First Impressions Read online

  “But not now?”

  “I think he may ask for a restraining order against you.”

  “You are a truly horrible human being!” Eden said, but she couldn’t help smiling.

  “There, that’s better.” He looked at his watch. “Unfortunately, duty calls and I have to go. They’re going to let you go home after the doctor sees you. You’re just tired from the workout. There’s not a dent on that pretty little body of yours.”

  “You’re very fresh, aren’t you?”

  Brad laughed. “Fresh. I haven’t heard that word in years. Don’t you watch reality TV? Don’t you know what people in the real world are saying to each other on the first date?”

  “Not your generation and not mine,” Eden said primly.

  Brad took her hand in his again and for a moment looked as though he was going to kiss it, but then he put her hand back on top of the sheet. “Young Clint gets off duty in two hours so I’ll make sure he drives you home. My housekeeper went out there this morning, gave the place a good cleaning, and”—he wiggled his eyebrows—“turned the breakers back on. I had to sign an affidavit swearing that you wouldn’t be there if she touched your, uh, breaker box.”

  In spite of herself, Eden blushed. “You’re incorrigible. Go on, get out of here. I’ll be fine. It’s Mr. McBride I’m concerned about.”

  “If I were you, I’d stay away from him. I doubt if he’s your biggest fan. Gotta go. I’ll see you at six tonight and I’ll bring dinner. You take a bath, wash your hair, make yourself pretty, and await my arrival.”

  With that he was gone. As the door closed behind him, Eden grimaced. “ ‘Await my arrival’?” she said. “Who does he think he is?” But she smiled anyway and rested against the pillow until she had to get up.

  “So help me, Bill,” Jared said into his cell phone, his teeth clenched, “if you don’t stop laughing I’ll remove two of your teeth the next time I see you—which will be soon.”

  Jared listened, but his temper didn’t abate. “You didn’t tell me she was insane. None of you happened to mention that fact, and it was nowhere in the papers you had me read. I thought she was some poor woman who’d had a hard life. I thought—No, I’m not going soft on you. So help me, Bill, if you start laughing again I’ll…” Jared gave a nasty smile. “I’ll tell the whole department where I saw you last summer.”

  Jared’s smile returned to normal. “That’s better. No, I’m fine. I’ve been a lot worse, but I look bad. No, I’m not being vain. I was sent here to seduce information out of a woman, wasn’t I? So tell me how I’m supposed to wine and dine her when I have a black eye, an arm in a sling, and bruises all over. I tell you, I’ve never seen anybody fight like she did! She was blind! Crazy.”

  He listened for a few moments. “That’s nice that the house shrink has a rationalization for why she attacked me, but it doesn’t help any. I think you ought to send someone else out here to do this job. What about Lopez? He’s great-looking. So what if he’s fifteen years younger than she is?”

  He paused. “I have no idea what she looks like! It was dark and she attacked me. I saw her snooping around, so I very calmly went to her, then she attacked me. I wasn’t expecting it, and I couldn’t very well attack her back, could I? I did everything I could to get away from her, but she’s an agile little thing, I’ll give her that. At one point, when I had almost scooted away from her, she bit me on the ankle. When I tried to push her head away, she bit my arm. And you should see the claw marks I have on me!”

  Jared stopped talking and listened to his boss. He knew that Bill had been sent a full report of what had happened, but Jared wanted to exaggerate everything so, maybe, Bill would take him off the case. It was one thing to try to sweet-talk information out of a woman he was attracted to, but quite another to have to be around a woman whose brain cords didn’t connect properly. For all his undercover work, Jared was no actor. Maybe he could play the tough-guy parts, but not the romantic ones. That’s why he liked women who were reformed bad girls. They didn’t expect much from him—which is just what he gave. His professional life was difficult, so he didn’t want the same in his private life, what little there was of it.

  “There’s something else that wasn’t in your reports on her,” Jared said. “She’s practically engaged to some lawyer in town. Yeah, I know she just got here, but they must have known each other before because they’re already a couple. Last night as I lay bleeding on a gurney, being sewn up and swabbed down, some kid of a deputy made it clear to me that little Ms. Palmer belongs to one of the town’s founding families—or whatever they are down here. Lord! Deliver me from the South. Everybody knows who everybody’s great-great-grandfather was and what his rank was in the war. Civil War, that is. No, I can’t calm down!” Jared said. “I’m in pain and I’m not the right man for this job. I think you should send a woman to befriend her. Maybe send an engaged couple, as I think Ms. Palmer is about two seconds away from being engaged herself. They’ll all talk to each other.”

  Jared took a breath to listen. “No, nothing. I didn’t see anything in the house that looked out of place. Nothing. I only had about forty-five minutes and I had to use a penlight. I thought your people said she was spending the night in town.”

  Jared listened to Bill defend his information while he looked out the window at the river at the bottom of the hill. In the next second, he came alert as he saw someone coming through the cut in the hedge that separated “her” house from his. Yesterday he’d done some exploring of the two connecting properties, mainly looking for hiding places and avenues of exit. He planned to explore every inch of the place, probably at night while Ms. Palmer slept the sleep of the innocent—if she was innocent, that is. There were a couple of places outside that Jared thought might be good to stick a couple of surveillance cameras. There were birdhouses and vines up the trees. He could hide the cords in the vines and the cameras in the birdhouses. No one would see anything.

  Since last night he’d developed the opinion that Ms. Palmer was indeed guilty of something. He wasn’t sure what, but she was guilty. All the sympathy he’d built up when he’d read about her life had left him when she’d sunk her teeth into him for the third time.

  Now he looked out the window and drew in his breath. Coming through the bushes was none other than the lady in question—and she was carrying a big ceramic dish, with a loaf of bread on top, pot holders covering her hands. While Bill was droning on and on about how Jared had to do the job and that if he were a good agent he could get it done in a matter of days, Jared got his first real look at Ms. Palmer. She wore jeans that were much looser than he liked on women and above that an oversize sweater that hid most of what was under it, but there was a breeze, and he could see the outline of a curvy little body that wasn’t half bad. He’d read that in New York she often went to the gym after work, but the report hadn’t said whether she went there to socialize or to sweat. From the look of her, she’d done a lot of sweating.

  When the breeze lifted her hair and she moved her head to one side to get the hair out of her eyes, he saw her wince. Good! he thought. He hoped she was very sore from what she’d done to him last night.

  Jared felt a tiny bit of guilt because he had been snooping through her house, and because his story about lights going off had been something he’d made up when the police arrived. And of course she had every right to call the sheriff or her boyfriend or anybody else, for that matter. And, yes, she was perfectly justified in thinking that he was a thief and therefore was probably going to attack her when he reached out to touch her arm. So, okay, maybe she’d been right on every count; but that didn’t heal his body or his pride.

  Jared listened to Bill and in an instant saw a way around all the obstacles. Her guilt. If he’d ever seen a human being with a sorrowful look on her face, the woman walking toward him with her peace offering was it. “I gotta go and don’t call me back. She’s here,” he said quickly, then closed his cell phone. Jared ran to the chair in front of t