The Gunny & The Jazz Singer (Birchwood Falls #1) (4 page)

Gazing down at her, she seemed calm
enough as if this happened to her all the time. It probably did if he knew
Butch. Cold fury roared through him at the thought of Butch putting his hands
on her. Where that came from, he didn't know. Maybe Butch really cared for her,
but it hadn't seemed like she returned the feelings.

Her mouth parted. She was waiting
for him to make his move. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips.

A woman's tongue was one of the
many things that triggered his arousal.

He brought his hands up to cup her
face, his thumbs prodding her chin up. She pushed up on her toes until their
chests touched, and her fingers slid up into his hair. It all happened so
naturally, so easily. And their lips met.

Once he started he wanted to ravish
her. It had been too fucking long since he'd had a woman. But he steadied his
libido and softly brushed her mouth, her warm breath searing his heart.

Caressing her lips, he nibbled,
sucking first her top, then her bottom lip. Re-angling his head, he held her
steady and kissed her like the starving man he realized he was.

Blood beat through his ears. In his
head, he could hear his own tortured breathing. She made soft little sounds in
her throat that sounded like arousal to him, like encouragement. Her fingers in
his hair yanking at the strands felt like encouragement too.

Her breasts flattened against his
chest. He thought he could feel the metal at the tip, but it might just be a
fantasy. His hand meandered to her waist again and inched its way up. He could
answer the burning question if he could just get his palm wrapped around her
breast.

His thumb flicked across the nipple
and
ooh rah!
There it was. A small
part of the tip of his thumb sank into the center of the ring.
Lord Jesus.
He wanted to tongue it,
catch it and worry it and drive them both mad with sensation. He caught her
gasp in his mouth, and when hers opened he swept his tongue inside.

He felt her try to wedge her arms
between their bodies.

"Okay, that's enough!"

Reining himself in, he gathered her
shivering body closer to his. "Shh, sweetheart. I'm sorry." He'd
never said he was sorry before, and he wasn't sure why he was saying it now.
She melted against him for a moment then straightened and pushed away.
Reluctantly he let her go.
Damn it.

In a quiet, formal voice she said, "Thank
you for walking me home—and welcome to the neighborhood."

When he heard the door lock click
shut, he chuckled. Yeah, so far he'd had a great welcome back. Then he sobered.
He hadn't come back home to fool around no matter how sexy the woman was. He'd
come home to find out the truth about the death of his parents. That was the
primary goal. The only goal.

***

The next morning, before he met up
with Butch to look at the police files, Marc intended to hunt down Frank
Jacquetta. That was if Frank still lived in town. One of the things supplied
with his house was the Birchwood Falls phone book, thin though it was with the
twenty-six-thousand population.

He found Frank's name and address.
In fact, he still lived right across the street from where his video and
electronics repair store used to be located. Jacquetta's had been next door to
Rahn Hardware when Marc was a kid. That was how the two families became good
friends.

"Marc Rahn, Jr.? My God, I can't
believe it's you. How many years has it been, boy?" Frank's happiness at
seeing Marc again came through loud and clear.

Marc offered his hand and accepted
the older man's still-firm handshake. "You don't look a day older, Mr.
Jacquetta."

"Boy, call me Frank. You're
not a punk kid anymore." Frank laughed and stood back so Marc could enter
the house.

The years fell away. Mr.…um Frank's
deeply tanned face wasn't any more lined with wrinkles than it had been years
ago. But his back had become stooped, and he tried to hide his shaking hands by
crossing his arms over his chest.

"Please, Marc, have a seat.
Would you like some coffee?"

"No thank you, sir, but I don't
want to keep you." He indicated the steaming cup sitting on the coffee
table.

Taking a quick look around, he
noted how the furnishings looked old and worn, but everything was tidy and
spiffy clean. The old guy had always been a stickler for neatness in his store.
All the tools and bits and pieces of electronic equipment had been kept
organized in their own bins and drawers. Frank had always known where a part
could be located when he'd needed it.

"So Marc, what have you been
doing with yourself all these years? How many has it been?"

"I've been in the Marines for
the last eight years."

"No kidding. You look like a
military man. Except for your hair."

Marc chuckled, running his fingers
through the growing strands. "Partly laziness and partly no desire to
shave my head until I have to go back."

"Were you in Iraq?"

"Yeah and Afghanistan. I'm a
Gunny."

"Well done, boy. I'm proud of
you, and welcome home."

Welcome
home.
Every time he heard that, it broke his heart a little. "Thanks,
sir, but I'm just on leave. I have to report back in six weeks."

"Frank," he reminded
Marc.

"Okay. Thank you, Frank."

"Now what can I do for you?
You must have friends your own age to hang around with now that you're home."

"I didn't come back for that,"
he responded, his stomach clutching at the pain of remembering. He missed his
folks so much.

In boot camp, he'd worked harder
than any of the other recruits, hoping exhaustion would keep memories at bay.
But even in the mountains of Afghanistan, if it was quiet for a change instead
of the bombardment of incessant RPG rounds, sometimes a thought of happier days
would creep into his mind.

Then he'd yearn for his mom's
loving voice welcoming him home from football practice. She was always there
preparing dinner. Dad would have been home soon from the store.

It had been idyllic.

His deployments had shown him
another side of life. Even after losing his mom and dad, he still realized how
lucky his life had been.

"I've thought so often of your
folks. They were great people. I'm so sorry for what happened to them."

"My dad didn't drink much, and
he would never have driven drunk. My mother wouldn't have let him."

"I know. That's what made it
so strange."

Marc's pulse leaped. Maybe he wasn't
the only one with suspicions. "Strange how so?"

Frank gazed into his coffee as if
it held all the answers. "I was with them at Marietty's that night."

"Yeah?" He held his
breath.

"He didn't have more than one
drink and that was early on."

"There wasn't any snow or ice
on the roads," Marc added.

"I'm sorry, son. It doesn't
make any sense, but I never believed it was an accident."

"You mean you think someone or
something could have forced them off the road?" It hurt to have his own
suspicions confirmed. Either way his folks were gone, but a purposeful, vicious
act against them was a devastating prospect.

"Yeah. That's the only thing
that makes sense. I'm sorry, Marc."

He slumped in the chair, sad and
defeated before he even got anywhere in the investigation. Although he was no
stranger to evil in the world, believing it had happened in his own hometown to
his own family was crushing, to say the least. "But why? Who would gain?"

Frank brushed his hand over his
lips, and his gaze seemed to focus on the coffee table. He whispered one word. "Wilcox."

"Harold Wilcox?"

"Just sayin'. Who wanted the
land for his resort? Who was buying out the stores there?"

"Did he buy yours?"

"I held out as long as I
could. He started out offering peanuts. I wasn't going to let my property go
for that."

"Had he approached my dad?"

"Yes. Neither one of us thought
he was playing fair with us. Your dad held out longer than I did."

"You finally sold out?"

Frank nodded. "Two weeks
before your folks died."

Marc bowed his head and rubbed a
hand across his aching chest. Suspicions were one thing, but how would he prove
that something happened almost a decade ago?

"What are you going to do,
son?"

"I'm no investigator, but I
can follow a trail well enough. All I can do is ask questions."

"Have you talked to anyone
else?"

"Butch Wilcox. Yesterday."

Frank narrowed his eyes at this. "Was
he of any help?"

"He said he'd get me the
police file from storage. Obviously I'll have to be careful of him. I'll look
at the file and move on. He wouldn't know anything anyway since he was in
school with me, not on the police force."

"He might have heard his dad
talking at the time."

Marc stood. "Yeah, you're
right. Thanks for the information, Frank."

"Good luck, Marc. If there's
anything more I can do, please call me. If someone's guilty of purposely
running them off the road I want that person to pay. I've thought about it more
than once over the years. I'm glad you're back in town. I wish it were for
happier reasons."

"Me too."

They exchanged phone numbers, and
Marc tapped Frank's number into his cell contacts. "Would anyone else have
been bought out by Wilcox? Weren't there some warehouses on the north side of
the river? Who owned them?"

"Guess." Frank gave him a
knowing glance.

"Wilcox. Fuck! Sorry," he
said with a wince.

"No need to apologize. I'm
with you on that."

Chapter Five

"Hey Moira, what's up?"
Phoebe answered her cell and took the opportunity to step outside the resale
shop for a short break. She'd worked at Clarke's since she'd moved to town a
year ago. They sold a lot of old, used clothes, and once in a while a gem came
in she could adapt for the stage.

"Why don't you tell me? Who
was that hunk last night?"

She sighed. Of course one of her
friends would be the first to ask about him.

"Did he take you home?"

"Why don't you just get the
questions out all at once?" Phoebe gave an uncomfortable laugh. "Anything
else?"

"Uh yeah. What he does, where
he lives, where he's been all my life."

"Okay, here goes. Listen up.
He's a Marine, across the street from me, and I don't know where he's been all
your life." Phoebe burst out laughing.

"What was his name? Marc Rahn?
There were Rahns here years ago. Let me think. Ages ago there was a car
accident. It was a pretty big deal. A married couple was killed. They had a
teenage son, a big football player. I guess this guy could be the son. Cindy
might remember more, since she was in high school back then."

Cindy was Moira's older sister. "My
God, that's so sad. He didn't say anything about his past, though. See what you
can find out from Cindy, okay?"

"Sure. I wonder why he's
living across the street from you. That old house at the edge of town on
Hickory Street was theirs. It's been empty for years. I don't know why it was
never put up for sale."

"That old barn of a house? I've
always wondered about it. It's pretty neat looking. It would be a great place
to restore."

"Yeah, well, so what about
him? Was last night the first time you met him?"

"Crap. I figured you'd
eventually ask that."

"Oh?" Moira's voice crept
up as she stretched out the word.

"Okay, here's the thing.
Yesterday morning he moved in. The noise woke me up, and I went to the front
window to check it out."

"Did you talk to him then?"

"Not exactly."

"Just saw each other from
afar?"

She laughed at her friend's
singsongy question. "I swear I didn't even realize I was um…"

"Oh no! What the hell did you
do? Stand naked in the window?"

Phoebe just waited. Moira knew she
slept in the buff.

"You did, didn't you? He saw
everything?"

"Yeah," she responded
sheepishly.

"No wonder he wanted to talk
to you. Did he try anything else last night?"

"I told him in no uncertain
terms that it hadn't been an invitation. It was a mistake."

"And I'm sure he accepted
that." Moira's sarcasm came through loud and clear.

"Right. He said he wouldn't be
forgetting what he saw. Damn." Her friends knew she didn't sleep around.
Very focused on her singing career, her
raison
d'être
, she allowed no one to interfere with her life plans.

"So did he kiss you?"

"Moira! Why would you think
that?"

"Because he was gorgeous, and
he was eating you up with his eyes."

"My God, that's so
corny-sounding. And kind of icky."

"So?"

Phoebe paused.

"Uh huh. I'm not surprised."

Her pause was enough of an answer
for Moira, apparently. Phoebe felt her skin heating up at the memory of that
kiss and where his hand had wandered to. Leaning back on the rough brick of the
building, suddenly weak-kneed, she was under no illusion that he'd found her
breast by accident. She had the feeling he was very skilled in the romance
department. That kiss had been sweet and sexy and joint-melting.

"I just hope it was a good
kiss." Moira sighed. "I'll just have to live vicariously. But what
about Butch? Are you still going out with him?"

"I've only gone out with him
twice, and it's not serious. I only gave him a quick peck after the second
date. I'm not his girlfriend even though that's the way he tries to make it
look."

"He did seem a bit possessive
last night, the way he was touching you."

"Yeah, I didn't like that. The
next time I see him, I'll tell him it's over. I guess I'd better sugarcoat it.
Just tell him I need my freedom to pursue my career."