Crazy in Love (3 page)

Mercy kept her game
-face on. “He’d had some late nights.”

“
He’s an obstetrician. They do that. Besides, the man has seen every vagina in Shiny. I think he’s secure in his choice.”

Mercy
’s face set into a decided pout, and Jake felt a familiar niggle of guilt working its way into his head. Which was stupid. Four sisters and a mother, the pout should not work on him.

But it always did.

“Okay,” he said, softening his tone a little. “I know you mean well, and I know it’s just because you love me, but I don’t need you to create little mysteries for me to solve. Okay?”

She gasped like a matriarch in a Tennessee Williams play.
“I can’t believe you think I would make all this up!”

Jake leaned back against the counter.
“I know all about you girls and your secret meetings.”

“
Secret meetings?”

“
Yes. Where the whole bunch of you sit around and talk about my life and how I’ve screwed it up and then you devise little plans to fix me when I don’t need fixing.”

“
Secret…?” She blinked. “What, you mean Sunday dinners?”

“
Exactly.”

“
They’re not secret. Mom invites you every week.”

“
Semantics. The point is, I’m not depressed about the way my life is going. That’s just the sort of thing you girls make up in your heads because you can only scrapbook for so many hours a day.”

Typically, in his family, a good sexist comment would change the subject right quick. Unfortunately, Mercy wasn
’t taking the bait.

“
So, are you taking my case or not?”

“
No.” Jake tossed the last grape up in the air and almost caught it in his mouth. It rolled under the refrigerator, and he flashed Mercy his most disarming smile before going to retrieve it. “If you really think there’s something going on here, go to the police and file a report.”

“
I can’t go to the police,” Mercy said. “They’d laugh at me. This is why I need a private detective.”

Jake tossed the grape in the garbage and wiped his hands on his jeans.
“What you need is a prescription. Good night.”

He pushed his way out of the swinging door that led to Mercy
’s kitchen, and down the back hallway toward the bar, where he’d left his jacket. He could hear Mercy’s feet as they padded determinedly behind him.

“
You know what I’ve realized about Tucker women, Merce?” he asked.

“
Wait. We’re not done talking.” Mercy huffed behind him. “Would you slow down?”

“
Tucker women are like little terriers. They seem harmless, even cute sometimes, but then they chomp down on your pants leg, and you can kick as much as you want, but you’re just never getting that leg back.” He pushed through the swinging door that led into the bar and grabbed his jacket off the hook on the wall. “Go home. Derek’s gonna worry.”

There was a long pause, and Jake had to turn around to make sure his sister was still with him. She was just standing there watching him, her eyes steeped in loving concern.

“We’re not worried that you’re unhappy,” she said. “We’re worried that you’re obsessed.”

Well. At least that was a new argument.

“I’m not obsessed.” He leaned against the bar, not near foolish enough to think that would end the conversation.

“
I saw you poking around in Esther’s office,” Mercy said, settling on a bar stool next to him.

He shrugged.
“I was helping pack up her stuff.”

“
Really? Well, FYI, when you pack, you usually put files into boxes, not pull them out.” She paused for a long
moment. “You were looking for something on Gordon Chase.”

Jake kept silent. He hadn
’t found anything, so there was no point in confessing.

“
Look,” Mercy said, a sigh in her voice, “I hate
him,
too. What he did was horrible, but he didn’t kill Dad.”

“
He talked him into selling that land for almost nothing when he knew that developer was coming in,” Jake said. “Then he turns it around and makes a million while Dad works himself to death? How is that not killing him?”

“
Dad didn’t work himself to death.”

“
He was killed at work. Same difference.”

“
Gordon Chase is not—”

“
Let’s talk about something else,” Jake said. “Pick a root vegetable. Any root vegetable. How do you feel about turnips?”

“
—responsible for everything that goes wrong in this town, Jake. He’s not responsible for what happened to Esther.” She shrugged minor acquiescence. “I might give you points on the thing with Elaine Placie, but still. It doesn’t make this obsession healthy.”

Ah, Elaine Placie
.
Now there was a topic he
really
didn’t want to revisit, so he kept quiet.

“
I loved Esther as much as anyone,” Mercy went on, “but the woman was eighty-seven years old with a heart condition. She died in her sleep. It doesn’t get any less suspicious than that.”

Jake angled his body toward Mercy.
“She tells me Gordon Chase is bugging her to sell, and then two weeks later, she dies suddenly in her sleep? At the very least, it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

Mercy looked at him skeptically.
“So, what? You
think he had an old woman killed for a real estate commission?”

“
Maybe. Maybe he’s getting a kickback from the family, who had a lot to gain from Esther’s death. This niece that’s coming tomorrow, maybe she knows something.”

Mercy sighed.
“You’ll get no argument from me that Gordon Chase is a total shit, but I don’t care about him. I care about you, and this isn’t good for you.”

Jake shrugged. There was no point in telling Mercy that the convenient way in which things seemed to work out for Gordon Chase was no coincidence. Nor did he think it was a coincidence that a laptop taken from the office of an associate of Chase
’s—a laptop that might have had evidence implicating Chase in a real estate scheme—went missing from the evidence locker the very night that Elaine Placie distracted Jake at the station, a distraction that ended up costing him his job. Mercy’d heard it all before, and arguing now would just make her think she was right about him being obsessed.

Which she wasn
’t. He wasn’t obsessed.
He just wanted to take the bastard down. Hard. With bruising, and possibly the occasional whimper.

“
We love you, Jake. We just think it’s time for you to grow up.”

Jake tightened his right hand into a fist. He hated this part the most.

“Look, I’m only thirty. There’s still plenty of time for me to get a real job and find a nice girl with good birthing hips.”

“
That’s not what we’re talking about,” Mercy said. “We’re talking about you taking something seriously. Something besides Gordon Chase.”

“
Okay,” Jake said, stretching out his fingers and forcing a smile. “It’s late. I’m tired. You’re delusional. Let’s just call it a day and we can start with fresh haranguing tomorrow, okay?”

“
If you need a mystery to solve—”

“
I’m not investigating your fucking radishes, okay?” Mercy’s eyes widened and Jake knew he was real close to getting his ass good and kicked.
“I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.” He put one arm around her shoulder. “I’m the jerkiest jerk in Jerkville, okay? I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

She reached up and cupped her hand around his chin, squeezing his mouth into an involuntary
O
. She knew he hated this, and was doing it deliberately, but he had to put up with it because he’d been an ass.

Those were the Tucker rules.

“Look, you were stupid. You let Gordon Chase get the best of you and get into that evidence room.”

“
This is you being supportive, right?” Jake said, his lips still puckered under the pressure of Mercy’s fingers as she tightened her grip.

“
Gordon Chase is a big stinky turd-man, but that’s his problem. Karma will take care of him.” She released his face and gave it a loving, if not particularly light, slap. “You need to drop it and move on with your life. And if that means investigating my fucking radishes, then that’s exactly what you’ll do.”

She smiled her bright, cheerful smile, and Jake smiled back.

“All right. Can I go home now?”

She got up off the bar stool.
“You are dismissed.”

He motioned for her to go first, flicking off the light as he followed her out of the bar.

She was right. He knew she was right. It was time to let the Gordon Chase thing go. He also knew he had no intention of doing that, but it had to be worth some points that he at least knew she was right.

He was sure of it.

Two

Flynn
checked her watch.
Again.
It was past two, and her driver was supposed to be there to meet her at the gate at one-thirty. The rest of the people disembarking with her at Scheintown—all three of them—had already gone on their way.
Their
people had been there, on time, to pick them up. Now the only people in the train station, aside from the workers, were herself and The Guy.

She stole a glance at him; he was still sitting on the bench across from her, reading a newspaper. When she
’d first gotten off the train, he had smiled and said, “Excuse me…” but she’d been looking for a chauffeur type holding a big white card with her name printed on it, and had ignored him. The Guy was hardly a chauffeur type; he was wearing a maroon flannel shirt over a black AC/DC T-shirt and jeans, for Christ’s sake. Besides that, growing up in Boston had taught her that you never smile at strangers.

Ever.

However, after dragging her travel suitcase behind her around the entire perimeter of the train station and finding no evidence of any genuine driver types, Flynn began to suspect that maybe The Guy
was
her driver. So, she went back inside, but by then he was sitting down, reading a newspaper. Which made her think that maybe he
wasn’t
her driver, so she sat down as well, figuring that if he
was
her driver, he would approach her.

But he didn
’t. He just sat there reading, a slightly amused expression on his face. So, she thought, maybe he
wasn’t
her driver after all. Maybe he was just the particular brand of homeless train station bum that sprouted up from the sidewalk cracks in places like Scheintown.

He didn
’t look like a bum, though. He was unkempt, but in that deliberate way that some guys did, which in the end kinda looked...
kempt
. His hair was brown and scruffy, but clean. His face held a slight five-o’clock shadow, but nothing excessively ragged. His eyes, in the one brief moment they’d connected with hers when she’d first gotten off the train, seemed bright and sharp. And he wasn’t hustling the way bums hustled, asking for money or glancing around to see if anyone had tossed out any recyclables.

To be honest, he looked like a regular guy.

Correction: He looked like a regular guy who was waiting her out.

She checked her watch again. She
’d been sitting there, not fifteen feet from him, for over twenty minutes. Argh. She uncrossed her legs; it was warm for October, and the pant legs of the sage silk suit Freya had loaned her were getting sticky. She tapped the pointed toes of her stiletto
boots—also Freya’s—against the stone floor. The sound echoed sharply through the empty station.

The Guy flipped the page on his newspaper. Flynn could see his lips tightening against a smile.

Oh, screw it.

Flynn got up, clip-clopped over to where he was sitting, and stood before him, arms crossed over her stomach.

“All right,” she said, not bothering to mask the irritation in her voice, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. My sister set this whole thing up and she’s the type to get a limo driven by a guy in a tux.”

He raised his eyes to hers. They were brown with flecks of gold, and they looked overly amused for the circumstances, but still kind. Despite her annoyance with him, the initial impression was a good one.

“Excuse me?” he said, barely able to contain his smirk.

Flynn rolled her eyes, mostly at herself. How could this possibly be going so badly so soon? How was that
fair
?

“
You’re here to pick me up. I ignored you. I thought they’d send a real driver. I mean, not
real...
You’re obviously real. I mean…
Gah!”
She flashed her fingers out in frustration. “I apologize if I offended you. Can we go now?”

He folded the newspaper and set it down on the bench.
“What makes you think I’m here to pick you up?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Was he
playing
with her?

“
You’re here. I’m here. No one else is here.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her.
“With a line like that, it sounds like
you’re
trying to pick
me
up.”

She threw her arms down at her sides.
“I don’t mean
that
kind of pickup. Look, are you from the Goodhouse Arms or not?”

He chuckled, pushed himself up from the bench, and walked toward her luggage.

“In my defense, I tried to speak to you when you got off the train,” he said. “You zoomed past me like I was holding a copy of
The Watchtower
.”

“
I thought they would send a real driver guy. You know. With the hat and the suit and a little sign that had my name on it. How was I supposed to know they’d send the…?”

She trailed off. She had no idea what purpose this guy would serve at an inn. Maintenance, maybe?

He saved her, though, because he didn’t seem to be listening, just looking around, holding her one bag in his hand.

“
Where’s the rest of it?” he asked.

“
The rest of what?”

“
Your luggage.”

“
That’s it.”

He lifted her bag as though it were as light as a shoe box, which she knew it wasn
’t. She’d packed it within an inch of its life.

“
This is it?” he asked suspiciously.

“
Yes, that’s it.” Flynn smoothed her hands over her suit jacket. “Why?”

“
I was raised in a family of women. It takes no less than four suitcases for any one of ‘em to get the mail. No way this is all you have.”

“
You know, some women do know how to pack.” Which she did. The two thousand dollars’ worth of label-wear that was being shipped to her the next day was
Freya’s doing; Flynn had everything she needed—which pretty much amounted to jeans, sweaters, flannel lounge pants, and her favorite shampoo—in that suitcase. Still, the condescending look coming from the man holding it set her off.

“
Do I need to remind you that my family owns the Goodhouse Arms now? Which makes me your boss?” Flynn tugged her blazer straight and tried to stand a little taller. How did Freya do this all the time? No wonder she was so cranky. Flynn was already tired of playing the big, bad businesswoman, and it had only been five minutes. Freya did it all year round.

To make matters worse, The Guy wasn
’t buying it. He stood there, a half smirk on his lips, his eyes running over her face and then briefly down her body in an attempt to size her up as an enemy, and when his gaze met hers again, exuding confidence, she knew he wasn’t the least bit intimidated by her even if she was his boss.

“
You’re selling it, aren’t you?” The Guy said finally, his voice quiet.

Flynn felt her throat close a bit and cleared it quickly.
“What?”

“
The Arms,” he said. “You’re selling.”

“
No.” Her voice squeaked a little on the word, so she cleared her throat. “What makes you say that?”

“
So, you’re not selling it?”

She stared at him. Why was the maintenance guy grilling her?
“I just got here.”

“
Well, it’s been a day or two since you got the news, right? You’ve had time to think about it. People like you usually have a plan for these things.”

“
People like me? What is that supposed to mean?”

“
Rich people. People with money. People who get their money by buying and selling other people.”

She narrowed her eyes and let her voice dip into warning tones.
“Excuse me?”

“
Your father is in real estate development, isn’t he? Isn’t that what he does—sells properties to the highest bidder?”

She put her hand over her heart, which was picking up speed.
“Have you been researching my family?”

He chuckled.
“A small town with Internet access is a very dangerous thing. We know everything but your bra size and your zodiac sign, although I’m guessing Pisces. You carry a lot of tension in this area.” He gestured his hand to indicate her shoulders, then leaned closer. “I’m not going to guess your bra size. I think that would be inappropriate.”

“
Do you have some kind of medication you’re off schedule for?” she asked.

“
I notice you still haven’t answered the question. Are you selling or not?”

Holy crap, he was unsettling.
“What makes you ask something like that?”

“
Well, evasiveness in answering questions, for one.” He motioned toward her suitcase. “Minimal luggage, so you’re not expecting to spend a lot of time here. You’re dressed like you’re about to hit the runway, not the office.” He glanced at Freya’s hand-me-down Kate Spade bag dangling from her fingers. “No briefcase, no laptop, just a purse. You don’t look like you’re here to work.”

Flynn felt her stomach tighten.
“What exactly do I look like I’m here to do, then?”

He cocked his head to the side and studied her for a
moment. “You look like you’re here to appease the natives until the sale goes through.”

She felt her mouth drop open, and her brain froze. She was sure there were a million poised, reasonable responses to his taunting, but
“You’re fired” was the only thing that came directly to mind.

Unfortunately, Freya had absolutely forbade her from firing anyone during the first week.

Fire the wrong person,
she’d said,
and you’ll start a stampede. All they’ll find is your beaten, battered body under a thousand resignation letters.

“
Look, Mr...”

“
Tucker. But you can call me Jake.” He grinned. How was it possible for him to be so mean yet look so friendly? He was like a polar bear, one of those really cute ones at the zoo that would carve you up for dinner in a heartbeat if it weren’t for the bars.

“
Well, Mr. Tucker—”

“
So it’s a
no
on calling me Jake, then, huh?” He nodded. “Trying to keep that professional distance. I totally understand. I will warn you, though. Everyone else calls me Jake. That’s a lot of peer pressure to resist.” His eyes were so filled with amusement, they were actually twinkling at her. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re going to sell.”

He smiled, keeping his eyes on hers, and she could see that underneath all the wise-ass crap, there was something more going on inside. That
’s when it finally dawned on her where that twinkle was coming from.

He was deliberately baiting her.

And he was enjoying it.

Jerk.

“Mr. Tucker, I’ve just spent five hours on a train, and
I’m tired. I’d like to go back to the Goodhouse Arms, get settled, and start working. Now, you can take me there, or I can call a cab, but either way, this discussion is over.”

He kept his gaze locked on hers, but Flynn had no idea what was going on behind those speckled eyes. Hell. She
’d been there less than a half hour and already she’d made an enemy. Well, that was fine. She wasn’t there to be liked. She was there to do a job. And, eventually, she was sure, she’d figure out exactly what that entailed. In the meantime, if she could just get the maintenance guy to stop looking at her like that...

She took an unconscious step backward to put more distance between them, and the stiletto heel of Freya
’s left boot betrayed her, turning under her and sending her skittering to one side. She flailed both arms, but she knew it was no use. She felt herself falling, and closed her eyes as she prepared for the inevitable harsh clash between her ass and the cold stone floor.

Then, suddenly, she felt herself being pulled upright. She opened her eyes to see Jake Tucker
’s face just inches from hers as he set her right, his hands warm and secure on her upper arms. She stared up at him, swallowing hard. She didn’t want to say, “Thank you,” because that would imply gratitude and debt and she was still kinda pissed off at him, but she didn’t know what else to say.
Good job? Well done?

You can let me go now?

He released her suddenly, as though realizing himself that he’d held on to her a moment too long. He laughed self-consciously and motioned toward her boots.

“
I never understood how you girls balanced on those things,” he said.

“
Well,” Flynn said, “apparently not all of us do.”

Their eyes met and there was another strange moment of
… something. Flynn didn’t know what it was, but it made her dizzy and she didn’t like it. Maybe it was allergies? Was it possible to be allergic to a person?