Operation: Reunited. Linda Johnston O.
Alexa gave an embellished version of what had happened in the store. She ached to flaunt her defiance, but that could be too dangerous. Instead, she acted defensive.
“He’s only planning to stay for a few days,” she lied. “I could hardly tell him to get lost right in front of Marian. I think she knows him.” Sure, that was a fib, but maybe it would fit the man into the group of outside guests whose presence Vane might accept. “It’ll be pleasant to have someone new stay with us for a little while.” She looked tellingly toward the mother and child as they walked toward the stores. “It’s an inn, for heaven’s sake,” she murmured under her breath. “Whatever is going on, surely it would be better for the place to continue to resemble a normal B & B.”
Vane was ten years older than Alexa’s thirty-one, but his features were youthful so he usually didn’t appear much older than she. Right now, though, his scowl made him look every bit his age.
She’d been wrong. He was going to make a scene, Alexa suddenly realized. Right here. Maybe he would even threaten her, as he did when they were alone.
She couldn’t deal with it. Not now. Not here.
Impulsively, she grabbed him and gave him as big a kiss as he had just given her. Stepping back, she forced herself to smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it because he worried her, and not because she otherwise regretted what she had done. “I won’t do it again without consulting you. But I think it’s a good thing, to make the inn look as busy as it used to.”
“We’ll see,” Vane said. “Now get in the car.”
Alexa turned and opened the vehicle’s door. This was one command—of too, too many—that she would obey.
WHAT THE HELL had he expected? Cole Rappaport watched through the windshield while that little scene played out, his hands fisted on the steering wheel of the luxury car he had borrowed for this assignment.
Alexa and Vane.
Oh, he had known the facts before he’d gotten here. They owned that inn together. They were engaged—the woman he had once loved so consumingly, so profoundly, that he’d considered giving up everything for her, and the man he had considered almost a brother.
But he had been out of their lives a long time. Had allowed them to think he had disintegrated in that damn explosion. For their own good, or so he had believed.
The sound he made into the stillness of the car was more a bark than a laugh.
He watched as Alexa stepped into the late-model SUV, the way her jeans stretched tight over her well-shaped behind. He was fifty times a fool for noticing, but she still looked good. Too good, though he had noticed small wrinkles of strain at the corners of her wide blue eyes. Maybe she had missed him.
Maybe she felt guilty.
Right. And maybe he was really John O’Rourke here on vacation.
When they had been together, her golden-brown hair with its reddish highlights had either been caught up in a tight bun at the back of her head, or, when they were alone, loose around her shoulders. Today, it had been drawn back into a plastic clip at the base of her long, graceful neck.
She was thinner than he recalled. She wore a navy work shirt over her jeans. Had he ever seen her before in anything less than designer slacks and silk blouses? When she was clothed, that is. He had seen her in a lot less, once upon a time.
Even now, his body tensed in recollection of the passion they had once shared. But he pushed it aside. He had a job to do, and that was the only reason he was here.
And it was a damn important reason.
He watched their SUV drive away, Alexa in the passenger seat talking earnestly to her fiancé.
Her fiancé. The man who had a right to kiss her like that. Cole had to remind himself of that little fact over and over, allow it to slice away at all the corners inside him that had eroded every time he had allowed himself, over the past couple of years, to think of Alexa. He needed every edge within him to be hard and sharp now.
He hadn’t planned on running into her just yet, but the chance meeting had worked to his advantage. And he would need a lot of advantages here to achieve all he had to.
She’d apparently thought she knew him—then realized her mistake. He hadn’t expected her to think he was Cole Rappaport, not with all the reconstruction done on his face after the explosion. It made disguise unnecessary.
Still, there was just the smallest bit of hurt clenching at his guts—hurt that had nothing to do with the residual, persistent pain from his injuries. A closer look had told her he wasn’t Cole. She hadn’t recognized him.
With an irritated snort, he lifted his cell phone from its stand on the console and pressed a single button.
“Bowman,” said the familiar, curt voice at the other end.
“It’s me. I’ve got a room reserved at the Hideaway By The Lake.” Cole hated talking on cell phones; they weren’t secure. There was a lot more he could say to his boss and mentor, Forbes Bowman—the man who had saved his life—but this wasn’t the time.
“Great” came the reply. “You have fun, hear? And check in now and then so I know you’re still alive.” The words, delivered in a hearty, amiable tone, could have been one friend talking to another. But Cole knew they were serious.
“Thanks,” he said. “Are you still looking into that sales data I asked for?”
“Yep,” Forbes replied. “I’ll pass it on when I get it.”
Of course the information Cole had requested had nothing to do with sales—and everything to do with his work here. “Later,” he finished. He pushed the End button and replaced the phone in its slot.
Since there was no lodge he needed to check out of, he had time to kill before showing up at the Hideaway By The Lake. He started the engine and drove around the Skytop Lake Village shopping center until he located a small convenience store. He got out and went inside.
Good. In a quiet corner far from the checkout stand, there was a public phone. It would, he hoped, suit his purposes later, when he wouldn’t trust the cell phone for what he needed to report to Forbes.
He glanced at his watch.
Soon it would be time for him to check in. To see Alexa and Vane on their home turf. To delve into the secrets they had kept from him two years ago, and the secrets they were keeping now.
Then, the fun would begin.
Chapter Two
Alexa carried the last bag of groceries into her professional gourmet kitchen. “Thanks, Minos,” she said to the man in the sleeveless T-shirt and torn jeans who had helped her.
Vane had disappeared as soon as they had pulled into the inn’s garage. Alexa figured he’d gone to socialize with some of the guests. He was good at that.
“No problem,” Minos said, hefting two bulging plastic bags onto the tile counter with ease. The short man with the large muscles looked at her with stern brown eyes beneath thick, dark brows, as though expecting her to say something else. To do something he would consider reportable to Vane.
Alexa hid her shudder. Between Minos and Vane, she felt under surveillance every moment of every day. She should be watching them. Not to mention all of the inn’s guests, every one of them here, she was certain, for some undivulged but nefarious purpose.
She’d seen similar deceitfulness before.
And when she had, the consequences had been unimaginably dire. Her parents had nearly lost their freedom.
She had irrevocably, horribly, lost Cole.
Minos hadn’t moved. At least he couldn’t stare into her thoughts. She swallowed her sigh. “I’m going to be starting dinner now,” she said with feigned cheerfulness. “If