Navy SEAL's Deadly Secret
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Cindy Dees
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Harlequin🏙️ Contemporary
HarlequinChapter 1
“Hoo baby, Anna. You’ve got a hot one at booth number nine!”
Anna Larkin glanced at the back of the diner and the lone man hunched in the last booth, looking intensely uncomfortable, as if he wanted to shrink into nothingness. As if he was attempting to be invisible, or at least to blend in with the locals.
Not happening. He was tall, broad-shouldered and gorgeous, with dark hair and eyes so blue she could see their color from the other end of Pittypat’s Diner. Not the kind of guy who would ever blend in with the mere mortals of Sunny Creek, Montana.
He’d given it a good try, though. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and she would bet he was wearing jeans and cowboy boots under the scarred linoleum table.
“Well, go on,” Patricia Moeller, the Pat of Pittypat’s, urged her. “Say hello to the pretty man with no wedding ring.”
Anna rolled her eyes at her boss. But she did tug down the hem of her T-shirt before she headed over with a glass of ice water.
Hoo baby didn’t cover the half of it as she drew near her customer. His face was tanned, his features strong, his cheekbones chiseled out of Montana granite. She guessed him to be about thirty years old. A thin, red scar started near his ear and ran down into his shirt collar along the powerful neck of an athlete.
She studied him more closely. He looked familiar. But surely she would remember a face like that if she’d ever seen it before.
The old caution kicked in. She knew better than to fall for a pretty face. Much better. She’d suffered enough psychological wounds from the last pretty-faced man who crossed her path to make her skittish for a lifetime.
Maybe that was why she plunked this one’s water down a little too hard, sloshing it onto the table and into his lap. He jumped, and their hands collided reaching for the paper napkin folded under his fork.
Hot. Hard. Strong. The sensations raced through her almost too fast to name. She jerked back, scalded. “I’m so sorry!” she stammered.
“It’s just water. I won’t melt,” he said gruffly. He lifted the napkin out of her slack fingers and mopped at his crotch.
Realizing in horror that she was staring at his groin, she mumbled, “I’ll, um, get you another glass of water.”
“I’d rather have a cup of coffee.”
“Right. Uh, how do you like it?”
His gaze snapped up to hers, startled and wary, as if some alarming innuendo was buried in her question. But then a faint smirk bent his lips. “I like it hot and sweet.”
She stood there staring down at him like she’d lost her marbles until he murmured, “Coffee? May I have a cup?”
“Coffee. Right. Coming up.” She whirled away, her face flaming in embarrassment. Good Lord. She’d been standing there, staring at him like a starstruck girl. And she was neither starstruck nor a girl anymore. She’d been both when she’d left Sunny Creek at the ripe old age of eighteen, but Eddie Billingham had stolen both her innocence and the stars from her eyes long ago.
“You okay?” Patricia asked her at the coffee station. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No ghosts in here,” she retorted. Just ghosts in her head. The ghost of her innocent self. The ghost of her girlish hopes and dreams. The ghost of Eddie—
“I don’t know,” Patricia was saying. “Is that one of the Morgan boys? He looks mighty familiar.”
Anna glanced over her shoulder at the customer and jumped to see him staring at her. Intently. She looked away hastily, staring unseeing at the coffeemaker. The Morgan family had four sons and two daughters, but they’d all moved away from Sunny Creek in the past decade. Last she’d heard, none of them showed any signs of returning.
Pattie continued, “He’s got the look of a Morgan about him with that dark hair and those blue eyes. Good-looking like a Morgan, too.”
“If you say so.” She’d only had eyes for blond-haired, pale-blue-eyed Billie in high school. Stupid her. Anna poured a mug of coffee and piled a handful of sugar packets and containers of creamer on the saucer beside the mug. Determined not to spill hot coffee on her customer, she put the drink down carefully in front of him. “Can I get you a bite to eat?”
“Nah. Not hungry.”
“Petunia baked this morning. Sure I can’t get you a slice of her world-famous pumpkin chiffon pie?”
“No thanks.”
The guy was showing no signs whatsoever of wanting to be social with her, and God knew, she didn’t want to be social with him after making a complete fool of herself. She moved away, pausing at the next booth down to check on a retired couple passing through town in an RV. They asked for the check, which gave her an excuse to come back to this end of the dining room. She dropped off the bill and swung by the hunk’s table.
“Need a refill on that coffee?” she asked.
“Nope. The deal was I had to drink one cup. No more.”
What deal? She was tempted to ask him, but he forestalled her by frowning faintly at something over her shoulder. He muttered, “Someone just walked in and wants to be seated.”
Far be it from her to look like she was hanging around his table trying to get his attention! She turned quickly and headed for the newcomer, yet another lone guy. Except this one looked to be in his early twenties. And if she didn’t know better, she would say he was high. His entire demeanor was jittery. His hands were never still, and he tapped his booted heels incessantly. Like a flamenco dancer on crack.
God, she knew that look. Eddie used to get it when he snorted crack to hype himself up before auditions...and used his fists on her to come down from the hype after auditions.
The guy pushed past Anna toward the counter and the cash register, and she turned to ask him if he’d like a booth, determined to be polite after being such a doofus with her last single male customer.
Over the newcomer’s shoulder, she spied her customer. He was frowning heavily, his gaze shifting back and forth warily between her and the new guy. Trepidation leaped in her gut. The old panic that she would do something wrong and provoke jealous violence flared, making her insides quail.
Oh, wait. Not Eddie. She drew a breath of relief, tried to exhale away the panic attack and turned to face Flamenco Heels.
She spied a flash of silver in his fist. A knife. Her gazed riveted on the blade and time slowed around her to a strange, silent blur while her mind kept churning away.
Of course it was a knife. Karma was a bitch that way.
She watched the guy with the knife take a step toward her. Her entire world narrowed down to that lethal bit of sharpened steel with her name on it. Of course it was going to stab her in the belly. To gut her. Just like she’d gutted Eddie.
The remembered feel of the blade slipping into her husband’s flesh, the slight resistance and then the slippery slide of it, the heat of blood gushing out onto her fist, the metallic smell and taste of blood...
Relief flooded her, taking her by surprise, as the guy took another slow-motion step toward her.
Thank God it was finally over. Justice had caught up with her. There would be no more running from the truth. No more pretending she wasn’t racked by guilt. No more fake smiles when people offered condolences.
She’d had no idea she was waiting for this—for the swift and certain retribution that was owed to her—until a punk with a knife charged her.
Her hands dropped to her sides. She stood up straight, threw her shoulders back and closed her eyes.
Peace. At last. A finish to the self-loathing and constant voice of judgment in her head.
Her body jerked backward without warning and she opened her eyes, startled.
Apparently, Flamenco Heels had stepped around behind her and thrown his arm around her neck, yanking her back against him. She staggered and choked as his arm dug into her airway.
She was no stranger to being choked and went limp in his arms, not fighting the unconsciousness to come. The kid turned, putting his back to the counter, dragging her with him.
She saw her customer surge up out of his booth, sending his coffee across his table in a spill of sable. Anna stared at him in dismay as he charged toward her. There was no need for him to put himself in harm’s way! Not on her account. Particularly not since she’d been waiting for this ever since she got back to Sunny Creek. She’d known someone would come for her eventually. Eddie Billingham had always had plenty of hard-drinking friends and family in this town who were as violent as he had been.
She tried to shake her head at her customer. To warn him off. She managed only a frown, but hoped it was enough.
Nope.
He merely frowned back at her and kept on coming in a swift prowl that screamed of violence. And skill. He moved like some sort of trained killer.
“Give me all the cash in the register!” Flamenco Heels shouted in her ear. She was shoved forward violently and slammed into the edge of the counter.
Now. Kill me now, she begged the kid silently. Before my customer gets here and stops you.
The counter had slammed squarely into her solar plexus and knocked the wind plumb out of her. Gasping for air, she pushed upright just as something big and fast rushed past her. Spinning around to face her attacker, she was in time to see her customer smash into the would-be robber, shoulder first.
Both men crashed to the floor, the robber on the bottom taking the brunt of the impact.
The two men grappled, the kid’s knife grasped in both of their fists. Her customer forced the punk’s hand up over his head, but then the punk slugged her customer in the side with his free hand. Her customer grunted in pain, letting go of the kid’s knife-wielding hand and rolling away sharply. She danced back out of the way of both men as they jumped to their feet.
Her customer slid in front of her, hooking his right arm around her waist and shoving her behind him. The robber jumped forward, knife first, and her customer reacted so fast Anna barely saw him move. His fist slammed down on the kid’s elbow, and a terrible crunching sound of bone and tendon giving way accompanied the clatter of the knife on the floor. The punk screamed and collapsed around his ruined arm.
As the robber’s face went down, her customer’s knee came up, connecting squarely with the kid’s nose. Blood gushed from the robber’s face, streaming down his chin onto his white T-shirt. He staggered back, holding his face.
“Take a knee,” her customer said in a voice colder than arctic ice.
The robber was oblivious until her customer grabbed the kid’s good arm and gave it an upward wrench. “Go. Down.”
The robber dropped to his knees, and her customer maintained a grip on the guy’s good arm, holding it twisted behind his back. The look in her customer’s eyes was wild. Haunted even.
The front door burst open and she looked up sharply. The sheriff, Joe Westlake, charged in, hand on his holstered weapon. He took in the situation quickly, nodded at her customer standing over the bloody robber wannabe, and closed the snap holding the flap over his revolver.
“Helluva way to find out you’re back,” the sheriff boomed, pounding her customer fondly on the back.
Gradually, the trapped-animal terror in her customer’s eyes faded. Caution replaced his panic. Belatedly, he mumbled, “Hey, Joe.”
“Whatchya up to?”
“Doin’ your job for you.”
The sheriff laughed and cussed out her customer fondly, calling him Brett. Brett who?
Her brain clicked in recognition. Brett Morgan? Of the wealthy and powerful Morgan clan? Patricia had been right. All the Morgans were good-looking as sin, black Irish on their daddy’s side and Norwegian on their mama’s side, a big brawny bunch who owned and operated the Runaway Ranch. It sprawled north of town in the High Rockies beyond the Sunny Creek Valley. She’d never been out there, but she’d heard it was an impressive spread.
Relieved of the punk, her customer half straightened, favoring his side where he’d been punched. She lifted her hands to help him, but he subtly waved her off with the hand not pressed against his ribs.
“You okay?” he rasped.
“I’m fine. You?” she replied.
He straightened all the way, grimacing, and stared down at her, really looking at her. “Seriously. Are you all right?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
He frowned, clearly not buying her answer. But then the sheriff loomed beside him, asking loud enough for everyone in the diner to hear, “Are you okay, Anna?”
She squirmed as all eyes in the diner turned on her. Lord, she hated all this attention. “I’m fine. Um, Brett Mor—” she stumbled over his name “—Morgan—rescued me.”
“I’m going to need to interview you,” Joe told her. “Can you swing by the station when you get off work today?”
Police. Questioning. Oh, God. The panic was back, clawing at the inside of her chest cavity. “What do you need from me?” she asked Westlake cautiously.
“I’ll need a statement about what this punk said and did to you and what you saw in the fight.”
“I would hardly call that a fight,” she blurted. “It was a totally one-sided smackdown.”
Her gaze lifted to the hooded stare of her customer, and for the first time, a smile flitted across his face. Just for an instant. Then it was gone.
Petunia, Patricia’s twin, emerged from her office, waving around a shotgun awkwardly enough that Anna briefly considered hitting the floor. Brett lunged forward and grabbed the ancient weapon by the barrel, pointing it up at the ceiling while he gently lifted the weapon out of the woman’s hands.
Anna hurried over to the older woman and threw an arm around her shoulders. Petunia was shaking like a leaf. “Let me take you home, Miss Pitty.”
“No, I’ll be fine. I have to put the place back together and mop up that blood.” The woman’s legs started to give way, and Anna guided her quickly to a stool at the lunch counter.
The sheriff finished handcuffing the robber wannabe and headed for the door. “Brett, buddy. Can you take Petunia and Patricia to their place? They’re looking a bit squeamish.”
Patricia declared indignantly, “I’ll have you know we don’t get squeamish, Joseph Westlake. I remember when you fell off the roof of the hardware store and dislocated your shoulder. Who helped Mac MacGregor pop it back in and then fed you pie till you quit crying?”
Anna bit back a smile as the big, bad sheriff’s ears turned red. A rusty sound vaguely akin to a laugh escaped Brett, and she stared at him in surprise. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who laughed often.
“Always were a jackass, Brett,” the sheriff declared good-naturedly.
“Right back atchya, Joey.”
The men traded good-natured insults as Brett escorted Petunia and Patricia out the door behind the sheriff and his prisoner. The door closed behind all of them, and suddenly the diner seemed hollow and empty.
An image of a knife flashed in her mind’s eye. It started out as Flamenco Heels’ knife but morphed into a bigger one. Clutched in her hand. Covered in blood. She shuddered all over at the gory memory. Would she never find a way to block out the image?
The remaining customers buzzed excitedly among themselves, cell phones out and texts flying. Anna winced. The gossip grapevine was one of the reasons she had run away from this town in the first place. And it was one of the main reasons why she’d dreaded coming back. What had she been thinking to come back here, anyway?
The adrenaline of the past few minutes drained away, and sudden exhaustion slammed into her. She trudged into the storeroom and filled the mop bucket, pushing it out to the dining room. Shuddering at the blood on the floor, seeing another, much larger pool of blood on a different cheap linoleum floor in her mind’s eye, she hurried to erase the evidence of the crime. But which crime she was trying to erase—of that she wasn’t sure.
A few swipes of the mop got rid of most of the robber’s blood, but she had to get down on her hands and knees to reach under the counter to get the last of it. Nauseated, she ran a sponge under the counter, seeing another counter in a small, dingy kitchen.
Her finger touched something cold and hard. Metal. Startled, she peered under the pie display case. Something circular and round glinted under there, but it wasn’t a coin. She used the mop handle to snag it and drag the object out.
It turned out to be a quarter-sized gold medal on a thin gold chain. The piece was beautifully carved on one side, the figure of a man holding a sword high over the head of what looked like a dragon. Saint George, maybe? Wasn’t he the guy who slayed dragons?
She turned the medal over. It was engraved with the words B—Always come home safe—Love, Mom.”
B for Brett, maybe? Or did this belong to the robber? She tucked it in her pocket to take to the sheriff.
The rest of her shift was busy as locals flocked to the diner to hear the story of the robbery and check out the damage—which amounted to one smashed chair and the coat stand being knocked over. Sheesh. Nosy much?
She wanted nothing more than to go home to the tiny house she’d inherited when her mother died, curl up in a ball and sleep for about a month.
Instead, she smiled and pretended she wasn’t shaken to her core, that the resurgent memories hadn’t freaked her completely out, and served up pie and coffee in a continuous stream. She had never been so relieved to hang up her apron when the supper waitress, Wanda, showed up for her shift at 4:00 p.m.
It was just as well that she had agreed to visit the sheriff today. She was too wiped out, first by the robbery and then by the continuous flow of customers who’d kept her hopping, to make the drive over to Hillsdale to check out some used windows at a junk shop as she’d planned to after work.
She stepped into the combination police office and jail, acutely uncomfortable at the overpowering atmosphere of law and order. She’d never had a run-in with the law here in Sunny Creek, but the law was the law, no matter where she was. And she had no love for police. Not after the past few years.
“Thanks for coming down to the station, Anna,” Joe Westlake said pleasantly enough.
She nodded, her throat too tight to speak. For crying out loud, she was the victim here. There was no need for her to feel like she’d just committed a murder. Still. Old habits died hard.
She perched on the edge of a chair beside the sheriff’s desk while he tape-recorded her hesitant description of the robbery.
“Oh, I forgot,” she said after he’d turned off the tape recorder. “Does this necklace belong to the robber? I found it on the floor when I was mopping up after the fight...er, robbery.” She fished out the Saint George’s medal and held it up.
“I recognize that!” Westlake exclaimed. “That’s Brett’s. His mom gave it to him just before he enlisted in the Navy. Want me to run it out to him?”
Her fist closed around the medal, warm from her pocket. “No, that’s all right. I’ll return it to him.”
Now why on earth did she go and say that? She wanted nothing to do with men at all, let alone a good-looking one capable of hair-trigger violence and who made her belly flutter in ways it had no business whatsoever fluttering.
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