Live and Let Love

  It was madness, but he bent his head toward hers. She angled her head and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her soft sweater into his until he could feel her warmth through the cashmere between them.

  Every part of his body went hard and stood at attention as he gently brushed her lips. Willow kissed him back softly, tentatively, as if this were the first time, a first kiss.

  He knew her theories about sexual chemistry and how a kiss would either reveal it or show it sadly lacking. He should have restrained himself, but he could no more stop himself than cease breathing. Longing thrummed through his body and ran his blood hot with desire.

  Her kiss, gentle and sweet as it was, almost broke him the way hours of torture could not. She opened her mouth to him. He had to restrain himself. He wanted to kiss her as if he possessed her. Instead, he kissed her just deeply enough to make her body tremble, until he knew she felt the chemistry, too.

  He could have lingered in that kiss, swept her in his arms, and taken her to bed. But he came to his senses just in time, pulled back, and broke the kiss, shaken. “Willow—”

  “Yes?” She stared up at him. He read her expression easily enough—she’d felt the desire, too. And then she yawned again.

  “I’m sorry. Again. I shouldn’t have … I took advantage. You’re overwrought. And tired.” He took a deep breath, reaching for that concerned stranger within him, trying to fend off the husband who wanted her desperately.

  She was breathing hard, if somewhat sleepily, and staring at him, looking almost triumphant. Which frightened the hell out of him.

  Just then Spookie, the killer watchdog, barked and came charging from the deep recesses of the house. Jack heard her toenails clicking on Willow’s hardwood floors as she approached. Spookie appeared from around a corner, growling. She took one look at him, and stopped dead in her tracks.

  It was a crucial moment. “Hey, girl,” he said, kneeling to get down on her level, where he could stare her in the eye without Willow being able to see his expression. Many people assume dogs, who have poor vision as a whole, recognize their owners by smell and voice. But Jack knew dogs inside and out. Dogs recognize their owner’s faces and read emotion on them similar to the way humans do. He looked just different enough that Spookie would probably be confused. At least for an initial moment.

  He loved that dog and hated what he was about to do to his poor pup. But it was for her own good. As he reached to pet her, he gave her a hard stare and a disapproving alpha-male back-off scowl. His little Spookie was a coward at heart. She whimpered and dashed off.

  Why did Jack always have to scare off those he loved? Sometimes he hated this job.

  He stood and looked at Willow, putting a heavy dose of apology and confusion in his expression and voice. “Sorry! I’m scaring everyone tonight. Dogs generally like me. Honest.”

  She stared at him without answering.

  Just then he noticed a spray of cockscomb in a vase on her entryway table and his blood ran cold. From the Rooster, no doubt. A coded message for Jack, should he see it. No one else would recognize it as such.

  I’m close to your wife. I have access to her home. I’m after you.

  Jack composed himself and pointed. “What are those ugly flowers?”

  “Cockscomb. From Shane.”

  “Interesting choice. They look a bit like brains.” The flowers were probably bugged. Jack had to get them out of her house. “Wait. Is that a whitefly I see on them? Or aphids, maybe? You need to get those out of your house. They’ll infect everything.”

  Willow looked alarmed. “I didn’t notice.”

  He stepped past her into the house and grabbed the flowers. “May I?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll just take these away and dump them for you.”

  “Sure.” Willow looked relieved to get rid of them.

  Jack glanced down at the flowers and back up at Willow. “I’d better go. You look dead on your feet and need your rest. Good night.” He turned to leave but somehow couldn’t make himself go. He had to see her again, convince her he wasn’t Jack. Even though of course he was.

  He also had to distract her from Kennett. And he couldn’t have her wondering all her life if he was still alive. He had to convince her otherwise. “Can I make things up to you? Take you out for coffee?” Coffee seemed safe. “Pay for your cleaning?”

  “No need to pay for cleaning. I’ll just toss these in the washer.” She smiled. “But I’d love to go for coffee. Tomorrow morning? Before the madness hits?”

  He nodded. “Name the place”

  “Bluff Country Store. Ten?” She covered her mouth, trying to stifle a yawn.

  Good luck with that. He made the best XTC around.

  “I promise I’ll be more awake and better company.” She paused. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

  But he did. “Sounds good. I look forward to coffee with a fully alert you.” He smiled at her. “Don’t beat yourself up. You’ve had a long, stressful, busy day. A few hours’ sleep should fix you up.”

  She nodded. “Tomorrow then. Fully awake. And if I’m not, Ada’s coffee will do the trick. That’s probably what you were thinking, right?”

  He laughed and nodded. As Jack walked away with the Rooster’s coded flowers he couldn’t believe he’d just made a date with his wife.

  * * *

  Willow shut the door and, holding back the curtains, watched through the side window by the door as Con drove off. When his taillights disappeared down the drive, she let her lacy curtains fall back into place and fell to a sit on the cold, hard floor. She was too unsteady to remain on her feet another minute. And too tired, too. At this rate, she was going to have to crawl to bed. That man, whoever he really was, had the power to take her breath away and render her unconscious with a look.

  She’d never met a man with that kind of power over her before. Except Jack.

  When Con had kissed her, she felt that jolt of attraction she’d known would be there.

  She must be overwrought. Either that or Aldo had just created the world’s first 190-proof wine and one glass had done her in. Something had gone to her head.

  But the root cause of her unsteadiness was pretty simple—the uncertainty, was Con Jack or not? Was Jack very much alive? Or was fate playing a cruel trick on her by throwing his almost perfect twin in her face at the least opportune moment?

  She couldn’t believe she was even contemplating that Jack could be alive. That Con could be him. She must be crazy.

  She ran her fingers through her hair. “Spookie! Here, girl! You can come out. He’s gone.”

  Spookie came running from the back bedroom where she no doubt had been cowering. She paused at the edge of the living room. Sniffed. Tilted her head. Surveyed the area. Studied Willow. And, finally, scampered into Willow’s lap for comfort.

  As Willow mindlessly stroked Spookie behind her ears and crooned to her, she ran over the facts and circumstances as she knew them.

  If Con was Jack, why hadn’t Spookie recognized him? Shouldn’t she have recognized his scent?

  Willow frowned. Spookie wasn’t a hound dog, a tracker. But still?

  Willow looked up at the ceiling. Con sure tasted like Jack. Looked just enough like Jack to make her doubt. His eyes were Jack’s. And his dance moves. And his Bond lines and sense of humor.

  If he was Jack, and still alive, and messing with her, pretending not to be himself, she’d, she’d …

  She didn’t know what she’d do. She wanted him back so badly.

  And what about the opposite end of the spectrum—if Con wasn’t Jack? Would a Jack look-alike be enough for her? Be better than no Jack at all?

  Well, at least if Con’s story was true and he was simply Con Russo, Aldo’s distant cousin, then danger wasn’t his middle name, right? In the win column for Con, her conscience wouldn’t bother her over what he did for a living.

  Marriage to Jack had taught her cunning and deception, how to get the intel she wan
ted, how to think like a spy. She drew on those rusty resources now, trying to think like Jack would have and see the situation from every angle.

  She could contact Emmett using her emergency contact method. Tell him her suspicions. See if Emmett choked and spilled anything.

  She pursed her lips. Fat chance. Emmett never chokes. He’ll probably just tell me I’m crazy.

  Then again, the possibility existed that Jack had somehow survived that blast without Emmett’s knowledge. That Jack had contrived his own death and this was his way of coming back to her.

  If that were the case, alerting Emmett would blow the whole thing. Still, if that were true, why hadn’t Jack come clean with her and revealed himself immediately?

  Could he have switched sides and was now a traitor or a double agent?

  She shook her head. Her Jack would never become a traitor. But if that were the scenario she was dealing with, she should warn Emmett.

  There was one more scenario—that Jack was undercover and working for Emmett. In which case, Emmett wouldn’t reveal a thing and would work to impede her from finding out the truth.

  She took a deep breath and stifled a yawn.

  Could Jack have amnesia? Not remember who he was? No, Con seemed too slick and with it to be suffering from amnesia. And if that were the case, why would Aldo believe Jack was his cousin Con?

  She bit her lip. She wasn’t living in the Dark Ages. Modern science gave her options like DNA testing. Home DNA collection kits for which one simply mailed the collected sample to a lab for testing. All she needed was his saliva, right? She didn’t like cop shows at all, way too violent and too much death and gore. But Ada’s husband, Paul, was a big fan of them and talked about them all the time. Willow remembered him telling her about an episode of 48 Hours where the police tricked a suspect into giving his DNA by licking an envelope. And another where they tricked a suspect by inviting him out for coffee and stealing his paper cup after he tossed it away.

  Garbage, evidently, was free for anyone to take. No legal issues involved.

  Conveniently, she was having coffee with Con tomorrow. And Bluff Country used paper cups. Who knew she was so subconsciously genius? All she had to do was steal Con’s cup and have it tested against the DNA report Emmett had sent her after Jack’s death. If Con was really Con, he’d never even know what she’d done.

  Now she just had to find a local place to buy a DNA collection kit, or get one online, and keep Con in town long enough to get the results back. How long would that take?

  In the meantime, common old dirty trickery and PI work would have to suffice. She’d check up on Con’s story. If she could stay awake long enough. She was as tired as if she’d been drugged. But she had to see if Con really was who he said he was.

  She dragged herself to her study and powered up her laptop.

  I can Google with the best of them.

  If Jack was undercover as Con for the Agency, Emmett and his team would have set up a fake cover life for him online. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use it to trip Jack up.

  The laptop came up. She typed the name Con Russo in the search box.

  No Internet connection.

  “What!” She resisted the urge to thunk her head on the desk. “No! I’m having coffee with Con tomorrow morning. I need to know something about him. Now.”

  Why did everything happen at once? She was dying to get to the truth and now this. How was she supposed to check up on Con? Or order a DNA collection kit?

  She grabbed her smartphone from her purse. There was more than one way to get what she wanted. Hooray for modern technology!

  But her smartphone didn’t work, either. Both the phone and the 3G were dead. No matter how many times she restarted it. Great. Is there something wrong with the cell tower?

  Tomorrow she’d be so busy with the Apple Festival she’d be lucky if she had time to breathe, let alone sleuth. By the end of the day she’d be too brain-dead and tired to be effective. About like she was now. And that was assuming her Internet connection came back up.

  She checked her Internet box. Sure enough the little lights next to DSL and Internet were ominously dark, not the bright green that meant they were working.

  She stared at them. Sometimes they clicked back on after a few seconds or minutes. A watched pot never boils and a watched Internet box never comes back up, either. She powered down her modem and started it back up again. Still no connection.

  She blew out a breath, grabbed the landline phone, and called her provider’s twenty-four-hour help line.

  “It’s your modem, ma’am. It’s dead,” the help desk techie told her after running her through ten minutes of diagnostics through which she barely stayed awake.

  “But it’s done this before and always come back up.”

  “That was it in its death throes, then. Sorry. The easiest thing to do is replace it. I can send one tomorrow with a technician who can set it up for you. Or I can give you a list of local stores that carry it and you can pick one up and do the setup yourself.”

  The stores were already closed and she had no time to run to one tomorrow. “Send one out. I’m desperate to get my service back.” Willow tried to keep the frustration out of her voice.

  The techie chuckled. “That’s what they all say. No one can live without Internet. I’ll try to get our man out first thing.”

  As satisfied as she was going to get, Willow hung up and drummed her fingers on her desk as she powered off the laptop. She should call the cell phone company, too, on her landline, to find out what was wrong with her cell service, but she was just too tired. Too tired to grab her laptop and drive somewhere where she could get Wi-Fi. Driving in this sleepy state would be suicide. She’d have to tell Aldo his wine needed a warning label—“Do not drink this wine and operate heavy machinery.”

  She yawned again for what felt like the hundredth time, and her eyes felt heavy. She’d have to deal with everything in the morning. Maybe her cell service would be back up by then.

  Her Internet service going out and her cell phone not working simultaneously were freakily coincidental. It was as if she was being thwarted intentionally. But why? All signs pointed to Agency involvement. And Jack.

  She’d have to be creative. And careful. Get to her tent early and talk to the other vendors as she set up. See what they knew or had heard about Aldo’s cousin Con. Seek Becky and Aldo out and press for details. Look for inconsistencies in Con’s stories. Hope she got 3G coverage somewhere outside the house.

  Make a mental list of prying questions to ask him at coffee.

  She’d find out who Con Russo really was.

  She wanted him to be Jack. No matter what Jack had done, she needed Con, this stranger with Jack’s eyes.

  She’d put a bright face on things. Had been trying to move on, looking on the positive side of her life without Jack. But tonight had brought back all the memories—life was better with him in it.

  She’d do anything to get him back—steal his DNA, sleep with him, tie him to the bed to keep him here.

  Anything.

  And if he didn’t want her back? Or if Con was really just Con? She’d worry about that later.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Willow’s cell phone rang as she stepped out of the shower, belting out the distinctive ringtone she’d assigned to her mother. Oh, good! Her cell service was back up. She didn’t need the ringtone to know who was calling. She could sense it. In fact, she’d been expecting it. Her sense of foreboding hadn’t gone away and she’d bet her mother’s hadn’t, either. Diana Norris was in tune to the Sense much more than Willow was. The only question was—what had taken her mother so long to call?

  Willow wrapped herself in her towel and grabbed the phone. “Mom!… Hey. I’m still among the living and doing fine. You?” She let her harried feelings out, hoping they masked her anxiety and crazy feelings that Jack was back and diverted her mom.

  “I’m fine, too, kiddo, but confused.”

  “You s
till feel it, too? You aren’t just calling to wish me luck at the Apple Festival today?”

  “Luck and success,” her mother said without missing a beat. “What happened last night? I was watching the Food Network when I felt something was wrong.”

  Willow had to proceed carefully. There was no reason to upset her mother further, not until Willow knew more. “The Sense must be overreacting. I got light-headed at the growers’ party last night and passed out. Probably exhaustion from working so hard to get ready for the festival. Aldo’s cousin took me home.

  “Did I tell you about him? He just arrived yesterday. His name is Con and he reminds me of Jack.” Which was the complete and honest truth. As far as she knew.

  “Light-headed? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. It was nothing. Just the day, you know.”

  Diana took a deep breath. “This Con reminds you of Jack? How?”

  Willow hedged. “Oh, I don’t know. Something about his eyes and his sense of humor.”

  Her mom was silent for a second. “I didn’t want to bring this up, but I have a feeling about Jack. I can’t explain it. I don’t mean to upset you, but I feel almost as if Jack is still alive.”

  Which only confirmed Willow’s suspicions about Con and made her more determined to get to the truth.

  “Jack’s gone, Mom. He really is.” Not. At least, she hoped not.

  Her mother didn’t know Jack had been a spy. Jack had an advanced degree in chemistry. As his cover, he worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency, frequently being sent abroad by the State Department to help foreign governments determine the chemical composition of the drugs in their countries and trace their origins back to the illegal labs that manufactured them.

  The story the CIA told about Jack’s death was that he’d been on a State Department assignment in South America. While working with officials, he’d been an innocent victim of the drug cartel’s dangerous wars.

  The U.S. Embassy had sent his remains home. Because of Jack’s military service in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were able to match the fragments of his remains to his military records. He was given a military funeral and buried as a hero in a military cemetery.