Intimate Strangers Read online

  Knowing he was stalling, he walked quickly up the wooden access ramp and through the front door, then stood for a moment, absorbing the atmosphere of the gallery. He could detect an odor he called “old-house smell.” Some of the antiques had come from musty old basements or leaky buildings, and they’d carried the scent of their previous surroundings with them. But that was the only negative part of the mix. From where he stood, he could see a pleasing hodgepodge of cabinet pieces, dining-room sets, reupholstered chairs and knickknacks overflowing from curio cabinets and shelves.

  The familiar scene sent a wave of nostalgia crashing over him. He’d gotten his appreciation of antiques from his parents, who had been part-time dealers back in New Jersey. In fact, that was how he’d met Veronica. She’d been a regular at the weekend flea markets and antique fairs, too, helping out cousins who were in the business. As teenagers, they’d started hanging out together, and the relationship had gradually changed from friendship to something stronger. He’d thought they were in love, though in retrospect, at eighteen, they’d probably been too young to choose a life’s mate. The marriage had been precipitated by Veronica’s pregnancy. After they’d gotten hitched, she’d had a miscarriage, and he’d been relieved that he didn’t have to support a baby as well as a wife. Apparently Veronica had been relieved, too, because they’d put off having kids—again and again.

  Both of them were busy. While he was learning the ropes in the construction business from his uncle, he doggedly took courses at the local community college until he got a degree in business. Veronica was spending time at garage and estate sales, picking up finds she could resell at the flea market and then at the small shop she bought into with her cousins. It had been her idea to move to North Carolina. After eight years of marriage he’d liked the idea of starting over in a new community. And when she’d suggested refurbishing this building and turning it into Treasure Hunt Pavilion, he’d liked that idea, too. She’d even come up with the scheme of getting together a group of dealers to finance the project—which he’d thought of as a stroke of genius at the time.

  His musings about the past were cut off abruptly by a familiar voice, low and sharp, coming from his right. It was Oliver Garrison, the largest shareholder and the president of the corporation that managed the enterprise.

  From where Mark was standing, his view of the man was blocked by a gallery full of furnishings, including an oversize armoire. But an instant mental picture formed of a man a little over medium height, well muscled from moving large cabinet pieces around, hair just graying at the temples, deep-set eyes that could go from warm to icy in an instant.

  Either Garrison was talking on the phone, or he had someone in there with him. He sounded angry now, or upset, but Mark couldn’t catch what he was saying.

  Would a tourist who had wandered into this place politely stay away from the angry voice? A well-mannered tourist, perhaps. But there were plenty of curious folks around who might be interested enough to approach.

  With a mental shrug, Mark stepped past the armoire, then treaded his way through a tastefully arranged seating group and around a marble angel that looked as if it had been stolen from a cemetery.

  Garrison wasn’t talking on the phone. Another man was with him, his back to Mark. But he stopped short when he recognized the broad shoulders underneath a blue uniform shirt and the buzz-cut hair above the beefy neck.

  Lord, of all the people he didn’t want to see. It was Sheriff Dean Hammer.

  Mark stood without moving. Hammer had been the man who had arrested him and carted him off to the state police in the back of a black-and-white cruiser. Too bad that cruiser hadn’t been parked in the public lot now. If he’d seen it, Mark would have picked another day to visit the antique gallery.

  Garrison’s eyes flashed from his companion to the newcomer, and the other man turned.

  “Can I help you?” the antique dealer asked.

  Mark’s mouth was so dry that he was surprised he could make any words come out. But he managed to say, “There doesn’t seem to be anybody around. I was looking for information about one of the tables back there.” He gestured vaguely behind him.

  “Monday is a slow day,” Garrison said. “So, many of the dealers aren’t on-site. Perhaps I can help you.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt.”

  “We were finished with our business,” Hammer said. He turned back toward Garrison. “Let me know if you have any other problems.”

  “I will.”

  Before the sheriff left, he gave Mark an assessing look. It was difficult for Mark to stand in place under the scrutiny. When the lawman departed, he breathed out some of the air trapped in his lungs. He’d known Hammer was a part of the community and had expected to run into him. In fact, he’d thought about finding an excuse to stop in at the man’s office, as a way of controlling their first meeting. But very little was working out the way Mark had thought it would. First Bill Bauder. Now Dean Hammer.

  It flashed into his mind that perhaps he was being handed advice from a higher power. Get out of Perry’s Cove before it’s too late. Go on with your life somewhere else.

  It seemed he wasn’t capable of taking that advice. Partly because he wanted to clear his name and partly because he wanted to make someone pay for what they’d done to him.

  “You having some trouble around here?” Mark asked when he and Garrison were alone.

  “Why do you want to know?” the dealer asked, a slight edge in his voice.

  “I’m thinking of renting a property in town. I don’t want to end up picking the wrong community.”

  “No danger of that. Perry’s Cove is about as peaceful a place as they come. But you know how modern life is. There’s always something. In this case it was teenagers, using the parking lot for a trysting place. Used condoms on the blacktop don’t do much for business.”

  Mark nodded as if he was agreeing.

  “You wanted information on a table?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Mark answered, remembering his excuse for interrupting the conversation with the sheriff. Leading the way into another dealer’s domain, he picked a nice-looking Queen Anne table and chairs.

  “The price is right here,” Garrison said, displaying a tag taped to one leg.

  “Sorry. I didn’t see it.” The figure was high, so he said he’d have to think about it. After thanking the dealer, he began wandering around the building looking at the various areas.

  Garrison was right. There weren’t many dealers around, but he did see Ann Layton and Sally Ferguson. Art Burger glanced his way but stayed where he was.

  In fact, Ann, who had to be in her fifties now and was still dying her hair red, came bustling up to him when he approached her area near the back of the building.

  “Can I help you with anything?” she asked in a chipper voice.

  “I’m just looking.”

  “Oh. Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then decided what the hell. “I was here a few years ago, and I remember a dealer named Philip Dumont. Is he still around?”

  He could tell from Ann’s suddenly distressed expression that he’d asked a loaded question.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Dumont passed away.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he answered lamely, coping with his own shock. “He…seemed like he was in good health.”

  Ann lowered her gaze. “Yes,” she murmured.

  “When did he die?”

  The woman thought for a moment. “About three years ago.”

  He waited for her to give him more information, but apparently that was all she planned to say. Her silence and the look of distress on her face told him that Phil Dumont hadn’t died of natural causes. Had somebody murdered the man? The same person who had murdered Veronica?

  Wouldn’t that be a coincidence?

  ONCE SHE’D FELT as if she’d climbed into the middle class. Now she was barely scraping along, Molly thought as she pulled a clean ski
rt out of the closet. It had come from a secondhand shop in Newport News, where she went to spend her meager shopping budget.

  She’d learned thrift from her parents. Their family had been poor but proud. Dad had been a deliveryman, Mom had worked various retail jobs. They’d given her a loving home, but their horizons had been limited. She’d been in her junior year of college, a scholarship student who had to work nights for living expenses, when she’d met the dashing Phil Dumont. She’d disappointed her parents terribly by quitting school to marry him.

  For a while it had seemed as if she and Phil had had it made. She’d loved finding old pieces of furniture, fixing them up and selling them at a profit. She’d loved helping people find just the right antique for their homes. And Phil had loved running the business end of the operation.

  Then she’d been back on her own, knowing she’d have a lot better career choices if she’d finished college.

  She still intended to do that. But not yet. Not until she could put a little money away.

  Satisfied with her appearance, she left the house and headed for the realty office.

  In the parking lot she sat for a moment, letting her thoughts turn to Mark Ramsey. She’d deliberately kept her mind off him while she’d changed clothes. Really, she hadn’t been sure until she arrived at the building that she was actually going to show up.

  With a small shrug, she entered the office, then stopped short as she saw Doris Masters watching her. She’d never been entirely comfortable with the slightly pudgy blonde, but she tried not to show her feelings, since she saw no point in creating animosity in the workplace.

  “Larry was looking for you,” the other agent said.

  “Okay.”

  “You were inspecting some property for him, weren’t you?”

  Though it was none of Doris’s business, she nodded as she headed toward the boss’s private domain in the back.

  Larry Iverson was sitting behind his desk, talking on the phone. He looked up, saw her and waved her to a seat, where she cooled her heels for several minutes while he discussed the settlement of a property he’d been anxious to get off the market.

  He looked like a beachboy going to fat. With blond hair receding from his forehead and a perpetual tan that had carved deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, he was as likely to do business from the poolside of his eight-bedroom beach house as from his office. But apparently he’d waited here for her today.

  As soon as he hung up, he looked at her expectantly. “Well?”

  “I believe the project is on schedule, although I’m not the perfect person to comment,” she said, sticking to the question he’d asked and not the more interesting subject of the recent accident.

  Apparently, he already knew what had happened. “I hear there was some trouble down there,” he said.

  “You mean the bucket of shingles that almost split my head open?” she asked, not really surprised that word had already gotten back to him. Perry’s Cove was a small town, and news traveled quickly.

  “Yeah.” He shifted in his seat. “Sorry it happened.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Still, I don’t like my people getting injured on the job. I would have gone myself, but I was tied up here and the client wanted a progress report ASAP.” He shifted in his seat again. “I hear some tourist pushed you out of the way.”

  She nodded. She didn’t want to discuss the aftermath of the accident, so she switched to a topic she knew Larry would love. “Yes. We got to talking. He said he was interested in rental property.”

  “Maybe you can talk up home ownership.”

  She shrugged, thinking that serving the customer had always been less important to Larry than the bottom line.

  Doris had left by the time Molly got back to her desk. She had a bunch of messages to return, but she couldn’t concentrate on them. Instead, she pulled the information on some rental property that might interest Mark Ramsey, printed out two copies and left one in a folder on her desk.

  As she worked, her mind kept wandering back to the man. He’d knocked her out of the way of the falling bucket of shingles, then he’d landed on top of her, and for a few moments his body had been pressed to hers. She’d had to catch her breath—and not just from the fall.

  There was no reason to react to him the way she had. He’d only been on top of her because he’d pushed her out of harm’s way and they’d both tumbled to the ground. She’d been breathless and shocked, yet she’d also been turned on by that personal contact. He’d been turned on, too. She’d felt his erection pressing against her leg, and in her disorientation, she’d almost moved against it. Then she’d come back to her senses.

  She didn’t even know the man. They’d been two strangers meeting under odd and dangerous circumstances. Yet he hadn’t felt like a stranger. Not at all. There had been something achingly familiar about him. Before she’d seen his face, she’d been sure she knew him, sure he was someone who had come back to her after a long absence. A romance novel she’d read about a couple who had been lovers in a past life drifted into her mind. There had been a strange familiarity between them, and finally they’d figured out their previous relationship. Could that be true in real life? She made a dismissive sound. It made a good story but it was only fiction.

  The whole notion was ridiculous, of course. Still, the impression of familiarity simply wouldn’t go away. Or the pull she kept feeling. It had been a long time since she’d responded with such frank sexuality to a man. Not since Philip, actually. After his death, she’d been numb and confused. The numbness had subsided, but there hadn’t been anyone in Perry’s Cove who captured her interest. Well, there were a few men she might have responded to, but they were married, and her personal code of ethics didn’t include poaching on another woman’s husband.

  That silent observation sparked a ghost of a thought that she tried to hold on to. But it was gone before she could capture anything solid.

  She was still pondering her heated response to a complete stranger when a throat-clearing noise made her look up.

  Mark Ramsey himself was standing over her desk, looking down at her as though he knew perfectly well where her mind had been wandering.

  She felt her face heat as she struggled for composure, then told herself firmly that he wasn’t a mind reader, and there was no way he could figure out where her thoughts had been. Yet something about the way he was looking at her made her fear otherwise. Or perhaps his thoughts were paralleling hers. Unwilling to deal with the implications of that, she began shuffling together papers on her desk.

  MARK WATCHED HER, seeing the nervous movements of her hands as she pushed papers into a pile.

  Was she hiding something incriminating? Or was she reacting to his frank sexual interest?

  He had tried to tamp down that interest, but despite his resolve, it kept rising back up, so to speak.

  “We were going to look at some rental properties,” he reminded her. “Unless it’s not convenient,” he added, holding his breath as he waited for her response.

  “That’s fine,” she answered. “I have some listings right here. Just let me get the keys.”

  He waited while she collected her purse, rounded her desk and disappeared down a short hallway.

  She was back several minutes later, looking as if she might have freshened her makeup. He liked the effect. And he liked knowing that she wasn’t married anymore.

  He felt a small pang as the admission surfaced. Her husband had died, apparently under suspicious or tragic circumstances, and he needed to find out why.

  Probably Molly had been through a bad time, and he had no right to take advantage of her loss. But he couldn’t turn off the secret feeling of elation.

  She was free, and he could ask her out—if that was what he wanted to do.

  To be frank, what he really wanted to do was make wild, passionate love with her. What would she think if she knew that?

  “All set?” he asked.

  “Yes.�
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  “Your car or mine?”

  “It’s probably easier for me to drive. I know my way around here, and you don’t,” she said.

  “Right,” he agreed, thinking that she’d saved him from flubbing up. The truth was, he did know his way around the area, and he might well have given that knowledge away if he’d been the one at the wheel.

  Her car was a five-year-old Honda. Not a luxury vehicle by any means, but she kept it spotless inside and out.

  He climbed into the passenger seat, enjoying the close-up view of her breasts as she shifted into reverse and turned the wheel to exit the parking space.

  He was turning into a dirty old man, he thought. The price of his enforced exile from the fair sex.

  He pulled his gaze away from Molly’s breasts and leaned back into the contour seat, closing his eyes. Still, he was aware of her delicate scent—a combination of soap and flowers and woman. Knowing it could drive him crazy if he let it, he made an attempt to ignore the enticement and focused on the view out the window. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “I’ve got several properties in mind. One’s a beach house.”

  “Those monstrosities springing up on the sand dunes?”

  “Something more suitable to one occupant. And if you don’t like that, I can show you a new apartment complex about ten miles from here. The grounds are beautifully landscaped. The units are well equipped, and there’s a pool and Jacuzzi.”

  He didn’t think that was what he was looking for, but he didn’t voice the objection. The longer it took to find a place, the more excuse he’d have to be with Ms. Dumont.

  “So, how did you get into the real estate business?” he asked.

  She hesitated for a moment, then answered, “After my husband died, I needed a way to support myself. We’d been antique dealers and I’d always been good with people, so a friend suggested I try real estate. Larry Iverson took me on as an office assistant while I was taking classes to get my license.”