Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel (12 page)

Her business done, she left the room and the prison. When she checked her phone, she had three messages. None of them from Nate Breslin.

Which was what she wanted, right?

“
Da
,” she murmured to herself.

Apparently not, she decided, tamping down her frustration as she drove back up the freeway to Portland.

Except for the occasional visit to the racetrack to watch the horses run, Mike wasn’t known to be much of a gambler. Nor a risk taker. Although he wouldn’t lie—he’d love to be one of those flashy detectives who got written up in the papers all the time and appeared on the news, even
Nightline,
and interviewed on the
Today Show
, his reputation was more of a plodding bulldog. Once he got a case in his teeth, he’d keep doggedly moving forward, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, until the full picture fell into place. But dogged and stubborn didn’t make headlines, which had always been okay with him. So long as the bad guys ended up behind bars.

Rather than use the online government system, he’d decided that his newly established business would seem more “real” if he delivered the application to the Portland Licenses Bureau in person. Then, although he’d used a computer all the time at PPB, while he was in old-school mode, rather than Google detective agencies or download a copy of
The Private Eye Business for Dummies
, he found himself driving the six minutes to the library.

The red brick and stone building, which was the oldest library west of the Mississippi, was one of Mike’s favorite places in the city, partly due to the memories of weekly visits with Tess to check out books together and listen to story hour. With its towering walls that let in so much light, marble pillars, and central rotunda, although much of the interior had been modernized, the library remained a stately presence in the ever-changing city.

He was planning to head up to the business section when he saw the woman seated at the welcome desk. His first thought was that she reminded him a lot of Maureen O’Hara, who’d made a bunch of movies with John Wayne, including his favorite,
The Quiet Man
.

Her hair was a deep red that reminded him of the horse he’d bet on this past summer at Portland Meadows. The filly with the long piston legs he’d uncharacteristically and recklessly put a thousand dollars of pension money down on a strong hunch had surprised all the odds makers who’d had her coming in dead last, crossing the finish line two full lengths ahead of the second-place gelding. The win had given him the money he’d needed to open his own investigative agency.

He hadn’t realized he’d stopped to stare until she looked up from her computer terminal and smiled. As he took in her red-tinted lips and eyes as green as the Emerald Isle and bare left-hand ring finger (which his detecting skills immediately told him meant she was available) Mike was breath-stealingly smitten. An old-fashioned word, maybe, he thought as his suddenly addled brain tried to come up with an answer to her question about how she could help him.

But hell, although he knew he was a throwback in this brave new world populated by gazillionaire nerds and skinny-jeans-wearing hipsters, Mike wasn’t ashamed to admit he was an old-fashioned guy. He liked his Scotch neat, meat and potatoes next to each other on the plate instead of arranged into some fancy pyramid that looked like it should be in a museum, and his musical tastes tended to hover in the range of country, bluegrass, and blues. With some Sinatra on the side, because you could never go wrong with Old Blue Eyes.

“Are you looking for something in particular?” she asked.

You
.

Old-fashioned he might be, but he wasn’t so much of a Neanderthal that he couldn’t realize that response that had ricocheted through his head was highly inappropriate.

“I’m looking for some information on running a business.”

“Ah.” She lifted a russet brow. “Those would be on the second floor. Are you interested in any particular type of business?”

“I used to be a detective for PPB,” he said, hoping that she wasn’t one of those people who had a knee-jerk negative response to cops. “I recently retired.”

“You must have a great many stories to tell,” she said. She tilted her head and studied him. “Perhaps you’d also like to check out the writing section? You wouldn’t be the first police officer to turn novelist. There’s Dorothy Uhnak, who served as a policewoman on New York City’s gritty streets before turning to writing. She won an Edgar for the first in her NYPD Detective Christie Opara novels.

“James Byron Huggins was on the Huntsville, Alabama, police force before writing his Christian thrillers, which were made into movies. John M. Wills retired from both the Chicago police force and the FBI to go on and write his award-winning novels and nonfiction work. And, of course, the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and dean of police fiction, Joseph Wambaugh worked in Los Angeles.”

A little dimple winked at the corner of her red lips when she treated him to what seemed to be a personal smile, rather than a welcome-lady librarian one. “Readers could always use another voice in that genre.”

“You know the names of all those authors off the top of your head?” Mike figured with a memory like that she would’ve been a crackerjack detective.

“I like to read. Also, I’ve been a volunteer here for twenty-five years. Well, except during the years we were closed for renovation. Then I circulated around to the other libraries in the system and even drove the bookmobile for a while.” Her eyes warmed with the memory. Which, although it had been a long time for him, had him wondering if her eyes would gleam like that after making love.

“You enjoyed the bookmobile,” Mike said.

Her laugh was like warm brandy on a rainy, foggy, February night. “You must have been a very good detective to realize that…I did. I felt like Santa delivering presents. Or the Good Humor Man.”

“Woman,” he corrected.

The sparkling smile faded from her eyes as she met his gaze with a searching one of her own. “Well.”

When she blew out a breath, he had a fleeting feeling that the zing wasn’t one-sided. Then, when she squared slender shoulders beneath a silk dress the color of Lombardi Cabernet, he felt her returning to business mode.

“The business books are on the second floor. I think I know the ones that might work best for you.”

As he followed a step behind up the grand black granite stairway, watching the sway of her purple skirt, Mike decided that if he’d known librarians had such great legs, he would have been spending a lot more of his retirement hours in the stacks.

Nate was going out of his mind. Five cities in as many days, and as much as he enjoyed meeting his readers, he was already beginning to lose track of which city he was in. Coincidentally, a movie based on one of his books was playing on a local channel, but about fifteen minutes of the butchered novel was about all he could take.

He picked up his phone and punched in the number it had taken all his self-control to avoid calling during the past five days.

“If you’re going to tell another ghost story, I’m not going to listen,” she said without bothering with any pleasantries. Tess knew it was all his fault that the rakish Captain MacGrath had been showing up in her dreams, looking remarkably, disturbingly like Nate Breslin.

When she hadn’t heard from him after their dinner at her house, Tess had decided that he had returned to Shelter Bay and put her out of his mind. For five very long days and nights, she’d been telling herself that was exactly what she wanted. Too bad she couldn’t make herself believe it.

“Are you calling for any special reason?”

“I was lonely.”

“What’s the matter? Did the captain float off somewhere into the void and leave you all alone in that big old house?”

“You know about my house?”

“I saw pictures of it in an old
People
magazine at the hair-dresser’s. It’s beautiful.”

“Did the article happen to mention it was built by the captain?”

“You’re making that up.”

“It’s the God’s honest truth. I know you aren’t ready to believe this, but I think the reason he’s still sticking around is Isabella.”

“You’re right. I doubt I’ll ever be ready to accept that idea. But it makes a good story. And speaking of stories, I’m in the middle of
Dragons’ Lair
.”

“You bought one of my books?”

The obvious pleasure in his voice disconcerted her. “I ran out of something new to read, and when I turned on my Kindle, there it was, advertised on the front page.”

And hadn’t that seemed like unwanted fate? Tess had thought at the time. Or maybe more that the giant company’s algorithm had taken notice of her search for his titles. “So I decided to give it a try.”

Tess had assured herself that it was only curiosity about a man who could actually believe in ghosts that made her go looking online in the first place. That’s all it was, she had insisted when she’d clicked to download. Curiosity. That’s all she would allow it to be.

“What do you think of it so far?” he asked.

What did she think? That reading the novel was like being led across a minefield by a raving lunatic. “I just finished the scene in the graveyard. The one with all the rats.”

“That’s one of my favorite scenes.” Tess could hear the satisfaction in his voice and knew he was smiling. “I’ve always thought horror stories are at their best when they’re big and gaudy.”

“You wrote that particular scene solely to shock.”

“Absolutely.”

Tess was surprised when he didn’t argue by attributing some theoretical artistic merit to the scene. “I thought you were going to claim some deep, important symbolism,” she admitted.

He laughed. “Hey, if you look for some hidden meaning in that book, you’re going to be very disappointed, Tess. It was merely a story meant to entertain. Nothing more.”

“It certainly does that,” she admitted.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“I didn’t say that exactly. To tell you the truth, Nate, I’ve already gotten up twice tonight just to make certain my doors are locked.” Unable to mesh the man who’d brought her étouffée and made her laugh with the horror writer whose mind was so filled with darkness, she asked the question she’d been wondering. “How can you go through life looking at things through such a gloomy cloud?”

“Hey,” he objected quickly, “you’re underestimating me. Didn’t I tell you that writers, especially horror writers, are the best sort of optimists?”

“After reading
Dragons’ Lair
, I’m having difficulty believing that.”

“Think of it this way: Every time I begin a new book, I’m optimistic enough to think that I can make you a child again. I’m promising to make you believe in vampires, ghouls, haunted houses—at least while you’re turning the pages.”

“If that’s your goal, then you’ve succeeded admirably. But I’m not certain that I should thank you for it. I’ll probably have nightmares.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. The dark is a fertile ground for our most primordial fears. Perhaps you just need someone to hold your hand until it’s morning again.”

There was a significant pause. Nate held his breath, afraid he’d pushed his luck too far.

“Perhaps I do,” Tess said at last.

Just when he felt her softening, just when he thought that they might be able to have a conversation free of the sparring that had defined their relationship up until now, there was a knock at the door. Nate forced down the surge of frustration.

“Just a minute,” he called out. “Tess, can you hold on for just a minute? There’s someone at the door.”

“Really, Nate,” she protested, “I have a great deal of work to do this evening.”

“Just one minute,” he promised.

“One minute.”

A moment later, he was back. “Hi again.”

“At least you’re not lonely any longer.”

Her frosty tone had returned. In spades. Nate wondered what he could have done wrong now.

“I’m feeling a lot better; talking to you helps a lot. The room service waiter is nice enough but not much of a conversationalist.”

“Room service? You’re in a hotel?”

“In Omaha. Didn’t you get my message?”

It was Tess’s turn to sound confused. “Message?”

“Damn. I knew I should’ve called. Or at least texted. Instead, I dropped by your office on the way to the airport five days ago and left my itinerary with your receptionist. You were in court,” he continued, “or I would have given it to you in person. Just in case you found yourself with a few minutes to spare and felt like talking to a lonely horror novelist.”

“Carrie, the receptionist, has been out all week with the flu. You must have come by the day she left work early. What itinerary?”

“The one for the book tour my publisher has me on to promote
Blood Brothers
in hopes of boosting pre-orders for Christmas sales.”

“How horrible for you, having to jet-set around the country, appear on talk shows, and put up with the hoards of readers who line up in bookstores to gush about your brilliance.”

“That gushing part is pretty cool,” he admitted. “But I think I’ve picked up a different cold in each of the cities I’ve visited and am in danger of becoming addicted to nasal spray.”

“Surely a man of your vast imagination could find a more jet-set addiction than nasal spray.”

The hint of barely suppressed amusement in her voice was an indication she was beginning to relax. Which, in turn, meant that he was finally getting through to her.

“I suppose I would be on the bottom of the social ladder at Betty Ford.”

“Right behind the hotshot television star who sniffs glue in his dressing room.” Nate decided she was definitely loosening up when she allowed her laughter to bubble free.

He smiled in response to the silvery sound. “I hate to risk breaking the spell, but have you by any chance noticed that we’ve been getting along for at least ten minutes?”

Tess hesitated for a second. “We have,” she admitted, sounding surprised. “But in case you’ve met too many women in the last five days to remember, we managed to have a pleasant enough conversation over dinner at my house.”