Coming Undone m-4 Read online

  It hadn't hurt, either, that P.J. had vanished. By the time Turner hauled him down to his office, only to discover the sheriff had been there for some time but P.J. hadn't made an appearance at all and no one had been instructed to contact him, it was obvious he'd begun to suspect he'd been played. An involuntary grin tugged at Jared's lips now.

  No shit, Sherlock.

  Not that he had much to chortle about, himself. He'd underestimated her. From everything he'd seen so far, he would have sworn P.J. would do just about anything to avoid turning the light of media attention on herself. She sure as hell kept dodging having to deal with all the bullshit her mother was spreading. And unless Jodeen Morgan had changed dramatically since their Denver days, he had to believe one session of straight talk from P.J. and her old lady's guns would be spiked. The fact that P.J. wasn't doing a damn thing about it had led him to believe she wouldn't make a fuss over his homemade alarm system, either.

  Looked like he'd been wrong on that front.

  Before he'd fallen asleep last night it had occurred to him that hooking up with her this early was probably a mistake and that maybe he ought to back off and just keep his eye on her from a distance until her tour started. Well, screw that. Her trying to get him arrested forstalking, for crissake, had made this personal.

  He came to attention when P.J. suddenly came into sight, skipping blithely down the staircase just as he was killing off his sandwich. It was an hour to sunset and he hadn't known if she'd go out at all. If so, though, he would have expected her to be dressed for hitting the club circuit like she'd been last night. Instead, she wore a sports bra, an abbreviated pair of shorts and running shoes. A CamelBak hydration system was strapped to her back.

  She was a runner? That wasn't something he ever would have guessed. He watched her cross the atrium.

  It didn't take a detective to figure out she was going for a run-which meant that sooner or later she'd be right back where she'd started: here. No sense in leaving this beautifully air-conditioned hotel to get all hot and sweaty following her around.

  Then he sighed. Because this morning's stunt was still fresh in his mind, and what if this were a ruse? She could easily have spotted him from the upstairs landing, in which case he wouldn't put it past her to have called the bell captain to load her luggage into her truck. And wouldn't he look like an ass if he sat here for the next hour and a half waiting for her to return, when for all he knew she was jogging her way to Timbuktu.

  Standing up, he glanced down at his Teva sandals. Shit. He was asking Rocket for a raise. He wasn't being paid nearly enough for this crap. He watched her exit through the front entrance, then followed.

  Like a breath-stealing, run-amok forest fire, a wall of heat hit him the moment he stepped outside, and he damn near trod on P.J.'s heels when he unexpectedly came up behind her where she stood stretching. With the image of blue hip-hugger boy shorts stretched taut over that amazing butt seared into his retinas, he backpedaled out of sight until she set off at an easy clip down the path that fronted the hotel. Once she disappeared around the corner, he started out behind her.

  He followed her past the pool at the back of the hotel and by the umbrella tables until she reached a little bridge that crossed the river to the hundred-acre island that formed Riverfront Park. She picked up her pace and they ran at a decent clip past the forestry shelter and the pavilion with its carnival rides and IMAX theater, through greenery and meadows, down to the place where the gondolas took off overhead and past a bunch of sculptures.

  Heating up, he stripped off his T-shirt as he ran. Even then, he had to stop at the hand-carved wooden carousel to catch his breath. Pressing one hand to the stitch in his side, he braced the other against a bench back and bent over, blowing hard. He looked beyond the kids leaning out to try for the brass ring to where P.J. was running by a structure that he heard a parent call the Garbage Goat. Thinking he would kill for a bottle of water, he blew out a breath and started after her again, ignoring the hot spot that his sandal was rubbing on the ball of his right foot.

  They jogged past a giant interactive sculpture shaped like a Radio Flyer red wagon and farther along passed a floating stage. They turned left over another little bridge, then P.J. turned left again and they pounded past a Vietnam veterans' memorial with a soaring clock tower in the background. That brought them back near the forestry shelter and he watched a trickle of sweat roll between her shoulder blades as she ran in place while giving another connected island they hadn't covered a considering gaze. Another drop coasted down the shallow groove of her spine and disappeared into the low-cut bandless waist of her little blue shorts.

  Christ, had the temperature just spiked another twenty degrees? He could see the headline now:Semper Fi Detective Strokes Out on Measly One-Mile Run. Lucky for him, he knew he could count on his sister to spend time at his bedside wiping the drool from his chin. John, on the other hand, would probably just show up to laugh at him.

  To his eternal relief, P.J. turned back toward the first bridge.

  Figuring he could safely assume she was headed back to the hotel, he slacked off his pace. Then his professional self demanded,And you're going to discover her room number howfrom back here?

  "Crap." Blowing out a breath, he picked up his speed again.

  She'd disappeared by the time he got in sight of the pool again and, swearing to himself, he put on a further burst of speed.

  "Enjoy your run?"

  He skidded to a halt, his head whipping around. P.J. sat at one of the umbrella tables on the rail-enclosed deck, her feet up on the chair next to her. He walked back. "You knew I was behind you the entire time?"

  "Hard to miss the sound of those sandals slapping on the path." She nodded at his feet. "You run pretty good for a man in Tevas."

  He swung over the railing onto the deck and took a chair across from her. "Gimme your water."

  "Get your own drink."

  He leaned toward her. "I sold my favorite baseball card for you. Give me the goddamn water!"

  "That was fifteen years ago, and you sold it for both of us, not just me." But she shoved the CamelBak she'd removed across the table.

  He swooped the backpacklike hydration system up, stuck the mouthpiece between his lips and nearly sucked the well dry. When he came up for air, he found her gazing at his naked chest.

  "You might want to put your shirt on," she said dryly. "I think this is one of those no shirt, no shoes, no service places."

  "Then they must not get a helluva lot of business. It's next to a damn pool."

  "That's a point." A valid one, P.J. saw when she looked around and saw a few of the diners still in bathing attire. She was nevertheless relieved to see him raise his right hip and fish his navy T-shirt from his back pocket, where he'd stuffed the shirt's tail. All that bare skin stretched over all that well-defined muscle and bone made her a little nervous. So she gave him a wiseacre smirk. "Who would have guessed that you'd turn out to be so buff?"

  He pulled the shirt on over his head then flexed an impressively muscular bicep at her. "You a fool for muscles?"

  "Oh, yeah." She laid it on thick, batting her eyes and doing the pitty-pat thing with her hand on her heart. "They just make me weak all over."

  "Uh-huh." As she'd hoped, he thought she was yanking his chain, even though the sight of his shoulders and chest and ridged abdomen did make her feel a little giddy.

  Lord Almighty, girl. Get a grip.

  Clearly she had to get out more. She'd determined as a kid not to get sucked into the penchant that seemed to run rampant in so many of the small-town women she'd known-that longing for a man, any man, to stand between them and the lonelies. She'd always patted herself on the back for striking a healthy balance. So okay, she'd admit that recently she'd been concentrating on her career so much that her love life was pretty much nonexistent. Still, she certainly hadn't turned her back on men altogether.

  Maybe she was going a little overboard on the vocation side of the equati
on these days, though, if the sight of one well-muscled chest gave her palpitations like those of a fourteen-year-old exposed to her first crush. That was a little on the awkward side.

  All the same, the girlish giddies had her feeling pretty cheerful.

  "So, when did you start running?" Jared asked, interrupting her thoughts.

  "When I was sixteen. One of the schools I attended had a track team and Mama and I actually stayed in town long enough for me to join it." Only to be told to pack up again two days after their first meet.

  "You do it to maintain that great ass?"

  "No. I do it for my singing."

  He gave her a blank look and she explained, "The lungs are a bellows, Hamilton. Running improves my wind, which improves my ability to sustain a note." She studied him from beneath her lashes. "So you think I have a great ass?"

  To her surprise, dull color climbed his neck to flush his jaw and cheeks. "Hey, I'm a red-blooded man. I've noticed your butt in a, you know, general sort of way."

  "Boys will be boys," she agreed dryly. And just like that, she found herself no longer pissed at him. The not quite disguised discomfort in a man she would have sworn didn't have a self-conscious bone in his body reminded her of the boy she'd once adored.

  Besides, what had started out feeling like one big slap in the face-Jared's determination to keep tabs on her and his vow to deliver her to her concerts-was actually turning into something of a godsend. This game of cat-and-mouse they played kept her from trying to rewrite her history with Mama over and over again.

  Who woulda thunk it? Truth was, though, she couldn't remember the last occasion spent offstage when she'd had this good a time. He was kind of stimulating company and it amused her to keep him on his toes.

  Maybe that was why, when he asked out of the blue what her mother had done to make P.J. fire her, she didn't blow him off the way she had that day in the Texas panhandle.

  "She cooked the books."

  He stared at her. "Sheembezzled from you?"

  Raw pain swamped her and she really wished she had blown him off. But she shrugged as if it were no big deal and dipped her chin in assent.

  "Thatbitch. "

  She'd always hated it when he'd bad-mouthed Jodeen. It was one thing for her to do so but something else entirely for anyone else to take a shot, and her jaw automatically shot up. But she resisted getting in his face about it. Because he was right. Much as she hated to admit it, he was one hundred percent correct.

  Mama was a bitch. She likely always had been, but P.J. had refused to let herself see it.

  Still, she hoped like hell her sorrow over acknowledging it now didn't show. Climbing to her feet, she gathered her CamelBak. "Well, gee," she said as if she didn't have a care in the world. "This's been swell. But our little whatchamacallit-our truce thingie-"

  "Detente?"

  "Yeah, that. Is over. Don't go thinking this changes anything. And you really don't want to start expecting I'll make things painless for you between now and the start of my tour. Because I won't. I'm still unhappy about having a guard dog. I'm not about to roll over and make your job easier." And if she had to stifle a silly little pang of regret, that would be her secret.

  He yawned. "I'll keep that in mind."

  His boredom shot her moment of remorse to hell, and she almost smiled in gratitude. "Just as long as you know." She started back toward the hotel entrance. "I don't want to hear no whining that you weren't warned."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Priscilla Jayne Sighted Playing Small-Town Bars Across the West

  WHEN THE MAN OPENED his mailbox to discover a manila envelope from the clipping service he'd recently subscribed to, he came the closest to smiling that he had in a long time. "Praise the Lord," he murmured and marched back up the path to his house with a brisker stride than usual. Pleasure suffused him at the prospect of reading about Priscilla Jayne. He admired everything he knew of her.

  Well, that wasn't quite accurate. He didn't approve of her song about drinking and partying that was getting so much airplay these days. But at the same time:"'Honor thy father and thy mother,'" he said with conviction, "that thy days may be long upon the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee." Exodus 20:12 was one of the Bible's most pertinent passages and Priscilla Jayne grasped its importance. That made her a woman in a million in this immoral age they lived in.

  Certainly his own daughter had never shown him the respect he deserved.

  He brought himself up short with an impatient shake of his head.No. He wouldn't think about that.

  Not now. Not today.

  The moment he entered his modest frame house, the man went straight to the dining room, where he drew the drapes against prying eyes and the hot, Midwestern sun. Except then it was too dim and the overhead light didn't help much. He'd been waiting for these articles with far too much anticipation to miss a single word.

  He fetched the gooseneck lamp from the living room, arranged it where it would do the most good and plugged it in.

  Nodding in satisfaction, he made a quick trip to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of iced tea but was too impatient to drink it at the kitchen table as was his custom. He brought it back to the dining room and, after placing the glass just so on a paper napkin he'd positioned in the exact center of the heart-of-pine trestle table, he slit open the envelope. Shaking its contents onto the pristine surface, he meticulously aligned the papers, took a sip of his tea and restored the glass to the precise spot from which he'd retrieved it. Heart quickening in anticipation, he reached for the first article.

  After reading it, however, his heart pounded with another emotion. Priscilla Jayne had fired her mother as her manager?

  That wasn't following the fifth commandment. That wasn't being a proper daughter at all.

  Still, it was one piece of writing, and that from one of the more sensationalistic publications. Perhaps they had skewed the story in order to sell more copies of their rag. Those kind of journals were sued all the time for doing exactly that. He reached for the next article in the pile.

  Several minutes later, he'd gone through the entire stack of material. He sat back with his fist clenched next to the newly straightened pile. What had happened to all those pretty sentiments Priscilla Jayne had expressed on that CMT interview he'd watched several months back? She'd seemed so different from the usual young woman of today-more moral, morepure. Certainly as different from his daughter, Mary, as a woman could get. He had developed an instant and total admiration for her.

  But she wasn't honoring her mother now in any manner that he could see. Fingernails biting into his palms, he glared at the faded wallpaper on the far wall without actually seeing it.

  That was just plain wrong.

  "THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT, Klamath Falls! You've been a great audience!" Stepping back from the mic, P.J. blotted perspiration from her forehead with the back of her wrist and reached for her water bottle. The throng crowding the dance floor and the tables surrounding it roared their approval, and she grinned. But it was late, she'd been doing this for seven nights straight, and when the lights slowly dimmed onstage, exhaustion rolled over her. She walked over to thank the band she'd jammed with tonight, then climbed down from the stage.

  Tomorrow she'd catch up with her band in Portland. Between traveling and the sound check she had scheduled at the arena to prepare for the tour's first concert that evening, it was bound to be a long and busy day. But that was tomorrow. Tonight she just wanted her bed at the Crater Lake Lodge.

  The thought of her room perked her up, and she cast a triumphant smile in Jared's direction. Not that he likely saw it, sitting as he was at the back of the room with his legs stretched out beneath the table in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest and his new charcoal-gray Resistol pulled low over his eyes. It didn't matter, though. He might be unaware of her satisfaction, but she still hugged the coup of reserving the last room at the inn to her breast. According to the desk clerk, the beautiful old wood-and-fieldston
e lodge was booked months in advance. P.J. had only scored a room herself due to fortunate timing and a last-minute cancellation.

  She strode across the bar and pushed out the door, shrugging into a sweater as she crossed the lot to her truck. She'd finally learned to come prepared for the Pacific Northwest's cool-to-downright-chilly evening temperatures. Picking up her pace, she hit the remote entry button on her keychain and heard the soft thunk of locks disengaging.

  "The world as we know it came to a screeching halt tonight," Jared said from behind her. "You didn't have me tossed out of the tavern. I hardly knew how to act when I didn't have to cool my jets in the parking lot for two or three hours."

  It said something about their week-long battle of one-upmanship that she wasn't even startled to hear his voice come out of the dark. Feeling exultant to have come out on top tonight-other times having gone back and forth between them pretty equally-she bestowed her most beatific smile on him.

  "Considering you'll be spending the rest of the night shivering in your car, I figured I should probably let you gather all the comfort you could from the bar."

  "At the very least." He gazed down at her. "Pretty damn pleased with yourself, aren't you?"

  "I am." She executed a little victory dance as she pulled the door open, then climbed up into the cab of the truck. Slamming the door shut, she turned on the ignition and punched the window button. When the glass had glided down she reached out to chuck him gently under his chin. Stubble pricked her fingertip and she snatched back her hand. Cleared her throat.

  Then gave him a cocky smile. "See ya around, sucker."

  Since she planned to go straight to bed for what remained of the night and there was no point in sneaking out of the lodge in the morning when Jared knew exactly where she was headed, she meant she'd see him tomorrow.

  But she hadn't eaten in hours and when hunger sent her out to raid the vending machine in the ice room shortly after settling into her room, it never occurred to her to look down when she opened the door. The next thing she knew, her shin smacked up against a hard barrier and she heard a grunt as her forward momentum sent her lurching over the object blocking her door. Sprawling onto her hands and one knee on the carpeted corridor, she cranked her head around to see what had happened.