Out of Eden

CHAPTER TWO

JACK REYNOLDS HAD BEEN in town for four days. Settling into his new home. Meeting with the mayor. Being courted by the town council and snubbed by his sister. Mostly he’d been reacclimating. Even though he’d grown up in Eden, he’d spent a lifetime in New York City, working for the NYPD. Big difference between the Big Apple and Eden. His friend’s little sister didn’t know how good she had it. Unless that was the alcohol talking. Either way, she’d just provided Eden with a week’s worth of gossip.

Jack had never seen the squeaky-clean McGraw sauced. Then again, he’d been avoiding Eden for years. Ever since he’d clocked his sister’s husband on their wedding day. He’d refused to tell Jessie why—effectively severing their dysfunctional relationship. Instead of going to hell, as she’d demanded, he’d returned to NYC. Over the next ten years, he made homicide detective, got married, got divorced, and tempted the devil as he took accelerated risks on the streets.

His wake-up call had come last month in the form of a young woman. A victim of a mob hit. He’d seen a lot of death. He knew how to manage his emotions. How to temper the revulsion and outrage. But how the fuck did you manage numb? Maybe he’d gone to hell after all. Jack Reynolds. Zombie cop. He’d sworn long ago that if he ever stopped feeling, he’d get out.

Easier said than done.

He’d resorted to drowning his misery and indecision in whiskey.

His sister’s crisis had kicked his drunken ass into action. When he’d learned through the grapevine that Jessie’s bastard husband had deserted her and her daughter, he’d sworn off the hard stuff and given his notice. Time to look after his own. The job opening for chief of police had been coincidental. Or maybe it was fate. In the end it had been too convenient to pass up.

Jack made eye contact with every man and woman in Boone’s as he carried Kylie out of the bar. These people, this town, would be his salvation. At least that was the plan. Reconnect with your roots, reconnect with your soul.

As for Kylie…he couldn’t get over how much she’d changed. He’d seen her briefly at her dad’s funeral eleven years ago, but they’d both been preoccupied. Mostly, he remembered her as the gawky, skinny kid who’d shadowed her big brother. Spenser used to run her off with a smile and teasing words. Spense loved his sister, but he was a daredevil and she was an angel. Spunky, but sweet. Kitten, he called her.

Jack tempered a smile, flashing on the episode that made it impossible for him to think of her as Kitten. An episode he’d sworn to a then fourteen-year-old Kylie he would never reveal to her brother. A promise he’d kept.

He glanced down at the woman in his arms, recognizing the big chocolate eyes and thick wild hair and little else. He was keenly aware of her compact curves and her quirky, pretty features. No wonder Ashe was sniffing. Kylie was an interesting package.

She pushed at his shoulder. “I can walk.”

“Whatever you say, Tiger.” He set her on her stocking feet but kept his arm around her waist in case she faltered. She did.

“I don’t get it,” she lamented as he escorted her outside and onto the sidewalk. “I can usually hold my liquor.”

“You usually drink beer,” Faye said.

“I wouldn’t reference the usual just now,” Jack told Kylie’s eccentric friend, though the harm was already done. He shook his head as the youngest McGraw launched into another gripe about routine.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Faye told Jack. “Except the obvious, of course.” The bleached-blonde unlocked the passenger side of a cherry-red minivan.

He’d never imagined the girl who dressed like a retro pop star would drive a minivan. He’d never imagined her as a mother, either, but the toys and books scattered in the backseat along with the Spider-Man sun shield confirmed what he’d heard. Faye Tyler, formally Powell, was married with children. Children she’d named after nineties musical icons.

Jack helped Kylie, who continued to vent, into the van while Faye answered her ringing cell. “What do you mean Sting threw up? Does he have a fever? He what? Where were you when… Yes, I know you can’t stomach vomit, Stan. For crying out loud. Okay. Yes. Yes. Be right there.” She tossed her phone in her purse, looked at her friend, then Jack. “There’s a bit of a crisis at home.”

“Is Sting okay?” Kylie asked, struggling to fasten her seat belt.

“He got into the freezer—don’t ask how—and ate an entire tub of double-fudge ice cream. He’ll be fine, which is more than I can say for my husband when I get hold of him.”

Jack remembered Stan Tyler. A short but solid man, former captain of the high school wrestling team. He didn’t figure Faye could take him, but it would be fun to watch her try, especially since he knew Stan would cut off his hand before raising it to a lady. “You live in the converted carriage house next to the B and B, right?”

“Right,” she said. “And Kylie lives in the opposite direction in the boonies. Do you think—”

“Sure.” He unbuckled the seat belt Kylie had just managed to fasten. “Come on, Tiger.”

“Stop calling me that.” She batted away his hands and glared at him through her oval, plastic-rimmed glasses. No-nonsense glasses, black, like her no-nonsense clothes—cropped, wide-legged pants and a loose-fitting blouse. He thought about the no-nonsense shoes she’d given away and decided she must’ve gone out on the town straight from work. “And I don’t need a ride home. From you, I mean. Max lives out my way.”

“Max plays cards from six until eight,” Faye said as she scurried to the driver’s side. “He’s got another forty-five minutes to go. He’s not going to break away early for anything other than a four-alarm fire.”

“I’ll wait.” Shoeless, Kylie strode unsteadily toward Boone’s Bar and Grill.

“Stop where you are. Hello? Splinters! Broken glass!” Faye snapped, clearly in mother mode. “Jack?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He stepped in and hauled Kylie over his shoulder. “Drive safe, Faye. Best to Stan.”

She saluted and pulled away from the curb.

Kylie kicked like a swimmer on speed. “Put me down, darn you!”

He pressed the lock release on his key fob as he reached his Chrysler Aspen. The new SUV would serve as his personal and professional wheels. Though he didn’t have a weak stomach like Stan, he hoped Kylie didn’t hurl on his new leather seats.

“I’m serious, Jack. Don’t make me hurt you.”

He quirked an amused brow. “You wouldn’t assault an officer of the law, would you, Miss McGraw?”

“Would you throw me in jail?”

“No.”

“Dang. What’s a girl gotta do to get tossed in the clink?” she asked as he poured her into the passenger seat.

“Why are you determined to spend the night in jail?”

“Because it would set this birthday apart from all the others.”

“I can think of more pleasurable distinctions,” he said while buckling her in.

She nabbed his shirt collar and got in his face. Her hair tumbled free of the ponytail, overwhelming her delicate face and ramping her sexuality ten points. “You offering up a distinctive pleasure, Jack?”

Kylie, flirting? The kid who got tongue-tied when Spense teased her about boys?

Only she isn’t a kid anymore.

Jack held her sultry gaze, breathed in her flowery scent and cursed an unexpected boner.

“Touch her,” he could hear Spenser saying, “and I’ll kick your ass.”

He wouldn’t blame his friend for trying. He’d threatened to do the same to Ashe Davis, a serial womanizer. This was Kylie, for Christ’s sake. Sweet. Naive. Drunk.

She licked her lush lower lip. “Well?”

“Let’s not go there, Tiger.”

“Too bad for you. I’m a yoga geek.” She raised one brow. “You know what that means.”

“Flexible?”

“Like Gumby.”

The retro green guy that could bend every which way and back.

Christ.

He shut her door, rounded the Aspen and claimed the driver’s seat. “Where am I headed?”

“Route 50, a half a mile past Max’s place. Do you remember where Max lives?”

Flicking on his headlights, he eased onto Adams Street and headed north. “The boonies.” A twenty-minute drive from town, midway between Eden and Kokomo. Corn and soybean fields. Patches of woods. Pig farms. Pastures of grazing cows and horses. Sporadic century-old farmhouses and the occasional contemporary modular home. A wide-open area where the nearest neighbor lived a mile or a half mile away. He shot her a look. “You live alone out there?”

She smirked. “I’m single, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking if you live alone. No roommate?”

“I like my privacy.”

“You could live alone here in town.”

“I like the solitude.”

He couldn’t argue with that. He’d rented a home on the outskirts of town, an old two-story brick house on two acres of land. He, too, liked the idea of solitude. Peace and quiet. The exact opposite of what he’d had when he’d lived in the high-rise in Brooklyn. Difference was he was a trained cop, capable of handling a crisis in any form. She was…Kylie. Kylie all grown up, he thought, raking his gaze over her body.

“I didn’t used to live alone. I used to be almost engaged. Are you shocked?”

“That you were almost engaged? Or that you were living in sin?” he teased.

“Either, or.”

“Neither.”

“His name was Bobby Jones. You wouldn’t know him. He was a free spirit.”

You mean a freeloader. “Spenser mentioned him.” Jack kept in touch with his friend via e-mail. Mostly they talked sports and global affairs, but they always touched on family.

“Spenser never liked Bobby.”

That was putting it mildly, but Jack held his tongue.

“I’m not fond of my brother right now.”

“Because he didn’t approve of Bobby?”

“Because he’s an insensitive boob.”

Jack swallowed a laugh. “Did he forget your birthday?”

“No. He forgot I’m human.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I have dreams, too.”

He started to ask specifics, but she’d slumped against the window, eyes closed. She’d either passed out or clammed up. One thing he’d learned on the force, sometimes the easiest way to learn something was not to ask. He’d let it go for now and she’d talk when she was ready.

He tapped the radio media key, scanned his presets and chose a local classic rock station. The same music he’d listened to in his teens while cruising these back country roads. He grinned at the irony when the speakers rattled with the Cars’ “Shake It Up.” What did Kylie plan on doing, anyway? TP-ing every tree in town? Spraying Eden’s sacred water tower with graffiti? Streaking down the center of Main Street?

A vivid image of the woman sitting next to him exploded in his mind. Ivory flesh and toned curves. It was the second time in less than twenty minutes he’d imagined Kylie McGraw naked. Damn. He shifted in his seat, frowning when “Shake It Up” segued into “Keep Your Hands to Yourself.” Seemed the DJ had coordinated a playlist specifically fitted to Jack’s evening. He lowered the volume and concentrated on the road, not Kylie. The scenery, not Kylie.

She’d changed. He’d changed. But aside from a random new home, this rural area had remained the same. Between the music and landscape, he easily slipped back in time. He soaked in the serenity as if it were a restorative drug.

Ten minutes later he zipped by Max Grogan’s place. The antique fire engine parked in the drive had been in the old man’s possession for more than twenty years. He wondered if Red Rover still ran. He relived a few choice memories regarding that red hook-and-ladder truck while keeping an eye out for Kylie’s house. A half mile past Max’s place, she’d said.

He was about to wake her when he spied a lone mailbox and rolled to a stop. Brightly colored shoes were painted up and down the white post and McGraw was scripted on the box alongside #312. He turned his SUV into the crushed-stone drive that led him into the woods and soon after his headlights flashed on a mobile home. Not only did she live alone in the boonies, she lived in a disaster waiting to happen. Eden was smack in the middle of Tornado Alley. If a twister touched down, she’d be gone with the wind. What was she thinking? Why hadn’t Spenser intervened?

She stirred along with his annoyance. “You found it,” she said in a slurred, husky voice. “Great. Thanks for the lift.” Then her lids drifted back shut and Jack smiled in spite of his unease. Damn, she was cute.

Three seconds later he sidestepped potted flowers and carried the dozing woman toward her green mobile home. Moonlight bathed the tended lawn. The warm evening breeze rustled the leaves of the surrounding oak and maple trees and the bamboo wind chimes hanging from a wrought-iron pole rooted next to a bird feeder. He smelled earth and flowers and perfume. “Kylie?”

“Hmm?”

“Keys.”

“Purse.”

“Where?”

She furrowed her brow.

“Let me guess. You left it at Boone’s.”

“No problem. Mat.”

“Who’s Matt?”

“Doormat. Hey, it’s like a knock-knock joke. Funny,” she said with a loopy smile, then slipped back into la-la Land.

If he hadn’t been pissed about her obvious hiding place for the spare key, he would’ve laughed. The joke wasn’t funny, but she was. “When you’re sober, you and I are going to have a talk about home protection, Tiger.”

He fished the key from under the mat and unlocked the door, no easy feat while juggling a living rag doll. Once inside he flicked on a wall switch, bathing the compact living and dining area in muted light. “Spotless” was his first thought, quickly followed by “sparse.” Minimal furnishings with an oriental flair. He noted the framed prints on the wall. Japanese temples and landscapes. A movie poster of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Huh.

He located her bedroom, wishing she hadn’t mentioned her agility, compliments of yoga. Oriental images of an erotic nature flashed in his mind as he laid her on her black-and-red comforter.

Time to leave.

He took off her glasses and placed them on the nightstand, noted a book on Zen and travel brochures on China and Japan. Spenser had never mentioned her obsession with the Orient. He wondered if he knew. He thought about what she’d said earlier. “I have dreams, too.” After one peek at her living quarters, any idiot could deduce her dreams involved Asia. He filed away the knowledge, slipped into the bathroom and nabbed a glass of water and two aspirin. He returned and nudged her awake. “Take these and drink this. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

Bleary-eyed, she complied, then fell back on the pillow with a groan.

“Sleep tight, kid.” I’m outta here.

Warm toes skimmed up his T-shirt and across his lower back. “Jack?”

Wary, he turned back and nabbed Kylie’s adventurous foot. The wide pant leg slid toward her body, revealing a toned thigh and a glimpse of red panties. Damn.

“I’m not getting any younger,” she said.

Hit the road, Jack. “Meaning?”

“Meaning if I wait for what I want, I’ll never get it. At least that’s the way it’s worked so far.” She shoved her hair out of her eyes, then wagged a finger in his direction to emphasize another thought. “Although, I did grab the bull by the horns once, if you catch my drift, and I know you do, and I didn’t get what I wanted that time, either. I gotta tell ya, life has been one big-butt disappointment.”

She sounded pitiful and angry at the same time, and he cursed himself a pig for imagining the pleasure zone beneath those satin panties. He released her sexy foot and tugged her pant leg back past her knee. Against his better judgment, he sat on the edge of the bed. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Today in particular stunk.”

“Want to tell me what Spenser said or did to ruin your birthday?”

“It’s what he didn’t say or do.”

“You’re losing me.”

“It’s not about my birthday, but my life.”

“Definitely lost.”

“But it is what it is so I need to make the most of what I have, which isn’t much. I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

He pressed a finger to his temple, rubbed.

“Creative visualization is a beautiful thing. I will have my adventure, just you wait and see.”

“Back to shaking up things in Eden, huh?”

“I was planning to start tomorrow, but you know what they say…” She quirked a brow, waited.

“No time like the present?”

Her full lips curved into another of those loopy grins. “For the past year, I’ve spent every night in this bed alone. It would certainly break my blah, boring routine if you—”

“No.”

“—kissed me.”

Shit.

“It’s the least you could do.”

“For?”

“Refusing to be my first.”

He scratched his forehead, reflecting on the episode he’d sworn to take to his grave. “You were fourteen.”

She scrunched her brow. “So? How old were you when you first—”

“That’s different.”

“Why? Because you’re a guy? That’s a stupid argument,” she slurred, “but I’ll let it slide and point out that I am now thirty-two.”

“You’re also blitzed.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What if I was sober?”

“You’d still be Spenser’s little sister.”

She heaved a dramatic sigh. Then she stretched like a languid cat, teasing him with thoughts of Gumby flexibility.

“I know,” he said, only half kidding. “My loss.”

“My stinky birthday.” She stuck out her lower lip in a contrived but alluring pout.

He knew when he was being played. His ex had been a master manipulator. Not that Kylie was in Amanda’s league. Kylie was drunk. He scrambled for a graceful exit without hurting her feelings.

She mistook his hesitation as an invitation. “A pleasurable distinction,” she whispered, then pressed those pouty lips to his.

Soft. Sweet. Hot.

Holy shit.

He froze.

She sighed. “Thanks for the birthday kiss, Jack.”

He grappled for a casual response.

“Too bad I didn’t feel anything.”

CHAPTER THREE

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE.

Hell would have been preferable.

As was his routine for the past seven years, Travis Martin rose at 6:00 a.m. He showered—using bargain-brand soap, shampoo and shaving cream. He dressed in Lee Dungarees Carpenter Jeans, a plaid shirt and beige work boots. Breakfast consisted of oatmeal, white toast and a cup of Folgers. He scanned the local newspaper while he ate. The only upset in this routine was the absence of his wife. She’d died three months earlier. Life had been difficult before. Now it was painful.

Still, Travis stayed the course.

At 7:00 a.m. he pinned on his name tag and tugged on a cap embroidered with his employer’s logo: Hank’s Hardware.

At 7:05 he was out the door of his run-down farmhouse and behind the wheel of his 1995 Chevy pickup. The truck, like his clothes, was nondescript. He blended with the male population of Eden. He was just another hardworking, blue collar stiff who occasionally attended church on Sunday mornings—not that he got anything out of the preacher’s sermons. Now and then he dropped by Kerri’s Confections where he indulged in doughnuts and coffee. What he really wanted was a cannoli and espresso, not that he ever asked. Once in a while, like most of the men in these parts, he made an appearance at Boone’s Bar and Grill, where he tossed back a couple of beers. Last night he’d been sitting at the end of the bar, nursing a bottle of Pabst and craving a glass of Chianti, when Kylie McGraw, who was typically as unassuming as himself, went a little oobatz. Unlike anyone else in Boone’s, Travis had empathized.

Like Kylie, he despised the tedium of this Midwestern mom-and-pop town.

Unlike Kylie, he had no intention of shaking things up. He’d flirted with danger a month earlier, a moment of weakness. A mistake he’d quickly rectified. Drawing attention to himself was not an option.

Or was it?

At 7:40, Travis parked his pickup in the alley behind the hardware store. He entered through the back door, traded greetings with his boss and two coworkers. He tidied his work station and skimmed new orders. He did everything exactly as he always did, only this morning, like that one unfortunate night, he couldn’t calm his inner self. His true self.

At 8:00 a.m., his boss opened for business and Travis struggled to maintain his composure, his wife’s last request ringing in his ears. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Unfortunately, as his loneliness and frustration escalated, the warning packed less punch.

CHAPTER FOUR

KYLIE WOKE UP WITH a blinding headache and a gross taste in her mouth. Her memory was splotchy, too, but it could have been worse. She could have woken up next to Ashe. Or she could have puked up her guts. Although, if she had slept with Ashe, she would have felt wretched and not because of a hangover. She didn’t care how good-looking he was, the man was a bed-hopping sleaze with a checkered past, and she had scruples.