With This Kiss
Autor:in
Susan Meier
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Chapter One
When Rayne Fegan stepped inside the Calhoun Corners’ borough building, the room instantly quieted. The police officers who sat at two of the four metal desks stopped writing. The two who stood by the blind-covered windows, pouring coffee from the pot perched on the wide ledge, openly stared at her.
No one asked her what she wanted. No one said, “Can I help you?” Everybody just stared.
She strode down the aisle created by the gray metal desks, directly to the office of the chief of police, Jericho Capriotti. Though she honestly believed she would rather be shot than knock on his closed door, she lifted her hand and rapped twice.
“Come in!” he growled.
Rayne ran her fingers along the back of her head to assure that her ponytail was secure, shoved her big glasses up her nose, and took a fortifying breath that she let out slowly before she twisted the knob and walked in.
Jericho sat with his back to the door, signing what looked to be a stack of checks on the credenza behind him. “What’s so important that you had to interrupt me?”
“I n-n-need your help,” Rayne said, and nearly cursed because she had stuttered with fear. She couldn’t believe she was afraid of this man, then decided that technically she wasn’t “afraid” as much as she felt as if she were facing judgment day. Jericho Capriotti’s dad was mayor of Calhoun Corners. In the last election Rayne and her newspaper editor father had done everything within the bounds of journalistic propriety to unseat him. They never crossed the line. They only printed the truth. But in the op-ed pages of the Calhoun Corners Chronicle, where her dad could ask the readers to weigh the facts and carefully consider their choices, Rayne’s father had most certainly made it clear that the fourth estate thought it was time for new leadership.
She had tried her best to get Jericho’s dad out of office and now when her dad was in trouble, the only person she could turn to was a man who hated her.
“M-m-my dad is missing.”
Jericho turned slowly and caught her gaze with his steady green eyes. Wearing a taupe uniform exactly like the officers in the main room out front, he looked formidable and official. But with his brown hair falling to his forehead and his light-colored eyes gleaming with fire, he also looked so darned sexy that Rayne did curse—albeit in her head. All her life she’d been dogged by a crush on this man who was so much older than she was that he’d never given her the time of day. Was it any wonder she’d agreed with her dad that it was time for Capriotti rule of Calhoun Corners to end?
He smiled. “What did you say?”
“You don’t have to be so damned happy about the fact that my dad is missing! To me it isn’t funny. And you’re no longer some sophomoric idiot who’s allowed to tease his way through life. You’re the chief of police!”
Damn him! Damn them all!
“You’re right,” Jericho said, then wiped his hand across his face as if forcing himself to get rid of his smile. “I was out of line.”
He gestured to an empty chair in front of his desk. “Sit. Can I get you some coffee or tea or something?”
She didn’t bother wondering why he hadn’t asked her about coming directly to him, instead of simply approaching one of the officers out front. With the feud between their families, she had bypassed his staff and brought the matter to him to assure that he couldn’t sidestep responsibility. He had to take the case to prove he wouldn’t.
“No coffee. No tea. No anything. I just want help finding my dad.”
“Okay.”
She primly took the seat he offered, then flipped through her father’s small pocket notebook until she found the page she wanted.
She handed the pad across the desk. “As you can see from the date on his note, my dad left almost two weeks ago, but it took me until yesterday to track down and pay off the people he’s running from.”
Jericho quickly scanned the missive. He didn’t even blink when he came to the part where her father admitted he’d been working to unseat Ben Capriotti as a way to pay back the money he’d borrowed from a loan shark. Jericho read impassively, then glanced up at her.
“Rayne, according to this, your dad’s not missing.”
“Of course he is! He hasn’t been home in nearly two weeks.”
“But he left a note.”
“Which doesn’t tell me where he is.” Rayne paused, sighed, and decided she needed to start this story from the beginning so he would understand. “I woke up about two weeks ago and found that note on the kitchen table. I immediately began looking for the loan shark,” she said, pointing to the name of the man her dad had written. “When I found him I told him I could pay off my dad’s debt, but it would take a day or two to get the money together.”
“Why did your dad borrow forty thousand dollars?”
Rayne licked her suddenly dry lips. “He wanted to become a breeder.”
Jericho leaned back. “Oh.”
“Yes!” she all but spat. “And he probably would have made a fortune like your father and brother-in-law, except, as always, my dad isn’t lucky.”
“Are you insinuating my father is only successful because he’s lucky?”
“I have no idea why your dad is successful, but at least his first mare didn’t die giving birth.”
“What happen to the colt?”
She swallowed. “It died, too.”
Jericho put his forearms on the stack of papers on his desk and leaned toward her. “So, he borrowed money for an investment that didn’t pan out and couldn’t pay it back.”
Grateful for the surprisingly kind way he phrased that, Rayne nodded.
“And you paid it back?”
She nodded again. “I had savings.” For the past year, she had lived with her dad and hadn’t spent money on clothes or entertainment, so she had plenty of cash to save. Now, she wished her dad had let her pay her share of their household expenses. Now, she wished she’d chosen a better outfit than worn jeans and an oversize T-shirt when forced to enter the enemy camp. Now, she wished her dad had simply confided that he wanted the chance to prove himself. She would have given him the money to purchase a mare if he had asked.
“So my dad can come home but I can’t find him. I don’t have the resources. You do.”
Jericho shook his head. “Not necessarily. If somebody doesn’t want to be found, there are lots of ways they can remain lost for a long time.”
Rayne blinked back tears at the very real possibility that she might never see her dad again. “But there’s no reason for him to stay away.”
Jericho gently said, “He doesn’t know that.”
Rayne’s lip quivered. After meeting the incredibly frightening man from whom her father had borrowed his money, Rayne knew that if her dad believed he still owed that man money, he would stay away forever.
“I do have a suggestion though.”
She shot her gaze to Jericho’s.
“I know a guy in Vegas who’s a skip tracer.”
“One of the people who finds defendants who don’t show up for trial?”
“Yes, he’s up on all the latest technology. He knows things and can do things the rest of us don’t and can’t.” He caught her gaze. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded. A skip tracer could skirt the edges of the law to find someone. A police officer couldn’t.
“Do you want his name?”
She nodded again. Jericho wrote a name and telephone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.
“Here. Tell Mac that I recommended you hire him.”
Rising from her seat, Rayne quietly said, “Thanks.”
Jericho cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.”
Rayne left his office. Though her eyes stung with unshed tears, she walked to the door with her head held high. She opened it and marched out and down the street as if absolutely nothing were wrong. But when she entered the empty offices for the Calhoun Corners Chronicle, she deflated with misery.
But, just as quickly, she forced herself to stand tall again. She wasn’t a quitter and she had the name of a skip tracer, somebody Jericho Capriotti recommended to search for her dad. She would find her dad. She had to.
After Rayne left, Jericho pushed back his squeaky wooden chair, rose and walked into the main room of the police station. Aaron Jennings and Bill Freedman were gone. At seven sharp, they would have jumped into a cruiser to make an early morning sweep of the town, including stops at the elementary, middle and high schools. Greg Hatfield and Martha Wissinger sat at their desks. Martha, a veteran with twenty years on the force and hair she dyed platinum-blond, read the paper. Greg, a twenty-year-old newbie with brown hair who worked out so much his biceps strained against his uniform sleeve, was filling out the report for an incident from the night before. In another twenty minutes, Greg and Martha would go home to get some sleep and spend time with their families before their next shift that evening.
Jericho was in a good town, working with good people. He’d come back to his hometown a reformed man. A respected law enforcement officer. Somebody his parents could be proud of. So why the hell had his brain picked today get a flash of memory of his stupid fantasy about Rayne Fegan?
Jericho didn’t want to be even thinking any kind of good thought about the daughter of the man who had been a thorn in his family’s side for as long as Jericho could remember. He was home. Fences had been mended. His brother Rick was getting married in February. His sister Tia would be a mother in January. And he had a place at the table again for Thanksgiving next week. Only a fool would disturb the family harmony.
Shaking his head, he walked to the window ledge housing the coffeepot. It was insane to scold himself for ideas he had no intention of following through on. Though he could have happily followed through on them three years ago when he’d run into Rayne at a party in Baltimore. He’d always believed there was another person behind those big glasses and big clothes she wore. When he saw her that night, wearing a tight red dress and contacts, with her yellow hair cascading around her shoulders, and behaving like a totally different person, he knew he had been correct. Calhoun Corners seemed to bring out the worst in Rayne Fegan and that night he had suspected he would meet the real Rayne.
But his friends had wanted to leave and he traveled as part of a pack back then, so he hadn’t even said hello to her. But the image of her in that little red dress, sipping wine, flirting with a circle of very interested men had stayed with him. For years. Actually, that image had given him something to think about when he wanted to steer his mind away from choking Brad Baker right after he’d run off with Jericho’s live-in girlfriend.
He had to be honest with himself and admit the memory had morphed into a fantasy. But now that he knew the persona Rayne hid was that of a polecat, not a tigress, he would easily be able to shove down the stupid notion that he wanted to take off those glasses and loosen her hair.
“What did she want?”
Feeling like a man caught with his hand in a cookie jar, Jericho glanced at Greg. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, Jericho!” Martha groaned. “There’s no way Rayne Fegan would step foot in this office unless there was something so damned serious going on her in life that she couldn’t get help elsewhere. Spill it!”
Jericho shook his head. He had absolutely no allegiance to Rayne Fegan. If anything, he and his family should be jumping for joy that her father was gone. Particularly since he’d left of his own volition. He wasn’t hurt or kidnapped or even in any danger now that the loan shark had been paid by Rayne.
Just thinking her name made Jericho feel strange, but relegating his fantasy to the farthest corner of his brain, he remembered the forlorn look on her face when she realized it was possible her father would never come home. Mark Fegan might not be the only family Rayne had, but he was the parent who’d chosen to raise her. Her mother had made no secret of the fact that she didn’t want a child tagging along with her to New York City. Six-year-old Rayne had seemed to take the situation in her stride. After all, staying in Calhoun Corners had meant keeping her friends, her home, her father.
But now that she’d alienated nearly everybody in town with her part in trying to unseat Jericho’s dad, and her father was gone, so was all of Rayne’s bluster. He couldn’t exactly feel sorry for the girl who’d dedicated most of the past year to making his family miserable, but having been on the outs with his own family and having lost his best friend when Brad ran off with Laura Beth, Jericho understood what it was like to be alone. He wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
Not even Rayne.
“It turns out that what she came in for isn’t a police matter after all. There’s no reason for me to brief you.”
Martha groaned. Greg shook his head and went back to work on his report. Jericho returned to his office and forgot all about Rayne Fegan until he was striding along Main Street, on his way to the diner for lunch. He glanced down an alley and saw her walking up Second Street.
He stopped, watched her turn up Prospect Avenue, and frowned. She was walking to her house. Walking? It was freezing! His frown deepened. Her house was at the top of Prospect Avenue, which really should have been named Prospect Hill, because the entire avenue was a steep incline. It would take her at least most of her lunch hour just to walk to her house and back.
He shook his head. What did he care? Her dad owned the paper for which she worked and with him gone she was the boss. She could be a few minutes late returning from lunch.
Calling himself crazy, he finished the trip to the diner and chose a seat at a wooden table like the twenty or so others scattered about. A long shiny red counter matched the booths that circled the outside rim of the room. Red-and-white checkered curtains hung in evenly spaced intervals on the wall of windows beside the booths.
He ordered a chef salad and pulled out a copy of the Calhoun Corners Chronicle. If he weren’t the chief of police, he wouldn’t open Rayne’s father’s rag for all the tea in China. But he was the chief of police and it was prudent for him to keep up with births, deaths, weddings and engagements. Not to send cards and be in good “social” standing, but because a police department never knew when the change of a family’s status would result in a strain that could culminate in a domestic disturbance. On the other hand, finding the right girl or becoming a father could also tame a usually drunk and disorderly twenty-year-old.
Elaine Johnson, the tall, amply built wife of the diner owner, Bill Johnson, walked over with his salad. She set the dish on his place mat.
“Thanks, Elaine.”
“You’re welcome, Chief,” she said, a giggle in her voice.
He glanced up and smiled. “Jericho’s fine. I’m not much for titles.”
“You should be,” Elaine said, her brown eyes gleaming with pleasure. “Your mother is so proud of you. Nobody in your family even knew you’d gone into law enforcement. It was such a surprise.”
“And exactly the opposite of what everybody expected.”
She batted her hands in dismissal. “My guess is that you saw the inside of a jail one too many times and realized that if you didn’t change you might find yourself locked up permanently.”
Jericho grimaced. She was close but not exactly right. He’d actually made his first attempt at reforming at around twenty-three, when Laura Beth Salvatori came into his life. A tall, beautiful redhead, with a quick wit and a sharp mind, she was a challenge for his intellect as well as his sexual prowess. In the end, he’d won her over. Or so he’d thought.
After they lived together for two years, his best friend, Brad Baker, had come to Colorado for a visit. A rich kid Jericho had bummed around with on local ski slopes when Brad was in the Western United States and not in Europe, Brad was every bit as good-looking as Jericho, twice as charming and a thousand times richer. Laura Beth had taken one look at Brad and that was the end of anything she’d felt for Jericho. She’d packed her bags and left with Brad that weekend. That was the last Jericho had seen of Laura Beth or Brad and the beginning of what Jericho referred to as his lost years.
Hurt and angry, he drank, got fired from his manufacturing job and went back to bumming around the ski slopes, picking up enough money for booze and bail by giving skiing lessons. Then one night he woke up in jail with a teenage boy who had stabbed a rival gang member. They’d talked and Jericho realized that the kid hadn’t had half the guidance and love Jericho had had in his formative years. He’d found himself telling the boy some of the very things his father had told him and by morning the kid had seen the error of his ways.
Unfortunately, the boy he had stabbed died during the night. The kid Jericho had saved wouldn’t get a second chance. He would go to prison. Maybe for life.
That sunny morning when Jericho stepped out of jail, he realized he was drinking, getting into fights, gambling away his money, all because a woman he’d loved left with a guy he’d thought was his friend. At first, his behavior might have seemed justified, but two years later, he knew that if he continued down that path, Laura Beth really would have taken everything.
So he quit drinking—except for the occasional beer or glass of wine with dinner—and he’d had a long talk with his attorney who had convinced him to go into law enforcement. After graduating from the police academy, he’d spent almost five years working vice in Las Vegas. Then his dad offered him the job as chief of police in Calhoun Corners, and he knew it was time to come home.
“Whatever your reasons for going straight,” Elaine was saying when Jericho came out of his thoughts. “Most of us are glad you’re home.”
Jericho smiled. He hadn’t missed the “most” in her last statement. He knew he had detractors, people who thought his dad had been wrong to make him chief of police. People who assumed he hadn’t changed or, worse, as the mayor’s son he couldn’t be objective. People who assumed that after Mark Fegan’s attacks and the swell of people who believed the opinions in his editorials, Ben Capriotti was getting his friends and family into position to make sure no one got so bold again. And now that Jericho thought about it, Mark leaving so mysteriously didn’t look good for the Capriottis.
Elaine pointed at the paper. “Damn shame what happened at the Chronicle.”
Not sure what she meant, and not about to talk about anything Rayne had told him, Jericho didn’t reply.
“I know. I know. You and your family aren’t big fans of the paper but, really, once you get past Mark Fegan’s rhetoric, it’s the only source of news we have.”
Jericho hid a smile. “You mean gossip.”
She shook her head. “No. There’s real news in there.” She took the paper from his hand. “And Rayne doesn’t shirk from the truth.” She opened it to the page she wanted, folded it twice, and set in it front of Jericho so he could read the headline of the article at which she pointed.
“Newspaper to cut staff.”
“Paper’s not making money so she’s going to run it single-handedly.”
Jericho peered up at Elaine.
“Her dad’s gone. There’s no money. She can’t afford to give out what little she makes to other people as salaries. So she’s outsourcing the actual printing and distribution. And she’ll do every other job herself.”
Jericho stared at the article in disbelief. It was no wonder Rayne had been upset when she came into his office. Her life was a mess.
Before he could come up with an objective reply to Elaine about Rayne’s circumstances, Drew Wallace, Jericho’s sister Tia’s new husband, entered the diner. Wearing his trademark black Stetson, jeans and a denim jacket, he didn’t look nearly as prosperous as Jericho knew he was.
Elaine waved him back. “You should eat with your brother-in-law,” she said when Drew walked over.
Jericho motioned to the seat across from him. “Sure, Drew, have a seat,” he said, then Elaine scampered away to get a place mat and silverware.
As Drew pulled out the chair across from Jericho, he said, “So how’s it going?”
“Good. How’s Tia?”
Drew rolled his eyes. “Between doing her advertising job from our den, planning Rick and Ashley’s wedding in our living room, getting ready for our baby in our bedroom and taking Ruthie every chance she can get, our house is a madhouse.”
Jericho laughed.
“Yeah, you can laugh.”
“Oh come on. You love it.”
Drew scowled. “It’s better than being alone.”
“Right,” Jericho said, knowing male bluster when he heard it. He’d said a few things like that a time or two himself when he was living with Laura Beth. He’d griped about stockings in the sink, telephone bills, and the home shopping network, but he’d loved having a woman around. He’d liked having an apartment that was a home, the scent of her cologne surprising him when he walked around corners, her warm body beside him on cold nights. But there was a downside to that, too.
Tia loved Drew exactly as he was. But to Laura Beth, Jericho had been something like a work in progress. She’d changed how he dressed, how he combed his hair and how he behaved. To keep her happy, he’d damned near let her turn him into a sap. But going into law enforcement had corrected that mistake. If a policeman looked weak at the wrong time, with the wrong person, he could find himself dead. So, Jericho was a strong, not-to-be-messed-with lawman, set in his ways, grouchy, cantankerous and glad to be.
“So what the hell is the deal with Rayne Fegan hiking up Prospect Avenue?”
Jarred out of his thoughts, Jericho looked up at Drew. “You saw her, too?”
“She’s a wacky, wacky woman.” Drew shook his head. “It’s raining, but she has no umbrella and she’s trudging up that hill as if she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders.”
Jericho knew that to Rayne the weight of the world was on her shoulders, but he said nothing. He certainly wouldn’t reveal what he’d been told in a police interview.
Drew opened the menu Elaine handed him before she set down place mats and utensils and walked away. “Of course, with a dad like hers, how could she be anything but wacky?”
Jericho took a breath. “I guess.”
“The way he dogged your dad through this year’s mayoral campaign was ridiculous.” Drew caught Jericho’s gaze. “You know he even brought up your past and Rick’s.”
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“He tried to get people to think that if your dad couldn’t raise his own kids, he couldn’t be trusted to run a whole town. But that backfired. Even if it wouldn’t have been ridiculous to bring up things that happened fifteen years ago, Rick came home with a degree and took over Seven Hills as if he were born to it.” Laughing, Drew shook his head. “And that angle fizzled pretty darned quickly.”
“Yeah, Rick certainly came home a changed man,” Jericho said, knowing that bringing up his past and Rick’s past had been a last-ditch effort by Mark Fegan to save his hide from the loan shark. Jericho didn’t wonder why somebody wanted his dad out of office. The horse farmers who made up about sixty percent of the local population were thrilled that Ben Capriotti had maintained ordinances that precluded big business from moving in and farmland from becoming housing developments. Twenty or thirty percent of the people who liked living in a safe, quiet small town also supported him. But some landowners, particularly heirs who wished to sell the farms they didn’t want to run, weren’t as supportive. Some were downright devious. And Mark Fegan had been a pawn.
“Your family is becoming something like a force in this town.”
“Yeah,” Jericho agreed, but not happily. Jericho’s father had become mayor in the late seventies when the farmland was in danger of being swallowed up by developers. Now Drew Wallace, Jericho’s brother-in-law, was one of the super-successful horse farmers who liked things the way they were. Even Rick fell into that category. Not only was he marrying Ashley Meljac, but Ashley’s dad had deeded Seven Hills horse farm to Rick and Ashley as an engagement present. He stood to lose if anything in Calhoun Corners changed.
All that caused an unexpected problem for Jericho. He didn’t have a vote on council, couldn’t change ordinances or vote to keep them as they were, but he was the one who kept the peace. And that gave him a power of sorts. He had to answer to his dad, because his dad was the mayor. But he couldn’t become a yes-man. He and his dad might laugh about the people who worried about Ben Capriotti hiring his own son to be chief of police, but Jericho knew he had to prove he was objective, not just to protect himself and his own reputation, but also to protect his dad’s.
He might have inadvertently shot himself in the foot by so easily dismissing Rayne Fegan.
