Truly, Madly, Dangerously

Why was her heart beating too fast?

Why did her mouth taste like copper? In the past few years she’d been in much more dire circumstances than being locked in Aunt Lillian’s café with Truman.

“Are you happy in Garth?” Sadie asked.

“Most of the time.” Truman’s response was low and rumbling. A man’s voice, not the voice of the boy she’d loved a very long time ago. No, not loved. Lusted after. Drooled over. That wasn’t love. She just hadn’t known it at the age of fifteen. He shifted his feet, crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t like it here.”

“I don’t know if I like it or not.”

“So why are you so anxious to get out of town?”

Because I might start to feel like this is home again. Because I might fall in love with something here that I can’t live without…. Maybe because I already have.

Truly, Madly, Dangerously

Linda Winstead Jones

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LINDA WINSTEAD JONES

would rather write than do anything else. Since she cannot cook, gave up ironing many years ago and finds cleaning the house a complete waste of time, she has plenty of time to devote to her obsession for writing. Occasionally she’s tried to expand her horizons by taking classes. In the past she’s taken instruction on yoga, French (a dismal failure), Chinese cooking, cake decorating (food-related classes are always a good choice, even for someone who can’t cook), belly-dancing (trust me, this was a long time ago) and, of course, creative writing.

She lives in Huntsville, Alabama, with her husband of more years than she’s willing to admit and the youngest of their three sons.

She can be reached via www.eHarlequin.com or her own Web site www.lindawinsteadjones.com.

For my grandmother, Imogene Means, who served up more than her share of Gelatin Surprise in her ninety-nine years.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Prologue

“Behind you!”

Sadie dipped and turned, rolling across the creaking porch as a bullet smacked into the wall of the rustic cabin with a splintering crack. Still on her back, she lifted her pistol and took aim, but Santana leapt across the railing, grabbed the kidnapper’s gun arm, and twisted it up and back until the weapon fell to the porch.

The first kidnapper they’d faced was already down—permanently—and Santana was handling the other just fine. Sadie scrambled up and carefully opened the front door of the isolated cabin on this Tennessee mountain-side. The door squeaked loudly as it opened, and she stepped to the side so she wouldn’t be a clear target for anyone waiting inside. The intelligence they’d collected told them there were only two kidnappers holed up in the cabin, but if she’d learned anything working for Benning it was that you could never take anything for granted.

The main room was empty; the entire cabin was eerily silent. Her heart crawled into her throat. “Danny?” she said softly.

The young boy had been kidnapped five days ago, and his father had hired the Benning Agency to find him. The client was prepared to pay the ransom, if that was what it took. All he cared about was getting his son back safe and sound. All Sadie wanted was to be able to take the kid home, alive and healthy.

She glanced into the kitchen. Late-morning light spilled through an uncovered window. Beyond that window all she could see was sky and evergreen trees and the gold and red leaves of a Tennessee October. The view was beautiful, but the room was a mess.

She walked down the hallway without making a sound. The first bedroom she passed was as messy as the kitchen. And as deserted. The bathroom further down the hallway was small and unoccupied. That left one other room at the back of the hallway. The door was closed and locked from the hallway side.

Sadie holstered her pistol as Santana entered the hallway. She unlocked the door and opened it slowly.

Danny sat in the center of a big bed, bound and gagged and wearing the jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing when he’d been snatched from the sidewalk in front of his home. Tears filled his eyes and stained his cheeks. He was apparently unhurt…but terrified.

Sadie smiled as she walked to the bed, allowing her jacket to fall over her weapon. She had a feeling Danny had seen enough guns for one lifetime.

“Hi,” she said softly as she sat beside him and reached out to remove his gag. Duct tape. She pushed her anger deep.

“My name’s Sadie, and this is Lucky.” She nodded toward the man in the doorway. Santana was a couple of inches over six feet tall, and with his wide shoulders, big hands and killer stare he could be intimidating. Danny would respond best to a woman, they both knew that. “Your Dad hired us to come get you.”

When the gag was removed, Danny took a deep, ragged breath. “My daddy sent you?”

Sadie nodded. How much had the kid heard of the struggle that had just taken place outside this cabin? It had become clear within minutes that the kidnappers were not willing to make a clean exchange. They were going to take the money, kill the kid and kill the lackeys who’d delivered the ransom. They hadn’t counted on the lackeys being Sadie Harlow and Lucky Santana. Their bad luck.

At the very least, Danny must’ve heard the gunshots. “We scared away the men who kidnapped you,” Sadie said calmly, “and now we’re going to take you home.”

Danny nodded enthusiastically.

Sadie reached into the pocket of her jeans. “I’m going to get a knife and cut the tape away from your hands and legs, is that all right?” She didn’t want to flash a blade without warning the boy; she didn’t know what the kidnappers had used to scare him.

Danny nodded, and she flicked the knife open with her thumb.

Santana backed away while she sliced at the duct tape. “I’m going to double check and make sure those bad guys are—uh—really gone,” he said, leaving so he could move the body and the bound kidnapper to a place where the kid wouldn’t have to see them.

When the duct tape had been peeled away, Sadie slipped the knife into her pocket and examined Danny’s wrists and ankles. They were red and a little raw, but she’d seen worse. “Your daddy has been so worried about you,” she said softly.

“He has?” Danny’s blue eyes were wide and still damp with tears.

“Of course he has. We’re going to call him right now, okay?”

Danny nodded enthusiastically.

Sadie retrieved her cell phone from a back pocket and dialed. After only one ring, Mr. Graham answered with a frantic, “Hello?”

“Mr. Graham, I have someone here who wants to speak with you.” She handed the phone to Danny and stood. The kid gripped the small phone with both hands.

“Daddy?”

She stepped away from the bed for a moment to give Danny and his father some semblance of privacy. When she reached the doorway, Santana joined her. “All clear?” she asked softly.

He nodded.

A chill ran down Sadie’s spine and her arms prickled. Adrenaline crash. She was coming down as if she’d been on a powerful drug. She’d done her best to be calm and cool with the kid, but in truth her heart was still pumping too hard and her skin was flushed and overly warm. It was always that way when bullets started flying.

She was starving.

Sadie glanced up at Santana, who watched the kid on the bed with calm, contented eyes. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a dull but satisfying business meeting.

The man was gorgeous, dark and fit and downright pretty. She liked him a lot as a person, and they worked together well. And no matter how tempting she might occasionally find him, it was never a good idea to mix business with pleasure. Santana didn’t do emotion where sex was concerned, but she did. It was Sadie’s downfall, the chink in her armor, her Achilles’ heel. It was the reason she had been single in every way for the past several years.

“I’m thinking of taking a few days off,” he said. “What about you?”

“I wish,” she said softly. “I got an urgent phone call from my Aunt Lillian yesterday.”

Santana turned his brandy-colored eyes to her.

“It’s nothing, really, just…” No way was she going to tell Santana or any of her other co-workers—all males as testosterone-laden as he—why she was going back to Garth, Alabama. “I have to go home for a few days and take care of a little family business.”

He didn’t pry, but he did ask if she needed any help. She declined the offer, horrified at the very idea of anyone at the agency seeing her in the element she was about to jump back into. The Benning Agency was more than a P.I. firm. They didn’t take on seedy divorce cases or investigate insurance scams. Instead, they provided top-notch security, rescued lost or kidnapped children like Danny and took on dangerous jobs no one else wanted. Their agents were the best of the best.

Sadie smiled at Danny as she walked to the bed to take the cell phone.

“It’s going to take us a couple of hours to get you home,” Sadie said as she scooped Danny’s shoes off the floor and sat beside him. “Are you hungry?”

He nodded.

“Me, too. I could really use a nice, big chocolate milkshake right about now. And maybe some cheese fries and a chili dog.”

Santana lifted one curious brow. “What gives, Harlow? You only eat like that when you’re really nervous.”

Sadie took Danny’s hand as he left the bed then sent a tight smile at Santana. “I told you. I’m going home.”

And it was going to take a lot more than a junk-food binge to soothe her nerves.

Chapter 1

The old saying “You can’t go home again” was wrong. Sadie had quickly discovered that going home was easy. Much too easy. The saying ought to be, “You shouldn’t go home again. Ever.”

“Sadie,” the intrusive, whispering voice interrupted what was left of her dream.

Sadie opened one eye, barely. The bedside clock glowed green in the dimly lit bedroom. Four-fifty—in the morning! She’d gotten to sleep about one-thirty, after unpacking, listening to Aunt Lillian’s list of troubles and cousin Jennifer’s hours of unending complaints and trying to adjust her body to this hard, less-than-welcoming bed.

“Go ’way,” she mumbled as she closed her eye.

“It’s almost five. Rise and shine!”

Rise and shine were words that should definitely be justifiable cause for homicide, especially at this hour. With a moan, Sadie rolled onto her back and glared up, that one eye drifting open again. Lillian Banks stood five foot one, weighed maybe a hundred and five pounds, and carried her fifty-seven years as if it were thirty-seven.

“I didn’t get to sleep until after one,” Sadie said. Surely that was explanation enough, she thought as she closed her eye.

“Sadie,” Aunt Lillian whispered.

The dream was right there. And it had been a good one. Hadn’t it?

“Sadie.” A nudge accompanied this more urgent call.

The hard bed felt almost soft, she was so tired….

“Sadie Mae.”

Sadie sat up as quickly as was possible considering her condition, and both eyes flew open. The sound of her full name usually did that to her. She didn’t know if it was early years of maternal training or the horror of the full name that made her sound like a hick wearing a pair of cut-off overalls and straw in her hair. Whatever the reason, Aunt Lillian knew the trick. “I’m up!”

Lillian smiled widely. “Mary Beth called in sick. You’ll have to work her shift.”

This was so unfair. “Can’t Jennifer do it?”

A shake of a gray head was her answer. “No. Jennifer was out late, and besides…she’s got all the housekeeping to do and the last time she filled in for Mary Beth she spilt coffee on one of my best customers.”

Sadie’s airhead cousin, Lillian’s own daughter, had spilled that coffee on purpose, no doubt, to save her from such early-morning abductions. Maybe Jennifer wasn’t such an airhead after all. “Five minutes,” Sadie said, drifting back toward the mattress.

It wasn’t fair. Jennifer had gotten the normal name and the ability to weasel her way out of anything she didn’t want to do.

Lillian tossed a dress at Sadie, a hideous, bubble-gum pink, lace-trimmed waitress uniform that actually had her name stitched over the pocket. Just plain Sadie, thank God.

“You had this made for me?” Her heart sank. Obviously her aunt expected that these early-morning duties were going to become a regular thing. Sadie asked herself again how she had ended up here. “I didn’t come back to Garth to…”

“If you’re going to help out until I get things in order around here, you need a proper uniform,” Lillian said. “And don’t give me that look. Waitressing is a perfectly acceptable occupation for a young lady.”

Aunt Lillian was too embarrassed to tell her friends what had truly become of her niece. They all thought Sadie had gone to the big city and become a receptionist, suitable work for a young lady looking for a husband.

Pushing thirty—hard—wasn’t young, and Sadie didn’t want a husband. Almost been there, almost done that.

Lillian grinned and winked. “Hurry up. You know how early the fishermen show up for breakfast.”

Once Sadie was sitting on the edge of the hard mattress, relatively awake, Lillian rushed from the room with a parting suggestion that her niece get crackin’.

Sadie crawled off the bed certain that she’d been tricked. Lillian wasn’t all that desperate for help. She had just needed a free waitress during the one month a year that Garth was literally jumpin’. Only three weeks to the Miranda Lake Big Bass Festival, which arrived every October complete with parade, craft fair and—of course—bass tournament.

Since Uncle Jimmy’s death four years earlier, Lillian had managed the Yellow Rose Motel, and the café across the parking lot, with the help of Jennifer and a few longtime employees. But one of those longtime employees had broken his leg last week, and another had gone and gotten herself pregnant a few months back. Lillian swore she couldn’t hire just anyone. It took time and patience to find just the right person for the job.

Patience. Something Sadie did not possess.

There were financial problems, as well as a waitress shortage. A loan had come due, and for some reason the loan officer at the bank was being particularly stubborn. Financial problems Sadie could handle, though Lillian had put her foot down where a personal loan was concerned. She just wanted Sadie to meet with Aidan Hearn and reason with him. If she didn’t know better, she’d think her staunch aunt was afraid of the man.

She’d tried to get that chore out of the way yesterday afternoon, immediately after her arrival. But Hearn’s airhead secretary had insisted that the loan officer could not possibly see her without an appointment. It would be Thursday before he could squeeze her in. Two more days!

Once the financial concerns were taken care of, would Lillian let her niece go? Or did she think this waitress job that called Sadie out of bed at an ungodly hour was—horrors—permanent? Why hire a stranger when Sadie Harlow was the biggest sucker this side of the Mississippi?

The atrocious pink uniform dropped over her head. It was two sizes too big, at least. And closer inspection showed that someone else’s name had previously been in the spot where Sadie was now embroidered in red. Not only was she wearing the ugliest uniform imaginable, it was a hand-me-down.

She opened her bedside drawer and eyed the pistol there. The sight eased her. The well-oiled weapon had a soothing kind of beauty, caught in the light of the bedside lamp. For the past five years, Sadie hadn’t gone many places without that weapon close at hand. You only had to get in a jam once to get itchy about having some sort of protection nearby. No wonder she found the small pistol beautiful.

But there was no good place to conceal the weapon in the bubble-gum-pink uniform and thigh holsters were so damn uncomfortable. Maybe she didn’t need to have her pistol within reach, for a change. There was nowhere on the planet safer than Garth, Alabama. The small town was quiet. Peaceful. Dull. Which is why Sadie had been so anxious to leave her home town eleven years ago.

She left her pistol in the bedside drawer and settled for a pocket knife, which sat heavily in a deep, very pink pocket.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Sadie muttered as she walked down the stairs, again with only one eye open. That slit between tired lids was just enough to see where she was going as she made her way down to the motel lobby where Conrad Hudson—who helped out a couple of days a week and much preferred working nights—manned the desk. He’d been there last night, when Sadie had finally gone to bed. He greeted her in an annoyingly energetic voice. She grunted a surly good morning and stepped into the parking lot.

The Banks family lived above the front office and lobby, and had for as long as Sadie could remember. Right now only Jennifer and Lillian lived there, but in the old days the apartment had been crowded. Aunt Lillian and Uncle Jimmy, cousins Jennifer and Johnny. And then Sadie had come along to make everyone uncomfortable and to crowd the conditions even more.

She’d hated coming here after her mother’s death. Orphaned, grieving and different, she had realized right away that she did not fit in well. Little Jennifer and her big brother Johnny had been blond and happy, good students who had lots of friends, while Sadie had barged in with tangled dark hair, shell-shocked by her mother’s sudden passing and filled with an anger she couldn’t explain away.

It had been just Sadie and her mother for so long, since Peter Harlow had died when his only child was a baby. To be thrust into family life was an additional shock all its own. Aunt Lillian had done everything possible to make the new member of her family feel like this place was home. And it had been, for a while.

But Sadie had left Garth as soon as possible after high school graduation. Had she been running away? Sure she had, though she hadn’t known it at the time. She had run from the family who had taken her in, certain that somewhere out there was a place for her. A place where she didn’t always feel different. A place where she fit. She’d dedicated herself to college for a few years, though she’d never found an area of study that she could fully embrace. She had about decided she’d be a career student, always at loose ends.

Then Spencer Mayfield had come along, with his slick ways and his “friendship” and his smooth seduction.

She’d come so close to actually marrying Spencer. The wedding date had been a mere two months away when she’d discovered that she wasn’t his only “friend.” Just as well. She really didn’t want to go through life as Sadie Mae Mayfield.

The only men she trusted these days were her coworkers—Santana, Mangino, Cal, Murphy…even the Major. It had taken her a long time, but she’d finally found a place where she felt as if she truly fit in. And she didn’t need anything else. The fact that she was the only female in a group of difficult men didn’t faze her.

Sadie walked across the parking lot, yawning as she went, her white tennis shoes shuffling on the asphalt. Even though her coming here years ago had been sudden and tragic, in an unexpected way Garth still felt like home. Lillian and Jennifer were family. She had put down a few delicate and deep roots in her time here, but that didn’t mean she wanted those roots to grow stronger and tie her to the place.

This afternoon she’d visit the bank without an appointment and have a word with Hearn about extending the loan. After that, she’d hire at least two new employees and see them settled in. And then, if she was very lucky, someone else would get themselves kidnapped and she’d be called away on urgent business.

Three days, tops, and she’d be outta here.

Why were so many people actually awake at five in the morning? Dressed and disgustingly cheerful, the patrons of Lillian’s Café smiled and talked and…ugh, was that guy flirting with her? Did he have something in his eye or was he winking at her? She was in no mood. Maybe that was the customer Jennifer had spilled coffee on. Sadie hoped so.

She moved from booth to booth to table, pouring coffee without spilling a drop. She scribbled breakfast orders on a notepad and quickly squelched any unwanted overtures. The place was packed. Aunt Lillian worked behind the counter, and Bowie Keegan, a thin, short-haired young man who was the latest in a long line of short-order cooks, worked the grill. Sadie was the one who ended up scurrying from one end of the room to the other, trying to take care of all the tables while Lillian handled the counter and some of the cooking. Sadie did the best she could. If someone didn’t get exactly what they ordered, well, they did get fed. At this ungodly hour, they should be grateful.

“Sadie?”

She glanced down at the customer in the booth, a man in a sharp khaki uniform, a deputy who grinned widely at her. That smile was familiar, in an odd way. Wicked and cocky and…Truman McCain. Please, not now.

“No,” she said as she poured Truman a cup of coffee. “No Sadie here.” She wore no makeup, was draped in a hideous pink waitress uniform that was two sizes too large, and she had a terrible case of bed-head. This was no way to run into the guy she’d had a crush on during her impressionable fifteenth and sixteenth years. Not that Truman, who had been her cousin Johnny’s best friend since they were five, had ever given Sadie the time of day. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

He pointed at her breast. “It says Sadie right there.”

“Borrowed uniform.”

“You look vaguely familiar,” he teased.

“I get that from a lot of people. Are you ready to order?”

Truman just smiled. Why did he have to look so good? A good three years past thirty he still had all his hair, which was a lovely warm brown that curled a little at the ends, just as she remembered. His eyes remained undulled by time. They were a fabulous shade of blue—not too dark, not too light—that seemed to see right through her. He was bigger, wider in the shoulders and maybe a little taller, though it was hard to tell with him sitting in the booth that way. He just seemed… larger than she remembered.

The man who had provided her with the most humiliating moment of her life should not have aged so well. It just wasn’t fair.

“Do you need a few more minutes to decide?” she asked.

He ordered the special and she walked away, too aware that his eyes were on her legs that needed shaving, her too-big uniform, and her tangled hair. Her ill-advised return home was not getting any better.

Truman’s smile faded as he watched Sadie walk away. He hadn’t thought much about Sadie Harlow, at least not recently. She must’ve had a rough time of it. Poor thing, she didn’t look so good. She was pale and there were circles under her eyes. And she must’ve lost weight. That dress hung on her.

The legs beneath that dress were not so bad, though, he mused as his gaze landed there.

He knew damn well she hadn’t forgotten him, even if it had been more than eleven years since he’d seen her. If nothing else, the sheer terror in her eyes when she’d recognized him had given her away.

She delivered his breakfast without looking him in the eye, letting the heavy white plate laden with eggs and grits and biscuits land on the table too hard. His check followed, slapped onto the table near the edge. He mumbled a polite thanks and let her walk away. Whatever happened to forgive and forget?