The Fountain of Infinite Wishes (Dare River Book 5) (10 page)

“Unless they ask us beforehand,” Sadie said dryly. “If I were them, I wouldn’t be able to wait past tonight.”

“Well, you aren’t them,” her sister said, “which is why you’re here with me. Thanks again, Sadie.”

Her sister might be a little abrupt sometimes, but she had a heart of gold. “You too. Have fun at the gym. I’m going to go home and design a quilt for Gail. Do you think Vander might like one too? Or is that silly?”

Shelby lowered her sunglasses to the edge of her nose. “Why ever would you want to make him a quilt?”

She shrugged. “Because it’s how I say thank you.”

“He’s getting paid, Sadie,” her sister told her. “It’s not like he’s doing this from the kindness of his heart.”

“Goodness, you sound jaded when you speak like that,” Sadie told her. “He’s been kind to me, and I’d like to do something for him. Maybe some jam then. Men like food stuffs.”

Her sister sighed. “He doesn’t strike me as a quilt or jam kind of man, Sadie.”

“What kind of man do you think he is then, Shelby?” she asked, hoping to get a little more out of her this time.

“Not the kind you’d know what to do with,” she said, blowing her a kiss and taking off.

“What about you? Would you know what to do with him?”

Her sister ignored her, and she seemed to march rather than stroll off to Pearl, her convertible. Shelby was riled up by Vander, no doubt. She only sniped like that when she felt backed into a corner.

No good could come of it, if you asked her.

Chapter 8

“What have you found out?” Vander asked, pretty much stalking into Charlie’s office.

She looked up from her computer and gave him the don’t-rush-me look. “The McGuiness girls only left an hour ago—and from a meeting you could have easily had on the
phone.”
 

Her pointed remark about him making up a reason to see Shelby was best ignored. His motivations weren’t completely pure, and he knew it. “I know how fast you are, Charlie.” He sat on the edge of her desk, his favorite place when they were researching a case together. “Let me remind you that we don’t call our clients
girls.”

She blew him a raspberry. “I’ll add that to my list of Vander’s Dos and Don’ts. So far, I’ve found a brother, Virgil, who died two years ago at age sixty in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There’s also the mother: seventy-eight-year-old Lenore McGuiness living outside Memphis. She has a handicap Tennessee license plate for a 1971 Ford LTD, and while she owns her own trailer, it looks like she’s delinquent in paying her property tax.”

“Good work.” Memphis was only a three and a half hour drive. “What else?”

“The sister, Deedee, did some jail time for shoplifting. She lives out in Texas now, in Abilene. Tons of speeding tickets. She’s the only one of the immediate family I’ve found on social media. Her Facebook page is a cautionary tale about bleached hair, the toll hard living takes on a woman, and drama of balancing multiple boyfriends and kids. The kids have Facebook pages, but all I’ve found are photos of their immediate family and various racist political opinions guaranteed to curl your toes.”

“Wonderful,” he said, shaking his head. As P.I.s, they were used to seeing the full swath of humanity from the seemingly well adjusted to the radical, militant elements. “They’re probably not close then.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, pushing back in her chair from her desk. “From my initial findings, Shelby and Sadie’s mom did them a service by keeping their father’s family away from them. Preston McGuiness’ family is a peach. Of course, we don’t know for certain if the family ever wanted to be connected in the first place.”
 

Not everyone wanted to know their children or grandchildren, as Vander had discovered in his own version of the school of hard knocks after his mother had moved them in with his grandparents. “We know they didn’t,” Vander said, feeling it in his gut.

Charlie nodded. “Frankly, I think you visit the mother first and see what she knows. The sister looks volatile.”
 

Neither one of them liked to start with volatile.
 

“I’ll call our clients right now and see what they want to do.” He found himself unduly excited by the prospect. “You go on home. Don’t you have a kickboxing class tonight?”

She rose from her chair and put her hands on her petite hips. “I can be late if you want me to call them with you. Or are you looking for an excuse to hear Shelby’s voice again today?”

Charlie busted his balls like none other. Shelby
did
have a lovely voice, smooth as spun sugar one moment and then firm as… Steel was the wrong term. Firm as something elegant…like marble. When he came back to the moment, Charlie was staring at him.

“You’re worrying me,” she said, her hazel eyes troubled. “First the in-person meeting today and now this. Please let me take over this case, Vander.”

He just shrugged and said, “She’s Gail Hardcrew’s personal accountant.”

Charlie sat back in her chair.
“Hmmm.”

He put his hand on his hips. “Don’t
‘hmmm’
me. Dammit, Charlie, why didn’t you say anything? When Gail told me during our meeting, I was totally caught off guard.”

She worried her lip. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find out. I knew this would make you more curious about her. Heck, it made me more curious, and I’m not even into her.”

Shit. “Gail had a reason for our meeting today. She thinks so much of Shelby she wants to pay my…our fee.”

“Well, Ms. McGuiness becomes more interesting by the day,” Charlie said, putting her finger to her lips. “I was hoping Gail’s out-of-the-blue summons was about something else. A new lover to investigate, perhaps.”

“I bet you did. That way you wouldn’t get busted.”

“You need to work on your glower, Vander. How was Gail dressed for your meeting today, by the way?”

He let her divert the conversation because he wasn’t eager to discuss Charlie’s instincts regarding his interest in Shelby. “She had on a low-cut pink number with a white feather boa, which got in her mouth a couple of times,” he said, his lips twitching. “I really shouldn’t talk about one of our clients this way.”

“Please, it’s Gail,” Charlie said, rolling her eyes. “She loves the attention. But I suppose we should get back to Shelby. You’re cogitating over what you might have missed the first time you met her, aren’t you?”

He stared her down.

“Vander, you
really
need to give me this case. I know you. You can’t stand learning someone has more layers than you originally suspected. It’s your investigative nature. Add in your attraction to her, and you’re toast.”

He hoped he was stronger than that. He was a grown man, after all. “It’s just a stupid infatuation. Embarrassing to admit really.”

Charlie looked him up and down. “Are you sure?”

He stood. “I told you before. I don’t even really like her.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That was before you knew about Gail. Now, it makes more sense to you why Shelby was a little hard on her sister the other day. Gail is all drama, and Shelby must need to control her own emotions to work well with her. You know, like how you and I complement each other.”

Shaking his head, he walked to the door. “I should never have had everyone take that stupid Myers-Briggs personality test. You love beating that drum when it’s convenient to one of your arguments.”

“And you run away because you have avoidance tendencies while I have confrontational ones,” Charlie said, coming around her desk.

“Go kick something,” he said, walking to the door. “And don’t keep something as big as Shelby working for one of our clients from me ever again.”

“I did it for your own good, you stubborn mule,” he heard her mutter as he left her office.

When he reached his own desk, he fought his own urge to kick something himself. He wasn’t prone to temper tantrums, but Charlie had a way of bringing them out in him. She pushed and pushed, holding up his faults in his face. Usually, it helped him break open a case or a personal limit. But seriously. So what if he sometimes avoided things? He’d learned avoidance in spades from his mother and her parents. Sometimes it was a good strategy.

Avoiding his growing attraction for Shelby McGuiness was the best thing for both of them.

He picked up the phone to call her.

Chapter 9

Although Shelby hadn’t added Vander’s phone number to her contacts, she recognized the number. She was good with numbers, after all.

Her heart immediately started to race, so she took a deep breath before answering. “Hello.”

“Shelby, it’s Vander,” he said, all business. “Charlie and I found your father’s family, and I wanted to fill you in.”

“Gracious, y’all do work fast,” she said, her heart racing for a completely different reason now. “Okay, what did you find?”

“I’m headed out of the office right now,” he said. “Can you and Sadie meet me somewhere for a drink, or do you want to wait until tomorrow?”

Did he really think they’d be capable of waiting that long? “We can meet you. Let me call Sadie. Wait! What’s tonight?” She racked her brain for Sadie’s schedule.

He chuckled, and the sound was as decadent and inviting as chocolate truffles dotted with fleur de sel. “Monday, remember?”

“Right.” Goodness, she was frazzled. “She has her quilting circle.”

“Her quilting circle, huh?” Vander said, and Shelby could hear the smile in his voice.

Hadn’t she told Sadie that Vander wasn’t a quilt kind of guy? “She’s a master quilter if there is such a term. She teaches a group at the craft store on Mondays.”

“Is that where she works?” Vander asked.

“Yes,” she said, thinking about whether she should meet him alone. Her heart practically sang out the answer:
yes
. “Sadie’s…on edge…like me, I guess, so she’ll want to know what’s going on as soon as possible. I’ll meet you. Just tell me where.”

Vander paused, then said, “It will just be me. Charlie did the searching, so I sent her off to her usual kickboxing class.”

So it would be just the two of them? Good Lord, she needed to calm herself. “Fine. Where?”
 

“How about Oak Bar at the Hermitage?” he asked.

Shelby loved that classy cocktail bar in one of Nashville’s most unique hotels. She should have guessed he’d suggest a spot like that. It had originally opened as a private gentleman’s bar in 1910, and whenever Shelby went there, she could imagine it full of its original clientele—men in three-piece suits with gold timepieces smoking cigars and drinking bourbon. Vander was rather like the establishment himself, intriguing and compelling in an old-school way.

Checking the time, she calculated how far she was from the bar. “I can meet you there in half an hour. I’m finishing up some things for Gail.”

“Are you sure? Gail’s place is—”
 

“I have an offsite office and…sometimes work from home,” she told him. Truthfully, she’d never get anything done working at Gail’s house, and thankfully her boss agreed. She only went there for meetings.

“That works fine,” he said. “I’ll be at the bar. See you in few.”

“Great,” she answered as she hung up.

Was she really meeting Vander for a drink by herself? Heavens preserve her, she felt faint, like she’d drunk too much pink champagne and was walking along a cliff. In one word: exciting. She texted Sadie to make herself feel better.

Vander called to say he has some news already. I’m meeting with him tonight even though I know you have your circle. I didn’t think you’d want to wait. We’re at Oak Bar if you get out early and want to join us. Call me when you’re done.

Sadie’s quilting circle ran from seven to nine thirty, and it was seven thirty now. They’d be long gone by then.

Wouldn’t they?

She touched up her makeup like she would for any evening business meeting, telling herself she’d do the same no matter whom she was meeting. But she knew she was full of it.

“Oh, poo,” she said in the mirror as she finished adding a nude pink lipstick to her lips. Heck, she’d even chosen a color with the word nude in it, she realized. The thought of seeing Vander nude made her cheeks hot…and did other things to her.
 

What in the world was she thinking?

She knew what she was thinking. She was about to have Vander all to herself for once, and part of her couldn’t wait. There was trouble here.
Business
, she told herself again,
this is a business meeting
.
 

Still, Shelby made her hips sway a little extra as she walked into the cocktail bar perfectly on time. After all, she was a woman. Sure enough, he was already waiting for her, nursing a bourbon at the dark-wood paneled bar. A neat one, from the looks of it. His face was in profile, and she couldn’t help but admire the hard line of his jaw. He was a handsome man, and he certainly filled out that suit he was wearing. The thought of him naked intruded again, and she imagined what those muscles must look like when he was shirtless.

Stick to business
, she reminded herself as she approached him.