Dealing with Annie Read online

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  “It’s that bad. And worse, every instinct I have is screaming that there’s something wrong, that she’s in some danger—Don’t shake your head on this one, Thomas, I mean it.”

  “I know you do. I even believe you. Shocker, huh?”

  “You do?”

  “Your instincts have saved your sorry ass more than once. If you really think something’s wrong… then something’s wrong.”

  “It is,” Ian said, certain, and sick with it.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know yet, but nothing’s going to happen to her. I won’t fail again.” No way was he going to fail again.

  * * *

  FOR A FEW DAYS ANNIE buried herself in her workshop—researching, designing, developing new products, doing everything in her power to clear her mind.

  She kept Aunt Gerdie busy as well, letting her help with work, getting her to putter around in the house, whatever it took to keep her happy and feeling useful.

  At the moment, she was napping, and Annie was hands deep in a new exfoliating recipe. That made it tricky to answer the door when UPS came. Since she hoped the shipment was the prototypes for the new blusher containers for her spring collection, she stopped what she was doing to take a look. As she cut the box open, she glanced at the return address.

  It was 555 ABC Lane. Obviously a bogus address, and her fingers worked more quickly. Peeling back the packing, she pulled out a lovely box she recognized well.

  It was her own design, a small treasure chest Annie’s Garden used to hold their current bestselling kit. The box was made of clear, pale pink glass with brass fittings. At any department store one could buy the box in the makeup department, filled with three lipsticks, a lengthening mascara, a shimmery eyeliner, powder eyeshadow and a blusher.

  It was filled with those things now as well, only they’d all been crushed before being poured back into the box. Lipstick melted into lipstick, the eyeliner was broken into pieces, the mascara had been opened and smeared over everything, with a fine dust of the eyeshadow powder covering all of it. A purposeful, cruel mess.

  As she stared at it, her fingers fumbled for the bottom of the box, and the note waiting there.

  You’re next.

  “You all right, dear?”

  At the sound of Aunt Gerdie’s voice, Annie forced yet another smile as she slid the crushed makeup under the latest newspaper. Her heart was threatening to burst right out of her chest. “I’m perfectly fine. How was your nap?” She rose and met her aunt halfway, reaching for her hands, studying Gerdie’s face carefully. She looked happy and rested, which took some of the weight off Annie’s shoulders. “You look good.”

  “Oh, that’s so sweet.” Aunt Gerdie patted her silvery blue hair. “I just took a call for you.”

  Uh-oh. “I thought we decided you were going to let the machine pick up the house phone, so that you don’t have to worry about taking messages.”

  “Well, I was right there, it seemed so silly not to answer it.”

  Annie struggled to keep her smile in place. The last time Aunt Gerdie had answered the phone, it’d been a sales call, and they’d sold her a lifetime subscription to a fishing magazine.

  Only Aunt Gerdie had never fished a day in her life.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Aunt Gerdie said. “I didn’t buy any more magazines. I didn’t buy anything. It was a reporter for some highfalutin newspaper in the big city. They wanted a response to the articles that have been printed about you.”

  “And you said I wasn’t available at the moment, right?”

  “Of course I did.”

  Annie breathed a sigh of relief, a short-lived one.

  “And then I told her that all those stories were false, that while you didn’t need makeup to enhance your natural beauty, you wore only your own products. Even if working so hard is making you tired, and Jenny is stressing you out, and—”

  “You…told the reporter all this?”

  “She was so sweet. She has a daughter just about your age, and—”

  “Aunt Gerdie.” Annie had a sick feeling in the pit of her belly. The damning comments Gerdie had offered were going to get the paper a lot of mileage, and Annie a lot more stress, but that it had been done in love made it even worse. “Please, please promise me you won’t talk to any more reporters.”

  “Oh. Well, okay.” Aunt Gerdie pulled her hands free. “If that’s what you want, of course I won’t. I was just trying to help, I know how overloaded you are.”

  “You are a big help, in so many ways.” Now she felt like slime for putting that hurt in Aunt Gerdie’s eyes. “Just having you with me lightens my load. So very much.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.” Annie hugged her aunt close, wishing she didn’t feel so frail. “You’re so important to me.”

  “You’re important to me, too. But I worry, Annie. You’re not yourself.”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted.

  She only wished she believed it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ANNIE CALLED UPS. She wanted a trace on the package. She wanted to know exactly where it had come from.

  UPS promised to get back to her, quickly.

  In the meantime, she wasn’t stupid or naive enough to keep this latest development to herself. She called Officer Scott Hunter as well, and filled him in. He drove out to the house and took a report, which was unnerving enough.

  Even more unnerving was the realization that she truly was in trouble. Possibly in danger as well.

  Ian had been right.

  She needed to talk to him, needed to apologize. She needed… Oh, God, the things she needed. And all from him, the man she’d only met just over a week ago. The man she hardly even knew.

  And yet he was the one man who’d made her feel she was more than just a pillar of strength for everyone else around her. He made her feel soft, feminine…sexy.

  She wanted him to take her in his warm, strong arms and make her forget everything, if only for a night.

  Which meant she’d proved his point. Men and women probably shouldn’t be friends. At least not the two of them, as it certainly wasn’t a friend she wanted in her bed.

  Or his.

  Or wherever they ended up.

  She stepped outside and sucked in a breath. It was the tail end of one of those crisp, clear winter days where you needed sunglasses just to lay your eyes on the beauty all around, and a scarf over your mouth to simply breathe in the frigid air.

  For a moment she stood still, soaking it in, the perfect quiet…the startlingly gorgeous landscape… and reminded herself that this, this, was why she’d left the city. That no matter what was happening now, Cooper’s Corner and the people in it fulfilled her, relaxed her, and nothing was going to ruin it.

  It only took a few moments to walk to Thomas’s property, a few glorious moments through the woods that managed to clear her head.

  Ian was on the porch, a cordless phone to his ear.

  “Just tell me what you found out,” he was saying. He sat on the top step, his bad leg out in front of him, the other one bent, supporting his elbow, which in turn supported his head. He wore threadbare jeans and a cable-knit cream-colored sweater. His hair either hadn’t been combed or he’d shoved his fingers through it one too many times. With the shadow on his jaw and the tense expression on his face, he looked a little wild, a little dangerous, and a shiver raced down her spine.

  Until his words sank in.

  “You checked on Stella Oberman, Dennis Anderson and Jenny Boler, right?”

  He was checking on the people in her life. She waited for the anger to boil inside her, but since the crushed makeup delivery, she couldn’t deny being scared, so it seemed a waste of good time to get angry.

  She wanted answers instead. In light of that, she moved forward.

  * * *

  “BEFORE I TELL YOU A THING, I want you to call Cici,” Dean told Ian on