Hotshot P.i.

“Whether you believe it or not, someone tried to drown me,” she said, her voice breaking. She didn’t sound any more convinced than he was, but she was scared. He could see it in her movements as she got to her feet, nervously tugging her wet clothing away from her body.

For the first time, he realized she wasn’t dressed for a night swim. She wore a T-shirt and a pair of leggings. Both were wet and molded to her body. An amazing body, Jake grudgingly admitted. Her feet were bare, and she still wore her watch and a single gold bracelet. Both looked expensive. He ignored the voice of reason that questioned why she would have gone swimming wearing an expensive watch, why Jake had had to pull so hard to bring her to the surface. The questions wedged themselves in the back of his brain, a reluctant sliver of doubt.

“Right,” Jake said. “And where is that someone now?”

When he raised his gaze to her face, he saw that she was staring at him again. Squinting, actually, as if the moonlight was too bright.

“Who are you, anyway, and what are you doing here?” she demanded.

He tried not to let it hurt his feelings. Why should she recognize him or even remember him? She’d only spent the first seventeen years of her life living right next door to him, spending most every waking moment with him from the time she could walk. And it wasn’t as if he wanted to believe he’d made an impression on her just because she had on him. True, there’d been that kiss, the first for both of them, on this very dock, and she’d said she loved him, but hey”Jake Hawkins,” he said, surprised at the hurt and anger he heard in his tone. And the bitterness. “Not that there’s any reason you should remember me. But perhaps you haven’t forgotten my father. Surely you recall that your testimony sent him to prison ten years ago.”

“Jake.” It came out a whisper. She seemed to wobble a little as she squinted harder at him. “It’s been so long…you sound so different…and—”

He rolled his eyes. “Forget it.” For a moment, he just glared at her, mad, irritable and just plain out of sorts. He shifted his gaze to the lake. Lights flickered on the mainland. The air smelled of fish and pines. He should have been at sea, drifting with the night clouds, catching stripers and sailfish. He should have been at peace, breathing salt air, not standing on a dock in the wee hours of the morning with a woman who’d forced him to remember things he’d only wanted to forget. A woman, who unlike him, seemed to have put at least some of that past behind her.

“Why now?” she asked quietly. “After all this time?”

Fueled on a mixture of hurt and anger, he answered, “Your Aunt Kiki sent me to save your butt.”

“What?” The surprise on Clancy’s face was worth the flight to Montana. It was almost worth missing his fishing trip. “You met my Aunt Kiki?”

“The Wicked Witch of the East herself.” He’d never completely believed the stories Clancy had told after one of her required trips back East each spring to visit her rich aunt. He did now. “She’s everything you said she was. And then some.”

“I don’t understand,” Clancy said, frowning. “Why would Aunt Kiki send you?”

“Probably because I’m a private investigator and your aunt thinks her money and I can dig up evidence that will keep you out of prison.” Even as he said it, he realized it didn’t make that much sense to him, either. He had a hunch, one he was holding off like a bad cold. He told himself not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Kiki had provided him with the perfect opportunity. Why question it?

Clancy met his gaze; tears glistened in her eyes. “I see.”

He realized she did see at least part of it: one of the only reasons he was here was because Aunt Kiki had procured his services. He thought it would give him more satisfaction than it did to hurt her. What had she expected? That he’d come back and forget what she’d done, forgive her? Not likely.

“It’s unfortunate that you’ve wasted your time,” she said, her words so faint, he almost missed them.

Wasted his time? What was she saying, that she killed Dex Westfall, that she was guilty?

She straightened, her glance shifting from her bare feet to his face. “The last thing I need right now is…you helping me.”

He stared at her. “It’s not like you have a lot of choice in the matter. I doubt there’s a line of private investigators knocking down your door to take this case.”

She let out a small laugh; her hand fluttered for a moment in the air between them. “Jake, we both know you’re not here to save me. Admit it, you’d love nothing better than to see me behind bars.”

He started to admit it, but she didn’t give him the chance.

“What was my aunt thinking?” With a dismissive shake of her head, she turned and headed down the dock toward shore. “Consider yourself fired.”

“Wait a minute!” he called after her. “You can’t get rid of me just like that.”

She didn’t even turn around.

Jake stood on the dock, shaking his head in disbelief as he watched her stride toward her lodge. Fired? He’d never been fired in his life. Especially by some woman who didn’t have the good sense not to go swimming in the middle of the night. A woman who had the audacity to make up a story about an attacker calling her down to the dock to drown her—Jake glared at Clancy’s ramrod back as she retreated up the beach. Once a liar, always a liar, he thought.

“Fine,” he called after her. “Fire me. Say hello to my father when you get to prison.”

Her lodge door slammed, leaving him standing alone in the moonlight. He cursed and started toward his own lodge. Matching her angry strides, he stomped down the beach but quickly slowed to a limp. The bottoms of his feet hurt like the devil from racing across sand, rocks and rough wood to save a woman who didn’t even recognize him. He cursed himself for not only his unappreciated heroics, but also for that moment of weakness he’d had when he first saw Clancy again. For just that instant, he’d actually cared. How could he have forgotten, if for even a moment, the part she’d played in helping send his father to prison? He assured himself he wouldn’t forget again.

* * *

CLANCY FELL BACK AGAINST the door she’d just slammed and tried to stop shaking. She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to fall apart; she’d already cried too many tears and it had accomplished nothing. But just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse—Jake appeared.

She hugged herself to hold down the shudders that welled up inside her. Confusion clouded her thoughts. Someone had called her down to the dock and tried to drown her. Or had they? She closed her eyes, searching through the darkness of her memory, fighting desperately to remember. Could it have been just a bad dream? But it had seemed so real. The hand coming out of the water, grabbing her ankle, pulling her into the water. Once she hit the water, she’d been wide awake. But had there really been someone else in the water trying to drag her under? Or had it been Jake fighting to bring her to the surface? It had happened so fast. And yet she remembered the voice. It had been familiar. Jake’s voice?

Her eyes flew open at the thought. No, it hadn’t been Jake’s. His voice had a hint of a southern drawl.

Jake. A rush of emotions assailed her. Memories, as sweet as the warm scent of summer. Regrets that made her heart ache. She’d never expected to ever see him again. Never expected to have these old feelings come back with such force. Then to find him on her dock tonight. And now of all times.

She moved to the table to retrieve her glasses, anxious to be able to see clearly again, wishing she’d had them on earlier. Or at least had her contacts in. All she’d gotten was a blurred impression of Jake. Medium height and muscular. She smiled, remembering the boy she’d grown up with, the boy she’d fallen so desperately in love with.

She thought about the betrayed, angry look he’d given her that day at the courthouse ten years ago. Tonight, she’d heard that same anger and bitterness in his voice. He still blamed her for his father going to prison. And now he’d come to Montana to help her? She couldn’t possibly let herself believe that.

But Jake had saved her life tonight, hadn’t he? Clancy shivered, remembering the dark water and the hands pulling her under. Or had they been Jake’s hands trying to pull her toward the surface? If there had been an attacker, where had he gone so quickly?

She shivered, hugging herself tighter. Right now she needed a hot bath and dry clothing. She didn’t want to think about the fact that she’d walked in her sleep again; she particularly didn’t want to think what could have happened if Jake hadn’t been there.

She hurried upstairs, anxious to get out of her wet, cold clothing. But as she disrobed and stepped into the hot shower, exhaustion pulled at her, making her thoughts as clouded as the steam that rose around her.

She yearned to be warm and dry. To wrap herself in one of her mother’s old quilts. To curl up in front of the fire-place. To forget everything. And sleep. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the shower wall.

* * *

JAKE QUICKLY SHOWERED and changed into warm, dry clothing, hoping it would soothe his anger and frustration. It had done neither by the time he dialed the private number Kiki had left for him at the Kalispell, Montana, airport along with another cellular phone. She’d evidently anticipated that he’d chuck the first one into the gulf, which he had. It bothered him that Kiki thought she knew him so well.

Kiki Talbott Conners answered on the fifth ring. With more than a little satisfaction, he realized he’d awakened her from a sound sleep.

“What time is it?” she groaned.

Way past his bedtime, he knew that. His eyes felt as if they had sand in them. “A quarter after three.”

“In the morning?”

“That could explain why it’s still dark out.” He could just imagine her in a huge satin bed at the Bigfork condo she’d rented, surrounded by plump pillows and pampered poodles. “Your niece and I just got reacquainted.”

“At three in the morning?” Kiki demanded, grogginess turning quickly to surliness.

He walked to the window. “It’s a long story.” It looked as though all the lights in Clancy’s lodge were on. What was she doing still up, he wondered. And why all the lights? What was she afraid of? Surely she wasn’t buying into her own lies about a mysterious killer who came out of the water like a shark from Jaws. “Let me cut to the chase. Your niece doesn’t want me on this case.”

“That surprises you?” Kiki asked, adding an audible “humph.” “Perhaps she thinks you harbor a grudge against her.”

Kiki’s words snapped his attention back like a short rubber band. “Of course I have a grudge against her. And for a damned good reason.” He raked his fingers through his hair, remembering what Clancy had said on the dock, What could my aunt have been thinking? Exactly what Jake wanted to know. “Which brings me to the reason I called. Knowing that, why in the hell did you want me up here?”