Free Nowhere to Hide by Nancy Bush Page B

knew that it was his one chance to be true to himself. To do the right thing, really, for both of them. He held firm even though Loni called him, incessantly in the beginning, begging to put things back together. Finally, she’d quit calling.
    He shook his head. He still felt low about it, though he wouldn’t go back.
    And then, just as he was beginning to look around at other women, ready to take a stab at the dating scene again, his hairdresser, Sheila, was murdered.
    He couldn’t believe it, even now. Sheila and her friends had come to Westerly Vale on a wine-tasting junket with some women she knew from work. It was then that she revealed she and her friends liked to go to The Barn Door, and she invited him to join them. It was in The Barn Door parking lot that things heated up between them, and he, four months out of his relationship with Loni, had been more than eager to indulge in a heavy make-out session with Sheila in the backseat of his Tahoe . . . until she’d revealed that she was married, a fact she hadn’t mentioned while cutting his hair.
    That had cooled Jake’s ardor like a bucket of ice water over his head. And it didn’t matter that she and her husband were estranged. Married was married, as far as he was concerned, and Sheila had married a real piece of work.
    He clenched his jaw. If Greg Dempsey wasn’t responsible for Sheila’s death it was only because someone else had gotten to her first, in Jake’s biased opinion. The guy was a bastard of the first order. And when Dempsey himself showed up at The Barn Door, confronted Jake, and ordered him to stop fucking his wife, or else , Jake had been a) glad he’d kept his pants zipped up in the Tahoe, and b) damn close to slamming his fist into the son of a bitch’s face.
    And then, shortly afterward, Sheila was killed.
    “Jake?”
    He turned to find Neela pushing into the greeting room through the door he’d just entered. The door automatically locked behind whoever passed through it, so unless you had a key, or used the swinging door from the kitchen to the dining room, the only exit was out the front.
    “Hey, there. I was looking for Colin,” he told her.
    Neela was a petite woman with chin-length blond hair and rounded curves. She and Colin had met at Oregon State where Colin had studied horticulture, specifically viticulture, and Neela had majored in education. Neither of them had much of a head for business, however, so that was where he came in. Unfortunately, owning and financing a vineyard, winery, and B&B didn’t offer the same kickass jolt of adrenaline he was used to, so Jake kept his Portland office and pretty much steered clear of Westerly Vale.
    “Colin’s with your father,” Neela said. “They’re working out some details on the harvest. It’s about to go full tilt. This weather . . .”
    “Too hot. I know.” Colin and Nigel loved to talk about the business in a way that made Jake a little crazy.
    “Can I help you with anything?”
    “Ah . . . nah. Not really.”
    “You can call or text him.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said, but he’d really just wanted to check in with his brother because he was feeling unsettled. Nothing urgent.
    Climbing back into his Tahoe, he curved along Westerly Vale’s long, paved driveway to Highway 99. Hesitating a moment, he then turned south rather than north, heading away from Portland and further into the heart of Oregon’s wine country. There were wineries scattered around the state, a good many of them up and down the Willamette Valley, and a lot of those were within a ten-mile radius of Westerly Vale.
    He drove past the open gates to The Willows, Braden Rafferty’s vineyard, then turned around at the next light, came back and headed down the long drive. He didn’t like Braden Rafferty, but he’d gone to school with three of his children; had been classmates with August and September . . . Nine . . .
    She was the reason he’d decided to head to The Willows and check on his