Manhunting in Mississippi (4 page)

She gestured toward her van, which was stil running. “Wel , I guess I’d better be going.”

Henry, nodding and chewing, watched her while she climbed inside awkwardly, aware of the expanse of thigh she revealed in the process. Embarrassment mixed with doubt

and anticipation made her queasy as she drove away, and she suddenly remembered why she’d stopped dating in the first place—it hadn’t been worth the strain. She’d barely begun her day, and she was already exhausted. Stil , she was making progress. She had the
threat
of a date anyway.

More out of habit than necessity, Piper slowed at the caution light before proceeding onto Patty Richards Kegley Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of town. Twenty-two years

ago Patty Richards Kegley had made the mistake of stepping out onto what had then been cal ed Main Street in front of the single Mudvil e fire truck as it rushed to a grease fire at the drive-in on the far end of town. For her misfortune, she’d been immortalized in street signs, and the drive-in had created a sandwich in her name. Piper hoped if she herself incurred a mortal wound within city limits, she would at least warrant an entrée.

The Mudvil e morning rush hour typical y dragged on for a ful fifteen minutes when nearly one hundred workers leaving the midnight to 7:00 a.m. shift at Blythe Industries food plant clogged Kegley Boulevard in a semimad dash for a window seat at either Tucker’s Good Food Place or Alma’s Eats. Piper avoided the tangle by timing her commute for seven-thirty, which gave her ample time for the ten-minute drive and a cup of coffee before she donned her lab apron at eight.

The rain started fal ing in sheets just as the company’s familiar blue and gray concrete sign came into view. Blythe Industries lay long and wide in a carved-out section of woods about a mile outside of town, past Trim’s Food Market, the new high school and the old car wash. Pure coincidence had landed her the job of chief food scientist when the plant opened a year ago. She’d been visiting her grandmother and they’d run into Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Blythe over apple oatmeal at Alma’s. The businessman had been ecstatic to learn of Piper’s educational and professional background and offered her a job on the spot. Not entirely thril ed with her position as a label-ingredient tester at a Biloxi packager, and eager to be near her aging grandmother, Piper had accepted. The money was better than average and she’d made quite a dent in her col ege loans, but she found it amusing that she, who was al ergic to chocolate and averse to sweets in general, was in charge of creating many of the desserts ordered at fast-food restaurants al over the country.

She was glad to be starting a new project today, she decided as she circled the ful parking lot searching for a vacant space, despite the fact that someone from the Bentley Group was arriving this afternoon to offer tips on the kind of dessert they were looking for. Working with a suit looking over her shoulder didn’t rank high on her list, but if Bentley signed for a new dessert, Edmund Blythe had promised her a very handsome bonus, so she aimed to please. Plus, a new face would take her mind off her after-hours manhunting mission. Her nerve was dwindling rapidly.

Through thrashing windshield wipers, she spotted one wide parking space on the end of a row and headed toward it. Cursing the van’s absence of power steering, Piper

started turning wel before the spot to leverage a good angle. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a smal black sports car dart around the corner and wheel deftly into the spot. Piper slammed on the brake, bouncing her forehead against the unforgiving steering wheel and biting her tongue. Pain exploded in her sinuses while stars floated behind her eyes. And she had the vaguest thought that the cut in her mouth would affect her tasting abilities for the day. Damn pushy salesmen! They bombarded the plant daily, trying to coax Edmund Blythe into using their branded ingredients in the desserts produced on the line.

She pressed her hands against her forehead, blinking back involuntary tears. A low thumping noise invaded her senses and she realized someone was knocking on her window. Loath to move her pounding head, Piper glanced up slowly to see a man standing outside beneath an umbrel a, peering in at her. He wiped away the rain on the glass, then yel ed, “Are you al right?”

Her first instinct was to fling open the door and send the stranger sprawling, but her head hurt so much, she could only nod. He knocked again and motioned for her to lower the window. She cranked down the glass gingerly, giving him the same two inches she’d al owed Lenny this morning.

However, if she hadn’t been so angry, she would have appreciated the fact that the stranger was a measurable improvement over Lenny. His dark hair was cleanly shorn and

he was wearing a shirt—a dress shirt, no less—and a tie, which was reason enough for pause in these parts. His clear eyes were the color of the rain dripping from his umbrel a and topped with dark eyebrows, which were drawn into a vee. “Are you al right?” he demanded again.

Furious at her physical response to the nitwit, she swal owed a mouthful of blood and narrowed her eyes at him. “You,” she said thickly, “are a menace.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up and he pul ed back a few inches. “Me?” he sputtered. “What about you? Don’t you know you’re supposed to have your lights on when it’s raining?”

Piper licked her lips, testing her tongue. “I didn’t expect,” she said, her voice escalating with each word, “anyone to be driving like a maniac
in the parking lot!
” She winced at the pain and exhaled.

“It’s a good thing you had your seat belt on,” he snapped.

“It’s a good thing I’m not carrying a gun,” Piper returned.

He scowled, gesturing. “Are you al right or aren’t you?”

“I’l live,” she muttered, fingering the goose egg fast forming on her forehead.

“Look, give me a minute to move my car,” he said. “You can have the parking space.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” she said dryly.

“I didn’t see you,” he said tersely, “or I would have gladly let you have the spot.” He strode toward his car, shielded by the umbrel a. His movements were jerky as he unlocked the door and lowered himself inside. Within a few seconds, he had backed out of the spot and disappeared around the corner.

Piper eased into the space, her heart stil racing from the encounter. After she turned off the engine, she leaned forward and rol ed her eyes up at the sky, hoping for a few minutes’ reprieve to make the dash into the building. When none seemed forthcoming, she fished a plastic grocery bag out of the glove box. After tying the handles under her chin, she took a deep breath, then shot out of the door into the unrelenting cloudburst.

She didn’t make it far. Her pumps didn’t have the same grip as her trusty clogs. One second she was jumping puddles, the next she was flat on her back on the pavement,

completely winded and half-submerged, her head held out of the water, she suspected, by the knot rising swiftly on her crown. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. Merciful y the rain suddenly stopped.

“You’re accident prone,” a male voice said above her.

Piper opened her eyes slowly to see the salesman kneeling over her, his umbrel a providing the imagined lapse in the downpour. She considered the depth of the puddle—

surely drowning would be less painful than dying of humiliation.

“Are you al right?” He grasped her arm and pul ed her to her soggy feet, but she felt off balance and leaned heavily on his arm.

“I should have let you keep the parking spot,” she murmured, stil a little fuzzy, and very, very wet. Water streamed off her clothes, which were seemingly vacuum-packed to her backside.

“Do you feel wel enough to walk?” he asked, his breath fanning her face as they huddled under the umbrel a.

Piper conjured up a smirk. “What are my options?”

“I could carry you,” he said simply, one side of his mouth drawing up into a lopsided smile.

Her heart lodged near her throat at the prospect and time stood stil for an instant. His gaze locked with hers and Piper swal owed painful y. They might have been captured in their own little snow globe, separated from the rest of the world by some transparent barrier. Rain drummed on the umbrel a and water ran around their feet. Piper’s tongue felt thick, but she wasn’t sure if it was swol en from biting herself or if she’d suffered brain damage from the combined knocks to her head.

“N-no,” she stammered. She would already be the laughingstock when she walked into her office—she’d never live it down if she arrived high in the arms of a stranger. “I’l

walk.”

“That might be difficult.” He shifted and fighting a smile, he held up the heel to one of her pumps.

Her heart sank. “I’l crawl,” she amended.

“Come on,” he urged, turning her toward the building. “I owe you one.”

“You certainly do,” Piper said briskly, but his throaty chuckle relaxed her slightly. He bore more of her weight than she did as they made their way across the short walkway and up a sweeping set of limestone steps. Piper’s vital signs went haywire and she fluctuated between wanting the encounter to end and wishing for another lap around the grounds on the arm of this man.

His driving skil s aside,
this
was a man worth hunting. Tal , solidly built from what she could see, nice dresser. Piper frowned. He obviously was not from Mudvil e—hmm, that could be a problem. Stil , she was thril ed that she’d managed to stumble over such a prize specimen so early in her hunt. Phrases from her grandmother’s guide popped into her head and she searched for something bril iant to say that would erase the impression she’d given him.

But her romantic musings came to a screeching halt when she glanced down at his left hand. Winking back at her, mocking her from his third finger was a very gold, very

sparkly, very substantial-looking wedding band.

Her quarry had been bagged by someone else.

Piper suddenly felt cold, wet and miserable. Even if she did need the practice, she wasn’t inclined to waste her fledgling feminine wiles on a married man. She set down her

foot wearing the good shoe on the top step, then felt the rain-soaked heel snap off. The pain in her ankle surpassed any of the injuries she’d received in the last fifteen minutes. She howled, her dignity long gone.

Ian felt his clumsy companion lurch sideways, and bent his knees to accommodate her weight, such as it was. His flash of irritation was replaced by concern at her high-pitched yelp. At least they had progressed to an overhang, so he abandoned the umbrel a to clasp her other arm.

“My ankle, my ankle, ow, ow, ow,” she whimpered, holding her right foot off the ground. With the white plastic bag tied around her head, her shimmering eyes and her drenched, dripping clothes, she looked pitiful.

“Hold stil ,” he said, bending to lift her into his arms.

“No,” she protested, pushing at his chest with laughably tiny hands.

“Hold stil ,” he insisted, swinging her up, “before you break your little neck.” She gasped with indignation. Ian pressed his lips together and stared straight ahead. He concentrated on the few remaining steps into the building to keep his mind off the fact that his hands were ful of very attractive woman. The “little” had just popped out. Petite and elflike, she could be anywhere between her early twenties and mid-thirties. But she had a mouth like a teenager, and seemed just as flighty.

If Blythe Industries was riddled with ditzy employees, maybe he should rethink their business liaison. Perhaps this project would be better off in the hands of the midsize food plant he worked with in Peoria.

“I can walk, thank you.” She moved against him, struggling like a soaked kitten.

Glancing at her was a mistake—he nearly stumbled when he looked into her eyes. Pale blue, virtual y black around the edges, and brimming with anger. Childlike long lashes.

Chiseled, smal features, with dark, spiky hair sticking out from under her makeshift rain bonnet. And her wet wriggling was doing things to his body. “We’re almost there—you’re making things worse,” he said tightly.
Much worse.
He’d come to Mudvil e hoping to forget about women for a while, and within hours of arriving, he already had his hands ful …literal y.

He dragged away his gaze to look around for someone to open the double doors heralding the entrance to Blythe Industries, but no one else was in sight. Thankful y, the doors slid open automatical y.

About two dozen people loitered in the two-story lobby, talking, waiting for the elevator, stamping the rain from their feet onto pale marble tile. A few people drifted in through another entrance, directly opposite the one he and Miss Mishap had chosen. A tal desk sat unattended in the reception area. He looked around for a place to set down his load, and moved toward a smal cluster of couches and chairs.

Meanwhile, his load was caterwauling, “Put…me…down!”

A few heads turned at the obvious distress in her voice, and his irritation flared. How like a woman to bite the hand trying to feed her.

“Be quiet,” he snapped, “before I drop you on your wet backside.” Indeed, the going was precarious with al the water dripping from her onto the slick floor.

She refused to behave. Stil pressing against his chest, she shouted, “Put me down!”

He did. Ian dropped her unceremoniously onto the most absorbent-looking couch in the lobby. She bounced twice on her behind, arms flailing, eyes angry.

“There,” he pronounced, removing a handkerchief to wipe his own hands. His wet suit sleeves and the front of his shirt, however, were beyond patting dry.

“Thank you,” she said with a clenched jaw, trying to sit up. She reached forward to massage her ankle, which had already begun to swel . Despite her ungrateful attitude, Ian winced in sympathy. She needed medical attention.

A stout, middle-aged man broke from the staring crowd at the elevators, his stride purposeful. Ian recognized Edmund Blythe from the meetings in Chicago, where they had

signed a sizable contract. “Piper, is that you? Good Lord, what happened?”

In wet stocking feet, the woman he cal ed Piper looked up from the couch. She tore off the plastic bag, revealing choppy short, dark hair. Only someone with her incredible bone structure could have carried off the minimal hairstyle. “Good morning, Edmund.” She rol ed her eyes toward Ian. “I was told that I’m accident prone.”