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  “Nothing, I just pricked my finger on a thorn.”

  Dane lifted her injured finger, brought it to his lips and kissed the tip.

  “She said there was a card.” Annie glanced down at the wreath.

  Dane released her hand, bent over and jerked the card off the spray. He ripped it open. Annie grabbed it out of his hand and read it quickly. All color drained from her face.

  Dane caught the card as it fell from her limp fingers, then scanned it quickly. “You’re next” was the succinct but frighteningly clear message.

  Chapter 11

  “The florist said the arrangement was paid for in cash and the money was delivered by a messenger,” Dane told Annie when he hung up the phone. “She said that she and her assistants were so busy with flowers for Halley’s funeral that they didn’t have time to question an odd request. Neither she nor any of her employees even remember what the messenger looked like.”

  “Another dead end.” Fingering the bloodred roses on the wreath, Annie’s hand trembled.

  She had made it through Halley’s funeral without collapsing, without giving in to her emotions and crying her heart out, the way she’d felt like doing. Having Dane at her side had made it easier somehow. Strange as it seemed to her, she had felt as if she’d been drawing from his strength.

  Don’t fall into that trap, she cautioned herself. Strong men make it easy for you to lean on them. But in return they want your undying adoration and obedience. Father had demanded it and Preston had expected it. And Dane was cut from the same cloth, wasn’t he?

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. Annie glanced out the windows. Gray rain clouds swirled around in the sky, forewarning of the approaching storm.

  Dane lifted the wreath away from the wall in the den where he’d placed it while he phoned the florist. “I’ll dump this out back by the trash,” he said. “Why don’t you go on upstairs and take a bubble bath and I’ll put on a pot of coffee and—”

  “Don’t give me orders!”

  Dane stared at her, puzzlement in his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t intend for my suggestion to sound like an order.”

  Annie hung her head, smoothed her hands over her forehead and back over her hair. Then she glanced up at Dane, who had picked up the wreath and was carrying it toward the kitchen. “Dane!”

  He paused, but didn’t turn around. “Yes?”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry. I overreacted. I know you weren’t giving me an order.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Annie slumped onto the sofa, forked her fingers through her hair, tugged down on the ends and growled a cry of disgust and aggravation. Why did she keep doing that to Dane? Maybe he was an old-fashioned Southern gentleman. Maybe he was a member of the good ole boys’ club. But that didn’t mean he was a carbon copy of her father. And she knew he wasn’t an imitation of Preston Younger. Just having known Dane for less than two weeks, she could see the differences in him and her ex-husband. She sensed that there was an honesty and goodness in Dane that had been lacking in Preston. And not at any time during their marriage had Preston made her feel the way Dane had the night they’d made love. Preston had known how to take, but not to give. Dane, on the other hand… Annie sighed.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Dane called from the kitchen.

  She took a deep, relaxing breath. “Yes, thank you.” She rose from the sofa, took a few tentative steps toward the kitchen, then paused. “I think I will go upstairs and take that bubble bath you suggested.”

  “I’ll have the coffee waiting for you,” he said without glancing her way.

  Dane listened to her footsteps as she left the den and went out into the hall. After removing his coat and tie and loosening the first button of his shirt, he began preparations for the coffee.

  A smart man would get himself out of this assignment any way he could, he told himself, even by hiring a replacement from another security firm. A smart man would never have made love to a client.

  Why am I sticking around, taking Annie’s verbal attacks, when I know I should leave?

  Because you don’t trust anyone else to take care of her, an inner voice acknowledged. You cannot bear the thought of anything happening to her. You’ve committed a bodyguard’s unforgivable sin—you’ve become emotionally involved with your client. Hell, you’ve done more than that—you’ve made love to her.

  And you want to make love to her again.

  Just as he flipped the switch to start the coffeemaker, the phone rang. He lifted the receiver from the wall base.

  “Harden residence.”

  “Dane?” the feminine voice asked.

  “Yeah. Is that you, Denby?”

  “I’ve got some information on Martin Edwards,” Ellen Denby said.

  “Have you found him?” Dane asked.

  “In a manner of speaking. But, Dane, I’ve got to warn you—”

  “Martin Edwards is somehow connected to the Hughes family.” Dane felt as if a large lead weight had dropped into his stomach.

  “How did you know? Anyhow, it seems that Martin Edwards is dead. He’s been dead for twenty years.”

  Dead for twenty years! Dane did some swift calculations in his head and came up with the answer—twenty years ago, Dickie Hughes had been only eighteen. What kind of mischief had Dickie been into back then?

  “So Edwards is dead,” Dane said. “What’s the connection?”

  “Edwards was the plant manager for Hughes Chemicals and Plastics in Florence, Alabama, which is one of four companies your former father-in-law owns in the southeast.”

  “Right. And?”

  “And twenty years ago, that particular plant in the Shoals area did a little illegal dumping of PCBs into a nearby river, thus causing death to wildlife and illness to some residents.” Ellen paused, took a deep breath and continued. “Hughes paid some hefty fines on behalf of the company, but Martin Edwards was the one held legally responsible for what happened and shortly thereafter, he committed suicide.”

  Dane’s mind whirled with the information, processing it and combining it with other things he knew—and with his gut instincts. Why would Halley Robinson have been interested in a twenty-year-old suicide? And no one would have been interested in a PCB dumping scandal that had been resolved so long ago. If this was the story that had cost Halley her life, there had to be more to it.

  “Did Edwards have a family?” Dane asked.

  “A wife and daughter,” Ellen replied. “They moved out of state a few weeks after Edwards’s death.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “We’re working on it,” she told him. “I expect we’ll have that information for you by tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. By the way, have y’all unearthed anything interesting about Clay Boyd?”

  “Not so far,” she said. “It appears that Mr. Boyd is as clean as a whistle. But we did find out something about Royce Layman that may or may not have anything to do with this case.”

  “What?”

  “It seems Mr. Layman and several prominent Florence businessmen own quite a bit of stock in Hughes Chemicals and Plastics.”

  “Yeah, I knew. Jennifer Harden owns some Hughes stock, too. Any leads on the other two stories Halley Robinson was working on?” Dane had hoped that one of the other stories would remove any suspicion from his former father-in-law. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe that Richard was involved in Halley’s murder or in the attempts on Annie’s life. Lorna had adored her father, and Dane had become fond of him. And more importantly, he had learned to respect him and trust him. If there was any connection between the Hughes family and Halley Robinson, then Richard Hughes Jr. was the person involved. Dane would bet money on it.

  “The other two stories were pretty cut-and-dried,” Ellen said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything suspicious about either.”

  “I want y’all to do a little more digging into Dickie Hughes’s life, especially what was going on with him twenty years ago. See if there’s a personal connect