by Jill Shalvis
sister, loved the easy rapport, the obvious love and affection between them.
Loved him . . .
Twenty-eight
It was difficult for Parker to play travel guide for his sister with so much on his mind, not the least of which was Zoe and how for every minute he spent with her he wanted more minutes.
Hours.
Days.
Weeks . . .
For most of his grown-up life he’d gotten through the demands of his job by living one minute to the next, not looking back and not looking ahead either, at least not past the current case.
And now he couldn’t see any cases in his future, which brought on a whole new level of what-the-fuckery because his job had been his life so long he wasn’t sure he knew how to live without it.
But once Zoe flew them to Glacier Park and Amory and Henry got their first sight of snow, everything else sort of faded away. He knew he would never forget the sheer jubilation in Amory’s face as she scooped up a handful and threw it at Henry.
Henry, much gentler than she, simply pulled her in for a cold, icy hug that had Amory laughing out loud and tackling them both to the snow.
“Make snow angels!” Amory yelled, commanding everyone around her. “Henry, make one for your nana who’s sitting on a cloud watching us!”
“Henry’s aunt died a few months back,” Parker explained to Zoe. “She was his caregiver.”
“Who watches after him now?” Zoe asked.
“He has no other family.”
“No one? He’s got no one?” Zoe asked, clearly dismayed by this. “Who helps him if he needs it?”
“He’s hanging in there,” Parker said. “He got his GED and is thinking about taking some night classes at the local community college.”
Zoe turned from the sight of Henry and Amory making snow angels and laughing like children and stared up at Parker. “It’s you,” she said softly. “He has you. You’ve been looking after him, haven’t you?”
Parker lifted a shoulder. So he had a soft spot for the kid and helped out monetarily, making sure he was okay in the home he shared with other disabled adults and that he had food and everything he needed. “He’s a good guy. And he’s good to Amory. He makes sure she’s got what she needs and I do the same for him. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s a very big deal,” Zoe said softly. “You love someone, you take care of them. You don’t walk away and move on. You keep in touch. You let them know that even though maybe you can’t be with them, they’re on your mind. It’s called caring, Parker, and whether you want to admit it or not, you know how to do it, and in fact you do it better than most.”
He inhaled a deep breath. “Zoe—”
“No,” she said. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t need to hear it again.” She looked at him for a long time, her eyes shining with emotion that wasn’t all that hard to read and made his heart squeeze painfully.
She had no idea what he was going to say; she couldn’t. Because he didn’t know, either. Still, intending to try, he opened his mouth—
And a snowball hit him right in the face.
Amory grinned wide. “Parker and Zoe standing in the snow,” she said in a singsong voice. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G . . .”
Parker crouched down to make his own arsenal while above him he heard Zoe say, “I’m not his girlfriend.”
For the third time.
Not that he was keeping track or anything. Hoisting two huge snowballs, he threw one at Amory as she squealed and tried to outrun it—she couldn’t—and then used his second snowball to nail Zoe.
It was the last thing he did before being jumped by both of them and tackled down to the ground, where he got snow in places that no one should get snow.
They landed in Sunshine fairly late. The plan was to keep Amory and Henry until the morning, when Parker would drive them to the Coeur d’Alene airport and put them on a plane home.
When they all walked into the reception hangar, Parker saw Kel standing at the front desk looking tense. He had another officer with him. Both locked eyes on Parker.
Parker slowed and pulled Amory aside. “Remember when you told me you called Mom and Dad?”
“Uh-huh.”
Amory was a lot of things, and guileless was one of them. She didn’t have a poker face and she couldn’t lie worth shit. She just didn’t have the conscience for it.
Which was why he knew he’d been had; it was all over her face. “You didn’t call them, did you?”
“I did,” she said, and then her face crumpled with guilt. “Just not today.”
“What’s wrong?” Zoe asked quietly, eyes on Kel.
“I don’t know.” Parker ruffled his sister’s hair. “Stay here, Am, with Zoe and Henry.” And then he walked toward Kel.
Kel came forward to meet him. “Hey, turns out you were right about Carver going back to the scene of the crime. Only it wasn’t Carver himself. He’d sent back two of his militia to see if the coast was clear and we nabbed them. They squealed like good little pigs and gave up the rest of the militia’s scattered whereabouts and we found Carver with two of them holed up.”
Parker let out a relieved breath. “Damn. They got him.”
“You got him,” Kel said.
Parker knew his agency wouldn’t see it that way, but he was still more relieved than anything else because with Carver locked up, Zoe would truly be safe.
“I’ve got something you might be interested in,” Kel said.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“A job. The way you handled yourself with Carver got around, your under-the-radar investigative skills, how you dealt with him here, which could’ve ended so badly. My buddy at the ATF says if your agency’s stupid enough to let you go over what happened, they want you. They have a supervisory position open in the county office about forty-five minutes from here.” He glanced over Parker’s shoulder at Zoe and then met Parker’s gaze again. “Something to think about if you were feeling the urge to stick around,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake Parker’s.
“No!” Amory yelled, and suddenly she was standing in front of Parker, arms spread wide, blocking him off from Kel. “You can’t take my brother, I won’t let you!”
Kel was tall, so tall he had to bend down to look into Amory’s panicked eyes. “You’re his sister, right? I’m a friend of your brother’s. Where do you think I’m taking him?”
“Jail!” she wailed.
“I’m not taking him to jail,” Kel said. “I’m not taking him anywhere.”
Amory blinked. “You’re not?”
“Nope.”
“Pinkie-promise?” she asked.
Kel solemnly held out his pinky finger.
Just as solemnly Amory shook it with hers.
Then Kel’s gaze met Parker’s over her head. “Think about it,” he said. He looked at Zoe then and smiled, and then he walked away.
Parker looked at Zoe and realized she’d either heard what had happened or figured it out because her eyes were warm and relieved and . . . shit. Full of pride. For him, which he wasn’t sure he deserved. He gave her a smile and then turned Amory around to face him.
Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry I lied,” she said. “But Mom and Dad would’ve made me come right home and I wanted to see the snow, Parker! They don’t understand that you want me to have adventures.”
“Amory,” he said softly. “The adventures are for you, not me. You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to, especially with me.”
“But I love it when you’re happy,” she whispered.
Chest tight, he found a smile. “Same goes.”
“I know they think you’re an influence on me, but they’re wrong, Parker. You’re not an influence at all, and even if you were, you’re my favorite influence.”
And then she flung herself into his arms and sobbed.
He sighed. “Amory, do you know what influence means?”
“No, and I don’t care,” she sobbed in
to his shirt.
He stroked her back. “It’s when someone has a special advantage over you and has the ability to change your mind on something.”
She stopped crying and stared up at him. “Oh,” she breathed, swallowing hard. “Then they’re right. You are an influence on me, Parker!”
“And you’re one on me,” he said. “And because you are, I know you. I know you pretty well.” He tweaked her hair. “I called Mom and Dad, Amory.”
She blinked slow as an owl as she absorbed this. “So you’re not in trouble?”
“Not any more than usual,” he said.
She winced with guilt all over her face. “I didn’t mean to mess anything up. I just wanted—”
“What?” he asked.
“To make you see me as . . . normal.”
“Normal is overrated,” he said. “You’re perfect just the way you are. I just don’t want you to be limited, or accept the path that others put you on. I want you to live the life you deserve.”
“I know.” She looked down. “Sometimes the people who stare at me,” she said quietly. “They say mean things, like I’m never going to be smart. You’re not like them, but sometimes you look at me all sad. You’re sad for me. But, Parker, I feel sad for you.”
“Why?” he asked, completely baffled.
“I know that you think my life isn’t good. but it is,” she said earnestly. “It’s good because I have Henry. But all you have is work and you won’t even let Zoe be your girlfriend and she likes you so much. And you like her back, too, I can tell.”
Well, she had him there. He turned to look at Zoe and found her watching them, her eyes suspiciously shiny, which made his chest hurt. “Want to know something?” he asked Amory softly.
“Yes!”
“I think you’re smarter than me.”
She grinned.
Adoption day dawned bright and warm. Parker got up early to take Bonnie and Clyde to Belle Haven. He had them in the kitchen, where they were busy tormenting Oreo on his bed while Parker made coffee.
He was leaning back against the counter watching Bonnie climb onto Oreo’s head while Clyde cuddled between the dog’s two massive front paws when it hit him. This was the kittens’ last day.
And his. He was going back to his life, just as he’d wanted.
Zoe did her usual morning stagger into the kitchen. She wore a big T-shirt that fell to her thighs—his, he realized, his coffee mug frozen halfway to his lips. She had on one sock, the other foot bare. Her hair was . . . everywhere.
She looked like a shipwreck survivor and she’d never seemed more adorably sexy. With a moan that reminded him of how she sounded when he was buried deep inside her body, she headed straight for the coffeepot.
He held his tongue while she poured herself a cup and then sucked half of it down before sighing.
“Better?” he asked.
She slid him a look.
“What?”
“I told myself I wasn’t speaking to you,” she said. “I’m pretending we’re strangers. Which, really, we are.”
“You’re wearing my shirt,” he pointed out.
She looked down at herself and blinked, as if baffled to know how that had happened. “Yes, well, I guess we’re not total strangers then.”
He smiled.
She started to smile back and then caught herself. “Dammit, no. Don’t do that, don’t look at me like that. You make me forget that I’m trying to keep my distance. Space bubbles and all that.”
“Fuck space bubbles,” he said, and hauled her in. Turning them, he pinned her against the counter, lowering his head to nuzzle at the warm, soft crook of her neck.
With a gasp she locked her knees and tightened her grip on her coffee, which she held between them like a chastity belt. “What are you doing?”
Getting in as much time as I can get with you for my last day . . . He nipped her warm skin and she gasped again. “Where are Amory and Henry?” she asked, taking one hand off the mug to fist it in his shirt, holding him to her.
“Out back picking flowers for my mom and dad,” he said. “Amory wanted to bring them home some Sunshine flowers.” With great reluctance he pulled back. “I’m going to drop the kittens off at Belle Haven on the way to Coeur d’Alene airport.”
“Why?”
“Because Amory and Henry have a flight.”
“No,” she said. “I mean why are you taking the kittens to Belle Haven?”
“It’s adoption day.”
She froze and pushed him from her so that she could move to Oreo’s bed. Sitting right there on the floor, she pulled Bonnie and Clyde into her lap. “No,” she said, lifting Bonnie to kiss her on the nose.
Bonnie batted adorably at Zoe’s finger, making her laugh. “They can’t go to adoption day,” she said, snuggling Clyde next.
“Why not?”
“Cuz they’ve already been adopted. By me.” Clyde was falling asleep in Zoe’s hands, and she cuddled him in for one last kiss before setting him between Oreo’s two huge front paws.
Oreo tipped his head down and gave the sleepy kitten a lick, his tongue bigger than Clyde’s entire head.
“Mew,” the kitten said without opening his eyes, and then he pressed his little face into Oreo’s fur and began to purr.
Parker crouched in front of Zoe. “You don’t have to take these two heathens on. I’m the one who—”
“I don’t have to do anything,” she said, lifting her chin, meeting his gaze, her own stubborn. “I want them. Just like I want you.”
Her words, laid bare, were bold and simple, and stunned him. “Zoe—”
“I just wanted to be clear,” she said. “In case you weren’t sure of my feelings. You’re leaving, I know that, but I wanted to put it out there before you go. The three W’s and all that—” She shrugged like it didn’t matter, but it did.
He pulled her up and into him.
She went without hesitation, wrapping her arms tight around him, tucking her face into the crook of his neck. “You’re leaving today with your sister,” she accused. “I saw your duffel bag by the front door.”
He stroked a hand down her silky hair, closing his eyes as he breathed her in. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I’m leaving today.”
He had to. He had his orders. Be back in D.C. by Monday to face all that had gone down, and in spite of the fact that it had all worked out, it most likely wasn’t going to be pretty.
Still, he wouldn’t change a thing he’d done.
But before he could do that, he needed to go home with Amory and Henry and try to repair the relationship with his parents.
Zoe stared at him. “I heard Kel said something about a job here—”
“I’m not walking away from my job,” he said.
“No.” She pulled free and stared at him. “Of course not. You’re just walking away from me, and pretty damn easily it seems like.”
He let out a breath and shook his head. “If you think that, you haven’t been paying attention.”
“I’m paying attention,” she said. “I’m paying lots of attention. Staying here, taking on a job that would keep you in one place, allowing you a personal life, would be settling. Your biggest fear—turning into your workaholic parents. Well, open your eyes, Parker, you’ve already become them.”