Scarlet Nights

  “You look like a disciple of Bacchus. You aren’t actually as civilized as you’ve been pretending to be, are you?”

  “If by that you’re asking if I cook four-course dinners every night, the answer is no. I’ve been trying to impress you. Have I?”

  She wasn’t going to answer that. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I had one all worked out, but you changed it today when you refused to stay home. I think it’s your turn to come up with a plan.”

  “Okay,” Sara said. “First, we have to decide what you and I are to each other.”

  “That sounds good. So what are we?”

  “Friends,” she said quickly. “That’s all we can be, since I’m about to be married. You are going to release my fiancé for our wedding, aren’t you?”

  “Unless your mother finds out where he is and won’t let us.” He looked at her. “Has your mother hated all your boyfriends?”

  “There’s only been one other boyfriend, and no, she didn’t hate him. She’s saved all her anger for Greg. Could we please get back on the subject?”

  “Sure. You’re going to marry a man the town hates and live here in the middle of all that animosity.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you want my help, you have to be nice about Greg.”

  “That should be easy, since I’ve never met him. You think I’d like him?”

  “I have no idea, since I know little about you that’s truthful. I think maybe you’ve lied to me about everything.”

  “Haz—”

  “Don’t say it again! Hazards of the job, ha! Could you please stay on the subject?”

  “I thought Greg was the subject.” When she glared at him, he put his hand up. “All right. We’ll tell the town you and I are friends. Will that make you relax around me and stop treating me like your enemy?”

  “Maybe.”

  Mike put the grapes down. “I guess the idea of there being anything between you and me is out of the question.”

  “Completely.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Sara refused to look at him. “If you’re going to try using that voice on me, then you’ll have to leave my apartment. I’m not going to stay with you—or help you—if you try to … to proposition me.”

  “All right,” Mike said and moved onto his back. “We’ll be the best of friends. Chums. Roommates.”

  “Like brother and sister. Like you and Tess.”

  “No. Not like Tess and me. We are brother and sister.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She runs around in her underwear. She has me adjust her, you know, straps. I couldn’t do that with you because you’re the prettiest, most desirable woman I’ve seen in years. Sara, I’ve been working undercover almost since I joined the force, and that means that the women I’ve been around are usually on some drug. Most of them are married, and when it comes to clothes they think that less is more. Except for jewelry and makeup, then more is better. But you …”

  He turned to look at her. “You’re like no other woman I’ve ever seen in my life. You look like you just stepped out of a spring breeze. I find that your clothes that cover up nearly all of you are about as sexy as anything I’ve ever seen in my life. The way you move, the way you talk, I like all of it. I promise that I will do my best to keep my hands off of you, but it’s not going to be easy. Are there any more of those little sandwiches left?”

  Sara sat there blinking at him. “Well, uh …”

  “Sandwiches?”

  “In the basket,” she finally managed to murmur. “I didn’t know you felt that way about me.”

  “How could I not?” He was rummaging inside the basket. “I can’t find them.”

  “Let me,” she said, and as she brushed his hands away, their faces were close together. For a moment, Sara almost bent forward, but then she drew back. “I guess it would make your job easier if you and I were sleeping together.”

  “Oh, so very, very much easier,” he said. “In fact, I truly believe that our being together would help our country become greater.”

  Sara shook her head at him. “It’s not going to happen.”

  Mike gave a big sigh. “Can’t blame a man for trying. Okay, so what’s the rest of your plan?”

  “To do what you said and collect DNA from the women who come to our shop. But …”

  “But what?”

  “Erica.”

  “And she is?” Mike had his mouth full of tuna salad sandwich.

  “The woman Greg got to run the shop. She won’t let me—”

  “Don’t you own that place?”

  “I’m a partner only on paper. Greg and Erica make the decisions.”

  “I’ll make a call and have someone come and break her legs.”

  “How about her arms too?” Sara said eagerly.

  Mike grinned. “You’re not as innocent as you look, are you?”

  “Make up your mind. Do I look like a vestal virgin or am I killer sexy?”

  “Both. Is there any more coleslaw?”

  “You eat a lot, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been crawling all over that farm all day, sometimes barely escaping with my life, and now I’m sitting with a gorgeous dame who says I can’t touch her. Yeah, I’m starving.”

  “If you tell me everything you saw today, I’ll tell you about my two bad encounters with Mr. Lang.”

  Mike’s face lost the teasing look. “You must tell me everything you know.”

  “Not until you tell me at least half of what you know.”

  “About what?”

  She threw a piece of bread at him—and Mike caught it in his left hand.

  “Sara, my lovely, I honestly and truly don’t know what’s going on. I know one of the biggest criminals in American history is or has been living in this pretty little town. Maybe Merlin’s Farm has nothing to do with her, but something has been going on there.” Mike couldn’t tell her that he felt sure Stefan’s wanting the farm connected the Vandlos with either Brewster Lang or the old plantation.

  When Mike looked at Sara, he saw she was waiting in quiet anticipation for him to explain. “This morning when I went to see the farm I expected a derelict old ruin, just as I’d been told it was. What I found was a war zone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He related, in detail, what he’d seen. He elaborated about the traps and how he believed the marijuana plants had been used as a lure. When he got to the recent graves of the dogs, Sara frowned.

  “What about the geese?”

  “I didn’t see any.”

  “Mr. Lang and his father always kept geese. They’re a rare breed called Sebastopol, and they have curly feathers and the sweetest tempers in the world. My mother says that those geese are the secret to Mr. Lang’s great vegetables.”

  Mike looked at her in question.

  “Geese eat bugs and weeds, and they produce manure.”

  “Oh. You know a lot about farming, don’t you?”

  “Hazards of being my mother’s daughter.”

  Mike chuckled at her play on his words. “So what did Lang do to you?”

  Sara told him about Brewster Lang twice making his hand into a gun at her—and Mike grinned at her retaliating hand gesture at the second encounter.

  “And you think he did that because you look like your great-aunt Lissie?” Mike wasn’t about to tell her that he knew a great deal about that particular hatred.

  “I guess so. Unless he despises all children. With him, who knows? One thing I do know is that when I was little the farm wasn’t booby-trapped. That day when I visited, I went inside every building.”

  “Surrounded by geese and dogs,” Mike said. “You must have looked like something out of a storybook.”

  She glanced at him, stretched out full length on the cloth. Already, his black beard had grown back. He really did have nice lips, she thought. As for his short hair and high forehead, she was growing used to it. What she hadn’t accustomed herself to yet wa
s the fact that Merlin’s Farm was never going to be hers. Her children weren’t going to grow up there.

  Mike didn’t look at her, but he could feel her staring at him. “So, tell me, Sara, where do you see yourself in five years?”

  “Mother of two kids,” she said instantly.

  “No husband?”

  “Sure. Of course. I’ve imagined that I’d be with Greg and I’d stay home with the kids, and—”

  “And what?”

  “I’d make Merlin’s Farm glorious again.” She didn’t want to talk about the end of her dream, so she changed the subject. “I didn’t get to see much before you came swinging down on top of me.” She looked at him in speculation.

  “What’s that look for?”

  “Not many men can hold on to a rope with one hand and lift a full-grown woman with the other.”

  Mike shrugged. “You’re not what I’d call fully grown. What do you weigh? Ninety?”

  “You’re sweet. Greg says I need to lose ten pounds.”

  So her body will more easily fit in the trunk of his car? Mike wondered. “If Greg can’t lift you, he needs to go to the gym more often.”

  “Where do you see yourself in five years?” she asked.

  “I haven’t thought about it. I leave my future to Tess.”

  “And she wants you to marry, have kids, and live on Merlin’s Farm.”

  “I’m stealing your future,” Mike said softly, and when he saw sadness in her eyes, he wanted to take it away. “Want to know a secret?”

  “Sure.” She was gazing at the creek, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “It’s a good secret.”

  “Oh?” She sounded distracted.

  “It’s the kind women love.”

  Sara turned to look at him. “What do you know about girl secrets?”

  “Tess is going to have a baby.”

  When Sara’s eyes widened, Mike was glad to think that he’d cheered her up. But then, in the next second, to his utter disbelief, she burst into tears.

  Mike sat up, grabbed napkins, and handed them to her as he put his hand on her back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please don’t cry.”

  “These are happy tears,” she said as she wiped at her face with the napkins. “Really, I’m just so very happy for them. Except … Except …” She looked at him. “My two best friends are pregnant, and I’m not even married!”

  Mike was learning that Sara had a good sense of humor. “I’d be willing to help you out with one of those predicaments. I’d certainly give it my very best try.”

  For a moment she didn’t know what he meant. “You’re horrible,” she said, but she was smiling.

  “No, really,” he said with a look of concern. “I’m serious. It’s a creed of mine that I always try to help out a lady in distress.”

  Sara was sniffing. “Thank you. You made me feel better.” She blew her nose and began to start packing the dishes away. “I think we should go. It’s getting late. What fabulous things are you going to cook for dinner?”

  “Tonight’s your turn. I’ll make the salad.”

  “That should go well with McDonald’s.”

  “You aren’t serious, are you? All that grease and—”

  “You and my mother! You can relax; I was just kidding. Let’s go raid the storage area of my mom’s grocery.” She leaned toward him. “Want to hear a secret from me?”

  Mike held his breath. “Yes.”

  Sara held up her ring of keys. “I have a key to the back door of Armstrong’s Organic Foods.”

  At first Mike didn’t understand why she thought that was a secret, then he remembered that one of the stories he’d been told about Stefan was that he’d demanded free groceries from Sara’s mom. If Mike understood her correctly, she was offering him something she’d denied the man she was going to marry. He didn’t want her to see how much this pleased him. “A key to all that organic food? Forget sex, give me tree-ripened peaches.”

  Sara laughed. “So when are you going to tell Mr. Lang that you own the farm that he considers his? His mother gave birth to him in the front parlor.”

  “Sure it wasn’t in the barn?”

  Before Sara could reply, her cell phone buzzed and she looked at it. “Oh no! You made me forget that I promised to visit Joce this afternoon. This is awful of me! Poor Joce is stuck in bed, trying to keep the babies from wanting to come out too early. Her father died a few months ago, Luke works all day, and Tess is away, so Joce is mostly alone.”

  “And you visit her to keep her company. Hey! I have an idea. Why don’t we make dinner for them tonight? Didn’t Tess tell me Luke put a new kitchen in the main house?”

  “Yes and no. Luke wanted to gut the old kitchen, but his dad and Joce vetoed him. He ended up repairing the old cabinets and repainting them, and Joce finally agreed to put in”—she sighed—“white marble countertops.”

  “Did you just make a speech of love about a kitchen? Between the Virgin Tree and the way you said ‘white marble countertops’ I’m definitely not going to sleep tonight.”

  “You almost make me think you’re serious. But yes, I like the idea of making dinner for them. Poor Joce is at the mercy of Luke’s ability to buy take-out and the kindness of the townspeople.” Standing up, Sara looked down at Mike. A dinner party, she thought. How very ordinary, but at the same time how utterly divine. Greg always found fault with every social event they’d been to in Edilean.

  At that thought, she frowned. It was far too late to start comparing the man she was going to marry to someone else.

  When Mike picked up the picnic basket and offered her his arm, she smiled at him. It had been quite nice having a man swing on a rope, grab her about the waist, and rescue her.

  10

  SO WHAT’S HE really like?” Jocelyn asked. “Other than being gorgeous, that is.”

  “I don’t think of him that way, but then I’m in love with someone else.” Sara enunciated her words carefully to make sure Joce heard them. Earlier, she and Mike had raided her mother’s huge storage room at the grocery, then they’d gone directly home. Sara had already called Joce, who’d said that Luke might burst into tears at the thought of a home-cooked meal.

  “Then he can join me,” Sara muttered, but she didn’t explain her meaning. “So it’s all right if Mike and I make dinner in your kitchen tonight?”

  “Sara, you can move in and make three meals a day if you want to.”

  “Mike is the cook, not me.”

  “He can cook too?”

  Sara knew she was being pushed toward another man, but she’d made her decision about Greg, and she was going to stick with it.

  As soon as they went in the main house, Luke took Mike outside where a charcoal grill had already been lit. A bed had been set up downstairs for Joce, and she lay on it, her big belly pushing up the light covers. Sara stood beside her and looked out the window at the two men, who were talking and laughing.

  “They seem awfully chummy,” Sara said.

  “Mike finally got Luke to agree to go to the gym with him tomorrow, and I’m so glad. Luke hovers over me like I’m going to kick off at any second. Promise me that you’ll stay with us in the delivery room. I’m afraid Luke will collapse.”

  “I promise,” Sara said. “And I hope you’ll be there with Tess and me.”

  “You’re—?”

  “No,” Sara said quickly. “Tess is, but I’m not sure Ramsey knows about it yet.”

  “So you and Mike have advanced to the point where you share secrets about his sister?”

  “We don’t—”

  “Is he easy to live with?”

  “I don’t actually—”

  “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  “Stop it!” Sara said, then quietened. “Look, before this whole thing gets out of hand, you should know that Mike is here on a case. And that’s not to leave this room.”

  Joce gave a quick nod. “What’s the case?”

  “Some woman, a big-t
ime criminal, is living in Edilean and Mike came here to find her.”

  “How does he know she’s here?”

  Sara shrugged. “I don’t know. He tells me little pieces here and there, but I can never get a full story out of him. Did you know that your husband ran me out of my own apartment so Mike could go through some secret tunnel and come up in my—Tess’s—bedroom?”

  Joce’s eyebrows rose. “I knew something was going on because he didn’t use any pesticide in your apartment. But he did remove your toilet and kitchen sink.”

  Sara looked out the window and glared at her cousin, who was drinking beer from a can, turning steaks on the grill, and laughing at whatever Mike was saying. She looked back at Joce. “Want to help me find out what’s going on?”

  “Since my husband has been keeping secrets from me too, I’d love to help.”

  The two women looked at each other in conspiracy.

  Thirty minutes later, the meal was done and they were sitting around Joce’s bed, each with a tray full of steak, salad, and grilled vegetables.

  Mike and Luke were dominating the conversation with their endless talk of working out. “I’ve seen what this guy does at the gym and he wants me to go with him,” Luke said.

  “I know he can play Tarzan,” Sara said, and she and Mike smiled at each other.

  “What does that mean?” Luke asked as he looked from one to the other.

  Before Mike could reply, Joce spoke up. “So how did you find out this woman you’re hunting is living in Edilean?”

  Luke had no idea what his wife was talking about, but he saw that Mike looked like he was about to explode.

  “Mike,” Joce said, “don’t worry about it. No one will tell your secret. We want to help you.”

  Mike was glaring at Sara, but she was smiling back.

  “What’s going on?” Luke asked.

  “Mike’s here on a case,” Joce said. “He’s after some criminal, a woman.”

  “Yeah?” Luke asked.

  “I think we should go,” Mike said as he looked at Sara. His teeth were clenched.

  “No,” Sara said. “I don’t want to be alone with you right now.” She wasn’t the least bit afraid of Mike, but she didn’t want to hear his lecture—even though she knew she deserved it. But then, he didn’t know Joce and Luke as she did.