Free One Book in the Grave by Kate Carlisle Page B

really want to see him? Yes, but I had questions. Too many, really. I needed to know how his tools could have shown up next to a dead man and buried in my tire. I knew he hadn’t killed Joe. Max was too good a person to ever have killed anyone. But, then, the Max I knew would never have lied to his friends and family for three long years. Could he have turned into a cold-blooded killer?
    Absolutely not. But I had to admit that I was getting a strange feeling about this whole adventure.
    Derek touched my knee. “Stop worrying.”
    “How do you know I’m worrying?”
    His mouth twisted in a sardonic grin as he applied a little more pressure to my knee. “Your leg is shaking enough to overturn the car. You always shake your leg when you’re fretting over something.”
    “I do?” I slapped one hand to my knee to hold it still.
    “Yes, love, you do. And another thing.” He kept his eyes on the road but reached over and stroked my forehead with his fingers. “You get the tiniest, most adorable frown line right here, between your eyebrows.”
    “Damn, I thought the Botox would take care of that.”
    I appreciated the snicker I heard from Gabriel in the backseat.
    Derek tweaked my cheek. “Don’t even joke about that.”
    “There’s nothing adorable about frown lines,” I muttered.
    “Everything’s adorable on you, darling.”
    I smiled adorably at him, then laughed when Gabriel began swearing under his breath. I couldn’t quite catch what he’d said, but was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.
    “There’s nothing to worry about,” Derek said easily, keeping both hands on the steering wheel now as the twists in the road became more unwieldy. “We’ll find Max and bring him back to Dharma. Robson and Gabriel will make sure he’s unharmed until the police find the murderer.”
    My leg was shaking again. I pressed my hand on my knee to make it stop, then shot Derek a look. Did I really have such obvious tells that he could know what I was thinking or feeling? Or was he just tuned in to me? I was tuned in to him, too, but I could no more tell what he was thinking than I could move that mountain on the other side of the pasture we’d just passed. It wasn’t fair.
    “I’m not really worried,” I lied. “I’m more angry. And hurt. I was just thinking about Max and Emily and
Beauty and the Beast
, and, you know, everything that was happening back then.”
    “This situation has brought up a lot of old feelings for you,” he said.
    “True,” I admitted, then realized that Ian had said the same thing to me. The men in my life were a little too observant sometimes. “But that’s not what’s bothering me.” I turned in my seat so Gabriel could hear me, too. “I’ve been thinking that it wasn’t Joe’s murder that set everything into action to draw out Max.”
    “What do you think it was?” Gabriel said.
    “It was me.”
    Derek took the curve too quickly and swerved, thenswore ripely as he maneuvered the Bentley back into the lane.
    “Are you okay?” I asked, clutching the dashboard.
    He said nothing, just glared at me with his teeth clenched in…anger?
    “What did I say?”
    “It’s okay, babe,” Gabriel said, and patted my shoulder. “Our driver’s got shaky nerves. Now, where did you get this idea that you’re the catalyst in all this?”
    I cast another uncertain glance at Derek, then related what Ian had told me on Friday. “The book’s so-called owner suggested to Joe that he call the Covington to buy the book. Ian thought it was because the new children’s wing was getting a lot of attention, but I think it’s because they knew about Ian’s connection to me, knew that he would call me in to restore the book. They also knew about my connection to Max and that as soon as I saw the book, I would recognize it and go looking for Joe.”
    “And find him dead,” Gabriel concluded.
    “Exactly.”
    I looked at Derek again. His jaw was clamped shut and it was pretty obvious why. Okay,