Troublemaker (17 page)

“I need a vacation,” she said aloud.

Mayor Buddy chuckled. “I know the feeling. Small towns, huh?” He paused, then with a faint undertone of guilt said, “Come to think of it, have you ever taken one? Vacation.”

Mortified that he might think she'd been asking for paid time off, she said, “I was joking. I have too much on my plate to even consider a day off. Not only do I have a boatload of tech projects lined up, I have a friend recuperating at my place.”

“I heard about that. When he's feeling better, bring him to town so people can meet him. I bet Miss Doris would bake something special for him.”

Oh, yes, she definitely had a headache. When Morgan was feeling better, he wouldn't look so sick. That stood to reason, didn't it? What would people see when they met him? Would they see what she saw, a man who chose to live his life on the razor's edge of danger, a man who could and had killed in a number of ways? Perhaps it was because she knew he'd been shot, knew—vaguely—what he did for a living, but to her it was evident in the sharpness of his gaze, in the way he moved, the intense alertness about him even when he was doing nothing more dangerous than watching TV. Who would be so oblivious that they'd look at him and think he was nothing out of the ordinary?

Now Mayor Buddy was wanting to enfold Morgan in the town's embrace, which to her was a little like putting a tiger in a petting zoo. And Miss Doris would bake the tiger a special cupcake.

God in heaven. She couldn't keep Morgan secluded, or everyone would die of curiosity and she could just see a regular parade of visitors to her house on a pilgrimage to see the man she kept hidden there. Small towners were both nosy and brazen; they wouldn't care if their excuses were flimsy as long as their goal was accomplished. Sooner or later—probably sooner—she would have to bring Morgan to town. What better way to spike Warren Gooding's charges than to let people see for themselves what shape Morgan was in? Sooner would definitely be better, while he still looked sickly.

When
she got home, Morgan was outside on the porch again, his chair
in the sunshine. The late afternoon was feeling cool to her, but he didn't have a jacket on over his tee shirt. Her laptop was open in his lap, and he was tapping at the track pad. Tricks woofed happily as soon as she saw him, and when Bo released her from her safety harness, she bounded out of the Jeep and raced to him, her tail wagging madly, her whole body wiggling in delight.

He stopped what he was doing to scratch her ears with both hands and ask how her day had gone. After a minute of that Tricks abandoned him to do some investigative sniffing. “Hi,” he said, glancing at Bo, and went back to the laptop.

Two seconds later he muttered, “Shit!” and closed the laptop.

“What's wrong?” she asked, going to stand beside him while she kept an eye on Tricks.

“I saved seven of the little fuckers, you'd think that would count for something,” he growled. He shoved his hand restlessly through his hair. “Sorry. That slipped out.”

She had to laugh. Dragging another chair around, she sat and stretched out her legs. “Playing Pet Rescue, huh?”

“For about three hours now. I run out of lives, I play something else until I have more lives.” He slanted a look of blue fire at her. “No offense, but I'm going crazy with boredom. I'm not good at doing nothing.”

“None taken. I'd be bored too.” Privately she thought the timing couldn't have worked out any better. “If you feel up to it, want to go to work with me tomorrow? I can't guarantee sitting in the police station will be any more interesting than playing Pet Rescue, but it'll be a change of scenery.”

“God, yes.”

“Things got a little interesting today.” She told him about Warren Gooding's visit, and the standoff with Loretta, which elicited one of those rusty-sounding laughs from him. “Evidently people are already curious about you, so you can expect a steady parade of people coming by to look you over. But Mayor Buddy also said Miss Doris would
probably bake something special for you, so I'd say it'll be worth being stared at.”

“Hasn't anyone in your town ever seen a stranger before?” he muttered.

“It's a small town. Being nosy is required.” She smiled as she tilted her face toward the sun. The down time was . . . relaxing. It was oddly companionable, sitting here with him in the late afternoon, chatting while she watched Tricks. She never would have described him as companionable, but there it was.

“How did you end up here? This isn't exactly on the beaten path.”

“Hubris,” she replied. The story wasn't a pretty one, but what the hell, she wasn't ashamed of it. She'd made some mistakes, and she'd worked hard and dug her way out of a hole. “I teamed up with a friend in California and flipped a house. It seemed like a fun thing to do, real estate was booming, and we each cleared about thirty thousand profit from it. In hindsight, that was the worst thing that could have happened because I decided I liked flipping houses better than tech writing and could make a lot more money from it. My friend didn't like the work so much, though she did like the money, so she opted out of going in with me on the next house. I made money on it too. I thought I was an expert. The people who bought it had a friend who hired me to convert an old barn where he grew up, and here I am.”

“Weaseled out on you, huh?”

She appreciated his quick comprehension. “It got so I couldn't get in touch with him very easily, and whenever I did he'd tell me to keep going, and he made the decisions on lighting fixtures, flooring, high-end kitchen appliances. To keep construction flowing, I used my money, and when that got low, I switched to my credit cards. Dumb. Real estate was tanking, big time. The barn was almost finished when he told me he couldn't get financing, and on top of being stupid enough to use my own money, I hadn't gotten a signed contract from him. He walked away clear, and I had a barn to live in and a mountain of debt.”

“Which explains why I'm here. If it hadn't been for that, you'd have told me tough luck and put me on the road again.”

“The money was definitely a big consideration. But I've worked hard, whittled the debt down, and it's all manageable now. At least my head is above water, thanks to my deal with the town. Besides, I wouldn't have put you on the road right away. You were pitiful.”

He winced at her less-than-complimentary description, but it was accurate so he shrugged and let it go. He surveyed her for a minute, his thoughts hidden. She was unprepared for what he finally said. “I can get Axel to pay you more.”

She blinked, astonished, then laughed. “Not necessary. When I say it's manageable, I mean it. I'll use the money to knock a big hole in the remaining mortgage and either pay it off early or refinance for a lower payment. I'm good with the deal as it is.” She hauled herself out of the chair. “I need to get busy. How does pizza sound? You do eat pizza, don't you?”

“Pizza sounds like heaven. Any kind of pizza. I even ate vegan pizza once. Not willingly, but I ate it.” He stood with improving ease, holding the laptop in one big hand.

“C'mon, Tricks,” Bo called, then looked up at him with a smirk playing around the edges of her mouth. “By the way, it would help if you could look really pitiful tomorrow, because the rumor's already going around that we're shacking up.”

P
ITIFUL
. THE WORD CLANGED ANGRILY AROUND
inside Morgan's skull. She thought he was
pitiful
. Maybe he wasn't as okay with it as he'd thought. Even worse was the accuracy of her assessment; his ass had definitely been dragging the ground when he'd arrived here, but he was doing a lot better. Some, anyway.

He'd try his ever-lovin' best to look
pitiful
for her tomorrow, so no one would think he could possibly get it up or that she would even consider crawling between the sheets with him. After tomorrow, though, he was going to start getting back in shape. He knew how. He'd gone through training that broke most men. Tomorrow would be pushing it some, so he'd have to be smart about it. His sternum and chest muscles were still healing, and he didn't want to tear anything loose.

Then he considered the almost military straightness of her back as she walked into the house ahead of him, and he had to wonder if she'd used the word deliberately to alienate him. No man liked being described as pitiful. The tactic would have worked on most men, but he wasn't most men. He was aggressive, intelligent, and he didn't say, “Oh, well,” when presented with a problem or a challenge; he met the challenge and solved the problem.

Yes, she had chosen that word with, if not malice, definite intent. He knew it instinctively. It was those walls again; he had been careful not to
make a comment that could in any way be regarded as sexual, but she'd still felt the need to reinforce the distance between them. Was it simply because he'd been here for several days now and was a part of her home life? She'd wanted to make certain he stayed a temporary intrusion.

From what he'd seen so far, her home really was her sanctuary. Officer Tucker had followed her out to interrogate him, and also to make sure she got home safely after bumping her head, but no one else had visited. No one had even called, other than Officer Tucker's nightly check-ins, which were very brief.

She was a solitary person; he got that. She was also candid and open about her past, how she'd ended up here, what she was thinking. Maybe being so candid was another defense mechanism: tell people so much that they wouldn't suspect she was hiding anything, such as a key part of herself.

She turned on the top wall oven to start preheating and got out Tricks's food. He eased onto one of the stainless steel and wood bar stools at the counter, watching as the dog excitedly pranced around her. When she had it prepared, with little pieces of turkey on top, she set it down and he waited for the weird ritual he'd noticed at every one of the dog's dinnertimes. Tricks didn't do it any other time, but at dinner she had to be coaxed to eat.

This time, however, Tricks ignored the food bowl and came to lie down beside the stool where he was perched. She crossed her front paws and appeared to be waiting.

Bo made an exasperated sound in her throat and picked up the food bowl. “Yes, your majesty,” she said, as if the dog had spoken. As she approached, Tricks uncrossed her paws. Bo placed the bowl between them, right in front of her. Tricks wagged her tail and began eating.

Morgan had to laugh. She and the dog were a never-ending comedy act. “Exactly which one of you is trained?”

“I am, up to a point,” she admitted without hesitation, slanting a quick smile at him. “She's done this her whole life. She eats without a problem the rest of the day, but she wants her supper how she wants it. Sometimes she wants to be praised before she'll eat. Every so often she'll pick out the
spot where she wants to be, and I have to put the bowl in front of her or she won't eat.” She bent and gently caressed Tricks's head. The dog stopped eating to give Bo's hand a lick. “She's worth the trouble.”

Straightening, she washed her hands and got a pizza pan out of the cabinet, then extracted a large frozen pizza from the freezer. “It's a supreme. Want me to pick anything off it before it cooks?”

“No, I like it all.” Except for anchovies. He'd tried them, though in his opinion whoever had come up with the idea of a fish pizza should be taken out and shot. Some things just shouldn't be.

The oven beeped, signaling that it was hot, and she slid the pizza pan into it. He watched her for a minute, liking how fluid her movements were. She moved like a dancer, each step precise and graceful.

He could have silently watched her until the pizza was ready, but he wondered if she'd be as candid about the rest of her life as she had been about her stab at flipping houses. Maybe he could learn some more about what made her tick. The only way to find out was to do some verbal poking around and see if she'd answer. “What's the deal with you and Mac? Axel,” he amended.

“He's a jerk,” she said without hesitation.

“Yep. Not arguing that. I mean, what's the history?”

“My mother and his father got married. I wasn't thrilled. Neither was he. We hated each other on sight.”

“How long were they married?”

“Seven—no, eight—interminable months. Interminable for all four parties.”

“Not a long time to develop an undying hatred for someone.”

She leaned against the cabinet on the other side of the bar. “It was plenty long where Axel is concerned. I was thirteen and insufferable, he was eighteen and insufferable. At least I had the excuse of being thirteen. I gather he's still insufferable.”

“He has his good points. Not many, but some. He isn't good with people, but he's damn good at his job. When my life depends on good intel and good equipment, I appreciate the last part.”

She gave a small grunt of acknowledgment. “I guess so.”

“Trust me—I
know
so. Axel's father was your mom's second husband?” He kept his tone casual, wondering how much more she'd divulge.

She had a variety of noises that expressed a lot of feeling, and this time she used a snort. “Second? More like fourth. I think.” Looking at the ceiling, she counted them off on her fingers. “Dad, Wilson, Hugh, Douglas—yes, he was the fourth.”

“Damn. Four marriages and you were just thirteen? That's rough.” He still kept it casual because he suspected she wouldn't appreciate sympathy.

“Mom is a serial bride. She's on number seven now, but she's getting older so she may hold on to this one for a while—unless she's divorced him since the last time I heard from her, which has been a while. We aren't close. Not enemies, just not close. She's got her own thing going on, and I'm here in West Virginia. She likes big cities.”

The scenario was getting clearer. Bo had had no stability in her life, no one on whom she could rely, so she'd learned to count on herself and no one else. His psychology skills weren't even at armchair level, but it didn't take a genius to figure out how disruptive the musical-chair stepfathers had been in a young girl's life. His own childhood had been steady, thank God.

“After Douglas she was single for a while—long enough for me to finish high school without moving
again,
though she had a couple of steady boyfriends. After I started college, she married . . . Adam. I think. He didn't last long, so I never met him. Adam, Alan, something with an A. I'm not sure about number six, either. Number seven is William, and I've actually met him. They've been together a few years and live in Florida.”

“How often did you change schools?”

“Every time she married, but after Douglas I was in the same school until I graduated. I was able to join the swim team. I love swimming. All of the apartment complexes we lived in had pools, and that's where I spent my summers.”

Yeah, he could see her as a swimmer, with her aerodynamic build.
She'd be the sprint swimmer, while he was an endurance swimmer, able to swim for miles. That is,
normally
he could swim for miles; now he'd probably drown after twenty yards.

“What about your dad? You close to him?”

“No. He pretty much forgot about me when he left. He remarried, adopted his new wife's kids, had a couple more of their own, and that's his family now. I think they're living in Sacramento, but that was years ago so they may well be somewhere else by now.”

He got the picture. It wasn't awful, but neither was it pretty: ignored, abandoned, jerked around from place to place. No wonder she had walls.

“What about you?” she asked, slanting him a sideways glance from those dark eyes, turning the tables on him. “Have you been married? What about your family?”

“My dad is dead, from a fall in the kitchen. He hit his head on the corner of the cabinets. That was almost fifteen years ago. My mom remarried year before last, to an okay guy. He loves her and takes care of her, and that's good enough for me.”

She waited a minute, probably to see if he'd answer her first question. “What about marriage?”

“Never been married, no kids. I came close to getting hitched once, but it didn't work out. It's hard on a wife when the husband is in my line of work. I'm out of the country more often than I'm in it.” His heart hadn't been broken either, because the truth was he could remember his fiancée's name, but not really how she looked.

“I can see where that would be a problem,” she admitted.

“How about you? Ever been married?”

“Once. I tried it when I was twenty-one, fresh out of college. It lasted less than six months before he cheated.”

“Ouch.” He'd been keeping an eye on the clock and he had a good idea how long frozen pizzas were supposed to heat, having eaten more than a few of them in his life. He slid off the stool. “Sorry I haven't been paying more attention, but I don't know where you keep stuff. Point me in the direction of the plates and things and I'll set the table.”

She looked surprised, dark brows arching. “Are you sure you're up to it?”

“Carrying two plates?” he asked testily. “Yeah, I'm sure.”

“Don't get cranky about it. The plates are there—” She pointed toward one of the cabinet doors. “The glasses are there, and the silverware is there.”

“Why do we need silverware?”

She chuckled. “I don't guess we do.”

As he collected the plates and glasses he said, “I like the barn. You did a good job.” The kitchen cabinets were kind of beat up, but it was like they were supposed to look that way. Big industrial-looking lights hung from the high ceiling, as well as steel ceiling fans. Considering how high the ceiling was, the fans were a necessity. The layout was open from one end to the other, the only real privacy either in the bathroom or the rooms upstairs. It would be a great bachelor pad, out here in the middle of the country, nothing restricted or fussy about the building.

“Thanks. It wasn't renovated in my taste, but I suppose over the years it's become mine. It's my furniture, and that helps. Plus no one else has ever lived here, and in a way that makes it more mine.”

“Except for the cows.”

That got a smile from her. “Cows don't count.”

He set the plates on the table, added napkins. As he headed back to get the glasses he said, “What do you want to drink?”

“Grab a couple of beers from the fridge.”

His head came up, his attention laser-focused on her. “Beer? You have beer?” She'd been giving him
milk
when there was beer?

“If you're steady enough on your feet to carry crockery, you're steady enough to have a beer. Plus you aren't on any pain meds; I wouldn't let you mix them.”

“Beer,” he muttered, opening the refrigerator door and yes, thank you, Jesus, there were five dark brown bottles there. He hooked his fingers around the necks of two of them and pulled them out. They weren't Bud or Miller; there was a pig on the label. He tilted the bottles up to look at them. “Naked Pig? Never heard of it.”

“Back Forty is a little brewery in Alabama. One of the guys in town is a truck driver and every time he goes through there he stops and picks up an order for the devotees here. I like Naked Pig.”

She was into microbreweries. He didn't care. She was a beer-drinking woman, and life was looking better by the minute.

She pointed toward a bottle cap opener that was stuck on the stainless steel refrigerator by a magnet. He popped the tops off, tossed them in the trash. “You want yours in a glass?”

“Yes, please.”

“Girly.”

She grinned. “That's my beer, so watch your mouth or you won't get any.”

He chuckled and poured the beers into glasses—his, too, though he'd have been just as happy to drink it out of the bottle. Her beer, her rules. He'd buy the next delivery.

He almost moaned aloud as the first cold sip slid down his throat. The bubbles snapped on his tongue, and the crispness of the taste made him want to down the whole glass at one go. “Damn, that's good,” he sighed.

She checked the pizza. “Just another minute or so.” Tricks had trotted over when she opened the oven door and stood looking up, hope in every line of her furry pale gold body. “No, nothing for you,” Bo said. “You've already had your dinner. I'm not baking cookies.”

He said, “You bake cookies?”

“She gets cookies for her birthday.”

“That's tomorrow, right?”

“No, it's quite a while until her birthday.”

“Mine's tomorrow,” he lied.

“It is not. I saw your driver's license, remember?”

“It's a fake.”

“I'm not baking cookies.”

Morgan consoled himself with the beer, silently pleased at how well the last half hour of conversation had gone. They'd teased each other—a little—and she'd given him an insight into what had made her so
reserved and self-protective. He hadn't made a big deal of it, she hadn't made a big deal of it, but he knew damn well it
was
a big deal because it had to be. Kids needed stability, and she hadn't had that.