Blind Her With Bliss (16 page)

Please
Enjoy
this excerpt from

Tilling Passions Series Book 2

Deirdre Tilling slammed the spade into the soil. Her booted foot thumped down on its metal edge, driving it deeper and transferring her frustration to the wounded earth. She’d been working the flowerbeds around her farmhouse since noon. And though the sun stretched the shadows of the maples long across her lawn, painting their leaves a deeper crimson, the hours of heavy labor hadn’t helped ease the pain of loneliness. Puffy clouds skittered over the tree line, reminding her of cotton candy and hometown fairs.
Brianna’s favorite autumn activity.

Deirdre swiped the back of her hand across fresh tears and turned the dust on her arm to streaks of mud.
Christ. And wasn’t she just a pathetic mess?
The spade bit into the ground, collecting another load of wilted petunias. Without ceremony, Deirdre added them to the growing pile of detritus in the wheelbarrow. She wished she could purge her heart of her ex as easily as clearing the summer gardens.

Exhaustion made her back and arms ache. But it was anguish that pinched her heart and made it difficult to breathe. It had been almost eight weeks since her live-in lover had announced she’d found someone else. Deirdre missed her with a physical need that made her ill with want.

Loneliness had become an all too familiar companion.

Deirdre threw the spade over the mess in the wheelbarrow and pushed the load to the mulch pile in the back corner of her property, under the white pines. A bitter sigh pushed past her lips. Love had not been kind to her. Over the years she’d struck out with both sexes. Three serious relationships in her twenty-five years and all of them had ended with a quiet fizzle. She hadn’t even had the satisfaction of huge explosive conclusions that would guarantee her a little time in Delmont’s rumor mill.

Nope, all she netted were whispered condolences and pity glances from a few close friends.

It hardly seemed fair her older sisters had both found someone. They were obnoxiously happy and engaged to the men of their dreams. Not that Julie or Meghan meant to flaunt it, but contentment surrounded them like a sickly sweet cloud that threatened to suffocate Deirdre at every family function. And with the Tilling clan, dinners, barbeques and random celebrations were a weekly occurrence Deirdre had come to dread.

Of course she’d never
not
go, she loved her parents too much to hurt them that way. John and Alice Tilling were coming up on their fortieth wedding anniversary and nothing meant more to them than their three daughters. Settling in her hometown and opening Tilling Gardens and Plants, a floral and landscaping business, with her sisters had seemed as natural as breathing.

But
Bri
had thought Delmont, Maine just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The pace was too slow, the neighbors too nosey, and Deirdre’s family too cloying. There wasn’t much Deirdre could do to change any of that, so she’d just watched the woman pack up and drive away with all of her belongings and Deirdre’s heart.

Deirdre dumped the flower refuse on the compost heap. It had all gone to seed. Rotting away to a pile of crap, just like her love life.
Damn she felt morose tonight.
She threw the shovel on top of the dirt and tipped the gray wheelbarrow on its side. She didn’t even have the energy to take care of her tools. Not a good sign for a landscaper.

Truth was, sometimes life just sucked and then went downhill from there.

She bit her lip, staunching the flow of tears burning in her eyes. When would the pain in her chest go away?

Her feet pounded up the backstairs of the white clapboard house where she’d spent her youth. Too large for her parents, they’d downsized over a year ago, moving across town and into the same neighborhood as her sisters. Deirdre had been the only one of the three Tilling daughters willing to spend the time and energy needed to gut and update the old farmhouse.

She’d proudly signed the papers and made it hers last fall, just before meeting
Bri
. Four months later, right after the holidays, the beautiful blonde had moved in. Willing to spend weekends pulling down walls, running new wiring and fixing leaking plumbing,
Bri
had worked tirelessly next to Deirdre. Now silence echoed through the rooms. The shiny remodel had turned into a lackluster project that took more energy than Deirdre was willing to expend. Though they had the roof, windows and siding replaced to update the outside, only the kitchen and the master suite had been finished inside.

Unable to bear the pain of an empty double bed, Deirdre had moved back into her old room on the second floor.

She stalked through the kitchen and living room, taking the stairs two at a time to the old fashioned bathroom, trying to outrun her sadness. Wallowing in it all afternoon had gotten her nothing but puffy eyes, blotchy skin and indigestion. Deirdre’s friend, Emilio, had invited her to some fancy shindig out on the coast. She had every intention of repairing the damage hours of self-pity had caused, slipping into some slinky black number and heels and heading out to join the world of the living.
Enough feeling sorry for herself.
Sometimes being without a significant other had its advantages in social situations.

And tonight, that suited Deirdre just fine.

* * * *

Ayden Scott stood at the mirror adjusting the collar of the white button-down oxford. Tucking the tails into the faded Levis, he wondered if it was too casual for the party. Shooting a glance over his shoulder, he studied the two other shirts heaped with the chinos and Dockers on his bed. He’d never had problems dressing before he went undercover for the Drug Enforcement Agency.

It was a simple party, nothing to worry about…yeah, except blending in.
He finger-combed his wet hair away from his face.
This was a new look for him. The clean-shaven face and his blond locks dyed black made him a different man. Even his mother, God rest her soul, wouldn’t recognize him.

He’d been in Maine almost two months now. They were getting close to a big bust. He could feel it. This was the second time the DEA had given him the privilege of lead on an investigation, and he’d be damned if he’d frig this one up.

Too many times the supplier fell through their hands, and they were left prosecuting the street dealers, thugs who did their bosses’ bidding. None of them rolled over on the head honcho. Not when their only punishment was a couple of years in the slammer, some probation time, or worse, a simple slap on the wrist. Anything beat ratting out your employer. But man, wouldn’t that just piss him off if this case ended that way?

This one was promising to be huge. And Ayden wanted it. He could feel it like an addict could feel the urgency for another fix. It caused a physical ache in his gut. He wanted to bring down the guy he was chasing like nothing he’d ever wanted in the eight years since joining the DEA.

The heroin was coming in from Canada. They knew that much to be fact. They just couldn’t figure out who or where. This party at the mansion tonight promised some prime contacts. Ayden had two other teams scouting out similar locations along a thirty-mile stretch of the Maine coast. They’d bring the guy running the operation down—or die trying.

No, he couldn’t think like that. No one was dying on his watch. Not this time.

“Don’t go there, Ayden,
ol
’ boy.” He shoved the frustration into the back corner of his brain, encapsulating it with all the other painful memories he didn’t dredge up. Ayden had grown accustomed to his own voice in the last few years. He’d given up trying to psychoanalyze the reason he talked to himself. He’d come to accept it was simply a part of his personality. He was a loner.

You have a job to do.” He gave himself one more glance before heading into the bedroom of the rented condo to straighten up. One never knew what kind of informants might be falling into his bed this night.

Ayden had been working hard to get the little fish to believe he had a big enough operation to deal directly with the supplier. He had bogus contacts in Portland, Boston, and Philly, supposedly ready to distribute the goods. That ought to lure them in. Everyone wanted a share of the drug market in those cities. If those places weren’t big enough, he’d also come up with business contacts in New York, but that alias was flimsy at best, and he hoped it didn’t come to that.

Others, more experienced, were afraid he wasn’t ready to take on a job this big. Not after the snafu in Miami. But that had been nearly three years ago. He’d taken the transfer to the Northeast and clawed his way back into the good graces of the DEA. He
deserved
to be lead investigator. He
needed
to bring this guy down, if for no other reason than to prove something to himself.

There were so many similarities in the two operations.

Ayden was sure this cartel was somehow affiliated with the Miami outfit as well. That ill-fated mission no one talked about.
The one that had pressed him over the edge and into the bottle.
Luckily he hadn’t drowned. Instead he’d gotten help, cleaned himself up and now was stronger and more focused.
All the more reason for him to be deep undercover.
He needed to bring down the fucking bastard who had stolen everything from him and screwed up his life in the process.

But perhaps that was all just wishful thinking on his part.

Monday, he planned a meeting with his teams to go over everything they’d uncovered in the last week. He hoped by then they would have zeroed in on the guy running the show, and he’d have something solid to tell his superiors in Boston. He’d had no contact with them for a couple of days. Ayden knew, given his track record, they’d be getting antsy.

To top it all off, someone was breathing down his neck, keeping an eye on him. He sensed it like a shadow that never materialized. He had to be close if they were tailing him. If, on the other hand, he found out he was being watched by his own men, heads would roll. But his gut told him that wasn’t the case.

Despite the danger, or perhaps because of it, he loved undercover work, bringing down the bad guy, keeping the drugs off the street. But he knew firsthand, it wasn’t without pitfalls.

You had to mesmerize the bad guys with a fake persona while your feet remained firmly planted in reality. He was definitely walking a tightrope stretched taut between both sides of the law. So far he’d skirted around the need to sample the goods. He wasn’t sure how long he could tiptoe around the edge of the precarious precipice before falling victim—again. Undercover work was a slippery slope of acting and real-life drama.

He loped down the stairs, grabbed a light weight jacket from the coat closet and headed out the door. There was no way he was screwing this one up.
N
ot
this time
.