Stranger in Cold Creek (8 page)

She leaned toward him. “Why, Mr. Blake, is that a proposition?”

He leaned toward her, as well. “Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you're being facetious or serious.”

Good question. She sat back slowly. “Facetious.” Sort of.

He smacked his hand against his heart, feigning pain. “Ouch. I still want to stay, though.”

“You do realize I'm a well-trained law enforcement officer.”

“I do.”

“But you still think I need a bodyguard.”

“Even a well-trained law enforcement officer sometimes needs backup.”

She waved her hand toward the newly bare room. “I just have the one sofa.”

“I can sleep on the floor.”

“But you're still recuperating from a hunting accident.”

His eyes narrowed, not missing the hint of skepticism in her voice. “Yes, but you made it plain you don't intend to share the sofa.”

Before she could think up a decent comeback, headlights flashed across the front windows and she heard the rumble of a car engine rattle to a stop. Adrenaline flooded her system in a couple of heartbeats, and she reached for the holstered M&P 40 on the side table next to the sofa.

John was on her heels as she crossed to the window and looked out. “Who is it?”

She nearly crumpled with relief when she recognized her father's old Silverado. “It's my dad.” She peered at the truck bed. “And I think that's a mattress set in the back of his truck.

* * *

G
IL
D
UNCAN
'
S
EARLIER
friendliness had faded into a suspicious sort of watchfulness, John noticed as Miranda's father finished helping him position the mattress and box springs into the existing bed frame. “You're still here?”

John stifled a smile. “I am.”

“Hmm.” He glanced toward the open doorway, as if keeping an eye out for Miranda, who was still in the living room, checking in with the sheriff's department to see if there had been any word yet from the lab. “Any particular reason why?”

“Just keeping an eye out for her,” John answered. It was mostly the truth. Even if he weren't attracted to Miranda, he'd still feel the need to be here to watch her back. The attraction was just a bonus.

“You plannin' on staying all night?”

“Dad.” Miranda's firm voice from the doorway made her father close his eyes in frustration.

“Anything from the lab yet?” John asked, trying to distract Miranda from her father's nosy question.

“Not yet. I knew it would be too soon, though Bill Chambers promised me they've put a rush on it, since it was an attack on a cop.”

“You need me to stick around tonight?” Gil asked. “I could sleep on that new sofa of yours.”

Miranda glanced at John. He twitched his eyebrows upward, wondering how she'd answer.

“No, Daddy, I'm good. John's going to stick around a while. It'll be fine.”

Gil angled a narrow-eyed look at John. “All right, then. I'll head on home, I guess.”

Miranda gave him a quick hug at the front door. “Thanks for bringing the mattress set.”

“It's not like you were plannin' on coming home to stay tonight,” he grumbled. “So I figured you might as well have the mattress and box springs off your old bed.” He gave John another speculative look and headed down the front porch step and out to his truck.

Miranda watched until his truck turned out of the driveway, then came back into the house and closed the door behind her. She looked at John. “He's overprotective sometimes.”

“The best dads are.”

She smiled at that. “Well, at least that solves the sleeping arrangements. You can have the sofa. Dad brought all the pillows from my old bed, so I should have plenty to spare.”

“So you're not going to kick me out, then?”

“Not at the moment.” She crossed to the fireplace, picked up the poker and pushed around the logs inside to stir the flames. John couldn't stop himself from moving closer, drawn by the heat.

She looked up at him, the flickering flames burnishing her skin to a soft gold and igniting the red glints in her hair. He wasn't aware of taking a step toward her, but he must have, because suddenly they were only a few inches apart, her breath mingling with his.

She was so warm, so alive. So very, very close.

All he had to do was bend his head and his mouth would cover hers.

She moved suddenly, backing away. “I'll find you those pillows.”

John watched her hurry from the room, aching with frustration.

Chapter Eight

Miranda woke with the sun just after six, getting as far as the shower before she realized that, one, she wasn't expected back at the station until tomorrow, and two, she had a man sleeping in her living room, and it probably hadn't been a good idea to shed her nightclothes as she crossed the hall to the bathroom.

Wrapping herself in a towel, she tiptoed out to pick up her clothes, keeping an eye on the door to the living room.

“Hey, Miranda, I was looking at this room—”

She froze at the sound of John's voice coming from behind her.

Oh God
, she thought,
please let this towel be covering everything.

“Sorry.”

She stood quickly and turned to face him, clutching the towel closed in front of her. “I thought you were still on the sofa.”

“I woke early and couldn't go back to sleep, so I was looking at that room back there.” He pointed his thumb toward the back of the house. “I can help you out with the repairs if you want.”

“I thought you were working on your own place for your employers,” she answered, acutely aware that the towel she'd chosen was entirely too short for a long conversation with a man in her hallway.

“I am, but I should be able to accomplish both in the time I have. You'll be going back to work tomorrow, right?”

She nodded.

“Then I could come over here while you're at work and start getting some of the frame repairs done, at least. And I could help you put up the drywall and lay the new floor. Those are two-person jobs.”

“My dad was planning to help in the evenings.”

“So there'd be three of us working. It would get done three times as quickly. What do you say?”

“I'd have to know your rates.”

“I'm not talking about doing it for pay.”

She cocked her head. “But we barely know each other.”

He took a couple of steps closer to her, making her knees tremble. “We've spent two nights together now, haven't we? Surely that qualifies us as friends.”

She tightened her grip on the edges of the towel. “You just want to keep an eye on me. You think I'm still someone's target.”

“Don't you?” he asked.

She supposed she should. Someone had come close to killing her only two days ago. And someone had thoroughly searched her house with ruthless abandon—possibly the same person.

If they hadn't found what they were looking for—and how would she know, since she had no idea what that was—they might keep coming back.

So having her own personal bodyguard wasn't the dumbest idea she'd ever heard, she supposed.

“Tell you what. I'll give it some thought in the shower.” She darted back into the bathroom and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment to calm her twitchy nerves.

If being around John Blake left her this shaky after two days, what condition would she be in if he stuck around longer?

But maybe she should stop considering the question as a woman and start thinking about it with the instincts of a cop. John Blake was one big walking enigma who'd come into her life shortly before someone attempted to end it. Maybe that was a coincidence.

But what if it wasn't?

She pondered the thought while she showered, coming to the conclusion by the time she stepped out of the shower that John couldn't be the person who wanted to do her harm. She was pretty sure the accident happening in front of his house had been pure happenstance. And while there was a window of time when he could have tossed her house, it was a very narrow window.

He'd have had to rush over to her house as soon as Miles Randall drove her to the clinic for treatment, because the mess in her house hadn't been created in a short period of time.

She checked that the hallway was empty before scooting across to her bedroom, wrapped in the now-damp towel. After dressing quickly, she headed into the living room, where she found John folding up the bedding she'd provided for him the night before.

He looked up and flashed a smile that made her stomach turn a little flip. “Hey. Did you give my proposition any thought while you were in the shower?”

It was all she'd thought about. She'd spent the whole time under the hot spray weighing the pros and cons of taking him up on his offer.

So what if he was still a bit of a mystery? He'd been nothing but helpful to her so far, and she had no reason to think that whatever he might be hiding was any danger to her. On the upside, he was apparently a good enough carpenter to get a job with a company as big as Blanchard Building. He was also pretty good to have around in a crisis.

And did it matter if she found him attractive and intriguing? She was single. So was he, according to the background check she'd run. And if she went forward without any illusions about some sort of romantic happily-ever-after, who would get hurt?

“I could use the help,” she said.

His grin spread wider. “Great. So why don't we go take a look and let me catch up on what you want done?”

“Slow down, tiger. How about we go find breakfast first?” Her kitchen was a useless mess, but the plumber she'd called the previous afternoon had told her he couldn't come until this afternoon. “There's a diner in town that serves an old-fashioned country breakfast, if that's your thing.”

“It's my thing,” he said with a smile. “Now and then, anyway.”

* * *

S
HE
SHOULD
HAVE
known better than to try to dine in at Creekside Diner, because everybody there had heard not only about her wreck, but also about the mess an intruder had made of her house. Between the hushed questions from the wide-eyed waitress and the incessant whispers of the less brave diner patrons, Miranda felt as if she was having breakfast in a fish tank, with everyone watching the show.

“Small towns,” John said with a shrug when she apologized later in the truck, speaking as if from experience.

“We should probably stop by the hardware store,” she said as he started to turn back toward Route 7. “To tell my dad you're going to be helping out with the repairs.”

She felt more than saw John tense up. “Is that going to be an issue for him or something?”

“No.” Her father wouldn't have an issue with John helping out, really. But he might find it a matter of curiosity, and that was why she needed to tell him sooner rather than later and explain it in a way that wouldn't make him run right home and start cleaning his gun.

“That doesn't sound like a very confident
no
.”

She laughed. “My dad is protective of our relationship. It's been just the two of us since I was pretty young, and my dad tends to be a little overprotective.”

“Too overprotective?”

“Not really—”

“I just wondered, because of something you said the other night, about wanting to stand on your own two feet.” He paused a little longer than necessary at the four-way stop at Temple and Main, slanting a curious look her way. “Is your dad being overprotective what you were talking about?”

“Sort of,” she admitted. She nodded toward the intersection, indicating he should keep going. The hardware store was halfway down the next block. The sooner they got this over with, the better. “I'll tell you more about it when we get back to the house.”

Her father took the news better than she'd anticipated, though the curiosity she'd seen in his eyes earlier was back. At least he didn't say anything embarrassing.

“I've got my card game tonight, but I'll be sure to come help tomorrow night,” he told her with a tight smile, his gaze darting toward John, who was wandering through the power tools aisle.

“I know you will.” She touched her father's hand, and his smile loosened up, growing warm.

“You sure you can trust that fella?”

“He seems to check out,” she answered carefully.

“You don't think it's odd you meet him the same day someone tried to shoot you?”

“They tried to shoot him, too.”

Gil looked at John, who looked up at that moment. John gave a friendly nod and went back to examining the electric sander he was holding.

“You think I'm a nosy old man.”

She reached across the counter and gave his work-roughened hand a squeeze. “I think you're a hardheaded, softhearted daddy who's still having a little trouble lettin' go of his baby girl.”

“You'd think after all this time I'd have it down.” He put his hand over the back of hers. “Call me if you need me.”

“Always do.”

John approached the checkout counter with the power sander and an electronic level. “I didn't remember seeing these things among your tools.” As she brought out her debit card, he shook his head. “I might need them before I'm done at my place as well, so they're on me.”

As he was paying for the tools, the bell rang over the front door and Miranda turned to see Rose McAllen enter, her thin hand closed around the plump little fist of her three-year-old granddaughter. She lifted sad eyes to meet Miranda's gaze, managed a brief, unconvincing smile and headed toward the back of the store.

“Still nothing on that case?” Gil asked quietly.

Miranda shook her head. “No witnesses, no trace evidence on the body—everything seems to be a dead end.”

“A murder right here in Cold Creek?” John murmured as he handed over a credit card for the purchase. “I thought this place hadn't seen a murder in years.”

“Technically, it's not a murder,” she explained as her father rang up John's purchase. “It was a hit-and-run accident. Rose McAllen, the lady who just walked in, lost her daughter a couple of years ago. Lindy was a teen mom, always a little on the wild side, and she'd sneaked out of the house one night to meet friends. Apparently she tried to cross the highway and misjudged the distance between her and an approaching vehicle.”

“And the vehicle didn't stick around to see if she was still alive?” John frowned.

“The coroner said she was probably dead on impact. She went under the wheels and her neck snapped.”

John grimaced. “Surely the driver knew he'd hit her.”

“Depends. If he was drunk or high—”

“Right.” John glanced behind her and lowered his voice. “She's heading this way.”

“Dad, I'll call you later.” Miranda turned to smile at Rose again, and crouched to look at the little girl by her side, ignoring the ache in her legs and back, remnants of her rollover crash. “Hey there, Cassie. Did you get to play in the snow the other day?”

Cassie nodded and managed a little smile.

“She helped me make a snowman,” Rose McAllen said. “A little one.”

Miranda stood. “She's growing up so fast.”

Rose's eyes darkened with pain. “She reminds me so much of her mama.”

Miranda put her hand on Rose's arm. “Mrs. McAllen, we've gone through every bit of trace evidence and put out calls for information, but nobody seems to have seen or heard anything that night. But I promise, we haven't stopped looking. If we come up with any new leads, I'll let you know.”

Rose just stared at her a moment, as if she wanted to say something, but finally she just gave a nod and moved on.

“Poor woman,” John murmured as they got into the truck.

Miranda buckled her seat belt. “Sometimes I wonder if that's what happened to Delta. Wherever she disappeared to, she didn't take her car, because it's parked in the yard behind her trailer with two flat tires. Which means she either got a ride or took off on foot.”

“And you think she might have been hit by a car?”

“It's a possibility, but nobody's found a body. And Cold Creek isn't the kind of place where it's easy to hide a body. You can see for miles wherever you look. Even if she were hit and knocked into an arroyo, someone would have found her by now.” She grimaced. “They could just follow the buzzards.”

“You said she lives in a trailer.”

“Not much of one. She used to live in a pretty big double-wide, but the tornado took it out last year. She stayed with me a little while, until she could sell what was left of her old trailer for scrap and scrimp together enough money to buy a smaller used trailer.”

“Where did she work?”

“Here and there. She never kept a job long, although from what I hear from people, she was a pretty hard worker and she was the one who'd walk away from the job, rather than doing something to get fired.”

They reached her house and entered with caution, but if there'd been an intruder while they were gone, he'd been as unobtrusive as a mouse. While John carried the new tools to the unfinished room, Miranda checked to see if anyone had left messages on her landline. There were none.

“Where did she sleep?” John asked when he returned to the living room.

It took a second to remember what they'd been talking about. “Delta? On the sofa.”

“Interesting that she turned to you for a place to stay. You said you weren't that close.”

“I don't think that Delta was really close to anyone, thanks to her father.” She sat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside her, inviting him to sit.

He sat next to her, close enough that his comforting warmth spread over her like a cozy sweater. “Con artists don't make many friends in the long run. I guess that probably limited her options for friends.”

“Hal McGraw was a charming bastard, but by the time Delta was old enough to know what was going on, he'd pretty much worn out his welcome in Cold Creek. Delta told me he'd leave town for days and weeks at a time, going to other places to pull his scams, leaving her alone to fend for herself. And I'm talking about when she was as young as twelve or thirteen.”

He muttered a low profanity. “Nobody intervened?”

“From what I've heard, nobody knew. It wasn't like they mingled with a lot of other people, and Delta always got herself to school somehow, at least once she was old enough to do it. She'd learned early how to take care of herself without his help. That's why she claimed emancipated minor status as soon as she was old enough. She still lived with her dad when he was in town, but she was her own person.”