The Survivor

And in Elsie’s mind, it didn’t.

Bess looked out the storefront and continued to wait for the agent Brian Payne, one of her good clients, was sending over. She didn’t have any idea how much his services actually cost—and would have been more than willing to pay—but Brian had insisted on trading the service out. As such, she was going to be on the lookout for anything she thought he might be interested in. Over the years he’d bought everything from old lighting fixtures to antique clear gas pumps. He had eclectic taste and had been a good customer.

When the police had failed to give her any true hope of catching the person who’d stolen her hard drive and was now in the process of harassing her clients, Brian had been the first person she’d thought of. She’d had no idea that the book in the picture had actually been a Wicked Bible and, furthermore, had had no idea that a thing like that even existed. But given that Brian had told her he knew of one that had gone for a hundred grand at auction recently, she could certainly understand the appeal.

Elsie released a self-suffering sigh. “You aren’t going to listen to me, are you?” she said, frowning tragically. “I have this sight—this gift,” she continued with a theatrical wave toward the sky. “And you are going to go about your mulish, headstrong ways.” She harrumphed. “You are just like your grandfather. Always have been, even when you were just a wee thing.”

“Thank you,” Bess said, even though she knew Elsie didn’t exactly mean it as a compliment. She’d loved her grandfather to utter distraction and had appreciated everything about him. She’d lost him three years ago and there wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t miss him terribly. Her father had died in a car wreck when she was seven and her mother, racked with grief, had taken her own life a year later on the anniversary of his death. Officially orphaned then, she’d moved in with her grandfather—a widower himself—and had been with him ever since. So had Elsie, for that matter, which was no small reason why Bess didn’t let her go and hire someone more competent. But Elsie tried and, though there had never been anything romantic between the older woman and her grandfather, she’d been the closest thing to a grandmother Bess had ever had. Since she’d always collected odd things, Elsie fit in perfectly.

Her grandfather’s house was hers now, of course, and Bess had renovated it more to her liking, but there were certain things she hadn’t been able to touch. His tobacco stand still sat next to his old leather tufted wingback chair and the small needle-point footstool was still stationed in front of it, waiting for a pair of aching feet. She grinned.

Usually hers.

They’d made quite a pair, she and her grandfather. Though he hadn’t told her until much, much later, she hadn’t spoken at all for the first year after her mother had committed suicide. She’d nod or shake her head and occasionally cry, but she hadn’t talked and she hadn’t smiled. Rather than send her back to school before she was ready, he’d homeschooled her instead and, though he’d tried to reintroduce her to public school later, she’d become so distraught he’d refused to make her go.

Beyond second grade she hadn’t set foot in a classroom until she’d gone to college, and even then she would have rather been tutored by her grandfather. Frankly, her education would have been better. She’d learned the Classics at his knee, could read bits of Latin and knew more about the solar system than the general population. He’d taught her Roman and Greek mythology, had taken her to almost every major battlefield in the continental U.S. and had made history so alive for her, it was a passion she still had today.

They’d ride the back roads of the South “picking,” as he liked to call it, and he’d drill her on various mathematical theorems and throw out famous quotes and expect her to know them, based on all the biographies he’d wanted her to read. “I cannot live in a world without books” had been one of his favorites. Thomas Jefferson, she remembered.

Her grandfather had wanted her to have the degree in the event she ever decided to do anything besides “rescue history,” picking through old barns and houses for people’s “junk,” though she abhorred that term. Nothing was ever junk in her opinion. Everything had value and purpose.

To the illiterate eye her place was probably a catchall for useless items, but to Bess it was a cache of things that had almost been lost. She was holding on to them for safekeeping until they could be sold and passed on to someone who would appreciate them.

“I can see you’ve made your mind up,” Elsie continued, her nostrils flaring.

The luggage next to the door had probably “told” her that, Bess thought, squashing a smile.

“I have. Brian is sending someone over to keep watch on the store so you’ll be safe, and I’ll have my cell if anything comes up while I’m off with the additional agent.” She sent her a harsh look. “And by ‘comes up’ I mean a legitimate issue, not any premonitions, you understand.”

Elsie tsked and shook her head. “Poor Nostradamus,” she said. “I have an inkling right now how he must have felt.”

Bess smothered a snort. “Just cover the store and handle the auctions, please. Hopefully we’ll be able to take care of this relatively quickly.”

Where was the agent anyway? The longer it took them to get on the road, the more time the asshole who was terrorizing her clients had to get ahead of them. One of the advantages she and the agent would have was that Bess knew which clients were ones she’d sold stuff to and which clients she’d bought things from. The would-be thief was drawing from a master list and had been going to see both, and he was working in a pretty direct line, moving from place to place. If he kept to this pattern, then they should be able to catch up with him.

Initially Brian had tried to talk her out of going along, as well, but he soon gave that thought up. These were her clients, with whom she had credibility, and it was her foolish mistake that had put them all in jeopardy.

To be fair, it was her practice to take pictures on-site, particularly if the piece was going to be something she’d put up for auction online. It was faster to do it that way and it made the process a whole lot simpler. She’d come in from the road, upload the photos, write the descriptions and activate the auction. If things needed a bit more cleaning up before selling, she’d do that once she got back to the store, but for the most part, her clientele didn’t care if something was “clean.” Like her, they could look at it and see the potential. Furthermore, collectors weren’t as picky.

If only she could remember where she’d gotten that Coca-Cola sign, Bess thought for what had to have been the millionth time. She’d racked her brain, had gone through everything she’d had on auction during that time, and could not recall where she’d gotten the sign. It could have been someone she regularly visited or someone she’d never picked before. If she saw promise—barns, old buildings, rusty cars and bicycles in the yard—she’d stop and do a cold call. She always kept a record of what she bought, but the truth was she’d bought dozens of Coca-Cola signs—the brand was highly collectible—and it could have come from any one of those places.

Luckily she’d been in the process of trying to organize those records and had off-loaded them onto her laptop, so the—she was just going to call him Bastard—didn’t have access to them.

And really, without those particular records, Bastard was looking for a needle in a haystack. She took a mild amount of satisfaction from that.

“Ooo, I think he’s here,” Elsie murmured, peering out the window. She patted her extremely teased hair and moistened her heavily painted lips. “That has to be him. Nice khakis, black cable-knit sweater—you know how I love a cable-knit sweater on a man.” She gasped. “And, oh, look! He’s brought a dog!”

He had, Bess thought, watching covertly off to one side of Elsie, who was positioned behind the counter. While she would have ordinarily been more interested in the animal than the man, it was the man that held her attention right now.

Mercy.

Bess sucked in a shallow breath as every hair on her body suddenly prickled with goose bumps. Her heart galloped into overdrive and her mouth instantly parched, forcing her to swallow. She felt a bizarre sort of tug behind her navel and then a swirl of heat slid into her belly and settled there, making her more aware of the warmth than was strictly comfortable.

He was big and broad-shouldered with dark brown hair that was more swept to the side than styled, and the way that it clung to his head made her want to slide her hands through it, to see if it was as sleek as it looked. He had a face that was incredibly masculine—broad planes and angles, a nose that had been broken at least once—but an especially full mouth that gave him a slightly boyish quality, one she instinctively imagined he resented.

But the mouth was…incredible. She licked her own lips as she stared at his and wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to feel his lips against hers. Her nipples beaded behind her bra and she released a small sigh and leaned closer to the window.

As Elsie had pointed out, he wore khakis that showcased long legs, a narrow waist and, from the side anyway, an ass that was nice and tight. The sweater stretched over a pair of heavily muscled shoulders, clung to an equally muscled chest and basically let a woman know that there was a rock-hard, beautifully maintained body beneath the clothes. The only part of him that she couldn’t truly see were his eyes, which were hidden behind a pair of designer aviator sunglasses she desperately wished weren’t in the way. I bet he has brown eyes, Bess thought, imagining a warm dark chocolate with long sooty lashes.

He opened the car door and clipped a leash to the dog, a blond mutt of questionable origins, but pretty all the same, and the animal leaped down onto the pavement. He scoped both ends of the sidewalk before studying the storefront and she watched his lips—that sinfully carnal mouth—twist with something akin to humor, but not as kind. A pinprick of disappointment nicked her heart, but she shrugged it off. Just because he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life didn’t mean he was going to be any different from the rest.

Sad, that, she thought, because her reaction to him had certainly been different from previous reactions to any man she’d ever seen in print, in person or in film.

She got the impression that he’d taken one look at her business, gotten her measure and had already—even though he hadn’t met her yet—found her lacking.

The bell over the door tinkled as he walked in and he went immediately to the counter, stuck out his hand and introduced himself. He’d removed the sunglasses along the way, but to her irritation, she couldn’t get a good look at his eyes. “Lex Sanborn, Ms. Cantrell,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Elsie, who was hardly what one would call a wall-flower, smiled brightly at him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” she said, lowering her voice to a husky purr à la Lana Turner.

Bess smothered a snort and then had to cover her hand with her mouth when she caught Lex’s temporarily transfixed expression. Evidently he was picturing going on the road with a lusty senior citizen intent on making him her boy toy. After the look he’d given her shop, he could just keep that image, Bess thought, and stayed out of view.

He tried to withdraw his hand, but Elsie clung firm. She had closed her eyes, evidently going into one of her psychic trances. She murmured a nonsensical noise and gave a delicate shudder. “You came very close, didn’t you?” she said.

Lex gave an uneasy laugh. “I’m sorry?”

Elsie patted the top of his hand and, when she opened her eyes, her expression was strangely warm and sad. “But it wasn’t your time.”

Some of the color leached from his face and the dog nuzzled his leg as though picking up on a shift in its master’s mood. “Er…if you’re ready, we should probably get going.”

Bess frowned, puzzled over his reaction, and shot a look at Elsie, who seemed to have wilted against the stool behind the counter. The older woman very rarely looked her age—on purpose—but at the moment she seemed every one of her seventy-five years. What had happened? Bess wondered.

Elsie finally seemed to snap out of whatever had a hold of her. “Go? Go where?”

Lex smiled uncertainly. “After the man who has stolen your hard drive and is harassing your customers,” he reminded her, and it was obvious he thought she was a touch senile.

Elsie chuckled. “Oh, I’m not going,” she told him, as if he were the one who was confused.

He blinked. “You’re not?”

“No, Bess is,” she explained.

He gave his head a shake. “You’re not Bess?”

Elsie positively cackled with laughter. “Goodness, no,” she said. “But I wouldn’t mind being her for a few days,” she confided with a wink and, though Elsie’s comment was wasted on Lex, Bess knew it was in reference to her youth. Elsie often accused her of “squandering” it with old junk, cable internet and reality television, which was hardly fair when she’d caught Elsie watching Real Housewives, as well.

Elsie looked past Lex’s shoulder and he instinctively turned around.

“I’m Bess,” she said, coming forward. His gaze slammed into hers and, though she knew it was impossible, she practically floated the rest of the way across the room, tugged inexplicably by the pull of his stare. She felt a smile drift over her lips and released a slow steady breath.