Susan Andersen - Coming Undone

Christ, had the temperature just spiked another twenty degrees? He could see the headline now:Semper Fi Detective Strokes Out on Measly One-Mile Run. Lucky for him, he knew he could count on his sister to spend time at his bedside wiping the drool from his chin. John, on the other hand, would probably just show up to laugh at him.

To his eternal relief, P.J. turned back toward the first bridge.

Figuring he could safely assume she was headed back to the hotel, he slacked off his pace. Then his professional self demanded,And you're going to discover her room number howfrom back here?

"Crap." Blowing out a breath, he picked up his speed again.

She'd disappeared by the time he got in sight of the pool again and, swearing to himself, he put on a further burst of speed.

"Enjoy your run?"

He skidded to a halt, his head whipping around. P.J. sat at one of the umbrella tables on the rail-enclosed deck, her feet up on the chair next to her. He walked back. "You knew I was behind you the entire time?"

"Hard to miss the sound of those sandals slapping on the path." She nodded at his feet. "You run pretty good for a man in Tevas."

He swung over the railing onto the deck and took a chair across from her. "Gimme your water."

"Get your own drink."

He leaned toward her. "I sold my favorite baseball card for you. Give me the goddamn water!"

"That was fifteen years ago, and you sold it for both of us, not just me." But she shoved the CamelBak she'd removed across the table.

He swooped the backpacklike hydration system up, stuck the mouthpiece between his lips and nearly sucked the well dry. When he came up for air, he found her gazing at his naked chest.

"You might want to put your shirt on," she said dryly. "I think this is one of those no shirt, no shoes, no service places."

"Then they must not get a helluva lot of business. It's next to a damn pool."

"That's a point." A valid one, P.J. saw when she looked around and saw a few of the diners still in bathing attire. She was nevertheless relieved to see him raise his right hip and fish his navy T-shirt from his back pocket, where he'd stuffed the shirt's tail. All that bare skin stretched over all that well-defined muscle and bone made her a little nervous. So she gave him a wiseacre smirk. "Who would have guessed that you'd turn out to be so buff?"

He pulled the shirt on over his head then flexed an impressively muscular bicep at her. "You a fool for muscles?"

"Oh, yeah." She laid it on thick, batting her eyes and doing the pitty-pat thing with her hand on her heart. "They just make me weak all over."

"Uh-huh." As she'd hoped, he thought she was yanking his chain, even though the sight of his shoulders and chest and ridged abdomen did make her feel a little giddy.

Lord Almighty, girl. Get a grip.

Clearly she had to get out more. She'd determined as a kid not to get sucked into the penchant that seemed to run rampant in so many of the small-town women she'd known-that longing for a man, any man, to stand between them and the lonelies. She'd always patted herself on the back for striking a healthy balance. So okay, she'd admit that recently she'd been concentrating on her career so much that her love life was pretty much nonexistent. Still, she certainly hadn't turned her back on men altogether.

Maybe she was going a little overboard on the vocation side of the equation these days, though, if the sight of one well-muscled chest gave her palpitations like those of a fourteen-year-old exposed to her first crush. That was a little on the awkward side.

All the same, the girlish giddies had her feeling pretty cheerful.

"So, when did you start running?" Jared asked, interrupting her thoughts.

"When I was sixteen. One of the schools I attended had a track team and Mama and I actually stayed in town long enough for me to join it." Only to be told to pack up again two days after their first meet.

"You do it to maintain that great ass?"

"No. I do it for my singing."

He gave her a blank look and she explained, "The lungs are a bellows, Hamilton. Running improves my wind, which improves my ability to sustain a note." She studied him from beneath her lashes. "So you think I have a great ass?"

To her surprise, dull color climbed his neck to flush his jaw and cheeks. "Hey, I'm a red-blooded man. I've noticed your butt in a, you know, general sort of way."

"Boys will be boys," she agreed dryly. And just like that, she found herself no longer pissed at him. The not quite disguised discomfort in a man she would have sworn didn't have a self-conscious bone in his body reminded her of the boy she'd once adored.

Besides, what had started out feeling like one big slap in the face-Jared's determination to keep tabs on her and his vow to deliver her to her concerts-was actually turning into something of a godsend. This game of cat-and-mouse they played kept her from trying to rewrite her history with Mama over and over again.

Who woulda thunk it? Truth was, though, she couldn't remember the last occasion spent offstage when she'd had this good a time. He was kind of stimulating company and it amused her to keep him on his toes.

Maybe that was why, when he asked out of the blue what her mother had done to make P.J. fire her, she didn't blow him off the way she had that day in the Texas panhandle.

"She cooked the books."

He stared at her. "Sheembezzled from you?"

Raw pain swamped her and she really wished she had blown him off. But she shrugged as if it were no big deal and dipped her chin in assent.

"Thatbitch. "

She'd always hated it when he'd bad-mouthed Jodeen. It was one thing for her to do so but something else entirely for anyone else to take a shot, and her jaw automatically shot up. But she resisted getting in his face about it. Because he was right. Much as she hated to admit it, he was one hundred percent correct.

Mama was a bitch. She likely always had been, but P.J. had refused to let herself see it.

Still, she hoped like hell her sorrow over acknowledging it now didn't show. Climbing to her feet, she gathered her CamelBak. "Well, gee," she said as if she didn't have a care in the world. "This's been swell. But our little whatchamacallit-our truce thingie-"

"Detente?"

"Yeah, that. Is over. Don't go thinking this changes anything. And you really don't want to start expecting I'll make things painless for you between now and the start of my tour. Because I won't. I'm still unhappy about having a guard dog. I'm not about to roll over and make your job easier." And if she had to stifle a silly little pang of regret, that would be her secret.

He yawned. "I'll keep that in mind."

His boredom shot her moment of remorse to hell, and she almost smiled in gratitude. "Just as long as you know." She started back toward the hotel entrance. "I don't want to hear no whining that you weren't warned."

WHEN THE MAN OPENED his mailbox to discover a manila envelope from the clipping service he'd recently subscribed to, he came the closest to smiling that he had in a long time. "Praise the Lord," he murmured and marched back up the path to his house with a brisker stride than usual. Pleasure suffused him at the prospect of reading about Priscilla Jayne. He admired everything he knew of her.

Well, that wasn't quite accurate. He didn't approve of her song about drinking and partying that was getting so much airplay these days. But at the same time:"'Honor thy father and thy mother,'" he said with conviction, "that thy days may be long upon the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee." Exodus 20:12 was one of the Bible's most pertinent passages and Priscilla Jayne grasped its importance. That made her a woman in a million in this immoral age they lived in.

Certainly his own daughter had never shown him the respect he deserved.

He brought himself up short with an impatient shake of his head.No. He wouldn't think about that.

Not now. Not today.

The moment he entered his modest frame house, the man went straight to the dining room, where he drew the drapes against prying eyes and the hot, Midwestern sun. Except then it was too dim and the overhead light didn't help much. He'd been waiting for these articles with far too much anticipation to miss a single word.

He fetched the gooseneck lamp from the living room, arranged it where it would do the most good and plugged it in.

Nodding in satisfaction, he made a quick trip to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of iced tea but was too impatient to drink it at the kitchen table as was his custom. He brought it back to the dining room and, after placing the glass just so on a paper napkin he'd positioned in the exact center of the heart-of-pine trestle table, he slit open the envelope. Shaking its contents onto the pristine surface, he meticulously aligned the papers, took a sip of his tea and restored the glass to the precise spot from which he'd retrieved it. Heart quickening in anticipation, he reached for the first article.

After reading it, however, his heart pounded with another emotion. Priscilla Jayne had fired her mother as her manager?

That wasn't following the fifth commandment. That wasn't being a proper daughter at all.

Still, it was one piece of writing, and that from one of the more sensationalistic publications. Perhaps they had skewed the story in order to sell more copies of their rag. Those kind of journals were sued all the time for doing exactly that. He reached for the next article in the pile.