Читать книгу Bachelor Sheriff - Пола Грейвс - Страница 10

Melissa felt all four gazes on her as Aaron and the other men waited for her reaction. Her skin crawled at their scrutiny. She’d made a career out of being a background player, the driven worker bee behind the scenes who got impossible things done but stayed out of the spotlight when it came time for accolades. She didn’t know how she was supposed to react, what she could do to ease the suspicion she saw in Deputy Clayton’s eyes or the curiosity in Perry Blake’s expression.

She almost blurted out, “I didn’t do it,” until she realized a denial would make her look guiltier than silence.

Aaron Cooper spoke first. “Do you know why anyone would set your house on fire?”

She was grateful to find his expression devoid of suspicion. “I don’t know.” She wasn’t the sort of person who aroused murderous passions. She hadn’t had a real boyfriend since law school, didn’t sleep with married men or make cutthroat business deals. She was just a midlevel attorney at a small law firm in a small Alabama city.

Who also defends women whose husbands and boyfriends like to knock them around.

Aaron seemed to catch the change in her expression. “You do know something.”

Her stomach tightened with a mixture of anger and alarm. She’d raised a few murderous passions in her pro bono work, hadn’t she? From men with hair trigger tempers and violent tendencies.

“No,” she said aloud.

There it was. The hint of suspicion she’d been waiting for in Aaron Cooper’s expression.

She couldn’t tell him about her pro bono work. It would expose her clients. She worked hard to protect them from their brutal spouses and boyfriends, to hide them from further danger and give them chances at good lives. The last thing any of them needed was cops nosing around in their pasts to find a suspect in an arson that had caused only a minor amount of damage.

“You said you saw someone moving around outside your house,” Deputy Blake said, skepticism oozing from every word.

Aaron looked at Blake. “What?”

“I couldn’t unlock the dead bolt on the front door.” Melissa was glad to focus on something that might help Aaron. She hated lying, even if she’d had too many opportunities to hone the skill over the years. “I saw a shadow through the window, moving out of view, like someone going around the corner of the porch.”

“What about when you got outside?” Aaron asked.

“I didn’t see anyone. But there was a twig or something like that wedged into the front door lock from the outside.”

“We don’t know if it’s actually connected to the fire,” Blake said. “We got a few calls last night about wedges being put into locks. One of the complainants said she saw some kids running away just before she discovered the vandalism.”

“Maybe they graduated to something more destructive.”

“Pretty big step, from petty mischief to attempted murder,” Blake pointed out.

“I’m not a shrink. I don’t have to know what motivated the jerks. I just have to prove they did it,” Aaron said.

“Maybe they cut the electricity as a prank,” Melissa suggested. “Maybe it accidentally made a spark, igniting leftover gasoline in the generator?”

“How much gas was in the generator?” Perry asked.

She looked at him, wondering when the class clown she remembered had grown up to be this serious-faced firefighter looking at her with hard skepticism. “I don’t think it could be much,” she admitted. “Less than a cup. It emptied the last time I used it, and I don’t add gasoline until I need it.”

“You don’t store the gas back here by the house, do you?” Perry asked.

“No. I keep it in the shed.” Melissa pointed to the small work shed about twenty yards behind the house, near the edge of the woods that formed the border of her property.

Perry looked at Aaron. “There are signs of an accelerant, probably gasoline, in the burn patterns here. The state’s arson investigation team could tell us more. Should we call them in?”

Aaron looked from Perry to Melissa. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Let’s call them in.”

Melissa’s heart sank. “I don’t want you to investigate it. Nobody was hurt. I won’t even make an insurance claim. Let’s just leave this alone, okay?”

What was left of the compassion in Aaron’s expression disappeared, corroded by undiluted cynicism. “You’re a lawyer, right? You know we can’t do that.”

She was afraid he was going to say that. “Okay, fine. Investigate.” She tightened her grip on Jasper, who’d started to whine. “Tell your mother I appreciate the offer but it’s best I just find a hotel—”

Aaron caught her arm as she turned away, his strong grip just shy of painful. “The offer of the guest house stands.”

She pulled her arm away, glaring at him. What, now that he saw her as a suspect, he thought he could manhandle her any way he pleased? Maybe the whole reason he wanted her at his mom’s place was to make it easier to keep an eye on her.

But at this point, she was so tired and stressed she wouldn’t have protested if he’d suggested an ankle monitor to track her whereabouts. She just wanted to bathe off the soot in a scalding shower, crawl into a warm bed and sleep for a week.

“Can we go now?” she asked impatiently.

“Yeah, we can go.” None of the earlier gentleness remained in his deep voice. He was angry with her, clearly, and in no mood to pretend civility. Or gentleness.

He nudged her toward the driveway when she started up the cobblestone walk to retrieve her suitcases. “I’ll get them. You go get in the blue truck.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pushed a button. Lights came on at the end of the driveway, slanting light across Aaron’s grim features.

She felt annoyance flood her system. “I’d rather drive my own car.”

He gave her a considering look. “You’re tired and you’re shaking. You don’t need to be driving. I’ll get a deputy to bring your car to the marina tomorrow.”

Picking her battles, Melissa relented, trudging through the frost-limned grass to an enormous blue pickup truck sprawled across the mouth of her driveway. “Feel free to pee on his upholstery,” she muttered to Jasper as she put him on the small bench seat behind the front bucket seats.

He sniffed the length of the bench as she pulled herself wearily into the passenger seat and shut the door behind her. The truck’s cab was warm compared to the bitter cold outside. It smelled better than she expected, too—spicy, a little masculine.

Like Aaron Cooper himself, a traitorous teenage voice whispered in her head.

Melissa tucked her legs up and rested her chin on her knees, gazing through the windshield at Aaron as he lifted her suitcases as if they were lunchboxes. He may have left his football career behind, but he still looked good, she noted grudgingly. He’d been leaner in high school, but the extra flesh seemed to be all muscle.

Too bad he was such a bully.

Aaron heaved the suitcases into the truck bed, where they landed with gentle thuds. Circling to the driver’s side, he opened the cab door and looked over the seat at her.

For a second, the suspicion in his eyes melted, revealing sympathy. He shrugged off his thick brown leather jacket and handed it across the seat to her. “Here, put that on. And buckle up.”

He belted himself in while Melissa pulled the enormous jacket around her. It swallowed her whole, enveloping her in the same heady scent that filled the cab of his truck. She held her breath, holding that scent inside her for a moment. She felt sixteen all over again, tongue-tied and hopelessly infatuated with the star football player who barely even knew she was alive.

But a quick glance at Aaron Cooper’s stony profile dragged her back to the present reality. She was temporarily homeless, frozen half-solid and apparently the prime suspect in a case of arson. And Aaron was a big, pushy guy who probably wouldn’t think twice about twisting arms to get his way.

Lovely. Just lovely.

“Do you honestly think I set my own house on fire with my dog and myself inside?” she asked.

Aaron shot her a sidelong look. “I think you’re keeping something from me.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He shrugged. “Lies make me antsy.”

“I haven’t lied.”

He looked her way again. “Why did you want us to drop the case, Ms. Draper?”

The cool formality of his tone stung her, even though she knew it shouldn’t. They were strangers, really. Passing in the halls and a few classes together didn’t constitute a friendship.

Not that she wanted Aaron Cooper as a friend anyway. She’d known entirely too many men in her life who didn’t know how to keep their hands—or their fists—to themselves.

She turned her face away from him and gazed out the passenger window, remaining quiet.

“I rest my case,” Aaron said.

She bit back a protest. Anything she said in her defense would only pique Aaron’s interest more. He was probably going to find out about her pro bono work sooner or later, but the longer it took, the more time she’d have to warn the women she worked with that scrutiny might be headed their way.

And maybe, if she could figure out which of the many violent men who’d threatened her over the years was the one who’d set fire to her house, she could tip off Aaron and put an end to the whole mess before he had to bother her clients.

The women she worked with had lived in sheer hell for years before making their escape. The last thing they needed was a nosy deputy dragging them back through hell all over again.

BY MIDMORNING, the day had warmed to the low fifties with bright sunlight to ward off the chill. The living room of the guest cottage was cozy and warm, morning sunlight through the front windows casting a cheerful glow across the homey furniture. Aaron found himself fighting the urge to stretch out on the sofa and take a nap.

Melissa and her puppy had disappeared into one of the bedrooms soon after they’d arrived, staying awake only long enough for a quick shower and the breakfast of eggs and toast Aaron’s mother had had waiting for them when they walked through the door to the lakeside cabin.

His mother, Beth, had also put fresh sheets on the beds and turned up the central heating to a cozy warmth. After Melissa had gone to bed, Beth had stayed a few minutes to talk to him, managing to glean the basics of Melissa’s plight from him with a few subtle, well-aimed questions.

“You don’t seriously think that poor girl tried to burn her own house down, do you?” His mother’s tone of voice had made him feel as if he were a complete creep to entertain the notion for a second.

He’d been relieved to admit he didn’t think Melissa had set the fire. But he hadn’t told his mother his strong feeling that Melissa knew who had.

The expression on her face when Perry had told them the fire had been set deliberately hadn’t been shock. It had been fear, liberally tinged with a strange sort of fatalism, as if she’d been waiting for just such a thing to happen.

So as he finished up calls to the office to brief his commander and get a few investigative balls rolling, he found himself wondering why Melissa Draper had been so unsurprised to hear someone had tried to kill her.

The soft click of the bedroom door down the hallway gave him time to school his features into a cool mask of professionalism. He waited until he heard her pad quietly into the living room before he turned to look at her.

His breath hitched halfway into his lungs. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deliberately despite the sudden, unexpected pounding of his heart. She wasn’t what he’d call pretty, exactly—she never had been. Her forehead was too wide, her blue eyes too large, her lips too bow-shaped, her skin too milky pale. Her dark hair had always been straight and shapeless, though instead of letting the straight locks hang down over her shoulders she now wore it pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

She wore a pair of faded jeans just tight enough to reveal a nice pair of legs and a loose-fitting gray T-shirt that concealed too much for him to get a good idea what the rest of her body looked like. Unfortunately, his mind seemed determined to fill in the blanks all by itself.

“I thought you’d be gone.” Her sleep-raspy voice hit like a jolt of caffeine. He instantly focused on her, from the faint scent of shampoo in her still-damp hair to the way her lips parted to reveal a flash of perfect white teeth.

He was reacting to her like some sex-starved loser who hadn’t gotten lucky in a decade. And that definitely wasn’t him. What the hell was wrong with him?

He liked tough, driven women who embraced his no-promises, no-regrets idea of relationships with as much enthusiasm as he always had. He sure as hell didn’t play with the hearts of women who looked as breakable as Melissa Draper.

She’d said something, he reminded himself, trying to gather his scattered thoughts to remember her remark. “I’m working here,” he answered, appalled when he stumbled over his words. Clearing his throat, he dragged his attention back to the notes he’d been making for the report he’d type up when he got back to the office. “I thought I’d wait until you woke up.”

“I’m up,” she said.

“Trying to get rid of me?”

She gave him an odd look and moved to sit stiffly on the chair across from the sofa where he sat. She looked nervous, he noted, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with whatever secrets she was keeping. “Is my car here yet?”

He frowned. “You’re not thinking of leaving.”

She met his frown with a scowl of her own. “Am I under arrest? I must have missed the Miranda warning.”

“You’re not under arrest.”

“Yet.”

He pressed his lips together, annoyed—at her for being so stubborn and confrontational and with himself for the way his heart was pounding with excitement because she was sitting close enough that he could smell her soap-and-water scent every time he took a breath.

He hadn’t been on a date in a while, thanks to his recent promotion at the Sheriff’s Department and all the catching up he had to do on current cases. Clearly, he needed to remedy that problem, pretty damned pronto.

But he was finding it harder these days to find a woman who really sparked his interest. Wasn’t that really the problem, more than the lack of time?

He wondered how much it had to do with the changes in his own family. Four marriages in the last three years, all of them deliriously happy, at least from the outside looking in—they’d been enough to force him to take a second look at the way he’d chosen to live his life over the past few years.

He’d come to believe that true, lasting love—the kind his parents shared—was the exception, not the rule. He’d seen people destroy each other in the name of love.

He’d seen people destroy themselves—

“Is my car here or not?” Melissa’s impatient voice interrupted him.

“It’s out front.” His voice emerged in a low growl. “Deputy Clayton dropped it off about an hour ago. You’re free to go anywhere you want, as long as you don’t leave the area. We’re going to have more questions for you.”

He grabbed his phone and his notebook, stuffing both in the pocket of his leather jacket. The faint smell of smoke assailed his nostrils, reminding him how she’d looked earlier that morning in the cab of his truck, all big blue eyes and shaky bravado. He’d better run by his house to get another jacket, he decided, or he might not get any work done the rest of the day.

“You’re leaving?” She trailed him to the door.

He paused in the doorway, surprised to find her standing so close. “I need to type up the report and check on some other cases we’re working. If you need anything, give me a call.” He leaned forward, telling himself it wasn’t to get a better whiff of her heady scent. “And if you suddenly remember who might have wanted to hurt you, you know where to find me.”

Her eyes met his, full of secrets. When she didn’t answer, he forced himself to turn and leave.

In the cab of his truck, he took a couple of long, deep breaths. Grabbing his phone from his pocket, he dialed the number of the Betancourt Law Firm in Maybridge and asked for Tina Lewis, a lawyer he’d gone out with a few months earlier.

“Hey, Tina, it’s Aaron,” he said when she answered. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

MELISSA’S BOSS, Carter Morgan, insisted she take the whole day off. “You’ve probably got a million things to take care of. Where are you now—at home?”

“I’m staying at a friend’s house on Gossamer Lake.” Melissa glanced at Jasper, who was whining softly at the front door of the cottage. “Are you sure you don’t need me to come in? With Alice off this week, you’ll be shorthanded.” She willed Carter to say yes. Hanging around the cottage all day, waiting for Aaron Cooper to decide to arrest her after all, would drive her insane.

Besides, she wasn’t sure she could even trust him.

“You don’t have any cases going to court this week. Take the rest of the week off, too, if you need it,” Carter insisted, his tone almost fatherly. “You can come back fresh and prepared on Monday.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Melissa insisted. She hung up the phone with a growl of frustration. So much for using work to distract herself today.

Of course, there was always Domestic Crisis Center work to be done. She had a list of clients she could call to check on. There were two child custody cases pending, and another woman had taken a restraining order out on her boyfriend recently. Melissa should probably check with her to see if he was complying with the order.

She’d made a couple of calls and was about to check on the woman with the restraining order when Jasper jumped into her lap and started whining. “I guess you’re about ready to go outside, aren’t you, big boy?” She scratched behind his soft, floppy ears and set him on the floor, tucking her phone into the pocket of her jeans.

Outside, with the day creeping toward noon, the temperature had risen high enough that the cardigan she’d donned before leaving the cottage was sufficient to keep her comfortable. She was tempted to settle down in the weathered wooden rocker on the cottage’s front porch to make the rest of her calls. What a difference from the previous night’s frigid cold and discomfort.

Jasper began to bark wildly, his tail wagging with canine joy. It took Melissa a few seconds to spot what Jasper had clearly seen moments before: a pretty young woman walking up the path to the house, a baby on her hip.

Aaron’s sister Hannah, Melissa realized as the woman came closer. She’d been a couple of years behind Melissa in school. Like Aaron, Hannah had moved in a different social circle, but Melissa’s memory of the youngest Cooper was positive. In high school, at least, Hannah had been the rare kind of person who’d related easily to anyone she’d met.

Hannah looked a lot like her brother Aaron, though smaller and much more feminine. Her eyes were green, not gray like Aaron’s, but they had the same ridiculously long, dark lashes and bright inquisitiveness. And the woman’s square jaw was also clearly a Cooper trait.

“Hi, Melissa.” She smiled brightly, ignoring Jasper’s barks. “I don’t know if you remember me—I’m Hannah Cooper. Well, Patterson now. Aaron’s sister.” She grinned at the puppy. “And this must be Jasper.”

“I remember you.” Melissa smiled back at her, surprised to feel instantly at ease. “And yes, Mr. Manners here is Jasper. Who really needs to stop barking anytime now,” she added with a hint of frustration in her voice.

“Jasper, hush,” Hannah said in a forceful tone. The puppy quieted down immediately, gazing up at Hannah with a look of sheer adoration, his tail wagging merrily.

“How did you do that?” Melissa asked, incredulous.

“You just have to let them know you mean business. Sort of like dealing with brothers, too.”

The baby, who’d handled Jasper’s yapping without a whimper, began to cry when the puppy stopped barking. Hannah laughed. “Poor Cody—the only thing that scares him is peace and quiet. Luckily, he doesn’t get much of that around here.”

Melissa shook off her darker musing. “He’s adorable. Is he yours?”

Hannah beamed. “Yeah, he’s my little wrangler. My husband wanted to name him after a town back in Wyoming. That’s where Riley’s from.”

“Oh, right. I heard you’d married a cowboy.”

Hannah’s grin broadened, but before she could answer, Melissa’s cell phone rang. Melissa grabbed it, murmuring a quick apology to Hannah. She noted with amusement that the phone’s loud ring had quieted Cody immediately.

“Melissa Draper.”

“Melissa, it’s Dinah Harris.”

Melissa’s amusement faded quickly. Dinah was one of her clients, a woman whose husband Terry had a nasty temper. Melissa had helped Dinah get a restraining order against Terry a couple of months earlier. “Hi, Dinah. Is something wrong?”

“I need to talk to you. Can you get here before noon?” Though nothing she said denoted alarm, Dinah’s voice sounded tight and worried. Melissa didn’t like the sound of it.

“I’ll be right there.” She hung up and looked down at Jasper, who was still gazing lovingly at Hannah.

“Everything okay?” Hannah asked.

“A client needs to see me. She sounds worried, so I need to go. But I forgot about Jasper. I don’t want to leave him alone in the cottage in case he has an accident.”

“Leave him with Cody and me. We’ll take him with us down to the bait shop to visit Mom and Dad. He’ll love it.” Hannah reached for Jasper’s leash.

“Are you sure?” Melissa asked.

“Positive.” Hannah took the leash with a genuine smile. “I’ll see if I can teach him a few tricks before you get back.” She started off down the path toward the lakeside marina, Jasper trotting along beside her without so much as a backward glance.

“Traitor,” Melissa muttered with a grin, but her humor fled as soon as she got behind the wheel of her Volkswagen. The worry in Dinah’s voice might mean nothing.

But if Terry Harris was back in her life, it could very well mean murder.