Dangerous Flirt (15 page)

“So this is where you two snuck off to.” Sarah Jane lowered herself into a spare chair and laid Beth's briefcase on the table. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I didn't want you to lose this.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, you bet.” She patted the yellow-and-blue plaid cloth tote bag at her feet. “I keep scrapbooking materials and my favorite stamps in mine. You never know when inspiration will strike.”

Phil pushed away from the table and stood. “Ladies, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go out in the hall for a smoke. I'll see you later.”

“Darn, I was hoping you could help me carry a box from the business
office to the convention hall.” Sarah Jane paused for a moment. “But I'm sure you don't have time for that.”

“I can help.”

“Aren't you the sweetest, Beth, but it's a big box and really I need a man's help. Don't you two worry, I'm sure I can pay a bellboy to haul it for me.”

A strained smile tugged at Phil's cheeks. “We can't have that. I'd be happy to help.”

“Wonderful.” She stood. “Let's
be off. We'll see you later at the reception, Beth.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Watching the two of them walk off, it struck Beth that she'd known Sarah Jane for most of her life, but the niggling feeling in her gut telling her she had missed something had grown into an ache.

She had to have turned into a paranoid mess to even imagine Sarah Jane as a criminal mastermind. She was a senior citizen scrapbooking
fanatic, for God’s sake.

She pulled out a legal pad and the Haverstan file from her briefcase, uncapped a black pen and drew a vertical line down the center of a page from the pad. In an organized fashion, she listed what she knew about Haverstan on one side of the paper. The list was regrettably short. On the other side, she wrote a much longer list of questions she still needed to answer, most
notably, who was behind Haverstan and were they the ones who had drugged her last night. At that, her pen stilled. Until she got back home, there wasn't much she could do. Unless…

Digging her phone out of her briefcase, she ignored the unease swirling around in her stomach and punched in the number she'd first memorized in sixth grade. This would not be a comfortable conversation, but there were
only a handful of people in Dry Creek, Nebraska, who knew where most, if not all, the bodies were buried.

“Layton residence.”

“Hi, Mrs. Layton, it's Beth.”

“So Hank tells me you're not my daughter-in-law,” Hank's mother said without preamble. “What kind of foolishness have you two been up to? Imagine if the Junior Leaguers got ahold of this information. It would be all of town in an hour flat.”

Yep. This was going as expected, but if she'd learned anything growing up as Claire's best friend, it was the best way to deal with Glenda Layton was to be blunt. “Nothing. It was just a mix-up. No wedding. No divorce. No nothing.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” Translation: You're full of it.

“Speaking of gossip—”

“Gossip? I've never gossiped a day in my life.”

Beth shook her head. Glenda could easily operate
a clandestine intelligence-gathering operation in her sleep. “You're right, I misspoke. I'm trying to get some information about a company called Haverstan, they've been buying up the land around my grandparents’ place.”

“Interesting. I haven't heard that name in forever and a day.”

“You've heard of them?”

“Sure.” Her strong voice turned wistful. “When I was growing up, there were Haverstans
all over Dry Creek County. Cecil Haverstan, he was the cute one, died in Vietnam. Two of the cousins died of fever when we were in grammar school. Most everybody else scattered to the four winds in the seventies.”

“So no one's left?” So much for old-school intel.

“Let me think…Cecil's cousin, Robert Reynolds, died a few years back, so that leaves only Sarah Jane Hunihan.”

Beth straightened
and glanced up at the door Sarah Jane had walked out of minutes ago. “What?”

“Oh yeah, she's a Haverstan on her grandmother's side. You'd never know it to look at her now, but that one was a hellion in her younger days. Had boys from six counties mooning after her, but she ignored them all. That girl had her eyes on a bigger prize than a bunch of cowhicks.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, I never really
paid attention to the talk. You know what Dry Creek is like now; imagine how bad the gossip was before reality TV and the Internet.”

Beth waited, certain Glenda wouldn't be able to help herself from spilling the beans.

“Well, I can tell you this much. Sarah Jane had her eyes on moving into the big houses in the Big Horn Hills. She had a plan, I don't know what it was but that girl changed herself—from
the shoes on her feet to her big blonde hair—into the spitting image of a country club wife, just without the husband. Then one day she chopped off her hair, bought the place near your grandparents and became the scrapbooking fiend she is today.”

“What happened?”

“I have no earthly idea, but I think the question you need to answer is
who
happened. Not that I would know, because I don't gossip.”

In a knee-jerk reaction to Glenda’s proclamation, Beth rolled her eyes.

“Wow.” Who would have ever thought? Could Sarah Jane be the one behind Haverstan, the threats and the drugging? Improbable didn't even begin to describe her level of doubt, but she couldn't shake a sinking feeling that the monster behind everything carried a plaid tote bag filled with stamps and scrapbooking pages.

“People
your age never seem to realize that us old folks had lives before you came along, and continue to even after you're here.”

Mind spinning, Beth took a sip of lukewarm coffee. “Well, thanks for the background, Mrs. Layton. I’d better go now—”

“Oh no you don't. I want to know what's going on with you and Hank.”

Damn. Glenda wasn't about to let her get off easy. The problem was, Beth couldn't even
explain to herself the two-steps-forward-and-three-steps-back relationship she had with Hank. “I wish I knew.”

“Well, you'd better figure it out soon. That boy's been making a public spectacle of himself chasing after you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” Her voice softened. “I love you like my own daughter, Beth, but you need to either take him up on his offer or put him out of his misery because
I want some grandbabies before I'm too old to spoil them properly.”

Grandbabies. The word socked her straight in the gut. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Beth tried to stop the tears filling her eyes. “I'll do that, Mrs. Layton.”

“You're the first girl to make him forget about Amanda and I'm hoping you'll make that permanent. But even if you don't, you're welcome at our Sunday dinner
table anytime.”

Touched by this acceptance, Beth blinked back tears. “Thanks, Mrs. Layton.”

“And tell that son of mine to stop being a big fat chicken and call his mother.”

Beth swept her notepad and pen into her briefcase and stood up so fast she knocked her chair to the ground. It clattered against the tile floor, turning everyone's attention her way. She smiled wanly, righted the chair and
speed-walked out of the cafe. Discombobulated by the information floating around her head, she was certain of only one thing—she had to find Hank.

Swerving around a slow-moving couple in matching Las Vegas T-shirts, she headed toward the conference rooms. Hank had promised he'd be back for her after her panel. With any luck, he was hanging around, ticked off and wondering where in the hell she'd
gone. When she told him that Sarah Jane Hunihan had rocketed to number one on the suspect list, he'd have to pick his jaw off the floor with a shovel.

The name Haverstan could be a coincidence, but she didn't think so. Still, she couldn't right the image of the scrapbooking woman she'd grown up next to with the land-hungry developer who had coerced families out of their homes and had sunk to
vandalism and threats to get her to sell. Only two weeks ago she'd found Sarah Jane in the bathroom at work practically hyperventilating because of the stress brought on by the developers. A blast of cold air from a nearby vent brushed across the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine. Of course, what better way to hide your evil intentions than in plain sight?

Hurrying down the hall,
she punched in Hank’s number. No answer.

At the turn for the conference rooms, she spotted Sarah Jane and Phil going into the business center.

Fuck. If she went on to the conference room, she would lose them. Beth paused next to the information desk a few yards outside of the business center. She tried Hank again. Voice mail. She texted a quick call-me message.

Half hidden behind a sign for
the national estate attorneys’ conference, Beth watched the business center's open door, dreading and anticipating a Sarah Jane sighting. The coffee she'd just downed swirled around her stomach as her nerves sent her entire body on high alert. Half of her wanted to storm into the business office and demand the truth. The rest of her wanted to slink back to her hotel room and hide.

She'd eaten
wild berry muffins with Sarah Jane at her kitchen table after her grandmother's funeral. Still hot from the oven, the muffins had been delicious and Sarah Jane had proved to be a sympathetic sounding board when Beth needed to talk out what she was going to do next with her grandparents’ land.

Blinking, realization hit her. It had been Sarah Jane who'd brought the conversation around to her grandparents'
house. Sarah Jane who'd first brought up the idea of selling. Sarah Jane who'd kept her up to date about all the other families who'd sold their property. Her knees weakened and the world tilted a bit on its axis.

It had been Sarah Jane who'd offered to complete the public records search of Haverstan. The company had hounded her, too, and she'd told Beth that even though she'd sold, she'd like
to know more about them. And Beth had fallen for it, all of it, without a second thought. What an idiot she'd been.

Too antsy to wait a moment longer, she whipped around and plowed right into a wall of muscle and stumbled back. “I'm so sorry.”

“All my fault. How about I buy you a drink to make up for being clumsy?”

The man's pale lips formed a smile, but it didn't reach his blue eyes. Everything
about him was average, from his height to his bland brown hair, except for the one-inch scar on his chin.

Without meaning to retreat, she took another step back until the information desk counter bit into the small of her back. “Um, thanks but no.”

His fingers clamped around her elbow like a vice. “Oh, come on now. Just a friendly drink.”

This wasn't the first time she'd had to deal with pushy
men at these conferences. They assumed that taking off their wedding rings would make women fall at their feet. Jerks. They were the morons who were the butt of every dishonest lawyer joke told since the dawn of time.

Accidentally on purpose, Beth stepped on the toe of his black shoe and leaned all of her weight into it. “I said no thank you.”

The man laughed softly, but his smile disappeared.
“I'm afraid you don't understand.”

“Oh, I think I do. Your wife is at home, probably raising your two-point-five kids mainly on her own, while you jet off to conferences where you accost the waitresses and hit on every female attorney under fifty. Look. I'm not interested.”

He took a step forward and something close to overwhelming panic skidded across her skin. She'd never seen him before but
somehow he tripped the alarm bells in her head.

“So sorry to make you wait, ma'am. Is there something I can help you with?”

Beth turned her head at the no-nonsense tone of the hotel attendant at the information desk. The woman had addressed her, but was staring holes into the man.

Grateful for the backup, she smiled at the woman whose arms were crossed in front of her chest. Over the woman's
right shoulder, she spotted two people who looked as if they hadn't showered in two days. She'd never been so glad to see them in her life.

“Sam! Chris!”

Claire's older brothers looked up and changed course, making it to her side in a few strides of their long legs. At the brother's approach, the stranger disappeared, melting into the crowd milling down the fake Parisian street, and she breathed
a sigh of relief.

She sent the attendant a grin. “Actually, I found what I was looking for.”

“Mmm, mmm, mmm.” The woman shook her head. “I'd tell you to hit the tables, but it looks like you already hit the jackpot.”

Glancing up at the Layton brothers towering over her, she tried to look at them with a fresh perspective. Even with the bags under his eyes, Chris couldn't hide the good humor
in their Layton-family-hazel depths. Tall and good-looking with sandy brown hair and thick biceps, most women would be a little bit in love just at the sight of him. Her heart didn't even hiccup. As for Sam, well, he was the Adam Cartwright of the family—tall, dark and mostly silent. Serious as a heart attack, he leveled the same no-nonsense stare at her that sent his history students at Cather College
scurrying.

Meeting his gaze, she sighed. He didn't do it for her either. Nope. Only Hank had ever made her stomach dive bomb to her toes.

“Everything okay?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, just an idiot who forgot he was married.”

Chris held out his arm for her. “Come on. Let's go grab something to eat before I drop. I'm half dead from keeping up with Sam at the poker table last night.”

“Little brother,
I took it easy on you and you still couldn't keep up with me. You're just lucky that waitress nailed that guy in the head with her drink tray. Otherwise, you'd owe me even more of your millions in lottery winnings. Another couple of hours and you'd be in hock to me for some serious money.”

“You wish.” Pulling her hand through the crook of his arm, Chris headed toward one of the buffets.

Beth
dug her heels in. “Sorry guys, but I can't join you. I have to find Hank. Have you seen him?”

Glancing back at the empty business center window, she wanted to stomp her foot. Sarah Jane must have left while she'd been distracted.

“Seen? No, but he called us from some Elvis place to keep you company until he got back. His cellphone had died and he couldn’t remember your number. What’s that about?”
Chris asked.