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Roxie pulled two loaves of raisin bread from the oven and glanced at the clock on her cell phone. She had just enough time to let these cool before she dropped them off at the historic society for their bake sale tonight.
The cinnamon aroma filled her house, making it seem like everything was all right. If she counted her blessings, she should be happy. Her Friends of the Museum group owned the property they’d identified for the museum. Her brother was charting his own future. Her sales for the month were decent.
These were good things.
She pocketed her cell phone and squeezed her eyes shut momentarily against the negative things. The Sloan things. Everyone had warned her about him, but she’d ignored their advice. She’d thought she knew best, but he’d turned her world on end.
No. She wasn’t wasting more time mooning over what might have been. Taking a deep breath, she marched outside, turning on the hose and staring defiantly at the shadows dappling her yard.
The now familiar twinge of dread whispered across her spine. She whipped her head around, scanning for trouble, cataloguing the images. Miss Daisy parked in the drive. Her browning lawn. The overgrown lot next door. Four flickering fireflies. An empty Prospect Street.
No one.
No guns either.
Damn.
She was losing her mind. Adults weren’t scared of the dark. She had too much living to do to be governed by fear.
A dog would help. A dog could warn her of danger. A dog like Mac. Images of Mac and Sloan filled her head. Coldly, she banished them.
She narrowed the spray nozzle to reach the distant camellia bushes.
“Bitch! You ruined everything!” a woman screamed.
Heart thudding, Roxie whirled. Andrea Albert was running straight at her. She carried a rifle. Acting on instinct, Roxie aimed the hose at her, the bullet-like spray striking Andrea in the face.
Andrea screamed and sputtered. She shook her head in fury.
Roxie kept the hose trained on the angry woman. She couldn’t shoot straight if she couldn’t see. “Get off my property.”
“Die, bitch.” The rifle pointed in her direction.
Roxie dropped the hose and dove forward on the ground. The gun roared over her head, shattering the clothesline post. She grabbed Andrea’s ankles and yanked hard. The woman hit the ground hard, the rifle falling beside her.
With a longer reach, Roxie shoved the gun away and sat on the squirming woman. Water from the hose sprayed over them.
“You can’t have my life!” Andrea raged. “My dad loves me. He promised to take care of me. You brainwashed him, turned him against me.”
“Andrea! Calm down! I don’t want your life.”
“You made my dad sick. You stole my inheritance. They’re mine. I snuck into his lockbox before he died and saw what you’d done. You made him change his will. Now you have to pay for stealing what belongs to me.”
“I didn’t steal anything! Stop this crazy talk, Andrea!”
Andrea bucked underneath her. “You and your damn real estate company. You flooded the market with too many sellers and chased the buyers away. You took my dad. You stole my inheritance. You ruined everything.”
Roxie grunted with the effort of keeping Andrea pinned to the ground. Time to call Laurie Ann. She fished her wet cell phone out of her pocket, relayed the request for assistance to Jocelyn at Dispatch, and hung up. “I’m sorry your father is dead,” she said to Andrea, still squirming beneath her. “I miss him, too.”
Andrea started flailing at Roxie again. “You can’t fool me. You’re a greedy opportunist. You exploit innocent people like my dad. You make people do things against their will. You conned my dad. You conned this town. You’ve been all over the world conning people. I know what you did. You caused global warming. You have to die.”
Global warming? Oh, dear. Roxie realized part of Andrea’s problem and moved to secure Andrea’s thin wrists. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt me. You’re nothing. A nobody who consorts with street trash. I saw you kiss that vampire Harding boy right after he had that mattress delivered to his house. I hope he bleeds you dry.”
Sirens wailed in the distance as dusk descended. Roxie just had to hang on a bit longer. “Help is on the way, Andrea,” she said between grunts of exertion as she struggled to hold onto Andrea. Was this what cops had to deal with when holding down criminals? Roxie was grateful the woman wasn’t someone who gained superhuman strength during a psychotic episode. “It will be all right.”
Andrea seemed to soften beneath her. “Don’t you understand? Nothing is all right. The trees have eyes. They see everything. They’re watching us now. Don’t you feel it?”
Roxie shuddered. The dusk was thickening like fog on the marsh. “Help is on the way,” she repeated, needing to hear it as much as Andrea.
A car pulled in her drive, blue lights flashing. Another followed. Headlights illuminated Roxie and Andrea, soaking wet and tussling on the ground.
Laurie Ann raced over. “What happened?”
Roxie released Andrea’s wrists. “She charged me with the rifle over there.”
“Andrea?” Laurie Ann shined her light in the thin woman’s face.
“The trees have eyes. The trees have eyes,” Andrea sang.
Officer Rusty Trumple retrieved the rifle. Officer Joe Dandy lifted Roxie off Andrea. “We got this,” he said.
Andrea scrambled onto all fours and scurried toward the road. Joe picked her up in his arms. “You’re safe now, hon. The trees can’t get you.”
Roxie shivered against the night air. “She’s crazy. She said I made her dad sick, that I turned him against her. She blames me for the crappy economy and global warming.”
“We’ll get her to the hospital for a psych evaluation.” Laurie Ann wrote down the sequence of events for her report.
“Test the rifle,” Roxie said. “I believe she shot at us in the rice canal.”
“She admitted that?”
“No. But she said Sloan is a vampire.”
“Gracious. We’ll get her sorted out. With any luck we can stop the extra patrols on Prospect with her in custody.” Laurie Ann nodded toward the house. “Grab a few things. You’re coming home with me.”
“I don’t need kid glove treatment.”
“Yeah. You do. You just got shot at, Roxie, and subdued your shooter. Shut up and do as I say or I’ll call your Mama, no matter what continent she’s on.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A week later Sloan sauntered through the rooms of his Mossy Bog house, his dog padding softly at his side. The dark wooden floors gleamed with glossy polyurethane, and the entire house looked brand new. Custard yellow paint brightened the walls.
Roxie’s favorite color.
Mac waited at the base of the attic stairs, while Sloan checked the underside of his new roof. The last three days of constant rainfall had flooded low lying areas of the coast, but his attic was bone dry. He shone his flashlight around the unfinished space, pleased to see his granddad’s old trunk in its former resting place under the eaves.
As he strode to the kitchen, he noticed how fresh and clean the house smelled, how every room felt warm and inviting. This cozy place seemed like a different house entirely, a place for raising a family.
The thought put a sour taste in his mouth.
Hardings weren’t family men. Neither his father nor grandfather had stayed married for more than a year. He’d never considered marriage. There’d never been a woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. But coming back to Mossy Bog had changed him. The thought of marriage no longer repulsed him. It would be worth the risk with the right woman, a woman like Roxie.
Roxie Whitaker.
She probably couldn’t stand the sight of him. He’d hoped to see her at the office, but her associate said Roxie was out of the office. It had been fifteen days and three hours since he’d spoken to her. Two soul-searching weeks of him staring at the phone and wishing he’d said things better.
He’d replayed their last conversation in his head, analyzing the content. He wanted to find his inheritance. He’d made no secret of that. Matt Bolen’s journal proved her grandfather’s involvement. That damned fact had messed up everything. Roxie had yelled at him and hung up on him.
But she hadn’t broken their contract. So there was hope. Even though he’d left her three messages at the office that she hadn’t returned, she’d gotten the work on his house done.
He dreamed of her.
Night and day.
He couldn’t stop thinking how right she felt in his arms.
God, he was whipped.
Worse, her cold shoulder wasn’t unexpected. In truth, this relationship had followed an all too familiar pattern. It had been only a matter of time before the Harding stink bomb went off and she left him for good. Women didn’t stick to Hardings.
He was screwed, no matter how he looked at it.
The plumber’s cell phone warbled, slicing through the stillness of the mostly unfurnished house. Sloan drifted toward the downstairs half-bath where Chuck Beard was installing the new pedestal sink.
“Our girl’s in trouble.” Chuck clipped his phone to his drooping tool belt.
The plumber packed up his gear. Sloan glanced at his watch. Three in the afternoon. He’d trained for the wrong career. Contractors made their own hours. But Roxie had taught him not to be confrontational with them. At least in Mossy Bog. “You leaving?”
Chuck nodded, lines etched into his grizzled face. “Emergency call at three oh eight Prospect Street.”
Roxie’s address.
Sloan’s heart stalled. “What kind of trouble?”
“City water main broke. I gotta get over there and pump out Miss Roxie’s house.” The plumber frowned. “For years, I tried to get Lavinia to do something about that ground level foundation but she insisted there was no need. Now her granddaughter’s paying for her stubbornness.”
Roxie was in trouble.
Adrenaline sluiced through Sloan’s veins. Even if she didn’t want him, he had to help her. He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t.
He locked his house, then he and Mac jogged down the backyard path to Roxie’s. Smelly water covered his shoes as he splashed along the wooded path. Sirens shrilled through the damp afternoon. An ambulance? Was Roxie hurt?
He shot a rusty prayer up to heaven. “Please, let her be okay.”
The knee-deep water slowed his momentum. Beside him, Mac leapt like a galloping pony through the shallow pond of Roxie’s yard. Sloan pushed forward one leg at a time. Flashing blue lights flickered beside her house. Heart in his throat, he scanned the scene. Where was she?
“Roxie!” he yelled.
***
WHO WAS HOLLERING FOR her now?
Lord. Didn’t she have enough trouble without someone else melting down? Roxie had no compassion to spare. Not one drop of sympathy or patience for a single soul. Worse, she was so damned tired.
She sloshed through the knee-deep water, dodging floating chairs, the sheriff, and the fire chief to get to the front door. After spending a sleepless few nights at Laurie Ann Dinterman’s she might have been safe, but she wasn’t comfortable. Still, she wished Laurie Ann hadn’t driven her mom to the doctor in Jacksonville today. At least Laurie Ann wouldn’t look at her like she’d caused this mess. Sloan appeared, his broad shoulders blocking the thin sunlight from the room.
Breath stalled in her lungs. Her internal engine revved, causing a surge in energy. “Sloan.”
He looked thinner, gaunter. She made herself breathe. With effort, she found her voice and good sense. “Didn’t Megan give you the invoice? I can’t go over it right now. Could we meet later if you need to discuss it?”
His Adam’s apple wobbled. “The invoice is fine. I heard you had trouble over here.”
She nodded and drew in a shallow breath. “The city water main broke.”
Mac pushed his head into Roxie’s hand. “Hey, sweetie.”
“I’m here to help,” Sloan said. “What can I do?”
His intensity hadn’t lessened in two weeks. She clutched the doorjamb for support. Sloan was here. To help her.
But he’d called Pop Pop a thief. Pop Pop was family. Family stuck together.
No matter what.
“Mr. Beard will pump out the house,” she said evenly. “There’s nothing else to do at this point.”
A city crew circled the gushing fire hydrant by the street. The fire chief and the sheriff trooped out of her house, water lapping at their knees. “Get the water pumped out. We’ve shut off your electrical current,” the fire chief said.
A white panel truck pulled up, and Roxie heaved a sigh of relief. “No problem. Here comes my plumber now.”
Sloan followed Mr. Beard into the flooded house. Since when did Sloan become a plumber’s assistant? She snorted at the very idea.
Out in the yard, metal clanked against metal. The sound of rushing water ceased. There was a beat of silence, then a cheer went up from the city crew.
Finally.
No more gallons of water per minute were pouring into her house. With the leak capped, the water level would drop.
Why had her granddad built this house on the lowest part of the property? For a smart guy, he’d made a pretty big mistake when he sited the house.
“Sheriff?” The city crew chief waved Sheriff Gator Parnell over.
Curious, Roxie followed. As she listened to the conversation and studied the fire hydrant, an icy sensation chilled her heart. She turned to the sheriff. “Someone did this on purpose?”
“Jonesy is certain the thing didn’t blow,” Gator said. “The bolt threads are intact. Someone tampered with the hydrant.”
“Why? Why would someone do that?”
“Don’t rightly know. First the break in, now this. Anybody got it in for you? Any real estate deals gone sour?”
“No, of course not. Except for Andrea Albert who tried to shoot me a few days ago, but she’s locked up in a psych unit somewhere.”
“The guys at the American Legion told me about Andrea’s meltdown. She always was a few dimes short of a dollar.” Gator jerked a thumb toward her flooded house. “You got any valuables in there?”
Roxie heard someone sloshing over to them. Sloan’s unmistakable scent reached her. She ignored him. “My belongings are valuable for sentimental reasons. I don’t own expensive things. I don’t understand this at all.”
“Did you hear anyone outside before the water rose?” Gator asked.
“I was cooking in the kitchen. The first hint I had of anything wrong was seeing the water on the floor. It seeped under the front door and flowed down the hall to the kitchen. I glanced out the window, saw the gushing fire hydrant, and called for help.”
“Damn.” Gator scratched his head. “I was afraid of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ll be running extra patrols down Prospect again until we figure this out.”
“Again?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sloan nod his approval. Ice shot through her veins. Had he heard about the shooting? “Am I in danger?”
“Could be. Best to be aware of that possibility. My gut says this vandalism isn’t a personal threat. Just in case, you got a place you can stay tonight?”
“I thought I’d stay here. My upstairs is fine.”
“You might feel more comfortable staying with a friend. Even if Beard gets this place pumped out, it needs to dry out before you turn the power back on.”
Roxie was done staying with friends. She needed some sleep. “I don’t want to leave. This is my home.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her, sheriff,” Sloan said.
Roxie’s face heated. “That’s not necessary.”
A look of understanding passed between the men. Gator studied Sloan. “You got this?”
Sloan nodded and sloshed off to help Mr. Beard with another hose. Irritation simmered in Roxie’s blood. “I don’t need a babysitter. For goodness sake.”
Gator pocketed his notebook. “Keep your cell phone handy and lock your doors. Call me if you have even a hint of trouble.”
She nodded, in defeat, hugging her arms to her middle.
Numb.
She felt so numb. When was this nightmare going to end? First the breaking and entering, then the identity theft, Andrea shooting at her not once, but twice, and now this. Someone had done this on purpose. Someone had done all of it on purpose.
Why?
She’d never hurt anyone.
The city crew, fire chief, and the sheriff departed. Mr. Beard, Sloan, and Sloan’s dog splashed out to Mr. Beard’s truck. A generator roared, and pump hoses inflated. With nothing to do, she sloshed back to the porch and sat on the wide rail.
A horrible thought occurred to her. Was Sloan in there scoping out her house for hidden wealth on the pretext of helping?
Not good. But she was grasping at straws. If she didn’t stop thinking about Sloan, she would end up with an ulcer. He was a former client now. Nothing more.
As the level of water in her yard dropped, her thoughts turned to cleaning up. Would she have to bleach her entire first floor? What would bleach do to the finish on her floor?
She wrinkled her nose at the pervasive stench. It smelled like a cross between rotting seaweed and skunk. Pungent and strong, penetrating in a noxious way. She didn’t own enough air freshener or candles to counter the magnitude of the stink.
It would be a long night.
Mr. Beard came out and stood beside her. “That’s all I can do, Sweet Pea. The generator will power the pumps until they run dry, then everything will automatically shut down. You don’t have to worry about them. Once we get past this emergency, you need to regrade this yard and install a drainage system.”
At least with business picking up, she could afford to fix this problem. She smiled at Mr. Beard. “Thanks, I’ll do that.”
Mr. Beard nodded and left. Sloan and Mac stayed put on her porch.
Awkward.
She fell back on good manners, hoping he wouldn’t remember that chat he’d had with the sheriff. “Thank you for your help.”
His lips quirked at the corners. She tensed. Was he laughing at her?
“I’m not finished helping yet,” Sloan said. “Pack a bag. You’ll stay at my place tonight.”
Stay with him? Out of the question. “I’ll be fine here. My second floor is bone dry. Thanks for the offer.”
He prowled closer. “Let me put it this way. If you don’t pack your own bag, Mac and I will go upstairs and pack for you. You’re coming home with us.”
His woodsy scent wafted up her nostrils, catching her off guard. She blinked in confusion, gripping her hands tightly on the railing. How was it possible to be spitting mad at Sloan and yearning to touch him at the same time? “If I choose to spend the night elsewhere, I’ll call a friend.”
He barred his arms across his chest. “I’m not leaving here without you.”
She quickly squashed her natural tendency to soothe his upset. Stay focused, Roxie. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m a concerned neighbor.”
Bossy was more like it. Stubborn. Authoritative. Dictatorial, even. “I don’t need your charity.”
“You don’t?” he growled, edging closer. “How do you think I felt knowing you and Lavinia took care of my yard for thirteen years? I didn’t want your charity, but I got it anyway. You can’t stay here. My place is clean as a whistle, thanks to you.”
Heat steamed off her face. Her act of service hurt him? She’d never considered that kindness could backfire.
Huh.
She tried to think of another plan but came up empty. Even Laurie Ann’s lumpy old rollaway was preferable to this, but Laurie Ann was out of town. Dave and Megan were visiting his brother’s family in Statesboro. She chewed her lip. If it were anyone but Sloan, she wouldn’t hesitate.
But Sloan was complicated.
“All right.” The words slipped out before she knew it.
The coiled tension in his frame eased. His dark eyes warmed and she blurted, “But I’m not sleeping with you.”
He propelled her toward her front door. “Message received. I’m the last person on earth that you want to see, but I’m taking care of you tonight. I owe you, Roxie, for all you’ve done for me. Let me help you.”
Her nervous system spiked when he touched her. A toxic brew of hormones rocketed through her body. Tempestuous winds roared, stirring the muddy waters of her emotions.
This was a very bad idea.
She ground her back teeth together. No diplomatic escape presented itself.
Camping out alone wasn’t her style. And someone had caused this flood on purpose. If she stayed here, she’d jump at shadows all night.
He opened the front door for her, and she stepped into the small foyer. Her house reeked of sewage. Filth covered her beautiful hardwood floors. Tears sprung up in her eyes.
Her home. Her private sanctuary.
She couldn’t face this disaster right now.
Going with Sloan would keep her mind off her terror. He had tried to contact her after that awful conversation, but she’d refused to return his calls.
She shivered and pulled herself together. “Okay. Pack up the contents of my refrigerator in those coolers on the counter while I throw some clothes in a suitcase. No sense in all that food going to waste and we’ll need dinner. We can take them over in Miss Daisy.”
For once, Sloan let her take the lead.