLED WITH CONFLICTING emotions, Colin turned into his driveway. He stopped long enough to hop out and grab the mail and newspaper, but he didn’t even glance at the headlines.
Cait was here. In Angel Butte. Dazed, he shook his head. Damn, better than that, she was really here, meeting him at home. Potentially, home to stay.
He only wished he understood why. The familiar reserve had been in her voice when she’d called, and he couldn’t get a good read on her, but she had admitted that she hadn’t made hotel reservations and, when he’d asked her to stay with him and Nell, she’d accepted. Not until they set a time and ended the call had it hit him what job she had undoubtedly applied for.
Director of community development, working right under that slimy bastard Noah Chandler. Of course, since Colin and Cait hadn’t talked since she’d called with an excuse for not attending his wedding, she didn’t yet know what kind of man Chandler was. And might not care what Colin thought, he realized; why would she, given the barely-there state of their relationship?
A strange car sat in front of his garage. A peanut like Nell’s, this hatchback differed in being shiny and new-looking. He pulled in next to it, and his sister got out of the driver’s side.
He met her near their rear bumpers. “You look good,” were the first words out of his mouth.
She smiled, and suddenly that smile was wobbling and there were tears in her eyes. “Colin.”
He took a couple of steps, she took a couple and then they had their arms wrapped around each other, and he laid his cheek against her hair.
“Damn, Cait,” he murmured. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
She gave a choked laugh. “I’m not sure I can believe it, either.”
They separated slowly, reluctantly on his part. He couldn’t be sure how she felt, although something was different about her from the last time he’d seen her. Her face was more open. She was looking him over as frankly as he studied her, her gray eyes a match for his.
One thing that had changed was her hair. Lighter than his, almost blond, it had flowed damn near to her waist the last time he’d seen her. Now it was pixie-short, highlighting the delicacy of her features. He’d kind of known his sister was beautiful, but he hadn’t been hit with it like this before. She was also thinner than she’d been in November, he thought, but not in an unhealthy way. She looked leggy and athletic.
“How’s the married state?” she asked.
He grinned. “I recommend it.”
Her eyes seemed to darken, as if a cloud had momentarily covered the sun, but all she did was nod. “I’m glad for your sake.”
“You haven’t taken the plunge without telling me, have you?”
“You mean get married?” Her laugh held no hint of real amusement. “No. In fact...” Momentarily she pressed her lips together. “I’ve broken up with Blake. Um...you remember him, right?”
“I remember him.” Colin hadn’t much liked the guy, although he hadn’t been able to put his finger on why and suspected he had a mental block when it came to liking anyone who shared his little sister’s bed.
She nodded, her gaze sliding away from his. “Thing’s didn’t end that well, so...” The sentence drifted into the ether.
Colin’s eyes narrowed. Had the bastard ditched Cait? The way she was wringing her hands together, “not well” had to have been pretty damn hurtful.
“How long ago?” he asked.
“As it happens, only a few days after we had dinner with you.”
So November. Six months hadn’t been long enough for her to start healing? That sent up a flare. But she’s here, he reminded himself. They had time to relax with each other, talk. Pushing too soon would be a mistake.
“Hey,” he said. “Come on inside. Do you have a bag I can carry?”
“Oh. Sure.” She grabbed her purse from the car, then went around to the back and unlocked it. His surprise at seeing two enormous suitcases, as well as a smaller one, must have showed, because she explained, “I was staying with a friend whose boyfriend is suddenly moving in. So, well, I packed everything.” She shrugged.
“You must have furniture, kitchen stuff...” He floundered.
“In storage. I’ve been sort of on the move a lot lately.”
Since she and Blake had split up, he diagnosed. But that sounded as if she’d moved a couple of times or more since then. More flares shot into the sky. Still too soon, he told himself.
“I only need the small one,” she said. “I can get it—”
“Don’t be silly.”
As he gave her the tour of his home, she seemed genuinely impressed with the house, its open spaces, river rock fireplace and vast windows, which let in a flood of light and a view of the surrounding ponderosa and lodgepole pine forest, as well as some raw outcroppings of lava.
Colin carried her suitcase to the spare bedroom, pointed out the bathroom and left her to settle in while he went to put on coffee. Cait joined him only a minute or two later, perching on one of the tall stools at the breakfast bar as if she’d been there a thousand times. Colin leaned back against the cabinet, hands braced on the countertop edge to each side. Again they studied each other.
“You finish your dissertation?” he finally asked.
“Mostly.” Cait wrinkled her nose. “I’m at the cross-checking and polishing stage. I can do that long-distance as well as I could in Seattle.”
“Why this job?” He made sure his voice was quiet, nonthreatening.
“Why not?” his sister challenged him.
“You’ve never expressed any interest in coming home before.”
“I don’t think of Angel Butte as home. Why would I? I haven’t so much as set foot in town in eighteen years.”
“So why now?” he persisted.
“The job’s really perfect—”
He didn’t let her finish. “I thought you were aiming for a career in academia. Isn’t that why you went back for the PhD?”
Her shrug was jerky. “I’m not so sure anymore. No matter what, I want more real-life experience before I consider going into teaching. And, like I said, getting out of Seattle seemed like a good idea right now.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked gently.
Her eyes met his. Hers were bright with...something. Anguish? Fear? Nothing he liked. But she only shook her head. “Not right now, okay?”
His fingers tightened on the tiled edge of the countertop, but he tried to hide his reaction from her. “You know I’m here for you.”
Her head bobbed. Her “yes” came out as a whisper. “I suppose...that’s why I came. Because you always said that.” She tried to smile. “I’m hoping you aren’t dismayed to have me take you up on your offer.”
“Never,” he told her, making sure she heard how serious he was. “You’re my family.”
After a moment, she nodded again, then cleared her throat. “So, what can you tell me about the mayor and city council and everyone else I’d be working with if I take this job?”
His grunt wasn’t quite a laugh. “That’ll take me all evening. But let’s start with the mayor.”
CHAPTER TWO
RUTH KNOCKED LIGHTLY and stuck her head around the door. “Ms. McAllister is here, Mayor.”
Noah looked up from Cait’s résumé, which he’d been reviewing. “Good. Send her in.”
He hoped she wasn’t a disappointment. He’d interviewed two candidates so far and been underwhelmed by both. Her, he had a good feeling about—unless she was Colin McAllister’s sister, a relationship bound to taint their association.
He rose from behind his desk just as she walked in. Tall, slim and beautiful. Stunned, he probably gaped. Hair cut short to lay in feathery wisps around her face was darker than honey and sun-streaked. She wore heels, black trousers and a formfitting, short royal blue blazer over a simple white camisole. Gold hoops in her ears. Her stride was lithe, her smile pleasant and luminous gray eyes wary.
And—hell—he knew those eyes, color and shape.
“You have to be related to Captain McAllister,” he said.
Her smile didn’t falter. “That’s right. He’s my brother.”
“Ah.” He held out his hand anyway.
She studied it for a moment that stretched a little too long before allowing him to envelop her much more slender hand. It was unexpectedly chilly to the touch. Resisting the temptation to hold on, maybe take her other hand and warm both, Noah let her go and nodded toward the grouping of chairs around a low circular bird’s-eye maple table that gave him a comfortable place to hold long conversations.
“Coffee?” he asked. “Or tea or water or...?”
“I’m good, thank you.”
He waited until she chose a chair and sat before doing the same himself. They looked at each other for a long minute. He wondered how she saw him. He wasn’t a handsome man. The face he saw in the mirror every morning was downright ugly, in his opinion. Maybe unfortunately, it suited his aggressive, straight-to-his-goal, probably brusque personality. On the other hand, he’d never had any trouble getting women. This one had to have heard an earful from her brother, though.
Yeah, so? he asked himself, irritated. This was a job interview, not a date. If he didn’t hire her, she wouldn’t stay in town. If he did, he’d be her direct supervisor. Coming on to her wasn’t an option.
Ignoring the inconvenient attraction, he started with the usual chitchat. She had lived in Angel Butte only until she was ten, she explained, at which point her parents had divorced and she had moved away with her mother. Yes, she had to admit that her brother’s residence here had something to do with her interest in the advertised position.
Noah hesitated, but he decided to get this out of the way before either of them wasted any more time. “Are you aware that your brother and I have our differences?”
“Yes.”
That was all. Yes. Even her expression didn’t alter.
He pushed a little harder. “Is that going to be a problem?”
One sculpted eyebrow quirked slightly higher than the other. “It won’t be unless I take the position and you fail to back me up when I need your support.” The emphasis on “me” was there, but subtle enough he couldn’t call her on it.
Annoyed for a different reason now, he met her challenging stare. He’d have had no trouble labeling her as an ice princess, except that her eyes were the furthest thing from cold. There was one hell of a lot going on in her, but she was repressing it. Only those big, shimmering gray eyes gave her away.
He didn’t see what he could do but nod although he felt his jaw muscles spasm. “All right. Let’s talk about your background.”
They dived right in. Her dissertation had to do with the cultural assumptions that led, and sometimes misled, urban planning. She had the academic stuff down pat—she talked about natural resources, engineering, public decisions, leadership and the conflicts inherent in those elements.
Insofar as he understood what the position entailed, he aimed his questions at finding out how practical her knowledge was versus ivory-tower theory and idealism. She got right down to the nitty-gritty, talking about planning, sure, but also code compliance, her ability to evaluate complex data, read and interpret plans, specifications, maps and engineering drawings. They ended with a heavy focus on the people-management component. She would be directly supervising an assistant director, chief of building inspectors, administrative services manager and others. She claimed understanding the real needs of citizens was her first priority, followed by balancing the goals she set with the reality of dealing with politicians, developers, landowners, protesters. They talked about the frequent presentations she’d be giving to city council committees, civic groups and more.
She asked about those committees, and he tried to give her a sense of city council personalities and how they related to the Infrastructure Advisory Board, the Arts, Beautification and Culture Committee and Economic Development Committee, all of which would demand her involvement.
Cait McAllister remained poised, articulate and knowledgeable. She never faltered. She was so damn cool, he tried to shake her, jumping topics from zoning to budgets, EPA requirements, water reclamation, citizens versus tourists. Nothing. She jumped with him.
She’d driven around town this morning, she told him, and already had some observations.
“I admit,” she commented, “that I was dismayed by the, er, shopping strip that was my first impression of Angel Butte.”
“All that was county until an extensive annexation took place a year ago.”
“I imagine that was good for the tax base.”
“Yes and no.” He ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the scrape of whiskers. “The campaign for the annexation was intelligently run. Unfortunately, nobody did any planning to speak of for handling the newly annexed areas. Your brother may have talked to you about the challenge it provided the police department. Our former mayor and a good part of the city council were opposed to expanding the number of officers in the department. Instead, they were spread so thin, in no time problems arose. I imagine it goes without saying that we’ve had plenty of other similar issues.”
Her eyes had widened. “I can imagine. Sewer, water, fire department... I’ll bet there’s a huge backlog in approving building permits.”
Noah smiled grimly. “Two city council members are major local developers. You’d think they’d have foreseen the problems, but apparently not. Now they’re unhappy.”
A flash of humor on her face almost took his breath away. “I have yet to meet a happy developer,” she murmured.
He chuckled, a rusty sound. “Now that you mention it...”
Her smile lit her face. He stared for too long; the smile died and her gaze became wary.
“What do you see as priorities for new projects?” he asked gruffly to cut short the moment.
“I can only address the obvious,” Cait pointed out. “There may be urgent need for storm-water projects or the like. I see Bend is expanding their water reclamation facility, for example.”
He nodded. “We have some of the same issues. I’ve been looking at possible sites for a new sewer treatment facility. But go with the obvious. What jumps out at you?”
“Some visual mitigation of the less than appealing approach to town,” she said bluntly. “Broader streets, landscaping, at the least. It’s great to have those kinds of businesses, both for the convenience of citizens and visitors alike and from a tax standpoint. But it’s ugly. Not an appealing first impression of what proves to be a charming town. We might even consider a bypass route.”
He nodded. That was on his list, too.
“Second, if Angel Butte is to continue to draw tourists in the numbers I saw this morning, I’d recommend major infrastructure work aimed at improving bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Right now, parking downtown is an exercise in frustration. You’ve got people jaywalking everywhere, and I’d be scared to ride a bike on most of the existing roads. You don’t want people staying at local resorts and inns to have to get into a car to go out for dinner, for example. They may end up irritated, and they may even decide to drive up to Sunriver to eat instead. Looking to the future, I’d argue that this would be an economically intelligent direction.” A wry smile flickered. “You might prevent some traffic fatalities besides.”
“I came close to taking out a tourist myself the other day,” he admitted. “And as it happens, I own Chandler’s Brew Pub on the main street. Parking is grossly inadequate. That’s part of why receipts lag behind my locations in Sisters and Bend.”
He saw no surprise on her face, which meant she’d done her research on him in advance. He had expected no less.
“You must have questions.”
She did. Some he’d anticipated, some not. All of them gave him a good idea of how smart she was.
When she seemed satisfied, he considered her for a minute. She withstood his scrutiny with no more than a slightly raised chin. He was amused to see that her chin was on the square side. When she jutted it out, the effect was pugnacious.
“Would you take the position if I offer it?” he asked abruptly.
Even that didn’t shake her composure. “Assuming compensation is adequate, I believe I would.”
“When would you be able to start?”
A ghost of some emotion showed in her eyes. He wished he had some idea what she was thinking. Not knowing worried him.
“Immediately,” she said after a moment. “I plan to stay with Colin for a few days, at least. I can continue work on my dissertation without being in Seattle. I’ll need to make a few trips back, of course, but...I find myself at loose ends right now. This job would suit me very well.”
Right now? “I’m looking for someone who will be making a long-term commitment, not taking the job as a brief fill-in.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest I was thinking short-term.”
Noah nodded. “I’ll need to follow up on your references. I can promise to get back to you within a matter of days.”
She rose gracefully to her feet. “Thank you for your time. You have my phone number.”
He stood, too, aware that he physically intimidated many people but also sure that, for some reason, she wasn’t among them. “I do,” he agreed.
They shook hands again. Hers was a little warmer this time. He squeezed gently and let her go sooner than he would have liked. He walked her to the outer office and watched as she strode away toward the elevator or stairs, the swing of her hips subtle but sexy as hell.
Not until he turned did he realize that his PA had been watching him. He saw curiosity in her eyes.
“How did the interview go?” she asked, just as she had after all the previous ones.
He grunted. “Good. If her references pan out, I think she’s the one.”
She cleared her throat. “You do know—”
“That her brother is Captain McAllister? I know.” He frowned. “How do you know?”
Ruth smiled. “We chatted.”
“Did you chat about anything else I ought to know?”
She tilted her head while she thought. “No, I don’t think so,” she said after a moment. “She seems like a lovely young woman.”
Lovely was definitely one word for Cait McAllister, Noah reflected as he returned to his office. Sexy was another. The fact that he was thinking that way about her had the potential to be a huge problem. Did he really want to hire a woman likely to distract him the way she had today?
Muttering under his breath, he went to the window and stared out. Not, he told himself, because he might be able to see her walk out to her car—although there she was, and he couldn’t have taken his eyes off her if the most aggravating of city councilmen was tapping on his shoulder. Looking toward the cinder cone usually clarified his thinking.
Somehow that didn’t happen with him focused on Cait McAllister’s long-legged stride, the sway of her hips, the gleam of spring sunlight on her hair.
Not until she got into a little blue car that, a moment later, joined the traffic on the road and passed out of his limited line of sight could he look away.
“Damn,” he said aloud, but quietly.
There were other words he could use as descriptors for the woman who had just left his office. Brilliant, he suspected, was one. Definitely highly qualified.
Which made him blessed that, for whatever reason, she wanted a job in Angel Butte, Oregon.
What he’d really like to know was why she was willing to take it. His gut said she was desperate for a change. He wondered if her brother would know what she was trying to leave behind.
Maybe the bigger question was whether he could quit noticing how lovely and, yes, goddamn it, sexy she was and see her as a professional.
If not...
Noah sank heavily into his desk chair and gazed, unseeing, at one of the paintings that hung on his office wall.
Who was he kidding? Of course he was going to hire her. And, no, he wasn’t going to be able to turn off his libido. He’d have to aim for reining in his response. If he was really lucky, her personality would begin to grate on him and he’d quit caring what she looked like.
* * *
“I KNOW COLIN is estranged from your mother.” Nell poured balsamic dressing from the little plastic cup over her salad. “He seems to think you’re still close to her?”
Cait and her new sister-in-law had spent the morning browsing shops and were now eating at a café owned by a friend of Nell’s, who had come out when they arrived to say hi and inspect Cait with obvious curiosity.
So far, Cait really liked Colin’s wife. If Nell was being nosy...well, who could blame her? She was, after all, married to a man with major family issues. Who knew better than Cait, who had issues, too, if different ones from her brother’s.
What’s more, Nell wasn’t a casual acquaintance. Strange as the realization was, they were family.
“Not so much,” Cait admitted, answering the question about her relationship with her mother. “Once I hit my teenage years and rebelled, things went downhill. We’ve never quite recovered.”
Nell nodded. “Does she know you’re here in Angel Butte?”
Cait winced. “No. If I get the job, I’ll have to tell her eventually.”
Nell didn’t say anything. Tiny lines on her forehead suggested she hadn’t raised the subject only in a casual, get-acquainted way. Good lord, Cait thought; Mom is her mother-in-law. Cait knew Colin hadn’t invited their mother to his wedding.
“I suppose Colin’s told you that...our father was abusive,” she said carefully.
“Yes.”
“He and Colin fought a lot.”
“He told me that, too.” Nell still hadn’t reached for her fork. “He thought he’d probably scared you and your mom both toward the end. He was trying to draw your father’s anger away from the two of you, but he admits he was filled with a lot of rage, too.”
“That last couple of years were really horrible. I remember getting off the school bus and dragging my feet because I dreaded going home.” Cait tried to smile. “Anyway, if Mom was ever happy here in Angel Butte, she’s long since forgotten. I think she feels guilty about Colin, too.”
“She should,” Nell said sharply, after which she made an apologetic moue. “That was tactless, wasn’t it? I won’t take it back, though. I don’t mean to offend you, but the truth is, she abandoned him. Having his own mother leave him behind with the father he hated... He has scars.”
“He seems so...together,” Cait said hesitantly. “Except...I guess I could always tell that he wanted more from me than I knew how to give.” Her laugh was sad. “Family life at its finest.”
Nell’s laugh held a similar note. “My family is no better—I assure you. One of these days, I’ll tell you more about our soap opera.”
“I’d actually like that.” Cait smiled. “Misery loves company.”
“Absolutely.”
They both chuckled and, as they began to eat, turned the subject in other directions. They were talking about a women’s self-defense class Nell had taken over the winter when Cait’s phone rang. Of course it had sunk to the bottom of her too-roomy bag, but she snagged it by the fourth ring. The number was local, and not Colin’s, unless he was using a landline at the police station.
“I’d better take this,” she murmured to Nell, and answered.
“Ms. McAllister.” The gravelly voice was unmistakable. “Noah Chandler.”
Her heart raced. Truth time. “Mayor.”
“Why don’t we progress to Noah and Caitlyn? I’m calling to offer you the position.”
The relief was out of proportion, especially considering her mixed feelings about her return to Angel Butte. A journey back in time, she thought flippantly. “I go by Cait,” she said, sounding completely collected and mildly pleased. She impressed herself sometimes.
“Cait it is. Do you have a minute to talk?”
She grimaced apologetically at Nell, who waved her understanding and eavesdropped with interest.
A minute was all the conversation took. Mayor Chandler did not believe in beating around the bush. He laid out compensation, medical and dental benefits, retirement and vacation package with a take-it-or-leave-it curtness. She told him, equally briefly, that his offer was acceptable. He asked when she could start. Cait took a deep breath. “How about tomorrow morning?”
The momentary silence suggested she’d surprised him. But when he said, “Good. Let’s meet in my office at nine,” his voice didn’t confirm that impression.
Cait felt more than a little dazed as she dropped her phone back in her handbag. “Wow. The job’s mine.”
Working with him.
She didn’t let herself linger on that vague sense of apprehension. Only that wasn’t quite right.
She didn’t have time to, anyway, since Nell jumped to her feet and hurried around the table to give her a quick hug. “I’m glad. Having you close will really make Colin happy, and I think you and I are going to be friends.”
“I think so, too,” Cait agreed. From their first meeting, she’d had the feeling she and Nell already were friends. Maybe that was because her face was so disconcertingly familiar—Nell/Maddie hadn’t changed as much as most people did from when she was a child. With that pointy chin, sharp cheekbones and disarmingly high forehead, she looked thoroughly adult and yet still like the little girl Cait remembered, scattering of freckles, big brown eyes and all. She had claimed to vaguely remember Cait, too, but sounded more uncertain. Cait knew her own face was nowhere near as distinctive.
It wasn’t only familiarity that made Cait feel comfortable with this new sister-in-law, though. Nell had an air of reserve that reminded Cait of her own. Even after several months together, Nell seemed surprised by Colin’s smiles, touches and the intimate way they sometimes looked at each other. Or maybe, Cait reflected, Nell was surprised by her own response to him. Cait knew enough from what she’d read about Nell’s ordeal to be sure she understood self-doubt—and why trust could be hard.
Cait insisted on paying for lunch, which Nell finally accepted. They were walking out when Nell asked if she’d mind stopping to grocery shop on the way home.
“Of course not—” Head turned, she walked smack into someone. A man who asked if she was all right at the same moment she exclaimed, “I’m so sorry!”
And then she really looked at him. Shock seemed to squeeze her throat. “You,” she whispered.
Echoing shock showed on his fleshy but still handsome face. He was middle-aged, the auburn of his short hair muted from what she remembered by a substantial sprinkling of gray. He’d softened some around the middle, too, but...she did know him. Oh, why hadn’t it occurred to her that he might still live here?
“Cait,” he said, sounding rueful. “I’m surprised you recognized me. What were you? Nine, ten, when you moved away?”
“Ten.” Her voice was a little too high. “Jerry, that’s right, isn’t it?”
“Jerry Hegland.” His gaze flicked to Nell, who was watching the odd encounter. “Aren’t you—?”
“Nell McAllister.”
He looked momentarily confused.
“My sister-in-law,” Cait contributed.
“That’s right.” He was apparently putting the pieces together and realizing Cait’s companion was Maddie Dubeau. “I heard you’d married the police officer who found you. Ah, I knew Cait and Colin’s mother,” he explained. His gaze traveled back to her. “We were getting to be good friends, weren’t we, Cait?”
She managed a nod, her usual social skills having totally deserted her. This man had been her mother’s lover. Of course, she hadn’t known the truth until years later. Back then, she’d thought he was a nice man who Mommy and she happened to run into really often. He’d bought them lunch several times.
“I’ll bet you remember me best for the handprints I left in your concrete slab,” she blurted.
He stared at her. “What?”
“You didn’t know it was me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Suddenly he was as brusque as Mayor Noah Chandler at his most impatient. He looked over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m meeting someone.”
“Of course.” She wouldn’t lie and say, Great to see you. It wasn’t, even if she wasn’t being fair. After all, Mom was the one who’d been married.
Unless he had been, too?
She didn’t care.
I am angry at her. Had been, still was. She had been only sixteen—and an already confused sixteen, at that—when she’d found out her mother had had an affair.
An affair? Who knew? Maybe she’d been screwing around on Dad for years. Cait wanted to think the betrayal explained his rage.
She didn’t look back as Nell pushed open the door and the two of them exited.
* * *
DINNER STARTED WITH them all clinking wineglasses in a toast to her new job. Cait was still feeling the glow, if also a whole lot of trepidation, when Nell glanced at her.
“So, who was that guy we ran into at the restaurant?” She transferred her gaze from Cait to her husband. “Please pass the butter.”
He did so automatically, but he was looking at Cait. “I didn’t think you’d remember anyone from that long ago.”
Here was where she could say, He wasn’t anyone important. But Colin likely knew him, she realized. Her brother had been enough older than her to be aware of relationships and undercurrents to which she’d been oblivious. In fact, she’d nursed some anger at him, too, for leaving her in ignorance even though, all grown-up now, she could see why he hadn’t said anything to his little sister.
“Jerry Hegland.”
He frowned. “Who?”
She set her fork down. “You don’t know him?”
“The name is vaguely familiar.” He seemed to be searching his memory. “Wait. Something to do with the airport?”
“I don’t actually know.” But, yes, once Mom and she had gone out there to watch planes take off and land. Angel Butte Regional Airport wasn’t all that exciting, of course; at least in those days, aside from privately owned small planes, traffic had consisted of no more than a couple of flights a day to Portland and Seattle using turboprop commuter planes that carried something like fifteen or twenty passengers. Still, she remembered standing beside the runway as one of those planes tore by, gaining momentum and then lifting into the air. She had been amazed. Her family had never flown anywhere.
That had been one of the occasions when the nice man bought lunch for her and Mom, at the café in the airport terminal.
“Then how do you know him?” Colin asked.
“Mom.” She sounded like a crow. Harsh. “He and Mom...”
Her brother’s expression gradually changed with dawning horror. “He and Mom what?” he asked in a hard voice.
Cait was distantly aware that Nell’s mouth hung open. She’d had no idea what she was starting.
“They had an affair. Didn’t you know?” she begged.
“Hell, no!” He gave his head a shake. “I can’t believe— How did you know?”
“I always assumed... Wow.”
“Cait.”
“Don’t snap at me!”
Now they were glaring at each other.
Well, what difference did it make? she reasoned. Colin and Mom never talked anyway.
“I had no idea back then. I thought he was a friend of Mom’s. But when I was sixteen, I was rooting in her closet looking for something.” She’d been snotty, and Mom had taken away her cell phone in punishment. The minute Mom left for work the next day, Cait in a fury had dug through all of her mother’s dresser drawers, looked inside coat pockets in her closet, then taken down every box on the closet shelf. In the second one, she’d found a couple of photo albums and letters and been distracted from her search. She remembered sitting on the bed turning pages in the albums. Already her memories of her dad and her brother were fading. But here were Colin’s and her school photos, as well as lots of family snapshots. Mostly those weren’t all that great—people were squinting against the sun or looked posed and uncomfortable. There were first-day-of-school pictures, when Colin or she were stiff in their new clothes. And some of Dad laughing with his arm around one of them. She’d felt strange, seeing those.
She hadn’t paid much attention to the letters, beyond dumping them out on the bed so she could look at the loose photos. There had been a bundle tied in ribbon with handwriting she’d recognized as Nanna’s. But then she saw that a picture of a man she had recognized was bundled with a few notes that weren’t in envelopes.
“I found some notes he’d written Mom,” she said. “They were...um, kind of explicit. And then in one he was pleading with her to leave Dad. He said he’d take us, too. In the last one, he said, ‘Why won’t you call me? You’re wrong, whatever you think.’” She remembered it word for word. “It freaked me out. I guess Mom slept with him, but then she ditched him when he got serious about her. Which made me wonder if there hadn’t been other men, too.”
Colin hadn’t moved. “Mom?” he finally said in a low, dark voice.
Cait bobbed her head. “I always thought...”
His eyes focused on her.
“That you must know. I mean, you were older—”
“No. I had no idea. What does he look like?”
She did her best to describe the Jerry she remembered from back then and the one she’d encountered today.
“That son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s still mostly Mom I stumble over. I mean, she was married. She had us to think about.”
“You mean, she had you to think about,” he said, with less emotion than she suspected he really felt about being deserted by his own mother. But then his eyes narrowed. “Why would she have introduced you to him?”
“I guess sometimes they wanted to get together and she didn’t have any place to leave me. Or maybe they were playing family. I don’t know. I was a kid. I thought we ran into him by accident.” She told him about having lunch with the man, and the treat of getting to go practically out onto the runway to watch planes take off and land. “One time we had a picnic. I don’t remember where. We swam. I remember the water being really cold, but it was fun.” She shrugged. “All innocent, until I found out it wasn’t.”
“Goddamn it,” her brother said bitterly.
“Do you think Dad knew?”
Colin’s face was transformed by anger, his eyes the color of storm clouds. “I have no idea. I tried not to listen when they were screaming at each other.”
She nodded her understanding; sometimes she’d run to her room and pulled her pillow over her head. The yelling so often ended in crashes and grunts and sobbing. She hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near her parents then.
Right now, she was feeling something of the same choking sense of anxiety.
A muscle ticked beneath Colin’s eye. “I may have to meet this Hegland.”
She seemed to have quit breathing. “You look like Dad right now.”
“I don’t look anything like him,” he said in a low growl. But he did. He did. Dad’s face had always been so flushed when he lost his temper, worse when he’d had too much to drink, of course. Right now, dark color suffused Colin’s face and tendons stood out in his forearms. His hand had fisted around his bread knife.
Just like Daddy’s.
“Yes, you do.” She bent her head so she didn’t have to see him. Oh, God. This was what she’d felt every time Blake started to get mad.
“Colin, you’re scaring her,” Nell said softly. When Cait sneaked a worried peek, she saw that her sister-in-law had laid a hand on Colin’s arm. He’d turned his head and was looking at her.
After a minute, during which Cait didn’t dare move, he said, “Cait.” His voice was gruff but also somehow gentle. “I know what you saw back then, but I’m not like Dad. I’ve never wanted to be anything like him. I fought with him to keep you and Mom safe, but I’m not a violent man.”
She looked up to find him regarding her ruefully.
“Seeing you look scared of me,” he said, “that’s one of the worst things you could do to me.” He made a rough sound in his throat. “I would never hurt you.”
She gave a quick little nod, and, after a moment, he answered it with one of his own.
“All right,” he said.
Embarrassed at her over-the-top reaction—could she call it a past life regression?—she told him she was sorry. Colin insisted she had nothing to be sorry for.
Nell interceded by getting them talking about something else, and later, when they were alone in the kitchen, she apologized to Cait for mentioning Jerry.
“No, it’s all right. I just had this sort of flashback.” Cait even managed a small laugh. “The perils of coming home.”
“Which I fully understand.” Nell bumped her shoulder against Cait’s. “You should go figure out what you’re going to wear tomorrow.”
“Oh, boy.” New anxiety instead of anticipation, and Cait didn’t even know why. Because this was Angel Butte? Because, in running away from Blake, she’d made a sharp right turn in her life? Or because she would be seeing Noah Chandler at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, and had no idea why he made her feel so edgy?
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN NOAH AND Cait walked into Chandler’s Brew Pub, a host rushed to greet them, and what other employees Cait could see were suddenly very busy. Cait would have been more amused if she didn’t now work for him, too.
He’d been nothing but agreeable all morning, from the minute he had walked her to her new office. After barely giving her a chance to glance around, he’d hustled her back out so he could introduce her to half the people who worked for the city. Within an hour, names were running together in her head. Perhaps seeing that her smile was growing strained, he had decided to drive her around in his truly enormous SUV so she could see ongoing projects.
“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he had then declared.
She felt a flutter in her chest at the idea of having to look at him over a table for an hour and make conversation. She found herself wishing he was married, maybe had a couple of kids she could ask about. Knowing he was single was part of what had her on edge.
Noah Chandler was an incredibly sexy man despite the fact that he was the next thing to homely. Or maybe that wasn’t it, she’d found herself thinking as she stole glances at him while he drove. Colin had said he was an ugly bastard, but Cait couldn’t imagine any woman agreeing with that assessment. No, he only surprised her because, except for the very sharp blue eyes, he looked like a laborer, not a politician. He ought to be operating a forklift or heaving heavy loads in and out of trucks or railroad cars, not wearing a beautifully cut suit and running a city. She wondered how he kept that powerful physique. Certainly not by scowling at his computer monitor and hammering the keyboard, the way he’d been when she had stepped into his office that morning.
He wasn’t a physical type that had ever attracted her, for which Cait gave thanks. Surely she’d become inured to the intensity that seemed to be as much a part of him as his raspy voice and tendency to be abrupt when he forgot he was trying to give the impression he was an easygoing man.
They had barely been seated by the eager host when a pretty blonde waitress magically appeared with menus. She wore a tight little black skirt and a crisp white shirt that strained over generous breasts.
“Mr. Chandler,” she purred.
He glanced at her with scant interest and nodded. “Jess.”
Looking disappointed, Jess retreated with their drink orders, walking more like a model prowling a catwalk than a busy waitress.
Cait was mildly surprised that her new boss had asked for iced tea rather than a beer.
“You said you have three locations,” she said.
He hadn’t even opened his menu. “This was the first.” He looked around, as if appraising the place. “The one in Bend is the busiest. We have live bands playing three or four nights a week. Comedians do better than music in Sisters, for some reason. Here?” He shrugged. “The Friday-and Saturday-night crowd like entertainment. Otherwise, food and drinks seem to be the appeal.”
Curious despite herself, she had to ask, “You were so bored, you decided instead of expanding your business or finding a new hobby, you’d run for mayor?”
His grin gave her a few palpitations she should definitely ignore. Cait was a long way from even thinking about getting involved with a guy again, and if and when she ever did, she was looking for gentle, funny, intellectual. The reasons she’d always been drawn to domineering men were not subtle. Now that she’d faced them head-on, she would make better choices. All she had to do was remember her father. The terrifying fights he and Colin had had.
Blake.
Never again.
And even if she had been attracted to Noah Chandler, she now worked for him. Would, in fact, be working closely with him. So knock it off.
All that intensity was being trained on her right now, though, which made it hard. His eyes were a startling blue, especially considering his hair was dark.
“What’s good to eat?” she asked, hiding behind the menu.
He laughed. “Now, what do you expect me to say to that? Everything, of course. I usually have a burger or one of the potpies, but I’m thinking pizza today.”
They agreed to share one called “The Farm Kitchen” that had a delicious-sounding combination of roasted red peppers, black olives, artichoke hearts and more with a roasted garlic tomato sauce. Jess took their order of pizza and salads and again retreated, with a last, sulky glance over her shoulder.
“I think your waitress has a crush on you,” Cait observed.
His eyebrows climbed in surprise. “I can’t imagine. What is she, nineteen, twenty?”
“And you’re such an old man?” Oh, teasing him wasn’t smart. Professional, she reminded herself. Keep it professional.
“Thirty-five. Not quite old enough to be her father, but close enough.” Those vivid eyes stayed on her face. “Now that I’ve hired you, am I legally safe to ask how old you are?”
“Twenty-nine. The same age as Colin’s wife. Have you met her?”
“In passing. I’ve read plenty about her.”
Cait nodded. “It’s funny, because I remember her from third or fourth grade. Or maybe both. Do you think I’d recognize a single other kid from that long ago?”
His rough chuckle felt like a touch. “No? But I understand why you did. The paper printed plenty of pictures from when she was a kid and then when she appeared last year. Not much change.”
Cait laughed. “She claims to remember me, too, but I think she’s making it up.”
“What about you? How much have you changed?”
Something about the question froze her in place. She wanted to believe...oh, that she was nothing like that timid ten-year-old. But everything that happened with Blake had made her realize that she couldn’t shake her past.
“I was a beanpole,” she told him, keeping her voice light. “Taller than all the boys at that age, and ridiculously skinny. I had white-blond hair then, too. You wouldn’t have recognized me, I promise you.”
“I’m not so sure,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “Why did you look so unhappy when I asked you that?”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
He shook his head, impatience on his face. “Never mind. None of my business.”
Silence enveloped their table. Cait looked down at her place setting to avoid his too-keen gaze. Oh, why not? she asked herself. Blake was the only secret she had.
“We weren’t a happy family,” she said, probably startling him.
He’d been scowling toward the cluster of employees who hovered near the check-in at the front entrance, but his head turned sharply when she spoke. Without looking at them, she knew they had to be sagging in relief. She would have been.
When he said nothing, she gave a one-shouldered shrug. “In those days, I mostly tried to disappear into the woodwork. I was safest if no one noticed me, you see.”
“Safest?” He sounded out the word. “Were you abused?”
“Our father was violent.” Now her voice sounded small and tight. “Mostly when he was drunk. Unfortunately, he owned a bar and, by the time he got home, he was almost always drunk.”
“I had no idea.”
“Why would you? You and Colin aren’t exactly friends, and I doubt he talks about it anyway.”
“No.” Noah sounded disturbed. “No, I don’t suppose he would.”
“Men don’t like to, do they?” What made her say that? she wondered, appalled. Was she hinting he tell her his background?
If so, he didn’t take her up on it. Their salads arrived, saving them from awkwardness. Noah asked how much seemed familiar here in town, and she was able to reminisce about the much smaller town from her childhood.
“I was remembering going to the movie theater.” She smiled at memories that were good. “Colin took me sometimes when Mom or Dad wouldn’t. He’s five years older, you know. I hate to imagine the kinds of movies he sat through for my sake! And just think if one of his friends had seen him.”
Noah’s mouth curled up on one side. “Death to a guy’s reputation,” he agreed. “Just think, now you can choose from half a dozen movies or more any Friday night.”
He admitted, when she asked, to attending the community theater’s productions on a regular basis. He had even acted in high school. “I was always the villain, of course.”
“Of course?” she echoed in surprise, then flushed when again his eyebrows rose.
“Not even my mother would call me handsome,” he said drily. “I did a hell of a job with Iago, though, if I do say so myself.”
What could she do but laugh?
The pizza, when it came, proved to be fabulous. Prompted by her questions, Noah was willing to talk about opening his first brew pub. “I still okay every menu item,” he admitted, “but I was never a cook. I have a recurring nightmare about drowning in beer, though. Kegs breaking open, and I’m trying to get them stacked but meantime the beer is pouring down on me, into my nose and mouth.”
She chuckled but had a feeling this was black humor for him. She wanted to ask if he liked his product as well as her father had his, but she refrained.
“Lucky I’m a workaholic,” he said finally.
Cait could have guessed that. “What made you run for mayor?”
He eyed her, and she suspected he was trying to decide how honest to be. “Frustration,” he finally said. “That’s probably what drives most businessmen to get involved. You discover too many factors are out of your control.” He tipped his glass of iced tea to her. “Traffic. Zoning, taxes, the adequacy or otherwise of local law enforcement. In my case, once I started expanding, I had a chance to compare how three different cities operated. I’d lived here too long to want to pull up roots, so I decided to remake Angel Butte instead.”
That really made her laugh. Answering amusement in his eyes told her he at least recognized his hubris.
“Colin said you moved here about ten years ago?”
“Nearly eleven, now.” He hesitated. “I learned that my father was here. Hadn’t seen him since I was a kid, but for some reason I decided to look him up.”
She wondered if he really didn’t know why he’d felt the need to track down his father. Studying that rough-hewn face and the intelligence in his eyes, she thought, no, of course he knew.
“So you found him and stayed.”
Noah shook his head. “I never did find him. He’d disappeared.” His expression closed. “I guess he’d moved on.”
Cait didn’t believe in his outward indifference, but clearly he was done sharing confidences. She could take a hint.
They kept chatting, but more like the employer and employee they were. He asked that she attend the city council meeting the following Tuesday, told her about his second hire of the week, the new city recorder who’d be starting in June.
He paid, and as they walked out, wanted to know if she’d yet found a place to live.
Cait shook her head. “I haven’t even started to look. If you’ll recall, it was only yesterday you offered me the job.”
He gave her an odd glance. “I guess it was.”
It was a little silly that they had to get back in his big SUV for a whole two-block drive, but earlier he hadn’t suggested parking at the city hall/courthouse complex and walking back.
She looked straight ahead as he maneuvered out of the slot. “Did you have any suggestions? I mean, about where to live. I’ll have to rent for now.”
“I suppose you don’t want to stay at your brother’s.”
“No-o.” She drew that out. “He actually has an apartment above his garage. So I might stay there.” She liked the idea of having Colin close if Blake showed up in town. On the other hand... “I’m not sure I want to be accountable to him for my comings and goings.”
“It would be a little like moving back in with Mom and Dad,” Noah mused.
Cait rolled her eyes. “It might be worse.”
“Your brother the cop.” He was highly amused; she could tell. “I guess it might be.”
“Well.” She shook herself. “No hurry to decide.”
“There are some new town houses available for rent in a nice location,” he said after a minute. “I hear they’re decent.”
When she asked why he sounded grudging, he admitted they had been built by Earl Greig, who sat on the city council.
“One of the not-so-happy ones.”
“That would be him.” Noah’s tone was sardonic.
“Not-so-happy means they’re more likely to support you in making changes, doesn’t it?”
“In theory.” He made an indecipherable sound. “You should be welcome, at least.”
This was really out of line, but... “Earl doesn’t like you?”
“Earl can’t bring himself to forget that I used to wear my hair in a ponytail.”
Cait choked.
He flashed her a grin that was so devastating, he might as well have kissed her.
“Yeah, stubby little thing.” He reached up to his nape as if fingering hair that wasn’t there anymore. “Shocking, I know.”
Smiles like that—they were shocking. And, dear God help her, she had to pretend they had no effect on her at all.
“Lucky Earl doesn’t live in the big city,” she said.
“Earl is daily torn between his greed and disapproval of all newcomers as well as tourists. Makes his votes kind of chancy.”
He pulled into the parking slot reserved for the mayor, set the emergency brake and turned off the engine. Cait scrambled out, not wanting to take a chance he’d turn his head and gaze at her with that thoughtful look that made her wonder whether he saw straight through her.
She felt him glancing at her as they walked through the garage, but he didn’t say anything until they were on the elevator and it was rising, floor numbers pinging.
“I’ll let you have the afternoon to yourself,” he said, his tone distant as if he’d almost put her out of his mind already.
“Thank you for taking so much time for me,” she said formally when they reached her floor and the door slid open.
He dipped his head, a frown making his features harsher. Whether he looked after her as she exited, Cait had no idea. She didn’t dare glance back.
* * *
NOAH TRIED LIKE hell to stay away from his new director of community development for the rest of her first week of work. That didn’t mean he didn’t hear constant reports about her and have to field a couple dozen phone calls asking about her. It also didn’t mean he didn’t catch glimpses of her entirely too often. There was one day he swore he couldn’t step out of his office without seeing her hurrying down the hall or engaged in conversation in a doorway or walking out to her car.
Earl wasn’t real happy that a woman had been hired instead of a man, a hidebound attitude that didn’t surprise Noah at all. Noah listed her qualifications for possibly his most contentious city council member, who grumbled but went away. Beverly Buhl, chair of the Arts, Beautification and Culture Committee, called to burble her delight about how “forward-thinking” Ms. McAllister was.
“And charming,” she enthused, to which he growled agreement; something about his voice momentarily silenced her.
Taking Ms. Cait McAllister out to lunch had been his mistake, he concluded. He’d done fine up until then. Lunch might have been fine, too, if they’d stuck to business. Instead, they’d sounded each other out about their pasts, their likes and dislikes as if they were on a first date.
Damn it, she’d made him laugh!
He wanted to be grumpy because she didn’t dress professionally enough, but the truth was, she did. She went so far as to wear a suit the second day. Unfortunately, she never seemed to wear the kind of colors that would have allowed her to blend in. The suit was lemon-yellow, the skirt reached only midthigh and the jacket was short and fit snugly over very nice breasts and a slender torso. She even wore high heels in a matching shade of yellow. When he spotted her down the hall in that one, he was blitzed by the thought that she looked like a sexy ray of sunshine. Furious at himself, he blundered into the men’s room, stared at himself in the mirror with incredulity and took a piss when he’d rather have whacked his head against the wall.
Day three of her tenure, he almost walked into her as he was heading out midafternoon. Today she wore linen slacks and a thin sweater set the color of the ocean off Belize. He nodded; she offered a single, distracted smile and returned to conversation with her assistant director.
His mood darker, Noah stalked the several blocks to the public safety building for a meeting with Alec Raynor. As he was ready to go into the building, Cait’s brother happened to be coming out.
McAllister stopped, his eyes narrowed on Noah.
Since the one hostile scene back in March when Noah had admitted he had chosen not to hire McAllister for the head job, they had managed to hold semicivilized conversations; they had to, once McAllister made the decision to stay on as acting police chief and then captain of investigative services. Enmity was never far below the surface, though.
Today, McAllister stepped aside rather than continuing on his way.
Seeing no choice, Noah did likewise. If he were prone to regrets, he’d be sorry about the tension between them. But he did what he thought was best, and he didn’t allow himself second thoughts.
“Before the rumors hit,” McAllister said tersely, “I thought I’d tell you I’m running for county sheriff.”
Noah digested the announcement. The current sheriff was on a par with Mayor Linarelli, as far as Noah was concerned. In other words, lazy and very possibly crooked. “Interesting,” he mused. “Are you asking for my support?”
McAllister snorted. “That did not cross my mind.”
“It should have.” Noah was given to making decisions fast—as he’d done where his police captain’s sister was concerned. “You have it,” he said.
The other man stared at him. “Why?” he finally asked.
“We both know you’re good at your job. I think you have what it takes to clean up the sheriff’s department.”
“Just not Angel Butte P.D.”
“You know why I didn’t want to take a chance.”
McAllister gave a half laugh, shaking his head. “Do you have any idea how badly I want to tell you where to shove your support?”
An involuntary grin twitched at Noah’s mouth. “I can guess.”
“Unfortunately, I’m too ambitious to actually do that.”
Noah thrust his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He waited while a cluster of women came out of the building, their heads turning at the sight of the mayor talking to Captain McAllister. To his credit, the guy had kept his animosity quiet, but there had to be talk anyway.
When they were out of earshot, Noah asked, “You and Raynor getting along okay?”
His expression veiled, McAllister shrugged. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Noah nodded, even though that was no answer. “Let me know when you want a statement from me.” He pushed his way inside and continued up to Alec Raynor’s office.
The new chief’s PA waved him in. “He’s expecting you.”
In fact, the door stood partially open. Talking on his phone, Raynor half sat on his desk, a foot braced on the floor. He glanced at Noah and lifted one finger. Noah nodded and wandered over to study a new painting on the wall.
It was disturbing, he decided, not the usual government-office pretty. Even he had gone for pretty in decorating his own office, figuring his role was to be a booster for the city and area in general. He’d bought local artists and photographers. This—he couldn’t imagine a local had done it.
From a distance he’d seen that it was some kind of street melee. Closer up, components broke into shards and you didn’t see the overall scene. Faces stood out, though they were far from realistic. No matter how simply these faces were constructed, though, anger and despair jumped out.
“The artist is a friend of mine,” Raynor said behind him.
“I was thinking that most of us go for decorative.”
Raynor’s laugh sounded like rusted gears grinding. A little like Noah’s own, he reflected. They had that in common.
Not looks, though. His new police chief was whipcord-lean and not much above average height. Five foot ten, maybe. He had dark hair and eyes as dark a brown as Noah had ever seen. By this time of day, he already needed a shave. During the interview in February, Noah had thought he looked Italian. Now, with the Southern California tan fading, the effect was diminished. Unless the guy took up skiing this coming year, he was going to turn pasty white like the rest of them who didn’t have the time or inclination for winter sports.
Raynor circled his desk and sank down in the big black leather chair. He looked weary. “I fired two officers today,” he said bluntly. “A sergeant on the patrol side and a detective who was one of our representatives to CODE.” CODE was the coalition of police agencies, including the DEA and FBI, that fought drug trafficking.
“Damn.” Noah lowered himself into a chair facing the desk. He’d known this was coming but hated to have his assumptions confirmed anyway. “Tip-offs to drug dealers?”
“That’s what it looks like. No question they took bribes. Maybe even offered guard service. Hard to be sure. We’re still working on who the money came from.” His eyes met Noah’s. “We’ve traced one payment for sure to the same source that paid off Bystrom.”
Gary Bystrom was the former police chief whose corruption had been uncovered almost by accident in McAllister’s investigation of a murder that had taken place in the city park the same night his now-wife, Maddie Dubeau, had been abducted when she was a teenager. Found along with the boy’s bones was a backpack that contained, among other things, a snapshot of the police chief shaking hands with a known drug dealer and a bank deposit slip for a hefty sum into his account. The Drug Enforcement Agency had mostly taken over digging into the source of those bribes, a real challenge. Raynor was stubbornly refusing to let go entirely of the investigation, with the result that the DEA agent in charge was kindly deigning to keep them informed. Noah and, he suspected, Colin McAllister in particular were getting damn frustrated by the snail’s pace of inquiries that left Bystrom free as a bird. Probably putting away his winter clothes right now and getting out his fly-fishing gear. The only consolation Noah could find was that, at the very least, the feds had him for tax evasion.
What they’d known all along was that he had to be getting tip-offs from officers in the department about police raids. McAllister had found the first two; these were the next to fall.
“It’s still only the beginning, I suspect.”
Noah grunted. He wanted to see some trials and prison cell doors clanging shut.
The dark eyes were direct. “You know most of the work on this was done by McAllister.”
“You’re asking why he isn’t sitting in your chair?” Noah rolled his shoulders and then told him.
“I think you misjudged him.” Raynor’s smile was razor-sharp and came and went swiftly. “To my benefit, of course.”
“Is it? I still don’t know why you wanted this job.”
Still eyeing him, his police chief ran a hand over his darkly shadowed jaw, maybe to give himself a moment. “I was looking for a peaceful town. Not for me.” He hesitated. “My brother was special forces, killed in Afghanistan. I’ve been stepping in to help his widow with their kids. The boy’s thirteen, gotten to a rebellious stage. L.A. wasn’t the place for him.”
“I didn’t know you’d brought family with you.”
“They’re not here yet. Took a while for Julia to sell her house.” He shrugged. “Now she’s waiting out the rest of the school year. They’re moving up here as soon as the kids are out the end of June.”
Noah was unexpectedly relieved to have the answer to the questions he’d asked himself. It was even one he could understand, although this was a big change of direction for a man to make for his sister-in-law and her kids.
“Are we as peaceful as you thought we’d be?” he asked.
Raynor gave a bark of laughter. “Sure. There’s only been one murder since I arrived, you know.” That had been a domestic. “Now, honesty, that’s another story.”
Noah laughed. “Okay,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “Keep me informed.”
Raynor stood, too, presumably from courtesy. “Will do.”
Noah left, thinking that the past hour had been exceptionally informative. Now all he asked was that he make it back to his office without so much as another glimpse of his new director of community development.
* * *
COLIN SET ASIDE the newspaper when he saw Cait come out of the guest bedroom. “You going out this evening?” he asked with deceptive casualness.
“City council meeting,” Cait reminded him.
“Oh, right.”
She grinned at his tone. “Isn’t there such a thing as a county council?”
“Don’t remind me.”
She gave him a saucy look. “You could come keep me company.”
“A fate worse than death.”
Chuckling, she twirled in a circle, arms outstretched. “Do I look all right? I want to dazzle ’em.” She didn’t mention who in particular she wanted to dazzle. The suit was one of her favorites, a deep rose she’d worn over a yellow shell. These were about her highest heels, too, saved for occasions like this when she wouldn’t be on her feet for eight hours.
Her brother did relax enough to smile. “Can’t fail,” he assured her.
“Good. Don’t wait up, I don’t know how late I’ll be.”
He frowned, rose to his feet and followed her to the door. “Why don’t you park right by the front porch when you get in instead of off to the side of the garage?”
“You let Nell park in the garage even though she has to scamper all the way across the yard when she gets in at night.” This was one of those evenings when Nell was working at the library in Sunriver until nine, which meant she didn’t get home until close to ten. Cait knew her brother didn’t like these evenings but had resigned himself.
“I listen for her,” he said simply.
Cait sighed. She liked his protective streak. She did. She just wasn’t sure she could live with it. Maybe cops were always like that with their own families, given what they saw on the job. She admired how patient Nell was with him, although, come to think of it, in her case it was only a few months ago that someone had tried to kill her.
Cait had a flash of memory: Blake smashing his booted foot into the fenders and doors of her small car, the screech of metal giving. His last, quiet words before he melted into the night.
I will never accept that you’re not mine.
She was careful to hide her shiver from Colin. She should hope he decided to wait up for her, too, so she didn’t have to be afraid when she let herself into the dark house tonight.
She hadn’t been in Angel Butte that long. How would Blake find out where she’d gone?
But she didn’t kid herself. Short of assuming a new identity, disappearing wasn’t possible in the modern world. Within the next few days, the city website would be updated with her name and bio. Blake might not even have had to wait for that. He’d met Colin; he knew where he lived.
He could show up anytime.
So, for now, she would be grateful for her brother’s watchful eye, Cait promised herself. She kissed his cheek and said, “I’ll park so close to the front steps you won’t be able to squeeze by in the morning yourself,” and hurried out the door to the sound of his chuckle.
The council had their own chamber in the city hall wing off the historic courthouse, she had discovered her first day during the whirlwind tour Noah conducted. She’d seen the agenda for tonight and knew there were no very exciting decisions facing them, so she wasn’t surprised to find the audience thin. Noah had a place at the raised semicircular table along with the nine council members. He wasn’t sitting yet, although he stood behind the table talking to a balding, potbellied man and a woman who looked to be in her forties and wearing a fire-engine-red suit Cait admired.
Either he was keeping an eye on all arrivals or watching for her, because his gaze flicked to her the minute she walked in. He’d been in the middle of saying something but stopped midsentence, seeming momentarily paralyzed by the sight of her.
Feeling unwarranted satisfaction at the idea that she’d dazzled him, Cait gave herself a stern talking-to. Repeat to self—I do not want a man, especially a man as overbearing as this one. Who so happens to be my boss.
Without looking at him again, she strolled up to the curved table and held out a hand to the city councilman at the end.
“Hi, I’m Cait McAllister, new in the Office of Community Development.”
Two hours later, she was struggling to hold on to her expression of eager, or even polite, interest. She had been introduced at the beginning and received with reasonable cordiality. From that point on, much of the discussion concerned possible alterations to the noise ordinance. The citizens who did appear mostly wanted to hog the microphone as they vented about a neighbor’s barking dog or teenagers who were apparently free to party until all hours almost nightly. Nobody showed up to say, “Screw the ordinance! I have a constitutional right to make all the racket I want!” A police captain named Brian Cooper droned on with statistics relating to noise violations and possible repercussions should the projected change be voted through. Cait couldn’t decide if he was really that boring or whether he was trying to put everyone to sleep. To prevent a vote? she wondered, momentarily amused. She’d have to ask Colin about him.
Cait found herself surreptitiously watching Mayor Chandler. Patience was not one of his virtues, it appeared. Expressions flowed across his face—disbelief and exasperation alternated with the expected boredom. He eventually started either making notes or doodling. Cait leaned toward the doodling explanation.
Once he lifted his head unexpectedly, and his eyes met hers. They stared at each other for long enough to excite comment if anyone had been paying attention. There was an openness in his eyes and, she was afraid, in hers, as if they hadn’t had time to shield themselves. Even so, she wasn’t quite sure what he was thinking. She discovered, when he suddenly turned his head, that she must have quit breathing. She hoped the gasp wasn’t obvious when she sucked in air.
She probably should have lingered when the meeting ended, but she couldn’t make herself.
Oh, God. I shouldn’t have taken this job, she realized as she fled. She couldn’t keep dodging Noah. She either had to get inured to him, or...she didn’t know.
Joining a cluster of five people who got on the elevator together, she pushed the button for the parking garage and watched as someone else did for the lobby. There was no conversation; everyone stared politely straight ahead.
She stood aside when the doors opened at the lobby. To her dismay, everyone but her got off. As the doors shut, she weighed the possibility of going back up and hovering until the next group was ready to depart. Nothing but the city council meeting had been happening tonight. The lot would be deserted.
But the doors were already opening, and she saw that the space was well lit. With relatively few cars left, there weren’t a lot of places for anyone to hide. Nonetheless, she reached in her purse for both her car keys and her pepper spray.
She walked confidently, heels striking on the cement floor. She had the passing thought that four-inch heels were not a good choice for a woman alone this late in the evening. Unless, of course, she took one off and used it as a weapon.
Picturing herself brandishing a pink high heel in self-defense almost made her smile.
No dark figures stepped out from between parked cars. She reached her Mazda unscathed and was dropping the pepper spray back into her purse when she saw the rear window. A lopsided heart speared by a huge arrow had been drawn on it in some kind of greasy red paint.
Shocked, she stopped, her gaze involuntarily surveying first her surroundings again, then the rest of her car. Dear God, what was that on the windshield? A crack? Or...?
She backed up, peeked around her car to be sure no one hid there, then took one slow step at a time until she could see what had happened to the windshield.
The same smeary red paint had been used to write in foot-tall letters:
MISS ME YET?
“Is something wrong?” a man asked from behind her.
CHAPTER FOUR
HAVING EXPECTED CAIT to hang around to talk to council members, Noah was taken aback when he realized she was gone. He had nothing to say to anyone—what a waste of an evening this had been—so, nodding to Brian Cooper, he left the council chamber.
The elevator doors were just closing. Behind him, voices spilled out of the room. He shot a hunted look behind him. Damn it, if he waited for the next elevator, he’d get stuck making conversation, the last thing he had the patience for tonight. Reversing direction, he escaped into the stairwell in the nick of time.
Noah emerged into the parking garage to echoing silence. He could see only one person—a slim woman in a deep rose suit that revealed mile-long legs enhanced by heels that had to add four inches to her height. Cait McAllister wasn’t a woman who worried about deferring to men, he figured, or she wouldn’t wear shoes that made her taller than most of them.
He was halfway across the bare concrete space before he started wondering what she was doing, just standing there staring at her car. No—her head turned, almost surreptitiously, and then she ducked around to the passenger side. Hiding from someone he couldn’t see? Damn it, from him?
But she reemerged from the space between a concrete pillar and her little hatchback and kept staring at her car. Had she locked her keys in it or left the lights on and killed the battery?
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She gasped and whirled, one shaking hand holding out some little gizmo. Mace, Noah realized belatedly, or pepper spray. He also took in the shock that dilated her eyes. And then his gaze went past her.
“What the hell...?” he murmured.
She seemed to sag. “It’s...the windshield, too.”
He walked around her car and saw.
MISS ME YET? in enormous capital letters. The writing reminded him of the Just Married he’d sometimes seen in the back windows of cars also festooned with dangling cans or streamers.
“Never given a woman a valentine before,” he remarked, “so maybe I’m not an expert, but I can’t say this one strikes me as very romantic.”
Cait’s laugh sounded semi-hysterical. “No,” she agreed. “Romantic is the last word I’d use.”
He looked at her. “Do you know who did this?”
She closed her eyes. After a moment, she gave a stiff little nod.
She was not only shocked, but scared, Noah diagnosed. “No sign of him?” he asked.
“No, but I didn’t exactly mount a search.”
“I’m glad to hear you had the sense not to poke around all by yourself in a deserted parking garage for the asshole who’d do this,” he said grimly. “Stay put.”
He didn’t consider her a meek woman, but she nodded in acquiescence.
It didn’t take him long to determine that they were alone down there. Had been alone. As he walked back toward her, the elevator disgorged five people, two of whom separated from the pack, going straight for their vehicles, while the other three stood talking.
“Oh, God.” Cait sounded frantic. “I don’t want them to see this.”
“No.” He took an experimental swipe over the heart and discovered the color didn’t come off on his finger. “You can’t drive the car like this.”
“No. I’ll call Colin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll take you home.” He frowned. “I’ve got a tarp. I can toss it over your car.”
She thanked him.
He wasn’t parked far away. It took him only a minute to unlock the rear of his Suburban and grab the heavy canvas tarp he’d been using to keep the cargo space clean when he hauled construction materials. Returning, he found her staring at that damn pierced heart as if she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Noah pulled the tarp over her car, glad to hide it from her gaze.
“I thought you were new in town.”
Her mouth twisted as her eyes met his. “I am.”
Seeing how frail she suddenly looked, he shook his head. “Come on.”
He circled around in case she needed a hand getting in with those damn heels. Or maybe so he could catch a glimpse of an extra few inches of thigh as she hiked herself up.
Once in, he started the engine but didn’t release the emergency brake. “All right, what’s the deal?” he asked.
Her glance was swift. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah, I think it does. Was this meant to be fun? Some kind of prank? Or should we notify the police and have your car fingerprinted?”
Staring straight ahead, she chewed on her lower lip. Finally she let out a long breath. “I’ll tell Colin and see what he thinks. I hoped...”
Noah waited.
She still didn’t seem to want to look at him. “An ex-boyfriend has been stalking me. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to stay in Seattle to finish my dissertation.”
Anger balled in his gut. “Define stalking.”
“Mostly following me. Popping up everywhere I went. I changed health clubs. He’d show up at my new one. Trail me through the grocery store. That kind of thing.”
Mostly following? The tension in her voice told him there was substantially more.
She turned her head, her eyes still dark with unhappiness. “I could tell he was getting mad. The last time I was coming out of my health club after an evening class and he was waiting at my car.”
“Tell me you hadn’t gone out alone.” His voice sounded like the crunch of gravel.
“Well, I did,” she said with a spark of defiance. “Until then, he really was just a nuisance.”
He gripped the steering wheel hard. “Until then.”
Her eyes shied from his. “When I said no again, that I didn’t love him and he needed to accept that, he, well, sort of threw a temper tantrum.” She paused. “Did throw a temper tantrum. He was wearing heavy boots, and he kicked my car, over and over. He did a lot of damage to the body.”
Goddamn. The thought of those boots slamming into her little car had Noah’s whole body rigid with the need to do battle. Useless, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He didn’t have to be a psychologist to know the ex-boyfriend had wanted to hurt her, not the car.
“And while he was doing this?”
“I dialed 911, of course! What do you think, I’m stupid?”
“Was he arrested?”
“Some people were coming out of the health club, and he took off. The police did charge him later and he did some kind of plea deal. But, um, the last thing he said was that he’d never accept losing me.”
“And that’s when you decided coming home to your cop brother was a good idea.”
“Well...yes.”
“Does Colin know about this creep?”
She visibly winced. “Um...no. I really did hope Blake wouldn’t follow me. He has a job. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking!”
“How long had this been going on?”
“Like...six months?”
He swore under his breath and reached for the gearshift. Having backed out, he then punched in the code to open the iron grill of the gate, closed at night. Within moments, he was driving through downtown, which had gone pretty well dead except for a few places like Chandler’s that stayed open until eleven on weeknights.
Cait was quiet for close to five minutes. Then, “Do you know where Colin lives?”
“Someone pointed his place out to me.”
Another couple of minutes passed. “Will you say something?” she burst out.
“Better if I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d give you hell for not taking precautions!” Despite his best intentions, his voice had risen. “What were you thinking, going down to your car all by yourself tonight?”
“I was thinking he was in Seattle!” she yelled back. “And...and I did look around the garage before I got out of the elevator.” That part came out more subdued. “I’m not stupid,” she said again but softly, as if she was trying to convince herself.
Feeling like he had grit in his chest that scraped when he breathed, Noah grasped her fine-boned hand in his. Cait gave a little jerk, as if he’d startled her, but after a very still moment, she squeezed back. Holding on, he thought.
“Your hand is cold,” he said quietly.
“My hands are always cold.” It was a poor excuse for a laugh, but Noah admired the effort. “My feet, too. Lousy circulation, I guess.”
He was betrayed into imagining himself sandwiching her cold feet between his shins at night, warming them.
No. Don’t go there.
Neither of them said another word until he had to take his hand back to steer into the dark driveway leading through a tall stand of pines to her brother’s house. He was glad to see that the front porch lights were on. A floodlight over the detached garage lit up, too, presumably motion-sensitive. He drove as close as he could get to the front steps and then braked.
“Thank you for the lift,” she said, already releasing her seat belt and reaching for her purse. “And for listening.”
“I’m coming in with you.”
Door halfway open, she swiveled back to look at him. “What?”
“You heard me.”
By the time he turned off the engine and walked around, her brother stood on the porch looking down at them. “Cait.” His eyes narrowed. “Chandler.”
“You really don’t have to...” she tried.
Noah gripped her elbow and started her up the porch steps.
“Your car break down?” Colin asked.
At the top of the steps, she shook free of Noah’s hold and glared at him. “No. I’m going to have to get someone to clean it in the morning. It suffered from...I guess you could call it graffiti.”
“Shall I tell him about it?” Noah asked.
She’d gotten over being scared and was mad. “This is none of your business!”
“It happened in the city hall parking garage. While you were attending a city council meeting.” He put some extra weight on the word city. “You work for me. That makes it my business.”
Her brother’s narrow-eyed gaze moved back to his sister. “Cait?”
“Oh, fine.” She stomped past him into the house.
Colin glanced back. “You coming in?”
Surprised at the invitation, he said a firm, “Yes.” He was damned if he’d leave her alone to make light of the whole story to her brother.
Only a single lamp was on in the living room. A newspaper lay open on the hassock. He’d been waiting up for her, Noah guessed. Or for his wife?
“Is Nell home?” Cait asked.
“She’s taking a shower and getting ready for bed.” Although she’d perched on the sofa, Colin still stood, arms crossed. “Quit procrastinating.”
Her mutinous expression amused Noah despite his dark mood.
She sniffed. “You remember Blake.”
“We already established that I did,” her brother said slowly.
“Well, he’s been stalking me.” She told the story briskly, not minimizing but not revealing the fear Noah had seen. He didn’t comment, however.
Colin, he suspected, wasn’t deceived.
“And you didn’t tell me about this.... Why?”
She had a pretty mouth, but Noah wouldn’t have called it sultry until now, when her lower lip protruded. “I really didn’t think Blake would follow me.”
“That son of a bitch. If he thinks he’s going to terrorize you here in my town—”
“He’s convinced that he can talk me into going back to him,” she tried to explain.
“Is there a chance in hell of that happening?” Colin asked, the timbre of his voice roughening.
She scowled at both men. “Of course not!”
“All right,” Colin said. “He’s got to be staying somewhere local. We’ll look for him in the morning. I want to see your car.”
Cait nodded unhappily. “You’ll have to drive me to work anyway.”
“For now, it might be better if I drive you and pick you up every day.”
Noah approved.
“You’re overreacting. He painted a heart on my back windshield. It wasn’t a threat.”
“Yeah, it was.” Noah had been content to allow her brother to grill her until now, but her intransigence was beginning to annoy him. “He’s letting you know he’s in town and watching you. Given his history, that’s a threat.”
“Do you have a restraining order?” Colin asked.
“I didn’t think I needed one.”
Noah stared incredulously at her, and realized Colin was doing the same. Cait’s expression grew mutinous.
“We’ll get a restraining order first thing in the morning,” Colin said.
“Good,” Noah agreed.
Colin cast him a not-so-happy look. “Say good-night to Mayor Chandler,” he said. The momentary accord had apparently dissolved. “He’s leaving now.”
She rose and thanked him politely again, talking to their backs as Noah found himself being hustled out by Colin. On the porch, Noah balked.
“Your sister is trying to play down any threat. Don’t let her.”
The police captain’s jaw tightened, but to his credit, he also nodded. “I noticed. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”
“It’s ugly.” More urgency than Noah wanted to feel infused his voice. “The arrow is way bigger than the heart. It’s not piercing it—it’s stabbing. She’s more frightened than she’s letting on.”
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Janice Johnson
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Standing between her…and dangerReturning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man he’s so tempting Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.