Missing the Stars: Chandler County Read online

  “He has to check in with you? I was under the impression that JD Carpenter was a grown man.”

  “Well, yes, he is a grown man. A child in a man’s body.” She stomped her foot in frustration. She did not want to have this conversation in the middle of the street. “The man doesn’t have a responsible bone in his body.” It wasn’t the first time she found herself hoping his irresponsible nature was the reason for his disappearance.

  “Ah, so you ask him to call you to…check in?”

  “Yes! Isn’t that what I said? He is so freaking irresponsible that I have to keep tabs on him. Is it so much to ask for him to call me to let me know he’s okay? Why are you smiling like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know; it’s just, you’re smirking at me like you’re in on a joke I’m not.”

  “Not at all. I just find you quite funny.”

  “How so? You think it’s funny that I’m freaking out because my brother is MIA?”

  “Not at all, but I do find it hysterical you keep track of a grown man. I mean, he is entitled to live his life the way he wants. Isn’t he?”

  “No! Yes, I mean, of course he’s allowed to live his life how he sees fit. But I worry about him. He doesn’t think things through—he’s too spontaneous.”

  “Well, then, isn’t it entirely possible that he’s just off being spontaneous?”

  Oh, Jessie didn’t like how this conversation had flipped on her. She was the one who was supposed to be asking questions, taking down answers, and kicking some ass. Not this smart-mouthed man, even if he was easy on the eyes, and that was the last thing she needed to be thinking about. What she needed was to find her brother, make sure he was fine, and get back to her job—before it was too late. Furious with herself for wasting valuable time while she could be questioning somebody who might have useful information, she stomped her foot again, and the smart-ass’s face nearly split in two with the smile that stretched across it. He was loving every second of this. She was tempted to stomp on his foot for getting pleasure from her pain. Yet, Jessie knew that she was successful in creating her persona and performing her role by that smirk. Even if she did want to wipe it off his sexy face.

  “Listen, as lovely as it has been meeting you…” She paused and looked him up and down, making sure he read every ounce of sarcasm in her tone and expression. “I don’t have time for this. I need to find my brother and get home. I thought perhaps you would be helpful, but it appears you’re not useful to me.”

  “Ah, yes, to your nice, orderly life where nothing spontaneous happens.”

  “You know nothing about me and my life.”

  “Have you ever heard that some people are broadcasters?”

  “What are you babbling on about?”

  “Some people broadcast their internal thoughts so clearly that an intuitive person like myself can pretty much read their mind.”

  “Oh, gawd, are you certifiably crazy?”

  “Nope. But you were broadcasting loud and clear that you are an uptight person who doesn’t like to be pushed outside her comfort zone—even before you opened your mouth and started talking. Guess what? Today is your lucky day. You can go back to your orderly little life, and I will find your brother for you.”

  Jessie found herself completely dumbstruck and tongue-tied. So here she stood on the sidewalk in the middle of the sweltering heat opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water. Who did this cocky SOB think he was? Talking down to her like she was nothing more than a fretful woman who needed to be placated. It was true that she wanted—no, she needed—his help. She didn’t want to involve anyone else, but she needed to, and that was an entirely different story.

  “You are going to find my brother?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why would I go home and trust you to find my brother for me?”

  “Because I’m a PI. I own Port Investigations out of Wisconsin, but I work all over the US. So why don’t you go home and leave this to the professionals?”

  Oh, now he’d done it; he’d pissed her off to the stars and back and she was about ready to boil over with it.

  “Now, you listen here,” she said, jabbing her finger into his chest again. “I may not be a professional like yourself, and I might just be a poor little woman in your mind—a female who needs to be rescued—but there is nothing on God’s green earth that is going to stop me from looking for my brother. Not you, not anybody.”

  Cole rocked back on his heels and smirked again. Jessie wanted nothing more than to tell him how wrong he was about her, but she couldn’t. For now, she would just settle for shutting him up. She suddenly had a vision of planting a big kiss on his full lips to do just that, followed on the heels of a vision of her smacking him across the face.

  “Listen, lady, Coop called me and asked me to help him find his missing jockey, and then I’m out of here.” The slightest tightening of his jaw alerted her that he had just given away more information than he’d intended.

  “That jerk!” She nearly shouted, and his eyebrows shot up at her outburst. “I asked that son of a bitch if he knew where my brother was, and he kept telling me that he was out working with Race the Stars and now you tell me that you’re here to help find JD?” Now she was really scared. If Coop was lying to her like she’d thought, then that didn’t bode well at all. Calling in his hotshot PI brother to help him find JD made it even more imperative for her to be searching for him. It was still plausible that he was out base jumping or something, but in light of this new information, she was even more certain that JD was in danger.

  “I don’t know anything about that. It sounds like that’s between you and Coop. All I know is the faster I find JD Carpenter, the faster I can go on my merry way, and you will just get in my way while I’m searching. I work better without distractions and…you…are a distraction.”

  “Trust me when I say I’m not a distraction. I could be your most valuable asset.”

  “I doubt that,” he mumbled.

  “Listen, we have the same goals in life. You want to get out of here and go home and so do I. The only way either of us is doing that is by finding JD. I suggest we work together on this, or…”

  “Or?”

  “Or we go our separate ways and proceed to get in each other’s way. I think we can get a lot more accomplished if we try to partner up, don’t you?

  He appeared to be thinking it over for a moment before he shrugged his shoulders as if to say suit yourself, and then without another word, he spun on his heel and headed in the direction she’d been going, which was away from where she was currently standing. What the hell? Okay, so maybe Jessie was known to have a temper, and maybe—just maybe—what she lacked in spontaneity, she made up for with flame. Although, usually she was quite calm until provoked. When provoked, she was a sight to behold, while JD was carefree and fun, but Jessie couldn’t help it. She’d been expected to take care of JD after their parents died.

  No, that wasn’t true; she’d taken it upon herself to take care of him. Wasn’t her grandmother there, always telling her to let up a little? Hadn’t she said it was a lot to ask of a sixteen-year-old to watch a twelve-year-old and hadn’t she also chastised her for smothering him fourteen years later? She had. But Jessie had felt she owed it to their parents, and so it stood to reason that she was pissed off because the little shit that she took care of wasn’t answering her phone calls and the anger was all she had to keep her from falling apart out of sheer terror. One of only two people in the world she cared what happened to was nowhere to be found. That angry and fearful combination is what propelled her to grab Cole’s shoulder as he walked away—his very strong and muscular shoulder, the same shoulder which tensed under her touch.

  “Where are you going?” Her voice came out much shriller than she had intended and he slowly turned to look at her.

  “To my car. You're welcome to ride with me or follow me.”

  “Let me ask again. Where are y
ou going?”

  “To see my asshole brother.”

  “And you’re okay with my working with you?”

  “Darling, something tells me I don’t have a choice.”

  The way the word “darling” sounded coming from him sent shivers down her spine. Normally she would have been offended, but there was something about the man in front of her that had her off-kilter. Suddenly she felt like a teenager lusting after the boy next door, only the man standing looking at her pointedly was far from the boy next door. Something told her that he was a far cry from any man she had met or worked with and indeed every bit of her female parts that had been left dusty were screaming at her to find out.

  4

  There were only a few events in Cole’s life that had shaken him to the core: his parents murder, Tony’s death, and Danny’s death. All three of those events were violent acts that stole someone from him. There had never been an event that took him by surprise that wasn’t steeped in violence. Until today, at the very second in his hometown when a firecracker of a redhead came charging down the sidewalk and jabbed her finger into his chest. The next five minutes of his life he felt as if the earth had been knocked off its axis and he was still trying to regain his equilibrium when he turned to go to his car. Except the little pistol behind him wanted nothing to do with being left behind.

  Cole prided himself on his instincts. He wouldn’t have gotten as far in his career if it wasn’t for those instincts and they had never failed him. Even when he lost Tony and Danny, his sixth sense was telling him they were in imminent danger. There was just nothing he could do to stop what happened in both cases. He was too slow, and the events that took them happened too fast for him to do one damn bit of good. Likewise, he couldn’t stop his parents' murders—down deep, he knew that—but he still harbored a large ass amount of guilt over their deaths. His instincts had served him well, and right now they were yelling at him that this woman was not to be denied, but they were also telling him to tread lightly. If he didn’t play his cards right, she would leave his life in the same fashion she entered it, and for some reason, that thought didn’t sit well with him at all. Hence, why he was shaken. Cole didn’t let women get under his skin. Ever. Certainly not women he’d just met.

  At least he had managed to regain his composure and cover his momentary lack of composure with his customary cocky swagger. Part of him wanted to run, but he knew in the end that the spunky lady in front of him wasn’t going to be easy to get away from. Which she only proved after she stormed after him demanding to know where he was going. In reality, he was testing her to see what she was going to do next. Well, mostly he was testing her. He was also hoping she would follow him. She hadn’t disappointed or surprised him on either instance. He knew that she would follow him if he left her standing there on the sidewalk. In his mind, the experiment had been a success.

  Now that they were in his car, not only was her perfume filling the air and his nose, but it was wreaking havoc on his imagination. In the time it had taken to drive a mile, he’d had about five illicit fantasies about her. By mile two, the blood was pumping through his veins and on fire, and there was a certain member of his body that was receiving a whole lot of blood flow. What the hell was wrong with him anyway? He’d never reacted this strongly to a woman, and because of that, he knew he had to help his brother and get the hell out of Dodge, or at the very least, as far away from her as possible.

  The woman who was currently chewing on her full bottom lip and fidgeting with her purse, as if she didn’t know what to do with her hands or maybe she just didn’t know how to direct her nervous energy, was somehow intoxicating to him. Why had she gotten into a car with a complete stranger? Granted, that stranger was him, and he was the best person she could have paired up with for this job and for safety, but it was still irresponsible to climb into a car with a man she’d just met. Hopefully, she realized no one would get near her without going through him. It was how he worked every job, and if her brother was missing, logic would lead him to believe that there is a possibility that danger might come looking for her as well.

  “Stop staring at me.” Her voice was rough as if she needed a drink of water.

  “I’m not staring at you. My eyes are on the road.”

  “You most certainly are eyeballing me.”

  “Eyeballing you? What do you do? Spend all your free time watching movies with bad dialogue?”

  “Whatever,” she mumbled. When he thought she would go silent again, she began to talk a mile a minute. “Listen, I don’t normally get in a car with strange men. Or men—I mean, I’m not saying you’re strange, it’s just I don’t normally get in a car with someone I just met. You could be an ax murderer for all I know, and now you’re staring at me out of the corner of your eye, and I know that you’re thinking the same thing.”

  “You don’t know what I’m thinking, and I’m not an ax murderer.”

  “I do know what you’re thinking. You're pretty easy to read actually, and I know you aren’t an ax murderer; at least I hope you aren’t, but that’s not the point. I’m trying to let you know that I’m not a reckless person.”

  Easy to read? Well, that is something he could unequivocally say he had never been accused of in his life. Actually, the opposite had been said about him time after time, by every woman he’d ever dated and every person who’d ever worked for him. He was a closed book. No one could read him. Yet, she had read exactly what had been going through his mind.

  “Trust me, if there’s anything I’ve figured out about you in the last fifteen minutes, it’s that you’re not a reckless person. A little uptight, maybe…”

  “Uptight? Listen here…” He busted out laughing at the outraged look that had crossed her face. She was all but tapping her sensible boot on the floorboard of his SUV. “What are you laughing at?” she huffed at him.

  “You. You have no idea how adorable you are when you’re angry.”

  “Adorable? Are you kidding me? Are you hitting on me right now?”

  “Not even close. Trust me, darling, if I were hitting on you, you would definitely know it.”

  Cole sent a look her way and watched her fist her hands around her purse strap. Her sensible purse. Everything about her was sensible. Sensible shoes for the terrain. Sensible purse that would be hard to steal off her when she was walking down the street. Sensible clothing. The woman wreaked of caution, and yet, he suspected if her armor was removed she was anything but sensible. Hadn’t he seen that very thing on the sidewalk outside the deli? , When it came to her brother, she was clearly less than cautious. After all, she’d dropped everything and came to look for him. Not only that, but she’d gotten into a car with a complete stranger. That was the complete antithesis of sensible.

  While it was obvious that when it came to her brother, Jessie threw all caution to the wind, there was something he was missing, an underlying current of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He had no doubt it would eventually come to him, but the fact it didn’t immediately come to him was another indicator he was off his game.

  There was a chance JD was off somewhere partying versus being in trouble. Of course, Coop was also worried about him. That was enough to cause Cole to pause and take this seriously. In all honesty, he couldn’t blame her for worrying about her brother. It’s what you did when you cared about your family. In fact, he would be on high alert if she wasn’t concerned at all about her brother’s whereabouts.

  “Listen, I’m sorry if I’m being a bit bristly.”

  “If?” He smirked at the stubborn lift of her chin. Obviously, she didn’t care for his retort, which was just fine with him. He wasn’t there to make friends. He was there to find JD and then get back to his life. They lapsed into silence, and once again, he was trapped in his thoughts.

  Only, hadn’t he been running from that very life when Coop had called him? No. He had been taking a much-needed break because he was about to burn out. There was no way to get around the fact
that he needed this time off to recharge. Ethan and Quinn had made sure to drive that point home when they had their little intervention regarding the state of his mental health. Because he respected both of them on a personal—as well as—professional level; he listened and found it wasn’t that hard to see the merit of what they were telling him. Maybe if he’d been on his game, it wouldn’t have taken so long to find Quinn’s birth parents. Then again, they had made it relatively hard to find them.

  Cole was so deep in his thoughts that he almost missed the turnoff for the dirt road that led to the farm he’d grown up on. When he turned down the road, he noticed how beautifully maintained it was, which surprised him. Coop had told him many times all the changes to the farm, and he had seen pictures, but seeing it in person was breathtaking. For some reason, Cole had always assumed that Coop was embellishing the changes or sending him select images to make things look amazing to draw him home. Now he saw he hadn’t given his brother nearly enough credit.

  When they pulled up to the front of the farmhouse, it became apparent there was nothing which needed repair or upkeep on the farm. The farm was pristine. It looked the same as it had when he left, only better. Shinier. Greener. Everything somehow looked lusher. The horses in the paddock were exquisite animals of solid muscle. They were healthy and robust, every last one of them. Glossy hair and perfect coats of fur shone in the afternoon sun. There were more horses on the farm than Cole had ever seen. This farm wasn’t in need of money; it was doing handsomely. How had Cole misread his brother over the phone? Had he really thought Coop had been lying about the financial solvency of the farm? Had the years apart made that much of a difference? Cole and Coop used to be able to finish each other’s thoughts. Surely that connection hadn’t been so severely damaged when he moved away that he was no longer able to read him?