Somewhere Along the Way (8 page)

Gabe granted her wish. Without moving, he took the gentle press of her against him and his kiss continued.

She raised her arms to his shoulders and let them rest there, not holding but moving closer so that she felt him breathing. Either one could have stepped an inch away and broken the spell.

Slowly, his kiss turned hungry. His arm circled her waist and pulled her to him; her cry of surprise was lost in his open mouth. In all her life from dating to marriage, she’d never been kissed like he kissed her. He wasn’t playing or testing borders. He was telling her how he felt. This one kiss consumed her, and her entire body warmed with need.

Then, like the blink of blackness after a lightning strike, he shoved away from her so fast he pushed her into the wicker chair.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t have ...”

He was gone without finishing the sentence. Liz sat in the chair, listening to his footsteps run down the hallway and out the back door. Slowly, her heart slowed to normal.

After a long while, she stood and locked the door to her office, then automatically shoved the chair beneath the knob. If she could, she would rewind the last hour of her life and try to figure out what had happened.

Secretly, she’d always considered herself a pretty shallow person. Dating guys for their cars in high school, for their brains in college. But this . . . was different. Gabe hadn’t even asked her out. He didn’t look like he had anything to offer, and even if he did, he wasn’t offering it anyway.

He’d turned her down. She was ready and willing in his arms, and he’d run like she was a new strain of plague.

Liz sat down at her desk and held her head in her hands. She’d been rejected. No not rejected, almost tossed away. No man, not once in her almost thirty years of life, had broken up with her. But Gabriel had before they even had a first date.

Liz’s world no longer had a center.

GABRIEL MADE IT HOME IN HALF THE TIME HE USUALLY took, his left leg throbbing from the effort. He unlocked his door, checked the system, and slammed his gun on the shelf along with his mail.

“Damn!” His one word rattled around the room, echoing off the walls.

Tugging off his shirt, he headed for the shower. But even when the hot water poured over his head, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just broken one of his big rules. Rules that had kept him alive. Rules that had kept him safe through years of travel with the army. Men like him were sometimes called “smokies.” They had no roots, no family, no home ports. They floated from one assignment to another without leaving any print of where they’d been.

Never get involved! Never!

He grabbed a towel, drying off as he walked down the hallway to the one windowless room in the house . . . his bedroom. By the time he’d pulled on a pair of sweats, he’d convinced himself that he hadn’t really stepped over the line. One kiss probably meant nothing to her. She still didn’t know him. Hell, she thought his name was Smith.

Gabe smiled. Half the time
he
didn’t know what his name was. He’d been Leary until he ran away. In those months before he was eighteen, he’d told everyone his name was Smith just in case the law tried to make him go back home. The army made him step back into Gabe Leary’s shoes when he enlisted, but he’d traded last names with another Gabriel in basic training. He’d gone by Wiseman for almost ten years, but once he came back home to recover, the Gabe Leary shoes were waiting for him. He used Smith on all correspondence related to his work. He’d even rented the office to keep the two separate.

Moving to the main room of his home, he flipped on the light and sat down at one of the three drafting tables. He pulled a piece of drafting paper down and drew an outline of Elizabeth’s face, chin up, big bright eyes, pouty mouth, and light yellow hair that curled around her face like sunshine.

All in all, he knew it would be her mouth that would probably haunt his dreams tonight.

FRIDAY
JANUARY 25, 2008
WINTER’S INN BED-AND-BREAKFAST

MARTHA Q PATTERSON HAD BEEN CONSIDERED THE TOWN slut for so long she’d learned to embrace the title. When she was in her teens she’d take any dare. In her twenties and thirties, folks claimed she married half the eligible men in town and slept with the other half.

Which wasn’t true, Martha liked to remind everyone. Two of her husbands were from Bailee and one from Oklahoma City. But in the twenty years she considered her “marrying phase,” she did marry seven times, if she counted Bobby Earl Patterson twice, him being both her second and seventh.

The part about sleeping with other men was a flat-out lie. Martha had her morals. She believed in marrying first. In her forties Bobby Earl got cancer, and she stayed with him for ten years as lover, friend, and finally nurse. She didn’t consider him the great love of her life, but he considered her his, and sometimes that’s enough to stay with a man.

He died when she was fifty-one, leaving her the business she’d kept running all through his illness and an old house on North Street that his grandparents had built. Martha sold the tire and lube business and remodeled the old house into a bed-and-breakfast that she called Winter’s Inn because Bobby Earl’s favorite time of year was winter.

She averaged three or four paying guests a month, but that seemed to be enough to keep the lights on.

Martha Q was now fifty-three—the prime of her life, she decided—and she had no mission. No real job. No cause. It had been her experience in life that when she had nothing to do, trouble usually walked in to keep her busy. She didn’t need to go to work. Another man was the last thing she was looking for. She’d given up on the cause of losing weight ten times, and children were much admired as long as they belonged to someone else. Though she’d accepted a wide variety of sperm donations, none had provided her with a child, which she told everyone was to her liking.

In the drab cold of a January morning, Martha sat among her antiques and tried to think of one reason to get dressed. She didn’t have a booking at the B&B until next month, and the Red Hats, who had lunch in her parlor, weren’t scheduled today.

She downed the last of her cold coffee and looked through the paper, then mumbled to herself.

Her big tabby cat lifted his head and stared at her.

“I’m not talking to you, fat cat.” Martha wasn’t really that crazy about cats, but someone had told her every bed-and-breakfast should have one. After living with the tabby, Mr. Dolittle, for two months, she decided the cat was the reincarnation of her third husband. He ate at all hours and peed on the bathroom rug. He also had the habit of sleeping with his eyes partly open, which gave her the creeps.

She flipped the page and saw a small notice about Elizabeth Matheson opening a law office. Martha smiled, deciding she’d pay a visit. It had been her experience in life that it never hurts to know a lawyer. Maybe she’d even invite Elizabeth to lunch. She’d never been one to seek out women as friends, but a woman lawyer would be different.

Martha stood. “Well, Mr. Dolittle,” she said to the cat. “I’d better get out the trowel and smear on some makeup. I’ve got a visit to pay.”

The fat cat looked like he couldn’t care less. He turned his head to the bird feeder just beyond the window that Martha had put there just to torture him and she had a feeling they both knew it.

HARMONY FIRE DEPARTMENT

HANK CAME TO TOWN FRIDAY MORNING, SOMETHING HE rarely did. He liked to work at the ranch and considered his workweek from Friday through Monday. Then, Tuesday or Thursday, he’d put in his time at the fire station and Wednesday he spent the day at home keeping the books. Hank almost never took a day off, and when he was forced into it by Thanksgiving or Christmas, he usually spent his time wandering about the house wishing he were outside taking care of business.

But this rainy Friday in January, he had to get away from the ranch. He couldn’t point to what was bothering him. Maybe the fact that Alex had canceled their usual Thursday night dinner, claiming she had too much paperwork to catch up on. Maybe the realization that his sister Liz hadn’t come home for almost a month, and she’d missed lunch with him at the diner. Maybe his mood was brought on by watching Mrs. Biggs go to the cemetery every day, rain or shine. She was living among the dead as if nothing on the other side of the cemetery fence interested her.

He felt lousy, not physically, but emotionally. He liked order. Everything should make sense. Nothing had changed in his world, but it was shifting and he didn’t like it or know how to stop it.

At nine o’clock, he ran through the rain and into the county offices. Alex was walking from the break room with probably her third cup of coffee when he caught up with her.

“What brings you in, stranger?” She smiled, that warm, knowing smile a woman gives a man when she thinks she knows him completely.

He didn’t answer. He just walked into her office, waited for her to follow, closed the door, and tossed his wet hat on the nearest chair. Then he carefully took her cup from her, pushed her against the wall, and kissed her as if he were starving for the taste of only her.

When he let her go, he swore and said, “Marry me, damn it. I don’t like waking up without you.”

She brushed rain from her clothes. “Good morning to you too.”

“You’re not answering me. Alexandra, I’ve loved you for longer than I can remember. We’ve been engaged two years now and we’re no closer to marriage. I don’t like sneaking over to your place in the middle of the night. I want to go to bed every night with you and wake up with you every morning.”

Alex walked around her desk, putting some space between them. “You make it sound so exciting. Tell me one thing, Hank, if we married, where would we live? In my two-room cabin, or at your place with your mother, aunts, and sister?”

“We could get a place in town. We’re both here as many hours as we’re anywhere.”

She shook her head. “Neither of us would survive in town.”

“We could live at your cabin.” He grinned. “It borders my land. I could walk to work.”

“It’s too small. Can’t we just be happy the way we are?”

Hank gave in, like he always did. She loved him, and that should be enough for now. All the women in his house needed him, depended on him. His mother and sister Claire were so into their art they’d forget to pay the electric bill, and his two old aunts only thought of gardening in the summer and quilting in winter. They worried as much about characters on soap operas as they did people. His six-year-old niece was the only one in the house with any brains. By the time she turned ten she’d be running the place.

He picked up his hat and took a step toward the door. “If I have to, Alex, I’ll build us a house on the line between your land and mine. I’m going to grow old with you by my side.”

“That sounds like a plan. I’ll see you tonight.” She smiled. “I’ll have a hot supper ready.”

He nodded. “Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup?” One of the few things she could cook, but when they’d decided always to stay in on Friday nights, the menu hadn’t been one of the considerations.

“I’ll have the fire going.”

He winked at her double meaning and opened the door. “You got time to have lunch with Liz and me?”

“No, not today, I’ve got too many problems to solve. We’ve already had two break-ins reported this morning. Strange, both did damage, shattering glass and kicking in doors to get in, but nothing seems to be missing.”

“Have any suspects?” he said, thinking about how much he liked just watching her move.

“Maybe a gang of boys I’ve been watching. No proof, just a feeling. I caught them shooting at squirrels a few weeks ago. Only thing they seem to be able to hit were windowpanes.” Alex crossed to the window and looked out. “Odd, the break-ins don’t make sense. Why would anyone risk getting arrested for nothing?”

“The victims have anything in common?”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Get this, they were both named Smith.”

He stepped closer. “How many Smiths we have in town?”

“I already checked. Eight families with homes, two singles in apartments, and three with businesses.”