The Wedding Audition (6 page)

“How kind of you to want to volunteer!” Hazel Mae exclaimed loudly, turning her head as if to project her voice as far as possible. “That sounds wonderful.” Then, lowering her voice to a whisper again, she ducked closer. “The walls have ears here, even though they all need hearing aids.”

“Um…” Annamae had no idea what to make of this woman. Was Hazel Mae delusional? Suffering early dementia?

“No one knows we’re related,” Hazel Mae insisted. “I suggest we keep it that way and if I were you, young lady, I would maintain a low profile. That means staying away from the gas station, the diner, and the retirement home.” She ticked them off on manicured fingers. “And that dye job isn’t fooling anyone. I’d go dark brunette. Dye the brows too.” Her eyes tracked over Annamae’s features. “Although I like the blonde.”

“Thank you. That is, I appreciate the suggestions, but I came here hoping to ask you some questions about…” She bit her lip. “My father. My biological dad.”

Hazel Mae’s eyes went wide. She turned to look over her shoulder again, then glared at Annamae.

“Honey,
you
might not mind having your life story plastered all over the Internet, but I have skeletons that are very comfortable in their closets, thank you very much.” She grabbed a paper off the coffee table behind Annamae and jammed it in her hand. “That’s a flyer for the retirement home’s community garden project. It’s a total flop and no one ever shows up to hoe tomatoes but me. Meet me near the marigold bed by the fountain tomorrow morning and we’ll talk there.”

Before Annamae could argue, Hazel had an arm around her shoulders, steering her toward the door and down the hallway past Bobbi’s desk.

“You are an angel to consider volunteering your time to bring attention to the aging veteran community. I think the local VA hospital is the best place to start, but I’m so glad we got to visit.” Hazel must have done theater at some point, or else she was used to dialing up her volume for hard-of-hearing friends because her voice boomed loud enough for the whole first floor to hear.

“Of course.” Annamae smiled, too well-schooled in peacekeeping to defy her grandmother and insist on answers to her questions.

Besides, if the meeting in the marigolds panned out, she could quiz her then.

“Thank you, darlin’. And good luck to you!” Hazel opened the front door with one hand and gently shoved Annamae toward the threshold where Bagel was already barking.

Thanking the dog sitter, she made tracks toward her VW Bug. She couldn’t wait until tomorrow. But first, she would find her way back through those apple orchard fortress gates one way or another.

*

Wynn needed better
technology if he wanted to survive three more weeks in Beulah, especially if he was going to let Annamae Jessup back on the property. He’d wrestled with the idea ever since he’d let her leave the first time, but he kept coming back to the fear that he’d put her in danger. He had no idea how close his enemies were. He’d like to think no one had a clue where he’d disappeared after he left Miami, but he was positive that the Dimitri family would have allocated considerable resources to find him.

He wouldn’t let an innocent get caught in that crossfire again.

If he acted fast, he might be able to get her settled into the carriage house by nightfall. But only if she promised to lay low for a few weeks.

Otherwise… he didn’t want to think about the otherwise. He did not want to get witness protection services involved in the three-ring circus of securing a television personality.

Now Wynn walked the perimeter of the eight-foot fence that some paranoid farmer had once used to encompass his prize apple trees and wondered how long he could count on the electric wiring to keep out unwanted company.

The beeper on his hip chimed while he secured a loose nail on a post along the back of the property. There’d been a gate on this side of the fence at one point, but Wynn had welded it shut before moving onto the grounds. Trip wires and alarms were set.

The place was secure.

“Lambert.” He wedged the intercom receiver between his shoulder and his ear so he could keep working. He liked farm life just fine, but his crop wasn’t nearly as important as security.

“It’s Annamae Jessup, Mr. Lambert. I thought I’d follow up with you about the carriage house. Do you have a few minutes?”

“Actually, I was just about to contact you.” Tucking the bent nail in his pocket, he decided the rest of the fence repair would have to wait until tomorrow. No sense lingering around the fence if Annamae and her entourage lurked nearby.

“You were?” Her happiness transcended the piss-poor sound quality of the old-fashioned speaker system. He’d been so focused on better surveillance, he hadn’t bothered with the sound.

While the woman was on her mysterious errand, he’d researched her online enough to familiarize himself with her storyline on the reality TV show—knew that she played the part of the good daughter in a household full of attention-seeking females. But he would be wise to remember that was just a role she’d been assigned. He wasn’t about to get sucked in by a fake demeanor.

“If you’re serious about wanting privacy while you’re in town—.”

“One hundred percent.” She cut him off, her words blaring overtop of his since they both couldn’t talk at the same time on this speaker system. “And if you wouldn’t mind opening the back gate soon, I would really, really appreciate it. I’m pretty sure someone was following me earlier.”

Wynn’s feet stalled beneath him like a dead tractor. He shoved a hammer into the tool belt at his waist.

“Following you?” The back of his neck itched in warning. “A celebrity watcher, some kind of autograph seeker?” He hoped. “Or the media maybe?”

“That’s the funny thing.” She cleared her throat and in the background he could hear her dog panting—almost as if he had his muzzle right up to the microphone. “I didn’t see any flashes or lenses, which is kind of weird for the people who normally stalk me. I thought it was someone who worked on your farm since he seemed more preoccupied with the grounds than with me.”

What the hell was she talking about? He ground his teeth.

“Listen carefully to me.” He gripped the beeper intercom harder, his thumb pressing the Plexiglas until it blurred the readout. “Is there anyone with you now?”

“No. A minor miracle since—”

“I’m opening the gate. Drive through fast.” Tension clamped his head and stiffened his joints while he wondered who she’d seen. Probably just a curious local, but—Damn.

Without waiting for her response, he pressed the button on the remote opener and forced himself to wait a three-count before he closed it again. He might not care for this woman’s upper crust air of entitlement or her self-involved manners, but he wouldn’t allow an innocent to get caught up in the mess his life had become. A woman in the public eye couldn’t make a better target for the people Wynn was hiding from and he needed to do everything in his power to make sure she remained out of their sight.

Once he had her settled, he’d figure out who was following her.

*

Annamae had won.

She was so used to being the overlooked sister that she almost couldn’t believe that for once in her life she was calling her own shots. But she’d left Atlanta. Gotten a pet. Met her grandmother. And now she’d convinced Beulah, Alabama’s sexiest hermit to rent her his carriage house, effectively winning their standoff.

It had been a banner day, but she’d been determined not to give up until she got what she wanted. And she wanted – needed – the solitude of that carriage house to get over losing her fiancé, wrecking her life and disappointing her family. She also needed the solitude to bolster herself for the inevitable showdown when her parents decided to confront her.

Old VW jostling along every pothole, Annamae steered down the long driveway toward Heath’s house shortly before sunset, pleasantly surprised she’d convinced him to let her stay. Either way, she wouldn’t turn her nose up at a break.

After the strange visit with her grandmother, Annamae needed to regroup and plan for their meeting tomorrow. The beginning stages of senility might account for some of Hazel Mae’s odd behavior, but what if she truly had information to share about Annamae’s father?

Besides, getting to know her grandmother would be easier if Annamae lived a stone’s throw from the retirement center that Hazel Mae had warned her not to visit. She hoped the marigold patch was as quiet as the older woman believed. Annamae had the feeling her soon-to-be landlord would not appreciate any more celebrity buzz coming too close to his private apple haven.

He was definitely not the sort of guy who lobbied to meet her and her sisters just to be on television. Even though show producers would have fainted to have such a—er—
virile
man making appearances on the show. They’d asked for months to get Boone on
Acting Up
last season, but his game schedule had been too busy. And Heath Lambert was every bit as good-looking, along with a dangerous, tough guy edge.

Speaking of Heath…

Holy shitake mushrooms, he was hotter than she remembered. Damn it. Her memory of their last meeting had been defined by his efforts to judge her, to pigeonhole her as a brainless TV personality and a liar. She’d come away with a vague impression of hard, unforgiving eyes and rough, angular features.

Apparently her brain had edited out the memories of broad, tanned hands and muscular arms. And she’d been denied the view of six-pack abs last time, a sight she saw for all of two seconds as he pulled a shirt over his head on his way toward her car.

“No one was at the gate when you pulled in, right?” He covered the ground between them in long, purposeful strides, his focus narrowing to just her in a way she found disconcerting.

“Right. Just me and my dog.” She didn’t bother rolling up the window since the top was down anyway. She left her keys in the ignition and unfolded out of the driver’s seat while Bagel ran a few circles around her feet until he spotted a cat to chase.

Or, as it happened, a cat to bark at.

The black and white tomcat perched on a forgotten old brick well merely glared down at Bagel with a haughty feline stare.

Annamae smoothed a hand over her scarf, tucking a stray lock of brittle, over processed hair back under the silk, and then regretted it as Heath’s eyes followed the movement. Instinct told her this guy expected flirtation and feminine wiles from her and those same instincts said he didn’t respect those kinds of games.

Too bad her need to smooth the wrinkles from the skirt of her dress didn’t have anything to do with a desire to flirt and everything to do with feeling rumpled, tired and out of sorts. She wished she could turn off the internal voices that second-guessed what everyone around her was thinking, a habit engrained growing up in a household that had been watched constantly. But like it or not, she cared what other people thought of her.

“Did you notice anything in particular about the car following you, or the person driving the vehicle?” Dark concern transformed his eyes and his whole face as the sun dropped lower in the sky behind him, casting purple light around them.

Feminine awareness fluttered even though she told it to damn well shut up. Now was not the time to take a sudden shine to bad boys. She had enough trouble on her heels.

“I’m always being followed. I stopped taking notes a long time ago.” She would not capitalize on his worry for her since she’d weathered plenty of unwanted attention in Atlanta. “It comes with the territory when you’re on TV. I just didn’t want to upset the people at the retirement community with a lot of cameras. Besides, it was your guy this time, right?”

Was she missing something here?

His expression went even more ominous.

“Why would you think that?” His jaw flexed forbiddingly, as if she’d somehow lied or cheated or otherwise deceived him.

“Because I saw him just outside the back fence earlier,” she clarified, hoping she wasn’t getting his farm help in too much trouble. “It was the same person you had trimming trees along the fence when I arrived earlier today to see the carriage house.”