Chapter 2

Of all the unmitigated nerve, Noelle thought, seething as she angrily slung her things into a bag. Had she ever met a more provoking man? One that, with a mere slightly condescending smile and a handful of words, had turned her mind purple with rage?

On purpose.

Honestly, she’d always prided herself on her ability to get along with almost anybody, on never allowing herself to be goaded into an argument or unpleasantness because, nine times out of ten, the instigator didn’t argue to make a point, but to sling mud. Noelle had never minded getting dirty—she’d done a tour with the Peace Corps, had dug wells in Africa, helped build schools in Guatemala, had worked clean up after hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. She’d worked in countless soup kitchens, free clinics and homeless shelters. Service was her passion, her gift, and it fulfilled her in ways that the people closest to her had never understood.

Like her parents, who’d basically turned over her admittedly sizable trust fund, then washed their hands of her.

“Fine, Noelle,” her father had said, exasperated and angry. “You win. I’ll go ahead and sign over the money. And when you’ve given it away to every bleeding heart group in the world and saved every endangered animal on the planet—when it’s all gone and you have no other choice—maybe then you’ll grow up and get a real job like the rest of us.”

That dart had penetrated because she did work— hard, dammit—but she was paid in kindness rather than cash, satisfaction in lieu of a check. And why shouldn’t she be able to do what she wanted? Thanks to her grandparents who’d put the money away for her after hitting a seven-million dollar jackpot in a Vegas slot machine, she could afford to serve others, to offer a little financial assistance to causes she cared about. She’d paid cash for her modest house, had no debt and had socked away a good portion in an investment portfolio which, even in this poor economy, still made her plenty of money.

Hell, she wasn’t stupid. She was just different.

It pained her that her mother and father had never understood her, that they weren’t proud of her, that ultimately, the way she’d chosen to live her life had disappointed them and caused a rift. Other than the obligatory cards at Christmas and on her birthday—which happened to be on the same day, thus her name—she hadn’t heard from them in more than two years and each time the postmark was from a different part of the world.

Christmas, probably due to it being her birthday, was always particularly tough. Because when the volunteering was over and every hungry mouth had been fed, in the end she was still in front of a lonely tree, opening the two presents she’d ultimately bought for herself and singing a mash-up version of “Jingle Bells” and “Happy Birthday.”

Her parents hadn’t even bothered to send a gift last year, but had just stuck a check into the card that had arrived a week early. From Morocco. Though her father loved to tout the get-a-real-job idea to her, he’d fully embraced early retirement. Her lips tilted. She often wondered if the air was thinner up where he sat on top of his high horse.

Though she knew it was petty, she hadn’t made an effort to get in touch with them and let them know that she was the single witness to a high- profile crime, that the infamous Winchester clan of Calgary county had tried to kill her three times in the past four months—the bulk of which had happened in the last few weeks—to keep her from giving testimony in court.

Noelle had never given too much thought to her own death until someone had deliberately attempted to take her life. The resulting terror and anger had been nothing short of enlightening. Not only had it put her in touch with her own mortality, it had forced her to reevaluate her very existence, to measure her days in minutes rather than hours. She’d always lived by the “do the next right thing” mantra, but it seemed even more significant now. Even more important to make sure that her life, however humble or short, made a difference.

And though she’d consoled grieving parents after the last three world disasters and had held the hand of a dying child who’d been belatedly pulled from the rubble of a recent tornado in Alabama, she’d never witnessed a deliberate death.

An execution.

Both were senseless, but the latter haunted her to no end. Perhaps because the tornado had been a freak of nature and the murder….had not. The end of Rupert Nichols’s life had been cold-blooded and merciless. It had been ended over something as trivial as a differing opinion on a brand of ketchup, she’d later find out.

Travis “Tubby” Winchester—the nickname was a throwback to his elementary school days when he’d evidently had a bit of a weight problem—had pulled Rupert Nichols out the back door of his Main Street cafe, forced him to his knees, casually put a gun between Rupert’s eyes, said, “Nobody argues with me. I’m the Decider,” and then pulled the trigger. He’d adjusted his jacket, pocketed the weapon, then climbed back into his waiting car and driven away as though nothing had happened.

Noelle had seen all of this from her vantage point behind a parked car. She’d been volunteering at the free clinic on the other side of the alley and had noticed a pair of unusually small, malnourished kittens when she’d come in earlier in the day. She’d put out some food for them and had planned to look for them when she’d finished her shift. That’s what she’d been doing in the alley when Tubby’s car had pulled in. She’d been wedged up under the back tire of an SUV, trying to coax the kittens from beneath the vehicle with a piece of beef jerky when she’d heard Rupert’s initial cry.

It’s odd the thoughts that flip through a person’s mind when faced with a horrible situation. For instance, when Tubby’s car had driven past, she’d been more worried about the cats darting under one of his tires than being seen by the legendary local crime boss, that beef jerky had been a poor choice to lure the kittens in the first place and how having a little packet of tuna in her purse wouldn’t be remiss for times like this.

It was as though her brain had been trying to think of anything but the dead man across the way.

She’d scrambled from her inadvertent hiding place, falling once in the process and tearing a hole in her jeans, then stumbled toward him, her heart pounding in her suddenly roaring ears. She’d known he was gone—that the neat hole between his sightless eyes was deceptively small for all the damage it had done—but the impulse to help, to do something was too strong to ignore. A lump welled in her throat.

In the end, all she could do was close his eyes and dial 911.

Having made her home in Mossy Ridge during her childhood and teens, then as her “base camp” when she was between volunteer and relief postings, Noelle knew Rupert well. He’d been her Little League soccer coach, was allergic to fire ants and lived in a gray- and-white Cape Cod style house a couple of streets over from her own place. The Main Street Diner had been in his family for as long as she could remember and, while it was never going to be famous, the cafe served a good meat loaf and had the best banana pudding this side of the Mason-Dixon line.

His family, understandably, had been devastated.

Thankfully, during those awful seconds just after the shooting, Noelle had had the presence of mind to get a look at the license plate. She’d always had a good mind for numbers—could still remember her locker combination from high school—and while her eye witness account might have been questionable considering her position, poor lighting and a host of other factors, knowing that number had solidified her as a credible witness.

The district attorney, who’d been trying to nail Tubby on a cache of other crimes he’d managed to wiggle out of, had been practically giddy with excitement. While he’d managed to put away some of the notorious crime boss’s underlings for various offenses—drugs, prostitution, racketeering, even murder—he’d never been able to get a single one of them to turn state’s evidence against their leader.

And now, thanks to her, their leader was in custody.

In a bold move that had ultimately sent his family into hiding, the presiding judge had revoked bond and no amount of threatening or a well-argued point from one of Tubby’s exorbitantly expensive attorneys had been able to convince him otherwise. Tubby had been remanded until trial and that, as they say, was that.

But it hadn’t kept him from putting a hit out on her and Noelle had known that every day closer to the trial date put her closer and closer to danger. Tubby and his crime family hadn’t been able to avoid the law for this long because they were innocent—it was because most people didn’t have the nerve to confront them or put their own families at risk. But Noelle didn’t have any family close enough for them to use as leverage—she tried not to consider how sad that was—and she’d thought too much of Rupert to be bullied or frightened into silence.

When the threatening letters and phone calls had started, she hadn’t been surprised. Though shaken, she’d installed a top of the line security system, added a canister of mace to her key chain and a gun to her purse, then had brushed up on her self-defense skills.

But when someone had taken a shot at her outside the local Piggly Wiggly—she and her Pink Lady apples had fallen to the ground when the window behind her had shattered, resulting in bruises on both of them—that’s when she’d really gotten unnerved. A second shot had blasted through her living room window the following week, and the only thing that had prevented her death was the fact that she’d bent forward to retrieve the remote control from the coffee table so that she could rewind Pride and Prejudice and watch Mr. Darcy strip down and dive into the lake again.

She’d forever credit Colin Firth and Jane Austen for saving her life.

But this last attempt had terrified her even more. Evidently having decided that there was too much room for error with a bullet, her attackers had hurled a Molotov cocktail through her kitchen window and tried to burn her to death. She’d shoved Lilo and Stitch, her new kittens, into a pillow case, much to their howling displeasure, and climbed out the upper-story window of her guest bedroom. Thankfully, she’d neglected to cut away a tree limb that had grown too close and she was able to scramble to safety.

It was at that point that Ed Johnson, one of her oldest and dearest friends from their local Red Cross agency, had stepped in and hired Ranger Security. Mossy Ridge’s tiny police force didn’t have the manpower or the preparedness to deal with this sort of issue. According to Ed, a former military man himself, Ranger Security was the best in the business and he was confident in their ability to keep her out of harm’s way. Noelle released a small, shaky breath as a burst of heat mushroomed slowly inside her once more.

Clearly she and Ed had differing definitions on what exactly constituted “safe.”

Because she’d felt many things when she’d looked up and caught a glimpse of Judd Anderson, but interestingly enough, safe wasn’t one of them. Truth be told, she hadn’t even had to look up. The instant he’d walked into the room, she’d felt the change in the atmosphere, a significant recalculation to her own personal barometer. A strangely pleasant sort of pressure had invaded the shabby but cozy space, making it difficult to breathe and the fine hairs on her body had prickled to attention, a testament to his particular energy.

It was unnerving.

Noelle had known before she fully looked up that he was going to be handsome. The bits of him she’d seen from the corner of her eye had been proof enough of that. He’d practically filled the doorway, leaving little space between the top and sides of the frame. She’d caught a glimpse of dark hair, massive shoulders, lean hips and long legs and, though the courier’s uniform was supposed to lend credibility to his ruse, something about the outfit on him put her in mind of a male stripper. She’d mentally queued “Sexy and I Know It” and waited for him to rip his pants off.

Then he’d spoken in that unbelievably autocratic my-way-or-the-highway tone and ruined it all.

In quite possibly the sexiest voice she’d ever heard, which was hardly fair. It put her in mind of velvet and satin, the rustle of sheets, naked skin and hot bodies. Sex, frankly. Which she hadn’t had in more than a year, after the disintegration of her last slightly serious relationship.

And then she’d looked up into those impossibly dark eyes—so dark, in fact, that she couldn’t automatically distinguish pupil from iris, and the effect had been nothing short of breathtaking. Her brain had momentarily short-circuited and blanked of all pertinent content. A blaze of awareness fired over her skin, leaving her flushed and flustered and, though she knew she hadn’t moved, she felt a bit like Alice, tumbling counter clockwise down the rabbit hole.

Never a stranger to embarrassment, Noelle had often wished for the ground to open up beneath her feet and swallow her whole, but this was a decidedly different occasion and the sensation was more than a little disconcerting because she had the irrational idea that he should be tumbling with her and instead of a hole, they should fall into bed and not get out of it until he’d had her for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Or some approximation thereof.

Which was another anomaly because she’d never simply looked at a man and...melted. Or vibrated. Or tingled. In her lady bits. Without some other form of stimulation.

Her nipples puckered even now, remembering.

Because she was used to being the master of herself and, as often as possible, everyone else around her—life was simply easier that way—she’d managed to get a hold of herself and issue the set down Mr. High and Mighty Soldier deserved. He wasn’t her superior officer and she hadn’t appreciated his tone. In her experience, kindness was almost always more effective than being domineering. She liked to build people up, to challenge them to be better.

Like Les and Roy and Clark, for instance. Les didn’t recognize his own honor or efficiency, Roy simply needed to look in the mirror and find something to love about himself and Clark’s keen mind had been conditioned to insult others instead of bettering himself. In the two weeks they’d been protecting her, she thought she’d made a good deal of progress. It was easy enough to do if one bothered to look for the good and illustrate it to others.

That was her strength, that’s what made her a good volunteer, a good ambassador for kindness. She could strip the hide off of someone with the sharpness of her tongue, if necessary, but she’d rather not. Arguing or giving in to irritation was easy—lazy, even, if you asked her—but not arguing or controlling one’s temper took effort.

The fact that she’d not only lost her temper in her very first exchange with her new security guard— and then lost the verbal war—wasn’t an encouraging sign of things to come. Coupled with her irrational, wholly thrilling but definitely unwise reaction to him—the tingling had migrated to more sensitive areas below her waist—and Noelle knew she was really in trouble.

Quite possibly, much to her surprise, even out of her depth. Had she ever been out of her depth, she wondered absently, a frown inching across her brow. Had she ever met anyone who’d put her so firmly off her game? She blinked, mildly alarmed.

No.

The singular difference between most intelligent people was the decisions they ultimately chose to make. Her mouth puckered with grim determination. And she wasn’t going to make one now that would put her into the Brilliant but Unforgivably Stupid category.

She couldn’t afford to be stupid, unforgivably or otherwise, and she was quite sure that the situation she presently found herself in wasn’t going to magically rectify itself without any action on her part. So...

It had to be done.

With a resigned sigh and a violent twinge of irrational disappointment, Noelle picked up her cell phone, powered it on, and then dialed directory assistance. “Atlanta, Georgia,” she said. “Ranger Security.” She straightened when someone who identified himself as Juan-Carlos answered the phone. “Good afternoon, Juan-Carlos. My name is Noelle Montgomery and I’d like to request a different agent. Who would I need to talk to about that?”