Читать книгу Bachelor Cop Finally Caught? - GINA WILKINS - Страница 8

Twenty-six candles blazed on the birthday cake in front of Lindsey. A roomful of people crowded around the table at her friend Serena’s to watch her blow them out. All too aware of the one person who wasn’t there—Dan Meadows—she drew in a deep breath and efficiently extinguished all the tiny flames. Her audience applauded enthusiastically.

“Happy birthday, Lindsey.” Serena Schaffer North, the party’s hostess, gave her friend a quick hug as she spoke.

Lindsey responded warmly. “Thank you. It’s a great party, Serena.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Visibly satisfied, Serena cast a quick glance around the roomful of chattering, laughing guests. “I’m so glad everyone could make it.”

Not everyone, Lindsey couldn’t help thinking.

As if she’d developed a sudden, disconcerting talent for mind reading, Serena said, “I wish Dan was here. He said he would try.”

“He’s probably out beating the bushes for clues about the firebug.”

“Probably.” With a frown, Serena shook her head. “I hope he catches the guy soon. Dan’s starting to look so stressed lately. Frankly, I think he needs a vacation.”

“So do I.” Lindsey remembered the lines that were slowly carving themselves around Dan’s eyes and mouth. Dan needed more in his life than his work. He needed a reason to go home at night.

So did she.

Serena’s husband of almost three months, Cameron North—Lindsey’s boss and editor at the newspaper—joined them just then, sliding his arm around his wife’s waist. “Aren’t you going to have any of your own birthday cake, Lindsey? You’d better hurry or those vultures will eat it all up before you get any.”

“Someone will save me a slice.” Not particularly concerned about the cake, Lindsey studied the quiet contentment on the faces of the couple in front of her.

Serena and Cameron had met under extraordinary circumstances—she’d found him lying on the side of a road, beaten half to death, with no memory of who he was or how he’d gotten there. Just about five months later they were married. Cameron had recovered most of his memories of his past, but he had told Lindsey without embarrassment that, as far as he was concerned, his life hadn’t really begun until he’d awoken in a hospital room to find Serena leaning over him.

Though she’d teased him about being a sentimental softie, Lindsey had actually been touched by Cameron’s confession. She’d also been aware of a ripple of envy. Serena and Cam had known so quickly that they were right for each other. How could it have been that easy?

Okay, so she knew it hadn’t been that easy. She had seen the way Serena suffered during the weeks that Cameron had gone back to Texas to rediscover his past, before he’d come to the realization that this was where he wanted to spend his future. But it certainly hadn’t taken him twenty years to learn to appreciate what had been right in front of him.

Determined not to waste any more of her birthday moping over Dan, she pasted on a bright smile and playfully demanded that someone bring her a slice of her birthday cake. She laughed when at least six people immediately thrust plates of cake in front of her. She had lots of friends, she reminded herself. A job she enjoyed. The freedom to pursue her dreams wherever they led her. And if the romantic dream that had led her back here wasn’t meant to be—well, she’d find a new dream somewhere else.

Twenty years was long enough to invest in a fantasy that she was beginning to believe was never meant to come true.

The following morning, as she did on the rare Saturday mornings when she wasn’t working, Lindsey made a haphazard attempt at housework, zipping through the house in which she’d grown up, a dust cloth in one hand and a broom in the other. She’d inherited the three-bedroom house three months ago, when her father had passed away after a lengthy illness. He’d died on the Monday after New Year’s Day, a sad holiday this year—just as Christmas had been, since he’d been becoming weaker and weaker. Lindsey’s many friends in Edstown had made sure she’d spent little time alone during the holidays.

Her older brother, B.J., a career military man, had insisted that the house should be Lindsey’s as she’d spent the past two years living there and taking care of their father. Even though she’d argued that she’d done so only because she wanted to, B.J. had refused to accept part ownership of the house, settling, instead, for a portion of the modest insurance settlement.

During the past couple of weeks, Lindsey had been thinking about putting the house on the market. When it sold, she would insist that B.J. accept part of the proceeds. She could take a job in a bigger market— Little Rock, Atlanta, maybe Dallas—where she could start a new life. She had the credentials, the ambition, a few connections. There was nothing holding her here now.

Nothing at all, she thought with a wistful little sigh.

Her doorbell rang just as she finished running the vacuum cleaner in the living room. Glancing down, she wrinkled her nose at her appearance. Oversize green T-shirt, baggy denim shorts, fuzzy purple house shoes. Her hair stood in messy red spikes around her smudged face. She looked like an orphan from the cast of Annie, she thought with a shake of her head. Hoping her caller was a salesperson or a close pal rather than her minister or the mayor’s wife—neither of whom she was expecting—she opened the door.

As it had for the better part of twenty years, her heart tripped when she saw Dan Meadows on her doorstep. As she had since she’d gotten old enough to understand the meaning of the word “pride,” she hid her reaction behind an impudent grin. “Well, hey, Chief. Whazzup?”

Dressed in an oatmeal-colored cotton sweater and a pair of faded jeans, he eyed her skimpy attire. “Lose your calendar? It’s the first week of March, not the middle of summer.”

“I’ve been cleaning,” she said with a shrug.

“Ah. That explains your new perfume. I thought you’d switched to Eau d’Pine.”

Wrinkling her nose in response to the bad joke, she opened the door wider and motioned for him to enter. “Since the place is clean, you might as well come in.”

“How could I resist that gracious invitation?” Pulling his right hand from behind his back, he handed her a wrapped package as he passed her. “Happy birthday, Lindsey. Sorry it’s a day late.”

Kicking the door closed behind him, she studied the pretty paper and the jaunty bow. “No way you wrapped that. It’s too pretty.”

“You’re right. I had it wrapped at the store.”

“It’s almost too fancy to open.”

He grinned. “What makes you think there’s anything inside? Maybe the pretty package is all I got you.”

“And maybe you’re full of hot air.”

Laughing, he ruffled her hair—exactly the way he had when she was a kid tagging at his and her brother’s heels. His nine-inch advantage over her five-foot-three height made it even easier for him to treat her like a kid. “Just open the present, princess.”

His use of the childhood nickname made it difficult for her to keep her smile in place. “Yeah. Sure.”

With the ease of someone who’d spent a lot of time in this house during the past twenty years, Dan settled on the couch, an arm draped across the back, his legs stretched in front of him. His chestnut hair tumbled over his forehead, ending in a fringe just over his dark brown eyes. He looked tired, and there was a slight touch of gray at his temples now, but Lindsey could still see traces of the handsome teenager he’d been in the roughly good-looking man he had become.

She sat in a nearby chair, the gift in her lap. Though she usually ripped into her presents at light speed, she opened this one with excruciating slowness—just because she knew it would drive Dan crazy.

“You’re going to have another birthday before you get into that,” he complained, as she’d known he would.

“I want to savor the moment. You’re usually giving me grief instead of presents.”

“I give you grief? You’re the gung-ho reporter who stays on my heels all the time looking for a hot lead—as if there’s all that much to report in Edstown.”

“Just doing my job, Chief.”

“Yeah, well, you sure as hell make it tough for me to do mine sometimes.”

Because this was an old and generally unproductive argument, Lindsey let the comment pass as she peeled the last bit of paper away from the box. A moment later she swallowed a lump in her throat so she could say, “Dan, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”

His smile was just a bit smug. “Do I know what you like or what?”

Yes, he knew what she liked—when she was twelve. She had collected unicorn figurines from the time she was a little girl until she’d gone off to college. Her room had been filled with them, the walls covered with unicorn posters. Now Dan had bought her a blown-glass unicorn for her twenty-sixth birthday. Somehow he’d completely missed the fact that she was no longer the little girl he’d known so long ago.

Her heart aching, she set the unicorn—a perfect symbol for hopeless fantasies, she reflected glumly—on the coffee table. “Have you had lunch? I was just about to eat.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m starved. What’ve you got?”

“Sandwiches.”

“Just what I had a craving for,” he drawled.

With a weak laugh, Lindsey led the way into the kitchen. They spent the next half hour munching ham-and-Swiss-on-rye sandwiches, pickle spears, and raw vegetables with ranch dip. During the casual meal, they talked about her brother—Dan’s best friend since adolescence—and their mutual friends in Edstown. She asked about his parents, who were, as usual, spending the winter at an RV park in southern Texas; he assured her they were fine, that he’d spoken to them only the day before.

There were a couple of subjects they carefully avoided, such as the arsonist who’d been eluding the local authorities. And then there was the one topic neither of them ever mentioned—Dan’s bitterly unpleasant divorce two and a half years ago, barely six months before Lindsey had moved back to take care of her father. Even if Lindsey had wanted to bring up his marriage debacle—which she didn’t—Dan would not have cooperated. He’d forbidden everyone to even mention his ex-wife’s name in his presence.

“So, anyway, the noise Mrs. Treadway reported hearing outside her window was nothing more than a broken tree branch tapping against the glass. Unfortunately, by the time we managed to find that out, Jack and I were wet to the bone, covered in mud, half-frozen, and we’d narrowly escaped being midnight snacks for Mrs. Treadway’s rottweiler.”

Lindsey winced even as she laughed at Dan’s wryly told anecdote. “So you had a close encounter with Baby, did you?”

He all but shuddered. “Baby missed biting me in a very sensitive area by an extremely narrow margin. I swear I felt his hot breath right on my—”

“I get the picture,” Lindsey said quickly. There were some mental images she wasn’t prepared to deal with right now—Dan’s “sensitive areas” among them. “Baby’s not as bad as he pretends to be. Around Mrs. Treadway, he’s just a big, dopey puppy.”

“Yeah, well, thanks to Baby I almost had to switch from the bass section of the church choir to the soprano section.”

She smiled and nodded toward his empty plate. “Would you like anything else to eat? I have some leftover birthday cake that Serena insisted I bring home.”

“Cake sounds good, if you have an extra slice.”

“I have plenty,” she assured him and rose to cut him a piece.

“I’m sorry I had to miss your party. I got tied up at the station and didn’t get away until after eleven.”

“Which explains the dark circles under your eyes.” She studied his face as she set the dessert plate in front of him. “You aren’t getting enough rest lately, Dan. Serena thinks you need a vacation.”

“She does, does she?”

“When’s the last time you took more than twenty-four hours off?”

He shrugged. “It’s been a while,” he admitted. “But I won’t be taking a vacation anytime soon—not with some crackpot trying to burn down every building in the damned town.”

“He usually waits a few weeks between hits. You should have time to take a break while the other investigators pursue leads.”

“That’s the thing—we have no leads,” Dan growled. “The guy’s slick, I’ll give him that. He’s not leaving clues.”

“He’ll screw up—and when he does, you’ll catch him.”

“Yeah, but that means he’ll have to strike again first. We’ve had one death because of this guy so far. I don’t want anyone else endangered, including our firefighters.”

“You’ll catch him,” Lindsey predicted again.

“Damn straight. But not if I’m off on a vacation. Besides, who takes vacations this time of year?”

“People who are tired and need a rest?”

Dan only shrugged and filled his mouth with another forkful of cake.

“This has been nice,” he said a few minutes later, when his plate had been cleaned and the last sip of iced tea drained. “You and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and talk much lately—not without you holding a notebook in your hand, anyway.”

“No. You’ve been so busy we’ve hardly seen each other since B.J. was home for Dad’s funeral.”

The mention of her late father made Dan’s smile dim a little. “So, you’ve been doing okay? Living here by yourself, I mean.”

“I’m fine,” she answered gently. “I miss my dad, of course, but he was so ill and so debilitated that I knew he was ready to go. And I’ve been on my own before, you know. I lived alone for three years before I moved back two years ago to take care of Dad.”

“You let me know if you need anything, you hear? I promised B.J. I’d keep an eye on you.”

Her teeth gritted. “Thanks, but I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”

“Of course you are.” He glanced at his watch, which kept him from seeing the way her brows dipped in response to his slightly patronizing tone. “As much as I’ve enjoyed this, I’ve got to go. I have things to do at the station.”

She walked with him to the door. “Try to go home at a reasonable hour tonight,” she advised him. “You won’t be doing anyone any good if you collapse from exhaustion.”

He chuckled and reached out to ruffle her hair again. “You sound just like my sister.”

“Well, I’m not your sister, and if you do that to my hair one more time, I’m going to sink my teeth into your hand.”

The snarled threat only made him laugh. “Now you really sound like my sister.”

Clenching her teeth tightly together, she opened the door, then forced herself to say pleasantly, “Bye, Dan. Thank you again for the birthday present.”

“You’re welcome.”

Some impulse made her speak, just as Dan started down the front steps. “I’m thinking about selling the house.”

He stopped and turned to look at her in obvious surprise. “No kidding? Why? Is it too much for you to keep up?”

“No. I can handle the maintenance. I’m considering looking for a job in a bigger city. Dallas or Atlanta, maybe.”

“Oh.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking as though he didn’t quite know how to respond. “Well…I can see where you’d have better career prospects in a bigger market, but…you’d be missed here.”

She noted that he didn’t say who would be missing her if she left. “I haven’t really made a final decision yet. I’m just mulling it over.”

“I see. Well, you do what you think is best for your future. I’ve gotta go, okay? See you around.”

“Yeah.” Lindsey leaned against the doorjamb and watched him climb into his car. “See you around, Dan.”

Sometime later she carried the unicorn into her bedroom and set it on the dresser. Her childhood collection had been packed away since she’d left home for college—not that Dan would know that. It had been years since he’d seen the inside of her bedroom.

He probably still pictured ruffles and teddy bears, she thought glumly.

Stupid man.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror attached to one of her closet doors. A low groan escaped her as she studied the grubby clothes that dwarfed her petite figure, and the fuzzy house shoes that would have looked more at home at a teen slumber party. She ran a hand over her spiky hair and glared at the smudge of dust on her unpainted cheek.

“No wonder he still thinks I’m twelve,” she muttered. She winced when she remembered his ex-wife, with her perfect hair, perfect face, perfect teeth, perfect breasts. Lindsey turned sideways and poked out her chest, eyeing the results in the mirror. “Pitiful,” she grumbled. “Just pitiful.”

She mentally replayed the way she’d bantered with Dan, swapping put-downs and bad jokes, pretty much the way she and her brother carried on when he was home. When they met on a professional basis, she and Dan usually ended up yelling at each other—and she’d admit that she usually started it. Maybe it was just a teensy bit her fault that he hadn’t seen her as a sexy, desirable woman.

If she gave up now and moved away, putting her dreams behind her, would she always regret not giving it one more try? She’d never been a quitter, and had never been hesitant to go after something she wanted—except for Dan. What did she have to lose—except her dignity, her pride and her ego?

The grubby woman in the mirror suddenly looked a little pale, but there was a new look of determination in her green eyes.

Dan Meadows was about to find himself with a brand-new problem on his hands.