“A clever, outrageously funny caper.”

—New York Times bestselling author Stella Cameron on Stella, Get Your Gun

“I think we could’ve planned this one better.”

Jake sighed. “Just like a woman. Always got 20/20 hindsight.”

“This is not about 20/20 hindsight,” I said. “It’s about you letting the damned gate swing shut because you were in too much of a hurry to check behind yourself.”

“It was wide open,” Jake protested. “We disabled it.”

“Well, it’s shut now,” I said. “Hold on.” I punched the accelerator.

“Stella, no!” Jake yelled. “Don’t hurt my truck!”

I heard gunfire behind us and mashed the accelerator pedal to the floor. “Brace yourself!”

Stella, Get Your Man
Nancy Bartholomew

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NANCY BARTHOLOMEW

didn’t seem like the Bombshell type at first. Sure, she grew up in Philadelphia, but she was a gentle minister’s daughter. Sometimes, though, true wildness simmers just below the surface. Nancy started singing country music in biker bars before she graduated from high school. And yes, Dad was there, sitting in the front row, watching over his little girl! She graduated from college with a degree in psychology and promptly moved into the inner city, where she found work dragging addicted inner-city teenagers into drug and alcohol rehabilitation. She then moved south to Atlanta and worked as the director of a substance abuse treatment program for court-ordered offenders.

When the criminal life became less of a challenge, Nancy turned to the final frontier—parenthood. This drove her to writing. Nancy lives in North Carolina, rides with the police on a regular basis, raises two hooligan teenage boys and tries to keep up with her writing, her psychotherapy practice and her garden. She hopes you’ll love her third “child,” Stella Valocchi, and thanks you from the bottom of her heart for reading this book!

For Martha,

who taught Stella how to be a true Bombshell!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Chapter 1

It was 3:00 a.m. and freezing. I was lying next to my partner, Jake, belly deep in pig shit and trying to remind myself that repo is an art form. A good repossession requires creativity and ingenuity. Repo, like art, is not always comfortable or warm. It is messy. Artists are, by their very nature, required to suffer. I took a deep whiff of Mama Pig and knew I was truly suffering. But it wasn’t the agony that bothered me really, it was my karma. This job could ruin my karma for all time. You see, we were robbing Santa Claus.

Jake hates it when I say that, but it’s true. Okay, so it’s not exactly true, but try to tell that to any good Italian-American in Glenn Ford and see where it gets you. We were huddled up inside Santa’s pigpen, waiting for our Golden Moment, the time when the coast was clear and Jake could bring the tow truck up the driveway.

“Nothin’ good is gonna come of this,” I muttered.

“Stella, you were a cop. ‘Santa,’ as you so lovingly refer to him, is a crook. He’s a dope dealer. He didn’t pay for the sleigh, despite having the cash, so we’re taking it back. Clear and simple. It’s a job, Stella, nothing more.”

I stared up at the moon and shuddered. Joey “Smack” Spagnazi, aka “Santa,” did have a bad reputation. He hadn’t served time. He hadn’t even been convicted, but every man, woman and child in tiny Glenn Ford knew he was “connected,” in a mafioso sort of way. Everyone thought he was Chester County, Pennsylvania’s, drug kingpin, but so far, the police hadn’t been able to catch him. He was just too slick. But Joey Smack had his good side, too.

“Maybe he used the payment money to send more kids to that summer camp of his,” I offered.

Jake snorted, ever the cynic. “Yeah, right, save kids with cancer so you can later introduce them to a lifetime cocaine habit. Stella, I don’t get you. Usually you’re the one giving me the soft-heart lecture.”

“All’s I’m saying is, Joey Smack doesn’t mind copping to running numbers, loan-sharking or an assorted list of criminal activities as long as your arm, but he says drugs aren’t his thing. What if he’s telling the truth and we’re robbing Santa Claus?”

“Jesus.” Jake moaned. “Listen, we took the job, let’s just do it. If Joey Smack wants a sleigh so bad, let him pay for it. We don’t have a dog in this fight, all right? We work for Lifetime Novelty. We are not the judge and jury for Joey Smack!”

I studied my partner. Good-looking, in a tall, dark and handsome sort of way. Smart, on most occasions, and resourceful when smarts failed. Why was he so stupid about humanity?

I mentally slapped myself. He was, after all, a man, wasn’t he?

Jake was staring back at me, the impatience leaving his face as something else replaced it, something smoldering hot and, up until now, unrealized between the two of us, unfinished business that had been on the back burner for years. Yep, Jake was a man all right, the kind of man that makes you tingle all over and slowly come to a steady, about-to-boil-over-if-you-touch-me simmer that I found frankly maddening.

“Go get the truck,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I rolled away from him, coming up into a low crouch that startled Mama Pig and her babies. In the darkness I heard Jake chuckle as he moved off toward the road. I forced myself to focus on the job at hand. Joey Smack’s farmhouse sat on a slight rise, hundreds of yards from the road, protected by a wrought-iron electrified fence, which we’d disabled.

In the middle of the huge expanse of pasture he called a lawn sat a huge Christmas panorama. Joey Smack was famous for this. On one side of the field, the Baby Jesus had just been born, surrounded by his entourage, every piece hand-painted and lit up to be visible from the road. On the right, Frosty the Snowman looked on a fake pond filled with magnetic figures that swirled and skated to cheery Christmas music. But it was in the center of the field, most prominently displayed, that Joey Smack had finally outdone himself.

An electronic Santa sat in an illuminated sleigh, hooked up to nine sizable and well-lit reindeer. As you watched, Santa waved and slowly doffed his hat. Every piece of the display used the appropriately colored lights. It was wired into a panel that insured a visual feast for the hundreds of cars that drove by each evening in a long slow snake that snarled traffic for hours every night from mid-November until January. The entire showcase probably compromised the electrical power banks that fed the eastern seaboard, but this didn’t worry old Joey Smack.

No, the affable host, dressed as Santa, would wander to the roadside every night, all smiles and good cheer. He’d hand each innocent child a sucker and ask earnestly, “What do you want for Christmas?” Joey seemed to believe he really was Santa Claus and the new sleigh just added fuel to his delusional fire. It was a custom-made, larger-than-life sleigh and Joey was often spotted from the road, maniacally polishing its brass frame, or sitting up on the bench, shoving the wire-mesh Santa to one side as he cracked the whip over poor Rudolph’s head.

The word on the street was that Joey slipped his regulars rocks of crack when they pulled up in front of the estate for the grand nighttime viewing, but again, there was no proof of this. The other myth about Joey Smack was easier to verify. If he knew of an Italian-American family in Glenn Ford who was in need or without at Christmastime, Joey took care of them, with presents and food and an envelope stuffed with cash to tide them over “until there’s better times.”

Was it any wonder Joey Smack never had to worry about prosecution? Who would testify against a saint like that? Further, who in their right mind would attempt to repo Santa’s sled from Santa Claus? We were risking the wrath of hundreds of children, dozens of Joey’s minions, and probably risking our own lives as well, and for what, a few lousy hundred dollars? What was the big deal about eating and paying the rent? Was that really so important? Was this really a viable career choice?

I crept slowly toward the darkened display, looking for the panel to disconnect the wires before Jake arrived with the truck. Repo is all about speed. We had to load old Santa, his vehicle and the nine tiny reindeer before someone woke up and realized what was going on. No amount of Yankee ingenuity or artistic license would make Joey Smack decide to let Santa go without a fight. Stealth was our middle name, repossession was our game.

I was half swaggering now, buying into my own propaganda. Jake and I were pros. This was a cakewalk for us. After all, he was a former Delta Force Army Ranger, while I was a veritable killing machine, a former cop with every bit of specialized training I could absorb. What could be easier than a simple repossession? In fact, maybe that was the real problem; I just wasn’t challenged by my newfound profession.

When Jake came chugging up the driveway, I was ready for him.

“They’re unhooked. Let’s do Santa and the sleigh first and then stuff the reindeer around them.”

He nodded and we flew into action, moving as quickly and quietly as possible. We were easily a hundred yards from the house, but every move sounded like a shotgun and the diesel’s engine seem to roar louder and louder as we scrambled to load old Saint Nick.

The true shotgun blast was almost a relief.

It thundered into the still night air, turning baseless apprehension into fully grounded reality. We were busted. Rudolph stood alone on the snowy ground where he waited to join his imprisoned but unsecured buddies on the flatbed of the truck. As far as I was concerned, he could stay there, too. The Lifetime Novelty Company would just have to make do with the haul we had on the back of the truck. I was not battling shotgun fire to reclaim one red-nosed reindeer. Not me.

“Drive!” I yelled, diving for the passenger-side door.

The gun roared again.

“Jake, damn it! Let’s go!”

I could hear voices now, men calling out as they ran toward the pasture.

I screamed his name one more time, but knew even before I looked, that Jake had been hit.

I flew out of the truck, ducked low behind the flatbed and yelled, “Repossession! Hold your fire!”

This was met with another blast from the shotgun, this time over my head. They didn’t care who I was. They were protecting their property and would say that when the police came to investigate our murders. Shit!

“Stella!” Jake’s voice, weak, came from the rear of the flatbed. I found him, struggling to stand, and went to him. I grabbed his arm, slipped my hand around his waist and felt sticky liquid coat my fingers. My heart clutched in my throat and for a heartbeat I found I couldn’t move.

“Okay, babe, hold on,” I whispered.

A blast of gunfire blew out the windshield and back window of the truck. With strength I didn’t know I had, I pulled Jake forward, throwing him onto the floorboard of the truck as I dived over him to slide behind the wheel.

I heard Jake moan as I pulled my Glock out of its holster and slammed the truck into gear. We were moving.

Jake squirmed, trying to pull his door shut as he, too, reached for his weapon.

“I got it!” I said. “Just lie still. You’re bleeding!”

I was driving hell for leather toward the front gate. Behind us, Joey Smack’s security guards fired again. As I watched in the rearview mirror, a set of headlights swung out from behind the farmhouse and began following us. I glanced at Jake, saw the color drain from his face and knew we were in trouble.

My chest tightened with feelings I didn’t want to acknowledge, not to myself and certainly not to Jake. I was scared, but not about Joey Smack or his men. I was scared because it was Jake lying there, bleeding, and because I knew with a deep certainty that he mattered to me, really mattered.

“This is so not good,” I muttered.

“What?”

I didn’t answer him immediately. It wouldn’t do for Jake to see me scared, or worse, concerned. Any sign of emotion from me would be a dead giveaway. Around Jake I was as cool as a cucumber. I forced myself to take a deep breath before I spoke.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I just think we could’ve planned this one better, that’s all.”

Jake sighed, a half moan that sounded like raw pain. “Just like a woman,” he gasped. “Always got twenty-twenty hindsight, always gotta process the problems in the relationship.”

I looked out in front of us, squinting as the cold night air hit my eyes.

“No, this is not about twenty-twenty hindsight,” I said. “It is about you letting the damn gate swing shut because you were in too much of a hurry to check behind yourself. Admit it, you were in a big hurry to score Santa and you let the gate swing shut!”

“It was wide open,” Jake protested, starting to sound like a querulous child. “I knew we’d be leaving in a hurry. Remember? We disabled it.”

I stared at the eight-foot wrought-iron fence up ahead. It was closed and locked. I took a deep breath.

“Well, it’s shut now,” I said. “Hold on!”

I punched the accelerator and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.

“Don’t hurt my truck!” Jake yelled. “It’s all I got left of the shop!”

I ignored him. Jake’s truck was dispensable, we were not. His shop might’ve been blown to bits by a maniac, and he might love his truck, but I had to believe our lives were worth a lot more.

“Stella!”

We hit the fence dead-on. The shock of the impact threw me against the steering wheel and wedged Jake tighter beneath the glove compartment. The F–350 bent the metal bars like green tree limbs, but they refused to break. I shook the impact off, fastened my seat belt and shot a look in the rearview mirror as I backed up and got ready to try again. The headlights were gaining on us.

“Stella, no!” Jake screamed.

I ignored him and yelled. “Brace yourself!”

I mashed the accelerator pedal to the floor, held my left foot on the brake and then, just as I felt certain the engine would blow, released the brake pedal. We slammed into the fence, the lock gave, and we were through.

“My truck!” Jake moaned.

“Your ass,” I said, wincing as I tried to turn my neck and look into the rearview mirror. “I saved your ass and all you can think about is a few cosmetic repairs to your grillwork?”

I heard gunfire behind us, close behind us, and saw Joey Smack’s people on our tail.

“You still got your gun?” I asked.

Jake pulled himself up onto the front seat, SIG-Sauer in hand, panting with the pain and exertion.

“Out the back window,” I said.

Another gunshot and the left rearview mirror bit the dust.

“Goddamnit! That does it!” Jake cried. He sprang up, aimed, and then lowered the pistol. “I can’t see a fucking thing! The damn sleigh’s in the way. I can’t get a shot off.”

I veered left, then right, hoping to keep the car from pulling up alongside us. I looked in the rearview mirror again just as Santa took matters into his own hands. As I watched, the robotic Santa seemed to sway, his arms spinning wildly as he careened out of the sleigh and almost toppled off the back of the flatbed. He lay like a swimmer, poised to dive, wobbling.

“Jake?”

“What now?”

“You didn’t have time to tie Santa down, did you?”

Jake rose to look out the back window frame.

Santa began to move, sailing off the flatbed in slow-motion perfection, and crashing down onto the hood of our pursuers. There was a loud sound of tires screeching. The car bobbled across the highway and off into the woods. The last image I had was of a black sedan crashing into a tree and exploding into a fireball.

“Damn!” Jake murmured. “I think they’re dead.”

I ignored him and drove. There was nothing I could do about that right now. Saving our lives and taking care of Jake was my only focus. I had no idea how badly he’d been wounded. My chest hurt with the effort to keep from screaming. I wouldn’t allow myself to even consider the possibility of Jake’s injuries being life-threatening. I couldn’t go there and still function. It was all business or Stella blows a gasket, and I just couldn’t afford the luxury of emotion. I had to make sure Jake was safe and on the mend before I gave in to my feelings.

Along the way to the hospital we lost a couple of reindeer, but considering we’d managed to survive, I viewed the loss more as casualties of war and not shrinkage of the merchandise. I planned to charge Lifetime Novelty a hazard fee, too, for pain and suffering. By the time we actually reached the medical center, I’d managed to parlay our near disaster into a right hefty invoice, due upon receipt.

“You know,” I said as we pulled up to the emergency-room loading dock, “it wasn’t such a bad night after all! We got what we came for, nobody on our team died and we’re going to make a lot of money!”

When Jake didn’t answer, I turned to look at him. He was slumped against the passenger-side window, unconscious.

Chapter 2

Eventually, the entire team assembled in the emergency-room waiting area. I call us a team, but that’s really for lack of a better term. A few months ago, after my career and love life went ka-plooie in one short night, I’d returned home to my old hometown, hoping to lick my wounds and regroup. What’s that old saying? We make plans and God laughs? Three months later I was still here, only now I was in business with most of my extended family and a man who’d once left me standing at the altar.

If I’d seen another option, believe me, I would’ve hopped on it like ugly on an ape, but my uncle was dead, my aunt needed me, and my cousin was too much of a fruitcake to hold down a regular nine-to-five job. Besides, she was in love with the former assistant D.A. for Chester County. That kind of hookup comes in real handy when you’re starting a one-stop-does-it-all private investigation agency.

Jake won his ticket into the deal by helping me find my uncle’s killer. My aunt was along for the ride because she is one of our country’s brightest chemists, and because of that, she requires almost constant protection. Where better place to be protected than in an agency specializing in detection, protection and repossession?

So when Jake got shot, it was only natural that they all showed up to show their support. We might not have a plan, and on any given day one or more of us has at least one screw loose, but we are loyal, and my aunt loves Jake for reasons I may never really understand. There was no stopping them from coming, and to tell the truth, I was relieved. I looked around the waiting room, saw them sitting there, and felt somehow better about everything, even Jake.

My aunt Lucy, her gray hair still in pink rollers, her butterball body encased in a solid black dress with black sensible shoes, sat next to my bizarre cousin, Nina. My aunt was frowning and clutching her black purse to her ample bosom.

Nina, despite the early hour, looked the same as she always did, disheveled. She sat next to Spike Montgomery, Chester County’s former assistant D.A., and her girlfriend. Nina was wearing wrinkled khakis, a T-shirt under a wrinkled man’s cotton dress shirt and open-weave, thick-soled sandals. Her short, spiky blond hair stood out all over her head, its pink tips glowing like traffic cones in a work zone out on I–95. Sometimes I wondered how Spike, the seeming counterculture opposite to Nina, had ever fallen in love with such an oddball.

Spike was the only one of us who seemed unperturbed by a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call to the emergency room. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a simple, conservative ponytail. Her jeans were Tommy Hilfiger, dark denim, and very much unwrinkled. Her turtleneck sweater was unblemished beige, and matched her skin tone and flawless complexion. She wore stiletto heels, even at this hour, when it was all I could do to balance myself in sneakers. But that was Spike, performance artist and former D.A. With her, nothing was truly as it seemed. She was like a tiny Christmas present in a huge, well-wrapped box.

Of course, Lloyd wasn’t allowed in despite my aunt’s protests that he was really my uncle Benny reincarnated. He was, after all, an Australian sheepdog. My dog. Instead, Lloyd was relegated to Aunt Lucy’s ancient Buick, where he sat behind the wheel, with one paw on the gearshift, waiting for updates. Nina had tried to smuggle him in to no avail, and I could tell she wasn’t going to let the issue die an easy death.

As if reading my thoughts, Nina got up and decided to revisit the issue with the powers that watched over the emergency room. She walked across the room, shoulders squared, head held high. Spike watched, following Nina’s progress with a benevolent smile.

“The Western world so discriminates against Eastern philosophy,” Nina told the security guard at the E.R. entrance. “I mean, like, in China, Border collies would be a part of the family. They wouldn’t have to wait in cars.”

“Yeah, but that’s on account of the family don’t want nobody eating their backup stash,” the guard said. “Here we just say leave the animals outside where they belong.”

“You are such a bigot!” Nina sputtered.

That was when Aunt Lucy decided to get into the fray. “You are talking about my husband, sir,” she snapped. “And I do not appreciate your attitude! Benito should be with Jake.”

The security guard wasn’t sure what to do with this turn of events. He took the cigar stump out of his mouth and stared, slack-jawed, at my aunt.

“Excuse me?” he said.

Nina stepped in between the two. “My uncle died a few months ago. Aunt Lucy says the dog is him, reincarnated.” She glared at the guard. “And who’s to say he isn’t?” she finished, daring the man to disagree.

The security guard cocked his head to one side. “Is this uncle related to the patient?” he asked.

“No,” Aunt Lucy answered. “But we look out for each other.”

The guard gave her a patronizing smile. “Well, then,” he said, “if he ain’t family, he ain’t coming in anyway, so he can park his canine butt in the lot like all the other dogs!”

That’s when Spike took over dragging the two women inside while I took a detour back into Jake’s examining room. I was family on account of I’d told the admitting clerk that I was Jake’s wife. I figured they might get sticky on the policies and procedures, so I took care of the red tape early on.

After all, Jake had been unconscious. It was up to me to ensure his safety and overall well-being. We were partners now and even if I had mixed feelings about the guy in real life, it wouldn’t do to act that way when the chips were down. It just wouldn’t be professional. Actually, I was about to lose my mind worrying about him. I was having a great deal of trouble stuffing my feelings back into a neat little box. I couldn’t stand thinking he might be critically wounded.

“Relax,” the resident told me. “It’s just a flesh wound with a lot of blood loss. The bullet went clean through his side. Other than a couple of little scars, he should be fine. Just give him a few days’ rest and go easy on the, um, physical activities.”

It must’ve been the late hour. I stared at the doctor, not comprehending what he was trying to tell me.

“He means no sex for a couple of days, honey,” Jake said, leering at me from the exam table. “He doesn’t want you wearing your old husband out and possibly busting something open.” Jake chuckled. “Like I told you, Doc, she’s a feisty one, that wife of mine!”

The young doctor had the decency to blush, but Jake merely looked pleased with himself.

“I was only looking out for your best interests, Jake!”

“Don’t worry, baby,” Jake said. “I won’t let you get too frustrated.”

I crossed the room to the stretcher, bent down close to Jake’s ear and whispered. “You just wait until I get you out of here, then we’ll see who gets frustrated. You’re lucky I don’t rip those stitches out here and now, sport.”

Jake moaned and the doctor worked to conceal a smirk. I turned around just as he reached to hand me Jake’s discharge instructions.

“It’s really not at all like it seems,” I said. “He’s been like this since high school. See, I turned him down and he just hasn’t gotten over the shock. And by the way, we’re not really married. I just said that so the guard dogs out there would let me in. We work together.”

The doctor smirked harder. “Sure,” he said. “Happens all the time.” He stepped closer and peered into my eyes. “Were you injured at all? I mean, like a blow on the head maybe?”

I spun around just in time to see Jake behind me, making circular motions around his ear and then motioning to me, trying to indicate that I was the crazy one and the doc should humor me.

“Listen here, you,” I told Jake. “Don’t try me, buddy. It’s never too late to be seriously wounded.”

Jake laughed.

The doctor turned back to me. “I want you to close your eyes, then stand on one foot and touch your nose with the tip of your left index finger.”

“Oh, bite me!” I said. “Are you coming, Jake?”

“Not yet,” he said, grinning. “I’m running a little slow. Maybe if you talk dirty…”

“It’s probably the pain-medication talking,” the doctor said, still peering intently into my eyes. “Now, I really would like to check you out.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” Jake leered.

The doctor handed me a bottle of pills. “Give these to him every four hours, as needed.”

I gripped the bottle and looked back at my new victim. “Hear that, big boy? I’m to give these to you for pain, so I’d suggest you behave.”

I turned and glowered at the doctor who was approaching me with a blood-pressure cuff. “Back off, Shorty. I told you, I’m fine!”

The doctor blanched and practically ran from the room. I watched the door swing shut behind him and turned my attention back to Jake Carpenter. I was about to take him to task for everything, from leaving me at the altar my senior year of high school to making my life a living hell, but we were interrupted before I could launch my lecture.

“How you talk, Stella! I could hear every word you said to that nice doctor. What a disgrace. And then, to turn on this one when he is wounded and half out of his mind with the pain.”

Aunt Lucy stood in the doorway, glaring at me then smiling at Jake.

“He’s hurt! This is how you treat someone who saves you from God knows what kind of madman? I thought you said it was just going to be a routine side job?”

Aunt Lucy was taking no prisoners, but she had the facts all wrong.

“First off, he didn’t save me. I saved him! Secondly, it was supposed to be routine, but repos can go down easy or they can turn into your worst nightmare. This was just one of those times.”

Aunt Lucy ignored me, walking instead to the gurney where Jake sat, attempting to put on his shirt.

“Don’t move!” she groused. “Here.” With a deft hand, Aunt Lucy began buttoning Jake’s work shirt, all the while issuing orders. “You need rest and someone to look after you.” She shot a menacing look in my direction. “You are coming home with us.”

“Oh, Mrs. Valocchi, you don’t need to do that,” Jake protested.

It was as obvious he didn’t mean a bit of what he was saying. He let the words slip out slowly, as if he was feeling uncertain and weak. When Aunt Lucy patted his arm, Jake, man of stone, actually faked a wince. I could’ve thrown up. What a con!

“Yeah, Aunt Lucy,” I said. “Jake’s gonna be fine. Besides, where would you put him anyhow? All the bedrooms are taken with me and Nina and Spike there. I’ll look in on him at his apartment. It’s just a flesh wound. He’ll be fine.”

Wrong. I would’ve been better off taking a two-by-four and hitting myself in the head. Now I had incurred the wrath of Aunt Lucy.

“Stella Luna Valocchi!” she cried. Then she lapsed into Italian, which was unusual considering she was born and raised in the United States and learned Italian in college while also completing her Ph.D. in chemistry. But whatever the source of her rich vocabulary of Italian curses, the results were going to be the same. Jake was coming home with us, whether Jake liked it or not.

To add insult to further injury, the police, in the form of one very pissed-off and familiar female detective, materialized just as Aunt Lucy had Jake leaning on her arm and hobbling toward the exit.

Detective Poltrone, a bleached blonde with a brain deficiency, stood blocking our exit, notepad in hand and smug satisfaction written all over her face.

“Not so fast, kids,” she said. “I’ve got a report of a gunshot wound here and I’m thinking that somehow it has something to do with a burned-out sedan smoldering out off Route 322. How’s about we talk awhile?”

Aunt Lucy was incensed. “Can’t you see this man’s in pain?” she sputtered. “He can’t talk to you now. They gave him medicine. He won’t know what he’s saying!”

Jake’s eyes were a bit glassy, I thought, looking at him, and he had a goofy smirk on his face. Was it the pain medicine, or was he just enjoying himself too much?

Aunt Lucy didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she offered me up like a sacrificial lamb.

“Stella was there. She’ll be glad to answer all your questions, won’t you?” Before I could open my mouth, Aunt Lucy went on. “I’m taking Mr. Carpenter home to my house. You can call tomorrow and I’ll let you know if he’s up to speaking. In the meantime, good night!”

The two of them left me at the mercy of the dragon lady, without so much as a backward glance.

I turned back to her with a resigned sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”

Detective Poltrone smiled. “This could take quite some time,” she said.

“Dead bodies usually do,” I muttered.

“Dead bodies?” Poltrone blurted. “What dead bodies?”

I stared at her. Surely the two men in the car had died, hadn’t they?

“Nothing. I thought you were talking about a burned-out car. I just figured…”

Poltrone was waiting for me to stick my foot all the way down my throat, and I had been about to oblige her.

“Nothing. Now about this shooting. You see, it was a simple repossession gone wrong…”

I started talking and Detective Poltrone began writing in her slow, laborious scrawl. I knew without a doubt we’d be stuck like this for another hour, and then what did I have to look forward to? Jake Carpenter would be asleep, most certainly given my bed in the guest room, and I’d be the one sleeping on Uncle Benny’s old couch in the basement.

In reality, it was worse. Not only did I return home at dawn to catch a few hours of shut-eye in the dank basement, but I was also the one who got elected to carry trays up to the wounded warrior all day and wait on him hand and foot while my aunt glowered at me for being “unappreciative.”

“There’s plenty of room, Stella,” Jake whispered, patting the vacant side of the bed. “You don’t have to sleep in that cold, drafty basement. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” He patted his bandaged side gently and smiled up at me. “After all, you heard what the doc said, no strenuous physical activity.”

“Oh, yeah, like you would listen to someone else’s instructions,” I said. “I know you, Jake Carpenter. I wouldn’t be in this bed two seconds before you made a move.”

Jake smiled and gave me that look that made my stomach dive into a free fall. “Well,” he said, “it wouldn’t be strenuous physical activity if you were the one on top.”

I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I spun on my heel and tromped back down the stairs to the kitchen, planning my revenge on Jake Carpenter and then revising it to include more forms of slow torture.

My cousin, Nina, was waiting for me. She was sitting at the kitchen table, a deep frown furrowing lines across her forehead as she stared at a blank piece of white paper. When I slammed Jake’s tray down onto the countertop she jumped, her pen skidded and a long, jagged black line snaked its way across the clean, unblemished surface of the paper.

“See?” she cried. “That’s just what I was trying to tell you! If you don’t have a goal, your life lacks direction. You become just like the line on this paper.”

I looked around, thinking maybe she was talking to Spike and I hadn’t seen her.

“You talking to me?” I asked.

Nina looked around the empty kitchen. “You see anybody else standing here? Of course I’m talking to you! Who else would I be talking to?” She sighed, took up her pen again and frowned at me. “Jake got shot because you didn’t have a plan.”

Oh, right, another country heard from.

“Nina, Jake got shot because Joey Smack’s people had guns.”

Nina shook her head and smiled like I was stupid.

“No, he didn’t. He got shot because you thought we should pool our talents into an agency that helps people in trouble, only you wound up taking a repo job on account of you didn’t have a mission statement.”

“No, Jake got shot on account of they had guns and Jake wasn’t expecting them.”

Nina smiled as if I’d made her point for her. “Bingo!” she cried. “If we’d all planned what this agency was about and what kinds of jobs we wanted to take on, then we would’ve been prepared. You wouldn’t go fix a faucet without a wrench or something, would you?”

As she spoke, I saw Spike appear in the doorway, her head cocked to one side as she listened. I turned to appeal to her.

“So do you think it’s my fault Jake got shot, too?” I asked.

Spike shrugged and walked over to the table.

“I think Nina has a point.” She spoke slowly, as if weighing her words. “I mean, granted, we’ve all got skills in the same area. I’m a lawyer and you used to be a cop. Jake’s former Special Ops and Nina’s… Well, Nina’s…” She paused and smiled at her girlfriend. “Nina’s just Nina. Now, while it was a good idea to decide to go to work together, we haven’t really talked about it since then. All we did was rent office space. You and Jake started taking on freelance investigative work and repos, but Nina’s right, we do need to think about where we’re headed.”

“Yeah,” Nina said. “I answer the phone. I mean, that is so bogus! What a waste of my talent!”

Once again I had no idea what Nina meant. The only talent she had that I was aware of was mud wrestling, and where could you go with that?

“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” Nina continued. “I think I have a calling and I think I ought to follow it.”

The phone rang, startling us all. Spike and I stared at it, then looked at Nina, who sat smiling like the Cheshire cat.

“So are you people going to get that, or must I do everything?” Aunt Lucy came in from the back porch, followed by Lloyd, and grabbed the receiver off the hook.

“Hello?” There was a brief pause as Aunt Lucy listened. “Who? Private investigators? Hold on a minute.” She turned to glare at me. “So now you got clients calling the house?”

I was already halfway across the room, reaching my hand out for the phone, but she jerked it back, insisting on an answer.

“Actually,” I said, “I believe you can blame this one on old Jake. He had the calls forwarded to his apartment after business hours. I suppose he had them sent here after you insisted that he recover over here instead of in his own bed in his own apartment!”

I snatched the phone from her, listened to a muttered diatribe in Italian, and ducked into the kitchen pantry where I could attempt to hear.

“This is Stella Valocchi, may I help you?”

The answering voice on the other end of the line was female and muffled, intentionally muffled, I thought.

“Yes, I need to make an appointment, as soon as possible. Is Mr. Carpenter available?”

It was starting to steam me, the way everyone was assuming that Jake ran the business, rescued damsels in distress and took a bullet to save my hide, when in fact, the reverse was true. What had he been telling people?

“Actually,” I said, “he’s a little under the weather, so he’s not taking any appointments today. However, you’re in luck. I’m Stella Valocchi. I own the agency and Jake works for me. I’ve had a cancellation in today’s schedule and could work you in around four o’clock. Is that soon enough?”

There was a brief hesitation on the other end of the line. “I suppose,” she said, sounding just like a whiny kid who had to settle for vegetables instead of candy. “But I really wanted Jake.”

I sighed. “Take a number,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, ‘Do you know where the office is? Four Wallace Avenue, second floor?’”

“I’m sure I can find it,” she snapped.

“I’m sure we’ll be able to handle your case without any difficulty. Trust me.”

“Oh, all right!” she said, and hung up.

I looked over and saw the others hanging on my every word. “Of course, you do know that we charge a thousand dollars a day, plus expenses?” I asked the empty line.

Nina’s eyes widened into saucers.

“And we will need a week’s deposit in advance.”

The line began to hum.

“Fine then, I’ll see you at four.”

I hung up and turned back to the assembled group at the kitchen table. “Now, what was this about a mission statement?”

Chapter 3

Just once I’d like to have a plan go my way. Just one time. Was that too much to ask? I stood in what had been my bedroom, clutching my towel and clean clothes to my chest, watching as Jake rolled off the bed, fully dressed, and proceeded to search for his shoes. He should have been fast asleep.

“She asked for me. I’m going.”

I adjusted my towel turban, tightened my hold on the jeans that were wrapped around my underwear and bra, and gave him the no-shit-I-mean-business stare.

“You are mortally wounded, remember?” I said. “That’s how you scammed your way into Aunt Lucy’s house and my bed, isn’t it? You’ve been gut shot. You need my aunt to tend to your every need. You can’t go see clients in the office. I’ll handle it and you can hear about the job later.”

Jake found his lizard-skin boots, pulled them on slowly and gave me a look of his own. I was working on becoming immune to the way he looked at me, but so far I found myself weak-kneed every time.

“What’s the matter, Stella? Afraid I’ll be tougher than you? Afraid you can’t keep up?”

He stood and took two steps toward me.

“Be careful. Remember, you’re wounded.”

Jake smiled. “Funny, it hardly hurts at all.” He reached me, his hands reaching to grip the sides of my arms.

“Jake, you’re out of your mind on pain medicine. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

I felt my grip go weak on the clothes I held in front of me and clutched tighter to keep my towel wrapped securely around my body. He stepped closer, towering over me, his breath hot on the side of my neck.

“Why, Stella, you’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“I’m not scared of you, Jake.” My voice cracked into a squeak that told him I was lying, only believe me, I wasn’t really afraid of him, just a little…apprehensive maybe? I actually had come in only because I’d forgotten to bring a change of clothes into the bathroom. If I’d known he was awake, I would have asked my aunt to get them.

Jake ran the index finger of his right hand down the side of my face, the work-roughened skin exciting every nerve ending as it moved.

“I think you’re scared, Stella,” he whispered, cupping my chin with the crook of his finger. “I think you’re very scared.”

He bent his head toward me. My stomach pitched and his lips met mine. Finally.

The clothes hit the floor. The towel followed. I heard his foot kick the door shut behind us as I pressed into him. The rough fabric of his denim shirt brushed across the tips of my nipples and they hardened, begging for his touch.

Jake sighed. His tongue searched my mouth and mine answered him. In an entire lifetime of fantasizing, nothing could have matched the reality of Jake Carpenter’s kiss.

The turban holding my damp hair slid to the floor. Jake’s fingers raked my scalp, pulling my head back to better meet his inquisitive lips. He stroked the back of my neck in one long fluid movement that seemed to pulse with energy and heat. How long had I waited for this?

Since high school? Since the day he’d run off, too scared to elope, leaving the mousy little nerd to explain all to her aunt and uncle? Had I still been secretly waiting for him when I ran off to reinvent myself? Because I know I’d been waiting for this moment ever since my return to tiny Glenn Ford, Pennsylvania. But did I really want Jake, or did I just want him to want me so I could be the one to walk away?

His fingers slipped down my back, circled my waist and moved up toward my breasts. His hot mouth bruised my lips as I answered him with a passion I didn’t know myself capable of feeling. I felt him harden against me and knew I had Jake Carpenter in the palm of my hand. I could finally pay him back for every moment of agony he’d put me through eleven long years ago.

So why then didn’t I break it off and leave him there, wanting me and never being able to have me? Why was I lingering when I owed the son of a bitch a good and final payback? I mean, it wasn’t as if he was really my type, now, was he?

Jake’s thumb and forefinger found my left nipple, squeezed softly, and then pinched harder as I moaned and my knees went weak.

Okay. What was the better revenge, really? To leave him all worked up, or to get my needs met and leave him wanting?

Oh, definitely the latter. I mean, after sleeping in the cold, dank basement on Uncle Benny’s couch, didn’t I deserve a little satisfaction?

I felt his left hand moving down my side, felt him guiding us toward the bed, and knew I was going for all I could get before I rolled away and said, “There, that’s what you get for jilting me and humiliating me in high school!”

We half fell backward onto the bed and Jake only winced once as he rolled onto his left side and shifted to find a comfortable position. Once he’d settled in, his hands began to explore every tender, responsive inch of my body. When his fingers slipped between my legs, I stopped breathing. Oh, yes, this was definitely the good part. Oh, please hurry, I begged silently.

I grabbed the waistband of his jeans and fumbled with the button. Might as well do some exploring of my own, I figured.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” I whispered.

I felt the button give, tugged at the zipper, and was rewarded with a gasp from Jake as my fingers found smooth, hardened skin.

Jake rose up onto one elbow and stared into my eyes. His fingers moved closer and closer and if he didn’t touch me soon I was going to have to beg. Without a word, he read my mind, and I felt his fingers plunge deep inside me.

Oh, yes, I was going to enjoy this. I was going to…

“Stella! You in there?” Nina banged on the door. “Hey! We need to leave! It’s almost three-thirty. Isn’t she coming at four?” More banging.

I jumped off the bed, snatched my towel off the floor and wrapped it tightly around my torso. What in the hell had I been thinking?

“Yeah,” I called. “I’m coming!”

“Does Jake need anything before we go?” she asked.

I looked at the man lying on my bed. He’d fallen back against the pillows, eyes shut, his facial expression the perfect picture of frustration. Revenge was sweet, but so unfulfilling!

I struggled into my clothes, danced around the floor on one leg as I pulled my almost too-tight jeans up and quickly zipped them.

“No, he doesn’t need a thing,” I called to her.

Jake opened one eye and frowned. I stood, topless, at the end of the bed and let him suffer as I slowly, very slowly, pulled on my bra and fastened it.

“He’s not in pain, is he?” Nina asked. “Aunt Lucy says he can have another pain pill now.”

I looked at the bulge in Jake’s pants and smiled. “He may be a little uncomfortable,” I said, “but he’ll manage. He’s a tough guy.”

I smirked, pulled my black turtleneck sweater on over my head and turned to open the door.

“Wait,” he gasped, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “I’m coming.”

I looked at his crotch, then at his darkened eyes. “No, you most certainly are not,” I answered.

I opened the door and Nina half fell into the tiny bedroom. She took one look at me, glanced over my shoulder at Jake and started laughing.

“You didn’t… I mean, you weren’t…” She gasped.

“No!” we both answered.

Nina’s grin broadened. “Oh, man, wait until I tell Spike!”

I glowered at her, sure that behind me, Jake was doing the same. “Nina, let’s just get going, all right?”

Nina looked miffed. “Well, don’t take it out on me!” she huffed. “I’m not the one who said she’d be at the office in an hour!”

She spun on her heel and headed down the steps, leaving me to dash off after her. When Jake didn’t follow us, I was both relieved and disappointed. He needed to stay home. After all, a gunshot wound was nothing to fool around with, even if it had been superficial.

I raced Nina to my Camaro, slid behind the wheel, cranked the engine and looked at my watch. Ten minutes. We’d make it with five to spare, even with it being rush hour. Of course, rush hour in Glenn Ford meant a four-minute commute across town instead of the usual two.

“What’s that red light mean?” Nina asked, breaking her pout.

I looked at the instrument panel.

“Damn! We need oil.”

Nina sighed. “Oh, that’s nothing! One time I drove my car with the oil light on for two weeks.”

I looked over at my pink-haired cousin. “And then?”

“Oh, well, it died forever, but that wasn’t because of the oil light. The engine block froze.”

“Nina,” I said, rolling my eyes mentally, “that’s what happens if you don’t get oil!”

Nina stared at me. “You’re kidding, right?”

I started down the driveway. “No. We have to stop.”

“But we’ll be late. You told her four and she’s paying a thousand dollars a day.”

“She’ll wait.”

“This is so totally why you need a mission statement,” she muttered.

I failed to see the connection between stopping to put oil in my car and a corporate mission statement, but I kept my mouth shut. I drove to Sheeler’s Garage, ran inside to grab two quarts of oil, and figured at most, we’d be five minutes late.

That was before Joey Smack’s representatives, in the form of a long, black sedan with dark, tinted windows saw fit to stop by Sheeler’s and give me a personal season’s greeting from their boss, aka Santa Claus, aka The Man Voted Most Pissed Off About Having His Sled Repo’ed.

I had the hood popped and was about to insert the funnel, when the car rolled to a stop beside us. The right-side passenger window slowly slid down, just far enough for an arm and a hand to emerge. The arm was wearing a charcoal-gray suit jacket and a light blue cotton shirt with cuff links. The hand was holding a gun.

“Merry Christmas!” the arm’s owner called, and started shooting.

Nina screamed and ducked down in her seat. I hopped behind the car, wedged between the pumps and the Camaro and wished like hell I’d worn a holster instead of leaving the Glock wedged down beneath the driver’s seat.

The bullets hit the right front tire, the right rear tire and the back window, before the driver of the sedan hit the accelerator and tore off out of the lot.

I heard the squeal of tires and cautiously popped my head up over the open hood and watched the getaway.

“Nina, you all right?” I called.

Nina slowly rose up from the front passenger-side floorboards and gave me a nasty look.

“We could’ve been killed!” she stormed. “Don’t you take precautions? Why didn’t you shoot them?”

“My gun was in the car,” I said.

Nina nodded an I-told-you-so nod. “See? No planning. No mission statement. That’s how you wind up in situations like this. You need to be prepared!”

“I’m sorry, honey,” I said, realizing how scared she was.

Nina shook her head. “It’s not just that they shot at us,” she said softly. “I’m used to that by now, I mean, ever since you started chasing bad guys and all, but we could’ve been better prepared, Stella, that’s all.”

Of course, that wasn’t all. Nina was right, as usual. I hadn’t been prepared. I hadn’t figured Joey Smack would go so far, but he had and we hadn’t been ready.

“You ladies okay?” The shaken garage attendant popped his head out of the door. “I called the cops, they’re on the way.”

Needless to say, we were late for the client meeting.

We pulled into the parking lot at 4:20 p.m. Nina practically flew out of the car in her rush to unlock the front door and open up the office. “Office” is a euphemistic term here. Our temporary quarters were over a print shop in what had been a long-vacant apartment in major need of renovation and cosmetic improvement.

When Nina slid her key into the door leading to the steps up to the second floor, she turned, her eyes widening.

“It’s not locked,” she whispered. “I think somebody’s up there!”

I walked back to the car, stuck my hand through the now-missing back window and pulled my Glock out from its resting place beneath my seat.

“Wait here,” I told her. “I’ll go check.”

“But what if he shoots you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, you could start by calling 911. If I’m dead, bury me in my jeans. I don’t see the sense in getting all dressed up and uncomfortable just to be buried.”

“Stella!”

“Okay, okay! Just call 911 if you hear gunshots, and stay out of the way!”

I handed her my cell phone, gently pushed open the front door and started up the stairs. I kept the gun low by my side, careful to step on the outside edges of the old stairs, and slowly moved toward the second-floor office.

I hated coming in this way. Approaching a possible bad situation from the ground floor was potential cop suicide and I knew it. If someone heard me, if they were waiting for me, I was a sitting duck.

I crawled the steps, flattened against the wall, and reached the landing. So far, so good. I paused, listening, and was rewarded with the sound of muffled voices, male and female, coming from the upstairs office.

You’d think burglars would be quieter. I snuck up three more steps, my head rising just above the hall floor. I peeked around. Nothing. I trained my gun on every possible hiding place and still saw no sign of illegal entry or Joey Smack’s people. As I listened, I heard the impossible.

Jake Carpenter’s unmistakable rumble echoed out into the hallway. He laughed and I knew for certain he was inside. When a woman’s high-pitched giggle erupted, I knew the score. Jake had beaten us to the punch. He was sitting in my office, in my high-backed desk chair, talking to our client as if I didn’t exist. Damn him!

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped, spinning around to face Nina, who’d managed to sneak up the steps behind me.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought I told you to wait!” I whispered loudly.

Nina grinned and brandished the Camaro’s tire iron. “Yeah,” she replied, “you did, but now I’m armed. I can help.”

Nina cocked her head and listened intently for a moment. “Besides,” she said, brushing past me, “it’s only Jake anyhow.”

Leaving me to follow in her wake, Nina sailed through the office waiting room and on into the inner sanctum where Jake held court with our new client.

“Maybe we do need a mission statement,” I muttered. “Maybe a few people need to know who’s in charge around here.”

I stiffened my shoulders and walked behind Nina into the office. The new client sat with her back to me. She was so unconcerned with our arrival that she didn’t even turn to look over her shoulder as Nina made her entrance.

For some unknown reason this was all about Jake. I knew that much from our brief telephone conversation. She probably assumed, wrongly, that since he was the man, he would handle her investigative matter better than any mere girl. I sighed inwardly, funny how some women were like that.

Jake finally broke his contact with our new client and looked up.

“Well,” he said, smiling, “finally. We were beginning to wonder about you.”

He rose and indicated the woman sitting across from him. “Stella Valocchi, may I introduce you to Mia Lange?”

Our new client stood and for the first time I got a good look at her. A few inches shorter than my five-eight, closely cropped straight black hair, black leather jacket, short skirt, black stockings, high heels. Dressed to impress, or rather, dressed to seduce. Deep, dark eyes, small, perfect mouth, but the pout said she was not a happy woman.

I noticed something else about her, too. When she turned to me the light went out of her eyes, but when she looked at Jake she lit up like a Christmas tree. She was as phony as they came and I disliked her instantly.

I extended my hand and smiled, figuring two could play this game. “I’m sorry we’re late. We got held up.”

Her grip on my hand was like iron and she squeezed hard. I figured she wanted to see me wince, so I squeezed back. Was that the merest flicker of pain I saw cross her marble features? I smiled a little wider. Nina broke the moment.

“Held up?” she sputtered. “Well, not exactly, more like shot at by attempted murderers!”

Mia Lange’s eyebrows lifted and her mouth dropped into a perfect O of surprise, but her eyes remained coolly detached and I thought she seemed completely indifferent to Nina’s news. She released my hand, returned to her seat and dismissed me entirely.

But Nina had Jake’s complete attention. He raised his eyebrows. “What happened?”

I smiled frostily. “Don’t worry. I took care of it.”

Jake nodded, silently agreeing to discuss it later, and started to sit back down in my chair. When he caught the look I gave him, he hastily grabbed one of the spare chairs and pulled it up beside the desk.

“Here,” he said, gesturing to my chair. “Why don’t you sit here.”

I gave him a withering glance, nodded him into the spare seat and took my rightful place behind the desk. Nina was right. We were so going to have an organizational meeting just as soon as our newest client left.

“Ms. Lange.”

“Mia,” she cooed, her eyes widening and fluttering in his direction.

“Mia,” he echoed, “has asked us to find her brother. It seems they lost contact with each other after their parents died and they were adopted out.”

I felt the first tiny twinge of remorse for not liking our new client. She’d lost her parents when she was a kid, too. I’d been lucky. I got to finish growing up with my mother’s sister, Aunt Lucy, while Mia got stuck with strangers.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. “How old were you when this happened?”

Mia looked down at her lap. “I was very young,” she answered. “I couldn’t have been more than four-years-old at the time. My brother was older, I think, but not much, maybe a year or two.”

I nodded and gave her a sympathetic look. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your brother?” I asked politely. “Do you have any idea at all where he might be?”

Mia never looked at me, instead she lifted her head and stared straight into Jake’s eyes.

“Like I told you,” she said softly. “The investigator I hired a few years back was able to learn that he might have been adopted by a family in Surfside Isle, New Jersey, where we were born. He couldn’t find out anything else.”

“So you’ve tried to find him before and couldn’t?”

Mia nodded. “I was so young when my parents died, too young to even remember my siblings’ names—or even our family name. I have nothing to go on. My adoptive parents gave me the name of the adoption agency, but the agency would only tell the P.I. that my brother grew up in Surfside Isle. The records were sealed and they couldn’t give him anything else to go on. The same thing happened with my sister. The agency said she was adopted to an out-of-state family, but wouldn’t give us more.” Mia shrugged. “I made sure the agency had my name and address. I told them that if my brother or sister ever wanted to find me, they could give out my information, but that’s all I could do—wait and hope they come looking for me. I gave up until about a month ago. That’s when my sister contacted me.” Mia bit her lip and fell silent for a moment.

“I really need to find my brother,” she said, her voice tinged with desperation. “You see, he may be my sister’s only hope.” As I watched, tears formed in her eyes and her lower lip trembled slightly. “She needs a kidney transplant. I would have given her one of mine, but it turns out I’m not a suitable donor. I’d go look for him myself, but my sister’s so ill now that I’m afraid to leave her. I would hate to go looking for my brother and have my sister die. I mean, we’ve only just found each other! That’s why I need you.” She gazed into Jake’s eyes as big tears rolled down her perfect cheeks.

He leaned forward, patted her knee and handed her a tissue. Nina, watching from the edge of the room, bit her lower lip and frowned.

Mia shook her head, brushed away the tears with one elegantly manicured index finger, and seemed to struggle for control of her emotions.

“I’m all right,” she said, smiling bravely at Jake. “I just feel so alone in all this. Without my brother, I really have no one I can turn to.” She stared into Jake’s eyes. “Please tell me you can help me help my sister.”

“Don’t worry,” Jake said. “You’re not alone anymore. We’ll find your brother.”

“Good.”

Mia straightened in her chair, her attitude changing from pathetic damsel to businesswoman the instant she heard Jake say he’d help. She reached into her large leather bag, brought out a thick, business-size envelope and handed it to Jake. “I hope this covers my retainer,” she murmured.

Jake tossed the envelope onto the desk unopened and said, “I’m sure it’s fine.”

I was less trusting. I reached for the packet, opened it and almost gasped. There were ten one-thousand-dollar bills inside.

“I’ll get you a receipt,” I said. “Of course, there will be expenses in addition to our usual daily rate…”

She didn’t even let me finish. She dismissed me with a wave of her hand, her eyes never leaving Jake’s infatuated face. “Of course, whatever you need. Just let me know and you’ll have it.” She smiled at Jake.

She reached back into the bag, pulled out a manila envelope and handed it to Jake. “I’ve heard such good things about you,” she said softly. “I just know I can trust you to find him.”

Jake beamed, while I took the more paranoid worldview of a cop. How had she heard anything about us? We’d only been in business for a month. So far our biggest coup had been the repossession of Santa’s sleigh, and I hardly thought Joey Spagnazi was bragging about what a great job we did.

“I’m glad we come so highly recommended,” I said. “Who do we have to thank for sending you to us?”

Mia glanced briefly in my direction.

“My sister. She’s a bookkeeper for a local businessman and she gave me your name.”

“What’s your sister’s name? Maybe we can find your brother by tracing your sister back to Surfside Isle.”

“Oh, we tried that already.”

Jake nodded sympathetically. I was less impressed.

Mia fluttered her eyes in Jake’s direction and I wanted to slap her.

“You see, I came to Glenn Ford, hoping against hope that I’d be a match, but it didn’t work out.”

“Didn’t work out?” I echoed.

Mia’s head dropped slightly and she stared down at her hands.

“No,” she said softly. “I have hepatitis C, so I’m not an option. That’s why we’re so desperate now. My brother is her only hope.”

Before I could ask her anything else, she stood up, this time making eye contact with both of us.

“I only have one request,” she said, her voice firm and undeniably hard.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Find him, but don’t approach him. Don’t tell him about us.” She paused, apparently remembering her helpless act, and continued, this time in her little-girl-lost tone. “It might be a shock to him, that’s all. I want to be the one to break it to him. I don’t want to jeopardize my sister’s chances by having a stranger tell him about us.” She fluttered her eyes at Jake again. “You do understand, don’t you?”

Jake seemed to grow two inches taller. “Of course, Mia,” he said, soothing our poor little client. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

She reached out and gripped his arm, her eyes pleading. As she did this, I had an instant mental memory of myself standing naked in front of Jake, the same expression mirrored in my own eyes. Now, here I was, the bystander, while Mia Lange, the dark-haired pixie, was the object of Jake’s very rapt attention.

“I just knew you’d be the one,” she whispered. “I’ll be in touch.”

Oh, no you won’t, I thought, you will so not be touching this man. He’s mine! The thought jumped unbidden into my head and just as quickly I forced it back out.

“How will we reach you, Ms. Lange?” I asked.

“It’s all in there,” she said, indicating the manila folder she’d given Jake. “All my numbers are in there, my sister’s, my cell and my pager.”

Jake and I watched Mia Lange turn and walk away. She strode out the door past Nina without so much as a sideways glance. She almost collided with Spike in the hallway.

“Excuse me!” Spike said as Mia practically ran her down.

“Certainly,” Mia murmured, apparently oblivious to the sarcastic tone.

Spike stepped into the waiting room, saw the three of us staring after Mia and stopped.

“Who the hell was that?” When no one answered, Spike shook her head. “Important client, huh?”

Nina was the first to snap out of the Mia trance.

“Oh. My. God!” she squealed. “Important? You wanna know what’s important? Me and Stella almost got killed at Sheeler’s gas station! Some idiots shot at us! Oh. My. God!”

Spike stared at Nina, her face whitening as the news sank in. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Who did this?”

She crossed the room to Nina, put her arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “Honey, are you okay?”

Nina nodded, her eyes huge with remembered fear. “They could’ve killed us! But don’t you worry, I’m ready for them now!” She reached underneath her desk and pulled out the tire iron and a spray can of room deodorizer.

Spike looked at the two objects and frowned. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I understand the tire iron, but what about the room freshener?”

Nina grinned, pulled a lighter out from the pocket of her jeans and brandished it in front of us.

“My secret weapon,” she said. “The bad guy comes for me. I try to hit him with the tire iron, but in case it doesn’t work, I pull out my spray can. I point it at him, flick my Bic, and push! Instant flamethrower! See?”

She made a move to click the lighter, but Jake was faster, pulling the Bic out of her hand as I grabbed the spray can.

“I believe you!” Jake said. “I just don’t want you to miscalculate and torch the office.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t going to actually do it, stupid. What do you think I am, a pyronaut?”

“Pyromaniac?” I prompted.

“Whatever!” Nina groused. “I’m not stupid, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Well, of course not, baby,” Spike cooed. “No one thinks you’re stupid. I think you’re very brave.”

Nina quit pouting and smiled. “Yeah,” she breathed. “Totally. You do?”

Spike nodded.

Jake nudged me, motioning me back inside our office. “Joey Smack, you think?” he murmured.

“Absolutely. I think paybacks are murder and he’s pissed. We’ll be on his shit list for quite a while.”

Jake smiled. “Nothin’ we can’t handle, especially from New Jersey.” Jake plopped back down in my chair, propped his feet up on the desk and turned his thousand-watt attention to me. “Yep, old Joey Smack is gonna have a hard time exacting his revenge when we’re in New Jersey and he doesn’t have a clue.”

“New Jersey?” I echoed stupidly.

“Yeah, I mean, that is where the boy was born and raised. Don’t you think we oughta take up the trail there and see where it leads?”

Jake’s eyes twinkled as he picked up the envelope stuffed full of cash and tapped it against his open palm.

“Oh, yeah, babe. Me and you. A tiny mom-and-pop motel, all but vacant for the winter and a missing brother. Oh, yeah. What a life! It could take weeks to find that boy. Imagine.”

I kept silent, knowing full well Jake was quite capable of hanging himself without my help.

“Yep,” he said, stretching back in the leather chair. “Two people could get to know each other quite well in a situation like that. Intimately, I’d say.”

There you go. Give a man enough rope and he’ll ruin every opportunity, usually with his mouth.

I leaned in the doorway, arms folded across my chest, the perfect nonverbal picture of the word no.

“So, you’re looking forward to a little time away, just the two of us?” I purred, enjoying the setup.

Jake gave me the look that flipped my stomach like a pancake, savored the effect, and practically crowed. “Oh, yeah, babe. I’ve been waiting for this for a lifetime.”

“Obviously,” I murmured. I let my gaze drift lazily down his body, stopping midway as I licked my lips and only half faked anticipation.

Jake smiled. It was a shame to have to burst his bubble.

“So, Jake?” I cooed.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Has it occurred to you that Joey Smack won’t settle for us being out of town and that he’ll come after Aunt Lucy and Nina next? Have you forgotten that Aunt Lucy is a very valuable chemist and that you remain under government contract to ensure her safety? Have you completely stopped thinking with the Big Head because the Little Head is currently in charge of your life, thus insuring that I won’t come within thirty yards of you, even if you were suddenly the last human being alive and all the vibrators had dead batteries?”

I fired the questions like rifle shots and the effect was worth every word. Jake went from complacently confident of popping me in the sack, to confused and finally, irritated. I had him, all right, right where I wanted him. So why did I still feel disappointed?

“So what are you saying, one of us has to stay here?”

I shrugged. “That’s one option, or they could come with us.”

Jake exploded. “Oh, now that’s a plan, Stella. We pack up two, maybe three cars, with your aunt, your cousin, her girlfriend and Lloyd, then proceed to Surfside Isle, New Jersey, to look for a missing person whom we are to find but not approach. We don’t have a name, a description, or any other information, but you want to make this ‘easy’ case into a family fishing trip. Oh, now that’s professional. Yeah, the Beverly Hillbillies Private Investigation Company is at your service!”

I straightened and went in for the kill. “At least I wasn’t so busy thinking about getting laid that I forgot about Aunt Lucy and the safety of my co-workers!” I snapped. “At least I… Whoo!”

Something cold and wet nuzzled my ass from behind. Lloyd, happy to see me, was demanding my attention.

“Dog!” I screeched. “Get off me!”

Aunt Lucy stepped forward. “Your uncle has something to say.”

“By sticking his nose up my ass?”

Aunt Lucy stiffened and raised one imperious eyebrow. “He can’t help that he’s hampered by his new body,” she said. “Reincarnation isn’t exactly easy, you know. It’s not like the Sears catalog. You can’t just pick out your new body and say, I’ll take that one! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!” She sniffed. “And I don’t think profanity amuses him. It’s not exactly like you’re on God’s A-list, anyway. When was the last time you made confession?”

The conversation was definitely taking a dangerous turn for the worse.

“How do you like the shore?” Jake asked, attempting to rescue me.

Aunt Lucy didn’t seem especially thrilled to see him, either.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

“Surfside Isle has some great fishing,” he added, completely ignoring the question.

“Surfside Isle has mobsters, too,” she retorted. “It’s cold. The wind blows in off the ocean and you can feel it in your bones.”

Lloyd barked once, a short yip that seemed to mean something to Aunt Lucy. She cocked her head, smiled and said, “Well now, you’re right. That was nice.”

Lloyd moaned and padded over to investigate the trash can under my desk.

“I suppose,” she said, then turned back to us humans. “Your uncle likes to surf fish. Maybe the blues are running.” Then she frowned at us. “Of course, you won’t have much time for fishing if you’re trying to find someone’s brother.”

Busted. Aunt Lucy, Nina and Spike had obviously overheard every heated morsel of our conversation, not that we were trying to hide anything. I looked over my aunt’s shoulder and saw the other two hanging just behind her, obviously curious.

“Okay,” I said. “We’d better talk.” I looked at Nina. “I think this time it might be a good idea to have a plan.”

“We could start by naming ourselves,” Nina said. Then she stopped, her forehead creased in thought. “Well, actually, I think we might want to do some team-building exercises first. Maybe a trust walk.”

“A trust walk?” Aunt Lucy echoed. “How’s about we start with a place to stay? I have a friend who’s got a house in Surfside Isle, just one block off the ocean. Why don’t we start by asking her if the place is open? Trust walk!”

Nina bristled. “We blindfold partners and walk them around, you know, so they develop a trusting relationship and confidence in their partner’s ability to keep them safe.”

Spike was standing by the window in the office staring down at the street. She seemed so absorbed in the cars below that I was surprised when she roused herself to speak.

“Well,” she began, in her clear, crisp attorney tone, “I think there are more important issues to be addressed first.”

The room fell silent.

“Like what?” Nina asked.

Spike glanced out the window again. “Well, we could start with the four men in the car across the street. They’ve been watching the building for about five minutes, but now another car is pulling up behind them and everyone’s getting out and heading our way, and just so you know, I think they all have guns under their overcoats.”

The entire room exploded into quick, silent action. There wasn’t time for team building, mission statements, or a corporate name that reflected our unique abilities and talents. It was showtime.

Chapter 4

“Wait!” Spike commanded. “Stella, look at this!”

Jake moved with me, taking the side of the window opposite Spike while I stood and watched over Spike’s shoulder. We stood where we wouldn’t be seen from the street, hidden by the thick, dust-covered velvet drapes that had once been elegant accessories to someone’s bedroom.

Below us, on the busy small-town street, stood six men, all wearing overcoats and looking like movie extras in Scarface. They were prevented from crossing to our side by what can only be described as a parade float, a flatbed truck covered in thousands of roses sculpted to look like a garden scene. The trailer slowly inched down the main street of Glenn Ford, its loudspeakers blaring “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” as a figure wearing a groundhoglike headpiece and a tuxedo held on to a microphone and swayed in time to the music.

“Okay, okay, okay!” Jake barked. “Let’s move it!”

“What is that?” I asked.

Spike met my eyes. “Beats me. Looks like a one-man parade.”

“Bring it on!” Nina yelled. “I’m ready to rumble!”

We all jumped, startled. Nina stood in the doorway, her eyes wild with adrenaline, a Bic lighter in one hand and the can of air freshener in the other.

She turned away from us, faced the open waiting-room door and screamed, “I got somethin’ for ya! Do you feel lucky?”

“Oh, Jesus,” I moaned. “Why me?”

“Nina, come on. There’s a time to kick ass and this ain’t it. Follow Jake!” I slid my hand behind my back and pulled the Glock out of my waistband. “I’m the tail on this one,” I called to Jake. “Get them out of here!”

I wanted to say, “See, I told you so!” but, of course, this was definitely not the time for that. We had six men with guns looking to have a close encounter and the only thing standing between us and annihilation was a one-man parade. I looked back out at the street. The song was ending and the groundhog seemed to be signaling the driver to stop. Who in the hell was this guy? Was it Joey Smack in a new costume or what?

As the truck shuddered to a halt, the groundhog in black tie looked up at the office window and began to speak.

“Lucy, darling, I know you’re in there! Let me see your sweet face at yon window!”

He threw his arm up and out toward our office, almost reeling off balance with the force of his movement. I shrank back against the drapes and watched as Joey Smack’s boys stared in helpless frustration. A crowd of onlookers was beginning to gather, not a good omen for your run-of-the-mill mafia retaliatory hit. The mob, on the whole, and Joey, aka “Santa” Smack, in particular, liked anonymity when they killed people.

I felt some of the tension begin to ease out of my neck and shoulders and a smile began to play across my lips. This wasn’t Joey Smack, but who in the world was it and how did he know Aunt Lucy was in my office?

“Lucy, dear, I have loved you from afar, and now I come searching for some sweet remembrance of you, some token I might carry close to my heart until you accept me as your soul mate!”

I turned and stared back at Jake. He was herding the others toward the back exit, the door that led downstairs to the employee parking lot. We might not have a mission statement, but we, by God, had an emergency exit to the first floor.

The music started up again outside, accompanied by a chorus of car horns as the trapped motorists voiced their irritation at the prolonged delay.

“Lucy dearest, I must bid you adieu for now. Parting is such sweet sorrow!” the lovesick groundhog cried.

The truck jerked into gear and lurched forward as the quivering flatbed began inching once again down Lancaster Avenue.

“’Tis a far, far better thing I do…” I heard the guy yell, “than I have ever… Oh, dear!”

The microphone clattered to the floor of the truck as its holder grasped frantically at a rose-covered jukebox for balance. Joey Smack’s men seemed momentarily undecided about pursuing their mission, and I decided to err on the side of caution. I jumped in front of the window, threw it open and leaned out as far as I could.

“Help! Police! Those men have guns!” I yelled. “I think they’re going to rob the bank! Call 911!”

The disbursing crowd stopped, frozen by the new drama.

“Over there!” I yelled, pointing to Joey Smack’s elves. “Call the police!”

If there had been any ambivalence on the part of the six men below me, it was now gone as they headed for their two cars, heads down, hat brims pulled low over their Neanderthal brows.

“Yes!” I crowed triumphantly. I flipped open my cell phone, hit number one on the speed dial and waited.

“Done!” I said when Jake answered. “But not for long. Pull into Aunt Lucy’s garage, sneak them into the house and tell them to grab whatever essentials they need for a week out of town. And I mean essentials like medicines and dentures, not hair gel and accessories.”

Jake chuckled. “That might be a hard sell,” he murmured. “You know your aunt. She’ll pack half the lab and then start on the kitchen.”

“There were six of them,” I said. “They weren’t looking to play. Jake, I think Joey Smack’s mad about more than a sleigh repo. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t have a good feeling about it. I think a week away ought to give us enough time to figure out what the hell is going on.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Jake hated anything that seemed like a retreat in the face of enemy combatants, his Delta Force training had made him like that. He hadn’t modified his approach to accommodate the civilian business world, where tanks and machine guns didn’t grow on trees, and the laws forbid the use of deadly force on a casual basis.

In the background I could hear my aunt’s voice explaining something technical, probably to Spike. I shivered. If anything happened to her, or in fact to anyone close to me, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. What had we been thinking, starting up such a risky business without considering the repercussions?

“Can you get out of there safely?” Jake asked. “Do you need backup?”

I looked out at the street. Joey Smack’s men were gone, or at least, out of sight.

“I’m good,” I said. “I’ve got Aunt Lucy’s spare car key on my key chain. I’ll drive her Buick. I’m not coming near the house unless you need me. I’ll head on down to the shore. I’ll call you when I get into town and tell you where to meet me.”

“Good,” he said. There was a brief pause and when he spoke again his voice was soft and husky. “Be very careful.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “I will.”

I flipped the phone shut, still smiling, and locked up the office. I grabbed the paperwork on Mia’s case, pulled up the trapdoor and made my escape through the back exit of the print shop below. Joey Smack’s goons were nowhere in sight. Ten minutes later I was on Route 322, leaving town with nobody on my tail and nothing but the highway to keep me company.

I found myself flipping through the radio stations, looking for road music, not listening to any of it because all I could hear was Jake’s voice in my head. “Be very careful,” he’d said. His tone had been different from anything I’d heard from him before. It wasn’t casual; it was full of unspoken emotion. It wasn’t Jake tossing off an order; it was Jake invested in the outcome, very invested.

Oh, who was I kidding? Jake didn’t really want me. He wanted the thrill of the chase, not a relationship. He wanted to make up for being too scared to follow through with the ceremony during our botched elopement in high school. He didn’t really want me; he wanted to polish his tarnished bad-boy crown.

I stabbed at the radio, looking for something to drown out the embarrassing memory of parking in front of a Maryland justice of the peace’s house and waiting for hours for Jake to show up so we could get married. I cringed as I remembered that I’d only left after the justice of the peace himself had emerged from his front door and started walking purposefully toward the car.

Bruce Springsteen’s voice broke in on the memory singing “Born to Run.” I took my finger away from the scan button and let him have his say. It was the perfect music for a trip to Jersey and a stroll down bad-memory lane.

I’d come back to Pennsylvania for all the wrong reasons. I’d come back, tuck-tailed, because I’d caught my boyfriend in bed with my patrol partner. I’d come back to lick my wounds, and yes, I’ll admit it, I’d come back seeking revenge on Jake. But, revenge was supposed to be a passing encounter on the street.

I had it all worked out in my fantasies. I’d walk by. He’d stop and scratch his head, thinking, “Hey, wasn’t that Stella?” Only, I looked good now and I kicked bad-guy ass for a living. I wasn’t some shy nerd with no experience who believed any line of talk a guy gave her. I was the new-and-improved version of the old Stella Valocchi and Jake Carpenter didn’t stand a chance with me.

So how was it I wound up trusting him when everyone else thought he’d murdered my uncle? Of course, we’d found the real murderer, but that didn’t explain why I’d gone into business with him. And how on earth did I wind up butt naked this afternoon, lying on my bed with his lips dangerously close to providing me with a dose of nirvana I might never be able to forget?

The mere memory of this afternoon’s close encounter brought my heart up into my throat. All right, so maybe I wanted the man, but just on a temporary basis, then I’d be over it. One night of torrid lovemaking and I could put Jake Carpenter behind me. One night and I could move on with my life. Hell, maybe we could even be friends one day.

I mulled that one over for a moment, watching the traffic ahead of me as day turned into night and rush hour dispensed millions of cars onto the highway. Jake and I had to work together. It wasn’t as if we really had any viable alternatives. His auto-body shop had burnt to the ground in a fire. It would be months before the insurance money came through and he finished rebuilding. He needed money, and repo work was usually a cakewalk.

And what did I have to go back to in Florida? A boyfriend and a partner who’d betrayed me by sleeping together. What kind of life was that? No, my days on the force were a thing of the past. I had to find a new career and take care of my aunt. That meant Jake and I had to work together. Romance mixed with business spelled disaster every time. I was living proof of that.

I sighed and stabbed the scan button again. There was no way I could really sleep with Jake Carpenter. The revenge might be sweet, but the consequences could ruin me. No, it was definitely better not to think about Jake at all, not in that way at least. I felt my heart sink as Aunt Lucy’s Buick began to crawl across the Ben Franklin Bridge into New Jersey. I was feeling sorry for myself. I mean, all I wanted was a normal relationship, with a normal guy. Was that so much to ask?

The cell phone chirped and I lunged for it, happy to have the distraction.

“Hello?”

There was a pause, the crackle of static, and then a voice, low and guttural, spoke.

“You took something of mine,” it said. “You got exactly twelve hours to return it.”

“Mr. Spagnazi,” I said, guessing. “We were employed by the Lifetime Novelty Company to repossess your sled. Take it up with them.”

“I’m taking it up with you. This don’t have nothing to do with them.”

The man was a total lunatic.

“It’s on their lot,” I said patiently. “It’s not my problem.”

I flipped the cell phone shut and tossed it onto the passenger seat. This was insane. We do a simple repossession and look at the consequences: Jake gets shot and Joey Smack loses his mind. I shook my head to clear it, switched off the radio and forced myself to begin thinking about the business at hand. I made a mental to-do list: find a place to stay, ask around about Mia Lange’s brother and get Joey Smack off our backs.

I was winding my way through the lonesome stretch of Jersey Pine Barrens when the cell phone rang again.

“Your aunt talked to her friend with the house in Surfside Isle,” Jake said. He was all business, no “hello,” no concerned tone. Clearly I’d been hallucinating when I’d talked to him last time, but my stomach lurched all the same at the sound of his voice.

“She left a key with the neighbor. The address is 732 Forty-eighth Street. You got that?”

“No problem,” I answered.

“Good. Stop by the local grocery on your way in, too, okay? We’re gonna need beer, and coffee for the morning. I figure we can order pizza later. I’m starved.”

What was I, his mother? I felt my grip tighten on the cell phone. “Anything else?” I asked, my tone sticky sweet.

The sarcasm was lost on him. “Yeah, if you don’t mind, swing in somewhere and pick up a saltwater rig and some tackle. I wanna get some surf fishing in before we leave.”

I flipped the phone shut and tossed it over my shoulder into the back seat. Men! What a piece of work!

“I wanna get some surf fishing in,” I mimicked. “Yeah, and I want to spend a day at the spa and have my hair and nails done afterward.” What a freaking clown.

I looked at the clock on Aunt Lucy’s dash and figured I had a half hour left before I hit Surfside Isle. I settled back in the driver’s seat and tried to catch a glimpse of the ocean, but it was pitch-dark outside. I tried to remember the last time I’d paid a visit to the Jersey shore and found nothing but a few vague memories from high school.

The Shore was where everyone in Glenn Ford went for Senior Week if they couldn’t afford Florida. It was a black-and-white TV, a poor substitute for the living color of Florida with its crystal-blue waters and green palm trees. The Shore was in-your-face action, loud music, the boardwalk and sex.

Where Florida was all talk, Jersey delivered. Jersey didn’t make you act nice or talk pretty to get what you wanted; it shoved it at you with one hand and took your money with the other. The Shore fit the Jake I knew from the old days, but it couldn’t hold me, not any longer. I wanted something with more passion, more feeling behind it. I wanted something wonderful to remember, not an embarrassing encounter I couldn’t forget.

I cruised through Long Beach and thought about summers with my girlfriends, back before I’d known Jake. I remembered a sky-blue bikini with metal star studs, the smell of lemon juice in my hair, and the sting of too many hours spent laughing and playing in the sun. I remembered in flashes a vacation before my parents died, my father laughing and my mother taking pictures. It was good back then.

I sighed and looked past the ghosts, out into the winter’s night, and saw the briefest glimpse of moonlight hitting water. It could be good again, I thought. “Good times always follow the bad,” I murmured, quoting my uncle Benny.

A few miles later I entered Surfside Isle. Even on a winter’s night, with almost everything closed up tight, Surfside Isle demanded attention. The Ferris wheel in the amusement park caught the eye of the moon and glowed like a street-walker wanting attention. Neon signs winked Vacancy, or worse, Closed for the Season. I slowed the Buick to a crawl, passing shops and restaurants. Row after row of shingled cottages looked bereft without their summer visitors.

I pulled into the parking lot of the only place in town that appeared to serve food and was still open. The sign in the middle of the big glass window said Marti’s Café. It was the kind of place that probably got overlooked in the summer. It didn’t have the typical beach neon to beckon customers. No plastic swordfish to imply a rich menu of fresh seafood. It was simple, the kind of place locals probably frequent and guard as a jealous secret against the onslaught of tourists. I stepped out of the car and started for the door just as the lone waitress switched the Open sign to Closed.

“Shit!” I swore under my breath. What now?

As if she’d heard me, the woman looked out, saw me, and with a sigh, gestured toward the door. She looked tired, as if it had been a long, slow day. Her pale pink uniform was stained with what looked like spaghetti sauce and coffee. I waited, smiling, as she fumbled to unlock the door. Her wiry red hair fell across her shoulders and she flipped it back impatiently as she struggled with the lock.

“Thanks,” I said as the door swung open.

She looked at me, dark circles under her even darker eyes, and attempted a return smile.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m the only game in town this time of year and you look worse than I feel. What’s another customer, eh? I could use the money, and honey, looking at you, you could use something to eat.”

Damn. Was it that bad? I inspected myself in the mirror above the diner counter and thought, well, yeah, I guess it is. My hair lay flat against the sides of my head. I was pale, even more washed-out because my naturally dark hair was still blond due to an unfortunate undercover assignment that had happened months ago in my former cop life. I looked like a tired ghost.

“Coffee?” the woman asked. She’d gone around the counter to grab the pot of ancient brew off its stand.

“Is it safe?”

“Do you really care? Beggars can’t be choosers, you know.”

“Don’t mind her,” a male voice interrupted. “She talks to everybody like that, don’t you, Marti?”

I’d overlooked the guy at the end of the counter. He was maybe midforties, curly salt-and-pepper hair, tall, wearing jeans and a faded navy T-shirt. From the way he looked at Marti, I figured him for a boyfriend. He looked lovesick. Then I looked at Marti and realized she was completely unaware of his feelings for her. I revised the picture. Maybe he was her husband; marriage is like that sometimes.

“You complaining, Tom?” she asked.

“Not me, babe, never.” He turned his attention to me and smiled, but not the way he smiled at Marti. “Get her to heat up the chili. Her chili’s like…” He hesitated for a moment. “Like…winning the Super Bowl when the other team was favored to cream you.”

Marti actually blushed. I did another mental revision; this was an awakening, a new relationship about to flower.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that. Chili sounds great.”

“You want fries with that?” Marti asked.

Behind her, Tom slowly shook his head.

“No, chili’s fine.”

“You know, I forgot about that corn bread you made,” Tom murmured.

I took the hint. “I love homemade corn bread!”

Marti, seeing the setup, smiled at Tom. I settled back on my stool and felt myself begin to relax. Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a raw deal after all. Maybe we’d find Mia’s brother right away and still have time to spend a few days relaxing.

“Do you live here?”

Tom took a sip from his coffee mug. “Well, I did when I was little, but I moved away. I came back a couple of months ago for a two-week visit and haven’t left yet, so I guess you could say I live here.”

“Must be a pretty small town in the winter months,” I said.

Tom smiled. “Just gives me more time to learn the routine around here before the tourists start coming back and all hell breaks loose.”

I tried to drink a sip of my coffee, smelled the acrid scent of burned beans and put the cup back on the counter. Tom’s attention was split between entertaining me and being entertained by Marti. He watched every move she made through the open window into the kitchen, but glanced away if she looked up, too shy to be caught and too entranced to stop staring.

“Yeah, Surfside’s small but it’s grown a lot since I lived here.” He swiveled a little on his stool. “What brings you to the beach in the dead of winter?”

“Well, I met a guy who said he lived here. He made the town sound really beautiful. I thought I’d come visit, maybe run into him again.”

Tom’s attention switched back to me. “He doesn’t know you’re here?”

I tried to look embarrassed. “Well, no. You see, we met in a park two years ago in…New York, Central Park, and well, somehow we just started talking. He said I should come to Surfside Isle and look him up if I could, but…”

I looked down at my hands and bit the inside of my cheek thinking I should’ve taken up acting.

“I feel so stupid. See, he gave me his card and I lost it.”

Tom laughed, a rich, deep chuckle that made Marti look up from her place behind the window.

“You lost it? So you just came here looking for a guy who lives somewhere in Surfside Isle but you don’t know where? What’s his name? And why did you wait two years?”

I kept my head down. “I don’t know,” I murmured. “I can’t remember his name. You see, I was dating someone and so I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I kept thinking about him, I don’t know why, and when Glen and I broke it off, I suppose I…oh, I know, it’s stupid!”

Tom almost fell off his chair laughing. Marti slid chili and corn bread up onto the window’s counter and walked through the door to join us.

“What’s so funny about that?” she asked. “You mean to say you never met somebody, looked into their eyes and felt they could be the one? And then something happens and—” she snapped her fingers “—just like that, they’re gone and you never got a chance to see what was there. That never happened to you?”

Tom looked right into Marti’s eyes and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “And I made a resolution about that kind of thing. I don’t waste opportunities anymore.”

The force of Tom’s intensity seemed to radiate into the room, filling it with feeling and unspoken emotion. If it had been a two-by-four, the realization couldn’t have hit Marti any harder. Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open, and she turned bright red.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh!”

I watched my chili grow cold in the pass-through window behind her for a long minute as Marti and Tom stood staring at each other, oblivious to anything and everything but their own, newly created world. It was Marti who dropped back into the reality of the moment and realized where she was.

“Your chili!” she said, practically throwing the bowl from shelf to counter.

“Thank you!” I scooted back as the bowl slid toward me, sloshing dangerously.

Marti picked up a rag and began swiping furiously at the counter between us, ignoring Tom.

“You don’t remember his name?” she asked.

I shook my head. The chili was hot and deliciously spicy. I’d almost lost interest in Mia Lange and her brother. Almost.

“What’s he look like?”

I choked. What the hell did he look like?

“Well, he’s about forty, I’d say, and um…well, you know…cute…average height, great eyes.”

I shoveled chili into my mouth and avoided eye contact. They had to think I was a total ditz. I couldn’t even describe him to them. Fortunately, Marti and Tom were too wrapped up in each other to pay too much attention to me. They tried, but I knew they were just waiting for me to leave so they could talk.

They made a halfhearted attempt to review the café’s regulars. By the time I’d finished the corn bread, they agreed that they hadn’t seen any “cute” men in their forties who lived year-round in Surfside Isle, but they did know how to direct me to my rental house.

I left with a clear idea of where I was heading, but the sinking feeling that finding Mia Lange’s brother would be no easy task.

My cell phone rang as I started the car.

“You buy bait?” Jake asked without preamble.

“No,” I answered. “Did you really think anyplace would be open this time of year?”

Jake sighed. “There are no problems,” he said, “only solutions. That’s why I’m calling. I stopped a while back and took care of it.”

In the background I heard Nina yell, “I told him it could wait!”

“Well, you can buy all the bait you want, but you’re not fishing until we find our client’s brother.”

Jake snorted. “How hard can that be? A small beach town can’t have too many regulars.”

I rolled my eyes and visualized myself punting him like a football out into the surf off Surfside Isle.

“We’ll be there soon,” he said. “We’re just crossing the bridge. How’s the house?”

“I don’t know. I’m just pulling up in front of it now. You’ll see for yourself in about twenty minutes.”

I rolled slowly down Forty-eight Street and pulled into the driveway of a small, brown-shingled cottage. The street was desolate. A few houses, including the neighbor to the left of our house, had lights on, but that was it. No one moved in front of the windows, no one walked down the sidewalks, nothing passed under the few lonely street lamps.

“The neighbor on the right has the key,” he instructed.

“The neighbor on the left,” I said.

Jake sighed. “She said right.”

“Depends on how you look at it,” I snapped. “See you when you get here.” I closed the phone, cut the engine and got out of the car before he could call back.

“Do I look like I need supervision?” I asked the car. “I didn’t think so!”

I walked across the short frozen brown grass to the house next door, a large blue-shingled thing that looked more like a series of boxes than someone’s cozy beach cottage.

I started up the steps, saw a white envelope with Aunt Lucy’s name on it, and stopped. Inside was the key. I looked back up at the house for signs of life, saw none and shrugged.

“That was easy,” I muttered. “No muss, no fuss. Guess they didn’t want us waking them up.” I looked at my watch. It was barely after nine. “Old people,” I sighed.

I walked back to the Buick, grabbed my purse, my gun and my keys. I took a long look up and down the deserted street. The sound of the surf pounding the shore behind me and the scent of salt air couldn’t override the silent alarm that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

I whipped around and thought I saw the slats on the neighbor’s blinds drop quickly back into place. I stared hard at the darkened window but saw no further movement.

“You’re seeing things,” I muttered. “You’re like a kid scared of the dark. Get a freakin’ grip!”

I walked up the narrow concrete walkway to the house, climbed the steps to the glass-enclosed front porch and fit the key into the lock. I stopped, listening to the sounds of the vacant house before fumbling for the light switch. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the creaks and squeaks of a windblown beach cottage.

I flipped on the lights, stepped inside and locked the door behind me. I was standing in a cozy, beachside cottage that could’ve been furnished by my grandparents. Overstuffed recliner, blue tweed couch, braided rag rug and knotty-pine walls. Someone had hung café curtains with cheery, yellow rickrack in the kitchen, and a large rectangular table with mismatched vinyl-covered chairs took up the eat-in area.

“Homey,” I said out loud.

Still, I found myself reaching to pat the Glock tucked securely behind my back as I walked through the rest of the house. One bedroom and bath downstairs that would do for Aunt Lucy; no one would hear her snoring if she slept in the back of the house. But this left only two bedrooms upstairs; one with two double beds and one with a queen. Shit. How was that going to work? I couldn’t sleep with Aunt Lucy; no one could sleep with snoring that sounded like a jet engine roaring in their ears all night. Spike and Nina were virtually newlyweds, so that left their room out as an option. I was not sleeping in a bedroom with Jake Carpenter. No way.

Of course, the second I told myself I wouldn’t, all I could think about was, what if? My imagination went wild. I thought about it, pictured us starting out in two separate beds, then somehow, overcome with either revenge or lust, ending up in one bed, and then, well, I didn’t let myself go there, at least, not for long. Okay, so I thought about the two of us, horizontal and naked. Thought about it so hard and long that when I heard the front door open, I jumped up, grabbed the Glock, and might’ve shot somebody from sheer frustration.

“It’s freezing in here!” I heard Nina complain. “She didn’t turn on the heat yet?”

“Where are you?” Jake called.

I darted out of the bedroom.

“You guys made good time,” I called, sticking the gun back in my waistband.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Jake materialized on the landing and gave me a lopsided grin. “You said time was of the essence, didn’t you?” He looked at me, maybe noting the flush on my cheeks, and said, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just got here myself. I was just checking out the bedrooms—I mean, looking around, you know.”

Oh, he knew all right. I had the feeling he could look right past my face and into the most hidden recesses of my mind. What in the hell was wrong with me?

I started down the steps, intending to brush past him, but he stopped me, his hand firm on the crook of my arm.

“We need to talk,” he whispered. “Without the others. Later.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is it about the—”

“What are you two doing?” Nina stood at the bottom of the steps watching, a knowing smirk playing across her features.

“Nothing!” I said. “I was just telling Jake about the house. It’s a relic.”

“Uh-huh,” Nina said. “I bet.”

I moved away from Jake, trotted down the steps and joined the others. Aunt Lucy was inspecting the kitchen cabinets, pulling each door open, studying the contents and sighing, clearly not pleased.

Lloyd followed her, sniffing at her heels, now and then looking up and around. If I didn’t miss my guess, he was feeling as wary as I had. Something about the small house just didn’t sit right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and apparently Lloyd couldn’t either, but we both had that feeling.

Spike wandered out into the family room, coming from the direction of the downstairs bedroom, and stood staring up the stairway to the second floor.

“Couldn’t you just see this place as the setting for a slasher movie?” she asked quietly.

“Oh, my God!” Nina gasped. “That is totally not good for my serenity. I am so not going to sleep with that on my mind!” She stopped, dropped into a lotus position in the middle of the room, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Cleansing breaths,” she whispered to herself.

This fascinated Lloyd. He watched for a moment, and then wandered over to stand right in front of her.

“Umm…” Nina intoned solemnly.

Lloyd cocked his head to the side, his tongue lolling out as he began to smile. Obviously Nina was inviting him to play some new game.

“Umm…” she moaned again.

Without hesitation, Lloyd leaned forward and licked her face ardently.

“Eww! Dog breath! Spike, do something! Oh, God! You dog!”

Nina’s eyes popped wide open and she reached out to push Lloyd away, but he ducked down and under her arms, bounding into her chest with a leap that sent Nina sprawling backward onto the floor.

“Help!” she sputtered.

“Oh, Nina, now honestly. Your uncle was only trying to reassure you,” Aunt Lucy said. “Benito!” she called. “Enough! She is a grown girl. If she wants to sit on the floor and moan, so be it!”

Lloyd, who had answered to my uncle’s name ever since he learned that it usually resulted in people food, stopped licking Nina immediately and trotted to my aunt’s side. She smiled and bent down to pat his head softly. “I brought pepperoni,” she murmured.

Jake crossed the room to stand beside me. “You see why I wanted to fish?” he whispered. “Your family is nuts.”

I rocked back with one heel and planted it squarely on the toes of his left foot. With steady pressure I transferred all my weight onto his defenseless foot.

“All right, all right!” he cried softly. “But you got to admit—” He broke off as I ground my heel in harder.

Spike offered Nina her hand and pulled the distraught girl to her feet. “Come on, honey,” she said. “Let’s go look upstairs. Maybe there’s a more appropriate place for you to meditate.”

Nina smiled up at her. “You wanna meditate, too?” she asked slyly.

Spike tilted her head, looked around the room at the rest of us, and shrugged her shoulders. “You never know,” she murmured.

Damn those two! They made it look so easy, not to mention special and intimate. Oh, well, some days you get the bear and some days, your love life just sucks. I wouldn’t let myself look at Jake. I knew he was watching me. The damn man was always watching me! Too bad he didn’t have a romantic bone in his muscle-bound body.

Aunt Lucy was unpacking groceries, setting bottles and boxes on empty shelves and muttering to herself.

“I know it’s a bit rustic,” I said, “but it’s only for a few days, just until I get a handle on Joey Smack.”

Aunt Lucy looked up, giving me one of her cut-the-crap glares. “I need to be in the lab,” she said. “The Household Shopping Show booked me back next week and I need product.”

So that was the problem. It wasn’t that she missed her kitchen and cooking homemade Italian specialties for us. My aunt had discovered a new forum for her inventions and she just couldn’t wait to go on the air again.

“Hey,” Jake said. “My grandmother saw you on there last week. She said you’re a natural. She said you had them eating out of your hand with that little-old-grandma act of yours.”

Aunt Lucy feigned shock. “Jake Carpenter, I never act. All I did was show the people how my homemade cleaner works on all surfaces.” Without even realizing it, Aunt Lucy had swung into gear, staring out at us as if we were the audience, smiling sweetly and gesturing to a bottle she brought out from one of her many bags.

“I thought I told you not to let her pack,” I muttered.

“It was that or face her digging in her heels and refusing to come,” he answered.

“I can’t disappoint my people,” she snapped. “I’m wasting valuable time here.”

I tried changing the subject. “So the guy on the float today, who was that?”

That stopped her in her tracks. “What guy?” she asked.

“She didn’t see him,” Jake reminded me. “We went out the back.”

I didn’t care. I was just happy for the working distraction. I told her all about the groundhog, about his float, the song and the way he’d danced across the platform. I was rewarded with the most unexpected reaction. Aunt Lucy’s eyes widened, and for a moment I thought I saw all-out panic.

“Huh!” she said, and turned her back to us. She started fumbling with the empty grocery bags next, carefully folding them, but having difficulty with the creases. Her hands shook ever so slightly. Aunt Lucy’s hands never shook.

“Did I say something to upset you?” I asked.

Aunt Lucy opened the refrigerator door and stuck her head almost all the way inside it. I felt Jake go still beside me, watching.

“No, Stella, what makes you think a foolish thing like that?”

“Well, if you’re not upset, then why didn’t you answer me? Who is that guy? Don’t you know him?”

Aunt Lucy threw her hand up, waving it like a flag. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Stella Luna. He probably saw me on the shopping show and decided he needed a girlfriend. I don’t have time for that sort of nonsense. I have work to do.”

She still wouldn’t look at us, but I thought I knew why. She missed Uncle Benny and was embarrassed to be so publicly wooed. It was too soon, and frankly, I doubted there would ever be room for another man in her life. That’s why she insisted Lloyd was my uncle reincarnated. She couldn’t stand the thought of Uncle Benny really being gone. A dog was a safe enough way to keep suitors away. After all, men don’t want crazy women.

Jake touched my arm and gestured toward the front door. “Let’s go for a walk,” he murmured.

“But I don’t want to…”

“Yeah, you do,” he whispered.

Lloyd squirmed into the space between us, seizing on the word walk, and agreeing vigorously with the suggestion.

I rolled my eyes at Lloyd and grabbed my coat. “It’s freezing out there.”

Jake smiled. “It’s not so bad. Might go up to fifty tomorrow. Great fishing weather.”

He held open the door, waiting patiently while I wrapped a long furry scarf around my neck, tucked my hair up into a knit cap and pulled on wool gloves. Lloyd shot past him and ran down the steps, ready to explore his new turf.

When the door closed behind us, I was surprised that Jake didn’t move. He stood on the stairs, staring up at the sky, slowly surveying his surroundings with what seemed to be satisfaction.

“It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?” he said. “The sky’s so clear you can see every star, and the moon’s got a ring around it. Now, how often do you see that?”

I stamped my feet to keep them from going numb and wrapped my scarf a bit tighter around my neck. “Have you lost your mind? It’s gotta be twenty degrees out here!”

Jake sighed. “It’s all in how you perceive it, Stella.”

“I perceive it as freaking freezing!”

Jake wasn’t listening. His attention was caught by something lying on the ground next to the house.

“Would ya look at this,” he said. “Somebody must’ve left it behind. It’s a nice one.”

Jake inspected the rod. “Even left a nice lure on it, too. Wonder how that happened.”

He turned, holding a fishing rod in his hand. A silver bauble dangled from its tip, catching the moonlight as it twirled. Whatever agenda Jake had was forgotten as he started off at a brisk pace, walking straight toward the ocean.

“Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “It’ll warm you up to walk.”

No, snuggling down under an electric blanket would warm me up, I thought. Walking along the beach at midnight in December would only cause pneumonia.

“The doctor said you should take it easy. I think you should go back inside and rest.”

Lloyd ran back and forth, covering the distance between us like a relay racer, barking his excited pleasure in Jake’s choice of direction.

Jake paused, waiting for me to catch up, and when I did, slung one arm across my shoulders. I started to shrug him off, but he held fast.

“I’m just keeping you warm, Stella. Relax.”

“Doesn’t your side hurt?”

He smiled. “Pain is all in the perception,” he answered.

“I guess that shotgun blast was a hallucination then.”

Jake shook his head, still smiling. “You need to work on your negativity.”

“Negative? I am not negative!”

Jake chuckled and began walking at a slower pace, his arm still holding me close to his side.

“You prefer paranoid?” he asked.

I couldn’t think up a snappy comeback. It was too late and too cold. Besides, Jake was close to being right about me. I was negative, especially when it came to men and romance, but look at my track record. I had a right to be skeptical. Too bad I couldn’t cut my heart out and survive.

I walked beside Jake, feeling the strength of his arm around me and rehearsing what I’d say next. It was going to be all business, no matter how hard he tried. I was a no-nonsense woman with a job to do. The sooner we all accepted that, the better off we’d all be. Right?

I lowered my head, ducking the stiff breeze that numbed my skin. Who was I kidding? The only one who needed to quit living in a fantasy world was me. I still had feelings for a man I hadn’t known since high school. I was living in the past, fantasizing that by some small miracle Jake Carpenter had suddenly morphed into Prince Charming. When was I ever going to grow up?

Chapter 5

Jake led us right past the boardwalk, down the steps and onto the beach. It was clear he wasn’t planning to discuss anything with me until he’d planted himself along the surf’s edge and had that stupid silver bauble immersed in saltwater. He wasn’t the only idiot on the beach, either. I counted at least four others, spaced maybe ten feet apart, all watching the surf for signs of action. What kind of shared craziness brought them out on a frigid night to stand waiting patiently for the hit of a lifetime?

Probably the same strain of insanity made women believe in Prince Charming.

I waited on Jake, stewing with the timeless frustration that had gone on for generations before me and would continue long after Jake and I were distant, past memories. Men fish. They fish for no reason, for endless amounts of time, and often return with whopping lies about their missed opportunities. Women know this; I just don’t see why they persist in putting up with it. It had to tie in with that Prince Charming thing somewhere.

Jake brought his arm up over his head, rod in hand, and cast his line far out into the surf. With slow precision, he reeled the line back in and repeated the process, over and over again. Five minutes passed without a word while I slowly became an ice cube. When I couldn’t feel my toes any longer, I lost my patience.

“Listen, if you don’t have anything important to say, Lloyd and I are leaving.” I turned away and started walking. Lloyd, the disloyal, raced off in the opposite direction, trotting up to investigate the other fishermen, leaving me to make my last stand alone.

“Stella, damn it! Wait!”

Jake shoved the butt of his rod down into the sand and caught my arm.

“Come on, honey, I was just trying the thing out!”

“Honey? Jake Carpenter, I am not ‘honey’ to you! I am your business partner and that is all. Got it?”

He nodded, but I thought I saw the sides of his mouth twitching with a suppressed grin.

“What was so important we had to walk all the way out here to talk about it?” I demanded.

“I got a call from one of my contacts at the P.D. before we left,” he said. “The guys that chased us out of Joey Smack’s didn’t make it.”

I thought back to the vision I’d had in my rearview mirror of the car exploding into a fireball as it hit a tree, and shuddered.

“That’s not all,” Jake added. “I read over the report Mia’s private investigator sent her and…” His voice drifted off, his attention caught by something behind me.

“And?”

Jake wasn’t listening. His rod suddenly jumped, flying out of its sand pocket and skittering across the beach. Jake ran after it, dived and came up with it in his hands, pulling hard as something on the other end fought him.

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