CHAPTER TEN
Foolish, foolish woman.
She knew better than this. She knew exactly the sort of trouble she was courting by allowing these seductive kisses. She was allowing him inside her life, inside her heart. When she wasn’t with him, she was thinking about him. When she was with him, she could feel herself falling deeper and deeper.
A ribbon of need seemed to curl and twist around them, wrapping them tightly together. Lovely and sultry, but more dangerous than a pit viper.
She couldn’t let her life become more tangled with his. Trace was exactly the wrong man for her. He couldn’t have been more wrong if Monica had selected him herself.
She was coming to rely on him too much, on his kindness and his friendship, on the heat and wonder of these stolen kisses that seemed to make the world much less scary.
His mouth was warm and firm and he tasted buttery from the breadsticks. She leaned into him, soaking up his strength and his heat, wishing she could stay here all night with him in this delicious embrace and let all the troubles of the world stay outside the door.
He was still wearing his parka, though he hadn’t zipped it, and she slid her hands inside, to the heat at his sides. He was like a solid column of muscle, with no ounce of anything but strength.
With his arms around her, she felt…safe, for the first time she could remember.
Was it any wonder she was falling for him? Trace was the kind of man who gave an ugly little dog a home because he worried no one else would. He loved his family, he was dedicated to his community, he was extraordinarily kind to her sister.
The word jarred her back to reality. Her sister. Not her daughter.
That was the critical point. How was she going to tell him that Gabi was her sister after she’d spent weeks lying to him?
She was no better than Gabi. She had perpetrated a fraud on the Archuletas, on Trace, on the whole town of Pine Gulch. When he found out she had lied to him, he would be furious with her. She pictured the warmth in those green eyes changing to cold anger and her stomach twisted.
Though it was the hardest thing she’d ever done, even harder than striking out on her own when she was sixteen and had no money and no place to live, Becca forced herself to slide her mouth from his, to step back a pace. Cool air rushed in to fill the place where his body had been pressed to hers and she shivered but forced herself to be resolute.
“This isn’t a good idea, Trace.”
He raked a hand through his hair, his breathing ragged and his eyes a warm, dazed green which she refused to find flattering.
“You’re right. Not when Gabi is asleep upstairs.”
“That’s…not what I mean.” She shoved her hands in her pockets to keep from reaching for him again, her nails digging into her palms as if that hard, sharp pain could help her stay focused. She hated this, abhorred the idea of hurting him when he had been nothing but kind to her, but she had to do whatever was necessary to discourage him. She had to make it absolutely clear that she didn’t want any more of these wondrous kisses.
Somehow she had to pull off the biggest con of her life.
She drew in a sharp breath, ignoring the harsh pain that nestled somewhere under her heart. “Don’t kiss me again, Trace,” she said, her voice firm even while her insides were trembling. “I meant what I said. I don’t want a relationship. Not now. Not with you.”
His head jerked back an inch or two as if she’d just slapped him. His gaze met hers and she saw a confused hurt there that made her stomach feel hollow and achy, as if she’d just drop-kicked his ugly little dog in front of him.
“Wow. That’s plain enough.”
“You’re a very nice man, Trace. I obviously find you attractive or I wouldn’t have kissed you. But attraction isn’t enough. Not for me, not at this stage in my life. You’ve been a good friend to…to both Gabi and me, but right now that’s all I have room for in my life. I don’t want to hurt you but it’s not fair for me to let you think I might be open for more. I tried to tell you that before.”
“Right. You did.” He was angry now. She could see it in the flare of his eyes and the hard, implacable set of his jaw. “You told me and I stupidly ignored you.”
“You’re not stupid. This isn’t your fault, Trace.”
“It’s about me, not you. Isn’t that what people say when they’re giving someone the brush-off.”
Oh, she hated this. She wanted nothing but to have those strong arms around her, to press her cheek against that wonderfully solid chest and just hold on tight. But that was impossible, and the best thing for both of them was to make that perfectly clear to him so she wouldn’t have to be tempted again and again to throw her good sense into the wind.
“In this case, it’s true. It is about me. I’m sorry if you don’t want to accept that but I can’t change it.”
“So that’s it. ‘Stay away, don’t bother me again. Take your dog and get the hell out of here.’”
The pain in her heart spread through her entire chest cavity but she called on every deceptive skill her mother had ever taught her and gave him a hard little smile. “I wouldn’t have phrased it exactly like that.”
He stared at her for a long moment and she hated seeing that warm light that had been there when they kissed fade into anger and hurt. “I can’t argue with that, can I? Come on, Grunt. Let’s go home.”
He picked up his dog’s leash and opened the door. A cold wind blew inside, chilling every part of her that wasn’t already icy. He gave her one last look, then walked out into the night, closing the door firmly behind him.
She watched him walk down her steps onto the sidewalk, then turn toward his house at the end of the street. Snow swirled around him. It might have been a trick of the low light from the streetlamp and the pale moon filtering through clouds, but she could swear it increased in fury and intensity as he walked down the street.
Though she was freezing, she couldn’t summon the energy to close the door. She stood there in the cold, looking out at the lights glimmering on all their neighbors’ houses, her chest aching with a deep sense of loss.
Oh, how she wished things could be different. Why couldn’t she have a normal life, with a cozy house—instead of this dark, depressing old place—with a boyfriend and a little dog and a regular job?
Instead she had a sister who might be a pathological liar, a mother who wasn’t happy if she wasn’t defrauding someone out of considerable amounts of money, and she had just pushed away the most wonderful man she’d ever met because she was worried he would see through her lies.
Would see that she wasn’t good enough for him.
There was the truth. Becca pressed a hand to the ache in her stomach. She was afraid in her heart that she was so scarred from her insecure childhood that she had nothing to give a man like Trace Bowman. Otherwise she would have just faced the truth head-on—told Trace about her mother, about the years of lies and pain, about trying to distance herself as much as she possibly could from Monica until that day her mother and sister had shown up in Phoenix. What had she done that was so wrong, really, other than lying to the school and perpetrating a fraud on the town she was trying to make her own?
She shivered, the cold seeping deep into her bones, and she finally forced herself to shut the door. She had made her choice to push him away and she would live with it. What else could she do?
Now she had to focus on Christmas a few days away, on making the holiday as perfect as she could for a girl who had never known the normal traditions of childhood.
* * *
A guy didn’t die of a bruised ego. Or a broken heart, come to that.
He wasn’t sure which one he was dealing with. Trace only knew that something burned in his chest and a dark mood had settled over him that no amount of holiday cheer could lift.
He sat in his patrol vehicle outside the diner wishing with everything inside him that he didn’t have to go inside. He could see her through the half-curtain windows—making conversation, delivering plates, taking orders. She moved with that quiet grace with which she did everything and she looked so beautiful he couldn’t seem to look away, like a kid staring into the sun even when he knew damn well it was bad for him.
He would have picked any other place in town to meet with the mayor again about the pesky intersection that apparently the mayor couldn’t sleep until they fixed. He had even suggested The Renegade, the tavern on the outskirts of town. Hell, at this point he would have preferred meeting in his patrol car, but the mayor had insisted on The Gulch, much to his dismay. Said he hadn’t eaten breakfast and was starving and needed to be seen patronizing local businesses.
Trace didn’t want to go inside. He hadn’t seen Becca since Monday night, two nights ago, when she had basically sent him packing. He told himself he hadn’t made a conscious effort to avoid her, but in his heart, he knew otherwise. He was avoiding her, pure and simple.
He didn’t expect every woman he was interested in to fall madly in love with him. That was ego he simply didn’t have. Taft was the womanizer between them, not Trace. But he had sensed something special with Becca. She certainly didn’t kiss him like a woman who wanted nothing to do with him.
He obviously had no instincts about this sort of thing. The last woman he had wanted to pursue a serious relationship with had ended up dumping him, too. He’d thought he and Easton were on the brink of falling for each other when Cisco Del Norte came back to Pine Gulch and he realized East was crazy in love with the man.
Becca wasn’t Easton Springhill. He wasn’t wrong—she was developing feelings for him, just as he was for her. He had sensed it in the way she kissed him, had seen it in her lovely hazel-brown eyes, but for some reason she wouldn’t let him inside.
He couldn’t help wondering if she was still hung up on Gabi’s father, but she had seemed quite clear the night before that the man wasn’t in either of their lives and hadn’t been for a long time.
He sighed. Didn’t matter her reasons. The woman asked him to back off and he had no choice but to accept that. And while he might wish to avoid her for the next, oh, year or two, that was impossible in a small town like Pine Gulch. Like it or not, he was going to have to face her eventually. Might as well get it over with.
With another sigh, he climbed out of his vehicle. When he pushed open the door to the diner, heads immediately turned to see if the newcomer was anybody interesting. A few people waved, a few deliberately turned away. Being the police chief of a small town didn’t always help a guy win any popularity contests, not when he sometimes had to arrest someone’s brother or kid or wife. It didn’t bother him much anymore.
The mayor wasn’t there yet. Damn. That would have eased this awkwardness a little. When Becca saw him, color rose in her cheeks and she faltered a little before she pulled back her shoulders and stepped toward him. She was wearing a little snowflake ribbon in her hair and more snowflakes dangled from her ears, and she gave him a nervous kind of smile.
“Hi. Um, would you like to sit at the counter or a table?”
He frowned. Neither. He’d like to be eating a brown-bag sandwich in his car right now. He forced a casual smile in response. “Table please. The mayor wanted to grab some lunch while we have a quick meeting. He should be here in a minute.”
She directed him to an open seat. “Do you need a menu or would you like to wait until the mayor arrives before you order?”
He hated this distance between them and the tension that seemed to seethe and pop like those fizzy fireworks he used to buy on the Fourth of July.
“Coffee?”
“No. Just water, thanks.” He really didn’t want her waiting on him but didn’t see any way around it unless he tried to have a conversation with the mayor at the crowded, noisy counter.
She brought him his water a moment later and he sipped it, checking his watch about every thirty seconds. He had been there maybe three or four minutes when the front door opened. He looked up, hoping to see Mayor Montgomery. Instead, the stooped, white-haired figure of Agnes Sheffield walked in along with her quieter sister, Violet. The Sheffield sisters were fixtures of Pine Gulch and had lived there for their entire lives. They even married brothers, who were both long dead now.
To his dismay, Agnes spotted him and immediately abandoned her younger sister to stump over toward him, her cane beating a harsh tattoo on the diner’s peeled wood floor.
“This is the last straw. I have had enough! You hear me, Chief Bowman?”
Yes, along with the entire diner and probably every storefront on Main Street. “Of course. What’s the problem, Mrs. Sheffield?”
“I’ll tell you what the problem is. I want an apology, at the very least. An official one, signed on Pine Gulch Police Department letterhead. You’re lucky I’m not going to try to take that fool’s badge.”
“What fool would that be, ma’am?”
“Your officer. Rivera, something or other. Some kind of Mexican name. He gave me a ticket for reckless driving. Me. How absurd is that? I’ve never driven recklessly in my life, young man.”
The woman had needed her keys taken away about three years and two cataract surgeries ago. Her son was a friend of his and Trace knew he should have talked to the man before now and not let the situation degenerate so far. She was becoming a danger to others on the road, and he was going to have to be firm, as difficult as it was.
“It’s harassment. That’s what it is. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’ll look into it,” he promised. “Officer Rivera is a good man, though. None of my officers would give a ticket that wasn’t warranted.”
“There’s always a first time. I say, I did nothing wrong. I might have driven over the yellow line a time or two but I was not weaving. It was snowy. Anybody might have made that mistake.”
“But you know you don’t see as well as you used to, right?” he asked gently.
Something like fear flickered in her pale blue eyes. He understood it—losing the freedom to remain behind the wheel could be a horrible blow to a woman as proud and independent as Agnes Sheffield.
“That may be, but I can still drive perfectly well.”
On impulse, he reached out and took her weathered, wrinkled hand in his. It was cool and trembling. “Mrs. Sheffield. You would hate to cause an accident, wouldn’t you? What if you didn’t see the school crossing guard and drove through a crosswalk and hurt a child?”
“I wouldn’t do that. I’m a fine driver.”
“I’m sure you are.” He paused. “How about this. After the holidays, you and I can go for a little drive. We can even take Officer Rivera along if you’d like. If you can show us both we’re crazy, I’ll rip up your citation and get you that apology. On official stationary, I promise.”
“And if not?” she asked, her voice small and her tone no longer so truculent.
He squeezed her gnarled fingers. “Then we will just have to figure out a way to get you around town to the grocery store and your doctor’s appointments, okay? Maybe you can let Violet have a turn driving.”
“Hmph. We’ll see.”
The mayor came into the diner before he could answer and greeted Agnes with his customary charm. Trace wasn’t sure how he did it, but in about thirty seconds of conversation, Mayor Montgomery had Agnes blushing and tittering like a teenage girl.
He looked up and happened to catch Becca’s gaze. She was staring at him with a strange expression in her eyes, something glittery and bright. When they made eye contact, she wrenched her gaze away and headed for their table.
“Mrs. Sheffield, I seated Violet at your favorite table. Mayor, what can I get you to drink?”
The next forty-five minutes were miserable. He forced himself not to stare at Becca every time she came to their table to take their orders or deliver their food. He tried to avoid making eye contact but despite his best efforts, he was aware of her every movement in his peripheral vision Finally they finished the meeting and wrapped up their lunch at about the same time.
“Thanks for meeting me over lunch,” Mayor Montgomery said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “It was the only time I had free today.”
“My treat this time,” Trace answered. “You paid last time.”
“But I invited you.”
They wrangled over the bill for a moment but Trace emerged victorious and the mayor excused himself for another meeting. Trace was waiting for the bill when the chimes on the door jangled. From his position facing the door, Trace saw the new customer was a smartly dressed woman in her mid-to late-forties but trying hard to look a couple decades younger. He didn’t think he recognized her but there was something vaguely familiar about the shape of her jawline, the angle of her neck.
He was trying to place how he might know her when he suddenly heard a clatter. He turned at the sound and saw Becca staring at the door, broken plates and spilled food at her feet and shock in her eyes.
“Look what you did!” Agnes Sheffield exclaimed.
Becca looked as if somebody had just run her over with a delivery truck. Her features were pale, her eyes hollow and stunned. She stood frozen for a long moment, then seemed to collect herself enough to kneel down and begin cleaning up her mess.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll have Lou replace your food. Oh, did I spill on you?”
She started to wipe off a splatter of sauce from Agnes’s sweater, all the while darting little panicky glances at the woman who had come in. Who was it? And why did her presence leave Becca so flustered?
Not his business, he reminded himself, unless the woman was here to stir up trouble in his town. He did feel compelled to help Becca clean up the mess, however.
“Need a hand?” He didn’t wait for an answer, simply crouched beside her and started picking up shards of broken plate.
“I just…I need to tell Lou.”
Donna approached them with a wet cloth and the mop. “I saw, darlin’. No worries. I’ve already had him throw another couple of chicken breasts on the grill. No charge for lunch today, you two,” she said to the Sheffield sisters. “And for your trouble, you can have a piece of pie on the house.”
“What about one of your sweet rolls instead?” Agnes gave her a crafty look.
“Sure. I can probably find one of those for you,” Donna answered.
“A fresh one. It has to be fresh.”
“Of course. A fresh sweet roll coming up, Mrs. Sheffield.”
“They ought to fire that girl if she can’t handle a tray,” he heard Agnes grumble to her sister, and he saw that Becca’s leached-out color had been replaced by a pale pink as she cleaned up the mess.
“I can do this,” she muttered to him.
“And I can help,” he said simply. “Is everything all right?”
She met his gaze and he watched as she seemed to become calm and composed right in front of his eyes. He found her skill at locking away all her emotions quite remarkable, though he could still see a shadow in her eyes and he didn’t miss the way she completely avoided looking at the newcomer, whom Donna was trying to seat at the counter.
“Everything’s great,” Becca muttered. “Couldn’t be better. I don’t know why I’m so clumsy this afternoon. I guess it’s just already been a long day. I’ve been on my feet since six-thirty.”
He might almost believe her if he hadn’t seen that moment of panic in her eyes and her determined efforts not to pay any attention to the woman who had come in.
When they finished cleaning up the mess, she forced a smile. “Thank you. I forgot you were still waiting for your bill. Just give me a moment and we’ll get you on your way.”
She rose in one fluid motion and headed to the kitchen, taking the soiled tray with her. Donna had seated the other woman at a table across the diner from him. He was tempted to go over and introduce himself but thought that might not be wise, under the circumstances.
When Becca returned, she handed him his and the mayor’s bill with another distracted smile that didn’t come close to reaching her eyes, then she headed toward the woman.
He expected her to hand the woman a menu. Instead, Becca slid into the booth across from her. He had the right cash to cover the bill and could have just left it on the table, but he was too curious to see how this drama would play out. As he watched, Becca and the other woman spent a few moments of intense conversation, but with the general hubbub of the diner, he couldn’t hear the conversation. Becca looked to him angry and frustrated but the other woman didn’t appear to care much.
Who was she? Why did she seem so familiar to him, like a book he was almost certain he’d picked up once at the library? And why was Becca so upset to see her?
After perhaps a five minutes’ conversation, he saw Becca’s hands flutter to her jeans pocket. She seemed indecisive, her features tight with frustration, but finally she pulled out a keychain and extracted a single key, which she slid across the table to the other woman almost defiantly.
The woman gave a tiny, triumphant sort of self-satisfied smile that immediately set Trace’s teeth on edge as she palmed the key. She slid out of the booth, kissed Becca’s cheek and left the diner without ordering anything. Becca sat there for a moment, her features hollow and raw. He very much wanted to go to her, to ask her to tell him what was so terribly wrong, to promise her he would send the woman packing from his town if her presence bothered Becca so much.
Not that he could do such a thing, but he would have liked the chance to try.
As he watched, she smoothed her hands down her apron and stood almost defiantly, lifting her chin and returning to work.
She stopped at two other tables to check on customers before she worked her way to his. “Did you need dessert or anything?”
“I’m good. Thank you.” Despite years of training and practical experience questioning suspects and witnesses, he couldn’t come up with a clever way to ask her about what had just happened, so he ended up just blurting it out. “Who was your friend?”
“My…friend?”
“The woman you just gave your house key to.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Am I under police surveillance now?”
He refused to let her bait him. “I tend to observe things around me. It’s part of being a police officer. She obviously upset you.”
“She didn’t upset me. I was just…surprised to see her, that’s all. That was my dear mother, here to spend the holidays with Gabi and me. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Her cool tone of voice left him in no doubt the development was anything but wonderful to Becca. Her mother. That was why the woman seemed familiar, because he saw traces of her in the woman he was coming to lo—His mind jerked away from the word like a skittish horse at a rattlesnake pit. He saw pale traces of her in Becca.
“That will be nice for Gabi, to have her grandmother around.”
“Won’t it?” she said mechanically, then turned to leave. Though he knew it was crazy, he reached out and touched her arm. She trembled a little but at least she didn’t jerk her hand away.
“I know I’ve said this before but I just want to repeat that you can come to me for any reason. No strings, Becca.”
Their eyes met and he thought he saw a glimmer of yearning there before she became composed once more.
“Why would I need to do that?” she asked with that cool smile he was beginning to hate, then she headed away to attend to another customer.