Dangerous Secrets

Two

A date. She, Charity Prewitt, was actually going out on a date! Charity hadn’t been out on a date in…God, she couldn’t even remember the last date she’d been on.

There were ten bachelors in Parker’s Ridge, not counting Vassily, of course, who was fifty-four years old and horribly scarred from his time in a Soviet prison camp. Each and every bachelor within a radius of forty miles had asked her out, repeatedly. Each and every bachelor was lacking in something important—teeth, a faculty, a job. Certainly all of them were lacking in a sense of humor.

And the surrounding towns weren’t too much better. Most of the bachelors there were bachelors for a good reason. And one date was more or less enough to figure out what that something was.

Charity might even have gone further afield, but ever since Mary Conway had gone on maternity leave and then quit when her child was a preemie with problems, Charity had been more or less on her own in the library. The retired chief librarian, old Mrs. Lambert, would come in for an emergency, but she was seventy-four and almost deaf. And the town council kept putting off budgeting for another librarian. So Charity was more or less it.

Plus, of course, Uncle Franklin and her ailing aunt Vera required her constant presence and help. Charity had a range of about forty miles and desirable bachelors—even only bachelors that weren’t repugnant—were not exactly thick on the ground in that radius.

So being asked out by Mr. Nicholas call-me-Nick Ames, who was the most handsome man she’d ever seen—and who clearly had all his own teeth, all his own limbs, and seemed to be independently wealthy—well, it was like Christmas a month early.

He’d come in that morning to do some research on the area, saying he was thinking of making some investments. Charity had been impressed by how much he knew about the area already, but she supposed that businessmen had to be well informed. He’d let discreetly slip that he’d retired early after some very good years with a brokerage firm and was looking to open an investment firm of his own.

He was so outrageously handsome. Charity kept sneaking glances at him while he wasn’t looking. Tall, with midnight black hair, deep-blue eyes surrounded by ridiculously long lashes, a straight narrow nose, and a firm mouth.

Hard body.

Wow.

In Charity’s experience, businessmen were soft and pale. All that time spent behind a desk, making money. Or losing it, depending. Nick Ames didn’t look like he had wasted much time losing money.

He had all the visible accoutrements of prosperous businessman-dom. The elegant blue suit—Armani was her guess—the glossy shoes, the expensive leather briefcase, the manicured nails, the flat, expensive watch.

But that was where the resemblance to a typical businessman stopped. Underneath the elegant suit was clearly a very strong, very fit body, with amazingly broad shoulders. So at odds with the amount of time he must spend analyzing data, clipping articles, and peering into his crystal ball—or whatever it was stockbrokers did.

It was a lovely evening. Very cold—but that was a given for November in Vermont. The snowstorm all the weather forecasters had been talking about was still holding off and the night sky was bright with brilliant cold stars. Charity loved these clear frozen nights, and it was a good thing, too, she often thought, since moving somewhere warm was out of the question. Even a long weekend in Aruba was out of the question. Certainly as long as Aunt Vera was so sick.

To her surprise, Mr. Ames—Nick—took her elbow, as if she could have problems navigating the broad, even sidewalk stretching out before her or needed guidance in the small town she’d grown up in. Still, it was really nice. Men rarely took one’s elbow anymore.

Uncle Franklin often took her arm when she accompanied him somewhere, but it was for balance. Nick Ames certainly didn’t need to hold her arm for balance.

Up close, he seemed even taller. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, even with heels. He seemed broader, too, the shoulders incredibly wide beneath the rich dark-blue overcoat with the hand stitches. Cashmere. Uncle Franklin had one just like it.

For a fraction of a second, Charity wondered what she was doing—going out for dinner with a man she didn’t know.

She’d surprised herself. He’d asked and she knew she should say no to dinner, perhaps yes to a drink in town, and then…her mouth opened and yes simply plopped out.

Of course, that he was handsome as sin and had a killer smile might have something to do with it.

Manners, too. He’d positioned himself on the outside, next to the curb. It had been years since she’d seen a man deliberately place himself between a woman and the street. The last man besides Uncle Franklin that she’d seen doing that had been her father, always instinctively courteous with her mother. That had been over fifteen years ago, when they were still alive.

She and Nick walked down the block and he turned her right, onto Sparrow Road, with a gentle nudge of his hand. Halfway down the block, he stopped right outside a big black luxurious car. A Lexus, she thought, though she wasn’t sure. The only thing she was sure of was that it probably cost the equivalent of a year’s salary of a librarian.

He walked her around to the passenger door, unlocking it electronically with the key fob, and helped her into the passenger seat as if she were the queen of Parker’s Ridge.

A second later he was in the driver’s seat and helping her pull the seat belt over and down. To her astonishment, once the latch clicked, he didn’t pull back but leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on her mouth.

Charity stared at him. “What—”

He’d already put the big car in gear. He looked over at her and grinned, teeth white in the darkness of the car, as he slowly pulled out of the parking space. “I figure we’re going to spend the entire evening wondering whether we’ll have a good-night kiss, so I thought I’d just cut right through that. We’ve already kissed, so we’re not going to obsess about it. It’s already done.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t going to obsess about a kiss.”

That was a lie. She’d been obsessing about it since she’d accepted the dinner invitation. If she was perfectly honest with herself, which she usually was, she’d been obsessing about kissing him since she’d laid eyes on him this morning.

He was right, though.

It had only been a chaste little kiss—a buss, it would have been called a century ago. But it had definitely broken the tension. They’d kissed. They could now have an easygoing dinner together.

Smart man, she thought. No wonder he’d become rich.

He drove sedately out of town. Too sedately, actually. To her surprise, he kept to the speed limit even outside the city limits. For some reason, some feather-brained bureaucrat somewhere had declared a speed limit of thirty-five miles an hour within a ten-mile radius of town. No one in town was crazy enough to respect the speed limit, except Mr. Nick Ames. He was driving the powerful car as if he were carrying a carload of eggs over bumpy terrain.

He braked to a complete stop at the intersection between Somerset and Fifth, where on a clear day you could see into Canada. No one stopped at that intersection unless a car was coming, which you could see from miles out in every direction. Parker’s Ridgers simply slowed down a tad, but they never stopped.

Nick Ames stopped while the light was yellow and waited patiently for it to cycle through yellow, red, then green.

It was nice being in a car with a careful driver, but Charity found herself pressing her right foot to the floor, wishing he’d do it, too, silently urging him to go just a little bit faster. There was a thin line between safe driving and poky driving and he crossed it several times. Poky driving in Parker’s Ridge, where you had to work really hard to get into a fender bender, was overkill.

Getting to Da Emilio’s wasn’t easy. There were several turnoffs and very little signage. The locals got there easily enough, but it was hard for out-of-towners. Nick Ames didn’t seem to have any problems, though. He drove straight there.

The parking space outside the restaurant was nearly empty. It would fill up later, but for now the only patrons were those here for a pre-dinner drink. He drove into the first empty slot and killed the engine.

She smiled at him as he turned into the parking lot. “You have either a good sense of direction, an excellent memory, or both.”

He turned to her, big hand draped over the steering wheel. “Both, actually. I think they’re the same part of the brain. I also have a really good memory for faces. I don’t often get lost.” He looked down at her bare hands. “You might want to put your gloves back on, it’s really cold outside.”

“Yes, Mom,” Charity said with a roll of her eyes, but it was wasted. He’d already rounded the car and was opening her door, helping her out.

The little kiss had somehow changed the chemistry of the evening. From being a nice thank-you gesture, the invitation to dinner had turned into a real date. Sex was in the air—pleasantly so. Nothing overdone, just little sparks flying about in the crystal-clear air.

Charity drew in a long, delighted breath. The air was pristine, smelling of a hundred miles of pine trees and the delights wafting from the air vents of Emilio’s kitchen. The smell of a wonderful evening.

Her life lately had been a little gray. Not gray, really, just a little…unchanging. Routine. She didn’t like to admit to herself just how much of her time and energy was taken up with Aunt Vera and Uncle Franklin. By the time Friday rolled around, after she’d put in five full days’ work at the library, checking in on her aunt and uncle two, three times a week, doing whatever was necessary for their comfort and safety, she only had enough energy to do household chores over the weekend.

Slowly, without noticing it, she started going out less and less, going to fewer movies and concerts. The one thing she made an exception for was Vassily. When he called, she always had the time and the energy.

Nick opened the door for her and ushered her in with a hand to her back. A woman could get used to those old-fashioned manners.

Da Emilio’s was, as always, warm and welcoming, with a huge roaring fire in each room. A cozy bar area beckoned off to the right and Nick steered her toward it. The portly maître d’ came up to them. Nick stopped and murmured, “Reservation in the name of Ames,” to him, but the maître d’ didn’t pay any attention to Nick at all. He just barreled on toward her.

Charity sighed and braced herself.

“Signorina Chaaariteee!” She was enveloped in an embrace of big hard arms and a big hard belly. A hug fragrant with Versace and garlic.

“Sergio.” Charity smiled at him when he finally released her. Emilio’s brother-in-law was a much more outgoing personality than Emilio himself. He made a very good maître d’.

“Welcome, my dear. Where have you been? Why have you not been eating here?” He held her at arm’s length and looked her up and down critically. “You’re looking magra. Too thin. Have you been eating enough?” He frowned and shook his head. “What am I saying? Of course not. Emilio!” he called while taking her coat and—clearly as an afterthought—Nick’s. “Vieni qui subito!”

Some customers walked into the door but Sergio ignored them. “Emilio!” he bellowed.

Charity winced, glancing up at Nick. He looked amused, totally relaxed.

“Emilio’s going to be delighted to see you, Miss Charity. Why, just the other day he mentioned you. Anna came home for the weekend and—”

“Charity!” Emilio came out from the kitchen, a tall, lean, handsome man. His food was so good, Charity couldn’t understand how on earth he managed to keep so trim. Probably because he worked so hard. He’d landed outside Parker’s Ridge over twenty years ago, a good-looking young Italian student from Bologna, hitchhiking his way through the States after college, eventually bringing his fiancée and his sister and her husband over from Bologna.

God knew why he’d elected northern Vermont to settle down in, but Parson’s Ridgers were grateful he had. It was the most successful—and best—restaurant in this part of the state.

Emilio folded her in his embrace, then held her at arm’s length, looking at her critically, just as Sergio had done. “You haven’t been—”

“Eating enough,” Charity said on a sigh. “I know, Sergio already told me. But I am, you know. We’re not all fortunate enough to have Silvia’s figure.”

At the mention of his beloved wife, who handled the accounts and ran their family ruthlessly and well, leaving him time to create, Emilio smiled. Silvia weighed thirty pounds more than Charity did and every ounce was composed of drop-dead curves that were magnets for male eyes.

“This is true,” he said proudly. “Still, you should be eating more.”

Charity refrained from rolling her eyes. It was time to change the subject. Emilio was perfectly capable of keeping this up forever if she let him.

“But enough!” Emilio held up an imperious hand and the waiter Charity would swear had been across the room materialized in a second by his side. Without turning around, Emilio said, “Dario, two glasses of our finest Prosecco and some hot antipasti.” In the blink of an eye, the waiter disappeared again.

“Come, sit down.” Emilio led them to the nicest part of the bar area—comfy armchairs upholstered in brilliant red brocade ranged around an antique door that served as a coffee table, just to the side of the huge roaring fire.

Emilio sat with them, as if he had all the time in the world, though it was coming up to dinnertime and the restaurant was starting to fill up.

“How’s—” Charity began, but Emilio ignored her. He swiveled and stared at Nick, a frown between his heavy black eyebrows.

“So,” he said, showing acres of white teeth in what was not quite a smile. “You’re dining with Miss Charity. Are you a colleague?”

Nick was sitting back, relaxed. “No, not at all. An acquaintance. Charity did me a favor and I asked her out to dinner to thank her.”

“Have you known each other long?”

Nick didn’t even blink at the personal nature of the question. “No. We just met today.”

Emilio narrowed his eyes. “So, do you live in this area or are you just passing through?”

Charity gasped. Emilio was grilling Nick, exactly as if she were his daughter and Nick an unwanted suitor. She opened her mouth to protest when she caught Nick’s smiling gaze. He winked, subtly, and shook his head. The message was clear. Don’t interfere. It’s okay.

“Actually, I live in Manhattan, but I’m thinking of relocating and have been scouting out areas. I’m also looking to make some investments. I retired a couple of months ago from my job in a big brokerage firm and cashed in on the bull market before it turned south. I’d like to set up my own little boutique brokerage firm, but I haven’t decided where yet. All I know is that I wouldn’t mind eventually getting out of Manhattan. So my life is pretty much up in the air at the moment.”

How clever of him, Charity thought. He managed to convey very neatly that he was single, well off, unencumbered, and willing to settle down here in a few short sentences. She had no idea if what Nick said was true or not, but it definitely got Emilio off his back.

Emilio’s face relaxed. “Well, enjoy your evening. It was nice meeting you, Mr….,” he paused delicately.

“Ames. Nicholas Ames. And the pleasure is mine.”

Emilio stood as the waiter arrived with a bottle of Prosecco, two tall crystal flutes, and a platter full of delicacies with mouthwatering scents that he placed on the coffee table.

Looked like Nick had passed some kind of test. And not just with Emilio.

Charity popped a hot oliva ascolana, a stuffed, breaded, and lightly fried olive, in her mouth and barely kept from moaning. “Try one of these,” she urged. “They’re—”

“Olive ascolane,” Nick said and she looked at him, surprised. He smiled. “I’ve got my own Emilio, back in Manhattan. Off Bleecker. Only his name is Mario and he comes from Ancona. Makes fabulous olive ascolane, and the best Bolognese sauce in the world.” He chewed thoughtfully. “These olives beat Mario’s, though. Hands down. That’s got to be our secret.” He winked again. “I don’t dare tell Mario. He’d ban me forever.”

A log in the huge hearth broke apart, falling into fiery pieces in a shower of sparks. Heat blossomed in the room, painting her skin with its glow.

It wasn’t just the fire warming her up. The fire was a convenient excuse for the heat, which had surged up inside her at Nick’s wink. Incandescent, almost shocking in its power.

She could feel the heat from his body, more intense even than the heat from the fire. Or at least it felt that way.

She wasn’t naive. Nick was flirting with her. It was mild, but unmistakable—the old man-woman game she’d once played so well and so lightly and had almost forgotten. How long had it been since she’d gone out to dinner with someone attractive and flirted? Way too long, to judge by her intense reaction.

Had he noticed? Those deep blue eyes seemed so observant. It was very likely she’d flushed. Her skin was like a beacon advertising every emotion flitting through her.

This wouldn’t do. Charity forced herself to sit back, still her nerves, and smile blandly into Nick’s eyes, when—shockingly—what she really wanted to do was climb into his lap, nuzzle her face up against that square jaw, find out with her hands whether he was as hard underneath that elegant suit as she suspected. Place her lips precisely against his throat, where she could see the fine line where his whiskers stopped. Feel his heartbeat against her mouth. Lick that smooth, tan skin.

Whoa. Think of something else.

By the time they’d made their happy way through the fried mozzarella balls, tiny calamari, and huge fried Pantelleria capers, their table was ready.

Dario appeared as if by magic and escorted them to their table with a maximum of fuss. It was the best table in the restaurant and it took him a full ten minutes to get them settled. He seated Charity like an empress, whisked away a water glass with a spot on it as if it had been full of cockroaches, and guided them through their orders. He suggested that they let him take care of the wine. “Something special for you, Miss Charity.”

He came back with a bottle of Barolo from their special reserve, uncorked it deftly, and poured a finger into Nick’s glass. But even though Nick nodded his pleasure, it wasn’t until Charity had sipped and smiled that Dario relaxed.

He needn’t have worried. It was like drinking bottled sunshine.

“Wonderful,” Charity murmured. Dario beamed and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Well.” Nick sat back in his chair. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her face through the entire wine pouring. “I didn’t realize I’d invited royalty out to dinner. Why didn’t you tell me you were the queen of Parker’s Ridge?”

She smiled. “It was a little over the top, wasn’t it?”

“Absolutely.” He looked over his shoulder at Emilio chatting with some guests, then back at her. “Are you guys secretly related?”

“No, of course not.” Though at times, belonging to the big, boisterous Luraghi family sounded wonderful. She was an only child and her parents were dead. Her only family was her frail and ailing aunt and uncle. “I, um, helped Emilio’s daughter last year when she came to the library to do some research.”

“From what I’ve seen, they’re grateful for something a little more serious than explaining the Dewey decimal system to a student.”

She sipped some more of that wonderful wine. “We use the Library of Congress classification system.”

“Charity…”

She sighed and told a prettier version of the truth. “Emilio’s family is great. It’s a big one and they are all very close. Sometimes, though, that closeness can get a little…intense. His youngest daughter, Anna, felt hemmed in and used to come in a lot to the library for research projects. We became friends. She’d been having problems in school, but after a while she got back on track.”

It had been much more serious than that. Anna Luraghi had been cutting classes, dabbling in drugs, and moving arrow-straight toward the hard stuff. She’d fancied herself in love with a nasty little weasel Charity suspected of being a pusher.

Anna had been on the road to self-destruction, so desperately unhappy that Charity’s heart had gone out to her. She’d spent hours and hours talking with Anna, who clearly needed an adult she could respect outside the family to talk to. Emilio was a wonderful father, caring and involved, but his idea of dealing with a problem was to yell at it until it went away.

Anna was now at MIT, doing fabulously well, dating the cutest computer nerd on the Eastern Seaboard. Ever since, Emilio and his family treated Charity like she could walk on water.

Nick had listened to her with a slight smile on his lips, eyes narrowed, intent. His eyes were just magnificent. Dark, cobalt blue framed by black lush eyelashes any woman would kill for. They were beautiful, yet somehow managed to fit his purely male face.

“There’s more to it than that, but you’re clearly not talking, so we’ll skip over to another topic of conversation. What should it be? The weather? Books? Movies? I’d like to rule out politics and religion on principle. Other than that, I’m fine with anything you choose.”

This was startling. Charity wasn’t used to men who actually paid attention to what she said. Who let the woman get the conversational ball rolling.

Most dates listened with half an ear until the conversation bumped around to their main topic of interest—themselves. They’d make exceptions for their jobs, cars, and, lately, plasma TVs, but that was about it.

So Nick Ames was not only the sexiest man she’d ever met, he was also highly intelligent and perceptive. It meant that the gentle irony she sometimes used, and that always zinged right over her date’s head, had to be curbed.

She smiled. “Well, books are always good.”

“I should imagine so, seeing as how you’re a librarian.”

“No Marian the Librarian cracks,” Charity warned, alarmed. She’d heard them all.

His eyes were so very blue. He held up a large hand, index and middle fingers raised. His mouth tightly repressed a smile. “Not a one, Scout’s honor.”

“Were you a Boy Scout?”

“Made Eagle. Yes, ma’am. Racked up the highest number of points in my troop. So—getting back to you, how did you end up being a librarian in Parker’s Ridge?”

Make a long story short, Charity thought. “Well, I love books and tend to have a reasonably organized mind, so library science seemed like a good choice for undergraduate studies.”

Before taking off for Paris, her lifelong dream. And she’d almost managed it, too, with a grant to study French literature in Paris and a one-way economy-class ticket. She’d put her few belongings in storage and had one foot out the door when Uncle Franklin had called to say that Aunt Vera suddenly couldn’t remember the names of the days of the week.

There had been no question of what she had to do. The next day she was back in Parker’s Ridge, plane ticket refunded, applying for old Mrs. Lambert’s job.

“And why are you here?” He was listening so intently, you’d think she was telling some thrilling tale. “Why settle in Parker’s Ridge? It’s pretty, but it’s small.”

Charity repressed a sigh. Yes, it was small. And remote. Definitely not Paris.

She was here because this is where her duty lay. But that was too depressing to say, certainly in those terms. Charity had learned that the word duty should be used very sparingly in the modern-day world. She sidestepped. “My family’s been in Parker’s Ridge for over two hundred years.” No matter that she’d longed to escape the ties, the ties had brought her back.

He filled their glasses and lifted his. “Well, if it can keep the Prewitt family happy for two hundred years, Parker’s Ridge must have a lot of hidden virtues. I propose a toast, then, to Parker’s Ridge.”

She lifted her own glass and he touched his to hers. The clear ring of pure crystal sounded and he smiled at her over the glasses filled with bright, ruby red wine.

His smile went through her like lightning, an electric current that jolted her, inside and out. Suddenly, everything took on a heightened tone. The fire in the room burned brighter, the luscious smells from the surrounding tables were more potent, the silverware gleamed more brilliantly. She was aware of everything around her and especially of the big man sitting across the table from her, watching her closely.

There was no mistaking the masculine interest. She’d seen it enough in men, though not very often lately, to tell the truth. It seemed that lately she’d been living in a totally sex-free zone. But right now, in Emilio’s restaurant, sex was in the air and…she was up for it.

Charity’s heart skipped a beat at the thought. Wow. She was up for sex with this man. Right now. She’d never done anything like this in her life. Never even wanted to.

It took her a while before she felt ready to go to bed with a man. Weeks, sometimes.

But with a clarity that astounded her, she knew that she was going to sleep with this man. Soon. Maybe even tonight. Oh yeah. Instead of going to bed with a hot water bottle and the latest Michael Connelly, she might be going to bed with this sexy, totally hot man she’d met just this morning.

Her thigh muscles clenched at the thought. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time.

Her head instantly went into caution mode, listing all the reasons she shouldn’t do this. She didn’t know him. He could have a disease—though, frankly, the way he looked, not even her anxious subconscious took that one seriously. He radiated health and strength. Or…he could be a serial killer. They could find her dead body in a lake of blood and no clues. They’d interview Emilio and he’d say he looked fine to me. We had no idea he was a monster.

Or—or he could be into something really kinky, something she’d hate, like handcuffs or spanking. Ew.

Luckily, her body wasn’t paying her anxious, neurotic mind any attention at all. It didn’t really have to because any possible danger was all in her head. Her body wasn’t picking up on any vibes of serial killerness or kinkiness. All it perceived was a gorgeous, healthy male with a healthy interest in her, which she was feeling right back.

Oh yeah.

She held her glass up and saw that her hand was trembling. The liquid rippled against the sides of the glinting crystal glass. He was watching. He saw. Those deep blue eyes were perceptive. He was looking at her as if he could walk around inside her mind. So he could see her hand trembling and would notice the flush she could feel rising from her breasts. She had to work to bring her breathing pattern back down to normal.

This was a little scary. Charity was a reader, and like most readers, she lived mainly inside her own head. She was most comfortable on the sidelines of life, observing. Consequently, she was used to studying people without being studied back. It was disconcerting to think that he was reading her desire. That he could read her.

Put it back on a light, impersonal footing.

“Well then, I propose a toast of my own.” Again, their glasses clinked, with a clear ring of crystal. “To…to Nick Ames.”

And may he stay awhile in Parker’s Ridge.