he had to get on the Nina Monroe case, if there was a case, and the last thing he needed was to start the rainy season by spending time with Charity Jenkins. Hadn’t he learned his lesson with that woman?
“Is there something going on I should know about?” she asked, always on alert.
“No,” he said quickly. Probably too quickly. “I just don’t want anything to do with this article. You know how I feel about these damned Bigfoot sightings. Fools seeing things that we all know don’t exist and then shooting off their mouths.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
“No! And speaking of fools, make sure there is no mention of my father and Bigfoot this time. I mean it, Charity.”
She made a disgruntled sound. “You really are no fun.”
“Yeah, so you keep telling me.” She’d always said he had no imagination because he didn’t buy into flying saucers, ghosts or marriage. If she hadn’t already, she could add Bigfoot to that list.
“Well, all right, if you’re sure. By the way,” she said in that seductive soft tone of hers, “thanks for the present.”
“Present?”
“The one you left on my doorstep?” She didn’t sound very sure.
“Charity, I didn’t leave you a present.”
“Oh, I thought…”
He heard the disappointment in her voice. He hated hurting her. It was one of the reasons he would never have left her a present. “Sorry, it wasn’t me.”
She let out a small sigh as if she should have known. Just as she should have known not to set her heart on marrying him. But she had, anyway.
Despite his feelings for her, he couldn’t marry her. Couldn’t marry anyone. But especially Charity. Just the thought of mixing their genes made him break out in a cold sweat.
“I wonder who could have left the present, then?” she said more to herself than to him.
He wondered the same thing. Hadn’t he known it was only a matter of time before some man swept Charity off her feet? Knowing it was one thing. Having it actually happen… It surprised him how much the idea of Charity with another man rattled him.
“I almost forgot,” she said. “Didn’t I just see Wade Dennison come out of your office a few minutes ago? Something going on at Dennison Ducks I should know about?”
This Charity he could deal with. “Not everything is a news story. Or any of your business.”
Charity laughed. “We both know better than that.”
He hung up and saw Sissy in the doorway again, giving him one of her why-don’t-you-do-something-about-that-woman? looks. “Let me ask you something,” he said before she could start to nag him about his personal life. “Do you think Wade Dennison is handsome?”
“Not my type.”
“No, I mean, do women find him…attractive?”
She snorted. “He’s got money, so hell yes, women find him attractive.”
Mitch shook his head, wondering why it was so hard to get a straight answer out of a woman. “Is it possible that Wade and a twenty-something woman might—”
“I see where you’re going with this,” she interrupted impatiently. “Would he be interested in a woman young enough to be his daughter?” Her brows shot up. “Wade Dennison is a man, isn’t he?” With that she turned and marched back to her desk.
Mitch shook his head and looked at the information Wade had given him. But his thoughts veered off again to Charity and the “present” some secret admirer had left her. It bothered him that the man didn’t have the guts to come forward and make his intentions known. He wondered who the guy was. And what his intentions were.
With a curse, he again looked at what Wade had given him, focusing on Nina Monroe’s address. He groaned when he saw who her landlady was—Charity’s Aunt Florie. This town was too damned small, and it only seemed to get smaller when the rainy season began.
CHARITY JENKINS took a bite of the banana-cream pie, closed her eyes and instantly conjured up the image of Mitch Tanner. Something about the combination of sugar, cream and butter…
Of course, she’d been thinking about Mitch since she was four, so it came pretty easy after twenty-two years.
It was odd, though, the way she saw him in her daydreams. If she was eating something rich and wonderful, like banana-cream pie, then Mitch always appeared in snug-fitting worn jeans and a T-shirt that accentuated his broad muscled chest and shoulders. Without fail, he would be smiling at her, the sunlight on his tanned face, his eyes as blue as the Pacific.
Other foods, however, such as vegetables or anything low-fat, had Mitch in his sheriff’s uniform, scowling at her in disapproval. For obvious reasons, she avoided those foods.
She took another bite of pie, closed her eyes and was startled when Mitch popped up in her daydream wearing a black tuxedo and standing at an altar.
Her eyes flew open, her heart pounding. Her wedding? The one she’d imagined and planned since age four?
On this, she was not mistaken. Mitch in a black tux, she in white satin. Or maybe white silk. Or lace. The imagined wedding changed, depending on her mood. But the groom never had.
“The pie all right?” Betty asked as she stopped on the other side of the counter.
“De-e-elicious,” Charity said, closing her eyes again and licking her lips in true delight, hoping to see Mitch in that wedding tux again. No such luck. She opened her eyes as Betty refilled her diet cola.
Betty Garrett was a pleasingly plump bottled-blond on this side of fifty but who could pass for thirty-five in a pinch and had a talent for attracting the wrong men the way a white blouse attracts blackberry jam. She’d married and changed her last name so many times that most people in town couldn’t tell you what it was at any given moment. Right now Betty was between men, but it wouldn’t last long. It never did.
“I just put a couple of lemon-meringue pies in the oven in case you’re interested,” Betty said.
Interested? Lemon meringue was her second favorite.
“I figure this Bigfoot sighting will bring ’em in for sure. Did last time,” the older woman said. “I decided I’d better make some extra pies.”
Bigfoot sightings packed the town. The curious drove up to Timber Falls in hopes of seeing what some called the Hill Ghost or Sasquatch.
“I heard the No Vacancy sign is already on at the Ho Hum and a half-dozen campers are parked over by the old train depot,” Betty was saying. Everyone wanted to see Bigfoot and prove the legendary creature’s existence.
None as badly as Charity Jenkins, though. Every journalist dreamed of that one big story. The Pulitzer-prize winner. Charity yearned to write about something other than church dinners and wooden decoys. The
