Racing the Hunter's Moon (Entangled Bliss) Read online

  He avoided the question and looked past her at the open freezer door. “Looks like you were keeping yourself busy. Raiding the freezer, were you?”

  Huh. “I was hungry. Someone kept me waiting.” The only reason she would ever break into someone else’s freezer was under desperate circumstances. “What are you, carpenter or…”

  “It’s complicated.” He smiled, and once again attraction grabbed her insides with both hands and twisted. “But I have got a job to do this evening before we talk. I’m hungry too.” A black eyebrow arched. “Maybe you and I could have dinner after I’ve assembled the bed?”

  Faded jeans rode low on his lean hips and clung to his thighs. Above them, he wore a chunky navy sweater under a battered black leather jacket. Average, everyday clothing. But the breadth of his shoulders, the glimpse of tanned collarbone evident in the dip of the sweater’s crew neck, were far from average or everyday. She scanned down. Work boots. Big work boots. Big feet, big… Cutting that thought off at the pass, Betty’s gaze shot up to collide with his.

  Amusement danced in his eyes. “Well? Like what you see?”

  Betty put her hands on her hips. Raised an eyebrow of her own. This flirtation was getting out of hand—fast. She glanced behind him through the hallway to the front door he’d left open. The sky was darkening.

  “I guess you should bring the bed in. I’ll show you where you can put it.” She brushed past him, aware of a subtle extra swing in her hips as she strode to Mel and Heath’s bedroom. “The bedroom is down here.”

  As she turned, his gaze snapped up to her face. “Great.” He took a look in. “Could you help me bring it in?”

  Part of her wanted to say no, but that would be childish. Alice and her boyfriend, Mark, were always raving about what a nice guy Joe was. She couldn’t believe that Mark’s friend was the same guy she’d met this morning. But the sooner he set up the bed, the sooner she’d get some answers. “Sure.”

  She followed him outside, picked up a couple of long carved pieces of wood, took them inside, and then returned for more.

  It took four trips.

  “The bed will take a while to assemble.” Joe opened up his toolbox. “Why don’t you go ahead and heat up dinner? Did you see something you liked?” He didn’t look at her.

  “I liked the look of the meatballs.”

  His gaze shot up to hers. A slow grin spread across his face, and with a wicked look he said, “I’m guessing you’re talking about Mel’s rather than…” He glanced down. At his crotch.

  “Oh!” Betty turned her back, hiding her smile from his view. She compressed her lips to stop a laugh from bubbling free.

  I don’t like him.

  While the meatballs heated, Betty made spaghetti and set the table. Who was she kidding? That crack about meatballs had lent Joe Carter a whole new dimension. Good looks were one thing, but good looks wrapped around a humorous center? Deadly. If they’d met under normal circumstances she’d be climbing aboard the flirt train, destination bed, with her sexy underwear stowed for the ride. But there had been nothing normal about the way they met—he’d been observing her following Charmers this morning, which meant he had to be involved, somehow. Her mind tumbled over the possibilities. Maybe he was a suspicious mark who was onto Charmers too. Maybe he’d been involved in one of Charmers’s schemes.

  She pressed her lips together. She couldn’t let her guard down. Had to play this cool. Joe Carter was attractive, but he was hiding something, so he could pack away his grin and his innuendo—she sure wouldn’t be playing.

  When the meal was ready, she went to find him.

  The bed was in place, and he was stowing his tools.

  “Wow.” The elegant bed was made of a light wood, with delicate carved spindles at the head and base. Rather than the traditional detailing that was found in such beds, the lines of the spindles were plain, almost Shaker. A modern classic. “That’s gorgeous.” She walked over and smoothed a hand over the curved headboard. “Did you really make this?”

  “Yes, I did. It’s made of beech.” Joe snapped his toolbox shut.

  “When Alice and Mark told me your work was good, they weren’t kidding.”

  He smiled, obviously pleased with the compliment.

  “Dinner is ready if you are.”

  “Great. I’ll just wash up.”

  Betty went into the kitchen and started to put their meal onto plates. She was driving and so was he, so she didn’t open a bottle of wine, just filled a jug with water from the faucet. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten alone with a man.

  Joe strode in. “I’m seriously hungry,” he admitted. “I missed lunch.” He pulled up a chair, and Betty put a plate down before him.

  “So who are you?”

  “You know who I am.” He picked up a fork. “Joe Carter. Mark’s friend. A carpenter contracted to make Mel and Heath’s bed.” He started to eat.

  “Yeah, sure.” She injected as much snark as possible into her words. “I think we’re past that, don’t you?” Elbows on the table, she leaned forward over her dinner and glared at him. “Who are you really, and what are you doing in Meadowsweet?”

  Chapter Two

  Ever since he walked into the house and come face-to-face with the mysterious brunette who’d filled his thoughts all afternoon, Joe had been trying to work out how exactly he was going to handle this.

  He’d spent the last two years trying to trace the con man whose intricate web of identities had allowed him to vanish without a trace once he’d walked from custody on a technicality. A technicality Joe was responsible for. A dormant account he was watching had shown an ATM withdrawal in Meadowsweet. The financial crimes unit at the FBI had discovered payments from Alex Claybourne’s account to an Alec Corben, and Joe had been positive that Claybourne and Corben were the same man.

  Corben’s withdrawal in Meadowsweet was a tenuous lead the bureau would be reticent to follow up on—even if Corben and Claybourne were the same man, there was nothing to suggest he’d actually settled in the tiny town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. So Joe’d taken annual leave and boarded a plane to find out for himself.

  He’d asked around, but found no sign of the mysterious Corben. He had been on the last day of his vacation when he’d seen Claybourne walking down the main street arm in arm with an attractive older lady as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Discreet inquiries had revealed a new name: Alexander Charmers.

  Elated, he’d talked his boss, Bond, into letting him stay in Meadowsweet to investigate further. And today, he’d been forced to break cover the moment Betty stumbled into the investigation.

  “Well?” Betty crossed her arms and stared him down. Her brown hair tumbled in waves over her shoulders, a strand or two slipping beneath the neckline of her white shirt as if caressing her creamy skin. Unlike most women he met, she didn’t seem to go for makeup much, judging by the light spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose.

  Her eyes were an unusual shade of brown; he guessed some might call them tawny or something, framed by long dark eyelashes. He hadn’t been able to stop looking at her wide, generous mouth, even when she was sniping at him. Fear had flickered in her eyes when she’d seen him in the kitchen earlier, quickly masked, but he’d recognized it instantly. When she’d tilted up her chin, met his gaze square on, and questioned him, admiration for the smooth courage she displayed had been his overwhelming emotion. After surprise so intense it verged on shock that Betty Smith and the woman he’d started to call Nancy Drew in his head were one and the same.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “I could ask you that question.”

  “I’m Betty Smith. Friend to Mark and Alice, one-third owner of the Under the Hood garage,” she parroted in an echo of his earlier answer to her question.

  Smart-ass. “So why are you tailing Charmers?”

  “Who said I was tailing Charmers?” Her eyes narrowed.

  It’s going to be a long night.

  Joe pushed h
is plate to one side. “Look, we can do this two ways. We can continue to bullshit each other, or we can just be goddamn honest.” His jaw was clenched so tight it ached. He refused to break eye contact, or even blink.

  “Fine,” she huffed. “I was following him.”

  She might not have noticed him before, but her curves were so familiar he could pick her out in a woman-only marathon. “You’ve been following him for two weeks.” She wasn’t a professional, that was for sure. Her clumsy attempts at trailing Charmers had been driving him crazy. She kept a reasonable distance, but dashed into doorways every time Charmers turned, as though she’d been watching one too many cop shows. And when Charmers and Leonora had gone for coffee last Tuesday, she’d lurked on a table outside with the collar of her raincoat turned up, reading the damn newspaper, for Chrissake.

  Her eyes were open so wide the whole white was visible. “How do you—”

  “I’ve been following him for longer.” He blew out a breath. There was no alternative. His cover was in tatters now; he’d have to confess. “I’m an undercover FBI agent.”

  “You’re FBI?”

  Joe nodded. “I have him under surveillance, and the last time I checked, no agency allows garage owners to run their own private investigations, so what gives?”

  Her throat moved. She reached for the slender gold chain around her neck and rubbed it between her fingers. “Charmers conned my mother, Christine Tremaine, three years ago. He took her money and ran. I tried to find him, but it was as if he’d fallen off the face of the earth.”

  “Three years ago?” Joe’s blood quickened. He’d slipped the FBI net two years ago—there’d been no cases they knew of before that. “Did your mother report it?”

  “No.” Betty chewed the corner of her bottom lip in a way that fractured his focus, made him wonder what kissing her for real might be like. “I tried to get her to, but she was embarrassed about being taken for a fool, and wanted to keep it secret. I employed a private investigator right after, but there was a misunderstanding and he abandoned the trail.” She frowned. “By the time I got my investigator back on it, he’d disappeared. It took a year, but we eventually saw a picture of him in a newspaper. He’d been using a different name, and the FBI had caught him running a scam on another woman. I don’t know what went wrong, but they let him walk. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him in Meadowsweet, using yet another alias. And starting to do exactly the same scam on another unsuspecting woman.” Her hands curled into fists.

  “I know.” Joe knew from bitter experience, because he’d been the FBI agent who screwed up. He’d been so focused on catching Charmers he’d allowed the chain of custody on key evidence to be broken. This time, everything would be done by the book, and Charmers would have no chance to escape.

  He couldn’t blame Betty’s mother for wanting to protect her privacy; the list of Charmers’s actual victims was probably double the number reported to the FBI, which made his movements so difficult to trace. “What name was he using?”

  “Alex Carlisle.”

  Alexander Charmers, Alex Claybourne, Alec Corben, all names familiar to Joe and his team, and all the same man. Excitement skittered along Joe’s nerve endings at the unrecognized name Betty had provided. Alex Carlisle. He needed to notify the team as soon as possible and crunch that name through the system.

  “Where does your mother live?”

  “In the Hamptons.”

  There were no recorded victims in the Hamptons. Perhaps, like Betty’s mother, they’d neglected to report the crime. Rich society would be easy pickings for a man like Charmers, impossible to resist.

  “She warned her friends off him, but didn’t go into specifics. He was living in a beach house that he said he’d bought. Of course, once he disappeared, the truth came out that he’d rented it.” Betty wrung her hands together. “Now he’s trying to con Leonora. Who knows how many other lives he’s ruined over the years?”

  “Maybe dozens. Maybe hundreds,” Joe said. “Your mother must come forward and make a report.”

  “To the FBI?” Her tone was dismissive. “They’ll just screw it up again.”

  “So your plan is to make a citizen’s arrest or something, is it? You’re going to get him in an armlock, wrestle him to the ground, and handcuff him?”

  Her mouth tightened. Her eyes flashed. “I’m not an idiot. I planned to gather evidence. I picked up a Styrofoam cup he’d thrown in a trash can in the park, but then I saw you can’t get prints from that—”

  Curiosity made Joe interrupt. “Where did you learn that?”

  “CSI.”

  “The TV show?”

  She nodded and spoke rapidly. “Yes. Styrofoam’s no good. Paper is better, but then you’ve got the problem of maybe picking up stray prints, so glass is best. They were having lunch outside a restaurant last week; I managed to pick up his glass after they left and before the server removed it.”

  He’d followed Charmers and his date, had missed her stealing a glass from the table. Joe held back the eye roll and puffed out a frustrated breath.

  “You couldn’t get it dusted for fingerprints though. Unless you have a…”

  “I have fingerprinting powder and a brush. I’ve found latents.” She looked ridiculously proud of herself. “Of course, I don’t have access to AFIS, but…”

  “IAFIS,” Joe corrected. “In the FBI, we use IAFIS.”

  “Oh.” She stilled. “I didn’t know that.”

  There was a ton of stuff she didn’t know. She probably thought a computer zipped through all the available prints and…

  “I thought we could load the fingerprints into AFIS.” She grinned and corrected herself, “IAFIS, and then it would find a match—”

  “It’s not as easy as you see it on TV, you know.” He rubbed the ache blooming at his temple. “Where did you get the fingerprinting powder?”

  “I have my sources. Anyway, I put the glass in a plastic bag. So it wouldn’t be contaminated.”

  “Great.” A glass with someone’s fingerprints, dusted by a kid’s fingerprinting kit, wouldn’t be of any use, but she’d worked so hard, he couldn’t bring himself to point that out. “What else is on your agenda to catch him then?”

  “I want to establish a paper trail, get access to his bank statements, that sort of thing.” She gazed at the floor. “He stole my mother’s engagement ring.”

  “You don’t expect to find it, do you?”

  The truth was written all over her face. She had hoped to find it.

  “Was it worth much?” The moment the words left his mouth, he realized his mistake.

  Betty rolled her lips together, compressing them into a tight line. “To my mother, it was priceless because my father gave it to her. Dad didn’t have much money, but she came from a rich family and my grandmother gave it to my father to propose with. It’s one of a kind. Probably worth tens of thousands.”

  If they’d known about Betty’s mother, his investigators could have used the considerable resources at their disposal to find that ring if and when he’d sold it. Could have tied Charmers to the sale of stolen property. The loss of a valuable lead rankled, making his tone sharp.

  “It’ll be long gone. We need your mother involved,” he insisted again.

  “She won’t. I told you—she doesn’t want her humiliation made public. I tried, Joe. She said the only thing worse than what happened would be everyone knowing about it. And if it went to trial she’d have to testify, wouldn’t she?”

  Witnesses were always reticent to come forward. The shame that they had been taken in held them back. A member of the general public was no match for a confident trickster. They used the subtlest methods to squeeze money out of their marks. Charmers had even faked a medical condition with one victim—she’d agreed to pay his medical expenses, and had taken him as far as the door of the hospital for treatment. He’d taken the money, walked in through the hospital entrance, and kept walking through the exit at the back of the building.


  Betty looked tired, suddenly—beaten—and for a moment his heart softened.

  “Okay. I understand where your mother is coming from. But you can’t go after Charmers on your own. He looks harmless, but he’s anything but. I have resources you don’t. I’m on top of it, I’ve got a trace on his cell, and I want to get inside his house to plant a bug there, too, and search for evidence. Leave it to me.”

  “No.” She tossed her hair back, her answer instant and unequivocal. “I can’t do that. I’m sure you’re competent but…I just can’t.”

  “So no matter what I say, you’re going to keep following him?” She’s going to be the death of me.

  She sat up straighter. “Yes.”

  Everything had to go by the book. This was no game for amateurs—the last thing he needed was Betty playing detective. He’d worked too long and too hard to allow that to happen.

  “You’re interfering in an investigation, do you understand that? If you don’t butt out, he’ll slip the net, probably with Leonora’s money in his back pocket.” He stood and pushed back his chair. “If I see you anywhere near him again, I won’t be kissing you, I’ll be handcuffing you.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Her full lips pursed. She flicked her hair back and stood too. “I think it’s time for you to leave.” Fire blazed in her eyes, and despite the fact that she was as irritating as sand in a swimsuit, he did want to handcuff her. And kiss her, too.

  …

  She hadn’t been able to sleep—had tossed and turned until the break of dawn trying to work out how she was going to nail Charmers. Joe Carter’s involvement on the scene was an unforeseen problem she had no solution to. He’d been adamant that she shouldn’t be involved, but there was no way she was leaving Charmers’s capture to someone else.

  When her alarm blared, she almost turned over and ignored it, but couldn’t. There was work to do, so she splashed water on her face, downed a large cup of coffee, and drove to Under the Hood.

  Car maintenance classes usually happened during the week, after the day’s work was done, but today was different. It was Saturday morning, half past nine, and thirty-two intrepid women had turned out for the free “Change your tire yourself!” class. Two cars were parked outside Under the Hood, and in front of them were two identical tables with a variety of tools set out on them. In front, Alice and Betty addressed their students.