Candy Apple Dead

Table of Contents

 

 

Melting in Fear . . .

I pivoted toward the Jetta and caught a quick, shadowy movement out of the corner of my eye. My heart shot into my throat, and all my senses went to high alert. I could feel the hair on my arms, and suddenly the night sounds seemed amplified. Somewhere, buried deep beneath the soothing song of crickets and the whoosh of cars coming from the next street over, I heard the soft scuff of a foot on gravel.

Scarcely breathing, I tried to figure out whether I was closer to the Jetta or the door of Lorena’s. Either way, I had to pass a row of darkened cars, any one of which could be hiding someone.

I took one step, then another, reminding myself that I’d grown up with a brother, and I’d taken countless self-defense courses while I lived in Sacramento. Not that I’d ever had to put any of the techniques into practice.

Another footstep caught my ear and the shadow loomed into my path. I held back a scream . . .

 

CANDY APPLE DEAD CHOCOLATE DIPPED DEATH PEPPERMINT TWISTED

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CANDY APPLE DEAD

 

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / September 2005

Copyright © 2005 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

Excerpt from
Chocolate Dipped Death
copyright © 2006 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-04361-5

 

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“I swear, darlin’,” Brandon Mills said in a sexy
Texas drawl edged with sugar, “this fudge of yours is going to turn me into a butterball.”

I looked up from the marble counter and took in the fine sight of him leaning against the glass counter. All around us glass jars filled with an endless variety of confections winked in the brilliant Colorado sunshine. I’d only been back for nine months and running my candy shop, Divinity, for six, and I still had to pinch myself sometimes to prove I was here at all.

This afternoon was one of those times.

Brandon looked deep into my eyes—I mean
deep
—and I, nearly forty and arguably intelligent, went weak in the knees. He’s probably mid-forties, tall, dark, and incredibly handsome, and I defy any normal, red-blooded American woman to maintain her composure when he’s around.

When he realized that he had my full attention, he tossed off a heart-stopping grin that almost made me believe he meant something by it. I knew better, of course. I hadn’t known Brandon long, but it had only taken me a few minutes to peg him as a playboy. Since coming back to Paradise, I’d watched a handful of women flit through his life, and come to the regrettable conclusion that Brandon had about as much staying power in a relationship as cotton candy on a hot summer’s day.

Too bad. He really was something to look at.

With a sigh, I tried to pull my mind back to business. We were alone in the store that afternoon since my part-time sales clerk, who also happens to be my cousin, was off taking care of real-life problems. It was mid-September, so tourist season had already tapered off, and there wasn’t a single customer browsing Divinity for a tasty morsel to sweeten their day.

That made Brandon even more flirtatious than usual.

I didn’t want him to guess how deeply that penetrating gaze of his affected me, so I did what I could to look irritated. “That fudge of mine is still a little too soft,” I said, turning away from that full-on gaze. “I just can’t figure out what I did wrong.”

“Not a damn thing as far as I’m concerned.” Slowly, and wearing a deliberately teasing grin, he licked chocolate from his fingertips and ran a slow glance along the length of me. He was standing in the spill of autumn sunlight, perfectly framed by a nine-pane window and sheer granite mountain peaks. “It’s perfect, just like the woman who made it.”

He could have gone all day without using that word. It makes me uneasy. Scowling slightly, I turned away to pull a new box of tissue paper from the supply cupboard. In the past year, I’d watched my “perfect” husband take up with another woman, my “perfect” marriage fall apart, and my “perfect” life unravel right in front of my eyes. Not my favorite word, no matter who says it.

“I’m not perfect,” I protested. “Nobody is.”

“Close enough.” Stepping away from the counter, Brandon snagged one of the wrought-iron chairs from the seating area and straddled it. “You’re working too hard, Abby love. Why don’t you leave all this and come away with me?”

I had been working hard ever since Aunt Grace’s death six months earlier. Actually, Grace was my mother’s aunt, and I still hadn’t been able to figure out why she left Divinity to me in her will. Sure, I’d worked with Grace when I was a kid, but so had most of the other cousins, and some of them seemed more obvious choices than me. But I was the one Aunt Grace chose, and so far nobody had done much more than mutter about her decision.

“So how about it?” Brandon asked.

I arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Away where?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How about Rye-T On for a sandwich? I’ll bet five dollars you haven’t had lunch yet.”

“You’d win that bet,” I said with a reluctant smile, “but no thanks. You know, you’re lucky I’m not some dewy-eyed young thing with romantic dreams. Another sort of woman might expect ‘going away’ to mean more than walking twenty feet down the sidewalk.”

His expression sobered, and that lazy bedroom-look in his eyes made me think about things I probably shouldn’t. “Well, now, for you, darlin’, lunch would be just the beginning.”

My thoughts were
definitely
moving into dangerous territory now. Anticipation tingled all through me, but I didn’t want him to know that. “Really?” I asked, doing my best to sound bored. “What comes next? Dinner at McDonald’s?”

“Not for you, Abby. You deserve better.”

He sounded serious, so I stole another glance at him. He flashed a grin and reached for another piece of fudge. Oh yeah, he knew the effect he had on women, and he used it to his advantage. I just didn’t understand why he was using it on me.

I didn’t know why I was responding, either. Suddenly irritated with myself, I slapped his hand away. “I asked you to taste it,” I snapped, “not eat the entire batch.”

“Come and have lunch with me, and I’ll stop eating.”

“Tempting . . .” I said aloud this time. “But no. I have way too much to do.”

“Do it later.”

That’s another problem with Brandon. No sense of responsibility. “I can’t,” I said. “I still have to put together those sample gift baskets before six. Come to think of it, I’m sure there are things
you
should be doing before the meeting, too.”

He gave another lazy-shouldered shrug. “Nothing special. I left Chelsea in charge of the store for a while, and Lucas is there with her. It’ll be fine.”

“You hope.” Chelsea isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Unfortunately, I think Brandon’s the only person on earth who doesn’t realize that. He’s protective of her for reasons I don’t completely understand, and that means it’s best to tread cautiously when talking about her. Steering away from that topic, I asked, “So you’re all ready for the meeting then?”

For the first time that afternoon, Brandon’s expression grew serious. For weeks he’d been wrangling with the city council and the Downtown Merchants Alliance over the changes he’d proposed to the city’s annual Arts Festival. His motion included expanding the festival from two days to four and moving the whole thing to the center of town, but his ideas had stirred up a controversy that had split the town in two.