Stranger In His Arms

“And you?”

“I took off. But I bought you candy with my winnings. Left it on your doorstep the next day. Then I learned you’d gone home to Memphis that morning. You never came back to Casey Cove. Until now.”

She shook her head sadly. “Aunt Emily—my great-aunt actually—couldn’t stand the trip from Memphis after that. Her arthritis crippled her toward the end.”

“Why did you come back now?”

“This was her favorite spot.”

“Whose?”

Jennifer seemed flustered, and what looked like fear flickered briefly in her eyes. “Aunt Emily’s, of course. We had many happy times here, so naturally I wanted to return.”

His policeman’s instincts went on alert. Something about her answer rang off-key, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Besides, why would anyone lie about something as innocuous as why she chose to live in a certain place?

Unless she had something to hide.

Dylan pushed the suspicion from his mind. Maybe the blow to his nose had scrambled his brains. He sensed nothing sinister about the delectable Jennifer Reid. Quite the contrary.

“I have a few more questions,” he said, “then I can let you get back to your cleaning.”

She scrunched her face in a charming grimace. “It’s a nasty job, but somebody has to do it.”

“The inquiry or the cleaning?”

“Both.” She laughed with a rich throaty sound and seemed to truly relax for the first time since his arrival. “Fire away, Officer Blackburn.”

Dylan had left her employment form on the clipboard in his car, but he recalled all the pertinent details.

“You stated that you’re a widow?”

She nodded. “My husband died almost a year ago.”

She exhibited a significant lack of grief. Maybe her marriage hadn’t been a happy one. “Is that when you left Memphis?”

“There were too many details to take care of right after he died. But by June I had settled his estate, and I wanted to get away to escape the memories.”

He wondered briefly whether those memories had been good ones and why she had omitted saying so. “You mentioned references earlier. Why no references from Memphis?”

The glimmer of alarm returned to her eyes, and she clinched her well-manicured hands tightly in her lap. “I have no living relatives. And I was never employed until after I left Memphis. If you have Miss Bessie’s form, you have the name of my employer in Nashville.”

“Why Nashville?” His question was more personal curiosity than official. The grown-up Jennifer interested him even more than she had as a pre-teen.

She shrugged. “It was close. And I love people and country music, so it seemed like a good choice.”

“You worked as a waitress at the Grand Ole Opry resort?”

“I married right out of high school and never learned a profession or trade.”

“How did you come to work for Miss Bessie?” He hated having to interrogate her, but it was part of his job. So far, Casey’s Cove had been spared the sexual predators and assorted deviants who had preyed on children of other communities. It was his responsibility to keep the youngsters of his small town safe, even if it meant asking apparently meaningless or even embarrassing questions of newcomers.

The frightened look had disappeared from her eyes. Jennifer unclenched her hands, leaned forward, and helped herself to a cookie from the plate on the tray. “I saw her ad for an assistant in the Asheville paper.”

“Asheville? You mean Nashville?”

She had taken a bite of the cookie, but it must have gone down wrong, because she choked and coughed before answering. “Asheville. I’d come to North Carolina to see the mountains in their fall colors. I had planned to visit Casey’s Cove anyway, so Miss Bessie’s ad seemed like an answer to a prayer.”

Her attitude was too off-handed. The woman was hiding something, but he didn’t have a clue what it might be. He had to be certain she wasn’t a threat to Miss Bessie or the children at the day-care center.

“Isn’t there someone in Memphis I can contact for a reference?” he said.

She shifted uneasily, a movement not lost on his trained eye. “My former in-laws, but I left them off my reference list on purpose.”

“Why?”

“They never liked me. I hate to think what kind of recommendation they’d give me.”

Another indication of a less-than-perfect marriage. But lots of folks had unhappy unions. That didn’t make them unfit for employment. He wished he wasn’t getting mixed signals from his intuition. He liked the woman, and Miss Bessie with her amazing ability to instantly gauge a person’s character had hired her on the spot.

But he’d bet his pension Jennifer Reid was hiding something, something that caused her remarkable green eyes to darken with fear when certain aspects of her past were mentioned.

Stymied by his inability to put his finger on what had frightened her, he knew the interview was over. Jennifer wasn’t going to divulge information she didn’t want to, especially to a lawman sitting shirtless in her living room, whom she’d only just met.

“That’s all I need for now,” he said.

“For now? What else is there?” Her face flushed with dismay.

“Just the computer background checks, like I said before.” He noted the visible easing of tension in her muscles. “Now, if I can have my shirt, I’ll get out of your way.”

“If you’ll wait a few minutes, I’ll iron it for you.”

He shook his head. “I have a fresh one in my locker at the station. I’ll change when I get there.”

She retrieved his shirts from the kitchen and stood quietly while he donned them, still warm from the dryer. He headed for the door, then stopped. “Hope you’ll enjoy your time in Casey’s Cove, Ms. Reid.”

She had followed him to the door and held out one slender, well-shaped hand. “Thank you.”

He clasped her small hand in his own large one, enjoying the warm, soft sensation of her skin against his.

“And I’m sorry about your nose,” she added with obvious sincerity.

He dropped her hand and rubbed his aching nose ruefully. “Guess that comes with the territory.”

“Territory?” She cocked her head to one side in puzzlement, an appealing gesture that made him reluctant to leave.

“That’s what I get,” he said with a laugh, “for sticking my nose in other people’s business—even if it is my job.”

She smiled again, and before he changed his mind and lingered, he hurried out the door to his patrol car.