Page 18 of Home Team Advantage
Was it her imagination, or had his voice dipped a little when he purred—uh, said—her name?
She kept the shiver of awareness under wraps through sheer will. It would be a whole lot easier to bring her mind back into line if her name on his lips didn’t cause her body to react like that.
Matt was no sooner out the door than Mrs. Campbell shot her a disappointed look and shook her head. Anna pretended not to notice and focused on getting the older woman into the van.
After several sidelong looks and exaggerated sighs, Anna finally said, “What?”
“You should have accepted Matthew’s offer to drive.”
“Are you saying I’m a bad driver?”
“Silly girl. Here’s a life tip for you: when a man as handsome and smacked together as Matthew offers his assistance, you take him up on it. There are so few gentlemen left in the world, and chivalry is all but dead, I’m afraid.”
Anna withheld her snort. In her experience, chivalry was nothing more than manipulation. A way for men to get what they wanted. Then, once they had it, the gentlemanly mask was removed. Maybe there were legitimate white knights out there, but she’d never encountered one.
“Those Callaghans, they know how to treat their women right,” Elsa said. “Just like my Gene. I used to call him my knight. The man treated me like a queen.” She sighed. “He’s been gone close to fifty years now, and I still miss him terribly. That’s the one good thing about getting older, I suppose. Every day is a step closer to seeing him again.”
The van hit a patch of ice, and the back end fishtailed a little.
Elsa’s hands shot out and braced on the dash. “That wasn’t a request for you to speed up the process, my dear.”
“Sorry,” Anna said. Note to self: drive slower and don’t scare the nice lady who’s paying your salary.
“It’s fine. I’ll take a bit of excitement however I can these days.”
Chapter Ten
MATT
If he’d suspected Anna of hiding something before, he was now sure of it. He had spent years developing his skill to read people. The ability had saved his life more than once, and now, it was going to help him solve the mystery of Anna Black.
And it wasn’t because her pretty eyes had a way of gleaming like black diamonds when she felt challenged or the way his body lit up from the inside when he was in her presence. It definitely wasn’t because she didn’t seem interested in him at all.
Exactly what she was hiding, he didn’t know. It might be something completely innocuous. Perhaps something she was embarrassed about. A part of her life she wanted to leave behind.
Or it might not be. Maybe she was, as Elsa’s grandson seemed to think, a woman who made a habit of taking advantage of elderly women who lived alone.
He sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case. Not only because he was fond of Mrs. Campbell, but also because there was something about the woman that intrigued him. Made him want to know more.
That he could do, if only from a purely platonic standpoint. In six months, he’d be leaving Pine Ridge and not looking back. In the meantime, there was no reason why he couldn’t kill some time and look out for his elderly neighbor in the process.
The good news was, he now had a last name to add to Ian’s arsenal. That and a few other tidbits of information Mrs. Campbell had been able to wheedle out of the woman.
“Anna Black,” he said into his phone. “According to Mrs. Campbell, she came to town for a job with Willow Haven, but didn’t arrive in time, and they gave the job to someone else.”
“Easy enough to confirm,” Ian said. “Any chance she told Mrs. Campbell why she was delayed?”
“As a matter of fact, she did. She said her car was stolen at a rest stop off I-81, along with most of her things. Anna was down to her last couple of bucks and had no place to stay. She was applying for a job at IHOP at the same time Mrs. Campbell was there, having lunch with her friends.”
Ian whistled softly. “If that’s true, that’s one hell of a sob story. No wonder Mrs. Campbell took her in like a stray. Fortunately, that, too, is easy to confirm.”
“Thanks, Uncle Ian.”
“Anytime. I’ll call as soon as I have something.”
Matt set down the phone, then went to his old room and gingerly peeled off his shirt and the bandage underneath. As expected, the white rectangle was now completely red.
It wasn’t a big deal. He was mostly healed, but that wound had been especially deep. Physical exertion—like shoveling snow and manhandling a heavy-duty snowblower—tested the integrity of the stitches.
