The Smoky Mountain Mist (9 page)

“What is this place?” Seth had been quiet for most of the short drive, but once she killed the engine, his low drawl broke the silence.

“According to family lore, my great-grandfather built this place to cover a family moonshining operation during Prohibition.” She slanted a look his way. “I’m not sure that’s entirely true.”

He met her look with a hint of a smile. “Good stories rarely are.”

“I think it might have been embellished to give the Davenports a little hillbilly cred.” She smiled. “We were damned Yankees, you see. My great-grandfather was the third son of a shipbuilding family in Maryland that had only enough money to support two sons. So he was left to find his own way in the cold, cruel world.”

“And chose Bitterwood, Tennessee?” Seth gave her a skeptical look.

“There’s beauty here, you know. It’s not all harsh.”

“Guess it depends on what part of Bitterwood you come from.”

She conceded the point. “My grandfather told me his daddy knew from the moment he set eyes on Bitterwood that it was home.”

Seth’s expression softened. “I guess I can’t argue with that. I always end up back here no matter how far I roam.”

“I love this place.” She nodded toward the cabin. “My grandmother was a Bitterwood native. Her roots go back to the first settlers. She and my grandfather would bring me here during summer vacations from school and we’d rough it.” She laughed. “Well, I considered it roughing it.”

In fact, for a primitive log cabin, the place was relatively luxurious. A removable window unit air conditioner cooled the place in the heat of summer, and a woodstove kept it cozy on all but the coldest of winter days. It had been wired with electricity a couple of decades ago, when the town borders extended close enough to the cabin to make it feasible. And with a nearby cell tower, she never had much trouble getting a phone signal.

Seth climbed the porch steps behind her, carrying their bags. She’d packed a few things before leaving her house, and they’d stopped by the bungalow on Smoky Ridge where Seth lived in order to pick up clothes for him, as well.

The shabby old house belonged to Cleve Calhoun, the con man who’d brought Seth into that lifestyle, Seth had told her, his expression defensive. He’d moved in with Cleve again a few years back, after the older man had suffered a debilitating stroke. Now that Cleve was at a rehab center in Knoxville for the next few weeks, Seth was thinking about looking for a place of his own.

Rachel wondered what sort of place a man like Seth would like, watching with curiosity as his sharp green eyes took in the decor of the cabin. She’d decorated it herself several years ago, when her grandfather had left it to her in his will. She’d been twenty-two, fresh out of college and torn between sadness at one part of her life passing and a whole vista of opportunity spreading out before her.

As a permanent place of residence, the cabin posed too many problems to be practical, but she had always treated it as an escape when life started to become overwhelming.

Was that why she’d come here now?

“Nice digs,” he said with a faint smile.

“I love this place,” she admitted.

“I can see why.” He looked at her. “Do you come here often?”

“When I need to.”

He nodded as if he understood. “Why did you bring me here? You don’t bring people here normally, do you?”

She looked at him through narrowed eyes, a little spooked by how easily he could read her. “No, I don’t.”

“Because it’s a refuge.”

“Yes.” She felt naked.

Suddenly, he looked vulnerable, as well. “Thank you. For trusting me enough to bring me here.”

His rapid change of demeanor caught her by surprise. She hadn’t realized, until that moment, that she had any sort of power over him. He’d seemed so sure, so in charge, that she hadn’t given any thought to being able to influence him in any way.

It was an unexpectedly heady feeling, one that made her feel reckless.

And alive.

He was beautiful, she thought, standing there in the middle of her haven. Beautiful and feral, constantly on the edge of flight. Despite the facade of civilization, despite his obvious attempts to fight his own wild instincts, he would never be fully tame. He would never be genteel or domesticated. He’d always be a wild card.

And she’d never wanted a man more than she wanted him, in spite of that unpredictability.

Or maybe because of it.

“I wanted you here with me,” she said aloud, unsure that he would understand what she meant by it. Not sure she wanted him to.

But she should have known better. He had a wild thing’s instinct for reading another creature’s motives.

Fight or flight,
she thought. Which would he choose? To run?

Or to engage?

When he moved, it was swift and fierce, the decisive action of a predator with a singular purpose. He came to an abrupt stop in front of her, his gaze so intense it set off tremors low in her belly. “Do you know what you’re getting into?”

Probably not, but she had no intention of retreating. “Do you?”

His mouth curved in response. She imagined the feel of those lips on hers, and the tremors inside her spread in waves until she felt as if she were going to crumble apart.

Then he touched her, a light brush of fingertips against her jaw, sparking fire in her blood.

She rose, closing the space between them until her breasts flattened against his chest. His wiry arms ensnared her, crushing her even closer, until his breath heated her cheeks. “I’m dangerous,” he whispered.

She met his gaze. “I know.”

Threading her fingers through his crisp, dark hair, she kissed him.

Chapter Nine

Her mouth was hot and sweet, the fierce thrust of her tongue against his pouring gasoline on the fire in his belly until he thought he’d explode. He wanted her more than anything he’d ever wanted his whole life, a realization that scared the hell out of him even as it drove him to walk her backward until they ran up against the cabin wall.

She made a low, explosive sound against his mouth as her back flattened against the polished logs. Her legs parted, making room for his hips to settle flush to hers, and any hope of hiding the effect she had on his body was gone as he thrust helplessly against her hips. Neither the borrowed sweatpants nor her thin cotton yoga pants offered much of a barrier between their bodies, making it all too easy to take what they both seemed desperately to want.

Stop,
his mind begged him.
Think.

There was a reason he was still alone, a reason why he hadn’t coaxed one of the pretty Tennessee mountain girls to take a chance on a man like him. Even reformed, he wasn’t much of a catch. He was rough around the edges and wild at heart. A girl willing to settle for less than perfect could still do better.

Rachel Davenport didn’t have to settle. If all she wanted was a quick roll in the hay with a hard-bodied redneck, maybe he’d give it a go, but not when she was this vulnerable. Not the day after her father’s funeral, the day she’d lost another man who was important to her.

Not the day she’d had a nerve-shattering scare and probably wanted nothing more than to feel something besides fear.

As he started to pull back, her hands moved with sureness over his body, sliding down his back to cup his buttocks, pulling him closer. For a second, everything resembling lucid thought rushed out of his head, driven away by raw male hunger for completion. He drove his hips against hers again, making her whimper. The sound was maddening, fueling his lust to the edge of control.

She tugged his shirt upward, baring his belly to the light caress of her fingertips. She dragged her mouth away from his and pressed a hot kiss against the center of his chest, her tongue dancing lightly over the curve of his pectoral muscle.

She looked up at him, her blue eyes drunk with desire. “Is that good?” she asked, her thumb tracing a circle around his left nipple. “Did you like that?”

“Yes,” he breathed.

She bent her head and dropped a soft kiss along the ridge of his rib cage. “And that?”

He knew where she was headed. He knew if he let her keep going, he wouldn’t be able to make any sort of coherent decision about right and wrong.

There had been a time, he realized, when the question of right and wrong wouldn’t have occurred to him at all.

Did he really want to be that man again?

With a groan, he threaded his fingers through her hair and urged her to look up at him. She appeared confused but also wildly aroused, her cheeks flushed and dewy, her lips dark from his kisses.

He kissed her again, a long, slow kiss that had an oddly fortifying effect on his resolve. Rachel Davenport deserved to be wooed, with kisses that went somewhere besides straight to sex.

Even if he wasn’t the man who could give her that.

When he let her go, she slumped back against the wall, staring at him through half-closed eyes. Her breath was swift and ragged, her hair a tangled curtain around her face. “Seth?”

“This isn’t really what you want,” he said, keeping a careful distance.

Her brow furrowed. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

“Okay. It isn’t what
I
want.”

Her gaze dropped pointedly to his sweatpants, where his body betrayed exactly what he wanted. When her blue eyes rose to meet his again, there was triumph in them. “Really.”

“Rachel, please.” He turned his back on her, pacing toward the front window, where night had fallen early due to the rain. His reflection stared back at him, the wild-eyed gaze of a man on the edge.

“If you think you’re being noble—”

“I don’t think I’m capable of being noble. I just want to be fair.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “You think I’m not in my right mind.”

He shook his head, even though it was what he thought, in a way. “I think we both want to forget the past couple of days, however we can make that happen. And maybe that seems like a good idea right now, but it won’t once we’ve crossed a line we can’t uncross.”

He waited for her to respond, but she remained silent. Finally, he dared a quick look at her. She still leaned against the wall, her gaze on him. Some of the heat in her eyes had died, however, as if his words had sunk in and extinguished the fire inside her.

“I don’t do one-night stands,” she admitted after another long, silent moment. “I don’t think that’s how I was looking at this.”

He didn’t know if her confession made him feel better or worse. Maybe a little of both, he decided, though her admission that she saw him as more than a body on which to slake her lust certainly complicated matters.

“I’m not good for you,” he said simply.

“You’re not bad for me.”

He laughed a little. “There are hundreds of people out there who’d beg to differ.”

“You’ve done bad things. But you’re not bad. Bad people don’t try to change. They don’t see the need.”

He felt enough in control to face her completely. He pressed his back against the hardwood frame around the panes, concentrating on the discomfort and giving his body a chance to cool down and regain control. “There’s a difference between wanting to be good and being good.”

“Only in degrees.”

She was stubborn, he thought. And naive. “In a few days, once we figure all this out, you’re going to look back at this moment and thank me for keeping my head.”

Her eyes rolled upward. “You give me any more of that paternalistic hogwash and it won’t take a few days.”

Fair enough,
he thought. “I don’t want regrets, either.”

The look she shot his way was utterly wicked, catching him by surprise. “You wouldn’t have regretted it.”

He laughed. “Maybe not.”

She lifted her chin, her expression shifting back to cool neutral. “Okay. I get that this is a volatile situation with really rotten timing. And I know we’re not what anyone would consider a suitable match. So, you win. We don’t let this happen again, not while we’re trying to figure out what’s happening to me and why.”

He felt a squirm of disappointment that she’d conceded so quickly, but he pushed that unhelpful thought aside. “I do think someone should be with you at all times, though. You’ve already had two strange incidents on top of whatever happened to your friend Davis, plus the previous murders. I don’t think it’s safe for you to be alone right now.”

“Should I hire a bodyguard?” She sounded reluctant.

Seth thought about his orders from Adam Brand. Brand, for reasons Seth didn’t quite understand, had hired Seth to keep an eye on Rachel. So far, he hadn’t shared that fact with her, since Brand hadn’t given him permission to approach her on an official level.

But maybe it was time to talk to Brand again. He was overdue to give the man an update. He’d try to make the FBI agent see that Rachel deserved to know everything that was going on.

“I can do it,” he said in answer to her question. “I can protect you.”

Her dark eyebrows notched up. “I thought we decided to keep our distance from each other.”

“We agreed not to...get busy with each other,” he said with a wry grin. “Not quite the same thing.”

“One would certainly make the other harder to resist.”

True, but letting Rachel Davenport out of his sight for long was not something he was willing to contemplate. He might not understand Brand’s interest in Rachel, but he understood his own. He wasn’t going to let her become a casualty in whatever game her tormenter was playing.

Especially now that he had a pretty good idea why she’d been targeted.

But before he told her his theory, he needed to talk to Brand. The FBI agent could pull some strings and see if the local cops were making any progress in finding Davis Rogers, for one thing. Antoine had claimed to be forthcoming, but Seth didn’t kid himself. The cops would never trust him, not really, and nothing guaranteed Antoine would keep him in the loop.

Seth had a feeling what happened to Rogers might be more than just collateral damage aimed at weakening Rachel’s hold on reality. Rogers had seen her the night before, at Smoky Joe’s. What if he’d seen or heard something that could incriminate the person who was really behind these attacks on her?

“Rachel, this morning at Sequoyah House, you said you talked to Davis Rogers before you heard the thud and his phone cut off, right?”

She looked puzzled by the change of topic. “I didn’t really understand what he meant by what he was saying, but I guess he must have met me last night at some point. He said something about being sorry about what he did.”

Joe Breslin had said the man Rachel was with had made a pass at her. Could that have been why Davis Rogers had felt the need to apologize? “Can you remember what he said exactly?”

Her brow furrowed. “He said he’d been trying to reach me—I guess that makes sense. My phone was locked in my car. Then he said he needed to apologize about last night—oh!” She crossed to where she’d laid her fleece jacket on the back of the sofa and pulled her cell phone from the pocket. “I played this for the police but not for you.”

She punched a couple of buttons and a male voice came out of the phone’s tinny speaker. “Rachel, it’s Davis again. Look, I’m sorry about last night, but he seemed to think you might be receptive. I’ve really missed you. I didn’t like leaving you in that place. Please call me back so I can apologize.”

“
He
thought you might be receptive,” Seth repeated. That jibed with what Joe had told him, but who was the “he” Rogers had been talking about?

“I think maybe he tried to kiss me or something.”

“And you didn’t let him.”

She shot Seth a look. “I broke up with Davis years ago. I still care about him, and I desperately hope you’re wrong about how bad his condition was and that we find him alive and okay. But I’m not in love with him anymore.”

“Is he in love with you?”

“I don’t think he ever was,” she said flatly. “I’m not sure Davis loves anyone quite as much as he loves himself.” She pressed her fingers against her lips. “God, that sounds terrible, especially since he could be dead because he came here to see me.”

“Remember how I told you I went to talk to Smoky Joe this morning, and that’s how I knew to look for Davis?”

She nodded.

“Joe said the man you were with made a pass at you, and you rebuffed him. I figure that man must have been Davis Rogers.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I thought it was something you’d prefer to remember on your own.”

Her expression took on a slightly haughty air, reminding him that no matter how tempting he might find her, and how receptive she might be, there was a whole lifetime of differences between them, in experiences, in education, in culture and in outlook. “You had no right to make that decision for me.”

“Won’t happen again,” he snapped back.

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have barked at you.”

His anger ebbed as quickly as it had risen. He had no right to get up on his high horse considering he was still keeping the secret about Adam Brand. “No harm done.”

“I wonder what he meant—that ‘he’ seemed to think I might be receptive to Davis’s advances,” Rachel murmured thoughtfully. “Who’s the ‘he’ Davis is talking about?”

“I was wondering that, too.”

“I don’t think Davis knows anyone here in Bitterwood besides me. I mean, he knew my dad, of course, but my father’s dead. I guess he might have met Diane once—she and my dad married around the time Davis and I broke up—”

“What about your stepbrother?”

“Paul?” She frowned. “I don’t think so. We’ve gotten fairly friendly over the past few months, dealing with the company and taking care of my father’s last wishes, but—” She shook her head. “We were both adults when our parents met. We didn’t form any kind of family bond, and I can’t imagine him giving Davis advice about my love life.”

Bailey didn’t seem the matchmaker type, Seth conceded. Or the criminal type. He was an efficient, if perpetually distracted, office manager, helping George Davenport and his daughter keep the company going. But company scuttlebutt notwithstanding, Seth had never thought Paul seemed to want to run the company.

But someone did.

“How can we find out who’s next in line for the CEO job if you can’t step in?” he asked.

Rachel looked up at him. “The only thing I know for sure is that, until my father’s will is executed and I’m declared in charge, the company is under the control of a trust. And even then, the trust managers can make a change within the first year if I were to die. In other words, I can’t put the disposition of the CEO job in my own will until I’ve run the company for at least a year.”

“What if you couldn’t take the job from the outset?”

“I don’t know. It hasn’t been an issue, since I already agreed to take on the responsibility.”

“Do you regret it?” he asked out of curiosity.

“Agreeing to run the company?” Her brow furrowed, and she gave the question the thought it deserved. “I don’t regret keeping my father’s company alive. I don’t regret the time I spent with my dad learning the ropes, or the peace it gave him to know the company would be staying in the family.”

“That’s not entirely what I asked.”

“I miss being a librarian,” she admitted with a faint smile. “But I can volunteer on weekends. Or take time out to go read to the kids on story day.”

“Is that enough?”

“It will be.” Her voice was firm. “It has to be.”

A shrill noise split the tense silence that fell briefly between them. They both reached for their cell phones.

It was Rachel’s phone. “Hello?”

She listened for a moment, her expression so tight it made Seth’s chest hurt. “Yes, I understand.” Another brief pause and she added, “Yes. I can do that. Okay. Thank you.”