Smoke, Clean Male Sweat And Red Hot Peppers. Bottle It, And You’d Have The World’s Most Effective Aphrodisiac.

He stood, stretched and massaged his temples. Quickly, before she could blurt out anything embarrassing, she turned and folded down the covers. Kicking her shoes aside, she climbed into bed and pulled the covers up around her ears. If she pretended to be asleep when he came back, she might be able to stay out of trouble.

His shirt was off before he closed the bathroom door behind him, revealing a tanned, wedge-shaped back with a few intriguing scars, which she did her best to ignore. Yawning, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on recreating the story of Gretchen’s Ghost from the first line.

It was a lost cause. The picture that emerged on her mental screen resembled an X-rated video—one that left her feeling flushed and restless….

Dear Reader,

Get your new year off to a sizzling start by reading six passionate, powerful and provocative new love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Don’t miss the exciting launch of DYNASTIES: THE BARONES, the new 12-book continuity series about feuding Italian-American families caught in a web of danger, deceit and desire. Meet Nicholas, the eldest son of Boston’s powerful Barone clan, and Gail, the down-to-earth nanny who wins his heart, in The Playboy & Plain Jane (#1483) by USA TODAY bestselling author Leanne Banks.

In Beckett’s Convenient Bride (#1484), the final story in Dixie Browning’s BECKETT’S FORTUNE miniseries, a detective offers the protection of his home—and loses his heart—to a waitress whose own home is torched after she witnesses a murder. And in The Sheikh’s Bidding (#1485) by Kristi Gold, an Arabian prince pays dearly to win back his ex-lover and their son.

Reader favorite Sara Orwig completes her STALLION PASS miniseries with The Rancher, the Baby & the Nanny (#1486), featuring a daredevil cowboy and the shy miss he hires to care for his baby niece. In Quade: The Irresistible One (#1487) by Bronwyn Jameson, sparks fly when two lawyers exchange more than arguments. And great news for all you fans of Harlequin Historicals author Charlene Sands—she’s now writing contemporary romances, as well, and debuts in Desire with The Heart of a Cowboy (#1488), a reunion romance that puts an ex-rodeo star at close quarters on a ranch with the pregnant widow he’s loved silently for years.

Ring in this new year with all six brand-new love stories from Silhouette Desire….

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Beckett’s Convenient Bride

Dixie Browning

DIXIE BROWNING

is an award-winning painter and writer, mother and grandmother. Her father was a big-league baseball player, her grandfather a sea captain. In addition to her nearly eighty contemporary romances, Dixie and her sister, Mary Williams, have written more than a dozen historical romances under the name Bronwyn Williams. Contact Dixie at www.dixiebrowning.com, or at P.O. Box 1389, Buxton, NC 27920.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

One

Leaning forward, Carson Beckett removed the weights from his ankles and flopped back onto the exercise mat, exhausted and depressed. It was taking too long to regain his strength this time. And hell, he was still in his prime. Chronologically, at least. He knew of guys who reached retirement without ever having suffered so much as a hangnail. Not many, but a few. At the rate he was going, about all he’d be fit for was dusting a desk chair with the seat of his pants.

The occasional patch-up job was to be expected; he was a cop, after all. But a concussion, a black eye, a total of eleven broken bones counting arms, legs, fingers and ribs, all within the space of less than three years? That was pushing it.

At this rate he might even reconsider taking up that offer of a teaching post at the university. According to Margaret, the woman he was planning to marry as soon as he was up and running again, a degree in criminology was wasted on a policeman.

Carson poured himself a glass of water. Tap water, not the other stuff. Better the enemy you know, as he always told Margaret, who was never without her bottle of designer water. “Do you know where that water’s been?” he would tease.

Nine times out of ten she would frown and glance at the label. The lady had a lot going for her—looks, talent, ambition—but her sense of humor was notoriously deficient.

All the same, Car told himself as he stretched and flexed his lean six-foot-two body, it was time to toe up to the marriage mark. Neither of them was getting any younger. Margaret was a year and a half older than he was, but looked five years younger. She’d made it plain that children were not an option, as she had her career to consider, but then, his mother would be happy enough to see them married. She would go on hoping for a grandchild as long as she was capable of hoping for anything, but after awhile…

In the bathroom that had been added on after he’d bought the old shotgun-style house outside Charleston, Carson peeled off his sodden sweats and stepped under the shower, flinching as he adjusted the head for nail-driver pressure. Nothing like a hard stream of cold water pounding down on his scalp to jump-start the brain.

It was several minutes before he realized that not all the pounding was water. Someone was at his front door.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, he barefooted it down the hallway and opened the door a crack, expecting the pizza he’d ordered earlier. He’d been practically living on the stuff for weeks.

“Hey, man, I was about to give up on you. Got a message from the chief.” The voice was hoarse, the face familiar.

Shivering as the rain-laden March wind streaked past him into the house, Carson stepped back and let his friend and partner inside. “You look like hell, Mac.”

“Look who’s talking,” the younger man croaked.

“Come on in, there’s still some coffee in the pot.” The two men had joined the force the same year and had worked together on numerous cases, sharing too much stress and bad coffee.

The stocky, redheaded policeman flung the rain off his hat and ducked inside. He opened his mouth to speak and sneezed instead. “Jesus, Car, I’m sorry.”

“Bless you. Sounds like you need something stronger than coffee.”

“Can’t. On duty.” Mac McGinty dragged forth a soggy handkerchief and blew his red nose. “What I came for, Chief says you might as well stay out another week.” Carson had been out for the past three weeks on disability. “Everybody’s got this flu thing, or whatever it is. Miserable stuff. Makes you feel like you been kicked all over.”

The cop looked down at the fresh scars visible under the towel on his buddy’s bare legs, and swore. “Yeah, well…like I’m saying, you come back now, you’ll be laid up another month.”

“Didn’t you take your shot last fall?”

“You know me and needles. I figured if all the rest of you guys got shots, there wouldn’t be nobody for me to catch it from.”

Carson shook his head. “Tell me something, man—how’d you ever pass the physical? When they X-rayed your skull, didn’t it register empty?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I sneezed on you. All I’ve got is a cold. It’s those other jokers you got to watch out for. I mean, Eddie, he’s been out since last Thursday, running a fever, coughing his head off.” The redheaded policeman forked back his hair, replaced his hat and reached for the door.

“Sounds like I’m needed.”

“No way. Some of the first guys to go down are already starting to come back. Chief says your immunity system’s probably compromised or something.”

“Or something,” Carson Beckett said dryly, watching his friend dash out to the unmarked car.

Glancing at the relentlessly gray skies, he shut the door and turned toward the kitchen to see if he had any canned chicken soup on hand. Just in case. The pizza, when and if it was delivered, would do for breakfast.

As guilty as he might feel about being out on disability for so long, the chief was probably right. Whatever bug was going around, Carson couldn’t afford to risk it. He didn’t know about his immune system, but tangling with a drug dealer armed with a two-ton truck, followed a few months later by having his unmarked car creamed by a kid riding a chemical high was about all he could handle at one time. He was beginning to feel like that old Li’l Abner character—the guy with his own personal black cloud hanging over his head.

He missed work. Missed the boredom of routine calls and paperwork, the adrenaline rush of closing in on a tough case, and most of all, missed the camaraderie of guys he’d worked with for years, even those he didn’t particularly like.

It was his life, dammit. It was what he did—who he was.

He found a can of chicken noodle soup, opened it and dumped it into a pan. Adding garlic salt and black pepper, he debated his options. He could report in tomorrow and catch up on some of the paperwork that was part of being a cop these days.

Or he could use the rest of his downtime constructively. He had some pressing personal business he’d put off for too long, starting with Margaret.

It had always been more or less understood in both families—hers had lived next door for at least a generation—that unless something better came along for either of them, they would end up together. The Becketts were big on family. Strong ties, deep roots. Margaret was his mother’s goddaughter, and Kate, his mother, was increasingly fragile, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Both he and Margaret had agreed that they owed it to her to marry while she could still be a part of the festivities.

Carson had a habit that had developed into a policy over the years. On any to-do list of more than three items, he always tried to shorten the list by first tackling the one that could be finished the quickest.

Which meant that before he got caught up in wedding prep—in his family, marriage was a big deal—he needed to fulfill a promise he’d made to his grandfather before he died. A promise to clear up a generations-old debt owed by the Becketts to a family named Chandler.

Ever since a cowboy from Oklahoma named Chandler had handed over an undisclosed sum of money to an earlier Beckett, asked him to invest it, and then disappeared, the debt had gone unpaid. The Becketts had thrived. No one knew what had happened to the original Chandler, but a bundle of stock had been handed down through the Beckett family, with each subsequent generation intending to track down the Chandler heirs to make restitution.

Three days, tops, and the deed would be done. One more item he could mark off his list. Next would come formally popping the question and keeping his mother supplied with bridal magazines, fresh photo albums and blunt-tipped scissors. She was totally focused on weddings.

Barefooted, dressed in jeans and an open flannel shirt, Carson ate the soup from the pan. Table manners had been instilled in him from the time he was allowed to eat in the dining room with the family, but as a bachelor living alone, he allowed himself a certain amount of leeway.

He would have to clean up his act—one more thing on his to-do list—but not yet. It could wait until he was back on duty. Meanwhile, he would plan on one day to drive up to Nags Head, a day to locate the address and hand over the money, and another day to get back home. He could have made it in two days, but unless he got out and walked around every couple of hours, his knee and God knows what else would freeze up on him.

But the deed would be done. Finally. Unfortunately, the stock was now worthless, as the Becketts were inclined to procrastinate. The only record of the original debt was word-of-mouth, and PawPaw, who might have remembered hearing a few details from his own father, had died in January at age one hundred and two after suffering a series of strokes. For various reasons, neither of his sons was able to take on the task, and so it had been left to Carson and his cousin, Lance Beckett.

It was Lance who had come up with the idea of hiring a genealogist to track down the Chandler descendants. They’d shared the cost and each agreed to chip in ten grand of their own, intending to locate the heirs, hand over the money and mark the debt paid in full. It might not be enough; on the other hand, it might be a terrific return on what could easily have been the loan of fifty bucks, if you didn’t figure in compound interest. Back in the late 1800s when the debt had initially been incurred, fifty bucks might have been considered respectable money.

Lance had already fulfilled his part of the promise by tracking down one of the two heirs and repaying his portion of the debt. He’d gone further than that—he’d married the woman.

Now it was Carson’s turn. Unlike Lance’s heiress, who had moved east from Texas, Carson’s heiress had originated in Virginia, daughter of a high profile trial lawyer named Christopher Dixon and one Elizabeth Chandler Dixon, both deceased; granddaughter of a retired judge known as old Cast Iron Dixon and a wealthy socialite with the unusual name of Flavia. Both maternal grandparents deceased.

The Chandlers were thinning out, it seemed.

“Well, thank the Lord for small mercies,” Kit Dixon muttered under her breath, screwing the cap back on her India Ink drawing pen. The two jerks who’d been arguing so loudly on the other side of the church had evidently decided to make peace—or at least to move their argument to more appropriate surroundings.

One of the reasons she liked this old cemetery so much was the peacefulness. It was little more than a wooded knoll in a sea of marsh grass, home only to countless birds and small animals.

Kit hated anger, hated arguments. Always had. Even after all these years, loud, angry voices still made her stomach ache.

As quiet once again descended over the surroundings, she leaned against a mossy tombstone and gazed out over the cypress trees, the wind-twisted scrub oaks and a cluster of cedars. Chalky white marble gravestones of all shapes and sizes stood out against the dark foliage. Small ones with lambs on top—tall ones with angels. The lambs were her favorites.

It was perfect. She could easily visualize ghosts rising like smoke from the ancient graves. Now that the last sketch was done, she was ready to bring her watercolors. Atmosphere was far more important than getting a perfect drawing. During that fleeting time before nightfall she could sweep in the values and the muted colors—fifteen or twenty minutes for each illustration, and she’d be finished. After that she’d give the manuscript one last polish, hand it over to be typed, and Gretchen’s Ghost would be finished. It wasn’t even due at her publisher until the first of April.

Brushing the leaves and dried grass from her seat, Kit paused to touch a leaning marker, worn far too smooth to read. “Who are you?” she wondered aloud. “If I knew your name, I’d use it in my next story.”

She often used names she found on tombstones or on mailboxes, mixing first names and last. It gave her a sense of being connected to the past. And although she hated to admit it, she desperately needed to feel connected to someone—to something solid. She wondered sometimes if everyone felt that way, especially as they grew older.

But then, most people she knew had someone, somewhere.

Kit had someone. She had her paternal grandparents. She would probably even put in an appearance at their fiftieth anniversary party. She made a habit of dropping in unannounced every few months, partly out of a sense of duty, but mostly because it irritated her grandfather so. She would stay for half an hour and then leave. Leaving was the best part of all, because she could.

And because she knew it drove her grandfather wild. It wasn’t his granddaughter he wanted, it was what she represented—the last link with his only son. And she ought to feel sorry for him, she really should, only she couldn’t. She knew him too well.

So maybe she’d skip the party and get herself a dog.

Maybe she’d get a dog and take it to the party.

Or maybe she’d invite Keefer, the surf-bum she’d shared a house with last summer. It would serve him right. Her grandfather, not Keefer, who wouldn’t have been impressed if she’d told him she was a royal princess. Three things impressed Keefer. Good grass, big surf and big bazongas.

Kit didn’t have big bazongas. She practically didn’t have any at all, not that it mattered. An author-illustrator of two published children’s books with another one almost finished, her first book, Claire the Loon, had been optioned for television. When she’d first been notified, she hadn’t believed it. When it had sunk in, she’d walked three feet off the ground for a week.

Of course nothing had come of it so far. Odds were, nothing ever would. She’d been told by her agent not to get her hopes up, as far more books were optioned than ever made the final cut, so other than treating herself to a mammogram, an eye exam and half a gallon of Tin Roof Sundae ice cream, she hadn’t spent a penny of the option advance. It was in the bank earning a pathetic rate of interest.

Her real bread and butter, not to mention her rent and her art supplies, came from waiting tables. It was the perfect job. In season, the tips were easily enough to live on, yet the hours allowed her plenty of time to write. As there were usually job openings all up and down the Outer Banks in season, she was able to pick up and move as often as she liked if she needed a fresh locale.

That was just one more thing her grandparents disapproved of. No permanent address. They called her lifestyle immature, among several less flattering things. Perhaps it was. More likely it was her own brand of claustrophobia. Whatever it was called, she had a deep-seated need to prove her independence, and for the last seven years she’d been doing just that.

Not the way her mother had, with alcohol and lovers. Her grandparents never failed to remind her of her mother’s twin weaknesses at every opportunity. Both, Kit was convinced, were a result of being married to a man who had all the warmth of an empty igloo. The irony was that Kit had just enough of her father in her—not his cruelty, but his steely determination—to defy her grandparents and build a life for herself. And although she felt justly proud of her small publishing accomplishments, there was no room in her pragmatic, hardworking, self-supporting lifestyle for artistic temperament.

Okay, so she enjoyed being able to dress any old way she pleased. So she liked old cemeteries. After working eight hours a day in a noisy restaurant, with clattering cutlery and people constantly making demands, she found old burial grounds restful.

Besides, it came under the heading of research. Both her published books had been ghost stories, involving pirates and shipwrecked sailors as well as children and animals. It was her thing. Her bag, as Keefer would say. Start with a quirky animal personality, throw in a large helping of local history and a dash of fantasy, and voilà. Gretchen’s Ghost was going to be her best yet.

After repacking her backpack, checking to see that she’d left nothing behind, Kit headed for the parking lot on the other side of the church. She had just reached the old wrought-iron gate when the stillness was rent by the sound of a single gunshot.

Startled, she froze and waited. A hunter? In March? At this time of evening? Wasn’t that illegal?

Besides, who would hunt in a place like this?

When she heard the sound of someone speeding away she let out the breath she’d been holding. That’s what it had been—an engine backfiring. That funny whining sound it had made when it was racing off probably meant it needed tuning.

Admittedly, one of the occupational hazards of being a writer of fiction, especially fiction that edged over into fantasy, was that a single backfire could instantly become a pirate landing or an invasion from another planet.

The church was used only for summer revival meetings, but the security light was still in service. Now the pink glow shone down on the graveled parking lot, empty except for Ladybug, her orange-and-black, hand-detailed VW. So much for the invasion from Mars, she thought ruefully as she dodged a patch of weeds.

She was nearly halfway to her car when she spotted what appeared to be either a shadow or an even larger clump of weeds.

Not a shadow. There was nothing nearby to cast such an oddly shaped shadow. And not weeds, either, it was too solid.

A trash bag? A big, injured dog? A deer?

Oh, no—someone had shot a deer!

Maybe the poor thing wasn’t dead—maybe the Fish and Wildlife people could…

After the first few steps she froze. Then, sick with dread, she crept closer. “Omigod, omigod, no, please,” she whispered, backing away.

It was an old man, and he was obviously dead. There was a black hole in the middle of his forehead and a dark trickle of something that looked like blood trailing down his cheek from his left nostril.

Kit’s snack of almonds and dried apricots threatened to turn on her. She swallowed hard and muttered, “Gotta get help, gotta get help!”

But where…? Who? Murder didn’t happen in a place like Gilbert’s Point, it just didn’t.

But it had. And suddenly she realized that whoever had done it had to have seen her car. There couldn’t be more than one like it in the entire county—maybe in the entire world.

She stared at the vanity plate she’d bought with part of her first advance: KITSKIDS. If anyone wanted to find her…

Edging around the still form lying on the weedy, badly graveled parking lot, she hurried to her car. Throwing her pack onto the other seat, she locked the doors, keyed the ignition and ground the starter.

Don’t panic.

Cell phone. Why the devil hadn’t she bought herself one of the pesky things and learned how to use it. Everyone knew how to use a cell phone.

Everyone but Kit.

But even if she’d had a phone, she didn’t know the sheriff’s number. Wasn’t there some automatic gizmo you could punch to get help in an emergency?

One of the reasons she didn’t own a cell phone or a computer or any of the other gadgets everyone else in the world took for granted was that she was no good with gadgets.

“Nine-one-one, you ninny!” Any child knew how to dial nine-one-one. Don’t panic, don’t panic.

She would go home and dial nine-one-one and tell whoever answered that there was a dead man out at the old church on Cypress Mill Road. And they would ask her name, and she would have to go in and testify, and her grandfather…

Oh, shoot.

There was no one in sight when she raced up the steps and slammed inside the unpainted frame house she’d rented only a few months ago. Slinging her backpack toward the table, she grabbed the phone and started dialing, hardly remembering to breathe.

Answer, answer, answer the blasted phone!

Someone answered. A woman who sounded as if she resented being disturbed. “There’s a dead man in the cemetery—no, I mean in the church parking lot out on Cypress Mill Road!”

“Name, please?”

“Name! I don’t know his name! I just told you, he’s dead! Someone shot him! Oh—” Cold sweat beading her forehead, Kit slammed down the receiver. She took several deep breaths, her hand still on the receiver. All right, she’d done her duty. She had reported the crime; it was out of her hands.

Name. The woman had wanted her name, of course. “Idiot,” she muttered, feeling the horror of it all over again.

Should she call back and give her name? But if she did that, she might have to go in and answer all sorts of questions, and the story would get in the papers and old Cast Iron would be after her again to come to her senses, and she didn’t feel like brawling with him right now, she really didn’t.

On the other hand…

All right, Katherine, for once in your life, think logically.

Had she done everything she could?

Absolutely. She had reported the crime. Knowing her name wouldn’t help anyone solve it.

Was she in any personal danger?

How could she be? She’d only done her duty as a citizen.

On the other hand, her car had been the only one in the parking lot. It was certainly easy enough to identify, even without the vanity plate. For all the killer knew, she could have witnessed the whole thing instead of only hearing it.

Maybe she should go stay with her grandparents until the murderer was caught. She could even go on with her job, for that matter. Regardless of how often she moved she was never more than forty-five minutes or an hour away, depending on season and time of day.

There was probably some murky psychological reason why she’d untied the apron strings, but never quite cut them entirely, but she didn’t need to delve into that now. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Kit weighed her options. She could disappear. All she had to do was pack up and move again. But that would leave her boss in the lurch, and it would mean starting a whole new set of illustrations for Gretchen somewhere else.

She could go back to Nags Head. She knew the area, knew where the best jobs were, and where she could probably find an affordable room this early in the season, maybe even her old one.

Taking another deep breath—at this rate, she’d be hyperventilating—Kit glanced despairingly around at the shabby old house she had rented semi-furnished. It was just beginning to feel like home. She had even named the raccoons that regularly raided her garbage can.

Face it, Katherine—the gypsy life is losing its appeal.

Reluctantly, she dragged out her suitcase and the banana boxes she used for packing her painting equipment, copies of her books and all the messy details of her profession. The legal pads, which she bought by the score; the bulging files of correspondence and another file, pitifully thin, of royalty statements.

Could she be exaggerating the risk? The gunman was probably a hundred miles away by now. Why on earth would he come back to the scene of the crime, knowing he might have been seen?

All right, so she was thinking logically. That didn’t mean the killer thought logically.

On the other hand, she really liked Gilbert’s Point. It was much quieter than Nags Head, which was a circus during the peak season. She liked the people here. She had a decent job that allowed her plenty of free time for her real career. Not all employers were as understanding, but Jeff Matlock at Jeff’s Crab House was proud of her. Even though he was a bachelor, he’d bought copies of both her books.

Besides, her rent was paid through the end of March. And unlike the beach area, Jeff’s season was just getting started. The snowbirds—the semiannual flight of yachtsmen fleeing the snow and ice via the inland waterway, and returning in the spring once the north began to thaw—were beginning to migrate.

Kit stood at the door of her closet, staring at the eclectic mixture of grunge clothes—her tie-dyes and hand-embroidered jeans that her grandparents so despised—and the few decent dresses she’d kept for emergencies. Weddings, funerals, autographings and anniversary parties. Somewhat to her disgust she’d discovered that she was too much her father’s daughter to dress inappropriately for public occasions.

With a sigh of resignation, she closed the closet door. She would stay, but she would definitely be on her guard. If nothing showed up in the paper tomorrow indicating that the murderer had been caught, she would call the sheriff and offer to come in for questioning. Not that there was anything else she could tell anyone. She’d heard voices, she’d heard a shot, she’d seen a body.

And she’d run away.

Two

“Are you sure she’s not here?” Carson asked the white-haired kid with the mahogany tan. He’d arrived at Nags Head just before dark the day before and spent a miserable night in a hotel, wondering if he was coming down with whatever bug Mac McGinty had been generous enough to share with him.

“Kit? Man, she’s long gone. Got a Christmas card from some place called Gilbert’s Point.”

“You got any idea where it is?”

“Across the bridge, I think.”

“Which bridge?” According to the map, the place was full of bridges.

“Hey, dude, geography’s not my gig, y’know? Sorry. She was a cool roomie, too, but I mean, it happens, y’know?”

Dude knew. He was a cop, after all. When it came to education, a degree in criminology was nothing compared to thirteen years on a big-city police force. Ignoring the view through the open door of a coffee table made of beer cans and layered with dirty clothing, and the smell of pot and old pizza, Carson was tempted to forget the whole thing. He’d woken up feeling like leftover hell, but as long as he’d come this far, he might as well see this business through.

Dude? he thought, his footsteps gritting on sandy broken concrete on his way to the car. Was that retro, or had it never quite gone away? At the advanced age of thirty-seven, he was beginning to notice a few recycled trends.

Obviously Kit Dixon’s lifestyle was nothing at all like that of her cousin Liza. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have to approve of the woman, he had only to find her and hand over the money and the bundle of worthless stock certificates, in case she was into collecting useless antiquities. Some people collected “collectibles,” which could cover almost anything.

It was nearly noon when, with the help of aspirin and his GPS unit, Carson reached Gilbert’s Point, which consisted of a few old frame houses, several shabby restaurants, a crab processing plant and a dozen or so boats tied up at the plank wharf. Squinting against the harsh sunlight reflected off the inland waterway, he surveyed the scene, wondering where to start.

Or even whether to start.

He could always bundle up the stock certificates and the cashier’s check for ten grand and address it to Katherine Dixon, in care of general delivery, Gilbert’s Point, North Carolina. The post office would do the rest. If they even had a post office.

Not a chance. The Becketts’ buck-passing days were over. Besides, the job was already half done—he was here. With just a slight additional effort, he could wind things up. Case closed, only a hundred years late.

But the three days he’d allowed himself were getting used up in a hurry. At this rate he’d be lucky to get back home by the weekend. It would help if he didn’t feel so lousy. Hot, cold and sweaty at the same time, with a head that was threatening to self-destruct.

It occurred to him that some real food might help. Not that he was particularly hungry, but the combination of too much coffee, too much greasy fast food on the road and too little sleep didn’t help what else ailed him. Besides, at a local restaurant he could probably kill a couple of birds with a single stone.

He struck pay dirt at the first place he stopped. After ordering hot clam chowder and a fresh tuna sandwich at a waterside restaurant called Jeff’s Crab House, he popped the question.

“You happen to know a woman named Katherine Dixon?”

Instead of answering, the waitress called over the owner, a tall, loose-limbed type with a handlebar moustache, who took his time crossing the empty room that was just now being set up for lunch. “Jeff, this guy wants to know where to find Kit.”

Jeff looked him over before replying. “You a friend of hers?”

Carson stretched a point. “Friend of the family. I was in the area and thought I’d look her up.”

Another minute passed. Carson appreciated what the other guy was doing—sizing him up. Under other circumstances, they could have swapped credentials, IDs—hell, the whole bag of tricks, but his head was throbbing, his throat was getting rawer by the minute and every bone in his body ached.

“You want to hang around, she’ll be working the five-to-nine shift,” the proprietor finally said, “I don’t reckon she’d want me giving out her whereabouts. Probably not home yet anyhow.”

He was tempted to flash his badge, but that might give the wrong impression. He didn’t want to get the woman in trouble, he just damned well wanted to find her so he could go home and go to bed for the foreseeable future.

And anyway, in a place this size, he could knock on every door in less time than it took to search through the phone book.

“Okay. Uh…like I said, our families are connected.” In a manner of speaking, he added silently. “We’ve never actually met, though, so would you mind telling me what she looks like, in case I run across her?”

Jeff frowned. He fingered his handlebar mustache. “Guess it wouldn’t hurt none. ’Bout yea high.” He held a hand up to his shoulder. Five-six, Carson interpreted. “Lots of hair, kind of brown with some red in it. Gray eyes, freckles. She’s a real nice lady and a hard worker.” The guy was on a roll, so Carson let him talk. “Smart woman. Good-looking, too. She walks most everywhere, but you might see her car around. Hard to miss it. Old VW Beetle painted orange with black spots on it. Did the paint job herself,” he added admiringly. “I had me one, same year, back when I was in high school.”

Carson had learned a long time ago that a lot more information could be gained by allowing a witness to ramble on at his own pace than by asking specific questions. He’d take it all in and sift through it later when his head wasn’t threatening to explode. Right now, he needed coffee, food and another handful of aspirin.

Having evidently decided that Carson wasn’t a threat to anyone, the proprietor shifted his weight onto the other foot, apparently settling in for a lengthy visit. “I tried to talk her into selling it, but she said it was like family. Even gave it a name. Ladybug. Got one o’ them whatchacall vanity plates on the stern. Kitskids. Writes kids’ books, but she don’t have no kids of her own, not s’far as I ever heard of. Hey, Bambi, Kit ever mention any family to you?”

From across the room, the pretty waitress with black acrylic nails shook her head. “Less you count all the strays she collects. Kit feeds any critter that don’t bite back.”

By the time Bambi brought over a steaming bowl of Hatteras-style chowder and a tuna sandwich thick enough to choke a mule, Carson had lost his appetite. What had seemed a short-term deal on his to-do list was turning out to be a real headache. Literally.

“This guy said to give you this.” Bambi held out the scrap of paper. “Certified hunk. If you’re not interested, how ’bout I try my luck?”

Kit had come in early to ask Jeff how to find the sheriff’s office. It was probably located in the county seat, wherever that was. She could have called and gotten directions, but having made up her mind to do her duty as a citizen, she needed to show up in person and get the whole thing over with before she lost her courage.

“Here? You mean someone came to the restaurant looking for me?” It took a moment for the impact to sink in. “Did he—did he say what he wanted?”

The redhead shrugged. “You, I guess. Said he was a friend of the family. He asked a whole bunch of questions about where you lived and when you were coming in. Jeff told him you’d be in at the regular time. Hey, you okay? You didn’t eat none of that crab salad last night, did you? Jeff told you it was for the critters. He made it up a couple of days ago, and crab don’t keep.”

Ignoring the question, Kit asked anxiously, “You didn’t tell him where I live, did you?” Not that he couldn’t find her easily enough. There weren’t that many houses in Gilbert’s Point.

“What, me tell a stranger something like that? No way, hon.” She snapped her chewing gum. “Good-looking, though, if you like the type.”

Kit didn’t ask what type. She really, really didn’t want to know. The thought that someone could find her so easily was scary enough. The old church was several miles from Gilbert’s Point. Maybe she shouldn’t have panicked, but after more than two hours, her heart still hadn’t settled down. If she’d done the right thing and gone in instead of just calling nine-one-one, the sheriff could have done his job by now and she wouldn’t be jumping at shadows.

On the other hand, if she turned herself in now and offered to tell everything she’d heard—which wasn’t all that much, really—the sheriff would want to know why she hadn’t come forth immediately. Then she would have to tell him her name and it would get in the papers and her grandparents would see it, because Chesapeake was just over the state line in Virginia and everyone in the area read the same papers and listened to the same news stations.

And then her grandparents would demand that she come live with them, with all that implied, and she couldn’t, she just couldn’t. If and when she mended that particular fence, it would be because she wanted to, not because they demanded it. She owed it to her mother’s memory not to get sucked down that particular drain.

Meanwhile she was going to have to stop reading romantic suspense. Her imagination was active enough, without adding fuel to the fire.

By the time he left Jeff’s Crab House, Carson knew he wasn’t going to finish the job that day. His headache had backed off to a dull throb, but his eyes burned, his throat felt raw and every muscle in his body ached. The bones that had been broken ached twice as much. All he wanted at this moment was to crawl into bed and sleep for a year, but if there was a hotel in the immediate vicinity, he’d missed it.

He sneezed, grabbed his head to keep it from flying off his shoulders, and muttered, “Thanks for sharing, McGinty.”

He was on his way out the single road leading to Gilbert’s Point when he saw the little orange VW barreling after him. Black spots. Sort of like a ladybug on steroids. Shoving his personal problems into the background, Carson wondered if the lady could be following him. Had he let slip the fact that he intended to hand over ten grand while he was asking questions?

He didn’t think so, but then, he wasn’t operating at peak efficiency.

There couldn’t be more than one black-speckled orange VW in a place this size. Slowing, he looked for somewhere to pull over. The Landing Road was little more than an old cart trail that had been brought up to minimum standards with a few loads of marl and oyster shell, with drainage ditches on both sides. No place to pull over—barely enough room to pass.

Five minutes. He’d give her the spiel and hand over the goods. Then he could go somewhere and die with a clear conscience. The way she was kicking up dust, she was evidently eager to catch up with him before he got away.

He slowed, stopped and pulled on the parking brake. They were near the intersection of Landing and Waterlily Roads, but so far as he could see, theirs were the only two cars on the road. This shouldn’t take long, Carson promised himself.

Good thing, too, he added. He’d just run flat-out of juice.

Opening the door, he got out, steadied himself for a moment, and waited until she came to a halt a few feet from his rear bumper. Then, levering himself away from the support of his dark green SUV, he headed her way.

His legs were shaky. Maybe he should have eaten his lunch, but by the time he’d been served, food hadn’t seemed all that great an idea.

He was within ten feet of the hand-painted VW when he saw her roll up her window. She locked her door, then leaned over and locked the passenger door.

Well, hell. What now? Find the nearest hollow tree, leave the goods there, then write and tell her where to find it? If she wrote kids’ books, she might be into kids’ games.

Tough. She’d picked the wrong player this time.

He was still trying to figure out an approach when she rolled her window down an inch and shouted for him to move his car, then rolled the window up again.

Move his car? Had he missed something? It occurred to him that she might not have gotten the message that he was looking for her. In that case, maybe she wasn’t trying to catch up with him, but just wanted to pass. Thought he was a tourist, maybe, watching a flyover of cormorants.

Okay, so what now? Try to reason with her through a layer of steel and glass? Put yourself in the lady’s place, Beckett. She’s alone, she finds herself being accosted by a strange man. Reason enough to be spooked, right? The world was no longer a safe place, if it ever had been. Who knew that better than a cop?

The women of his family knew better than to stop if ever a stranger tried to flag them down. They’d been taught to lock all doors and pass the buck by calling the highway patrol. In this case, he was the next best thing, only she had no way of knowing it.

Feet spread apart to keep him from reeling, Carson held up both hands, palms out, in the universal sign of peace. “Hey, I’m one of the good guys, lady.”

Cautiously, she inched her window down and peered at him suspiciously. From where he was standing—aside from the eyeball assault of color: orange car, red hair, purple dress or whatever she was wearing—she appeared to be a damned fine-looking woman.

Irritated as hell, but a looker.

Make that angry, he corrected a moment later when she lowered the glass another two inches.

Make that scared. In fact, terrified would not be an overstatement.

Well, hell. What now? This wasn’t in the script. Under any other circumstances he’d have walked off and let her go unreparated, or whatever the proper term was. His whole body ached like a boil. He was running on fumes. And dammit, he hadn’t come all this way to leave the job unfinished.

Taking two steps forward, he said, “Look, for both our sakes, let’s get this over fast, all right?”

Slowly, he reached inside his buckskin jacket, planning to hold out his badge to reassure her.

“Noo-o-o!” she screamed. “Just get out of my way!”

Wrong move. He held out his hands again as if to prove he was totally harmless. Evidently the message failed to get through. She gunned the engine. The Beetle jerked forward. Carson tried to leap out of the way, but his reconstructed knee wasn’t up to the job. It buckled, and before he could catch himself, he went down, his head in a tangle of weeds bordering a blackwater ditch.

She backed up and slammed on the brakes. She was out of her car in an instant, wild auburn hair flying around her face, purple shirt flapping around long legs covered in a pair of tie-dyed tights.

She was wielding a tire-iron in a way that was anything but reassuring. “Open your eyes,” she demanded in a quavering voice.

No way, lady. I’m safer playing dead.

She crept closer. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping she’d be convinced and leave him alone. Nothing in the genealogist’s chart had indicated a strain of insanity in the Chandler genes, but then the lady genealogist hadn’t gone into any personal detail.

“You’re not dead. I saw your eyelids twitch. I hardly even touched you.”

She hadn’t touched him at all, but only because he’d jumped out of the way just in time. She hesitated, but he could hear her breathing. She was still looming over him with that damned tire iron. The right tool in the wrong hands could be lethal.

“Darn you, open your eyes!” she whispered fiercely. By then she was so close he could feel the heat of her body, feel her breath brushing his face. “I barely touched you, you can’t be dead,” she declared.

He was having trouble regulating his breathing. It would be just his luck to have a sneezing spell. He felt her knees press against his side, felt the soft pressure of cool fingertips on his throat, then on his chest.

Yeah, I’m alive, he was tempted to tell her. Keep on touching me like that and I’ll show you just how lively I can be, headache or no.

Fat chance. He was fighting on too many fronts to take on one more. She smelled like…cinnamon? Apples?

Something equally innocuous…and equally tempting.

She touched his forehead and jerked her hand away. He wanted her fingers back. They were cool, soothing, and God, he needed that. What the hell was he supposed to do now? None of this was in the script. If he opened his eyes or even so much as twitched a muscle, she’d probably cold cock him with that damned tire iron.

“You’re alive, I know you are. I don’t even see any blood, so you can’t be seriously hurt. But while you’re down I just want you to know that I didn’t see anything, not one blessed thing, so you don’t have to worry about me. Just because my car happened to be in the parking lot, that doesn’t mean I saw what you did. I was on the other side of the cemetery. I couldn’t even hear what you were fighting about.”

Breathing through clenched teeth, Carson mentally assessed the damage. He was winded, but probably in no worse shape than before. Unless he slid into the ditch and drowned. If she didn’t stop pressing her knees into his side, that was a distinct possibility.

What the hell was she talking about? A cemetery? Fighting? She sure as hell had seen him.

“Well,” she said tentatively. “I probably shouldn’t leave you here in case another car comes. Besides, you’re blocking the intersection.”

Tentatively, she picked up his hand and tugged. He felt something tickling his cheek and hoped it wasn’t alive, because the last thing he needed on top of everything else was an infestation of chiggers.

“Look, I know you’re not unconscious, I can tell by the way you breathe.”

He could have told her that his breathing would be a lot more convincing if she weren’t so close…and so damned female. Were pheromones considered hormones? His were supposed to be out on sick leave.

He could sense her studying him as if he were something under a microscope. Thank God he wasn’t armed. Sometimes he carried when he was off duty, but not when he was this far out of his jurisdiction. Besides, this wasn’t that kind of a case. Hadn’t started out that way, at least. But who knows, with a crazy woman…

“I didn’t hit you that hard. I didn’t even feel a bump,” she said defensively.

He didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing. If his head weren’t hanging lower than his feet, he’d have been content to stay right where he was for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, with a crazy woman feeling him up…

Get your hands off my body, lady, that’s private property you’re invading.

Her hair hung down and tickled his face. She was muttering under her breath, something about a gun. What the devil was she talking about? She didn’t even know he was a cop—they’d never got that far in the introductions.

Kit was looking for his pistol. He had to be wearing one, because why else would he be wearing a leather coat on a day like this? As long as you stayed out of the wind, it felt almost summer.

Had he had it in his hand when she’d hit him? If so, it could be anywhere, even in the ditch—although she hadn’t heard a splash.

The murder weapon. Oh, my blessed mercy!

She had to find it before he came to and hold it on him until she could get help. Yell for one of the men on the wharf to call the sheriff.

Being able to hand over his gun as evidence would make up for not giving her name when she called, but first she had to find it. One side of his coat was caught underneath his body, and so she started, carefully patting him down. His body was hot. Hot, hard and…

Squatting beside him, she leaned over and slipped her fingers under the other side of his coat. Right-handed men wore their guns on the left side, didn’t they? And vice versa?

She had no way of knowing which handed he was. Some men shoved their guns into the back of their belt, but he was lying on his back and he was too heavy for her to roll over.

And then her fingers touched something that felt like leather. Too flat to be a gun or a holster…

Frowning, she managed to ease it out of an inside pocket. “A badge?”

“Satisfied?” His voice sounded like iron grating on concrete.

She gasped and dropped the badge, scrambling backward and trying to look as if she hadn’t been caught with her hands in places they had no business being. “Look, whoever you are, we’re going to have to move you, else you’ll slide into the ditch and drown, but don’t try any funny business, because we’re being watched.” She had no idea whether or not the men working on the waterfront a few thousand feet away were paying any attention, much less whether they could actually see what was going on. “So don’t think you can get away with anything.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” he rasped. His eyes were still closed. She didn’t know whether to trust him or not.

“Can you move?” She leaned forward on her knees again and studied his face, which was hardly reassuring, but then at this point it would take the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to reassure her.

“Can you open your eyes?”

No way, lady. As long as he didn’t open his eyes, Carson told himself, he could pretend this was all a bad dream. All of it…the purple banshee, the smell of cinnamon and apples, the babbling testimony—those cool hands pawing over his body.

Don’t try any funny business? What was she, a comic book character? There was nothing even faintly funny about any of the past forty-eight hours.

He groaned, and the woman caught her breath.

Man, I don’t need this complication, Carson thought tiredly. She clutched his hand and gave a few experimental tugs. If he had a lick of sense he’d have crawled on his knees, climbed back in his car and hightailed it out of here the minute he realized she was criminally insane.

If I had a grain of sense, Kit thought, I’d have left him where he fell and got hold of the sheriff, and let him send for an ambulance. And while she was at it, she could have mentioned that they might want to bring along handcuffs, because the man sprawled out beside the road was probably a murderer, never mind that he had a badge inside his jacket.

Or she could call nine-one-one again, report a man down at the intersection of Landing and Waterlily Roads and then drive up to Chesapeake. Her grandparents might not approve of her, but they wouldn’t want anything awful to happen to her.

Oh, it would make the papers, all right. The churchyard murderer hit by a car driven by the only witness to the crime.

On the other hand, if she left him here, he might lose consciousness and slide down the ditch bank and drown.

“What am I going to do about you?” she whispered. “I’m tempted to—”

He opened his eyes then, and Kit found herself staring down into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. More cobalt than cerulean, she thought fleetingly, but darker now with what could be pain.

“Are you…all right?” she asked hesitantly. Merciful saints, the man was on a mission to shut her up permanently, and she was worried about his health?

She studied him carefully. His eyes were closed again. He was breathing heavily, as if he were in pain. She didn’t know if he’d lost consciousness or not, but she needed another look at that badge, and this might be her last chance. The thing could have come from a toy store, for all she knew. Probably had.

But not his gun. There was nothing wrong with her ears; toy guns didn’t make the same sound as what she’d heard in the churchyard.

Her hand moved toward his jacket. He opened his eyes, focusing on her face, not the hand that hovered over the flap of his coat.

“It’s real,” he said as if he’d read her mind. With a smile that looked as if it hurt and disappeared almost instantly, he said, “I’m a few miles out of my territory, but—” He covered his mouth, sneezed, and then groaned.

“Bless you,” Kit murmured automatically. “What are you—that is, are you looking for someone in particular?” Like me, for instance? She added silently.

If he was from the sheriff’s department, he’d probably traced her through one of those gizmos people hooked onto their phones. Nine-one-one probably had it for people like her; people who didn’t want to get involved.

Well, crud. No matter how tempting it was, she couldn’t leave the man lying there. Any minute now a car could come peeling in off Waterlily and crash into his car or run over his legs. Probably cream Ladybug in the process. There wasn’t much room for maneuvering.

“Look, I’ll help you get up and into your car, but I really don’t know anything more than what I told you over the phone. Told your dispatcher, at least. I heard voices— I couldn’t even tell what they were arguing about. Then I heard a shot, only I thought it was a backfire, and then—”

There was barely room, but she managed to position herself behind him. Reaching down, she hooked her arms under his. Lordy, what a waste, she thought before she could stop herself. He was a big man. A big, beautifully constructed man, she couldn’t help but notice. With uncombed black hair that was overdue for a trim, a lean, pale face that hadn’t recently seen a razor, he wore western boots, jeans that were worn in all the right places, a black shirt and a buckskin jacket that looked as if it had been through a few battles.

Get your mind on what you’re doing, you ditz!

“I’m going to sit you up,” she said, bracing to use herself as a counterweight. “Help me out here, you weigh a ton.”

“Give me a minute, okay? I’m just winded.”

“More than that, if you ask me. Well, you didn’t, but I’ll get you back inside your car, anyway. The rest is up to you. If you’re a real policeman, you can call one of your deputies or something. If you’re not—well, like I said, I didn’t see anything. Honestly.”

By the time they managed to get him on his feet again, Kit had touched him in places she hadn’t touched any man in years. Her palms tingled from the heat of his body. If it turned out he really was a sheriff or a policeman, she would simply repeat what she’d said over the phone—which wasn’t all that much, come to think of it. But this time she would answer any questions he asked to the best of her ability. Then, if he insisted on taking her in to make a statement, she could do that, too, because no crook was going to come near her as long as she was under police protection.

At least, that was the way it worked in suspense novels.

Except when the cop turned out to be the villain.

Well, she wouldn’t think about that. Besides, this one looked more like a hero. Not that he was classically handsome by any means. He had one of those crinkly mouths that looked as if he smiled a lot when he hadn’t just been run off the road. That aggressive jaw that was badly in need of a shave, and a pair of dark eyebrows arched perfectly over beautiful blue eyes. On a woman, she might have suspected tinted contacts, but this man, whoever he was, was too rugged. He looked as if he didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought of his looks.

Correction: at the moment, he looked as if he were about to collapse.

“Are you hurting anywhere in particular?” she asked cautiously. The last thing she needed was a lawsuit. That would be all her grandfather needed to reel her back into the family fold.

He inhaled deeply, shook his head and winced. “Nowhere in particular. My grandmother would have called it feeling all-overish.”

She didn’t want to hear about his family, she had enough problems with her own. She glanced at her car and then at his larger SUV. “Can you drive? That is, maybe I could drive you home and then come back for my car.”

“Long walk,” he rasped. She’d been right about his mouth. It crinkled into a quick grin that melted the last of her resistance. If he was one of the bad guys, she could easily outrun him. She doubted if he’d shoot her right in plain sight of the wharf and any passerby.

“Well, maybe I could follow you to make sure you get home safely. I mean, if you really are a policeman, I guess it would be all right.”

“Ms. Dixon?”

Astonished, she said, “You know my name?”

“Katherine Chandler Dixon?”

“Who are you?” She edged away. “Did my grandfather send you?”

“No, mine did,” he said, and then bent double in a fit of coughing that made her throat hurt just to hear it.

“You’re sick,” she said flatly. “There’s a hospital in Elizabeth City and one on the beach. I think there are some other medical facilities, too. Take your pick.”

Recovering, he shook his head. Under the dark shadow of beard, his face looked the color of raw plaster. “Don’t need a hospital. On my way to recovering from a few busted bones, I picked up a bug. It’s no big deal—mostly headache. I just need to sleep it off.”

“Look, if you’ll tell me where you live, I’ll see that you get there, one way or another, all right? The rest is up to you.”

“Charleston,” he said with another of those twisty grins. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was deliberately trying to disarm her.

“Where’s that?” And then her eyes widened. “You mean the one in South Carolina?”

“Yep. Last time I saw it, it was.” He appeared to be breathing easier now that the coughing fit had passed.

“I’m certainly not going to drive you to Charleston, but if you’re staying somewhere around here, I’ll help you get there.”

“Nags Head last night. Checked out this morning.” He named a hotel about three mileposts from where she’d worked last summer.

Shaking her head slowly, Kit made up her mind. Lord, if she ever wrote an autobiography, no one would believe it. Not that anyone would be interested.

“You’re coming home with me,” she said firmly. Lord knows she’d taken home scruffier-looking creatures. Four-legged ones. Besides, her home was within shouting distance of practically everyone in the village. “It’s not much, but at least you can rest up until you feel like telling me what this is all about.” The man knew her name. She wanted to know what else he knew about her. “You can rest on the couch until you’re feeling better. It opens up and I can let you have a spare pillow.”

Carson wanted to refuse. Hell, he wanted to be back in Charleston in his own bed, with the telephone off the hook and a solid week to do nothing but sleep.

At the moment, though, if she’d offered him a doormat, he would gratefully have accepted. “Need to talk anyway,” he said. He could rest up for a few minutes, speak his piece, hand over the goods and by that time he’d be good to go.

Good enough, at any rate.

“You wait here,” she said. “I’ll move my car off the road—nobody’ll bother it. I can drive a stick shift, you don’t have to worry about that.”

He shook his head, winced and said, “Automatic.”

“Whatever. I just don’t want you on my conscience. You’re in no shape to drive and my car will be all right here. There’s no crime around these parts.”

Hearing her own words, Kit wondered just when she had stepped through the looking glass. How about murder? And no matter how peaceful it might look on the surface, Gilbert’s Point saw it’s share of drug traffic, not to mention the occasional Saturday night celebration that got out of hand. So far as she knew, the Coast Guard took care of the drug runners and a night in jail took care of the boozers. But murder—that was scary.

“Give me the keys,” she growled. “I’ll help you in and—”

He helped himself in, moving as if he’d been stretched on a rack, but moving under his own steam. That was encouraging.

“You can take a nap if you want to, I don’t have to be at work until five and it’s only four-twenty. Are you allergic to aspirin? How about chicken soup? Jeff at the Crab House makes really good chicken soup.”

She could hear her mother now. “Katherine, do you have to drag home every stray creature in the world? I’m not running a zoo, you know,” she would say. At least, she would when she was sober enough. Or when she was home. Perhaps if she’d been home more often, or sober more often, Kit wouldn’t have adopted every stray she saw, from homeless cats to tailless lizards to broken-wing birds.

It had never worked out, anyway. Her father had seen to that. He made her watch once while he stuffed a litter of abandoned kittens into a sack and drowned them in the Chesapeake Bay.

And then she’d had to serve her term in the closet for defying his orders. It was usually only a matter of a few hours, but once, after one of her strays had infested the house with fleas and they’d had to get the exterminator in, she’d been locked in the closet for twelve hours straight. She had cried herself sick, then she’d begun making up stories.

She probably had her father to thank for her career.

“Hot tea’s supposed to be good for colds, too. And onions. Not together, of course, but…”

Carson let her babble. All he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes. He never got sick, never. Been busted up a time or two, but he’d never caught any of the bugs going around. Until now.

By the time she stopped the car in front of a house that was about the same vintage as his own, it was all he could do to slide out of the car. His overnight bag was in the back, but he lacked the motivation to reach for it.

Passing by an assortment of bowls and pans on the front porch, she opened the door and pointed toward the back of the house. “Bathroom’s back there, last door on the left. Couch is through there, help yourself. I’ll put the kettle on and call to see if today’s chicken soup’s ready. Jeff makes it fresh every day.”

Her voice had a soothing quality, which was surprising coming from a woman who was at worst a dangerous psychotic, at best, a compassionate flake. “There’s an afghan on the back of the couch. When you’re feverish, you probably don’t need to be chilled. Or is it the other way around?”

She left, muttering something about starve-a-cold, feed-a-fever, but by that time Carson was down and nearly out. A moment later he could sense her presence, even though his eyes were closed. Don’t talk any more, he wanted to say, it hurts my head.

“I won’t talk any more, you probably just want to sleep. Why don’t I go get my car now, and I’ll stop by the restaurant and bring you some chicken soup before I go to work.”

He felt a drift of something light and wooly over his body. She hadn’t tried to remove his coat, but she tugged at one of his boots briefly before giving up. He could have told her that there was a knack to pulling off boots, and she didn’t have it. At that point, he didn’t care.

Bye-bye, angel. Wake me up in a few weeks, all right?

Three

This is the right thing to do, Kit thought in an effort to reassure herself. After running the man down, she could hardly walk off and leave him there. He was injured, possibly even ill. It was only natural to be uneasy—any normal person would be uneasy.

All right, so she was more than uneasy, she was scared stiff. But she was still functioning, and under the circumstances that was pretty cool.

With shaking fingers, she dialed the Crab House. “Look, Jeff—I might be a few minutes late coming on shift, but I’m going to stop by first, and could you please have a quart of chicken soup ready to go?” She listened, darting quick glances toward the living room. “Uh-huh—that’s right, he found me.”

Someone had been asking questions about her? And she’d been fool enough to drag him home with her. Maybe her grandfather was right—she was a clear case of arrested development.

But the man had known her full name. That had brought her up short, and before she could come to her senses curiosity had outweighed fear, and now she was stuck with him.

Fortunately, he was out like a light, as she simply wasn’t up to the job of dragging him out and dumping him beside the road.

Raking her hair from her forehead, she thrust her car keys in her pocket and hurried down the path, wondering if she’d left enough room for Ladybug. Without thinking, she’d parked the Yukon in the place she usually parked her own car. Second thoughts, and third ones, dogged her steps as she hurried along the road. How could she have walked out and left a strange man asleep in her house at a time like this?

Even under normal circumstances Kit never invited men to sleep in her house. Sleeping over implied involvement, and Kit had a whole series of rules concerning getting involved with a man, starting with No Way and ending with Just Say No.

Growing up in a family that was everything proper on the outside and totally dysfunctional behind closed doors had left scars that she was still trying to heal—or if not to heal, at least to hide.

In other words, she mocked silently, you’re a chip off the old block.

Early on, it hadn’t been quite so evident that once her father left for his office, the whole house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Back then, her mother would wait until just before dinner to take the first drink. During the day they would go places, just the two of them. Movies, museums, shopping…to the zoo. On rainy days they might play Fish or cut paper dolls from old fashion magazines. She’d loved that, making up stories about each one.

For Kit’s eighth birthday her mother had given her a bride doll. In later years Kit always connected the doll in her mind with a large, gold-framed wedding picture that had hung in her mother’s sitting room. The bride in the picture wore a full-skirted lace gown and pearl-seeded veil, her eyes aglow in a classically beautiful face. Standing beside her, but not touching her stood the groom, Christopher Dixon, looking handsome and chillingly un-involved. That was before her mother’s drinking spiraled out of control.

Oh, they’d been a pair, all right. According to her grandfather, Betty Chandler had set out to trap herself a rich husband, and in a weak moment, the judge’s only son had allowed himself to be caught.

So far as Kit knew, her father had never had a weak moment in his entire life. If the judge was known as Cast Iron, then her father, a junior partner in a prestigious law firm at the time of his death, could surely have been called Stainless Steel.

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