Книга - Criminal Deception

Criminal Deception
Marilyn Pappano


This is far from over. After being the target of a mob hit intended for his twin brother, Joe Saldana had settled in to his trauma-free life in Copper Lake. But when his brother's girlfriend, Liz Dalton, entered the coffee shop looking for his twin, Joe found his new life suddenly unraveling. The threat still existed–and so did the white-hot attraction between Joe and Liz.A U.S. Marshal, Liz had taken precautions to ensure her pretend boyfriend's safety. Now that he had escaped protective custody, she had to find him and bring him in to testify. She didn't count on needing Joe's help, on deceiving him yet again. She could only count on wanting him despite all the reasons she shouldn't….









Remember Josh.


Her dark gaze locked with his, her eyes hazy with desire and regret, and he figured he looked about the same. He wanted her, damn it, but there were good reasons for both of them to keep their distance, starting with Josh.

Then she sighed softly, and he thought to hell with Josh. All their lives, Joe had been the responsible, reliable, honorable twin, while Josh had done what he wanted, taken what he wanted and run when he wanted. Joe had always thought too much, and Josh hadn’t thought at all.

At this moment Joe didn’t want to think. He wanted to feel. To do.

Liz’s breathing was shallow, ragged. Then he realized that it was his own echoing in his ears. She was hardly breathing at all, waiting, watching him, wanting…

Wanting him for who he was, or because he looked exactly like his brother?




Dear Reader,

I always fall in love with something when I write a book—a character, a place or something of importance to the story. This time there were those sweet sighs whenever Joe came onto the page, and Copper Lake is high on the list of places I’d like to live, but my true love affair was with coffee.

I’m a lifelong coffee nondrinker. But when I began a book about a man who owns a gourmet coffee shop, I thought the least I could do was sample some gourmet coffees. As luck would have it, at the same time I was doing this research, my niece came home from a year in El Salvador with bags of top Salvadoran coffee for everyone. One sip and I was in love. As further proof of serendipity, the only place to buy that coffee outside El Salvador was from the estate’s only American roastery a mere twenty miles from my house.

It’s fair to say that Liz fell in love with Joe over a cup of coffee. And so did I.

Marilyn Pappano




Criminal Deception

Marilyn Pappano

















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




MARILYN PAPPANO


has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but she isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed with family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10




Chapter 1


Joe Saldana was a sucker for a pretty female, and he’d proven it twice in the past hour alone: he’d agreed to help Ellie Maricci with her new pet project, and with nothing more than an innocent look from Alyssa Lassiter’s big blue eyes and a soft, “Pwease, Joe,” he’d committed to help her father coach Little League this summer.

Now he sat in one corner of A Cuppa Joe, his Copper Lake, Georgia, coffee shop, gazing at his neighbor across the narrow table. Natalia Porter was unusually hesitant this afternoon, a sure sign that she wanted something from him. He was determined not to help her out by asking what.

She looked up from her afternoon grande mocha caffeine fix and casually said, “I went for a bike ride today.”

“Huh.” There was nothing unusual about that. Soon after moving into the cottage next door to his two months ago, she’d bought a bike and accompanied him on dozens of rides.

“I went out to Copper Lake.”

“Huh.” The lake for which the town was named was only three miles northeast of the square, a short ride for either of them.

“I found something.” She gave up pretense for intensity that rushed out her words. “Two puppies. A male and a female. They’re so cute and sweet and—and so hungry. They’re nothing but skin and bones, and they kind of followed me home, but Mrs. Wyndham says I can’t keep them. You, on the other hand, are so responsible and so reliable and just the perfect tenant, and if you wanted to keep them, why, of course that would be another matter entirely.” Natalia paused for a breath, then looked at him hopefully. “So will you?”

He studied her. She was twenty-five, she’d told him, but with her ridiculously short brown hair and eyes that were way too big for her face, she looked about fifteen. Those eyes were green, at least for the day; she changed their color as often as she changed her contact lenses.

Very young, very innocent, very easy to say yes to.

Stubbornly, he didn’t. “You know what puppies do? They pee all over everything. What they don’t pee on, they chew up, and they eat like a horse. They’ll tear my house apart the first time they’re left alone. And in case you haven’t noticed, with the hours I keep, they’d be alone a lot.”

“I’ll help with that,” she said eagerly. “I’ll take them out every two hours and I’ll clean up whatever messes they make.”

“I don’t want pets.”

“When was the last time you had one?”

“I don’t have to have cancer to know I don’t want it,” he retorted. He was happy living by himself. He liked his shoes ungnawed on; he liked not sharing his bed. Being responsibility-free, except for the coffee shop, was his life’s goal. The only thing he didn’t want more than a puppy was two puppies.

Then he grinned faintly. That wasn’t accurate. He didn’t want to be audited by the IRS. He didn’t want Starbucks to move into that empty space across the square. He didn’t want global warming to be a fact, even though he believed it was.

He didn’t want to ever see his brother again.

Oh, yeah, Josh trumped every other bad idea out there. Josh was the worst idea out there. Life would have been easier all around if he’d never been born.

Although how would that have affected Joe? After all, they’d come from the same egg.

And Joe had been dealing with him ever since.

“Please, Joe?”

“Look, Nat, I’ll ask Miss Abigail—”

The bell over the door dinged and he glanced that way. For a moment, all he saw was red: a snug-fitting dress that hugged every curve it touched, from shoulder to breast to waist to hip. It was fire-engine, look-at-me red, and led to a pair of long tanned legs and high-heeled sandals, white dots on red and topped with a bow.

It was an amazing sight to a man with a fine appreciation for mile-long legs.

As the door whooshed shut and the newcomer took a few steps, curiosity raised his gaze. He’d been in Copper Lake a year and a half. How had he overlooked those legs before?

His glance slid back over those curves and skimmed across delicate features framed by sleek black curls before it clicked into one recognizable picture. All the appreciation disappeared, swallowed up whole by cold emptiness that spread instantly through him.

Slowly he got to his feet. Only dimly aware of Natalia’s questioning look, he mumbled, “Yeah, okay, whatever,” then crossed to the counter. He swore he felt the newcomer’s gaze the instant it touched him, and he wondered in some distant part of his mind if she knew who he was, that he was Joe and not Josh.

Because last he heard, she had been Josh’s.

She stopped near the cash register, where only two feet of marble separated them. She looked as cool as the stone between them, and elegant, too. Funny. Elegant had never been Josh’s type.

But Josh had had no doubt that Elizabeth Dalton was exactly his type.

“Elizabeth.” He drawled out all four syllables.

“I prefer Liz.”

He’d heard those words before, the first time they’d met. Josh had introduced her as Beth, but she hadn’t seemed at all like a Beth to him. She’d stated her preference that day, as now, but Josh had ignored her, and Joe…He hadn’t called her anything. He’d been too busy keeping his tongue from hitting the floor.

“What brings you to Copper Lake?” Then the obvious answer to the question hit him and his gaze jerked toward the plate glass windows and the street beyond, searching for a glimpse of his brother. It would be just like him to send someone else in to smooth the way before he showed his face.

“I’m looking for Josh,” Liz replied in that unruffled way of hers, and Joe’s attention jerked again, back to her.

He couldn’t decide which was more incredible—that his worthless brother had run out on a woman like Liz Dalton, that she thought he was worth tracking down, or that she thought he’d come to Joe. Even though they were identical twins, they’d been going their separate ways since they were about five years old. They hadn’t been particularly close even before what had happened two years ago.

He picked up a spray bottle and a handful of towels, circled the counter to the nearest table, then started the task of scrubbing the top clean. “You’re looking in the wrong town. This is the last place Josh would go if he’s in trouble.”

Liz followed him. “Then doesn’t that make it the first place I should check?”

He wiped that table to a shine, then moved on to the next. Natalia, two tables away, wasn’t even pretending that she wasn’t listening to every word. “I haven’t seen him in two years. I’m not sure I want to see him in the next twenty either.”

“Has he called you?”

“Why would he do that?”

“To apologize?”

His laughter was more of a snort.

She shrugged, a silent acknowledgment that her suggestion was unlikely, then offered a better one. “To ask for money or help.”

He rounded on her, moving closer, lowering his voice so Natalia would have to strain to hear. “Last time he asked me for anything, I damn near died. Do you really think he’d try again? Because if he did, I don’t know whether I’d beat him to a pulp or let the people who tried to kill me do it instead.”

Liz’s eyes darkened a shade, and for a moment shock flashed there. He half expected her to chide, You don’t mean that, but although her lips parted as if to speak, she remained silent.

Once more the bell above the door sounded, and he automatically looked that way as a group of girls wearing the tan-and-blue uniforms of the local middle school came in. There would be more behind them, followed in fifteen minutes by kids from the high school. As good an excuse as any to end this conversation.

“I’ve got customers. If you find Josh, tell him I said to go to hell and try not to take anyone with him.” Stepping around her, he returned to the counter, washed his hands, forced a smile and went back to work.



“That went well,” Liz murmured on the rush of a sigh. The words were meant just for her, but it was clear the girl at the nearest table heard them. Her startlingly emerald gaze met Liz’s for an instant before she guiltily looked away.

Okay, so she hadn’t expected Joe Saldana to be happy to see her or eager to discuss Josh. She’d just hoped he’d make her job easier. That he’d say, “Yeah, Josh is at the house. Go pick him up,” or would at least know where he was or how to reach him.

Not that there’d been anything easy about Josh Saldana from the beginning.

She left the coffee shop, heading for her car parked around the corner. As she settled behind the wheel, she watched through the shop’s side window while Joe joked with the girls lined up for drinks. He was old enough—just barely—to be their father, but that didn’t stop at least three of them from gazing at him adoringly.

Granted, there was plenty to adore, on the outside, at least. He was over six feet tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed, tanned and lean. Liz could practically hear a Beach Boys’ surfer tune playing in the background when she looked at him. He had a strong jaw, a straight nose, enough crook to his smile to give him a boyish look and enough sex appeal to give her a girlish tingle.

It had been there the first time they’d met—that sizzle—even though Josh had been standing between them, one arm draped possessively over her shoulder. She and Joe had exchanged looks and greetings, and something had sparked. And it had never fizzled out.

Well, maybe for him it had, she admitted as she started the engine. The last time she’d seen him, he was lying in an intensive-care bed, white as the sheet beneath him, hooked up to machines and IVs. His mother had quietly prayed and his father had wept, while Josh had been typically Josh. Nothing was ever his fault; he was always the innocent victim.

Liz had had her fill of victims like him.

The April afternoon was warm, but she opted for rolling the windows down instead of turning on the air conditioner. The breeze blew through her curls, and she drove with one hand on the wheel, the other holding them back from her face. Her destination was a mile or so away along quiet streets bordered by neatly kept houses, its drive marked by a small plaque: Wyndham Hall.

The house was old, not overly large, but it gave the impression of size and endurance, rather like its owner, Abigail Wentworth Wyndham. Somewhere between sixty and a hundred and sixty, Mrs. Wyndham was stout and energetic, and had been more than happy to rent one of her cottages to a friend of Joe’s.

Okay, so Liz had lied a little. It was all for a good cause, right?

Fifty feet in, the gravel driveway split. The left branch snaked around to the rear of three of the six cottages; the right headed straight to the back of the other three. Each was swathed in soothing pastels, hers the palest peach. The neighbors on the left and right, granddaughters of Mrs. Wyndham, were away at college. A woman named Natalia Porter lived in the pink cottage across the way, and Pete Petrovski, a Copper Lake police officer, lived in the blue one. That meant the middle, lightest lavender cottage, its porch facing Liz’s, was Joe’s.

If ever a man could handle lavender, it was him.

She parked next to the house and climbed four steps to the porch. Opening the door, she stopped just inside, getting a feel for the place. Unlike her condo in Dallas, it was amazingly quiet. No traffic on nearby streets, no people hustling along crowded sidewalks, no jets roaring overhead on their way to or from the airport. When the refrigerator cycled on, she startled, then expelled the breath she’d subconsciously held.

This was going to take some getting used to.

The place was mostly empty; a wicker sofa and coffee table that had come from Mrs. Wyndham’s porch, an assortment of pans and dishes and a borrowed air bed made up with borrowed sheets were all that surrounded her. Just till you get some stuff of your own, the landlady had said with a pat on Liz’s arm.

Liz had no clue how long she’d be staying, but whether it was a week or a month, she would be fine with what was in the cottage now. She preferred take-out over cooking; the couch was comfortable; the coffee table could double as a desk; and the twin-sized air bed was no worse than the motel beds she slept in as often as her own.

A shout from out front drew her back through the house to watch a tan blur streak wildly around the stretch of grass that separated the two rows of cottages. A larger yellow blur followed, panting happily, and the girl from the coffee shop watched, her expression somewhere between scolding and laughing. Behind her, a bicycle was parked in front of the pink cottage, and beyond, the front door stood open, with the screen door shoved back so far that it hadn’t closed again. Escape of the puppies, Liz surmised as she opened her own screen door and went outside to the front steps.

Immediately the dogs came racing in her direction, the tan one sleek and wiry, the yellow one larger, fuzzy—a Lab mix having a very bad hair day. Their wannabe mistress, who she guessed was Natalia Porter, turned her way, too, and all hint of pleasure disappeared from the girl’s face. She looked at Liz’s car and at the open door behind her, then scowled. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m your new neighbor. Liz Dalton.” Instead of offering her hand, she crouched to scratch the puppies. They were too exuberant by half to be indoor dogs. For a moment they lolled and grunted appreciatively, then something caught their attention and they were off again.

“Joe wasn’t happy to see you. Does he know you’ve moved in here?”

“He’ll find out soon enough.”

“He’s not going to like it.”

Because she couldn’t disagree, Liz shrugged, then leaned one hip against the stair railing and studied Natalia. She was older than first glance suggested, although with her bottom lip edged out, she still resembled a pouty adolescent. Joe had been sitting with her when Liz walked into the coffee shop; they lived next door to each other. Just friends? Or more?

Judging from Natalia’s animosity, Liz would guess very good friends, or the girl wanted a whole lot more.

A little jealousy somewhere deep inside her prickled. Did Joe go for the big-eyed, underfed waif type? Because if so, he couldn’t possibly appreciate anything about her. She was so far off that target that she might as well be another life form.

But Joe’s love life was none of her business. She was here to find out what he knew about Josh. No doubt the hostility he’d displayed toward his brother was genuine; she just didn’t know whether he’d told the truth about not seeing him. Families tended to stick together. Seven years with the marshals service, and she hadn’t yet met the family willing to turn on their loved one, no matter what he’d done.

“Your puppies are cute.”

Natalia watched the dogs collide, then tumble across the grass, legs tangled together, and almost smiled. “They’re not mine. I found them.”

“Finders keepers doesn’t apply?”

“Mrs. Wyndham says no.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Joe’s gonna keep them. First he said no, but then he got distracted and said okay.” Natalia gave a tiny grimace of a smile and grudgingly added, “Thanks.”

So Liz’s appearance had been enough of a distraction to make Joe agree to take two dogs he didn’t want. It wasn’t a warm welcome; she never expected those.

But it was something.



Raven was late coming into the shop. Joe waited on a few after-work customers, hiding his impatience to leave. Usually when he got antsy, he went for a bike ride. A fast twenty-five miles could work it right out of him. This evening he didn’t have that option, at least not until he went home and faced Natalia, her puppies and her questions about Liz Dalton.

He couldn’t believe Liz had tracked him down. When he left Chicago, he’d cut off contact with pretty much everyone but his parents, and they’d moved away, too, soon after. A few aunts and uncles knew where he’d gone, but most of them wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Josh. Especially not Josh.

Besides, he didn’t want to think that Josh was important enough to Liz that she’d bothered to track him down.

There’s no accounting for taste, his grandmother used to say.

A muffled thud from the storeroom indicated Raven’s arrival. He walked into the room, stopping so suddenly he practically toppled over. If he didn’t know she was the only other person with a key to the shop, he would have thought a stranger had wandered in.

Gone was the jet-black hair that looked like it came straight from an ink bottle, and in its place was a warm, natural-looking brown. He’d never seen Raven with a hair color even close to natural. All the excess holes—lip, nose, brow, ears—were empty, and her makeup actually flattered her instead of making her look like a walking corpse. Add a green shirt and faded jeans in place of her usual black, and she looked normal. He’d never seen her looking normal.

First Liz Dalton showing up, then Raven transforming into the girl next door…This couldn’t be good.

“What?” she asked hostilely, snapping Joe out of his shock. Hostility he was used to.

“Nothing. I’m out of here. Call me if you need anything.” He wheeled his bike into the alley. As he tightened the strap of the helmet and swung one leg over the bike frame, he wondered what was responsible for Raven’s new look.

Love or, at least, lust.

Look at Liz. She hadn’t changed her appearance for Josh, but she’d surely lowered her standards. Women like her just didn’t get involved with men like him. She was too smart, classy, law-abiding. At least, she had been. Who knew what all those months with Josh had done to her?

Now that he was gone, why was she looking for him? To renew the relationship? To punish him? To reclaim something he’d taken of hers?

Joe regretted not asking.

His edginess still sharp, he rode onto Oglethorpe, then made a left onto Calhoun. Too soon, he braked to turn into the Wyndham gate and bumped along the gravel road until he reached his house. Natalia’s lime-green bike was parked next door, but there was no sign of her or the dogs he’d agreed to take in the stupidity of his fog over seeing Liz. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe she’d decided that trying to hide them from Miss Abigail was worth a shot…though he couldn’t imagine anything escaping the old woman’s attention.

He’d reached the top of the steps when a screen door thumped shut. He was accustomed to neighbors on either side, but this sound had come from the other side of the yard. It was only Tuesday, so neither granddaughter would be home from college, and the middle house had stood empty longer than he’d lived there.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder. He’d done too damn much of that in the first six months out of the hospital; a balloon popping had been enough to make him dive for cover. But once he’d come to Copper Lake, the uneasiness had faded. He’d felt safe here.

But if Liz could find him, so could the Mulroney brothers, the Chicago businessmen who’d proven once that they couldn’t tell the difference between him and Josh. Maybe if they did come around, he’d have time to show them the scars left from their previous run-in as proof. If they didn’t kill him first and look later.

Slowly he turned. And stared.

Oh, man, hadn’t he thought on seeing Raven that life was taking a turn for the worse?

Liz was seating herself on the top step of the cottage directly across the lawn. She’d changed into really short denim cutoffs that made her mile-long legs look two miles long, and topped them with a plain white T-shirt like those that filled his top dresser drawer. His had never looked that good.

Her olive skin damn near glowed in the late-afternoon sun, and her hair gleamed blue-black. She’s Italian, Josh had said with a wink and a leer. You know what that means. Hot-blooded as hell.

Just looking at her made Joe’s blood hot.

He should go inside his house. Lock the door. Pull the shades. Do his best, damn it, to pretend that he hadn’t seen her again, that she wasn’t sitting fifty feet away, that she’d never been Josh’s girl.

Instead he slowly walked down the steps and across the yard. The grass was thick and smelled sweetly of spring and the promise of summer. He stopped ten feet from the porch and watched as Liz took a drink of bottled water.

Big mistake. He shouldn’t be watching anything involving a mouth as sexy as hers. The plumping of her plum-colored lips as they closed around the bottle neck, the movement of muscles as the cold water flowed down her throat, the slight grip of pink-tipped fingers around the bottle’s sweaty plastic…

Finally—thank God—she lowered the bottle and met his gaze. “Hello, neighbor.”

He swallowed hard, his own mouth suddenly dry. “Do you know how many millions of those bottles wind up in landfills and how long they take to decompose? The least you could do is buy a gallon jug and drink it from a glass. Better yet, buy a filtering system, or hey, here’s an idea—drink from the tap. It won’t kill you.”

She blinked, then looked at the bottle. “Sorry my drinking habits offend you.”

Heat flushed through him. He wasn’t a crusader. He did what he could to be environmentally responsible, but he didn’t push it on others. But instead of apologizing, he asked, “Why are you here?”

“I told you. I’m looking for Josh.”

“And I told you, I haven’t seen or heard from him.”

Her smile was small and tight. She didn’t believe him. She thought he was protecting his seven-minutes-older brother. That just proved how little she knew him.

Of course, they didn’t know each other at all. He’d seen her four times before the Mulroneys had tried to kill him in Josh’s place. Four excruciating evenings with Josh between them.

Except that last time. For a few short minutes they’d been alone in the room, and the tension between them had been unbearable. They had almost touched that night—had almost kissed. But she had whispered exactly the right words to stop him, and he’d bolted from the room before his brother had returned.

Remember Josh.

That was probably the only time in his life he’d managed to forget him.

“So what do you think? That if you hang around here long enough, Josh will show up and prove me a liar?” He folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve mistaken me for my brother. I don’t lie.”

“Never?” she asked, one brow arched.

He’d fled the kitchen that night, nearly plowing over Josh on the way. What’s wrong? he’d asked, and Joe had brushed him off. Nothing. Everything’s fine. Except that he’d almost kissed his brother’s girl. Except that he’d wanted a hell of a lot more than a kiss from her.

Now he just wanted her to go away.

“How did you get Miss Abigail to rent to you?” The old lady didn’t need the income from the cottages. She only rented to people she knew and liked. She’d been a regular at the coffee shop for three months before she’d agreed to let him have the purple house.

“I told her you and I were old friends.”

He scowled. “And she believed you?”

“And provided me with keys, furniture and dishes.”

“I’ll have to tell her you lied.”

Liz’s eyes widened innocently. “What kind of gentleman would do that?” Then she smiled. “See? I haven’t mistaken you for your brother. No one would ever call Josh a gentleman.”

It was an incredible smile, and it did incredible things to him. The knots in his gut changed to an entirely different kind of knot. Not stress, not anxiety, but tension of a much more intimate nature. He liked that smile. He could grow used to it very quickly. He could learn to need it.

If only he could also learn to forget.

Resolutely he stiffened his spine and scowled at her again. “Why are you looking for Josh?”

She took another drink from the bottle, her gaze on him as if expecting another lecture. After capping it, she set it aside, then rested her arms on her bent knees. “Let’s just say he’s got something I want.”

It figured. His brother was a liar, a cheat, self-centered to the max and, now, a thief, too. “You won’t find him hanging around me.”

“Maybe not. But it’s the last place I have to hang around.”

“Leave your number and go back to Chicago. I’ll call you if I hear from him.”

She shrugged. “I’m in no hurry to get back. I’ll stick around and experience Georgia in the springtime. Mrs. Wyndham says it’s very nice.”

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

Pivoting on his heel, he stalked back across the grass to his own house. Before he reached it, though, Natalia’s screen door slammed open and eight scrabbling feet dragged her onto the porch. He wasn’t sure whether the yelps came from her or the lunging, yipping dogs she held, more or less, at the ends of two leashes. She scrambled down the steps, barely keeping both her balance and her hold on the leashes, then managed to dig in her heels as both dogs began sniffing and dancing around his feet.

Her smile was brave if not particularly confident as she offered the leashes to him. “Your puppies,” she said breathlessly. “You’ll love them.”

He looked down at the dogs, one sniffing so fast that he was surprised it didn’t hyperventilate and the other trying to climb up him with paws the size of salad plates. “Puppies,” he repeated. He’d expected something small, cute and cuddly that would fall asleep with nothing more than a brief belly scratch. These two were both quivering nose to tail as if they might never sleep.

Liz, Raven and now this. Life was going downhill fast.




Chapter 2


Liz woke up at five-thirty without the help of an alarm, but her eyes were heavy and her brain slow to kick in as she crawled out of bed. After a stop in the bathroom, she padded into the living room to look across the grass at the lavender house. The windows were dark, and there was no sign of the black heavy-duty bike that was Joe’s only mode of transportation.

Even back in Chicago, he’d been into recycling. Ever juvenile, Josh had thought it a hoot to toss out pop cans and newspapers when his brother was around. But she hadn’t realized until prepping to come here that his commitment to going green extended to not even owning a car.

She felt a twinge of guilt when she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottled water and the foam container that held leftovers from last night’s dinner.

She knew from her briefing that A Cuppa Joe opened at 6:00 a.m. Business was good enough that Joe had a part-time helper, a retired schoolteacher by the name of Esther, from opening until nine. There was another part-timer, Raven, who worked from 5:00 p.m. until close. After Esther and before Raven, Joe was usually on his own.

For at least part of that time today, he would have company.

She ate bites of cold vegetable lo mein while getting dressed. Makeup done, hair pulled into a froth of curls on top of her head, earrings matched to her cobalt-blue sheath, Liz stepped into strappy sandals with three-inch heels, grabbed her purse and went to her rental car.

The sky was turning rosy in the east, and lights were on in most of the houses she passed on her way downtown. Back home in Dallas, lights were always on, and morning traffic was a nightmare. Chicago, where she’d spent two months before the botched murder attempt sent her, Josh and the rest of the team out of state, was the same. Copper Lake’s early morning traffic consisted of only an occasional car.

She parked in the same spot she’d taken the day before and just sat for a moment. Most of the buildings that faced the square were dimly lit, but A Cuppa Joe, Krispy Kreme and Ellie’s Deli were bright and welcoming. Visible through the large window of the coffee shop, Esther, her hair a startling orange, was filling mugs for seated customers while Joe was behind the counter, a line of about ten waiting.

He moved quickly, efficiently, with a few words and an easy smile for each customer. Two years ago, he’d been a destined-for-success financial planner in one of Chicago’s top investment firms and had looked the part in Armani suits and Alden shoes.

He looked just as handsome and even a little sexier in faded jeans and a pale blue T-shirt bearing the shop’s logo.

She waited five, ten, twenty minutes, but business didn’t slack off. Finally she went inside, took a place at the end of the line and waited, nerves tightening each time she moved forward.

Joe turned from the cash register and his smile disappeared. Mouth tightening at one corner, he curtly asked, “What do you want?”

She would bet this month’s salary that his question had nothing to do with taking an order, but she smiled and gave one anyway. “Just plain coffee.”

“Topéca, Jamaica Blue Mountain, Sumatra Mandehling?”

“You choose.” Her coffee generally came crystallized in a jar and was reconstituted with microwaved water. She wasn’t picky.

“To go?” There was a hint of hopefulness in his voice, although his expression remained impassive.

She smiled again. “No. I’ll drink it here.”

He bypassed the paper cups and cardboard sleeves, both bearing the emblem signifying recycled materials, and took a white ceramic mug from a shelf above the back counter. Dozens of mugs were lined up there, in all colors, sizes and designs, most marked with a regular’s name. Natalia’s was tall, pale yellow with emerald grass and a cartoon drawing of a lime-green bike.

Liz bet she could come in five times a day for a month and still not get her own mug added to the collection.

She paid no attention to the type of coffee he poured into the cup. It was steaming, fragrant and loaded with caffeine. That was all she needed. He traded the mug for the two bucks she offered without coming close to touching her, and he laid the change on the counter rather than in her outstretched hand.

Maybe some bit of sizzle remained on his part, after all.

She chose a table where her back was to the wall, not out of any sense of security but because it allowed her to see everyone in the shop and afforded a good view through the plate glass windows that lined the two outside walls.

Copper Lake had twenty thousand people or so and was prosperous for a small Southern town. The downtown was well-maintained and occupation of the buildings seemed about a hundred percent. The grass in the square was manicured, the flowerbeds were colorful and weed-free, and the gazebo bore a new coat of white paint. It looked like the small town of fiction: homey, welcoming, safe—a place where people looked out for each other.

Was that what had drawn Joe? Had he needed that sense of refuge?

She’d doctored her coffee with sweetener from a glass bowl in the middle of the table, stirred it with a real spoon and nursed her way through half of it when a presence disturbed the air. Glancing up, she met Joe’s gaze, unsmiling, serious blue. At the moment, he looked as if the only thing he needed refuge from was her. She might feel something about that later. Regret. Disappointment. Maybe even satisfaction, that he felt enough of something to need to keep her at a distance.

He slid into the seat across from her, resting his hands on the table top. Good hands. Strong, tanned, long fingers, neat nails. “You were keeping Josh on a pretty short leash. How did he get away?”

She resented the idea that she was the clingy sort but could see why he thought so. From the time she’d been assigned to Josh’s case, she’d rarely left his side.

Until the day he’d knocked her partner unconscious, handcuffed her to the bed and waltzed out of the San Francisco safe house where they’d been staying. She’d cursed herself hoarse and sworn that she would find him. Getting handcuffed, and to a bed, no less, by her protectee was the lowlight of her career.

“Everyone has to sleep sometime,” she said with a shrug. She had been asleep when Josh had snapped the cuff on. Her partner, on the other hand, had merely been asleep on the job.

“Did you have a fight? Was he seeing someone else?”

She shrugged again, lazily, as if it didn’t matter. “I’d say he just got tired of me.” Being in protective custody wasn’t easy for the most compliant of witnesses, and Josh had been far from that. He hadn’t wanted to testify against the Mulroneys, but it was the only way to keep his own petty-criminal butt out of jail.

For an instant disbelief flitted across Joe’s expression, but it was gone as quickly as she identified it. “What makes you think he’d leave Chicago? He’s lived his whole life there. He likes it there.”

She didn’t just think Josh had left Chicago. She knew it. She sipped her coffee, lukewarm now, before pointing out, “You’d lived your whole life there, but you left.”

Again, something flickered across his face. Guilt? Chagrin? Did he feel as if he’d run away? Getting the hell out of town when someone had tried to kill you, even if it was a case of mistaken identity, seemed perfectly rational to her. Instead of responding to her comment, though, he steered back to the original conversation. “When did he take off?”

“Two months ago.”

“And you’ve been looking for him ever since.”

She ignored the censure in his voice. There was something pathetic about a woman relentlessly tracking down the boyfriend who didn’t want her anymore. But she’d given more than two years of her life to this case, and damned if Josh was going to blow it. He would testify even if she had to force him into court at gunpoint.

“It must be valuable.”

“What?” she asked reflexively, drawing her attention back to Joe.

“Whatever he took.”

Her smile felt thin and strained. “It is to me.” Before he could continue with the questions, she asked one of her own. “Why Copper Lake?”

This time the shrug was his, a sinuous shifting of muscle beneath soft cotton. “The coffee shop was for sale. The price was right, the town was nice, and the name fit.”

Her brows raised. “You didn’t name it A Cuppa Joe?”

His scowl gave him a boyish look. “Do I look like the type who’d go for a name like that? I’d’ve chosen something less cute, like, I don’t know, Not the Same Old Grind.”

“I like A Cuppa Joe,” she said stubbornly.

A raspy voice chimed in, “You and every single woman in town.” Esther laughed, then topped off Liz’s cup. “Are you single?”

“I am. Are you?”

“I am, too. I’d go after him, but that age thing is a problem. He’s just way too old for my taste.” Punctuating the words with a sly wink, Esther moved on with the pot to the next table.

Silence fell over the table, not uncomfortable but not comfortable either. Liz stirred sweetener into her refilled cup, the spoon clanking against the porcelain, casting about for something to say. The sight of an elderly man coming through the door with the assistance of a younger man, clearly his son, provided it. “How are your parents?”

“Considering that they had to leave the home they’d lived in for thirty-some years and move someplace where they knew no one, and they haven’t seen their son in more than two years, not bad.”

Once the Mulroneys had learned of Josh’s family’s existence—had found other targets for their warnings—the U.S. Attorney’s office had deemed it safer for Joe and his parents to leave town and keep a low profile in their new homes. Joe had chosen the security of small-town life, while the elder Saldanas had opted for the anonymity of the city a short distance away. They’d been willing to give up a lot, but not the conveniences they’d taken for granted all their lives.

She had no desire to defend Josh’s actions, but it seemed the sort of thing a girlfriend should do. “He didn’t know how to contact them.”

Not surprisingly, the argument didn’t sit well with Joe. His gaze darkened and his lips thinned. “If he hadn’t screwed up so damn bad, they would have stayed in that house forever, like they’d planned, and he’d have always known where to find them.”

“He was sorry about that.” Truthfully, in a few moments of remorse, Josh had expressed regret for what he’d put his family through. Those moments had been rare, though. More often, he’d blamed the Mulroneys, the marshals service and/or the U.S. Attorney’s office. Sometimes he’d insisted that his parents had merely used Joe’s shooting as an excuse to move to a warmer climate, a smaller city, a more retirement-friendly area—not that they’d ever expressed any dissatisfaction with Chicago.

Maybe, Liz had thought, he just couldn’t face responsibility for the upheaval he’d caused.

Or he was just a self-centered, whiny brat.

Joe gave a sharp laugh. What it lacked in humor, it more than made up for with bitterness. “He’s never been sorry for a damn thing in his life.”

“He was sorry when you got shot. I saw him.” That had been one of the rare occasions. Standing beside Joe’s bed in ICU, not knowing whether he would survive, Josh had been humbled by regret and fear.

Liz had been afraid, too. Afraid that one more good guy would be lost, that once more the bad guys would win. Afraid that the Saldanas would never recover from such a loss. Afraid that she would always wonder what might have been if things had been different.

She had wondered. Nearly two years in different cities and states had added up to a lot of solitary nights. It had been safe to wonder then, because she’d thought she would never see Joe again. Once the Mulroneys went to trial and Josh had testified, she would take on new cases in new places. She would meet other men and probably, eventually, hopefully, fall in love with one of them.

Instead, here she was, sitting across from Joe, trying really hard not to wonder anymore.

She expected another denial from him, but it didn’t come. He stared out the window for a moment, as if the increasing traffic held his interest, before finally dragging his gaze back to her. “Did he know? Did he know they wanted him dead?” he pressed on. “Did he let me go on with life as usual knowing that people wanted to kill him, that they could easily mistake me for him?”

Her fingers tightened around the mug. Were these the first questions he would ask his brother if given the chance? Would a no provide any comfort? Would yes destroy their relationship for all time?

Up to the day Joe was shot, the Mulroneys’ crimes had been nonviolent. Their business had been just that: a routine job moving a product—money—from one place to another, laundering it along the way. They’d been involved in their communities; they’d gone to church with their families; they’d handled disputes diplomatically. Their hit on Josh had been the first and, so far, only sign of violence in their fifteen-year career. It was even possible that someone else Josh had pissed off was behind it instead.

“You know Josh.” Liz’s shrug was awkward. She’d never gotten over the guilt because she had known Josh, too. She should have expected violence. She should have known Joe was in danger. She should have protected him, too. “Nothing he ever does has consequences.”

Yeah, Joe thought grimly. He knew Josh. “When we were five, he sneaked Mom’s keys out and took the car for a drive. He made it two blocks before he ran into two other cars. He wasn’t hurt, but it did a lot of damage to all three vehicles. Mom spanked him. Dad grounded him, gave him extra chores, took his allowance, and three weeks later, Mom caught him behind the wheel again with the keys in the ignition. When we were eight, he tried to fly from our tree house to the ground. He spent the next six weeks with his left arm in a cast, spanked, grounded, extra chores, the whole bit again, and the day the cast came off, he tried again, breaking his right arm. And when we were twelve…” Breaking off, he shook his head. Too bad he couldn’t banish the memory so easily.

“And you were always the good son.”

He raised one hand in the Boy Scout salute. “I made good grades, stayed out of trouble and never gave Mom and Dad a reason to worry.”

“I was the good child, too,” Liz said.

The simple statement stuck him as odd. He’d seen her as only two things: his brother’s girlfriend and therefore the last woman on earth he should be—but was—attracted to. He’d never thought of her as a person: a daughter, a sister, someone with a life, hopes and plans outside of Josh.

Hell, he’d tried his best not to think of her at all.

“Of course, it wasn’t difficult. I was the youngest of four and the only girl, so my parents were predisposed to think of me as the good kid whether I was or not.”

Where were those brothers when she’d gotten involved with Josh? While Josh liked a challenge, he also liked not getting his ass kicked for messing around with the wrong girl. He would have kissed her goodbye…and then Joe, with his regular job, arrest-free record and all-around good-guyness, might have had a chance.

“Did your brothers approve of Josh?”

“They didn’t meet him, but no, they wouldn’t have approved.”

Which had probably been part of Josh’s appeal. Always being the good girl had grown tedious, and what better way for a good girl to rebel than with a bad boy?

Had she had enough of him now? Was she willing to admit he was a lost cause?

She was in Georgia looking for him after he’d dumped her and run. That seemed a pretty loud No.

“Do they live in Chicago?”

She picked up the mug, glanced at the dregs inside, then set it down again before meeting his gaze. Joe had the clear blue eyes that people paid money to get with contact lenses, but he’d always been a sucker for brown eyes, especially big, deep brown ones that, even after a couple of tough years, still managed a hint of innocence.

“No. D.C., Miami, L.A.” After another pause, she added, “I guess we all wanted out of Kansas.”

A good girl looking to escape the Kansas farmland and run a little wild. How easy it must have been for Josh to wrap her around his finger.

“I never would have pegged you for a farm girl.”

She blinked, then laughed, an easy, natural sound that reminded him again of innocence. “I’ve never set foot on a farm in my life. Well, no, wait, there was the time in third grade that my parents took us to the pumpkin patch for Halloween. That might have been a farm. Then again, it might have been a church parking lot in Wichita.” Her voice turned chiding. “There’s more to Kansas than farms.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in case I ever head out there. Do you go back often?”

“At least twice a year to see my parents.” As Esther approached with the coffee carafe again, Liz shook her head with a faint smile. “Do you get to see much of your parents?”

He shrugged. They’d settled in Savannah, only a few hours away, and he drove down at least once a month. He didn’t tell her that, though. How could he be sure that Josh hadn’t sent her here with a made-up story about looking for him just so he could find their folks? Mom and Dad might miss him like hell, but they were better off without him. Who knew what kind of trouble Josh would bring to their door if he could find it?

Because his thoughts had already taken a grim turn, he remarked, “Miss Abigail says you signed a month’s lease.” Twenty-nine more nights like last night, his gaze straying constantly to the windows, watching shadows as she moved from room to room. Twenty-nine more nights of getting to know her schedule, of catching unexpected glimpses of her, of seeing her both at home in casual clothes—those snug denim cutoffs from last night still made him sweat—and out and dressed up.

Twenty-nine more nights. God help him.

“Actually, my lease is for one month, with a month-by-month extension. I could be here one, two, four months. As long as it takes.” She made the announcement with an entirely too-sunny attitude. It turned his mouth down as if he’d just taken a hearty swallow of the used-up coffee grounds he provided Miss Abigail for her garden.

“If you’re really looking for Josh, Copper Lake isn’t the place to do it.”

“It’s the only place I have.” The airiness disappeared and something else crossed her face, flattening her voice. Panic? Despair? He’d taken something of value from her, she’d said. Sentimental value, like her grandmother’s opal ring she’d once worn? It was missing from her finger now.

Or financial value? Liz must have worked during the months they were together; someone had to support them, preferably in a way that didn’t bring them to the attention of the local cops. Had Josh wiped out her savings before he ran? Joe didn’t know what kind of work she did—Josh’s tastes usually ran toward waitresses—but it didn’t seem likely she could have saved an amount substantial enough to make her track him down.

What else could make a reasonably intelligent woman chase after a man she was well rid of? Love, he supposed, though he’d rather not think of Liz in love with his brother.

A knock on the plate glass window drew his gaze outside, and he waved. Anamaria Calloway, dressed in red with a bright Caribbean print shawl wrapped around her shoulders, was pushing the stroller that held young Will. The baby was sucking a pacifier and surveying the world around him with a lazy certainty that he was the center of its existence. He got both laziness and certainty, along with blue eyes, from his daddy and everything else, they hoped, from his ma—

He jerked his gaze back to Liz. “You aren’t—You didn’t—”

She looked from him to the baby, then back to him with nothing less than horror on her face. “Have a baby? With Josh? Dear God, no.”

Joe didn’t want to examine just how relieved he was by the answer. Knowing Josh had a kid would be tough enough. Knowing that he had a kid with Liz…Of all the things his brother had done in the last thirty years, that one would be the deal breaker. No more contact. Ever.

“I would never be so careless,” Liz said, her tone gone from shock to huffiness.

“People forget. They have accidents.”

“Not me. Never.”

“You never get so carried away that you don’t remember, or you don’t think it’ll be all right just this one time?”

“Never.”

Joe wasn’t smiling because he liked the emphatic nature of her answer. It wasn’t really a smile at all. He was just letting some of the tension ease from his muscles. “Do you ever wonder if maybe you’ve been sleeping with the wrong guys?”

Again, she blinked, but this time there was no tinkling laugh to follow it. “I think we got off track.”

“From the day we met,” he muttered. He couldn’t tell whether she’d heard. Her cheeks were flushed and she was looking just a bit disconcerted. Good. Making her lose her emotional balance might help him keep his.

“We were talking about the odds of my finding Josh here.”

“We hadn’t gotten to odds yet, but I’d guess they’re about a million to one against you. You familiar with the phrase ‘gone to ground’? Because Josh is. He’s had regular hideouts since he was three, and ‘with me’ has never been one of them, so you might as well move on.”

“You haven’t seen him.”

“Not since the day I got shot.”

“You haven’t talked to him.”

He shook his head.

“No e-mail. No contact with him at all.”

He held her gaze but didn’t speak. If she took his silence for a negative, if he’d deliberately misled her, well, that Thou shalt not lie stuff was between him and God. Certainly not him and Josh’s ex-maybe-wannabe-again-girlfriend. Besides, an unsolicited envelope in the mail with no return address didn’t count.

“See those two guys over there?” He gestured to the table closest to the door. “That’s Detective Tommy Maricci and Lieutenant A. J. Decker of the Copper Lake Police Department. If Josh showed up here, they’d be the first people I’d call. And he knows that. I’m fresh out of excuses, sympathy and family ties. He’d have to be beyond desperate to come to me because I’m not risking my ass for him ever again. So…” He shoved his chair back with a scrape. “You’re wasting your time hanging out here.”

“Well, it’s my time to be wasted, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t argue that point with her, so instead he picked up her cup and spoon and headed for the counter.



It was her time, Liz reflected as she stood up. And though she was there for the job, it left her an awful lot of nothing to do. Watching Joe chat with the two police officers he’d pointed out, she strolled across the café, then outside. The morning air was cool and damp and tinged with the promise of later heat. She could walk around the square and familiarize herself with the area. She could meet Joe’s business neighbors and see what they had to say about him. Most people, she’d found, told strangers way too much about others. Usually there was no malicious intent; they just forgot that they couldn’t trust strangers anymore.

How long had it been since she’d been so naive? She’d had a wonderful upbringing; there was no doubt about that. She’d loved her parents and her brothers, and they’d loved her. But discussions at the family dinner table had revolved around law and order, crime and punishment. She’d thought all little girls’ daddies wore suits, guns and badges to work; that all little girls’ mommies put bad people in prison; that all kids, even the good ones, borrowed Dad’s handcuffs for show-and-tell at least once and chained the prissiest girl in class to the teacher’s desk.

Your family’s weird, her best friend had told her in third grade, and Liz had put her in a wrist lock, forced her to her knees and made her apologize.

It had taken some time for her to realize they were different. With a grandfather and a father who were deputy U.S. Marshals, two uncles with the FBI, an aunt in the DEA and a mother who was a criminal court judge, they hadn’t been the typical Midwest family. Her grandfather was retired, and her father was close to it, but now her brothers were working with NCIS, ATF and the U.S. Attorney General’s office.

She walked to the end of the block, passing neatly kept storefronts, a flower shop that smelled heavenly through the open door and Ellie’s Deli, with enticing scents drifting through her open door, too. The cold lo mein she’d had for breakfast seemed a long time ago, so Liz climbed the old-fashioned porch and stepped inside.

The place was charming: old to its very bones, with fresh paint and reproduction fabrics and a few good antiques. Even though a fair number of tables were occupied, the bulk of the deli’s morning rush centered on the takeout counter, a wavy-glassed cabinet that looked as if it might have displayed pies and pastries once upon a time.

“Table or takeout?” a waitress asked on her way to the kitchen with an armload of plates.

“Table, please.” Right in the middle of the gossips, if you don’t mind.

Instead of leading her toward the dozen old men sharing a country-fried breakfast and their opinions on everything, the waitress turned toward the back of the building. The broad hall opened into a smaller, quieter dining room. Only two tables were occupied there: one by the pretty black woman with the baby stroller and a man Liz assumed, by their matching gold bands, was her husband and the one person in town, after Joe, who most interested Liz.

Natalia Porter’s attention was riveted outside, where the two puppies, restrained by leashes attached to the fence, were digging furiously in the dirt. The tan one created a hole deep enough to plunge her entire head into it, withdrawing only to snap at the fuzzy one when he tried to join her. Chastened, he went back to his own digging, shifting position just enough that the dirt his paws sent flying landed on the sleek puppy’s back.

Natalia laughed out loud before abruptly realizing that Liz was standing at the next table. For an instant, sullenness crossed her face, then her expression went blank.

“They’re adorable,” Liz remarked. She pulled a chair from the table so both Natalia and the puppies were in easy view. “Do they have names yet?”

“No. Joe has to name them.”

“So they’re well and truly his.”

Surprise darkened the girl’s eyes—today, sapphire blue at the outer rims, radiating in to pale gray—then she nodded. “Naming things helps form attachments.”

Natalia certainly had an attraction to Joe, even though he’d obviously not been part of her naming. Liz would like to know what that attachment was, how deep it ran and whether it was one-sided.

For business reasons, of course. Everything she knew about a subject added to her investigation. She wasn’t allowed to have a personal interest. That had never been a problem for her before. But now…

The waitress came for her order. After glancing at Natalia’s plate—ham, biscuits and gravy, hash browns with cheese, and hotcakes—and her stick-slender body, then thinking about her own curves that could so easily become dangerous, Liz asked for a fruit plate and unsweetened tea. Natalia remained silent, looking away from the dogs only to take a bite of food.

After Liz’s fruit arrived, she asked the girl, “Been a long time since you’ve had pets of your own?”

Natalia glanced at her. “I never have had,” she said flatly, then looked off as if she’d given away too much about herself.

Instead of questioning her, Liz speared a piece of pineapple on her fork. “I grew up with three brothers. We always had dogs, cats, turtles, fish, spiders and snakes. The snakes were for my benefit. My brothers liked to sneak them into my bed when I was asleep. One morning I woke up with one of the snakes looking me in the eye, smiling this damn smile while it flicked its tongue at me. Once my terror receded, I put it in a box, waited until that night when Mom’s boss came over for dinner and set it loose on the table. He was freaked out, his wife and daughters were in hysterics, and the next day all the snakes were out of the house for good.”

Natalia shuddered. “I hate snakes.”

“Me, too. But I couldn’t let my brothers know how much they scared me, or they would have won. You know?”

Slowly Natalia nodded and something in her expression said she really did know. She’d faced something that scared her, had hidden her fear and stood up to it, because she’d needed to win.

Liz couldn’t help but wonder what; it was her nature to want answers. An abusive father? A violent boyfriend? A threatening boss?

It would take more time than either of them had for Liz to gain her trust and find out. Instinct told her that Natalia Porter was a woman, despite her waifish look, who had little truth to tell and less trust to give.

“Have you always lived here?” she asked before sliding a piece of sweet melon into her mouth.

Natalia’s expression was torn, as if she’d rather pretend Liz wasn’t there but had already figured out that wasn’t the way to get rid of a nosy person. “No. Just a few months.”

“Where did you come from?”

Her only answer was a shrug.

“What made you choose Copper Lake?”

“Luck of the draw. The road went left, right and straight. I went straight, and it brought me here.”

“There are worse ways to decide where you’re going to stay awhile.” Like providing security to someone who couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted or needed it. Liz had worked protective custody before, but never with someone as difficult as Josh.

“I don’t have to ask why you’re here, do I?” Natalia pushed her plate away, the luscious cheese-covered hash browns untouched, and shifted in her chair to face Liz. “Because of Joe. Are you and he…?”

Liz signaled the waitress for a refill. “We know each other.”

“Duh. Like that wasn’t obvious yesterday. How well?”

Not well enough. Thanks to Josh, they would probably never get to know each other well enough. Either the older Saldana twin would be dragged out of the hole he’d hidden in and would testify against the Mulroneys, or the trial would come and go without his input. Either way, Liz would go on to a new case, and Joe would go on with his new life, and she, for one, would have a whole lot of regrets.

“I used to date Joe’s brother,” Liz said evenly.

The relief that flashed through Natalia’s eyes was intense, there and gone, and generated a similar intensity in Liz’s gut. The look that replaced it was flatter, blanker than usual.

Like those adoring teenagers in the coffee shop yesterday, Natalia had a thing for Joe. The big question was what he felt for her. Was it mutual, or was she hanging around waiting for him to finally notice that she was a very pretty woman with porcelain skin, delicate bones, eyes big enough to drown in and a perfect Cupid’s bow to shape her lips?

Liz would like to believe Joe was as oblivious to Natalia’s crush as he’d been to the teenagers’, but that would be naive, and she tried to never be naive. Joe and Natalia were friends; they lived next door to each other. She was enough of a regular at his shop to merit her own mug. He’d noticed she was beautiful.

Saldana men always noticed beauty, Josh had often bragged.

“So…are you and Joe…?” Liz hoped for the same sort of dear-God-no reaction she’d had to Joe’s suggestion that she’d gotten pregnant by Josh.

Natalia showed no emotion at all. “Would it matter to you if we are?”

Like hell, and that was a problem. Federal agents did not get romantically involved with any subject in an investigation—not suspects, not witnesses, not victims, not other agents. Not, not, not.

How did you stay uninvolved when you’d lost control? When your brain and logic and reason and ethics screaming no couldn’t be heard over the pounding of your heart?

The first thing you did was lie. To others. To yourself.

“Joe’s life is none of my business. I’m just looking for Josh.”

Natalia’s Cupid’s-bow mouth took on a pinched look. She didn’t believe Liz.

Which was only fair, because Liz didn’t believe herself.




Chapter 3


Joe’s primary function at any of the various organizational meetings he attended was to provide the coffee. Oh, he knew Ellie Maricci and the others relied on his willingness to volunteer, but when all was said and done, it was the coffee that counted most.

Tonight’s meeting was at River’s Edge, the antebellum beauty catty-cornered from A Cuppa Joe. It was a tourist attraction, a community meeting center and the place for celebrations of every sort. His mother, Dory, had seen a story about it in the Savannah newspaper and commented—while gazing at Joe with utter innocence—what a lovely place it would be for a wedding. The ceremony in the garden, a string quartet on the verandah, a lavish cake in the gazebo and laughter everywhere. The wistfulness in her voice had been deep, tinged with sadness.

Like most mothers, Dory wanted grandbabies to cuddle, preferably after a wedding to remember, but, she was fond of saying, she would take them any way she could get them. A bride who needed a little help planning a wedding would have been a plus in her book. She understood it was the bride’s mother who traditionally got the pleasure, but didn’t she deserve something extra for raising him and Josh?

She’d deserved a lot better than she’d gotten.

All too aware of that, Joe had responded with a joke. How do you get decent blues out of a string quartet?

Predictably, she’d swatted him. You don’t play the blues at a wedding.

Depends on whose wedding, his father, Ruben, had muttered.

Blues would be most appropriate for the poor sucker who made the mistake of walking down the aisle with Josh. Better yet, a funeral dirge.

And it damn well had better not be Liz.

Scowling, Joe carried a wicker basket across the verandah and through the open double doors. Ellie had covered half of the antique cherrywood dining table with desserts from the deli’s kitchen and left the other half for him. He’d already delivered two urns, started the coffee brewing—Guatemalan Antiqua and Ethiopian Yirgacheffe—and from the basket he now unloaded bowls of sugar and sweetener and two small carafes of cream, one plain, one flavored with hazelnut.

“Oh, my gosh, it smells wonderful in here.” Ellie waited for him to turn away from the table, then hugged him. Her body was solid, warm, with a barely noticeable bump from her four-months-along pregnancy. For more than five years, she and Tommy had gotten together, broken up and done it all over again, all because of his desire to get married and have kids and her opposition to both ideas.

Funny how surviving a near-death experience had made her see things in a different light.

It was one thing Joe and Ellie had in common. The near-death experience. Not so much the desire to marry and have kids.

When she stepped back, he gestured toward the table. “Do I need to set out cups and napkins again, or do you have that covered?”

Ellie grinned. “I brought finger food. No need for dishes.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen people take their coffee directly from the urn, on their knees, scalding their tongues. It’s not a pretty—”

The door that led from the dining room directly into the kitchen bumped open an inch or two, and black curls appeared briefly before the door received a harder shove. Liz was smiling, saying something over her shoulder and carrying a silver tray loaded with cups and saucers as she came into the room. Speaking of pretty sights…

Damn. He’d thought since he’d made it the rest of the day without so much as a glimpse of her that he might be safe. He would come to the meeting, it would be late when he got home, he would go straight to bed without even thinking about her…

Yeah, right.

“Hi, Joe.”

He automatically reached for the tray, heavier than it should have been. She flashed him a smile, hotter than it should have been. “Thanks,” she said as she began unloading cups and carefully lining them up near the urns. “I wondered why we were using the good china instead of paper plates and foam cups. Guess I have my answer.”

We. How easily she included herself among his friends, his town. She’d been there less than thirty hours, already had an invitation to work on Ellie’s project and had apparently made herself at home. Though, to be fair, Ellie would accept help from any living, breathing body.

And Liz was definitely living…breathing…and what a body. She wore white capris that left her legs bare from the knee down, a black-and-white dotted shirt that clung to her curves and black-and-white dotted sandals. With heels, of course.

Had he mentioned that he liked sexy shoes?

Ellie began stacking the saucers around the dessert plates as she primly said, “I admire Joe’s commitment to the environment and avoiding unnecessary waste.”

“Of course you do, because it means when we do this type of thing, I do the dishes.”

Liz wasn’t fooled. “I saw the state-of-the-art dishwashers in there.”

He shrugged.

“But tell me, doesn’t it take a lot of energy to run the dishwasher, heat the water, dry the dishes—heavens, to manufacture and ship the dishwasher in the first place? How do you know it’s not more environmentally friendly to just use throwaways and be done with it? Not foam, of course. It’s practically indestructible. But paper decomposes.”

Before he could respond, Ellie raised both hands. “Please, no environmental discussions. Tonight’s for my cause.”

Still holding Liz’s gaze, Joe directed his words to Ellie. “I heard you’d decided to use environmentally friendly disposable diapers for the kiddo. And that your remodel includes solar panels and a geothermal heat pump system.”

“That’s our contractor’s idea. Nothing to do with you,” she replied with a wink for Liz’s benefit. She knew Tommy and Russ had discussed it with him before making their choices. “So…I didn’t realize you two had met.”

“I didn’t realize you two had met,” he said.

Liz’s movements were fluid as she took a cup from the table, placed it under the spout of the Antiqua urn and filled it. “A good cup of coffee is the first thing I look for in a new town,” she said breezily.

“I’d’ve thought it would be a familiar face,” Joe said without a hint of breeze.

Ellie’s gaze shifted from one to the other, then she began easing away. “I’m gonna see if everyone’s here. When you hear me talking loudly in the parlor, that’s your cue to come on in. I’d hate for you to miss out on anything.”

Liz stirred sugar into her coffee, then held the spoon to drip. “I think that means she doesn’t want to miss out on anything.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I met Ellie at the deli this morning. Cute names in this town. Ellie’s Deli. A Cuppa Joe.”

“Not my doing,” he reminded her.

She nodded, then sucked the spoon into her mouth. The action was simple, unaffected, and damn near cut his knees out from under him. “Mmm. You know, there really is a difference between instant coffee and this stuff.”

“Yeah.” Was his voice really that hoarse? “Lucky for me, everyone else in the world was quicker than you to figure that out, or I’d be out of business.”

She took a sip and made another, softer mmm sound. “I don’t have time to make real coffee every day.”

“You can’t spare a few minutes? Keeping up with Josh—or tracking him down—must be a full-time job.”

A blink, one blink of those java-dark eyes, was her only response to the mention of his brother, and he tried to read a lot into it. Did she love him? Did she miss him? Did she hate him, need him, want to punish him?

Did she see him every time she looked at Joe?

Being an identical twin had its pluses and minuses. Being hot for a woman who didn’t even have to close her eyes to imagine she was with his brother was right up at the top of the minus column, along with being mistaken for him by a hitman.

Thinking about being hot for his brother’s maybe-ex was the perfect time for an interruption, provided by A. J. Decker. “Come on, Saldana. You’ve got all the coffee a man could need all day long. Do you mind sharing a little of it tonight?”

Joe forced his gaze from Liz. “I don’t know. I’m so used to getting paid for it that it’s kind of hard to give it away free.”

Decker reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled five. “Now will you move?”

Liz set her cup aside and picked up a clean one. “Keep your money, Lieutenant. This one’s on me.” Her slender, elegant fingers gestured toward the engraved plates that hung from each urn. “What’s your pleasure?”

Pleasure? On her? Sweet hell, Joe had to get away. Fast. Saying, “Excuse me,” and sounding more than a little strangled, he escaped the dining room for the broad hallway that divided the house front to back. The air was cooler there, easier to force into his choked lungs, kinder to his hot skin.

Familiar voices came from the parlor across the hall. Ellie and Tommy. The Calloway boys: Russ, Robbie and half-brother Mitch, and their wives, Jamie, Anamaria and Jessica. Sophy from the quilt shop and Officer Pete Petrovski, Joe’s neighbor. KiKi Isaacs, the first female detective in Copper Lake history. Dharma, the temperamental chef at the deli, and Cate Calloway, ER doctor and former cousin by marriage to the Calloway boys. Marnie, the lost-in-another-world crime scene tech who oversaw the CLPD lab. Her people skills mostly applied to the recently dead, but Joe liked her anyway.

He liked all these people. He liked their parents and their kids and their dogs, and they liked him back, even if they didn’t know much about him. The only person in town who did know much about him was approaching from behind, talking freely with Decker.

“…don’t know how long I’ll be here. I’ve just reached one of those points, you know, where anywhere you’re not has got to be better than where you are. If I like it, if I don’t…” She finished with a little shimmy of movement that started with the wild curls gathered on top of her head and ended with the slight sway of the ruffles stretched across the base of her toes.

And Decker didn’t even seem affected. His fingers didn’t tighten on the cup he held in his left hand. The saucer in his right didn’t tremble. He didn’t look as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs with that one little wiggle. He just nodded, said something about Dallas making Copper Lake look damn good, shoved a bite of minicheesecake in his mouth and went off to take a seat next to Cate.

Huh.

As Ellie moved to stand in front of the fireplace, Joe chose the broad sill of a window to lean against. The windows were open, and scents drifted in, along with the hum of insects and the infrequent traffic on the street. He rested his hands on the aged wood, settling in to relax and listen.

Ellie had already explained the gist of her plan to him: She wanted to found a school for young women on the streets who’d fallen through the system’s cracks. Whether a girl ran away or was tossed out by her parents, there was precious little help available and virtually none after they turned eighteen. Society got to wash their hands of them once the girls reached the age of majority, leaving them on the streets with one job skill—prostitution—and little more than dreams of having a normal life.

Joe was all in favor of normal lives.

The location was the simplest of the problems. The Calloways’ mother, Sara, owned an abandoned elementary school, and she was ready to donate it. But there were still the legal issues, the zoning, the licensing, the funding, the staff. But if anyone could handle it, he had faith these people could.



“It all sounds very daunting,” Liz remarked two hours later when she delivered a tray of dirty dishes to the kitchen.

Joe glanced up from the sink where he was washing saucers. “Maybe to mere mortals.”

“And these people aren’t?”

“Oh, they’re mortal enough. They’re just…passionate.”

Instead of murmuring some response, then leaving for more dishes, she picked up a dish cloth from the neat stack on the counter and began drying a fragile cup. “You included?”

“Only about my coffee.”

“And your family.”

He lifted one shoulder in agreement. “You know, passion can be positive or negative.”

“Oh, I’m sure you use your power for good. Getting on board with this bunch. All the recycling stuff. Coaching Little League. Sponsoring needy families at Christmas. Taking in strays.” She searched the cabinets until she found the remaining coffee cups, placed that one inside, then came back for another. “I’ve been talking to people about you.”

He gave her a flat look. “They know what I want them to know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No one knows what happened in Chicago or about Josh.”

“Oops. I told Natalia that Josh and I used to date.”

He washed a few more dishes before brushing it off. “Natalia doesn’t make small talk.”

“I noticed. Talking with her is like pulling teeth. I had breakfast next to her. I helped her walk those dogs back to your house. I even cleaned up the fuzzy one’s accidents on the way, and she still didn’t say three dozen words to me.” She watched, wondering if he would defend Natalia, certain he wouldn’t betray any of her confidences.

He didn’t surprise her. “You’re lucky it was the fuzzy one. His really are accidents. The brown one, though…she does everything on purpose.”

“She’s just a puppy,” Liz said with a laugh.

“She’s a half-starved, abandoned puppy who thinks she rules the world, particularly any corner of it that I try to claim for my own. She’s clearly familiar with the phrase ‘alpha,’ but she doesn’t seem to know that it’s usually followed by ‘male.’ She tries to mount the male, she stands me down and she’s not afraid to draw blood if you cross her.”

“Wow, and you’ve only had her twenty-four hours. This should be fun.”

With a scowl, he settled another stack of plates into the soapy water.

Liz became aware of the murmuring voices outside the kitchen growing more distant. “Sounds as if everyone’s leaving.”

“You thought I was kidding when I said I do dishes?”

“I thought surely someone would help.”

“Someone is helping.” He gestured to her with a sudsy hand. “Believe me, they pay attention. If you hadn’t stayed, Sophy would have, or Ellie or Jamie. The moment they see a willing victim walk through the door, though, they’re outta here.”

A willing victim—that was her. And Josh. But not Joe. He hadn’t asked for any part of the events that had turned his life upside down. Did he regret it? The shooting, of course. But moving to Copper Lake, starting his own business, making new friends?

“Do you regret it?” For an instant she was surprised that she’d asked the question aloud, but because she couldn’t take back the words, she pushed on. “Moving. Starting over. Moving here.”

He washed the last dish, then started on the glass urns. “It wasn’t in my life plan.”

“But sometimes good comes out of bad. You seem happier here than you were in Chicago.”

“You should have seen me before yesterday,” he said drily. “I was damn near ecstatic.”

She made a face at his back, then turned her attention to the kitchen. It was lovely, looking every one of its two-hundred-plus years but with all the modern conveniences, including the two dishwashers she’d mentioned earlier. She wasn’t surprised Joe had chosen not to use them. The dishes weren’t heavily soiled and could be done just as quickly by hand. Even she probably would have gone that route.

After the paper plates and cups had been prohibited.

“So what’s kept you busy the last two years? Besides Josh, of course. You never seemed to have time for work in Chicago.”

Meaning he’d never seen her unless she was plastered hip-to-thigh to Josh. Except that one night. That was the closest she’d ever come to disaster, and that included waking up to find Josh handcuffing her to the bed and spending two years on the fugitive squad.

“I’ve done a lot of things. I usually work for a while, save some money, then take a break.”

“What kind of things?”

“Wait tables. Tend bar. Clerical stuff.” Josh had thought it funny to tell a few of his buddies that she worked out of their apartment as a phone-sex operator. Joe wouldn’t be nearly as amused by that as those guys had been. Talk dirty to me had become their standard greeting to her.

“Most people who work those kinds of jobs have to keep working. They don’t get the luxury of months off here or there.”

She hadn’t had an entire month off since college, and even then she’d worked part-time jobs. But she smiled sunnily and said, “Most people have obligations.”

“And all you want to do is find Josh.”

Ignoring his comment, she put away the last half dozen cups, laid the damp towels across a rod to dry and leaned against the countertop to watch him rinse the first urn. It was tall, the glass tempered, distorted to give the appearance of age. He didn’t take particular care with it but handled it competently, the way he’d handled the more delicate cups and plates. She knew without asking that he’d never broken a piece of the everyday china, never let a soapy urn slip from his hands, never lost his cool, calm confidence.

Except maybe a little, on an emotional level. When it came to Josh. And her.

If he were anyone else, she would like that she could throw him off his emotional balance.

If she were anyone else, she would take a chance at letting him unbalance her.

He finished the last of the cleanup in silence, then scooped up the urns, one in each arm. “Can you flip the light switch?”

Accommodatingly she followed him through the house, turning off the switches he indicated, picking up the wicker basket from the dining table, securing the double doors behind them.

It was nearly ten o’clock. The buzz of streetlamps was louder than the tree frogs’ song, but only by a notch or so. The scents of the river two blocks away mingled with the closer fragrance of flowers, and music drifted from somewhere nearby, something low and mournful.

Liz took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “You made a good choice.” Sensing rather than seeing Joe’s curious look, she went on. “Coming to Copper Lake. Do you ever remember a night this calm in Chicago?”

“Hundreds of them. It’s just a town, too.”

“A great big, sprawling, noisy, crowded town.”

“Too big for the Kansas farm girl?”

She responded with an exaggerated frown before following him around the corner of the verandah, then down brick steps to the path. There she moved to walk beside him, through the gate and onto the sidewalk. “I’m not a farm girl.”

Stopping beside her car, he shifted the urns, then extended his hand for the basket. She considered not giving it to him and instead heading across the street to the coffee shop, prolonging this moment with him. A short walk in the cool humid night, a few moments more of comfortable conversation, another few deep breaths that smelled of jasmine and coffee and faded cotton…

She gave him the basket. “I’ll see you later.”

His fingers brushed hers. “You’ll be hard to avoid.”

She shoved her hands into her pockets. “You know how to get rid of me for good.” Tell me where Josh is.

There at the side of the street, his arms loaded, still looking like a surfer boy but a tired one, he said flatly, “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

His voice lacked the insistence she was accustomed to from deceitful family members. He didn’t shift his weight or avoid her gaze or do anything to suggest dishonesty. That didn’t mean he was telling the truth, though. It just meant he was better at lying than most people she dealt with. He was smart enough to avoid the usual subconscious behaviors of an untruthful person.

“Like I said, I’ll see you.” She clicked the remote to unlock the car door, then slid behind the wheel. He didn’t wait until she was safely on her way, but turned and strode across two intersections to the dimly lit coffee shop on the corner.

Within three minutes, she was home. In six, she was stretched out on the sofa, her cell phone propped to her ear. The only light burning in the house was above the kitchen sink; it cast just enough illumination to deepen the living room shadows. The curtains were drawn back, giving her a good view of all three houses across the way.

Pete Petrovski was home, and so was Natalia, babysitting Joe’s puppies. Their barks drifted through the open window, along with a cooling breeze. But the lavender cottage remained dark. Liz wondered if Joe was still at the shop, or if he’d taken advantage of the lovely night to take a ride around town, or if he’d somehow managed to sneak in through the back so he wouldn’t risk seeing her. Not an easy feat considering none of the houses had back doors.

“Hey, I know you’ve had a tough day playing the grasping ex-girlfriend, but surely it wasn’t so exhausting that you can’t take part in a conversation for five minutes.” Mika Tupolev’s voice was chiding, but her expression, Liz knew from experience, wouldn’t match. Mika didn’t frown or scowl or sneer or smirk, or smile much, for that matter. Like the icy Russian mountains her family had once called home, she was all cool all the time. The boss should have sent her to Copper Lake instead of Liz. Joe wouldn’t have been able to melt the first layer of permafrost that encased her if he tried.

Hell, Liz was hot-flashing just from seeing him. Just from thinking of him. And he wasn’t trying to get a reaction from her.

“I’m listening, Mika.”

“You’re not supposed to be listening. You’re supposed to be answering my question. Do you believe Joe Saldana when he says he doesn’t know where his brother is?”

She wanted to think that he was well and truly done with Josh for at least the next fifteen years to life. After all, Josh was as big on screwing up as Joe was on responsibility.

On the other hand, they were identical twins. They’d shared their mother’s womb, had the same face, the same eyes, the same DNA. Was breaking that bond permanently even possible?

“I don’t know,” she said. “He sounds sincere.”

Mika voiced what Liz was thinking. “Don’t all good liars?”

They did. As far as anyone knew, Joe was an honest law-abiding man, but most honest law-abiding people would lie for the right reason. Look at her. Lying was a big part of her job, and she sounded damn sincere when she did it. And Joe had spent half a lifetime with a brother who lied as easily as he breathed.

“My instincts say he or his parents are our best shot,” she said. “It’s always been Josh’s pattern. When he screws up badly enough, he turns to his family for help.”

“We’re keeping tabs on the elder Saldanas as well. If Josh contacts them or shows up there, we’ll know.”





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