Racing the Hunter's Moon (Entangled Bliss) Read Free Page A

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 his 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