I’LL BE WATCHING YOU Read online

  When she stopped directly in front of him, he flashed her his I’d-like-to-strip-you-naked-and-screw-you-right-here-and-now smile.

  She didn’t return the smile. Okay, so she wasn’t interested. No big deal.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re Reed Conway, aren’t you?’

  She knew him? Was she someone from his past? An old girlfriend? He’d managed to lay several Spring Creek debutantes when he was in high school. But not this one. If he’d ever gotten in her pants, he’d remember her.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ He gave her a once-over, concentrating on the area from breasts to knees. Giving a lady that kind of sexual appraisal had away of separating the women from the girls, as well as the available from the unavailable. Besides, he enjoyed looking. She had nice tits – big, but not too big. A small waist. And wide hips. Not today’s fashionable figure, but still the kind that gave a guy a woody.

  She removed her sunglasses and held them tightly in her left hand. A hand without rings. Short, neatly manicured nails with clear polish. Not flashy. Not married. Not engaged.

  He took a good look at her face, but didn’t instantly recognize her. Had he known her? She was pretty. Not beautiful the way his mother and sister were, but alluring in an almost exotic way. Full lips, glazed with a colorless sheen. A square face, a well-defined nose, and a pair of large, striking, dark eyes – eyes so brown they appeared almost black.

  She stared at him, her gaze boring into him and her lips slightly parted. Suddenly he remembered those eyes. Other things about her had changed. She’d lost weight, grown an inch or two taller, and now possessed an air of confidence that had been lacking in the young girl who’d watched him with those remarkable black eyes.

  ‘Ella Porter, my, how you’ve changed.’ He grinned when a look of shock drained the color from her face.

  ‘So have you, Mr Conway.’

  ‘Why so formal, Ella? Call me Reed.’

  ‘Mr Conway, I have a reason for coming here, and it isn’t so that we can get to know each other on a first-name basis.’

  ‘Then I take it you didn’t stop by to welcome me home on behalf of the Porter family.’ He sensed the tension in her tighten, and he couldn’t help enjoying being able to irritate her so easily.

  ‘I received a rather disturbing letter today.’

  She snapped open her small gray shoulder bag. That was when he noticed her hands were trembling. She was scared. Scared of him. Son of a bitch! She jerked a white envelope from her purse and held it between them as if it were a weapon that would hold him at bay.

  ‘Bad news?’ he asked flippantly.

  ‘Bad news for you,’ she replied, shaking the envelope in his face. ‘I’m not going to run to my father with this. Do you hear me, Mr Conway? Writing me vulgar, harassing letters isn’t going to upset my father, because he won’t see this letter or any future letters. You’re wasting you time trying to get to him through me.’

  ‘So you received a vulgar, harassing letter today and you immediately assumed it was from me?’

  ‘Are you denying that you sent this?’ She flapped the envelope in his face again.

  He grabbed her wrist. She gasped. The fear in her eyes gave him an odd sense of pleasure, but it was a pleasure mixed with pain. ‘Stop waving that damn thing in my face.’ She twisted her wrist, trying to free it from his grip, but he held fast. She glared at him, the fear in her eyes turning to anger. Ah, he liked the anger much more than the fear. ‘I’m not denying anything. Nor am I admitting to anything.’

  ‘I hardly expected you to admit it,’ she said, glancing from his face to her wrist. ‘Will you please let go of me?’

  ‘All in good time, Miss Ella.’ Tugging on her wrist, he practically dragged her toward the side door of the garage. ‘But first, I think you and I need to have a little private talk.’

  5

  Reed hauled Ella into the garage. She protested verbally and struggled against his overpowering strength. What had she been thinking, coming here and confronting him this way? The man was a convicted murderer!

  ‘Let go of me this instant or you’ll be sorry.’

  He ignored her, damn him! He pulled her inside a windowless room that possessed only two pieces of furniture: a cheap ‘Kmart special’ swivel chair and an old metal desk piled high with books, magazines and papers. A small air conditioner hummed and rattled in a hole cut out of the concrete wall. With wide eyes and mouth agape, Briley Joe shot out of the chair.

  ‘We need to use your office for a few minutes,’ Reed said.

  Briley Joe shut his mouth and stared at them, grinning at first and then grimacing when he apparently recognized Ella. ‘You do know who she is, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I know who she is.’

  ‘Have you lost your mind, manhandling Webb Porter’s daughter?’

  ‘If he doesn’t let me go, I’ll have him arrested,’ Ella said.

  ‘Hey, cuz, let her go. You can always find another woman. You don’t want to wind up back in the pen over a piece of ass.’

  ‘A piece of – how dare you!’ Ella glared at Briley Joe. Did that imbecile think Reed had dragged her into the garage office for a little slap and tickle? Her heart nearly thumped out of her chest. Unbidden thoughts swirled through her mind. She started to protest such Neanderthal treatment once again, but before she could do more than open her mouth, Reed shoved her down in the chair that Briley Joe had recently vacated. She gasped aloud as her bottom hit the seat, which was still warm from Briley Joe’s body heat.

  ‘Close the door on your way out,’ Reed told his cousin, who left immediately and quietly closed the door behind him.

  ‘I don’t know what you think this little scene will accomplish, Mr Conway, but I hope it’s worth it to you because I can assure you that it’s going to cost you dearly.’ Ella used her authoritarian judicial voice, the same commanding tone she used in the courtroom.

  Reed settled his backside onto the edge of the desk, reached out, and spun around the chair she sat in so that she was forced to face him. Resting his hands on the chair’s armrests on either side of her hips, he leaned forward, getting close enough so that she could feel his breath on her face. Startled by his nearness, she blinked several times.

  ‘You certainly grew up nice, Miss Ella.’ He raked his gaze over her face and down her throat, stopping at her breasts, then retraced his visual journey until their eyes met. ‘Real nice.’

  ‘Is this step two in your plan to sexually harass me so that my father will come after you?’ Keeping her gaze locked with his, she refused to let him know how much he intimidated her. He was a big man, powerfully built, and surrounded by an undeniable aura of danger.

  ‘You’ve got me all wrong,’ he said, grinning. ‘Besides, it seems to me, if anybody’s doing any harassing, it’s you.’

  ‘Me?’ She wanted to knock that cocky smile off his face. Her hands balled into fists, crushing the white envelope in the process. She prided herself on her even-tempered disposition. But this man had enraged her so easily that she felt shocked at her irrational reaction to him.

  ‘Yeah, you. I was here at work, minding my own business, being a law-abiding citizen, when you showed up and started tossing out accusations, accusing me of something I didn’t do. I figure that could be called harassment.’

  ‘Are you denying that you sent this to me?’ She held up the letter she still clutched in her fist and waved it around, all but slapping him in the face with it.

  He peered at her over the edge of the envelope, which rested just below the bridge of his nose. ‘The vulgar, harassing letter? Nope. I don’t know anything about it, except what you’ve told me.’

  He continued staring at her. Those incredible blue eyes hypnotized her. She couldn’t help wondering how many other women had been caught and held by the mesmerizing coldness in Reed Conway’s eyes. She swallowed. Get hold of yourself, Eleanor Porter. He’s just a man, like any other man. He puts his pants on one leg a
t a time, right? Yeah, sure. She couldn’t kid herself. Reed might put his pants on in the same way other men did, but he wasn’t like other men. He never had been. Not at eighteen. Not now. He had been a star athlete headed for the University of Alabama on a football scholarship when he’d killed his stepfather. He’d had a bad boy reputation with girls and women alike when he’d been Bryant County’s teenage heartthrob and the bane of concerned parents’ lives. She remembered accidentally overhearing her uncle Jeff Henry make an off-color comment about Reed all those years ago.

  ‘That boy’s got a man-sized ego because he’s bigger and better on the football field than anybody else. And the ladies seem to think what he’s got between his legs is bigger and better, too.’

  She could still hear her uncle’s and her father’s macho chuckles, each in his own way both condeming and envying the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who had been destined for football superstardom.

  And now Reed was different because he was a convicted murderer who had served fifteen years in prison. What had those years done to him? Losing everything – his freedom and the promise of a rich and famous future – must have embittered him. He had sworn revenge, hadn’t he? Against her father. But he had also sworn something else.

  He had sworn he was innocent.

  But that wasn’t possible. He’d been given a fair trial and was found guilty by a jury of his peers. Not only her father, but everyone in town knew he was guilty. He had to be guilty. All the evidence pointed directly to him. He had admitted beating his stepfather until he was unconscious. The knife used to slit Junior Blalock’s throat had belonged to Reed, and only his fingerprints had been found on it.

  ‘If you didn’t send me this letter, then who did?’ Ella asked. ‘Who else would have a reason to send me something like this? The content is very similar to those two letters you wrote to me …’

  ‘I shouldn’t have written those letters to you.’

  Ella lowered the hand that held the scrunched envelope. She didn’t know if she moved closer or if Reed did, but suddenly they were nose to nose. A wave of dizziness forced her to blink and then refocus her vision so that she looked away, over his shoulder toward the dingy white wall behind him.

  ‘I was wild with anger when I first got to Donaldson,’ he said, his voice low, even and unbelievably calm. ‘I lashed out at everyone and everything. I hated your father and I wrote those letters to you to get a rise out of him. It was a stupid mistake. One I’ve regretted for a long time.’

  He sounded so sincere that she almost believed him. Dear Lord, she wanted to believe him. She wanted to reach out and stroke his beard-stubbled cheek and tell him that she truly believed he regretted his past sins. She clenched her fist tightly at her side so that she didn’t respond physically, didn’t allow her own unchecked emotions to get her into trouble. As a small child, her spontaneous, emotional actions had worried her mother terribly, so she’d learned to curb those tendencies in order to please Carolyn.

  ‘I’d like to believe you,’ Ella said, proud that her voice didn’t tremble even though she was shaking like a leaf inside. ‘But it seems too much of a coincidence that the day after you’re released from prison, I receive a letter very similar to the two you sent me fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not a coincidence,’ Reed suggested. He released the chair arms and rose to his full, imposing height.

  Ella tilted her head and stared up at him. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘I know that I sure as hell didn’t write that letter to you, but circumstantial evidence points to me. Maybe whoever sent it wants you to think I’m the person who wrote it.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To get me in trouble.’

  Ella rose to her feet but quickly realized her mistake. Reed didn’t move out of her way, so only inches separated her body from his. She felt his heat, smelled his sweat, heard his indrawn breath when his leg accidentally brushed against hers. Or had it been accidental?

  ‘Why … why would someone want to get you in trouble?’

  ‘If I get in big enough trouble, I go back to the pen.’ Did Reed sway slightly toward her or did she lean into him? Only a hairbreadth separated them now. ‘Whoever really killed Junior Blalock doesn’t want me to stay free, doesn’t want me snooping around trying to find out the truth.’

  For a split second, she thought he was going to kiss her. She froze to the spot, unable to move, unable to breathe. You don’t want him to kiss you, do you? She realized that yes, she did want him to kiss her, and the shock of it motivated her self-preservation instincts. Maybe Reed Conway fascinated her in a way no other man ever had. Maybe the aura of danger and machismo that was such an intrinsic part of him aroused some primitive female needs within her. But she was an intelligent, cautious woman who knew better than to succumb to baser instincts.

  Ella eased around Reed, unavoidably brushing against him as she passed. He made no move to restrain her. Instead, he followed her to the door, reached around her, grabbed the knob and opened the door. His big, hairy arm looped around her waist. She was painfully aware of what their close proximity might look like to anyone who could see them. It would never do to have someone catch her practically in Reed Conway’s arms.

  ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time,’ she told him. ‘If you say you didn’t write this letter’ – she glanced at the letter she still gripped tightly in her hand – ‘then I’ll take your word for it. But if I receive another, I won’t be able to dismiss it so easily. Do I make myself clear, Mr Conway?’

  He grinned. Damn him! ‘Yes, Miss Ella, you make yourself perfectly clear. But you’re talking to the wrong man.’

  A heated flush crept up her neck and colored her cheeks. ‘Just stay away from me … and from my family.’

  ‘It will be my pleasure.’

  Ella practically ran from him, her footsteps clicking against the concrete floor of the garage as she made her hasty escape. She didn’t slow her pace until she reached her car; then, breathless with uncertainty and heightened senses, she halted long enough to get control of herself before she slid behind the wheel. Prompted by an urgent need to run, to get far away from Reed as fast as she could, Ella inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine. As she zoomed the Jag out into the street, the tires squealed loudly. When she dared a glance in her rearview mirror, she saw a smiling Reed Conway standing in the doorway, waving goodbye.

  ‘Now, there, my man, is one fine piece of ass,’ Briley Joe said as he walked up beside Reed. ‘Got class written all over her.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s a class act, all right.’ Reed shook his head and laughed. ‘She’s scared shitless of me. And I don’t think it’s just because I’m a convicted murderer.’

  ‘You think the judge has got the hots for you, cuz?’

  ‘I think she’s scared of me. That’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, but wouldn’t you like to know what it feels like to make it with one of her kind?’

  ‘Not much chance of that.’ Reed shrugged. ‘Women like Miss Ella are too high class for the likes of you and me.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Briley Joe snickered.

  Reed glanced at his cousin and noted the self-satisfied grin on his face. ‘Don’t compare Ella with her aunt.’

  ‘Some high-class dames like to get their hands dirty – real dirty.’ Briley Joe hooked his lean fingers over Reed’s shoulder. ‘Even if you don’t think she’s anything like her aunt, who knows? Judge Porter might get real turned on just thinking about jumping in the sack with an ex-con.’

  Ever the dutiful daughter, Ella called and left a message with Bessie to let her mother know she’d be home a little later than usual. She’d been driving around for the past half hour asking herself what the hell had happened between her and Reed Conway. She had stopped by the garage to confront him about the letter she’d received and came away badly shaken and halfway convinced that the man hadn’t sent it to her.

  You’
re an idiot, she scolded herself as she turned left on Tallulah Street. She needed someone to talk to about what had happened and about her confused emotions. She certainly couldn’t run home and confess to her mother that she’d gotten all hot and bothered over Reed Conway. Carolyn was apt to have heart failure just at the thought that Ella might have spoken to the man. And if she even mentioned Reed’s name to her father, he was liable to take gun in hand and go after him. No, this situation called for the sympathetic ear of a friend.

  She parked her Jag in the driveway beside the restored Victorian house at 508 Tallulah Street. Ella’s best friend since childhood, Heather Marshall, had recently returned to Spring Creek after an absence of five years, and the two had picked up right where they’d left off. Of course, during that five years when Heather had lived in Mobile, they’d phoned each other on a regular basis and had visited twice a year. Ella had been Heather’s maid of honor when she married Lance Singleton. She’d sat by Heather’s hospital bed when she suffered a miscarriage. And she’d offered support during Heather’s ugly divorce ten months ago.

  Ella stood on the flower-lined brick walkway in front of the house that had belonged to Heather’s grandmother and had gradually fallen into disrepair after the old lady’s death ten years ago. Heather had spent a small fortune restoring the place, and now the facade boasted its original Victorian colors: pink, cream and green.

  Working on the house had, according to Heather, saved her sanity after her divorce. Luckily, Heather had inherited enough money that she didn’t have to work unless she wanted to, and Heather definitely preferred a life of leisure.

  Thinking about how different she and Heather were, how different they had always been, Ella rang the doorbell. Even as children, they’d been exact opposites in appearance and temperament. Ella waited. No one came to the door. She rang the bell again. No response. Heather was home. Her black Corvette was parked in the driveway. Ella tried the bell one final time, then gave up and walked off the porch. She’d try the back door. When she made her way around the side of the house and opened the gate that led into the enclosed backyard, she heard water splashing. Of course. Why hadn’t she realized that Heather would be in the pool?