The Survivor

BESS CANTRELL OBSERVED the mutinous look on her assistant’s face and heaved an internal sigh of frustration. In addition to everything else that was going wrong, she did not need Elsie’s drama. But if she hadn’t wanted drama, she should have never kept on the spotty psychic/occasional nudist/full-time pain in the ass as her help after her grandfather died.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Elsie predicted. “You never listen to me, but you’re going to wish you did this time. I know I’m not always spot-on—”

Bess gave a mental eye roll. “You mean like the time you told me that you saw me taking a beach vacation and the pipes burst beneath the kitchen sink?”

“—but I’m telling you, this time—”

Bess tidied her client list once again, then slipped it into a folder. “Or the time you told me that you saw me having a hot night of passion with the UPS man and the next day his face was on the front page of the paper for setting a warehouse ablaze?”

Elsie’s papery cheeks flushed, but she continued on. “Be that as it may, I have a terrible, terrible feeling that you’re going to get—”

Bess heaved a deep sigh. “Or the time you told me that I shouldn’t go to the grocery store on Lentil, to go to one on Hillengrove because you were certain that the one on Lentil was going to have some sort of trouble, and I went to Hillengrove and was held hostage for over an hour while the store was being burgled?”

“I got those two confused!” Elsie finally exploded, her dark penciled eyebrows winging up her forehead. “My sight isn’t perfect! How many times do I have to explain that to you? But the point is I was right about something terrible happening.” She grimaced primly. “I merely got the store wrong,” she said, as if this little detail didn’t signify.

And in Elsie’s mind, it didn’t.

Bess looked out the storefront and continued to wait for the agent Brian Payne, one of her good clients, was sending over. She didn’t have any idea how much his services actually cost—and would have been more than willing to pay—but Brian had insisted on trading the service out. As such, she was going to be on the lookout for anything she thought he might be interested in. Over the years he’d bought everything from old lighting fixtures to antique clear gas pumps. He had eclectic taste and had been a good customer.

When the police had failed to give her any true hope of catching the person who’d stolen her hard drive and was now in the process of harassing her clients, Brian had been the first person she’d thought of. She’d had no idea that the book in the picture had actually been a Wicked Bible and, furthermore, had had no idea that a thing like that even existed. But given that Brian had told her he knew of one that had gone for a hundred grand at auction recently, she could certainly understand the appeal.

Elsie released a self-suffering sigh. “You aren’t going to listen to me, are you?” she said, frowning tragically. “I have this sight—this gift,” she continued with a theatrical wave toward the sky. “And you are going to go about your mulish, headstrong ways.” She harrumphed. “You are just like your grandfather. Always have been, even when you were just a wee thing.”

“Thank you,” Bess said, even though she knew Elsie didn’t exactly mean it as a compliment. She’d loved her grandfather to utter distraction and had appreciated everything about him. She’d lost him three years ago and there wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t miss him terribly. Her father had died in a car wreck when she was seven and her mother, racked with grief, had taken her own life a year later on the anniversary of his death. Officially orphaned then, she’d moved in with her grandfather—a widower himself—and had been with him ever since. So had Elsie, for that matter, which was no small reason why Bess didn’t let her go and hire someone more competent. But Elsie tried and, though there had never been anything romantic between the older woman and her grandfather, she’d been the closest thing to a grandmother Bess had ever had. Since she’d always collected odd things, Elsie fit in perfectly.

Her grandfather’s house was hers now, of course, and Bess had renovated it more to her liking, but there were certain things she hadn’t been able to touch. His tobacco stand still sat next to his old leather tufted wingback chair and the small needle-point footstool was still stationed in front of it, waiting for a pair of aching feet. She grinned.

Usually hers.

They’d made quite a pair, she and her grandfather. Though he hadn’t told her until much, much later, she hadn’t spoken at all for the first year after her mother had committed suicide. She’d nod or shake her head and occasionally cry, but she hadn’t talked and she hadn’t smiled. Rather than send her back to school before she was ready, he’d homeschooled her instead and, though he’d tried to reintroduce her to public school later, she’d become so distraught he’d refused to make her go.

Beyond second grade she hadn’t set foot in a classroom until she’d gone to college, and even then she would have rather been tutored by her grandfather. Frankly, her education would have been better. She’d learned the Classics at his knee, could read bits of Latin and knew more about the solar system than the general population. He’d taught her Roman and Greek mythology, had taken her to almost every major battlefield in the continental U.S. and had made history so alive for her, it was a passion she still had today.

They’d ride the back roads of the South “picking,” as he liked to call it, and he’d drill her on various mathematical theorems and throw out famous quotes and expect her to know them, based on all the biographies he’d wanted her to read. “I cannot live in a world without books” had been one of his favorites. Thomas Jefferson, she remembered.

Her grandfather had wanted her to have the degree in the event she ever decided to do anything besides “rescue history,” picking through old barns and houses for people’s “junk,” though she abhorred that term. Nothing was ever junk in her opinion. Everything had value and purpose.

To the illiterate eye her place was probably a catchall for useless items, but to Bess it was a cache of things that had almost been lost. She was holding on to them for safekeeping until they could be sold and passed on to someone who would appreciate them.

“I can see you’ve made your mind up,” Elsie continued, her nostrils flaring.

The luggage next to the door had probably “told” her that, Bess thought, squashing a smile.

“I have. Brian is sending someone over to keep watch on the store so you’ll be safe, and I’ll have my cell if anything comes up while I’m off with the additional agent.” She sent her a harsh look. “And by ‘comes up’ I mean a legitimate issue, not any premonitions, you understand.”

Elsie tsked and shook her head. “Poor Nostradamus,” she said. “I have an inkling right now how he must have felt.”

Bess smothered a snort. “Just cover the store and handle the auctions, please. Hopefully we’ll be able to take care of this relatively quickly.”

Where was the agent anyway? The longer it took them to get on the road, the more time the asshole who was terrorizing her clients had to get ahead of them. One of the advantages she and the agent would have was that Bess knew which clients were ones she’d sold stuff to and which clients she’d bought things from. The would-be thief was drawing from a master list and had been going to see both, and he was working in a pretty direct line, moving from place to place. If he kept to this pattern, then they should be able to catch up with him.

Initially Brian had tried to talk her out of going along, as well, but he soon gave that thought up. These were her clients, with whom she had credibility, and it was her foolish mistake that had put them all in jeopardy.

To be fair, it was her practice to take pictures on-site, particularly if the piece was going to be something she’d put up for auction online. It was faster to do it that way and it made the process a whole lot simpler. She’d come in from the road, upload the photos, write the descriptions and activate the auction. If things needed a bit more cleaning up before selling, she’d do that once she got back to the store, but for the most part, her clientele didn’t care if something was “clean.” Like her, they could look at it and see the potential. Furthermore, collectors weren’t as picky.

If only she could remember where she’d gotten that Coca-Cola sign, Bess thought for what had to have been the millionth time. She’d racked her brain, had gone through everything she’d had on auction during that time, and could not recall where she’d gotten the sign. It could have been someone she regularly visited or someone she’d never picked before. If she saw promise—barns, old buildings, rusty cars and bicycles in the yard—she’d stop and do a cold call. She always kept a record of what she bought, but the truth was she’d bought dozens of Coca-Cola signs—the brand was highly collectible—and it could have come from any one of those places.

Luckily she’d been in the process of trying to organize those records and had off-loaded them onto her laptop, so the—she was just going to call him Bastard—didn’t have access to them.

And really, without those particular records, Bastard was looking for a needle in a haystack. She took a mild amount of satisfaction from that.

“Ooo, I think he’s here,” Elsie murmured, peering out the window. She patted her extremely teased hair and moistened her heavily painted lips. “That has to be him. Nice khakis, black cable-knit sweater—you know how I love a cable-knit sweater on a man.” She gasped. “And, oh, look! He’s brought a dog!”

He had, Bess thought, watching covertly off to one side of Elsie, who was positioned behind the counter. While she would have ordinarily been more interested in the animal than the man, it was the man that held her attention right now.

Mercy.

Bess sucked in a shallow breath as every hair on her body suddenly prickled with goose bumps. Her heart galloped into overdrive and her mouth instantly parched, forcing her to swallow. She felt a bizarre sort of tug behind her navel and then a swirl of heat slid into her belly and settled there, making her more aware of the warmth than was strictly comfortable.

He was big and broad-shouldered with dark brown hair that was more swept to the side than styled, and the way that it clung to his head made her want to slide her hands through it, to see if it was as sleek as it looked. He had a face that was incredibly masculine—broad planes and angles, a nose that had been broken at least once—but an especially full mouth that gave him a slightly boyish quality, one she instinctively imagined he resented.

But the mouth was…incredible. She licked her own lips as she stared at his and wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to feel his lips against hers. Her nipples beaded behind her bra and she released a small sigh and leaned closer to the window.

As Elsie had pointed out, he wore khakis that showcased long legs, a narrow waist and, from the side anyway, an ass that was nice and tight. The sweater stretched over a pair of heavily muscled shoulders, clung to an equally muscled chest and basically let a woman know that there was a rock-hard, beautifully maintained body beneath the clothes. The only part of him that she couldn’t truly see were his eyes, which were hidden behind a pair of designer aviator sunglasses she desperately wished weren’t in the way. I bet he has brown eyes, Bess thought, imagining a warm dark chocolate with long sooty lashes.

He opened the car door and clipped a leash to the dog, a blond mutt of questionable origins, but pretty all the same, and the animal leaped down onto the pavement. He scoped both ends of the sidewalk before studying the storefront and she watched his lips—that sinfully carnal mouth—twist with something akin to humor, but not as kind. A pinprick of disappointment nicked her heart, but she shrugged it off. Just because he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life didn’t mean he was going to be any different from the rest.

Sad, that, she thought, because her reaction to him had certainly been different from previous reactions to any man she’d ever seen in print, in person or in film.

She got the impression that he’d taken one look at her business, gotten her measure and had already—even though he hadn’t met her yet—found her lacking.

The bell over the door tinkled as he walked in and he went immediately to the counter, stuck out his hand and introduced himself. He’d removed the sunglasses along the way, but to her irritation, she couldn’t get a good look at his eyes. “Lex Sanborn, Ms. Cantrell,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Elsie, who was hardly what one would call a wall-flower, smiled brightly at him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” she said, lowering her voice to a husky purr à la Lana Turner.

Bess smothered a snort and then had to cover her hand with her mouth when she caught Lex’s temporarily transfixed expression. Evidently he was picturing going on the road with a lusty senior citizen intent on making him her boy toy. After the look he’d given her shop, he could just keep that image, Bess thought, and stayed out of view.

He tried to withdraw his hand, but Elsie clung firm. She had closed her eyes, evidently going into one of her psychic trances. She murmured a nonsensical noise and gave a delicate shudder. “You came very close, didn’t you?” she said.

Lex gave an uneasy laugh. “I’m sorry?”

Elsie patted the top of his hand and, when she opened her eyes, her expression was strangely warm and sad. “But it wasn’t your time.”

Some of the color leached from his face and the dog nuzzled his leg as though picking up on a shift in its master’s mood. “Er…if you’re ready, we should probably get going.”

Bess frowned, puzzled over his reaction, and shot a look at Elsie, who seemed to have wilted against the stool behind the counter. The older woman very rarely looked her age—on purpose—but at the moment she seemed every one of her seventy-five years. What had happened? Bess wondered.

Elsie finally seemed to snap out of whatever had a hold of her. “Go? Go where?”

Lex smiled uncertainly. “After the man who has stolen your hard drive and is harassing your customers,” he reminded her, and it was obvious he thought she was a touch senile.

Elsie chuckled. “Oh, I’m not going,” she told him, as if he were the one who was confused.

He blinked. “You’re not?”

“No, Bess is,” she explained.

He gave his head a shake. “You’re not Bess?”

Elsie positively cackled with laughter. “Goodness, no,” she said. “But I wouldn’t mind being her for a few days,” she confided with a wink and, though Elsie’s comment was wasted on Lex, Bess knew it was in reference to her youth. Elsie often accused her of “squandering” it with old junk, cable internet and reality television, which was hardly fair when she’d caught Elsie watching Real Housewives, as well.

Elsie looked past Lex’s shoulder and he instinctively turned around.

“I’m Bess,” she said, coming forward. His gaze slammed into hers and, though she knew it was impossible, she practically floated the rest of the way across the room, tugged inexplicably by the pull of his stare. She felt a smile drift over her lips and released a slow steady breath.

Mystery solved, she thought.

His eyes were blue. And she was drowning.

3

HE COULDN’T HAVE BEEN more stunned if he’d been knocked over the head with a frying pan, Lex thought as he watched the woman come toward him.

In the first place, she was young. As in not old. Or not as old as he’d assumed she would be, at any rate. He struggled to get a handle on this change of events. Just a second ago he’d been certain he’d walked into his worst nightmare, a geriatric cougar bent on hunting him the entire trip.

In the second place, she was beautiful. Not mildly attractive or merely pretty.

Bess Cantrell was beautiful.

She had long wavy auburn hair and big green eyes that tilted upward at the corners, giving her an exotic edge. Curly lashes framed those compelling eyes, especially high cheekbones carved lovely hollows beneath them, and her nose was small and finely made. She had the clearest, smoothest skin he’d ever seen, and though he’d never understood the phrase “porcelain complexion,” he did now. The mouth that tied this all together was lush and bow-shaped and curled just so on the upper lip to make one think she was enjoying a bit of a private joke. At your expense.

She was petite and very curvy, probably carrying more weight than was currently fashionable, but he’d never liked a scrawny girl. He’d always imagined sex with a so-called supermodel would be like bedding a praying mantis. Sorry, not for him. He preferred the soft womanly frame of the old Hollywood stars—the pinup girls circa WWII—and this girl would have been right at home on the nose of a B-52.

The private joke he’d caught between his employers now made perfect sense and he felt his own lips twist with belated humor. A warning would have been nice, but wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable for them. Sneaky bastards. Perversely, he liked them even more now than he did before.

Bess shook his hand, the small touch resonating to the soles of his feet, then leaned forward and spoke in conspiratorial undertones. “I hope I’m the lesser of two evils,” she said with a tiny significant jerk of her head toward the woman behind the counter. Her voice was light and musical with a husky finish that put him in mind of tangled sheets and naked skin.

Hers specifically.

Lex smiled. He wasn’t touching that loaded remark with a ten-foot pole. “Lex Sanborn,” he said. “With Ranger Security.”

She nodded. “Bess Cantrell. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Her gaze dropped down to his dog and her naturally pink tinted lips slid into a friendly grin. “And who is this?”

“Honey,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind that I’ve brought her along.”

“Not at all,” she said. “She’s a pretty dog.” She dropped down to face Honey and held her hand out so that the animal could get a sniff. Honey looked up at him, evidently seeking approval, and, at his nod, she nosed Bess’s palm. The ice broken, Bess petted her head and scratched her behind the ears. “Ahhh,” she said, grinning at the animal. “You like that, do you? You’re a good girl.” She was completely at ease talking to the dog. Some people weren’t, which he thought was odd. He’d always found it easier to get along with animals than people, a fact he’d forgotten until he’d found Honey.

Bess stood again and looked up at him. “So we’d better be going then?”

He nodded, annoyed that she’d had to remind him and not the other way around. What the hell was wrong with him? It’s not like he’d never seen a beautiful woman. Not like he hadn’t been with more than a few actually. So what was it about this one that had made him forget himself already? What was it about this one that had his balls tightening and his chest in knots? After less than thirty seconds in her company?

Bess went over and hugged the woman behind the counter. “I’ll check in often, Elsie, and call me if something important comes up.” She lingered purposely over the “important” part, leading him to believe that the bizarre Elsie was prone to contacting her about things that weren’t. Given what he’d observed in the minute he’d known Elsie, he could see where that would definitely have been the case. When she’d refused to release his hand and made the you’ve-come-close remark, he’d gotten the strangest sensation that the older woman had been peering directly into his brain, picking his secrets out, leaving him more than a little unnerved.

His gaze slid to Bess once more and lingered over her ripe rear end. Most definitely the lesser of two evils, he thought.

“Of course,” Elsie said with an innocent bat of her lashes.

“And you’ll feed Severus for me?”

“Every morning and afternoon to make sure that his blood sugar stays normal.” She snorted. “And cats are supposed to be low-maintenance pets.”

Bess smiled gratefully at the older woman. “Thanks, Elsie. You’re a peach.” She turned to face him once again and then headed toward the door and picked up an overnight bag. “I’m ready when you are.”

He hurried forward and took the bag from her hand, then opened the door for her, making the effort to remember that he was a gentleman and had been taught common courtesies.

“I could have gotten that,” she said. “Believe me, I’m used to carrying things a lot heavier.”

He imagined so. Nevertheless, he’d do the heavy lifting on this trip. He opened the car door for her and tried not to watch the way the denim clung to her luscious heart-shaped ass as she slipped into the passenger seat. Muttering a plea for self-restraint, he stored her bag in the back of the SUV next to his, then helped Honey into the backseat and unclipped her leash.

“She’s going to hate me for riding shotgun, isn’t she?” Bess remarked, glancing back at his dog. He loved the way her hair curved along her sleek jaw, over her shoulders and around one breast. It was sexy and sensual and utterly effortless on her part, which naturally made it all the more appealing. His dick stirred behind his zipper, forcing him to shift into a more comfortable position. This was so not good, Lex thought as he slid the key into the ignition and started the car. He looked over his shoulder and then pulled out into traffic, belatedly realizing that he had no idea where they were going. In retrospect, he should have gone over that with her before leaving the store.

Too late now.

Not off to a very auspicious start, Lex thought, feeling more and more out of control.

“She’ll be fine,” he said, finally answering her question about the dog. “Payne brought me up to speed on what is going on and mentioned that your thief has been moving from one address to the next closest. Is this correct?” There, he thought. That sounded semiprofessional.

“It is,” she confirmed. She pulled a paper from a folder she’d had in her bag and consulted it for a moment. “Based on the address of the last incident he should be going down toward Waycross.”

“Waycross?”

“Yes, if he’s continuing to the next closest address. I figure he’ll stay within Georgia before going toward Mississippi, Tennessee or the Carolinas.”

He felt his eyes widen. Good grief, he’d had no idea they could potentially be covering that kind of ground, much less that in her quest for junk she covered that kind of ground. Had Payne left that little tidbit out of the briefing? Lex wondered, or had he just missed it?

“Have you alerted your clients in Waycross?” he asked, trying to quickly pull together a plan.

“Client,” she corrected. “And yes I have. Gus has been put on alert, knows that I haven’t sent anyone as my representative and he doesn’t have anything remotely resembling the book. He’s armed, and if anyone comes up on his property and doesn’t heed him, they’re liable to get the shock of their lives.”

“Sounds like this guy needs it,” Lex remarked with a grunt. “Have you had breakfast?”

She blinked, seemingly confused by the sudden subject change. “Breakfast?”

“First meal of the day,” he said. “From the late Middle English breakfast, meaning to break one’s fast.”

“I know what it is,” she said, shooting him an exasperated smile. “But thanks for the etymology lesson all the same.”

He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t enough to know what a word meant, he wanted to know where it had come from, as well. He was an avid crossword fan and he found that knowing a word’s origin often helped him figure things out. He’d picked the habit up from his grandfather, who’d also been in the service, and had been working them ever since.

“Well?” he pressed.

She looked confused again, as though they weren’t having the same conversation. “Well what?”

He chuckled. “Have you had breakfast?”

She grinned. “I have, actually, but if you haven’t, then I certainly don’t mind watching you eat.”