Close Contact

“Not long before I met you.” She snuggled in again.

Damn, that felt right, always had, and for now at least, he had the excuse he needed to hold her. Sure, he was still pissed. She’d gotten him interested and then disappeared on him, and apparently had still been playing the field. Since he had, too, he’d feel like a hypocrite. Only, he hadn’t been the one to call it quits with her.

Given that she’d suffered the loss of two family members before hooking up with him, Miles wondered if he’d only been a distraction for her. A way to cope with her grief. That would explain why she’d been so withdrawn, why she’d given herself physically while holding back emotionally.

It didn’t explain why she’d jumped from his bed to the bed of some nameless asshole who’d doped her.

Sahara asked, “Were your mother and grandmother together when they...?”

Maxi shook her head. “Mom died under anesthesia during a procedure a few weeks before my grandma.”

“And your grandmother?” Miles asked.

“She fell down her steps and suffered a severe head injury. No one found her until it was too late.”

“Damn.” He stroked up and down her back, noticing that he could span her shoulder blades with one hand. The scents of earth, warm skin, shampoo and woman filled his head. “I’m sorry.”

She tilted back to look up at him again, her chocolate eyes bruised and worried. “There are reasons I didn’t tell you any of this.”

Right, because she hadn’t planned to stick around. Now that she needed him, would she finally open up? It wasn’t the time to press her. “We can talk about all that after we’ve gotten you settled.”

“But that’s just it. I’m not going to be settled for a while.” Stepping away from him, steadier now, she straightened the throw over her shoulders. “I don’t know what’s going on at the farmhouse, but I don’t think it’s going to be resolved in a day, or even a week. I’ve already had the county police out there for other incidents, and they’ve found nothing. I can’t keep pestering them when I have no proof of anything.”

Maybe the new house had spooked her. Unfamiliar places could do that. You heard and saw things that you didn’t recognize. So far her issues didn’t require a bodyguard, but he’d be happy to personally ensure her safety. “You didn’t need to go through the agency. I could just take a look around—”

Maxi put her shoulders back again. “I want to hire you to stay with me so that someone else is there when things happen. And something will happen. It always does. But I can’t ask you to do that unless I’m paying.”

Because she didn’t want to get personally involved? Too bad. It was his turn to set the tone of their relationship. “What kind of things?”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“Do you want to sit back down?” By the second, she looked stronger, but it still worried him. If what she said was true, every minute they waited to see the doctor could be critical.

“Not a bad idea,” Sahara said. “It shouldn’t be long before Dr. Brummel can see you, but you should rest until then.”

Maxi shook her head as she paced. “I need to keep moving.”

Staying out of her way, Miles leaned against Sahara’s desk and folded his arms. “Okay, then let’s start with what happened last night. You said other things had happened, but waking up outside, the loss of memory, that was a first?” God, he hoped so. If she’d gone through that before and hadn’t come to him—

“That’s the only time it happened or I’d have been here sooner.” She hugged her arms around herself. “I was dealing okay with everything else. Sort of, anyway. But last night... I don’t ever want to go through that again.”

“You won’t.” He’d see to it.

Sahara got up to refill Maxi’s coffee. “What kind of other things?”

She gratefully accepted the coffee. “I know some of it will sound odd, like I’m imagining things. I swear I’m not. There’ve been sounds that startled me in the middle of the night and left me spooked. Weird noises, not like the house settling. I know that happens. This was more like...someone was actually in the house, walking around. Only, when I check, I can never find anything, and the doors and windows are always still locked.”

He could think of a dozen ways to explain that. “Could be a raccoon in the attic.”

Maxi shook her head. “No, I have my fair share of issues with critters, believe me. But I’m pretty sure raccoons can’t drive.”

Sahara and Miles looked at each other.

Maxi started pacing again. “I woke up one morning and my car was parked in a different spot from where I’d left it. I know because I always park it in the same place.”

Houses made noises. He could discount that, especially since even she said she hadn’t found anything. But this? “Someone moved your car?”

“It didn’t move itself.”

“Could you have left it in gear or something?” Sahara asked. “Was it on a hill?”

“It was moved from the driveway facing the house to the side yard turned away from the pond. Not on a hill.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t—”

“What?” she challenged, glaring at Miles. “Stagger in drunk and park in a stupid place that didn’t make any sense and then—of course, because I was so drunk—not remember it?”

He’d have to see the area before he could come up with an explanation for that one. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

“I think you were.” She glared a second more, then turned away. “Ever since then I’ve kept it locked.”

“You probably should have been doing that anyway.”

Another red-eyed glare. “Sometimes things in the barn are rearranged from how I put them. Equipment and stuff.” She paused by the window to look out. “One morning when I got up, I found the water turned on full blast in the kitchen sink. It had overflowed all over the floor.”

“That’s what you were cleaning?”

“No, that was a week ago. Last night I was doing a bigger job, scrubbing everything, including the oven. But I’m having a hard time getting ahead when a bunch of random, weird things keep happening.”

Sahara sat back in her chair. “Well, if I believed in the paranormal, I’d say you have a ghost.”

Maxi rubbed one eye tiredly. “I don’t believe in ghosts, so I need to find out what’s really going on. I didn’t know where to go. There’s no one else I trust. I didn’t want to bother you, Miles, but waking up on the ground, with everything so pitch-black I could barely figure out where I was, well, I don’t mind telling you, it scared me half to death.” She shuddered. “I haven’t been back to the house yet, but I do need to go there because the cats will be waiting to be fed.”

Miles slowly nodded. She’d said a lot, but he asked only one question. “Cats?”

* * *

AFTER ASKING ENOCH to take Maxi to the waiting area right outside her office, Sahara requested a private word with Miles.

“Business talk,” she told Maxi. “I’ll only keep him a moment.”

Miles waited, arms crossed, as Sahara closed the door, then sat her shapely tush on the edge of her desk, braced her hands flat behind her and crossed her long legs at the ankles.

After a lengthy, assessing look, she asked, “What do you think?”

He didn’t bother pretending to misunderstand. “That she’s leaving out major chunks of the story.”

Sahara nodded. “Not a lot of that makes sense, does it?”