Beckett's Convenient Bride. Dixie Browning

but so far as he could see, theirs were the only two cars on the road. This shouldn’t take long, Carson promised himself.

      Good thing, too, he added. He’d just run flat-out of juice.

      Opening the door, he got out, steadied himself for a moment, and waited until she came to a halt a few feet from his rear bumper. Then, levering himself away from the support of his dark green SUV, he headed her way.

      His legs were shaky. Maybe he should have eaten his lunch, but by the time he’d been served, food hadn’t seemed all that great an idea.

      He was within ten feet of the hand-painted VW when he saw her roll up her window. She locked her door, then leaned over and locked the passenger door.

      Well, hell. What now? Find the nearest hollow tree, leave the goods there, then write and tell her where to find it? If she wrote kids’ books, she might be into kids’ games.

      Tough. She’d picked the wrong player this time.

      He was still trying to figure out an approach when she rolled her window down an inch and shouted for him to move his car, then rolled the window up again.

      Move his car? Had he missed something? It occurred to him that she might not have gotten the message that he was looking for her. In that case, maybe she wasn’t trying to catch up with him, but just wanted to pass. Thought he was a tourist, maybe, watching a flyover of cormorants.

      Okay, so what now? Try to reason with her through a layer of steel and glass? Put yourself in the lady’s place, Beckett. She’s alone, she finds herself being accosted by a strange man. Reason enough to be spooked, right? The world was no longer a safe place, if it ever had been. Who knew that better than a cop?

      The women of his family knew better than to stop if ever a stranger tried to flag them down. They’d been taught to lock all doors and pass the buck by calling the highway patrol. In this case, he was the next best thing, only she had no way of knowing it.

      Feet spread apart to keep him from reeling, Carson held up both hands, palms out, in the universal sign of peace. “Hey, I’m one of the good guys, lady.”

      Cautiously, she inched her window down and peered at him suspiciously. From where he was standing—aside from the eyeball assault of color: orange car, red hair, purple dress or whatever she was wearing—she appeared to be a damned fine-looking woman.

      Irritated as hell, but a looker.

      Make that angry, he corrected a moment later when she lowered the glass another two inches.

      Make that scared. In fact, terrified would not be an overstatement.

      Well, hell. What now? This wasn’t in the script. Under any other circumstances he’d have walked off and let her go unreparated, or whatever the proper term was. His whole body ached like a boil. He was running on fumes. And dammit, he hadn’t come all this way to leave the job unfinished.

      Taking two steps forward, he said, “Look, for both our sakes, let’s get this over fast, all right?”

      Slowly, he reached inside his buckskin jacket, planning to hold out his badge to reassure her.

      “Noo-o-o!” she screamed. “Just get out of my way!”

      Wrong move. He held out his hands again as if to prove he was totally harmless. Evidently the message failed to get through. She gunned the engine. The Beetle jerked forward. Carson tried to leap out of the way, but his reconstructed knee wasn’t up to the job. It buckled, and before he could catch himself, he went down, his head in a tangle of weeds bordering a blackwater ditch.

      She backed up and slammed on the brakes. She was out of her car in an instant, wild auburn hair flying around her face, purple shirt flapping around long legs covered in a pair of tie-dyed tights.

      She was wielding a tire-iron in a way that was anything but reassuring. “Open your eyes,” she demanded in a quavering voice.

      No way, lady. I’m safer playing dead.

      She crept closer. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping she’d be convinced and leave him alone. Nothing in the genealogist’s chart had indicated a strain of insanity in the Chandler genes, but then the lady genealogist hadn’t gone into any personal detail.

      “You’re not dead. I saw your eyelids twitch. I hardly even touched you.”

      She hadn’t touched him at all, but only because he’d jumped out of the way just in time. She hesitated, but he could hear her breathing. She was still looming over him with that damned tire iron. The right tool in the wrong hands could be lethal.

      “Darn you, open your eyes!” she whispered fiercely. By then she was so close he could feel the heat of her body, feel her breath brushing his face. “I barely touched you, you can’t be dead,” she declared.

      He was having trouble regulating his breathing. It would be just his luck to have a sneezing spell. He felt her knees press against his side, felt the soft pressure of cool fingertips on his throat, then on his chest.

      Yeah, I’m alive, he was tempted to tell her. Keep on touching me like that and I’ll show you just how lively I can be, headache or no.

      Fat chance. He was fighting on too many fronts to take on one more. She smelled like…cinnamon? Apples?

      Something equally innocuous…and equally tempting.

      She touched his forehead and jerked her hand away. He wanted her fingers back. They were cool, soothing, and God, he needed that. What the hell was he supposed to do now? None of this was in the script. If he opened his eyes or even so much as twitched a muscle, she’d probably cold cock him with that damned tire iron.

      “You’re alive, I know you are. I don’t even see any blood, so you can’t be seriously hurt. But while you’re down I just want you to know that I didn’t see anything, not one blessed thing, so you don’t have to worry about me. Just because my car happened to be in the parking lot, that doesn’t mean I saw what you did. I was on the other side of the cemetery. I couldn’t even hear what you were fighting about.”

      Breathing through clenched teeth, Carson mentally assessed the damage. He was winded, but probably in no worse shape than before. Unless he slid into the ditch and drowned. If she didn’t stop pressing her knees into his side, that was a distinct possibility.

      What the hell was she talking about? A cemetery? Fighting? She sure as hell had seen him.

      “Well,” she said tentatively. “I probably shouldn’t leave you here in case another car comes. Besides, you’re blocking the intersection.”

      Tentatively, she picked up his hand and tugged. He felt something tickling his cheek and hoped it wasn’t alive, because the last thing he needed on top of everything else was an infestation of chiggers.

      “Look, I know you’re not unconscious, I can tell by the way you breathe.”

      He could have told her that his breathing would be a lot more convincing if she weren’t so close…and so damned female. Were pheromones considered hormones? His were supposed to be out on sick leave.

      He could sense her studying him as if he were something under a microscope. Thank God he wasn’t armed. Sometimes he carried when he was off duty, but not when he was this far out of his jurisdiction. Besides, this wasn’t that kind of a case. Hadn’t started out that way, at least. But who knows, with a crazy woman…

      “I didn’t hit you that hard. I didn’t even feel a bump,” she said defensively.

      He didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing. If his head weren’t hanging lower than his feet, he’d have been content to stay right where he was for the foreseeable future.

      On the other hand, with a crazy woman feeling him up…

      Get your hands off my body, lady, that’s private property you’re invading.

      Her hair hung down and tickled his face. She was muttering under her breath,