Smoky Mountain Setup. Paula Graves
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I have to.” She sounded sincere enough, even to her own skeptical ears. But her heart wasn’t nearly as sure.
She’d loved him once, as much as she’d ever loved anyone in her whole life. Hell, maybe she still did.
If he tried to leave, would she really pull the trigger to stop him from fleeing?
“You won’t shoot me,” he said softly. “At least, that’s what I want to keep believing. So I won’t put you in that position.”
“You’ll turn yourself in?”
He frowned. “I’d rather not. At least, not yet. There’s a lot I still need to tell you before you’ll understand exactly what we’re up against and why.”
“What we’re up against?”
He nodded. “I have to assume someone at that bank in Barrowville will remember the name Cade Landry. And why it’s so memorable. They’ll call the authorities to report my visit to the bank. And like you said, it won’t take long for them to connect us. We were partners, Olivia.” He moved toward her, walking with slow, sure deliberation. “Lovers.”
His voice lowered to a sensual rumble, bringing back a flood of memories she’d spent two years trying to excise from her brain. “Don’t.”
“It’s too late to undo it, Livvie. I took a risk coming here, and maybe I shouldn’t have.” He came to a stop just a few inches from where she stood, and she made herself remain in place, though the pounding pulse in her ears seemed to plead for her to run as far and as fast as she could.
Losing him once had nearly unraveled her. If she let him back into her heart—into her bed—again...
“I said I was working with the Blue Ridge Infantry, and that’s the truth. But it’s only part of it.” His hand came up slowly until his fingertips brushed her jawline, sending a shiver of sexual awareness jolting through her. “Did you know they were targeting The Gates?”
She swallowed with difficulty. “Of course. We’ve been trying to bring them down since Quinn first opened the doors of The Gates.”
“I’m not on their side, Olivia. That’s not what I meant by working with them—” He stopped midsentence, his head coming up suddenly. It took a moment for Olivia to hear what he’d obviously heard—a car engine moving up the road toward her cabin.
Landry moved away from her and crossed to her front window, sliding the curtains open an inch.
“Could be a neighbor,” she said quietly, suddenly afraid he was going to bolt, even though a few minutes earlier, she’d been hoping he’d leave and not look back.
It was just curiosity, she told herself, the need to know what he’d been starting to tell her about his connection to the BRI. It certainly had nothing to do with the way her jaw still tingled where he’d touched her or the quickened pace of her heart whenever she looked his way.
“They’re stopping here,” he said bluntly, turning back to look at her. She saw fear in his eyes, raw and wild, and realized she had only a few seconds to keep him from doing something reckless.
She pushed past him and looked through the curtains. The truck that had stopped outside her house was a familiar but, under the circumstances, not exactly welcome sight. “It’s Alexander Quinn.”
Landry groaned. “Your boss.”
She looked at him, wondering how much he knew about Quinn. “You said you’re not on the BRI’s side. Neither is Quinn. If you know anything about The Gates, you have to know that.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s going to turn a blind eye to the warrants out for my arrest.”
“You might be surprised.”
He shook his head and picked up his duffel bag. “I’m going out the back. Just give me a head start.”
She caught his arm as he started past her, not letting go even when he tried to tug free of her grasp. “Don’t run. Not yet. My bedroom is through that doorway. First room on the right. Let me find out what Quinn wants.”
Landry stared at her as if he were trying to read all the way through to her soul. Finally, the sound of footsteps on the front porch spurred him into action. He went through the doorway and veered right into her bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Olivia took a deep breath just as Quinn knocked.
Showtime.
* * *
HER ROOM SMELLED like Olivia, that half-sweet, half-tart scent he’d never been able to identify as anything other than her own unique essence. For a few seconds all he could do was breathe, fill his lungs with that scent, store it away for another drought like the two years they’d been apart since he’d left Richmond—and Olivia—behind.
The bedroom was small and sparsely furnished—a bed, a chest of drawers and a small trunk at the foot of the bed. The bedding was simple and neat—two pillows in pale blue cotton cases, sheets that matched and a thick quilt that looked handmade.
Despite the tension running through him like currents of electricity, despite the muted sound of the door knock just a room away, Landry couldn’t stop himself from smiling. It faded quickly, but the flicker of sentiment remained—she hadn’t really changed in the past two years if she was still decorating with handmade quilts.
She made the quilts herself, a secret she’d kept from her fellow FBI agents with the ferocity of a mother bear guarding her den. “If you ever tell anyone about this,” she’d sworn when she’d finally let him in on her secret, “I will hunt you down and kill you.”
The sound of voices drifted down the hallway. The rumble of a male voice, barely discernible, followed by Olivia’s alto drawl.
“New bike?” the male voice asked.
“Picked it up at a yard sale,” Olivia answered.
Landry pressed his ear to the door, trying to hear the conversation more clearly.
“It’s a man’s bike,” Quinn said in a tone that was deliberately nonchalant.
“I bought it from a man,” she answered, a shrug in her voice. “Women’s bikes are usually too small for a woman my height.”
Good save, Landry thought.
“I got a call from Daughtry,” Quinn said, still sounding like someone making small talk. “He said you got a hit on some bank account you’d asked him to monitor.”
“That man doesn’t know the meaning of honeymoon, does he?” Olivia laughed softly, but Landry heard the faint strain of tension behind her words.
Did Quinn hear it, too?
“One of the reasons I hired him,” Quinn answered. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
Still as smart-mouthed as ever, Landry thought.
“Whose account did you ask him to monitor?”
“Mine,” she replied. “I’ve been noticing some discrepancies in my bank statement, so I thought maybe someone had hacked my password for that account. It’s not a lot of money, but still.”
“So there’s someone tapping into your account? Why didn’t you just change the password?”
“That would only stop them from accessing the account. I wanted to catch someone in the act.”
“Did you?”
“Maybe. I have some feelers out.”
Landry didn’t hear anything else for several long seconds, not even an unintelligible murmur that would suggest they’d merely lowered their voices. The silence was unnerving. If he couldn’t hear them, he had no