Scarlet Nights by Jude Deveraux

like a nice guy and all, and he is Tess’s brother, but there’s something about him that I don’t trust. Wait until you hear how he broke into my apartment in the middle of the night. He—”
    “I know. He came up through the old tunnel.”
    Sara paused, her hand on a small, reusable canvas bag full of chili peppers. “How do you know about that?”
    “Aunt Lissie told me about it when I was a kid, but it’d been closed up. Luke rediscovered it the year before he met Joce. You know, that time when he was so depressed he wasn’t talking to anyone. He got my father to help him shore it up. Do you think Dad could do something like that and I’d not know about it? I was the one who washed his filthy clothes and rubbed liniment on his sore back.”
    “Who else knows about the tunnel?”
    “Alive or dead?”
    Sara shook her head. “Okay, so lots of people of your generation and older know about it, but that doesn’t excuse how he—this stranger—used it. I think he wanted to scare me.”
    “I guess he should have knocked on the door of what he thought was an empty apartment.”
    “If he and Tess are so close, why didn’t he know I was staying here? And why is his room empty? He showed up here at night with nothing . Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”
    Ellie looked up from the refrigerator. “Not if your apartment burned down and all you had left was what you were wearing and your car.”
    Sara stared at her mother, speechless.
    Ellie straightened up, her hand on her lower back. She was sixty-two years old and a handsome woman—due, she said, to not eating the poisons that were in commercially grown foods—but she didn’t look anything like her daughter. Sara’s delicate prettiness came from Ellie’s mother’s sister, Lissie, a woman of alabaster beauty. “I thought he might not have told you why he showed up during the night and why his room—which it looks like you’vebeen snooping through—is empty. The poor man has nothing. I ordered kilts for him.”
    “You what?”
    “I measured him, called the shop in Edinburgh, and ordered two complete Scottish outfits for him, one for dress and one to wear to participate in the games at the fair.”
    “Games? At the fair? Are you talking about the Scottish games? Throwing a cable? Shot putting? The mock battles ?! The Fraziers will slaughter him.”
    Ellie gave her daughter a sharp look. “What, exactly, is it that you have against this man? He’s certainly better—”
    When her mother seemed on the verge of saying more, Sara gave her a warning look. “If you’re planning on saying anything bad about Greg, don’t do it.”
    “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
    “Only because you can’t think of anything you haven’t already said.”
    “Think not? Give me three hours and I could fill them up.” At Sara’s look, Ellie put her hands up in surrender. “All right, no more fighting. It’s none of my business. So how’s your work going?”
    “Fine.” Sara wanted to get the subject away from Greg. “What are all these groceries he bought for? Is he planning to open a rival store?”
    “It’s what Mike needs to be able to cook.” Ellie’s face took on a look of enchantment. “I’ve never met a man who wasn’t in the business who knew so much about organic foods. We must have spent ten whole minutes talking about the benefits of flaxseed.”
    “That sounds fascinating.”
    Ellie ignored the snide remark. “Mike gave me a recipe for parsnip soup that I’m going to try on your father tonight, and they have a golf date this Saturday.”
    “Who does?”
    “Mike and your father.”
    “My father is going to play golf with a man half his age, someone he doesn’t even know? A policeman?”
    “I’ll tell Mike to leave his guns at home, and Henry can wear his bulletproof vest. You didn’t answer my question about what you have against this man, who, by the way, isn’t so young. He’s thirty-six and he can retire from the police force in