The Wedding Audition (15 page)

“Does he?” She’d longed for that sense of family her whole life and never felt it. No matter how hard she tried to make a place for herself with the Jessups, she simply was not one of them. Didn’t matter what name they gave her. “I appreciate that he gave me a home and a name, Mom. But I don’t think he’s ever felt a personal attachment to me.”

It felt liberating to say it aloud. She’d been afraid of that simple truth for so long, but once spoken aloud, it had less power to hurt her. Perhaps because she knew somewhere out there, her real father had wanted her. At least a little.

For a time.

Her mother’s lips went thin, her pink lipstick smudged. Unusual. But she hadn’t had access to her makeup technician today. “I drove all this way to talk some sense into you, only to find you completely brainwashed against me by a senile old woman.”

“All this way? It’s less than three hours, Mom. If you leave now you can be home for lunch.” Even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t really an option.

Wynn might not let her mother leave until after the trial. He hadn’t said as much, but if she posed a risk to their security, she wouldn’t be surprised. All the Jessup money wouldn’t sway him. She’d seen his commitment to his job and his passion about prosecuting the Dimitri family when he’d told her the truth about his identity.

“Don’t be silly. I didn’t get any sleep last night, so I need a nap.” She stood, smoothing the crisp fabric of her pink pencil skirt. “But after that, you and I are going to have a little talk with your grandmother so we can chase the ghosts out of the family closet for once and for all.”

*

“If the Dimitri
family is making a move, they’re hiding it well.”

The words on the other end of the phone didn’t assure Wynn in the least.

Sun baking through the windshield, he sat in his truck in the middle of his farm, feeling paranoid as hell that this was the only place he’d take a call from his contact back in Miami. He didn’t check in often, no names were exchanged, and each call required a new phone for that one call only. Still, having so much activity around the place made it next to impossible to control the environment. Even just having the name “Beulah, Alabama” in the national news was more attention than he liked.

“Of course they hide it well,” Wynn snapped back at the guy on the other end of the line, a faceless voice, someone he didn’t even know, someone he couldn’t be certain he trusted with everything. With Annamae. “They don’t do their own dirty work. They have too many legitimate income streams to risk playing a public role in their criminal activities.”

“Except for the Antony Marks case,” the other man observed dryly.

The murder Wynn witnessed. The one that would send Serge Dimitri to prison for life, assuming Wynn made it to the courthouse seventeen days from now. “An anomaly,” Wynn dismissed. Serge was the family patriarch, but he hadn’t been active in their dealings for years since he’d passed the business on to his son. “He’s semi-retired ever since his oldest son took the reins from Serge a few years ago.”

Wynn stared out the window at the rows of gnarled fruit trees probably better suited for burning than farming. But there was something peaceful out here in the sea of white blossoms, something that not even talk of the Dimitris could taint.

“Speaking of the younger generation,” his contact said as he no doubt sat in a cool air-conditioned room, “you asked me to look for connections between that reality show actress—Annamae Jessup—and the Dimitri family.”

“And?” He stilled, his hand gripping the phone tighter. He’d messaged that request on a secure server the day Annamae showed up at his gate.

“It’s a small thing, but we did get a hit.” The guy lowered his voice even though there was no sound in the background.

The idea didn’t make sense. Annamae couldn’t have a tie to the Dimitri family. Had someone followed her to town? Maybe the connection meant she was more at risk than he realized.

“What?” he prodded, edgy and pissed off. “What is it?”

“She placed a call to a radio talk show shortly before she drove to Beulah. Right on live radio, she broke up with that third baseman on the Stars—Boone Sullivan. The press is calling her the Hit and Run Bride.”

A stab of jealousy went through him over her recent boyfriend and what now appeared to be her rebound escapades in Wynn’s bed. Great. Just damn great. He should have thought to talk about that more before things had moved too fast and too well – too good – to be true. Living out here was taking away his edge.

He forced his mind back on the job, sorting through what his contact had said, sifting through the words for nuances and implications. A strange stab went through him, a possible betrayal so deep…. “Do the Dimitris own the radio station or something?”

They had their hand in the entertainment industry for sure. Hell, what if they even owned the network where her show aired? He’d briefly considered that possibility when he’d first met her, before she’d scrambled his brains.

“No. The woman Annamae called—the host of Sex Talk with Serena—is using a fake name.” His connection rattled off facts like a well-versed expert on the Dimitri Crime Syndicate. “She’s kept her identity a secret, but Serena is actually Valerie Dimitri. She’s Serge’s granddaughter.”

“Hold on.” He recalled Serge had many kids, most of them illegitimate. But the name Valerie didn’t ring a bell. “Here is all I need to know. Is there any suggestion that Annamae contacted the Dimitri woman at any other time beyond the radio show?”

He saw a movement in the trees and reached for his weapon, but then Bagel raced out of the trees, barking at some falling petals. A few seconds later, Annamae followed, her floral sundress rippling in the spring breeze.

“No. There’s just that one call and it seems like all the rest of the Jessup girl’s life is well documented.”

That would be an understatement from what Annamae had described. He watched her now as she peered up into the branches of an apple tree, then moved to the ends of a low hanging limb to study the blossoms, arching up on her toes in sandals.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” he assured his contact. “I’ll check in next week and we can firm up plans for my relocation.”

“Affirmative.”

Disconnecting the call, Wynn opened his truck door. When he shut it, Bagel noticed him and came running. Annamae was slower to acknowledge his presence, but she did spin toward him, the sunlight making hints of caramel tones shimmer in her hair. She started walking toward him.

Not for a second did he believe she had any kind of connection to the Dimitri family, but he didn’t like thinking that she’d come so close to one of them. He’d never heard of Valerie Dimitri, but that didn’t mean she was clean. Serge liked to keep his family close. Most of the relatives were high visibility thugs.

“Hey.” Fanning a slow wave, Annamae greeted him, far more subdued than her dog, who seemed to have developed a fair amount of affection for him. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Bagel raced to meet him, circling around his boots twice before trotting in step alongside.

“I checked the fences and then called in for an update.” Slinging an arm around her shoulder, he pulled her to him, tucking her against his side. He didn’t plan to tell her about the Dimitri connection. It wouldn’t help her sleep any better at night and besides—he was watching over her now.

And the fact that she’d run from her own wedding? He needed to remember that the next time he got the urge to kiss her senseless. He should keep things simple. “What are you two doing out here?”

“I’m trying to recover from the talk with Mom.” She twirled an apple blossom between her fingers. “Bagel is just along for the ride.”

“I saw you really giving the trees a once-over.” He was in no hurry to talk about anything of substance. No matter what he thought about the ex-fiancé, he still would have rather spent this day just messing around with her in his bed and maybe feeding each other strawberries.

She glanced up at him, her eyes as guarded as his own. “I read your book on grafting trees last night. You know you have a lot of old varieties on this land?”

He had to smile at that, their feet sinking in the soft spring earth.

“Is that so?” He knew, of course. Had been making elaborate schematics of the trees to identify them all.

Hiding out from crime families came with far too much downtime. Then again, farming had grown on him.

“Yes.” She held up the blossom. “You have a lot of southern heirloom apples that can’t be found anywhere else.”

That
he did
not
know.

“I should probably be taking better care of them then.” Which meant he would have to stay here longer term, something he hadn’t thought about. He liked this place.

“Yes, you should, if you want to stay and make any money.” Annamae guided him toward one of the trees and pointed to the flowers, comparing a few of the blossoms to show him the differences.

“So I’ve got a mish mosh of varieties here and every other tree is going to yield up something weird and different?”

“Different isn’t weird,” she countered, before looking away. “My guess is the previous owner was a kind of collector of varieties. I’ll bet the community garden would love to get some cuttings from these trees.”

He watched her examine another branch of flowers while the breeze rained white petals on her hair. If he didn’t have the trial coming up, he’d seriously consider kidnapping her for a year or two and seeing what happened between them.

Except that she’d just broken some other guy’s heart five minutes before she rolled into town. Why the hell hadn’t he paid more attention to what people said about the show or Googled it more extensively? He’d assumed the engagement was staged or some media lightweight affair. Now, feeling the deep emotions running through her, knowing her better, he wondered.

“You know all about cuttings after reading a chapter in a book?”

“More than a chapter. You took a long time to come to bed last night.” She grinned at him over her shoulder, her eyes flirtatious, but still a hint of something sad lurked there. “I read a lot.”

If there were any justice in the world, he’d be hauling her back to bed with him right now to kiss away that sadness, instead of playing host to her mother and worrying about how to keep them both safe.

“Well you made more sense of grafting than me. It sounds like I can’t cut anything until the fall.” When he’d be back in Miami and some other would-be farmer would benefit from all his hard work this year.

“Right. You wait until after they bear fruit. Then you need to take cuttings of them all this year so you can plant a fresh crop in the spring.” She bit her lip, turning it apple red. “That is. If you decide to keep the land. Afterward.”

And wasn’t that the question of the decade for him? He had no idea what the future held for him, but his life was always going to be too dangerous for a woman like Annamae, a woman who lived in the limelight. And since he didn’t want to think about a time without her, he steered them back to the present.

“So how did your mom find you? Did you ask why she decided to show up now to protest the broken engagement?” He fit her subtle curves to his side, inhaling the scent of her shampoo.

Bagel spotted a rabbit, but gave it the same greeting he offered to Wynn’s cats—enthusiastic barking and panting.

Annamae whistled for her excitable pet and he found some enticing smelling leaves nearby.

“She has web alerts for whenever the Jessup name pops online. She saw the sighting and knew I might be in town because of Gram.” She shrugged. “Anyway, Mom’s just trying to get me to salvage something out of the mess I made back home. She’ll want to spin it into a new reality episode about how she’s helping me pick up the pieces of my shattered life.” Sighing, she shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not certain my mother can separate life from the show anymore.”

“Then send her on her way.” He hardly dared to hope it would be that easy.

They kept walking through paths he’d followed hundreds of times in his year of Alabama solitude. It was a whole lot more fun with her at his side. Especially since she seemed to take so much pleasure out of the place. It was the second time he’d caught her unaware out walking, and he couldn’t help but think she must like it here.

“She said something about my grandmother, about more secrets. And my grandmother has shared things about my mom that make it tougher to cut her off. I need to know. More than that, I need to understand.” She paused. “I’m like a poorly grafted apple tree.” She grinned at her metaphor. “It’s like I got glued on the wrong branch and I haven’t thrived ever since.”

“This is all about the Smith side of your family?” he clarified.

“Yes. My real father. And his mother.”

He let that sink in, wishing there was another way for her to thrive without exposing her to more people and more time away from the security of the farm.

“Do you have to do this right now?”

“I believe I do, yes. For the first time in my life, I’ve grown a backbone. Do you realize how liberating that feels? Maybe not. You don’t look like you’ve ever had trouble standing up for yourself.” She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering in ways that made him contemplate a quickie in the back of his truck.