Just as he’d wanted.
He waited to make sure everyone had left before going to the storage hangar. As he had before, he helped himself to the boxes there, all old records. The next time he looked up, it was dark outside. There was only one more row of boxes to check, and he shifted those aside so tomorrow night he could remember where he left off, and then stared down at a door in the floor he’d just revealed.
A basement storage area. The trap door was locked. It took him five long moments to run to maintenance and find a crowbar, then five more to pry open the door.
Inside it was pitch black.
Yet another five minutes was lost finding a flashlight, but then he was back. He climbed down the ladder and shined his light over…more boxes.
Shit. He reached for the first one, dated the year he’d first come here, and memories rose up and gripped him by the throat.
His father telling him how much he was going to love the States. How he’d fallen for Sally, and that Bo would, too. How they were all going to be so happy. Together.
Bo had believed it, too. He hadn’t suspected a damn thing. Sally had gotten past his eighteen-year-old radar, and that still burned.
God, he missed Eddie, so damned much. With a sigh, he opened the box-and hit jackpot: old accounting journals undoubtedly dating from the days when records had been kept by hand. Pages of bank statements, receipts, bills…and an unmarked general ledger, which Bo would be willing to bet his last dollar didn’t belong with the “official” books of North Beach, because those books were upstairs. He’d seen them.
Two sets of books had been kept.
And possibly still were. Not uncommon, certainly, but what intrigued him most was the list of large deposits.
Deposits unaccounted for, no explanation, not matched to any customer, adding up to close to a million dollars.
A million dollars. Staggering, really. Where had the money come from? Where had it gone? And the biggie-did Mel know?
Given that the dates of the deposits ran from before Sally had met Bo’s father until right up until the time of Eddie’s death, the money could have come from anywhere, but Bo would bet his suddenly highly coveted deed to North Beach that Sally had conned it from someone else’s pocket.
Some of it Eddie’s.
What would Mel say? Would she look at the records, and still stand up for Sally? Or would she begin to see that maybe things weren’t always as they seemed?
That people weren’t always who they seemed?
He gathered some of his find and stepped outside the hangar, onto the tarmac. He eyed Mel’s Cessna, the Cessna she worked so hard to buy on her own, and wondered why he cared what she thought. Wondered, even as he was afraid he knew the answer.
But he hadn’t come here to the States for her. He’d come to claim back what was rightfully his father’s. His now. And as Mel’s plans were in the way of that, he’d be smart to steer clear of her.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t always smart…
Mel had a simple plan for the evening-relaxation. After a two-mile run on the beach, she called for Chinese to be delivered in an hour, then stripped, stepped into her bathtub, and let out a long sigh. Ah, the power of hot, hot water and bubble bath. She shampooed her hair, added a desperately needed ten-minute deep conditioner, then stuffed her hair beneath a shower cap. She lathered up a leg to shave, and the doorbell rang.
Naturally.
The Chinese food was early. Grumbling, she got out of the tub with one leg still lathered, wrapped her torso in a towel and went to the door. “Thanks,” she said as she pulled the door open a crack, then froze.
Not Chinese.
Bo stood there in loose black jeans and a snug black T-shirt, looking darker than sin and just as tempting, a fat file tucked beneath one arm, a look on his face that…Well, she couldn’t miss the temper, but she could have resisted it. But she couldn’t miss or resist the sadness.
She reminded herself that she didn’t care. She even tried to shut the door on him but as she already knew, he had the reflexes of a cat, and he simply reached out and slapped a hand on the wood. With heart-stopping trouble in his gaze, he looked her over. “Is it Halloween?”
“What?”
He touched the cap on her head and she remembered. Naked except for her towel and the lovely plastic shower cap on her head.
“Sexy,” he said.
She shifted her gaze to the ceiling. Dear God, are you listening? I know it’s been awhile, but if you could open up a huge hole and swallow me up, I’d appreciate it.
But no big hole gobbled her up. “I’m conditioning my hair.”
“Ah,” he said with a little smile.
Shaving gel plopped from her unshaved leg to the ground.
Bo raised a brow.
“And I’m shaving,” she said through her teeth. “Actually, I’m bathing, so if you’ll-”
He continued to hold the door open, looking her over slowly, making her squirm. Why was it that this man always managed to see her at her most absolute worst?
“You should see your face,” he said, amused.
Yep, this was how she looked while planning murder. His.
“Let me in, darlin’.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What if I said I have something you’re going to want to see?”
“There is nothing of yours I want to see.”
That had his grin spreading, the rat fink bastard. “You are such a liar.”
Unfortunately true. She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but his smile had faded, and there was something about his expression now, an utter solemnity, a knowledge…
And misery.
And though he was extremely careful to try to hide it, he was also mad.
Oh, God. What now? Could there be more? And what would he say to all she hadn’t told him, that though she couldn’t hand him Sally’s location, or even her phone number, she-or maybe it had been him, or some combination of both-had stirred things up enough that someone was now sending her threatening e-mails and letters…
She’d attribute them to spam, but her spam was usually along the lines of “lengthen your penis” or “grow your hair back”…not leave it alone, or back off or else…
She tightened her grip on her towel. Wracked her brain for a good reason to turn him away when everything inside her knew she had to face this.
Him.
“You going to let me in, Mel?”
Funny thing was, she’d already let him inside her heart, at least a foot, or two. He just didn’t know it. So in the end, she let him all the way in, stepping aside to once again let the big bad wolf into her house of straw.
Chapter 15
With difficulty, Bo tore his gaze off Mel’s extremely hot, extremely wet body and closed his mouth so he didn’t start noticeably drooling. He stepped over the threshold of her cottage and looked around to distract himself.
Her place was tiny, but well cared for. An overstuffed loveseat faced the small woodstove with a potted fern on either side. There were pictures on the walls, Al’s no doubt; some prints, some actual photographs, all of airplanes
