Oh lord, his kisses still made her feel like sparklers were going off in her brain and setting her whole soul on fire. She wrapped her arms around his neck before her legs gave out beneath her, drinking from his lips that same heady mixture of sweetness and passion they'd once planned to share for a lifetime.
But time and distance had distilled away some of the sweetness and darkened the passion to a rich, intoxicating brew.
His tongue brushed the seam of her lips, and she let him in, thrilling in the feel of his hunger for her, a bittersweet remnant of a past she'd believed was lost to her forever.
It's still lost, a quiet voice tried to remind her, but it was swallowed whole by the clamor of desire that swamped her as he deepened the kiss and pulled her closer.
"Hello?" The male voice floated through her consciousness a second before Frank released her and took a step back, robbing Callie of his warmth and support. She took a stumbling step sideways and ended up dropping with a thump to the stone wall of the empty koi pond. Her bangs fell forward into her eyes, blurring the sight of Frank straightening both his clothes and his spine as he walked toward the patio door.
"Miss Walters?" The voice rang out again, louder this time, and Callie brushed her hair back from her face and pasted on a smile as she recognized the soft drawl of the man who'd introduced himself earlier that morning as Dave Blaylock.
She rose, relieved to find that her wobbly knees had steadied considerably now that Frank was standing a few yards away under the shade of the patio awning. She crossed to the chain-link fence that hemmed in the neglected garden and greeted her surprise visitor with what she hoped was the right blend of pleasure and surprise. "Mr. Blaylock. I thought we agreed to meet at the club for dinner tonight."
"We did, indeed, and I apologize for showing up without calling, but you never gave me your number."
"Is there something you need?" she asked, trying to walk the line between over-eager and overly-cautious.
"Actually, I read about an antique gallery opening going on today and tomorrow in a town in the Smokies. It's less than an hour's drive—I thought perhaps we could change our plans and head there for dinner instead? I did some research and there's a quaint little diner in town where we could stop and eat, if you don't mind a little home cooking."
She spared a quick glance toward the shadows of the patio, where Frank stood as still as stone. "I'm not sure we should venture so far from home for our first dinner together."
Dave smiled."Perhaps we can visit the Bitterwood Antique Gallery some other time, then."
A shiver darted down the back of Callie's neck. Bitterwood? He had been talking about Bitterwood? Everybody in that little town knew exactly who—and what—she was. And it certainly wasn't a Texas oil heiress.
"Miss Walters?" Frank's deep voice, suddenly close behind her, gave her a start.
She whipped her head around. "Yes?"
"Your two o'clock conference call is about to start. You asked me to remind you." He gave a nod of greeting to Dave Blaylock, then locked gazes with her again. "Shall I ask them to postpone?"
"No." She spared a final smile for Dave. "I look forward to this evening, Mr. Blaylock."
"Please. Call me Dave."
"Dave." She turned in dismissal and followed Frank back to the house. Once inside, beyond the view of any prying eyes, she turned and pressed her face against Frank's shoulder. "Too close," she murmured.
Frank's arms tightened around her. "What if that was a test?"
She pulled her head back to look at him. "A test?"
He let her go, his hands sliding slowly down her arms until they linked fingers. "What if he knows you're not who you say you are?"
((()))
I don't like his just dropping by." Frank glanced toward the kitchen window, where Callie stood looking out at the front lawn.
Seth Hammond's voice drawled through the phone line. "If it's our guy, it may just mean he's eager to get started with the wooing."
Frank lowered his voice. "And if he's figured out she's a plant?"
"He's more likely to head for the next town than do anything to her. He's not shown any violent tendencies."
"That we know of." Frank didn't like unnecessary risks. And he especially didn't like unnecessary risks that involved Callie Shaw. Her life had been one hell after another, and here he was putting her in grave danger—for what? Because he'd wanted an excuse to keep her around? "I think we need to kill the operation."
Callie turned to look at him. "What?"
"We can't kill it," Seth said reasonably. "Penny Sheridan has put a lot of money into this operation.
"We're not backing out." Callie crossed to where he sat, plucked the phone from his hand and spoke into it."We'll call you back, Seth." She pushed the disconnect button and put the phone down on the table in front of Frank. "What the hell are you doing?"
"I don't trust this Dave Blaylock guy, or whatever his name really is."
She glared at him, her eyes a frigid blue. "I need this job. You know I do."
"You can do the secretarial stuff I also hired you to do."
"You think I don't know you made up this whole job because you felt sorry for me?" She reached across the space between them and put her hand on his arm. "I know I don't have the credentials to be an office assistant. Or the record to pass a background check. You had to twist arms to get me in on this sting, right?"
He couldn't deny it, so he remained quiet.
Her grip softened, became something just short of a caress. "I'm grateful. And I'm going to do everything I can to get this job right. So maybe your boss will see my worth. But if I bail out now, in the middle of a sting, there's no way he'll keep me on."
"I could talk to him."
"You're on a deadline as it is." Her fingers slid along the length of his arm, sending hot little shivers running through him. "And if I get this right, I'll have leverage to get a job for real. Something that might impress the DCS. I might have a chance to get custody of Adelaide before they decide to make her available for adoption."
"I can't shake this feeling there's something wrong—"
"We'll be at the club in a public dining area. And you'll be nearby right? What could happen?" She rose and dropped a light kiss on his forehead. "I've got to get ready for my date. Try not to worry, okay?"
He could try, he supposed.
But he didn't think he was going to succeed.
((()))
Dave Blaylock was their guy.
There wasn't any one thing he'd said or done since they'd met in the country club's wood-paneled pub restaurant an hour ago, but Callie had a well-honed radar for men who were nothing but trouble.
Dave Blaylock was trouble on steroids, though he hid it well.
"I like to drink life in big gulps," Dave said with a smile, his eyes warm as they met hers over his tumbler of scotch.
She smiled back, took a tiny sip of her white wine, and wondered if there was a way to get him to play his hand a little early. "I'm a sipper, myself. Life can be overwhelming sometimes." She reached across the table to touch his arm. "But I admire your gusto. Maybe you can teach me how to take more risks."
He laid his hand over hers, holding it in place. There was nothing objectionable about the friendly touch, but she had to quell a shudder anyway. "How about tonight?"
"Tonight?" She hoped she sounded interested instead of alarmed.
"There's a meteor shower tonight. Should be visible around midnight, and I know just the spot in the mountains where we'll have an amazing view."
"Just us?" she asked, glancing across the room just long enough to make sure Frank was still at the bar, nursing a ginger ale and watching her like a hawk. "I'm not sure my bodyguard would agree to that!"
Dave laughed. "I'm sure he wouldn't. But is he really going to tag along on all our dates in the future?"
"Maybe not in the future," she said with what she hoped was an encouraging smile. She could tell Dave liked the idea of getting her alone, and maybe she should be using his eagerness to her advantage. If he made a move to bring up money—hint at a loan, maybe, or suggest an investment—this whole sting could move forward faster than they hoped.
Frank and Seth told her the guy had never shown any violent tendencies and was more likely to run than engage if he got suspicious.
And she needed this sting to work. Adelaide needed it.
She took a deep breath and leaned closer, her smile widening. "Or maybe—I might be able to give him the slip tonight."
Dave quirked his eyebrows. "I believe you just took your first big gulp of life, my dear."
She shot him her most dazzling grin. "I think you're right."
He leaned closer to her, his hand caressing hers. "What do you have in mind?"
"I'm going to make a visit to the ladies' room. I believe there's a side exit near there used by the staff." She'd noticed some of the waitresses going in and out of the door earlier that evening when she'd gone to the restroom to calm her ragged nerves before Dave arrived. "Have the waiter bring the check and put it on my tab. You can pay me back later."
His eyes flickered with a sort of excitement she knew all too well. A scam artist with a fool in his crosshairs.
"I'll tell my fairy godfather that I'm going to the little girl's room," she said, gently tugging her hand from beneath his. "Then I'll meet you in the parking lot by the fountain."
Frank watched her all the way in as she crossed the room to the bar where he sat. "What are you doing?" he asked quietly.
"Going to the bathroom, ostensibly."
"Ostensibly?" His lips quirked slightly at the word. "Somebody did some reading while I was gone."
"Lots of time for reading in the pen," she murmured.
His half-smile faded. "What are you really going to be doing?"
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Dave motioning for a nearby waitress. "Reeling in a flim-flam man."
((()))
Anything new on this Dave Blaylock guy?" Frank answered his ringing cell phone without a greeting once he saw Seth Hammond's name on the display screen, his gaze going back to his tablet, where a GPS tracking program was updating every minute, giving him a visual on Callie's position. She and Blaylock were halfway up Moak's Bluff, heading for the overlook, according to the text Callie had sent him just before she met up with Blaylock in the clubhouse parking lot.
"Nothing yet. I emailed a former acquaintance that screenshot you got of Blaylock, but I haven't heard back yet." Seth sounded more curious than worried. Frank wished he could be so laid-back about the mission, but having Callie out of his sight—save for a little red dot on the GPS program map—was making him crazy.
"And we're sure this guy we're tracking isn't a physical threat to the women he cons?"
"No sign of foul play so far."
"So far," Frank repeated, waiting for the red dot to appear a little farther up the road on the map.
"Maybe my old pal will know more." Seth sounded unconcerned.
A couple of seconds later, the red dot moved, heading up the bluff toward the overlook. Frank released a soft exhalation. "Get back to me when you hear from him, either way." He hung up and picked up the binoculars sitting on the passenger seat of the Mercedes.
It would have been better if he'd had time to trade out the sedan for his sturdy pickup truck, but he hadn't wanted to waste time, since he'd had to stay behind longer than he'd have liked in order to give Callie the head start she needed to keep Blaylock from getting suspicious.
Now he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd given her too much of a head start.
"I don't remember seeing anything in the news about a meteor shower." Callie kept her tone light and coy. "Are you sure this isn't the sophisticated version of a snipe hunt you're taking me on?"
Dave flashed her a toothy grin. "Would that be so bad?"
She clung to her smile, shaking her head. But inside, her stomach was twisting into a painful knot.
Something wasn't right. She was more certain than ever Dave Blaylock was the con artist formerly known as Ellis Gentry, who'd bilked Penny Sheridan and several other women out of a whole lot of money. But from what she'd learned about his M.O. from Frank, the man liked to take his time to lure his target to him instead of giving a girl the hard sell.
So why was he rushing this time?
She knew Frank was tracking the GPS signal from her phone. He wouldn't let her get far out of his sight, would he? Everything was going to be fine. She wasn't in danger.
She hoped.
Frank grabbed his cell phone on the first ring. "Something from your friend?" he asked Seth.
"You need to get her out of there, Frank!"
His heart skipped a beat at the grim tone of Seth's voice. "What happened?"
"My friend recognized Blaylock. Definitely the same guy who bilked Penny Sheridan and those other women. His real name is Steven Sanford."
"And?"
"I just ran a check. He's wanted for questioning in Mississippi. Two women he was seeing there went missing and were never found."
((()))
From the Moak's Bluff scenic overlook, the lights of Sanctuary Hill below sparkled like jewels in the deepening dusk. Behind them, the higher elevations of the Smoky Mountains rose like hulking shadows, giving Callie an uncomfortable sense of being trapped with no way to escape.
Stop being such a scaredy-cat, she admonished herself as Dave stepped closer, sliding his arm around her shoulder.
"Is this okay?" he asked.
It wasn't. It was almost shudder-inducing. But she had to play the game, so she smiled and said, "It's fine."
"I don't usually move so quickly when I meet someone new." He had a warm voice, well-modulated, with a hint of southern charm. But beneath it all was a shiftiness that Callie recognized, the well-practiced patter of the huckster. "But something about you intrigues me."
Yeah, those non-existent millions.
"You seem strangely familiar."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Familiar?"
"Not to me, of course." His voice lost any hint of warmth, his accent eliding into a hard drawl as his arm tightened around her shoulders. "But to my old pal Kimmy? Real familiar."
Kimmy? Callie tried to pull away from him, but he held her in a crushing grasp. "What are you doing?"
"Ain't that the question we ought to be asking you, Callie?" The familiar drawl came out of the shadows nearby, and Kim Coker stepped into the open, her feral smile gleaming in the remaining light of the dimming day.
"Meryl Allen and Joyce Foster." Alexander Quinn delivered the information in a terse tone that made Frank's blood run cold. There was no inflection, nothing to suggest he was relaying anything more alarming than the day's weather report, but Frank knew the old spook well enough to know that he sounded the calmest when he was the most concerned. "Each was last seen with a man fitting Steve Sanford's description before she disappeared."
The road up the mountain was winding and perilous, but Frank drove as fast as he dared. "Any idea what might have set him off?"
"Both women had shared suspicions about Sanford with friends shortly before their disappearances."
Great. Frank's gut knotted, and he pushed the gas pedal to the floor. Peering up the mountainside, he tried to spot the edge of the overlook again. He was too far away to make out Callie or the man who'd driven her up there, but he couldn't stop himself from looking anyway.
"He was known to have worked with a female accomplice in Mississippi, and a few of his victims remembered his having a female acquaintance who fit the same general description," Quinn added. "Late twenties or early thirties, red or reddish brown hair, fair skin, short and curvy—"
"Kim," Frank growled. "Kim Coker."
Callie's roommate at the Tennessee Prison for Women.
((()))
Just who do you think you're fooling with this game you're playing? And who's that hunky guy you're playing with?" Kim walked around Dave Blaylock, coming to stand in front of Callie. "Are you a cop now?"
Callie laughed. "Me? A cop?"
"You're certainly not a Texas oil heiress," Dave said, giving her a hard shake that made her teeth rattle.
"What, you think you're the only two people in Tennessee who can pull a scam?" Callie made a face at her old cell mate, hoping the terror racing through her wasn't visible. She'd always been good at making up lies on the fly, even if she'd tried very hard over the past few years to shake the habit. "I thought Dave here was a rich old guy looking for a hot little number to make him feel a little less inadequate. And if he wanted to throw some dollars my way, what would it hurt?"
Dave's grip tightened painfully. "Don't try to con a conman, sugar."
"I did a little looking into your situation, Callie. Like how you've been tryin' to walk the straight and narrow since your sister OD'd and left her baby behind. I know you always wanted to be a mama."
She had, back when she'd thought Frank Hardy would be the father. There had been a year or two in prison where she'd still believed she could get out of prison and find Frank, somehow convince him they could still be together, the way they'd planned.
But he never wrote. Never tried to make contact, and she'd given up hope. And after Frank, she'd lost the urge for a home and family.
Until Adelaide.
Oh, Addie, she thought, despair slamming her like a hammer blow. If I don't make it out of here, who's going to look after you?
"And the guy?"
"You mean the bodyguard? He's a guy I hired to make it look like I was on the up and up. I heard all those rich people at the party would have personal security with them—"
"How'd you afford it?" Dave asked. His grip loosened slightly, but not quite enough. She was too close to the edge of the overlook. She might be a big, strong woman, but she couldn't overpower both Dave and Kim if they decided to put her over the rail. And she'd never survive the fall.
"Last I heard, you were losing your job at some honkytonk in the mountains," Kim said. "You telling me that was a scam, too?"
A flash of light swept across the scene, illuminating Kim's face. She squinted, raising her hand to block the glare in her eyes.
Callie felt Dave's body twist behind her, and his grip loosened more.
Now, she thought.
She jerked away from him and tried to move sideways, out of his reach.
But Kim moved more quickly, tackling Callie before she could get far. Callie scrambled to free herself from Kim's grasp, scratching and biting, fighting as dirty as she'd ever done.
If she didn't win this fight, she wouldn't get out of here with her life.
She gave Kim a hard shove, sending the woman reeling backwards, and turned to run.
But she'd gotten turned around in the struggle, she realized about a second too late, her frantic flight taking her right to the unprotected edge of the bluff. As she tried to stop her forward momentum, she grabbed for the end of the metal railing just beyond her reach. Her fingers brushed metal and clung.
But the momentum swung her over the edge anyway, as the ground crumbled beneath her feet and she began to topple over the bluff.
"Callie!"
For a second, she thought she was imagining Frank's deep, frantic voice. Then his strong hands caught hers, arresting her fall.
Gazing up into Frank's face, she felt her frozen heart start beating again.
((()))
You're not just telling me what I need to hear, are you?" From beneath the blanket swaddling her, Callie's voice sounded muffled and girlish. Frank smiled at the memories it evoked.
"Nope. They're both in police custody. Quinn knew the situation was bad and sent the state police when I told him where I was following you." He sat on the sofa beside her and tugged the edge of the blanket down so he could look into her sleepy baby blues. He'd been terrified, for the heart-stopping seconds it took to race from his vehicle to the edge of the overlook, that he wouldn't reach her in time.
Then his hands had closed around hers, her fingers had clasped his, and he could breathe again.
"If you hadn't gotten there when you did—" A shudder rippled through her slim body.
He put his arms around her, tugging her close. "I should have gotten to you a lot sooner than that," he murmured against her temple. "I should have gotten there twelve years ago."
She rubbed her forehead against his jaw. "I used to think you'd figure it out. You'd know I couldn't do what I was accused of—"
"I'm so sorry. I didn't believe it, not at first. But the evidence—" He felt sick, thinking about how hurt she must have felt, how alone. "And you confessed."
"I know." She pushed back the blanket and twisted in his grasp until she could lift both of her strong, cool hands to his face. "I expected from you the kind of trust I didn't give you myself. I'm sorry. I should have told the truth. I should have let Sable deal with the consequences. She might not have been slapped with the same sentence I was, and maybe the consequences would have saved her life."
"You can't know what would have changed."
"I'd be with you," she said, her voice rich with conviction.
"You are with me," he said with equal conviction, cradling her face the way she was holding his. "And if you think I'm going to let you go this time—"
Her lips curved. "I'm still nothing but trouble, Frank."
"Oh, believe me, Callie. That's what I'm counting on." He bent and kissed her. Deeply. Thoroughly.
She broke away a few moments later, gazing up at him with desire-drunk eyes. "I come with even more baggage now."
"Like Adelaide?"
She nodded. "I'm not going to stop trying to get custody."
"I always wanted to have kids with you, Callie. You know that."
"It's a lot of years later."
"Not so many." He kissed the top of her nose. "You want to be Adelaide's mother, right?"
She nodded. "I do."
"Then we'll make it happen."
She looked up at him, tears sparkling on her lower lids. "You're mighty sure of yourself."
"I'm a Marine. We never stop fighting."
"Never?"
"Never." He rested his forehead against hers. "I never stopped loving you, Callie. I never will."
She smiled at him. "That's what I'm counting on."