Criminal Deception

Marilyn Pappano Criminal Deception

(c) 2010

Dear Reader,

I always fall in love with something when I write a book-a character, a place or something of importance to the story. This time there were those sweet sighs whenever Joe came onto the page, and Copper Lake is high on the list of places I’d like to live, but my true love affair was with coffee.

I’m a lifelong coffee nondrinker. But when I began a book about a man who owns a gourmet coffee shop, I thought the least I could do was sample some gourmet coffees. As luck would have it, at the same time I was doing this research, my niece came home from a year in El Salvador with bags of top Salvadoran coffee for everyone. One sip and I was in love. As further proof of serendipity, the only place to buy that coffee outside El Salvador was from the estate’s only American roastery a mere twenty miles from my house.

It’s fair to say that Liz fell in love with Joe over a cup of coffee. And so did I.

Marilyn Pappano

Chapter 1

Joe Saldana was a sucker for a pretty female, and he’d proven it twice in the past hour alone: he’d agreed to help Ellie Maricci with her new pet project, and with nothing more than an innocent look from Alyssa Lassiter’s big blue eyes and a soft, “Pwease, Joe,” he’d committed to help her father coach Little League this summer.

Now he sat in one corner of A Cuppa Joe, his Copper Lake, Georgia, coffee shop, gazing at his neighbor across the narrow table. Natalia Porter was unusually hesitant this afternoon, a sure sign that she wanted something from him. He was determined not to help her out by asking what.

She looked up from her afternoon grande mocha caffeine fix and casually said, “I went for a bike ride today.”

“Huh.” There was nothing unusual about that. Soon after moving into the cottage next door to his two months ago, she’d bought a bike and accompanied him on dozens of rides.

“I went out to Copper Lake.”

“Huh.” The lake for which the town was named was only three miles northeast of the square, a short ride for either of them.

“I found something.” She gave up pretense for intensity that rushed out her words. “Two puppies. A male and a female. They’re so cute and sweet and-and so hungry. They’re nothing but skin and bones, and they kind of followed me home, but Mrs. Wyndham says I can’t keep them. You, on the other hand, are so responsible and so reliable and just the perfect tenant, and if you wanted to keep them, why, of course that would be another matter entirely.” Natalia paused for a breath, then looked at him hopefully. “So will you?”

He studied her. She was twenty-five, she’d told him, but with her ridiculously short brown hair and eyes that were way too big for her face, she looked about fifteen. Those eyes were green, at least for the day; she changed their color as often as she changed her contact lenses.

Very young, very innocent, very easy to say yes to.

Stubbornly, he didn’t. “You know what puppies do? They pee all over everything. What they don’t pee on, they chew up, and they eat like a horse. They’ll tear my house apart the first time they’re left alone. And in case you haven’t noticed, with the hours I keep, they’d be alone a lot.”

“I’ll help with that,” she said eagerly. “I’ll take them out every two hours and I’ll clean up whatever messes they make.”

“I don’t want pets.”

“When was the last time you had one?”

“I don’t have to have cancer to know I don’t want it,” he retorted. He was happy living by himself. He liked his shoes ungnawed on; he liked not sharing his bed. Being responsibility-free, except for the coffee shop, was his life’s goal. The only thing he didn’t want more than a puppy was two puppies.

Then he grinned faintly. That wasn’t accurate. He didn’t want to be audited by the IRS. He didn’t want Starbucks to move into that empty space across the square. He didn’t want global warming to be a fact, even though he believed it was.

He didn’t want to ever see his brother again.

Oh, yeah, Josh trumped every other bad idea out there. Josh was the worst idea out there. Life would have been easier all around if he’d never been born.

Although how would that have affected Joe? After all, they’d come from the same egg.

And Joe had been dealing with him ever since.

“Please, Joe?”

“Look, Nat, I’ll ask Miss Abigail-”

The bell over the door dinged and he glanced that way. For a moment, all he saw was red: a snug-fitting dress that hugged every curve it touched, from shoulder to breast to waist to hip. It was fire-engine, look-at-me red, and led to a pair of long tanned legs and high-heeled sandals, white dots on red and topped with a bow.

It was an amazing sight to a man with a fine appreciation for mile-long legs.

As the door whooshed shut and the newcomer took a few steps, curiosity raised his gaze. He’d been in Copper Lake a year and a half. How had he overlooked those legs before?

His glance slid back over those curves and skimmed across delicate features framed by sleek black curls before it clicked into one recognizable picture. All the appreciation disappeared, swallowed up whole by cold emptiness that spread instantly through him.

Slowly he got to his feet. Only dimly aware of Natalia’s questioning look, he mumbled, “Yeah, okay, whatever,” then crossed to the counter. He swore he felt the newcomer’s gaze the instant it touched him, and he wondered in some distant part of his mind if she knew who he was, that he was Joe and not Josh.

Because last he heard, she had been Josh’s.

She stopped near the cash register, where only two feet of marble separated them. She looked as cool as the stone between them, and elegant, too. Funny. Elegant had never been Josh’s type.

But Josh had had no doubt that Elizabeth Dalton was exactly his type.

“ Elizabeth.” He drawled out all four syllables.

“I prefer Liz.”

He’d heard those words before, the first time they’d met. Josh had introduced her as Beth, but she hadn’t seemed at all like a Beth to him. She’d stated her preference that day, as now, but Josh had ignored her, and Joe…He hadn’t called her anything. He’d been too busy keeping his tongue from hitting the floor.

“What brings you to Copper Lake?” Then the obvious answer to the question hit him and his gaze jerked toward the plate glass windows and the street beyond, searching for a glimpse of his brother. It would be just like him to send someone else in to smooth the way before he showed his face.

“I’m looking for Josh,” Liz replied in that unruffled way of hers, and Joe’s attention jerked again, back to her.

He couldn’t decide which was more incredible-that his worthless brother had run out on a woman like Liz Dalton, that she thought he was worth tracking down, or that she thought he’d come to Joe. Even though they were identical twins, they’d been going their separate ways since they were about five years old. They hadn’t been particularly close even before what had happened two years ago.

He picked up a spray bottle and a handful of towels, circled the counter to the nearest table, then started the task of scrubbing the top clean. “You’re looking in the wrong town. This is the last place Josh would go if he’s in trouble.”

Liz followed him. “Then doesn’t that make it the first place I should check?”

He wiped that table to a shine, then moved on to the next. Natalia, two tables away, wasn’t even pretending that she wasn’t listening to every word. “I haven’t seen him in two years. I’m not sure I want to see him in the next twenty either.”

“Has he called you?”

“Why would he do that?”

“To apologize?”

His laughter was more of a snort.

She shrugged, a silent acknowledgment that her suggestion was unlikely, then offered a better one. “To ask for money or help.”

He rounded on her, moving closer, lowering his voice so Natalia would have to strain to hear. “Last time he asked me for anything, I damn near died. Do you really think he’d try again? Because if he did, I don’t know whether I’d beat him to a pulp or let the people who tried to kill me do it instead.”

Liz’s eyes darkened a shade, and for a moment shock flashed there. He half expected her to chide, You don’t mean that, but although her lips parted as if to speak, she remained silent.

Once more the bell above the door sounded, and he automatically looked that way as a group of girls wearing the tan-and-blue uniforms of the local middle school came in. There would be more behind them, followed in fifteen minutes by kids from the high school. As good an excuse as any to end this conversation.

“I’ve got customers. If you find Josh, tell him I said to go to hell and try not to take anyone with him.” Stepping around her, he returned to the counter, washed his hands, forced a smile and went back to work.