Читать книгу A Gift For The Groom - Sally Carleen - Страница 10

Chapter Two

Nick awoke to the groaning of water pipes. At least he hoped it was water pipes. Otherwise, somebody was being tortured in a nearby room of the Rest-a-While Motel in Prairieview, Nebraska.

He could only hope Analise Brewster had slept half as badly as he had. If she had, she’d surely be ready to go home.

When they’d arrived in the middle of the night, the outside temperature had been cool, but inside the tiny room was another matter. He’d fully expected someone to come in just before dawn and shove in a few loaves of bread to bake. The sleepy owner they’d rousted out of bed had apologized for the fact that the air-conditioning was broken. Nick had his doubts that the place had ever possessed such a modern convenience.

To make matters worse, he’d had no dinner the night before except the cookies Analise had given him. Every thought of the room’s being hot enough to bake bread, fry eggs, boil soup, had been related to food and had sent his stomach into growling frenzies.

However, neither the heat nor his hunger had been the primary reason he’d tossed and turned all night, kicking the sheet into a twisted rope at the end of the lumpy bed.

Analise had been the primary cause of his disquiet. Analise, who’d talked and snacked pretty much the entire trip, including the drive from the small airport to Prairieview in the rattletrap rental car his contact had left for him. She’d talked about her fiancé, his father, his mother, her mother, her father, her friends... She’d filled his plane with so many people, making them so real, he’d halfway expected them to walk out of the plane when they landed.

By the time they arrived at the motel, the last two years of peace and tranquillity had disappeared without a trace and he was back in chaos. He’d grown up with four—count ’em, four—little sisters who’d kept the pandemonium at a consistently high level and regularly dived headfirst into situations from which he had to rescue them. Then, like a man possessed by masochism, when his twin sisters left for college, he’d married a ditzy woman who made his sisters seem staid and reasonable. His twin sisters had left three years ago and the ex-wife four months after he’d married her. Two years of serenity ... until last night. Until Analise.

She was like his sisters and his ex-wife all put together then multiplied. And to make it worse, his hormones didn’t care. They would betray him, sell him down the river, send him into servitude just to have Analise. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but while his brain told him to get away and save himself while he still could, his body wanted her with an intensity that threatened to overrule his brain.

What little sleep he’d caught in fleeting snatches had been filled with dreams of Analise... Analise talking, eating, offering him candy, taking candy from his fingers with those soft, full lips-

A knock on the door interrupted the thoughts Nick didn’t want to be having but couldn’t seem to stop. He untwisted the sheet from his ankle, retrieved his blue jeans from the worn carpet and went to answer the door.

In the harsh glare of morning sunlight, Nick hallucinated a short, rounded angel with a wrinkled, cherubic face and a halo of snow-white curls. She wore a navy blue dress with white lace on the collar just like the one his grandmother had worn for church and funerals. She beamed up at him and shoved a large tray toward him. “Good morning, Mr. Claiborne. I brought you some breakfast.”

He blinked a couple of times but the hallucination didn’t go away. In fact, his nose was getting in on. the act now, telling him the angel carried bacon, eggs and coffee on that tray.

He stepped back, allowing the angel to enter his room. With any sort of luck, he could get a few bites of those eggs and a couple of sips of coffee before the hallucination vanished.

“I’m Mabel Finch,” she said, shoving aside the lamp on the bedside table and setting down the tray. “My husband, Horace, and I own this place. Horace is the one who let you in last night.”

She lifted the napkin, exposing a plate covered with crisply fried bacon, scrambled eggs, two delicately browned biscuits, a bowl of gravy and a large mug of coffee. Nick was positive then that she was an angel and he was in heaven. He must have died sometime during the night, probably a heart attack from one of those high-voltage dreams about Analise.

“Th-Thank you,” he stammered. “This is great.” Mabel bustled across the room and opened the curtains then leaned back against the dresser, folding her arms across her ample bosom. “Analise wanted you to have a good breakfast. She said you didn’t eat anything last night except a handful of cookies.”

Analise. He might have known. He drew his fingers over his stubbled jaw, needing to feel the slight prickle of reality. “How long have you known Analise?”

“Since about seven this morning. Sit. Eat. You don’t want to be late for church.”

“Church?” He plopped onto the edge of the bed. Damnedest motel he’d ever stayed in. Being served breakfast in his room by the motel owner was nice, but being sent to church was, he thought, a little pushy. However, it was a small price to pay for this kind of food.

He unfolded the napkin, picked up the fork and began to eat.

“Analise told us all about why you’re here, looking for that Abbie Prather person.”

Nick broke open a flaky biscuit, poured gravy over it and crunched another piece of bacon. He wasn’t going to let Analise interfere with this unexpected feast. He wasn’t

“Horace and I bought this place ten years ago from the Claxtons who sold out and moved to Arizona because he had arthritis and they’d heard the climate was better there. We’re from Wisconsin, so this climate seems better to us. It’s all relative, I guess. Anyway, we don’t know Abbie Prather or June Martin, but if she lives out away from everything and keeps to herself, we might not know her since we’ve only been here ten years. I told Analise that the ministers would be the ones to ask because they know everybody.”

Like an embezzler would go to church, Nick thought, breaking open the second biscuit.

“And sure enough, when Analise called Bob Sampson, who pastors the Freewill Baptist Church on Grand Avenue, he told her to come talk to him. Analise said she was sure you wouldn’t mind her borrowing your car and going over there so we wouldn’t have to wake you.”

More gravy on that biscuit, Nick ordered himself Muffle everything this woman is saying with eggs and bacon. Drown it in coffee.

But it was no use. She had his attention.

Analise had borrowed his car? Since he had the only key, that must mean she’d practiced more of her questionable skills and hot-wired it.

“She said to tell you that she’ll be back to get you during Sunday school so you can both go to the service at eleven,” Mabel continued, then shook her head slowly, the action not disturbing her tight curls. “I don’t believe the good Lord will mind if she wears those purple shorts to church, but we’re Methodists. I’m not so sure about those Baptists. I offered to loan her one of my dresses, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”

Purple shorts?

He laid down his fork, drained the cup of coffee and gave up.

Before he was even out of bed, Analise had befriended the motel owners, procured breakfast for him, found a contact who remembered their missing party, stolen his car and gone to church in purple shorts.

And he’d thought he was finished with taking care of, riding herd on and bailing out irresponsible, resourceful females.

Not that his ex-wife, Kay, had ever sent his libido spiraling out of control the way Analise did.

How the heck was he going to keep her out of trouble when he was in major trouble himself?

Analise left the Reverend Robert Sampson’s house and headed back to the motel to get Nick so they could go to church and talk to other long-standing members of the congregation who might remember Abbie Prather—a.k.a. June Martin—and Sara.

A vivid picture was emerging of the woman who’d caused Lucas’s family untold agony, and it wasn’t a pretty one. She’d been so strict on her daughter that even the Reverend Sampson, a by-the-book clergyman, thought she was cruel rather than dedicated.

The decrepit car Analise had borrowed from Nick inched along the asphalt, so slow she wanted to open the door, put her foot out and push. What a difference from her own car, a small red sporty model with five on the floor and enough power to keep her in regular speeding tickets.

But her car was parked at the Tyler airport while she chugged along in this clunker, fighting her impatience to get back to the motel, back to Nick to share her news with him. Not that she was especially anxious to see him again, or that she felt any need to tell him what she’d accomplished, to prove that she wasn’t flaky. It didn’t bother her one bit if he thought she was flaky. And after last night, she’d bet her beloved fast red car that he definitely thought she was.

Yesterday had not been one of her diamond days. More like a lump-of-coal day, actually. And Nick had been the crowning lump, a promise of escalating fiascoes to come if she couldn’t control her obsessive penchant for flirting with trouble.

Nick was the complete opposite of Lucas. Lucas was safety, security, a friend she could count on. Nick was danger, an invitation to the unknown, to taste the exhilaration of a flight into skies that terrified her even as they tempted her, to prove she could do it.

For most of the night she’d lain awake in the hot little room at the motel, trying to forget the way his accidental touch had made her feel, the way the scent of him had invaded her senses and lingered as surely as if he’d been in that bed with her.

She gripped the steering wheel tightly and ordered herself to stop thinking about that. Not only were those inappropriate feelings for an engaged woman, they were inappropriate feelings for a sane woman. Her bad habit of dancing with disaster usually resulted in a catastrophe rather than success.

She’d left her room early and, to her surprise, found a lead, something she could do to be useful, to take her mind off those hazardous-to-her-health feelings. She’d come up with information that would help them locate Abbie...and rescue Sara.

The familiar sound of a siren intruded on her thoughts.

Automatically her foot hit the brake while her eyes scanned the descending speedometer needle.

Damn! Had she been speeding again? What was the speed limit, anyway? She’d been too caught up in her thoughts to notice.

This decrepit car couldn’t possibly be speeding! Maybe the dangling taillight had fallen completely off, or the wire Nick had used to hold up the muffler broke or maybe the car with its three shades of rusty paint and primer violated some law of ugliness.

In her rearview mirror she watched the young officer swagger up to her car.

Swaggering was not a good sign.

She located her driver’s license and held it out the window as the man approached. She didn’t want him to look too closely inside, to see that she’d hot-wired the car rather than wake Nick to ask for the keys, rather than risk going inside that overheated motel room where he slept, probably in the nude, when she was already overheated.

The policeman accepted her license wordlessly then went back to his car to, she assumed, check for wants and warrants. Good grief! The police in Briar Creek never did that! She could be here all day!

Finally he swaggered back and leaned down to look in, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. She leaned toward him so he couldn’t see the dangling wires.

“Going a little fast, weren’t you, Ms. Brewster?” And she’d have to go twice as fast to make up for lost time after this. “Only a little,” she protested. Why didn’t he give her a clue? Tell her what the speed limit was?

“Oh? How fast do you think you were going?”

How did she know what answer she should give when she had no idea what the speed limit was? “Well, I think possibly the speedometer said somewhere around about the vicinity of fifty-eight.”

He straightened and began to scribble on his clipboard. “The speed limit through this stretch is forty-five. Big sign a mile back.”

Great. An out-of-state ticket to start a brand-new blunder list for today.

“But you see,” she improvised, “this car is eleven years old, and since carbon buildup in internal combustion engines results in a gradual slowing of all exposed parts revolving counterclockwise, it’s necessary to deduct approximately one mile every year, which means I was only doing forty-seven, and what’s a couple of miles between friends?” She gave him her best smile.

The officer stopped writing, lowered his clipboard, raised his sunglasses to his forehead and looked at her. “What?”

“I said—”

“Never mind.” He shook his head and replaced his sunglasses. “It’s not right, whatever you said. You were doing fifty-nine. Slow down.”

“Okay,” she agreed. Had her gobbledygook really worked? Was she going to get off without a ticket?

He raised his clipboard again, dashing her hopes with the action. “You didn’t signal when you changed lanes, either.”

“But there was nobody else on the highway to signal to!”

“You have to obey the law all the time, not just when there’s somebody watching. Anyway, I was watching.”

She sighed. “All right. From now on I’ll signal before changing lanes if it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m in the middle of the Sahara Desert.”

“You’re not wearing your seat belt.”

“It’s an old car. The belt’s broken.”

“I need to see your vehicle registration.”

Amazing what a quick downswing her luck had taken in the last few minutes. The way things were going, Nick’s contact probably hadn’t left them the vehicle registration.

Fumbling in the glove box, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks when she found the document. She gave it to the policeman, leaned her elbow out the window and smiled as innocently as she could.

“This vehicle’s registered to Fred Smith of Omaha, Nebraska.”

“Yes, it’s a borrowed car.”

He took a step backward and his hand dropped to his gun. “Borrowed?”

Analise froze. Was she going to be shot for taking Nick’s car that wasn’t really Nick’s car? “Yes, borrowed! You see, my friend...well, he’s not really my friend.” Oh, dear! She was getting nervous and incoherent. “My detective,” she said firmly, pleased with herself for finding the right word, “Nick Claiborne, flew into a small airport and it was late and his friend...well, I don’t know if it was his friend or just an acquaintance...anyway, he left him this car and I borrowed it this morning because I had to go to church and find out about Abbie Prather who’s now June Martin and—”

“Turn off your engine and step out of the vehicle.”

Turn off the engine? Dive under the dash and untwist the wires? Not a good idea.

Leaving the car running, she opened the door and slid out “If you’ll just call Nick at the...oh, dear, I can’t remember the name of the motel, but it’s down the highway a couple of miles, which is why I was heading that way except you can’t call him because there aren’t any phones in the rooms but Mabel has a phone...”

Nick stood on the sidewalk in front of his room in the still-cool, bright Sunday morning. From the outside, the old motel with its peeling paint and missing room numbers had a quaint charm. In other circumstances, he’d have considered the day to be perfect, a good omen. But as he waited for Analise. to show up in his borrowed car that she’d so cavalierly reborrowed, he had a bad feeling.

A large, older-model black car pulled up. His gaze flicked over the automobile and returned to searching the highway for any signs of the rust-colored—or covered—vehicle Analise had absconded with.

Mabel’s head popped out the window of the passenger side of the black car. “Analise just called. She needs you to get her out of jail.”

As Nick rode with the Finches to the Prairieview police station, he marveled that these people whom Analise hadn’t known twenty-four hours ago leaped to her defense.

“It’s Frank Marshall’s youngest boy,” Mabel explained. “He’s been watching too many cop shows on television. Nothing ever happens in Prairieview, so he goes around looking for trouble. Gave Mildred Adams a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant Took a tape measure and got her at four inches too close. Imagine, taking Analise in just because the car wasn’t registered in her name.”

Apparently Analise hadn’t mentioned in her phone call to Mabel Finch that she’d hot-wired his car. That undoubt edly contributed to the arresting officer’s suspicions.

Ten minutes later they were in the middle of the Sunday-silent town. Mannequins in the department store window stood motionless, gazing from painted eyes at the empty sofas and chairs on display in the furniture store across the street. The movie theater marquee had a couple of letters missing. Even the drugstore was deserted. Anyone needing an antacid or deodorant would, Nick presumed, have to wait until Monday.

Horace pulled up next to Nick’s rented car, in front of the small, weathered-rock building designated as the Prairieview Police Station by the words carved above the door.

Both Horace and Mabel started to get out, but Nick stopped them. “You all go on to church. I don’t want you to be late. I’ll take care of Analise.”

“Well, okay,” Horace agreed reluctantly. “But if you run into any trouble, you call us at the Methodist church and we’ll come talk to Frank’s boy.”

Nick thanked them, exited the car, walked up to the building and grasped the tarnished brass handle to yank open the front door. He’d take care of Analise all right. After he got her out of jail, he’d wring her slender neck.

The door proved to be heavier than he’d thought and reluctant to move, so his dramatic gesture was lost Instead, it creaked slowly open.

Analise and a young man in a blue uniform looked up as he entered. The man sat behind a desk with Analise in a chair in front. In the first instant, his mind registered that she was indeed wearing purple shorts with a scoop-necked, sleeveless blouse with bright flowers of purple, black, yellow and a green the same color as her eyes. She’d wrapped a long purple tie around the neck he was getting ready to wring, and the ends floated down her back. She sat with one long leg crossed over the other, a purple sandal adorning her slim foot. She was as bright and tempting and dangerous as the neon lights of Las Vegas.

In the second instant, he noted that she held five cards in her hand and had a pile of pennies in front of her.

Honour washed over him as he recalled the dubious skills her former boyfriend had taught her. She was playing poker with the cop who’d arrested her and dealing off the bottom of the deck, judging by the size of her pile of pennies as compared to the officer’s pile.

She gave him her dazzling smile just as he charged across the room and snatched the cards out of her fingers, sending the rest of the deck and her ill-gotten pennies flying. It also sent him tumbling into her lap.

How was it possible, in a moment of crisis, that he still noticed she smelled like honeysuckle on a warm summer evening and her skin was as soft and velvety as the petals of a magnolia blossom?

He pushed himself up, endeavouring to get his face out of her midriff and his hands off her thighs, even though his body would have loved to stay right there.

As he struggled to his feet, his gaze met her startled green eyes. Startles, but not horrified, some alien creature in the back of his brain exulted. Startled and maybe just a tittle bit...excited?

“Hold it right there, mister!”

Nick whirled around to see the officer standing with his weapon drawn.

Great. He was going to end up in jail with Analise, both of them growing old and fat together, eating fried eggs and bologna for breakfast every morning. And the way things were going, she’d be in a cell close enough for him to hear her talk all day long but not close enough to touch.

“It’s okay, Joe,” Analise reassured the officer. “This is Nick Claiborne, the man whose car I borrowed. Tell him I didn’t steal it, Nick.”

Joe reholstered his gun but didn’t relax. “Car’s not registered to Nick Claiborne.”

“I told you—” Analise began impatiently, but Joe cut her off.

“You got any proof you rented it from Fred Smith?” He sneered at Nick.

“Have you got any proof I didn’t?” Nick withdrew his wallet, opened it to his private investigator’s license and slammed it onto the desk. “I’m working on a case. Ms. Brewster is my client. I rented the car, and she took it to use this morning.”

“With your permission?”

Nick gritted his teeth but made himself lie. “Yes.”

“Then how come she had to hot-wire it?”

There was a limit to how big a lie he could tell. He avoided the question instead. “What are the charges against Ms. Brewster?”

Joe stood straighter. “Speeding, failure to signal before changing lanes, failure to wear a seat belt and possibly driving a stolen vehicle.”

“Has the car been reported stolen?”

Joe slumped back into his chair. “No,” he admitted grudgingly.

“Then write her tickets for the rest and let her go.”

Joe waved one hand negligibly. “Aw, we’ll just forget about the tickets. Analise explained why she was speeding, there wasn’t anybody around to signal to anyway and the seat belt was broken.”

“Thanks, Joe!” Analise beamed at the officer then bent and started retrieving her pennies.

Nick grabbed her arm and dragged her from the station.

“What on earth is the matter with you?” she demanded, jerking away from his grasp as soon as they were outside.

“Bad enough you were cheating at cards with a police officer, I wasn’t about to let you take your winnings with you.

She fisted her hands on her curved, purple-silk-clad hips. “I wasn’t cheating! How could you possibly think I would cheat?”

“You’re the one who told me your friend taught you to deal off the bottom of the deck!”

“I assume you know how to shoot a gun, too, but you don’t go around doing it for fun!”

Nick threw his arms into the air. “I learned how to shoot a gun when I went through the police academy. The purpose was to save my life. I haven’t shot one since I left the force. Do you want to explain to me how that relates to cheating at cards?”

“I...was...not...cheating!” She bent forward at the waist and ground out each word from between clenched teeth. “And you never know when being able to deal from the bottom of the deck could save your life.”

“How?”

“Well...” Her voice trailed off and she moved around him toward the car, then stopped and faced him again. “You never know until the situation arises. It’s always best to be prepared.”

He unlocked the car door and opened it. “Get in.”

“Not until you apologize for accusing me of cheating.”

“If you weren’t cheating, how did you win all those pennies?”

She shrugged, the movement shifting the brightly colored fabric that covered her rounded breasts in a tantalizing manner. “Beginner’s luck.”

“Beginner’s luck? What about the story of your boyfriend teaching you to play poker?”

“Well, sure, he taught me, but we never really played, just practiced. When I saw a deck of cards on the desk in there, I figured I might as well give it a shot. What did I have to lose? If you hadn’t charged in like some maniac, I was getting ready to offer him double or nothing to drop the charges against me. I had a royal fiush. Joe dealt me the ace, queen, jack and ten of hearts and then I drew the king.”

With a final glare, she turned and slid into the car then closed the door.

Now, how the hell had she managed to make him feel guilty, when she’d stolen his car, gotten herself thrown in jail and he’d rescued her? At least Kay had been grateful when he’d gotten her out of her scrapes.

He strode around to the driver’s side, resisting an impulse to smack the hood as he passed. The car might fall completely apart.

Damn it, she’d hired him to do a job, to vindicate her fiancé’s father and find the guilty party. Nothing in that job description required him to look out for her when she got herself in a mess. He solved other people’s problems from a safe distance. He didn’t get involved, not with the problem or the client. That’s what he liked about this job. No emotions. No ups, no downs, no worries, no losses.

He got in the car and slammed the door...hard The vehicle quivered and rattled but remained in one piece.

“I don’t care what it takes,” he said, “even if it costs me a day’s investigation, even if you decide to fire me, you are, as of this minute, on your way back to Texas.”

Distress clouded Analise’s features. “I can’t do that. Bob—Reverend Sampson—told me that June Martin—that’s the name he knew her by—that her daughter, Sara, not only had red hair like me but also green eyes and she even spelled her name the way I spelled my doll’s name when I was a little girl. With no ‘h’ on the end.” She lifted both hands as if to forestall his protest. “I know, I know. Could be coincidences, but I believe I have a connection with Sara. I believe fate brought me here so I could intervene in her life and help her get over the cruel things her mother did to her. I have to be there when you find her. It’s my destiny. I have wonderful parents, a stable home life, terrific friends, all the material things I could possibly want—I’ve always had life handed to me on a silver platter and now it’s my turn to pass along some of the good stuff.”

There was no mistaking the sincerity, the concern, in her voice and in her eyes. At the same time as a part of Nick raged in protest, another part melted at her misplaced desire to help someone less fortunate.

Her long, golden legs, generous lips and rounded breasts that moved those improbable flowers on her blouse up and down and all around with every breath undoubtedly had something to do with his meltdown, but he couldn’t think about that.

If they did make it to church, he’d most certainly pray that they found June and Sara Martin before nightfall and Analise would be out of his life forever.

“Bob told me that June and Sara moved away right after Sara started school,” Analise informed him, as if her sole purpose in life was to complicate his.

The fact that some rebellious, not-very-bright part of him gave a tiny, embarrassed cheer at the thought of Analise not disappearing from his life forever only proved how desperately he needed to get away from her.