Playing Dead in Dixie Read online

  "I'll think about it," she said.

  But she didn't mean it. The last thing she needed was to put her problems on Wes Hollingsworth's broad, muscular shoulders. She'd known him, what, a week? And already, he could turn her inside out with a casual look or the brush of his fingertips on her arm. Even the sound of his voice sent little shockwaves up her spine.

  And the more time she spent with him, the worse it got.

  In a couple of weeks, she just might be able to leave Bangor behind with no regrets. Over the years, she'd made an art of leaving, after all. But if she let Wes Hollingsworth get too much closer, all bets were off.

  And that scared the hell out of her.

  Wes pulled up outside the Stricklands' house and shut down the truck's engine, cutting off Trisha Yearwood in mid-lament. Silence filled the void, thick and tangible. Carly dared a glance in his direction, wondering if he was thinking about the same thing she was thinking about.

  Which was how damned badly she wanted him to kiss her.

  It was a bad idea. A really, really bad idea. But when he turned to her, she leaned in, closing the distance between them.

  Wes lifted his hand to her face, cupping her jaw. "This is not a good idea."

  She nodded, even as she slid closer, until her thigh pressed against his. "I know."

  His other hand came up and threaded through her hair, his fingers tangling, curling to urge her head back. He bent his head and brushed his lips against the side of her throat. "We hardly know each other."

  "Hardly at all," she gasped as his teeth nipped lightly at the tendon where her neck met her shoulder.

  She slid her hand over his chest, stroking the hard muscles through his cotton shirt. His heartbeat hammered against her fingertips, tangible proof that he was as affected as she was.

  He drew back an inch or two, gazing at her in the faint glow coming from the porch light a few yards away. "I'm not going to stop asking questions about you."

  "I know." She licked her lips, wishing he would just stop talking and kiss her already.

  "If whatever you're hiding hurts my family . . . ."

  She nodded, tired of the preamble. She knew it all already. Nothing good was going to come of any of this.

  But right now, she didn't care. She curled her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him down to kiss her, cutting off the rest of his warning.

  He slanted his mouth over hers, hard and hungry. Her lips parting under the fierce, sweet pressure, she dug her fingers into his shoulders, anchoring herself to him as the world around her shattered into sparkling sensations of pleasure and need. She drank from his kisses, tried to quench the fire building in her belly, but his passion only stoked the flames.

  Wes slid his hand up her body, slowly tracing the ridges of her ribcage before his fingers settled, warm and tantalizing, against the curve of her breast. Through the flimsy fabric of her tank top and scrap of a bra, his thumb brushed over her nipple, circled and brushed again. She arched against him, needing more.

  Suddenly, Wes pulled away from her and turned back toward the front of the truck, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles glowed white in the darkness.

  Carly slumped back against the passenger door, her pulse thudding loudly in her ears. The handle dug into her hip, a painful reminder of harsh reality. Her breathing sounded harsh and uneven. Somewhere, a dog bayed, mournful and distant.

  "You should get inside before Bonnie and Floyd start worrying about you." Wes's voice was low and raspy, a little out of breath.

  "Not gonna walk me to the door?" Carly tried to keep her voice light, even though her entire body felt like it had been set aflame and abandoned to burn itself to ash.

  "It's late."

  Well, that was a sad excuse for an excuse, she thought. "You don't date much, do you?"

  He finally turned to look at her. "You're not going to be here in a month or two. Are you?"

  She didn't reply, but he already knew the answer.

  He sighed. "I don't even know your name. I don't know, maybe you're even married. Maybe he's who you're running from. I mean, how would I know?"

  She nodded. "You're right. It was a bad idea."

  He nodded as well, his dark gaze moving over her, as if trying one last time to see who she really was.

  For a minute, she wanted him to.

  She wanted to tell him that she was Carlotta Marie Sandano, that she was twenty-seven years old, that her mother was a second generation Irish American lass who'd made the tragic mistake of tying herself to a handsome Italian stallion with big dreams, small resources and a lazy streak as long as the Garden State Parkway. She wanted to tell him about her fear of spiders and her fear of attachments.

  She wanted to explain how she took a bookkeeping job at the Palais Royale Casino under the false impression that Human Resources Manager Dom Manning had seen past her showgirl looks to recognize the sharp brain in her pretty little head, only to find out that Manning was as crooked as her Nonna Maria's arthritic back, secretly routing millions of dollars through the casino to launder it for a half dozen different criminal enterprises while stacking the accounting and audit offices with yes men and incompetents.

  Dom had thought she'd be easy to handle. He'd been wrong.

  She wanted to tell Wes about going to the FBI and agreeing to stick with the job long enough to give Agent Phillips the evidence he needed to put Manning away, until she'd come home one day to find the sweet little stray cat she'd been feeding hanging upside down from her shower curtain pole, gutted and bled out.

  About going to work the next day and pretending nothing had happened, right up to the moment she'd grabbed the bag she'd hidden in her car and hopped the first tour bus out of A.C.

  She wanted to tell Wes that if she let herself think about the trouble she was in for more than a minute, the world started to go black around her as panic closed in, cold and suffocating.

  But she said none of those things when she opened the passenger door and slid out of the truck.

  All she said was good night.

  Chapter Six

  Carly hadn't expected to see Wes again anytime soon. But to her surprise, when she returned to the hardware store after lunch the next day, he was there talking to Floyd. Both men looked up when she entered. Floyd smiled. Wes didn't.

  Well, this is awkward.

  Floyd waved her over. "Carly, can you close for me this afternoon? Wes needs help with something at J.B.'s place."

  "Sure," Carly agreed, looking curiously at Wes. "Is something wrong?"

  He shook his head. "J.B. finally admitted the linoleum on his kitchen floor is so old, it's gotten slick. He can't keep his footing."

  "So that's why he fell."

  "Looks like it." Wes nodded.

  "I'm going to help Wes put down some new flooring in the kitchen tonight," Floyd said. "I'd thought Sherry was going to close tonight, but she's got to take her mama to the doctor in Savannah this afternoon. Reckon you could cover for me?"

  "I'll be happy to." A ripple of anticipation ran through her belly. Closing up would give her a chance to look over the store's books without anyone asking questions.

  She'd been wanting to take a look ever since she found out the store was having financial trouble. She was a trained auditor, after all. She'd kept her eyes open her first week of work, trying to figure out where losses might be happening. But the store did a brisk, steady business, and a lot of the items sold were high-end tools and hardware. Strickland's Hardware should be turning a comfortable profit.

  She wanted to find out why it wasn't.

  "Thank, darlin'. I'll show you what you'll need to do before I leave." Floyd patted her arm and turned back to Wes.

  Carly headed back to the employee break room to get her uniform smock, denying herself another quick glance at Wes. The sooner she conquered her inconvenient crush on the sexy police chief, the better for all concerned. She pulled the smock over her head and shook her hair out of her
eyes.

  And found herself looking at Wes, who stood in the break room doorway, watching her.

  Immediately, the air in the room went thick and hot. Carly's heart squeezed hard in her chest, then took off like a racehorse. She licked her lips and tried to speak in a normal tone of voice. "Can I help you?"

  One corner of his mouth twitched, but his dark eyes were deadly serious, the intensity of his gaze unnerving. "I just wanted to see if you were okay. After the other night."

  A brief flicker of pleasure at his concern quickly fell beneath a torrent of irritation. How arrogant, to think that a few kisses and a brush-off could knock her off her feet.

  Never mind that it damned near had.

  "I'm not the kind of girl who swoons after a little good night kiss." She dragged her gaze away from his, pretending to smooth non-existent wrinkles from the front of her smock.

  "That's not what I meant."

  "Look, I've got to get back to work." She brushed past him, trying to pretend that her whole body didn't vibrate from the brief touch of his arm against hers.

  He caught her hand. "I meant what I said last night. I can help you. Whatever you're afraid of—"

  She pulled her arm away, worried that if she listened to him much longer, she might spill everything.

  Which would be a disaster. He was a cop. He couldn't keep what she told him in confidence, even if he wanted to.

  She forced herself to look up at him. "Be sure to tell your father I said hi." Then she turned and left, not waiting to see if Wes made any reply.

  Floyd immediately directed her to a customer in aisle four who seemed to be having trouble choosing between table saws. By the time she'd gently convinced the man to buy the more expensive one, Wes had left.

  Which was fine with her, she told herself firmly.

  Really.

  "DO YOU THINK IT'S A GOOD idea to leave a woman you've known for less than two weeks to close up the store by herself?" Wes asked Floyd as he helped his uncle position a square vinyl tile in the middle of his father's kitchen floor.

  "You brought that mouthy gal into my house. Why ain't you worried about that?" J.B. asked from his perch on a ladder back chair just outside the kitchen door.

  Wes scowled at his father. "I was here with her."

  "Yeah, you're with her a lot, ain't you?" J.B.'s eyes glittered with dark humor. "Bonnie Jean says you're practically livin' over at her place these days. Ain't that right, Floyd?"

  Floyd grinned as he settled the tile into the bed of glue. "Been seein' a whole lot more of you these days than I used to."

  "I'm looking out for you and Aunt Bonnie. You don't seem to realize you've let a complete stranger into your house."

  "And you let her into my house," J.B. groused.

  Wes threw up his hands. "Don't worry, J.B., she won't be back here again, okay?" He grabbed the glue dispenser and laid the adhesive for the next tile, biting the inside of his jaw.

  The old guys could laugh if they wanted to. But he didn't find much about Carly to be funny. The more he got to know her, the less he knew about her. Maybe she wasn't the brassy con-artist he thought she was at first. But she was still a woman with secrets. Lots of them.

  Dangerous ones.

  He may not have brought her into the bosom of his family, but so far he'd done a damned poor job of running her out of it. She'd tried to leave once and he'd stopped her. She'd offered to leave against last night, and instead taking her up on it, he'd practically begged her to stay and let him help her deal with whatever—whoever—she was hiding from.

  And he didn't even want to think about the way she'd felt in his arms, her mouth eager and hot beneath his, her arms holding him so tightly against her that he could feel her heart racing in tandem with his own.

  He bit back an oath and slapped the vinyl square into the glue bed, ignoring his uncle's soft snicker.

  THE LAST CUSTOMER LEFT at 5:55 p.m., taking with him not only the sink fixtures he'd come there to find in the first place but also a matching towel rack and toilet paper holder.

  Carly locked up and closed out the cash register, noting with satisfaction that her last minute sales pitch had added almost forty dollars extra to the man's ticket. And he'd actually seemed grateful for her suggestions.

  She could get used to this sales business, she thought as she locked the register and carried the receipts back to Floyd's office. An extrovert by nature, she never seemed to have trouble talking to anyone, friend or stranger.

  In fact, the only person who seemed to leave her speechless was Wes Hollingsworth.

  She pressed her lips together in a tight line and placed the bag of bills and coins on Floyd's desk. You are not going to think about Wes Hollingsworth, remember?

  She unlocked Floyd's top left hand drawer and found the bank pouch where he said she'd find it. She counted the money, checking it against the register receipts. Finding the cash total a few pennies short, she reached for the penny jar Floyd kept in office for just such an event and matched the total to the receipts. Saving out a few bills and most of the coins to seed the cash drawer for tomorrow, she put the rest of the money in the pouch.

  She zipped the pouch and unlocked the bottom drawer, where Floyd kept the money overnight until he could make the bank deposit the next morning.

  And found a stack of ledger books.

  Carly sat back, surprised. Floyd had a computer in his office; she'd assumed that the books were kept on a bookkeeping program. It was where she'd planned to look for the store's financial files.

  It had been a while since she'd seen actual ledger books.

  Hands trembling, she placed the bank pouch in the drawer and picked up the ledger book that lay at the top of the stack.

  Okay. Last change to change your mind. You can put the book down and walk away.

  It wasn't any of her business if the Stricklands were losing money hand over fist. She wasn't going to be here to see them go under. No business of hers at all.

  But they'd been good to her. Better than some of her own family had ever been. The least she could do was try to figure out what was causing their financial woes.

  She opened the ledger book.

  Scanning the entries, she ascertained that the ledger contained an up-to-date listing of credits and debits. The last entry had been made yesterday, in neat, feminine handwriting. Definitely Sherry's; Carly had seen the woman sign a few purchase orders over the last week or so.

  Nothing jumped out at her in the ledger book, no obvious discrepancies at first glance. But a quick look-through definitely supported Floyd's assertion that the hardware store was having financial troubles. The debits were higher than the credits on almost every page of this ledger.

  A finger of suspicion crept up the back of her neck, although she hadn't found anything yet to suggest fraud. Still, hadn't her Proactive Fraud Auditing professor told her she had one of the best noses for fraud he'd ever seen?

  Right now, her nose was itching big time.

  She picked up the next few ledgers and laid them on the desk in front of her. The next two books showed similar losses, dating back over three months. The remaining books, however, showed a small but discernible profit.

  Carly's fraud radar kept going off, pinging hard against her spine. She put the ledger books back in the drawer and locked it, trying the key in the other deep drawer on the right side of Floyd's desk. It opened easily and she looked inside. She didn't find any ledgers in that drawer, only a long row of files. She flipped through a couple. Vendor invoices and purchase orders, dating back a few months. Nothing recent.

  Closing the drawer and locking it back, she placed the keys on the desk in front of her and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  Okay. There were definite losses for the last three months. Almost all profits for the months before that. She'd need to see other ledgers, going back years instead of months, to work out whether the three month period of losses could be attributed to seasonal fluctuations or some
other explainable economic factors. Where would Floyd—or Sherry—keep them?

  She looked around the office, her gaze falling on the file cabinet across the office. She pushed away from the desk and crossed to the file cabinet.

  Please don't be locked.

  She pressed the release catch on the drawer handle and pulled. The drawer slid open with a soft whine.

  Insider were more vendor invoices, going back to the previous year. She tried the next drawer and found payroll files. In the third drawer she found what she was looking for—twenty or so ledger books, lined up back-to-front in the file drawer.

  She thumbed through quickly, looking for the summer months of the previous year. Finding them, she left a piece of notepaper to mark where they'd been and carried them back to Floyd's desk. Unlocking the desk drawer again, she pulled out the summer books from the current year and compared the totals to the totals from the previous year.

  Whoa.

  She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and checked again.

  "Carly?"

  Bonnie's voice, coming from somewhere out front, made Carly jump. Nerves jangling, she grabbed the older ledger books and put them back in the file cabinet, thanking her lucky stars that she'd thought to mark their place. She quickly shut the drawer and returned to Floyd's desk, sliding the more recent ledger books into the drawer just seconds before Bonnie opened the door to the office and walked in.

  "There you are!" Bonnie smiled at her. "All finished up? I thought we could have a girls' night out, since Floyd is going to be out for a while more, helping Wes at his daddy's. I thought we could drive over to Savannah and eat somewhere nice. How's that sound to you?"

  "Sounds terrific." Carly locked the desk drawer again and got up, tamping down a niggling sense of guilt. She didn't really have anything to feel guilty about, did she? It wasn't like she was the one trying to hurt the Stricklands.

  But she thought maybe someone else was.

  The difference in last summer's receipts and this summer's was striking, almost a twenty percent decrease. Problem was, invoice payments had gone up more than twenty-eight percent over the same period. That kind of jump in debit-to-credit ratio could have several different causes, market forces or bad purchasing practices, to name a couple.