When she reached the doorway, Santana joined her. “All clear?” she asked softly.
He nodded.
A chill ran down Sadie’s spine and her arms prickled. Adrenaline crash. She was coming down as if she’d been on a powerful drug. She’d done her best to be calm and cool with the kid, but in truth her heart was still pumping too hard and her skin was flushed and overly warm. It was always that way when bullets started flying.
She was starving.
Sadie glanced up at Santana, who watched the kid on the bed with calm, contented eyes. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a dull but satisfying business meeting.
The man was gorgeous, dark and fit and downright pretty. She liked him a lot as a person, and they worked together well. And no matter how tempting she might occasionally find him, it was never a good idea to mix business with pleasure. Santana didn’t do emotion where sex was concerned, but she did. It was Sadie’s downfall, the chink in her armor, her Achilles’ heel. It was the reason she had been single in every way for the past several years.
“I’m thinking of taking a few days off,” he said. “What about you?”
“I wish,” she said softly. “I got an urgent phone call from my Aunt Lillian yesterday.”
Santana turned his brandy-colored eyes to her.
“It’s nothing, really, just…” No way was she going to tell Santana or any of her other co-workers—all males as testosterone-laden as he—why she was going back to Garth, Alabama. “I have to go home for a few days and take care of a little family business.”
He didn’t pry, but he did ask if she needed any help. She declined the offer, horrified at the very idea of anyone at the agency seeing her in the element she was about to jump back into. The Benning Agency was more than a P.I. firm. They didn’t take on seedy divorce cases or investigate insurance scams. Instead, they provided top-notch security, rescued lost or kidnapped children like Danny and took on dangerous jobs no one else wanted. Their agents were the best of the best.
Sadie smiled at Danny as she walked to the bed to take the cell phone.
“It’s going to take us a couple of hours to get you home,” Sadie said as she scooped Danny’s shoes off the floor and sat beside him. “Are you hungry?”
He nodded.
“Me, too. I could really use a nice, big chocolate milkshake right about now. And maybe some cheese fries and a chili dog.”
Santana lifted one curious brow. “What gives, Harlow? You only eat like that when you’re really nervous.”
Sadie took Danny’s hand as he left the bed then sent a tight smile at Santana. “I told you. I’m going home.”
And it was going to take a lot more than a junk-food binge to soothe her nerves.
Chapter 1
The old saying “You can’t go home again” was wrong. Sadie had quickly discovered that going home was easy. Much too easy. The saying ought to be, “You shouldn’t go home again. Ever.”
“Sadie,” the intrusive, whispering voice interrupted what was left of her dream.
Sadie opened one eye, barely. The bedside clock glowed green in the dimly lit bedroom. Four-fifty—in the morning! She’d gotten to sleep about one-thirty, after unpacking, listening to Aunt Lillian’s list of troubles and cousin Jennifer’s hours of unending complaints and trying to adjust her body to this hard, less-than-welcoming bed.
“Go ’way,” she mumbled as she closed her eye.
“It’s almost five. Rise and shine!”
Rise and shine were words that should definitely be justifiable cause for homicide, especially at this hour. With a moan, Sadie rolled onto her back and glared up, that one eye drifting open again. Lillian Banks stood five foot one, weighed maybe a hundred and five pounds, and carried her fifty-seven years as if it were thirty-seven.
“I didn’t get to sleep until after one,” Sadie said. Surely that was explanation enough, she thought as she closed her eye.
“Sadie,” Aunt Lillian whispered.
The dream was right there. And it had been a good one. Hadn’t it?
“Sadie.” A nudge accompanied this more urgent call.
The hard bed felt almost soft, she was so tired….
“Sadie Mae.”
Sadie sat up as quickly as was possible considering her condition, and both eyes flew open. The sound of her full name usually did that to her. She didn’t know if it was early years of maternal training or the horror of the full name that made her sound like a hick wearing a pair of cut-off overalls and straw in her hair. Whatever the reason, Aunt Lillian knew the trick. “I’m up!”
Lillian smiled widely. “Mary Beth called in sick. You’ll have to work her shift.”
This was so unfair. “Can’t Jennifer do it?”
A shake of a gray head was her answer. “No. Jennifer was out late, and besides…she’s got all the housekeeping to do and the last time she filled in for Mary Beth she spilt coffee on one of my best customers.”
Sadie’s airhead cousin, Lillian’s own daughter, had spilled that coffee on purpose, no doubt, to save her from such early-morning abductions. Maybe Jennifer wasn’t such an airhead after all. “Five minutes,” Sadie said, drifting back toward the mattress.
It wasn’t fair. Jennifer had gotten the normal name and the ability to weasel her way out of anything she didn’t want to do.
Lillian tossed a dress at Sadie, a hideous, bubble-gum pink, lace-trimmed waitress uniform that actually had her name stitched over the pocket. Just plain Sadie, thank God.
“You had this made for me?” Her heart sank. Obviously her aunt expected that these early-morning duties were going to become a regular thing. Sadie asked herself again how she had ended up here. “I didn’t come back to Garth to…”
“If you’re going to help out until I get things in order around here, you need a proper uniform,” Lillian said. “And don’t give me that look. Waitressing is a perfectly acceptable occupation for a young lady.”
Aunt Lillian was too embarrassed to tell her friends what had truly become of her niece. They all thought Sadie had gone to the big city and become a receptionist, suitable work for a young lady looking for a husband.
Pushing thirty—hard—wasn’t young, and Sadie didn’t want a husband. Almost been there, almost done that.
Lillian grinned and winked. “Hurry up. You know how early the fishermen show up for breakfast.”
Once Sadie was sitting on the edge of the hard mattress, relatively awake, Lillian rushed from the room with a parting suggestion that her niece get crackin’.
Sadie crawled off the bed certain that she’d been tricked. Lillian wasn’t all that desperate for help. She had just needed a free waitress during the one month a year that Garth was literally jumpin’. Only three weeks to the Miranda Lake Big Bass Festival, which arrived every October complete with parade, craft fair and—of course—bass tournament.
Since Uncle Jimmy’s death four years earlier, Lillian had managed the Yellow Rose Motel, and the café across the parking lot, with the help of Jennifer and a few longtime employees. But one of those longtime employees had broken his leg last week, and another had gone and gotten herself pregnant a few months back. Lillian swore she couldn’t hire just anyone. It took time and patience to find just the right person for the job.
Patience. Something Sadie did not possess.
There were financial problems, as well as a waitress shortage. A loan had come due, and for some reason the loan officer at the bank was being