Secret Agent Groom (The Bridal Circle #2) Read online

  Country was a whole different matter to him. Space. Lots and lots of space with lots and lots of places to hide. Sparsely populated. A few overworked police officers covering vast square miles of space. “County police protection,” he muttered. Response time measured in hours instead of minutes.

  “County police?” She sounded confused, then laughed. “I guess so. But that doesn’t mean they’re any less trained than a city policeman.”

  She just didn’t understand. The bad feeling in his stomach grew. Damn. He didn’t like any of this. He definitely should have asked more questions before he’d agreed to take her up there. He just wasn’t thinking clearly around her and that had to change. As of right now.

  “There are neighbors close by, aren’t there?” he asked.

  She flashed him a smile—whose potent rays he deflected—then went back to her driving. “Boy, you sure are full of questions. You’d think you had something dastardly planned and wanted to make sure there were no witnesses.”

  “Hardly.” Her nonanswer meant no neighbors. If there were any, she would have said so.

  He turned to glare out the side window, fighting back his anger at himself. He couldn’t believe how stupid he had been, jumping at this plan without thinking it through. He’d wanted to see Heather away from Chesterton so when this chance presented itself, he’d grabbed it, no questions asked. It had seemed perfect, ready-made. Harmless. He bit back a silent curse. He’d made it sound exactly that when he’d called Casio on his cell phone this morning from the bathroom while he was supposedly showering.

  “I’m taking her up to a friend’s cabin someplace near Watton in the upper peninsula,” he’d told his supervisor. “She’ll be safe up there and I’ll be back in action tomorrow evening.”

  “This really necessary?” Casio’d asked.

  “Yes. For her and for my peace of mind.”

  But just where had that mind of his been? He glanced once more at the cars behind them, but everything was as before. Ordinary folks going about their business. No one speeding up, no one dropping back. It could mean something or nothing.

  “I don’t like the feel of this at all,” he told Heather. “This cabin is too isolated to be safe.”

  “You really know how to set a person’s mind at ease.” Her laugh was nervous. “Maybe you should just stay up there, too.”

  A little part of him found the idea appealing, but he broke it off quickly. He was the reason for Heather’s problems. He was the honey that was drawing the scum.

  “Maybe we should just collect Ida and come right back down.” No, then Heather’d be back in harm’s way. “Or better yet, you and Ida can find a nice hotel in Mackinaw and spend the weekend there.”

  “Why, when we’ve got a cabin all paid for?”

  She just wasn’t understanding. How much was he going to have to spell out for her? He was trying to warn her, not terrify her. “Because it’s safer, that’s why,” he snapped. “You never know—”

  There was movement and then a low growl from the back seat. Great. Junior was getting ticked at him. They’d never been the best of friends and things weren’t getting any better.

  “It’s okay, Junior,” Heather said soothingly over her shoulder. Then she turned back to Alex. “Look, I know what I’m doing and it’s for the best. It’s what has to be done. But what do you say we save our arguments until we get up there?”

  Alex bit back his argument. She was right; it would be better to wait. If the cabin was as isolated as he expected, he’d be able to show her the dangers more easily than he could describe them now.

  The problem was he had lost control somewhere along the way. He’d had a plan to protect her and it got too mixed up with her plan to go help Ida Crawford. He had to bring them back to his plan, then everything would be fine.

  “Do you wonder where all these cars are going?” she asked glancing out the car window.

  He turned to stare at her, then back out at the cars. “I guess. In a way.” Though maybe not with the same innocent wonder that she had.

  He turned back to her. Alex felt a need to know what went on behind Heather’s sky-blue eyes. What did she want from life?

  “Are you jealous of those hurrying off to exciting places?” he asked her.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I like my life. I love teaching the little kids and making costumes in my free time. I love coming home to my cats and finding good homes for my strays. I wouldn’t trade my life for another.”

  She spoke with such passion, such surety. As if she knew what mattered and had it in her hands. Her fervor left a longing in its wake. He let his gaze go back to the traffic, but he couldn’t release the uncertainty that was suddenly nagging at him.

  “You’re lucky,” he told her.

  “Why? Don’t you like your life?”

  What a question! He loved his life. He loved the adventure, the danger, the need to belong everywhere and nowhere. Yet strange and unbidden memories were coming forward, like a book falling open at an unexpected spot.

  “I think my father hated his life,” he said slowly. “He never exactly said so, but I could tell.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Alex shrugged. How could you explain something that was always felt but never expressed? “He had such dreams.”

  “Having dreams doesn’t mean you hate the present,” Heather pointed out. “It just means you have something you want to do in the future.”

  Once he started telling her, the words just seemed unable to stop. “Everything he wanted to do, he put off. He wanted to learn to fly. To race motorcycles. To do deep-sea diving. And he died before he had a chance to do any of it. He kept saying he could do them all tomorrow, but then he never had a tomorrow.”

  “And you’re trying to give him one,” Heather said.

  He frowned at her, looking for something deep in her eyes and only half hearing her words. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just that he made his own choices. Maybe he liked the quieter life more than you think.”

  She’d wanted him to take a peek at his life, but it wasn’t his life she’d shown him. It was somebody else’s. His was good, satisfying, what he wanted. And if he’d gotten off track lately, it was only a temporary thing.

  “What are you saying?” he asked. “That I’m just using my father as an excuse to lead a wild life? Is that why you won’t let me drive, because you think I’m reckless?”

  “I won’t let you drive because you had a concussion and your reflexes are liable to be off.”

  Alex just watched her for a long moment, caught in an emotional landslide. Longing. Indecision. Regret. Determination. Why had he opened himself up to her like that? It left him feeling weak and vulnerable, even if her conclusions were all nonsense.

  He needed to get back to being himself. He needed to be in control again.

  It was early evening by the time Heather pulled the car into the parking spot in front of the Watton grocery store and turned off the motor. Rain was spattering against the windshield, making the outside world as blurry as her inside one. She was tired, achy from sitting, and thoroughly tensed up from thinking about what she’d tell Alex when they got to the cabin.

  Her nerves had tightened with every mile she’d driven and she hadn’t been able to hide the fact. Luckily, Alex had thought she was just nervous about driving over the Mackinaw Bridge and still nervous about it when they stopped for dinner in Saint Ignace.

  Little did he know. The bridge was no big deal. She wasn’t a bridge-a-phobic or whatever they were called. No, she was an anger-a-phobic. She didn’t like having other people angry with her. In less than an hour Alex would find out what this was all about. And Heather knew he was going to be really mad.

  She looked up at the small Watton grocery store and unbuckled her seat belt. “I need to pick up a few things. You want to come in?”

  “Of course,” he said, as if he couldn’t even understand her a
sking.

  Rats. It’s not that she didn’t want him there, but it would have been all right if he had declined the invitation. A little time to herself—to catch her breath and work up her courage—would be awfully nice.

  “Okay.” She checked on Junior and Bonnie and both seemed fine. “It’s just a few more miles, babies. Then you’ll have room to move around.”

  After taking a deep enough breath to fill a hot air balloon, she stepped out of the car and into the drizzling rain. It wasn’t enough to cool her off, though. Alex was waiting at the door of the grocery, sending her heart into a definite stutter. There ought to be a law against men being so tall and handsome. And certainly against them being so unaffected by her touch.

  He held open the screen door for her. “So, what are we getting?”

  “Oh, odds and ends for he weekend.” She stopped inside the door and looked around, hoping she could find seclusion down its aisles by sending Alex over to get :he peanut butter while she got the jelly.

  No such luck. It was a typical tittle country general store, tiny in size but carrying everything—Elvis Presley videos to garden hoses to mustard. There was no room left for her to hide even for a moment.

  “Howdy, folks,” the old man from behind the counter said.

  Heather hurried over. if she couldn’t literally hide from Alex, maybe she could mentally hide zoom him.

  “We need some food for the weekend,” she told the proprietor and pulled out her list. “Where are the canned soups?”

  “Last aisle at the far end,” he said.

  Heather nodded, then she and her list scooted to the last aisle.

  “So you folks come up for the holiday?” the old man asked. “Too bad the rains had to come on your long weekend.”

  Heather’s step grew a little lighter as she realized he was talking to Alex. She would have the aisle to herself! She could crouch down behind the lima beans and give herself a pep talk.

  “Yeah,” she heard Alex say. “But we’re just up here to help Ida Crawford close up her cabin. Not really for a vacation.”

  Good. Have a nice long conversation about the weather, Heather told them silently. The rain didn’t bother her at all. It was actually rather prophetic, she thought. Sometimes what you needed wasn’t what you wanted, be it rain instead of sunshine or—

  “Ida Crawford?” the old man was saying. “She new around here?”

  The words interrupted Heather’s meditation with a solid jolt. She grabbed a couple of cans of soup and hurried back up to the front of the store, hauling in a couple of cans of tuna and a bottle of salad dressing along the way.

  “I don’t think so,” Alex said. “She comes up here every year.”

  “Huh.” The old man picked at his teeth with a toothpick. “We got a Isa Davenport over in Baraga Country, but I sure don’t know of any Ida Crawford.”

  Heather dumped her items on the counter. “Actually, her cabin’s not very close,” she said quickly. She glanced Alex’s way but he didn’t look overly suspicious. “She’s north of Route 28.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He rubbed his chin. “Don’t recall much up north but that Florida rich folks’ cabin, and ain’t nobody been there this year ‘cepting mice and raccoons.”

  Mice and raccoons? Heather gulped back an onrush of fear. Nothing that Junior and Bonnie couldn’t handle, right? “Well, actually it’s way north. Way way north. And I probably have the road wrong.”

  Heather knew Alex was looking at her strangely by this time. He had to be. She must sound like a de mented homing pigeon. But she was going through with this, come hell or high water. Or Alex’s suspicions.

  “Want to grab a quart of orange juice?” she asked him, then went over to pick out a couple of small baskets of fresh fruit and salad fixings. She put them on the counter. “I think that’s everything.”

  The old man started to ring up the items on his old brass cash register, bagging them far too slowly for Heather’s liking. She didn’t want Alex to start questioning the route or her plans or anything. He came over to her side, a frown that almost reached to the South Pole on his face.

  “Are you sure—”

  “That I’ve got everything?” she finished for him. “I didn’t need much. I’ve got some stuff in a cooler in the car.”

  Heather counted out the money and shoved the bags into Alex’s arms in record time. Too bad exiting grocery stores wasn’t an Olympic event. “Thanks for everything.”

  With a bright smile, she tugged on Alex’s arm, practically pulling him toward the door.

  “Hope you two find the right cabin,” the man called after them.

  “We will,” Heather called back.

  Once she and Alex were outside and back in the rain, she let go of his arm and fought to hide her sigh of relief. One hurdle down.

  “Are you sure of the way?” Alex asked.

  Heather just marched ahead of him, going over to unlock the trunk. “You mean because of that sweet old man?” She forced a loud laugh. “Would you believe I stop here every year and he always says the same thing? He always forgets about Ida because she’s just a summer resident. He only remembers the year-round folks.”

  Alex put the bags into the trunk, then Heather closed it with a solid thunk. “Well, let’s get going. We want to get there by dark.”

  Alex got back in the car and Heather took advantage of the moment’s separation to wipe her sweaty hands on her rain-dampened shorts. How was she getting to be such a good liar? Now, if only she was as good at disabling cars, though Aunty Em’s suggestion for letting the air out of Alex’s tire worked. Heather had to trust that her other suggestion would, too. And trust that her nervous stomach wouldn’t get any nervouser.

  “Heather?” Alex called. “Is something wrong?”

  She started, then hurried into the car. “Just breathing in the fresh country air.”

  She didn’t check to see if he was giving her any kind of look at all, but pulled back onto the road. This was it. She was really doing it. After resetting the trip odometer, she clutched the steering wheel tightly and kept an eye out for the stone bridge Dorothy had told her about, then she turned onto the dirt road that appeared amid the dense pines. Dorothy had called the road a seasonal two track, and now Heather knew just what that meant—two tracks through the weeds and only passable in the good seasons. Luckily the rains hadn’t been that heavy.

  “Damn. I hope we don’t meet any other traffic,” Alex said as branches brushed the windows. “There’s barely room for one vehicle here.”

  “I don’t think many people come this way.” She hoped not anyway.

  “I can’t believe Ida comes up here,” he added. “You really need a Jeep or four-wheel-drive truck for this road.”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad.”

  She was trembling, and her reactions were so far off, that she was sure she was making the road seem much worse than it was. It’s true that the lane was dotted with puddles and overgrown with bushes and weeds hanging in the way. But it was her alternating between hitting a puddle-filled pothole too fast and slamming on the brakes too fast that was giving them whiplash. And it didn’t help that she jumped every time a branch snapped back at the windows as if it were alive.

  “Just how far is this cabin?” Alex asked.

  “Another few miles.” Okay, another eight miles. But he didn’t want the real truth. And besides, it wasn’t like there was a place to turn around and go back, even if she wanted to.

  Another mile, maybe two and they drove through a partial clearing The trees were thin enough that the sky was visible above them. Unfortunately, it meant the rain had come through at full strength earlier. A huge puddle covered the track.

  Heather held her breath as she hit it, feeling the wheels pull slightly at the mud, but after a long scary moment they kept on going. Maybe that was too bad. If they got stuck in the mud, that would be the reason they had to stay here and she wouldn’t have to confess her plan to Alex. Of course, they would have to wa
lk another few miles to the cabin and that wouldn’t be fun.

  “I don’t like this at all,” he snapped as they went under the cover of the trees again. “We’re collecting Ida and then we’re leaving. This is beyond remote. The county police would be no protection at all. They’d never get here in time in an emergency.”

  She just kept on driving. What was the matter with him? He had turned into a prophet of gloom and doom. “Why are you always worrying something’s going to happen?” she asked. “This is the country. It’s safe out here.”

  “You can’t really believe that. This would be a perfect place to hide out. Or to ambush somebody.”

  Heather felt a sudden stab of understanding. That call she’d overheard last night, that man had threatened Alex. He hadn’t heard the message since she’d erased his answering machine tape when they’d gone to his house this morning for him to shower and collect clean clothes, but he knew they would be after him. And was worrying now about where they would catch up with him.

  “They’d have to know where someone was in order to ambush them,” she pointed out. And no one in Chesterton knew where they were going. Only Dorothy did and she certainly wasn’t going to tell.

  “Or they’d have to catch him unawares,” Alex added, sounding as if he were talking more to himself than her.

  “Right.” She had no idea what he was talking about, but since it seemed to satisfy something in him, she wasn’t going to question.

  She had other things to think about anyway, like whether they would get there before dark. The shadows were deepening yet the track seemed to go on endlessly. She glanced at the trip odometer. They were almost there, thank goodness.

  A low-hanging tree branch swiped at the windshield, then suddenly the cabin appeared ahead of them. It was a small boxlike building huddled under the pines, rough-hewn siding with a wide, welcoming front porch that did nothing to hide its empty look. Heather drove the car across the pine needles up close to the house, her stomach a tight ball of nerves. This was it Time to face the firing squad.

  “Are you sure there’s somebody here?” Alex said. His voice sounded suspicious and more than a touch angry.