Return of the Dixie Deb (7 page)

“Sure.” She put the brochure down. “I think the Major’s better days are in the past.” She rubbed her fingers on the fraying upholstery on the arm of her chair. “I don’t have a whole lot with me, but I’d like to dress down for a while.”

“Yeah, I’m not anxious for anyone to I.D. us and have Miss Lily produce the family musket.”

She hung a few things in the cedar-lined closet. It had felt good to be back in jeans for a while, but later she’d need something dressier for the return to yesteryear the Major’s seemed to require.

****

She took a final look in the mirror. Okay, the lime-green sundress seemed to pass muster for a day at the Major’s. It looked simple and carefree—two words she hadn’t used in connection with her life lately.

Make-up? She repressed a shudder. She’d had more than enough of dolling herself up for their bank jobs. Maybe just a little lip-gloss. She pursed her lips together, used it, and tried a smile. It kind of looked like she meant it. She had to admit their weekend break came as a welcome breath of relief. It was clear Mac wasn’t enjoying his career in crime any more than she was. Maybe the past year had been rocky for him too.

She started to open the bathroom door, stooping over to fasten her sandal again. From the other room, she could hear Mac on the phone. He was keeping his voice low. She should shut the door and give him some privacy. She started to, then hesitated. He sounded tense. Was something wrong? She waited, the door half cracked.

“…just calling to check. It’s been a year today. That was supposed to be the critical period, to see how things were working out.” He paused.

“Right. I was wondering if there was any further news.”

Her fingers clutched the doorframe as she leaned in.

“Okay, good. That sounds great. Maybe we could meet sometime. Not right away, of course. I’m caught up in something for business. But if we could arrange it soon, it’d mean a lot to me, you know, if the two of us…” His voice relaxed.

She pushed the door on shut.

****

A graveled path circled something a sign called a kitchen garden. Patches of herbs were identified with lettered stakes. Bees buzzed in scented magnolias as Jan chose a path away from the house.

“So did you know what you were getting into when they started talking about this investigation?” she asked.

“More than you did, I guess.” The green sundress she had on didn’t showcase her butt the ways jeans did, but her bare legs looked good, her sandals working her muscled calves, the bodice clinging to that nice upper story.

Down, boy.
He shook his head as he followed her.
Anyone would think you haven’t been around an attractive woman in ages.

Instead of nineteen months. Since his cousin’s Christmas party back in Lake Claire had ended with playing
Auld Lang Syne
with Rita Marie Jenkinson. But his old high school crush had no desire to pursue a relationship any further just as she was negotiating an exit from her third marriage. After that, he and Jake had been busy following the money trail of a phony Internet charity until the phone call had come.

All in all, just as well. So what if it had been nineteen months.

And four days.

Ahead a bare foot pulled out of a sandal. Bare foot, bare legs leading on up to…

“I still don’t understand why this one particular case is so important. I mean it was a quarter century ago. Seems like the government could be focusing on something more current.” Jan leaned forward to bury her face in a clump of blooming hydrangeas.

He froze in place, keeping himself from positioning himself in back of her as she bent over. His hands were damp. He shook his head to dismiss the impulse to pull her back to him and snuggle that ass against his groin.

“Oh, the Bureau aims to resolve every case.”

“They always get their man. Is that the slogan?

“I think that’s the Mounties.”

She looked up to laugh at him, her hazel eyes shining under the fringe of her dark lashes.

“Have you done a lot of this? Undercover work?”

“Not personally, no. I worked more in white-collar stuff, financial fraud. People moving illicit funds around. I was stationed in New York before, well, before I left the Bureau for a while. Jake Derossiers worked in the same office. He did the online investigating while I did the grunt work. We were in a couple of sting operations together. I did some traveling.”

“Like to Europe?” She sounded curious.

“No, not there, not then.” He stopped. “The F.B.I. sent me down to the Caribbean, then to Mexico. Once to Brazil. Some people get real creative about hiding money.”

“People like me, you mean.”

“No, big fish, sophisticated con artists.” He caught up with her as she turned away and took her hand. “What happened? For a first-time offender, the I.R.S. really came down on you.”

It didn’t add up no matter how he pushed the pieces around. It’d been on his mind since Atlanta, trying to figure out the logic behind the government’s desire to re-open an ice-cold case and plant a small-town accountant with no previous criminal history in the middle of it.

“It was more than a little, Mac. It was thousands, six figures, in my e-account I couldn’t explain. I wasn’t paying attention. I just kept making deposits while I worked on getting the corporate returns filed for our clients.” Her voice quavered.

“Sounds like maybe they suspected you of money laundering, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activities. You were trying to do everything on your own then?”

“Yeah. Things were in a mess. Tim was gone. People were leaving.” She shrugged wearily. “How much longer do we have to keep doing this? Did Jake tell you anything? I’d like to get back to a real life.”

“Not about that. The jobs we staged this last week should have given us plenty of additional publicity. His message said we were the lead story on CNN Friday night. We’ve got the heist set up on Tuesday. Maybe that’ll be enough to lure the Deb out—if it can be done.”

Tall clumps of orange daylilies and wild daisies brushed her skirt as they climbed the rise. She seated herself on a stone bench overlooking the river. Below them, weeping willows trailed fronds in the brown current while colored dragonflies darted amidst the cattails.

He stared back at the house. Distance was kind to its fading grandeur. A breeze was swinging the weathervane atop the carriage house cupola.

“We need to talk about the sleeping arrangements, Jan.”

She tilted her head back to look at him.

“We’ve had separate beds in the motels we’ve been at, even the cheaper ones. I figured it’d be that way here, too.”

“Yeah, it was kind of a surprise to walk into that room. I guess we got the honeymoon suite.”

“It would look funny asking for a rollaway when we’re registered as Mr. and Mrs.”

“But it’s only tonight and tomorrow, Mac.”

Tonight and tomorrow. Easy for her to say. Two long, dark, quiet nights. Double bed, fluffy pillows; jasmine scented air coming in through the open windows; her long, bare legs showing under her nightshirt again as they had the other nights they’d spent together while outside fireflies sent their own mating signals.

“I can make up a kit on the floor, Jan. I mean the couch is only a loveseat. It isn’t big enough for either of us.”

“Oh, come on. Just think of it as a sleepover, like when you were a kid. You stay on your side. I’ll stay on mine. The law and the lawless, right?” She waved a hand. “It’s no big deal.” Her big, honest eyes looked up innocently.

Chapter Six

He paused at the entrance to the lane, resting his hands on his knees. Somehow the run back had seemed longer than his run out. He concentrated on catching his breath.

He’d carefully eased himself away from her in the early morning dimness of their room. In the bathroom, he’d changed into a T-shirt and old pair of sweatpants. Last night she’d spent time in the bathroom soaking in the claw-foot tub while he tried to distract himself in the bedroom with old copies of
Southern Living
. He’d stared at the printed pages trying not to think of her in the warm water, heaping piles of suds floating around her while she relaxed, her eyes closed. Then getting up, the lather clinging, to wrap one of the fluffy towels around her warm, wet, naked…

Damn
. The roadwork wasn’t accomplishing what he had hoped.

“It’ll be easy. Like a sleepover.”
Easy for her to say
. “We’ll just stay on our own sides. Did you ever see that old Clark Gable movie? The one with Claudette Colbert where they had to share a bed?”

Whatever.

Sleep had finally come last night as he grimly clutched the rail on his side of the bed only to wake up rolled to the center, the sweetness of her hair teasing his nose, her breath on his skin, her mouth inches below his. On its own, his hand had started to move to the softness below the nightshirt.

Shaking his head as if that would remove the memory, he took a couple of long, steadying breaths and readied himself for the last leg.

Yeah, he’d pushed himself away from her, but not before leaving a kiss in her hair.

He started his run back. It was still early. Maybe he’d grab a steam bath first. Might help to shed some of the extra weight he’d picked up in Europe.

The run was good for his thighs and calves. Most of the exercise over the last six months had been secondhand—watching mindless games on television, more European soccer than he’d known existed, or tuned into ESPN at his apartment while he waited for a decision to come about his future with the Bureau.

Dahlia was setting up breakfast in the dining room as he entered. He gave her a quick wave before finding his way to the spa facilities in the back of the house where he and Jan had come across them the day before.

“Good morning, sir.” Junior Grady was laying out towels as he entered. “Looks like you’ve been up and about.”

“I needed to work off some of that dinner from last night.”

The fried chicken, country ham and butter beans, sautéed greens, baked yams, and peach pie hadn’t helped his resolution about physical fitness.

“Thought I’d grab a steam bath before starting to chow down again.”

“Go right ahead. The steam bath and sauna are ready.”

He used a changing room to strip off his sweaty clothes, wrapped himself in a towel, and headed for the dry heat of the sauna.

He leaned back against the wall, letting the warmth sink into the core of his bones. The dry heat opened all the pores on his body. Hopefully, the nicotine he’d inhaled over the past few weeks was being sweated away. If only it were as easy to get rid of old memories. He rose, stretched, and pushed the door open into the adjoining steam room. He found a seat through the mist and sat taking in a deep lungful of the damp air. Finally, he got up, secured his towel about him, and ran his hands through his dripping hair as he pushed the door open to the outer room again.

He could hear voices, but his eyes were wet. He rubbed away the moisture, looked and took a step backward.

The brunette sister, Daisy, was busy giving a massage. She had a leg bent back as she massaged a narrow arched foot, a towel barely covering the rounded rump of her client.

Lying on her stomach, Jan laughed as she turned to say something to Daisy. Catching sight of him, she pulled her towel back around her chest, her eyes widening.

But not before he got a glimpse of tan and pink and perky.

If she’d lost weight recently, at least it hadn’t affected the good parts.

Daisy paused and gave him a bright smile.

“Good morning, sir. I guess great minds think alike.”

He wished.

He cleared his throat and found his voice.

“I’m ah, I’m going to go up and grab a shower before breakfast, Jan.”

She nodded as he turned toward the dressing room.

“Take your time,” she called. “Daisy’s just getting started.”

Oh, yeah.

It was going to be a long, long, cold shower.

****

He sat back in the chaise lounge and studied the back of the house. In contrast to the immaculate appearance of the pillared front, there was no argument this side could use a paint job despite the climbing bougainvillea that attempted to camouflage it. Evidently, even at the Major’s, first impressions counted.

Beside him, Jan opened a tube of sun tan lotion and dabbed some on her shoulders.

“Need some help?” He closed the book he’d been flipping through while he waited.

“Sure.” She passed him the lotion and lifted her hair away from the back of her neck. He held his breath and kept an eye on the couple under the sun umbrella. They’d already appropriated the morning paper by the time he and Jan had come downstairs. The older gentleman was still turning the pages. It looked like he was commenting on something to his wife.

“Hey, don’t wear a hole in it.”

“Sorry.” He pulled his hands away from the velvet of the neck and shoulders edging her sundress. At the other end of the patio, it looked like the newspaper reader’s wife was gathering up her things.

Jan settled back in her chair and reached for her magazine and sunglasses.

All right, they were both on their feet now, the newspaper abandoned on the table.

He capped the tube, rubbed his hands on his arms, and nodded toward where the older couple was making their way toward the French doors.

Jan looked up at him.

“I’m going to check out what’s going on in the world.”

It looked like the other guests had been following the financial news. He straightened the pages and flipped through the sections as he walked back to where Jan was waiting, her magazine closed on her lap.

National news, sports, op-ed, daily living.

Around the state. He stopped, put the rest of the paper down, and sank back on the chaise lounge.

On the lower half of the page, a headline in bold type read “She’s Back…?” Under it, a subtitle declared, “Authorities issue a definite maybe.”

He took a deep breath and read the article to Jan.