High Tide by Jude Deveraux Page B

sleep in his clothes and get up looking smooth and unrumpled. And bed head would never dare afflict that thick black hair of his.
    As she watched Ace pick up fat red tomatoes and smell them before putting them into a bag, she thought, What redneck cooked for a woman? And when he paused and looked up into a tree, she knew he’d sighted some bird.
    So who was this man she’d turned her life over to? she wondered. He was poor, that was true, she’d seen that, yet he had relatives he could fax to do detective work. He drovelike he was a professional race car driver, yet his apartment had been filled with books.
    The only thing Fiona was absolutely sure of was that he wasn’t what he seemed and he was not telling her the whole story. In fact, now that she thought of it, he was telling her next to nothing. He was demanding that Fiona tell him lots and lots about herself, but in return he was keeping himself a secret.
    As she watched him go into the store, she thought, Two can play this game. If he was going to keep secrets, so could she. First of all, she sure as hell was not going to explain Kimberly to him. And second, she was going to use any method she could think of to find out as much about him as she could. Remember, she thought, knowledge is power.
    When Ace got back into the car, he told her that the police had been there, but no one thought that the two murderers would be able to get through the roadblocks. “They think we’ve gone south to Miami,” Ace said as he swung back onto the road. “It seems that the police received three anonymous tips that we’d been seen that far south.”
    â€œSo they won’t be looking for us here?”
    â€œNot for a while yet, and I’d be willing to bet that the tippers were named Taggert.”
    â€œAre they relatives or birds?”
    â€œCousins,” Ace said with a quick grin as he got back on the highway, only this time they were heading back the way they came.
    â€œPlease tell me we’re
not
following whatever bird you saw back there.”
    â€œBlue-gray gnatcatcher,” he said. “I’d like to see the nest—it’s held together with spider silk—but, no, I justwanted to make sure that no one was following us. If the policeman tells anyone about the woman about to give birth, someone else might be suspicious.”
    â€œRight,” Fiona said, and for minutes she didn’t breathe, but, as far as they could tell, they were safe and no one was following them.
    But when Fiona saw the house where Ace had grown up, she almost said that she’d rather turn herself in to the police. Jail couldn’t be as bad as that cabin.
    It had a rusted metal roof that was peeled up in places, and in others the metal was missing altogether. But she doubted if too much rain got inside as thick piles of Spanish moss covered the big holes. There was a sort of porch on the place, but one of the columns had collapsed, so the roof was hanging down on one side. There was a front door and two windows with missing panes. The upper part of the building was gray wood, and the lower was rotting.
    No wonder he liked Kendrick Park, she thought. This building made those at the park seem like the Taj Mahal.
    Ace got their bags out of the car, then stood holding them while Fiona stared at the cabin. “It’s a bit rustic,” he said under his breath.
    What was he up to? she wondered, because she had the feeling that this wasn’t real, that he was trying to make her believe he was a poor little boy from the wrong side of the tracks. There were bells ringing in her head that told her that he was doing this for a reason. But what reason?
    She didn’t know the answer, but she did know that she could play this game too. If he wanted to believe that she thought he was some redneck briar, so be it. She could pretendas well as he could. “So. Do these Taggert relatives of yours wear shoes? Pick their toenails