me, or they would have won. You know?”
Slowly Natalia nodded and something in her expression said she really did know. She’d faced something that scared her, had hidden her fear and stood up to it, because she’d needed to win.
Liz couldn’t help but wonder what; it was her nature to want answers. An abusive father? A violent boyfriend? A threatening boss?
It would take more time than either of them had for Liz to gain her trust and find out. Instinct told her that Natalia Porter was a woman, despite her waifish look, who had little truth to tell and less trust to give.
“Have you always lived here?” she asked before sliding a piece of sweet melon into her mouth.
Natalia’s expression was torn, as if she’d rather pretend Liz wasn’t there but had already figured out that wasn’t the way to get rid of a nosy person. “No. Just a few months.”
“Where did you come from?”
Her only answer was a shrug.
“What made you choose Copper Lake?”
“Luck of the draw. The road went left, right and straight. I went straight, and it brought me here.”
“There are worse ways to decide where you’re going to stay awhile.” Like providing security to someone who couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted or needed it. Liz had worked protective custody before, but never with someone as difficult as Josh.
“I don’t have to ask why you’re here, do I?” Natalia pushed her plate away, the luscious cheese-covered hash browns untouched, and shifted in her chair to face Liz. “Because of Joe. Are you and he…?”
Liz signaled the waitress for a refill. “We know each other.”
“Duh. Like that wasn’t obvious yesterday. How well?”
Not well enough. Thanks to Josh, they would probably never get to know each other well enough. Either the older Saldana twin would be dragged out of the hole he’d hidden in and would testify against the Mulroneys, or the trial would come and go without his input. Either way, Liz would go on to a new case, and Joe would go on with his new life, and she, for one, would have a whole lot of regrets.
“I used to date Joe’s brother,” Liz said evenly.
The relief that flashed through Natalia’s eyes was intense, there and gone, and generated a similar intensity in Liz’s gut. The look that replaced it was flatter, blanker than usual.
Like those adoring teenagers in the coffee shop yesterday, Natalia had a thing for Joe. The big question was what he felt for her. Was it mutual, or was she hanging around waiting for him to finally notice that she was a very pretty woman with porcelain skin, delicate bones, eyes big enough to drown in and a perfect Cupid’s bow to shape her lips?
Liz would like to believe Joe was as oblivious to Natalia’s crush as he’d been to the teenagers’, but that would be naive, and she tried to never be naive. Joe and Natalia were friends; they lived next door to each other. She was enough of a regular at his shop to merit her own mug. He’d noticed she was beautiful.
Saldana men always noticed beauty, Josh had often bragged.
“So…are you and Joe…?” Liz hoped for the same sort of dear-God-no reaction she’d had to Joe’s suggestion that she’d gotten pregnant by Josh.
Natalia showed no emotion at all. “Would it matter to you if we are?”
Like hell, and that was a problem. Federal agents did not get romantically involved with any subject in an investigation—not suspects, not witnesses, not victims, not other agents. Not, not, not.
How did you stay uninvolved when you’d lost control? When your brain and logic and reason and ethics screaming no couldn’t be heard over the pounding of your heart?
The first thing you did was lie. To others. To yourself.
“Joe’s life is none of my business. I’m just looking for Josh.”
Natalia’s Cupid’s-bow mouth took on a pinched look. She didn’t believe Liz.
Which was only fair, because Liz didn’t believe herself.
Chapter 3
Joe’s primary function at any of the various organizational meetings he attended was to provide the coffee. Oh, he knew Ellie Maricci and the others relied on his willingness to volunteer, but when all was said and done, it was the coffee that counted most.
Tonight’s meeting was at River’s Edge, the antebellum beauty catty-cornered from A Cuppa Joe. It was a tourist attraction, a community meeting center and the place for celebrations of every sort. His mother, Dory, had seen a story about it in the Savannah newspaper and commented—while gazing at Joe with utter innocence—what a lovely place it would be for a wedding. The ceremony in the garden, a string quartet on the verandah, a lavish cake in the gazebo and laughter everywhere. The wistfulness in her voice had been deep, tinged with sadness.
Like most mothers, Dory wanted grandbabies to cuddle, preferably after a wedding to remember, but, she was fond of saying, she would take them any way she could get them. A bride who needed a little help planning a wedding would have been a plus in her book. She understood it was the bride’s mother who traditionally got the pleasure, but didn’t she deserve something extra for raising him and Josh?
She’d deserved a lot better than she’d gotten.
All too aware of that, Joe had responded with a joke. How do you get decent blues out of a string quartet?
Predictably, she’d swatted him. You don’t play the blues at a wedding.
Depends on whose wedding, his father, Ruben, had muttered.
Blues would be most appropriate for the poor sucker who made the mistake of walking down the aisle with Josh. Better yet, a funeral dirge.
And it damn well had better not be Liz.
Scowling, Joe carried a wicker basket across the verandah and through the open double doors. Ellie had covered half of the antique cherrywood dining table with desserts from the deli’s kitchen and left the other half for him. He’d already delivered two urns, started the coffee brewing—Guatemalan Antiqua and Ethiopian Yirgacheffe—and from the basket he now unloaded bowls of sugar and sweetener and two small carafes of cream, one plain, one flavored with hazelnut.
“Oh, my gosh, it smells wonderful in here.” Ellie waited for him to turn away from the table, then hugged him. Her body was solid, warm, with a barely noticeable bump from her four-months-along pregnancy. For more than five years, she and Tommy had gotten together, broken up and done it all over again, all because of his desire to get married and have kids and her opposition to both ideas.
Funny how surviving a near-death experience had made her see things in a different light.
It was one thing Joe and Ellie had in common. The near-death experience. Not so much the desire to marry and have kids.
When she stepped back, he gestured toward the table. “Do I need to set out cups and napkins again,
