Chaos in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) (2 page)

Jadyn nodded. “If she were alive, I’d say she needed a job, a hobby, or a friend.” Jadyn froze. “A friend. Maybe that’s the answer.”

“She already harasses everyone who can see her and everyone who can’t. There isn’t anyone left.”

“Not a live friend. A dead one.”

Mildred’s eye widened. “I understand where you’re coming from in a very general sense, but I don’t think you’ve thought it through.”

Jadyn frowned. “Why not?”

“Because instead of a companion
for
Helena,
we
could get another Helena.”

“Right! Wow. Dodged a bullet with that one. I’m not sure Mudbug could handle two Helenas.”

“Not even the devil himself could.”

Jadyn’s cell phone sounded and she pulled it out of her jeans pocket, frowning when she saw Colt’s name on the display. A call from the hunky sheriff would put a smile on the face of most of the women in Mudbug, but if you were the game warden and it was only 8:00 a.m., that call wasn’t nearly as flattering as one might think.

“What’s up?” Jadyn answered.

“I’ve got a situation in Miller’s Cove. A shrimp boat washed up, probably from the storm last night. It’s been beat pretty good and was half-sunk when Harley Koontz came up on it this morning.”

“Any sign of the driver?”

“No. And it’s not a boat I recognize, at least not offhand.”

She grabbed the pad of paper and pen off the dresser. “Give me directions to Miller’s Cove. I’ll head there right now.” She took down the directions and hung up the phone.

“Problems?” Mildred asked.

“A shrimp boat washed up in Miller’s Cove. No driver in sight and Colt doesn’t recognize it.”

Mildred’s expression turned grave. “That storm last night was a doozy. If someone got caught out in it, he could have been blown some distance. There are fishing villages branched out in every direction at least a hundred miles. It could have come from any one of them.”

Jadyn nodded. “Well, since it landed in the game preserve, it’s my problem now.”

“Be careful,” Mildred said.

“Always.” Jadyn headed out of the room, hoping the missing driver had abandoned his sinking boat and hitched a ride home. The stack of dead bodies that had piled up since she’d been in Mudbug was already bigger than she’d hoped to see in a lifetime.
 

Whoever said small towns were quiet and boring clearly had never lived in one.

###

Sheriff Colt Bertrand stood at the edge of the cove, staring at what remained of the shrimp boat and wondering how much was left of the boat’s captain. It was a thought better saved for later in the day and after he’d had coffee and breakfast, but unfortunately, he didn’t get to choose. Equally unfortunate, the back portion of the boat that would have contained the name of the boat had been broken off, leaving the boat and Colt facing an identity crisis.

“You don’t recognize it?” Colt asked, looking up at Harley.

Harley was fiftyish with a head full of silver hair that always had at least one piece sticking straight up in the air like Alfalfa. If you measured to the top of that sprig, Harley probably topped out near seven feet tall and weighed in at negative two. He had to be the tallest, skinniest person, with the longest limbs, that Colt had ever seen. He was, quite frankly, a walking scarecrow.

He was also a professional fisherman and tour guide and spent every waking moment on the water.

Harley stared at the boat and scratched his head, flattening the sprig with his finger, only to have a replacement pop up an inch farther along his part. “It’s nobody from Mudbug. Bud Peterson has the same model, but he just replaced the floor in his a couple weeks ago—painted it some pansy-looking green color.”

Colt leaned over to inspect the bottom of the boat. “Dark gray.”

Harley nodded. “A man’s color.”

Colt hadn’t seen Bud’s unfortunate color choice for his boat floor, and he hoped Harley’s opinion on the matter never made it to the surly fisherman. Bud would snap Harley in two like a twig.

“Could be from one of the nearby villages,” Harley suggested. “If he shrimps the Gulf or the channels closer to New Orleans, I wouldn’t cross paths with him often, if ever.”

Colt nodded. He’d already figured that was the case. “Were you out last night?”

“Yeah. I was fishing out Buford Point way when I saw the storm brewing. Came in a bit earlier than predicted, but isn’t that the way it always goes? I’d packed up most of my stuff an hour earlier, figuring the weather would screw me out of another hour like it always did, but I still caught the front end of it before I made it back to town.”

“It was moving that fast?”

“A good clip. I was doing twenty miles an hour or so, faster when I got a straightaway, but it moved in quicker than I could run through the channel. Probably a good forty-mile-an-hour wind blowing southwest pushing it. ”

Colt sighed. “Which means this boat could have traveled fifty miles or more by drift alone, and just during the storm.”

Harley nodded. “That sounds about right.”

Colt heard the engine of Jadyn’s jeep before it rounded a corner and emerged from the woods. She parked next to Colt’s truck and headed over, giving Colt a wave as she approached.
 

Colt held in a second sigh. The sight of Jadyn St. James in jeans, a T-shirt, and hiking boots, wearing no makeup and with her long dark hair in a ponytail, sent him to a mental state he hadn’t experienced since high school. Without a single bit of effort on her part, she was the sexiest woman he’d ever met. He’d been fighting his attraction from the moment he laid eyes on her at that first crime scene, but stubbornness had finally given way to desire and he’d kissed her.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from it. Maybe he’d been hoping that it would feel all wrong, and then he could apologize for his presumptuousness and things could go back to normal. Normal for Mudbug, anyway. But instead, that one kiss had terrified him. And that was something a Southern man did not admit, especially when he was the sheriff.
 

Fortunately, he’d had to leave the next day for a law enforcement conference that had lasted a week. He’d hoped the time away would clear his head of Jadyn, but instead, he found his thoughts constantly drifting back to her—during workshops and dinners, and even in his dreams. On the drive back to Mudbug, he’d finally decided it was time to put up or shut up. Either he believed all women were bloodsucking vipers like Maria or he believed a woman could be good-looking and capable, and still be warm-blooded.

This was the first time he’d seen the very warm-blooded Jadyn St. James since he returned from the conference. And aside from the problem the wrecked boat presented, Colt was almost relieved that their first meeting would be over business. Working a job together was a much better way to ease back into interaction with Jadyn—get him on firm footing until he could decide how to approach the elephant in the room.

“Morning, gentlemen,” she said as she stepped up.

Colt introduced her to Harley, whose eyebrows lifted when he caught the “new game warden” part, but he was smart enough to keep any opinions he had on the matter to himself.

“You thinking it got caught in the storm?” Jadyn asked.

Colt nodded and recounted the conversation he and Harley had about the wind speed and direction.
 

Jadyn blew out a breath, and Colt knew she’d already processed the variables and come up with the same conclusions he had. That was another thing—Jadyn was smart, which made it impossible to dismiss her as just another good-looking broad.
 

“Can you put out a request for any missing persons bulletins for the surrounding areas?” she asked him.

“I’ll put it on the wire and make some phone calls as soon as I get back to the office.”

“Great. I’ll give Marty a call and see if he can get this out of the cove and towed to his shop. Maybe I’ll be able to find something in it that tells me who it belonged to.”

“Hell,” Harley said, “if the guy’s missing, surely someone’s looking for him.”

“Really?” Colt asked. “If you went missing, how long before someone would know?”

Harley frowned. “Well, now that I think about it, I guess wouldn’t no one know until I missed a fishing tour. Yeah, I see your point. Hey, maybe I should get one of them girlfriend things…so’s she could set up an alarm if I didn’t come home.”

Colt smiled and clapped Harley on the back. “I think you should get right on that. I bet there’s a girlfriend thing just waiting for you to show up and sweep her off her feet.”

Jadyn’s lips quivered and Colt could tell she was trying not to smile.
 

“How about you?” Harley asked, giving Jadyn the once-over. “You got a man?”

Jadyn’s lips and the rest of her froze and her eyes widened. “Me? No, I’m not in the market for a man.”

Harley nodded. “You go for women. I figured as much, being that you have a man’s job. Oh well, guess I’ll have to check out Pete’s tonight. Bet I could hook me a good one there.”

Jadyn’s mouth dropped open as though she was going to respond, but she must have decided it was pointless, or safer, because a second later, she closed her mouth and pulled out her cell phone. “I’m going to give Marty a call and head back to town. I’ll let you know if I find something on the boat. Nice meeting you, Harley.”

“Nice meeting you,” Harley said and shook his head as he watched her walk back toward her Jeep. “Damn shame about the woman thing. I bet she’d look good in a cast net and rubber boots.”

Colt grimaced. “Yeah, it’s the bedroom outfit of choice for men all over the world. Listen, I best get going. I appreciate you reporting this.”

“’Course,” Harley said, but his gaze was still on Jadyn, probably mentally dressing her in different fishing equipment.

Before he could offer up another ensemble, Colt headed for his truck, giving Jadyn a wave before she pulled away. With any luck, the shrimper would be having coffee and cussing at his insurance adjuster. Colt gave the boat once last glance before climbing into his truck.
 

The thing was, Mudbug hadn’t seen luck in a long, long time.

Chapter Two

Jadyn’s heart pounded in her chest as she drove down the narrow dirt road that led back to the highway. But her uptick in pulse had nothing to do with her missing boat captain and everything to do with Colt Bertrand. Since her arrival in Mudbug, her job and Colt’s had been intertwined, forcing her to spend more time with him than she was comfortable with.
 

Colt was everything a red-blooded Southern woman wanted in a man and probably more than most could handle. He was gorgeous to look at, built like an athlete, smart, hardworking, and one of her personal requirements, deadly. The last thing she’d come to Mudbug looking for was a man, but Jadyn could no longer deny her attraction for the sheriff.
 

The last time their jobs had crossed paths, things had ended in a gun-slinging showdown that had almost gotten them both killed. Then Colt had kissed her and despite the lack of bullet wounds, Jadyn was certain she’d been shot. Just not a flesh wound.
 

Her heart, on the other hand, had clenched as though it was in a vise. Then he’d left almost immediately for a conference and she’d spent the past week watching reruns on television and taking cold showers. Colt certainly knew how to get to a woman. That one kiss had marked the moment she’d given up completely on pretending she didn’t want Colt Bertrand in every way possible.

But was it worth the risk to go for it?
 

Granted, if things didn’t go the way she wanted, the only casualty would be her ego. But romantic rejection was the worst kind of ego bruise. Jadyn would be the first to call herself tough, but she was still human. Wanting someone who didn’t want you back was the worst kind of suckage.

And that was the crux of the issue—Colt seemed to blow hot and cold. At times, Jadyn was certain of his interest. It was as if it were written in bold lettering across his face. Then just when she thought he was going to make a move, he’d retreat. She supposed she could give him the benefit of the doubt on this last one, as he had to attend the conference for his job. It wasn’t his fault that they had a showdown with the bad guy and then he had to leave for work.

She frowned. But had he kissed her because it was an emotionally charged moment in which they’d almost died? Or had he kissed her because he wanted to kiss her? She’d hoped when he returned from the conference she’d be able to tell, but so far, he’d been back two days and the only contact he’d made with her was over the mystery boat.
 

Maybe he’s tired.

That was certainly possible. Those professional conferences were often exhausting.

Maybe he changed his mind.

She sighed, certain that somewhere between “he’s tired” and “he changed his mind” was the truth. The question was, which direction did the truth lean toward—ultimate bliss or decided embarrassment? More than anything, Jadyn wished she could get the answer to that question without putting herself out there. Without risking ultimate humiliation.