Fear. Marie’s fear.
Not infection. Or further physical damage. The scar area was pink, not red. A healthy pink.
Asking a nurse to come and stay with Danny in the exam room, and giving the boy a handheld learning-game device with the permission of his mother, Miranda led Marie down the hall to her office, closing the door behind them.
“What’s wrong? Is it infected or is the injury worse than we thought? Does he need more surgery? Should Dr. Bennet take a look at him?”
Max Bennet, the pediatrician who’d hired Miranda as his PA even before she’d completed her training, would be a good person for Marie to talk to. But not about her son’s leg.
“Danny’s incision is fine, Marie.”
“But shouldn’t Dr. Bennet take a look, just in case?”
Picking up her phone, Miranda sent a quick text to Max, who responded immediately.
“He’s going in now, if you’d like to meet him down there,” she said to the worried mom.
Her furrowed brow smoothing out, Marie shook her head. “He’ll let you know if there’s a problem, right?”
“He’ll text either way.”
“You called me in here to talk to you—separate from Danny—and since there’s nothing wrong with his incision...” The other woman’s words trailed off.
Miranda nodded, words tripping over themselves as they fought for release, while, for the most part, she was forced to remain silent.
For the most part.
“Danny’s leg hurting...we know it’s going to.” She started slowly. “Surgery let us put the fibers back together, but there’ll still be scars. We talked about how the nervous system sends messages when muscles have been compromised, inflaming the area to protect weak fibers, shortening the fibers...”
Marie gave a quick nod. “Rehabilitation is all scheduled, and we’ll be there on time, every time,” she said.
“Good.”
“I just... I’m so scared, you know? Danny—he’s all I have. I should’ve gotten him out sooner and now he’s hurt, and Devon might try to take him from me and... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wasted your time today.”
Marie was in daily counseling through The Lemonade Stand. She didn’t need Miranda to work through all the issues with her. Nor was Miranda professionally qualified to do that.
“I know,” she said now, making a silent choice that she prayed she wouldn’t regret. But what was the value of her life if she couldn’t use her experiences to help others? She’d needed to speak to Marie since she’d first heard her story. “And that’s why I called you in here. Fear is insidious. The thoughts it drives can consume you to the point of interrupting your ability to cope with daily life. The stronger those thoughts get, the more real they seem...”
Danny was only a year older than Ethan.
If Miranda hadn’t left when she did, her son could so easily have been that little boy sitting down the hall. Or worse.
Her father had been after Ethan, just as Devon was after Danny.
“I know I’m being paranoid, and I’m sorry...”
“No, no, don’t apologize,” Miranda said, leaning forward with both hands on her small desk, in her small office, as she looked at the woman in the folding chair across from her. “What I wanted to tell you, still want to tell you, is that I understand. And that...anytime you have a concern, even if you pretty much know that it’s just fear, you’re welcome to call me. At home.”
Taking a card from the holder on the front of her desk, she wrote her cell number on it. “Anytime,” she said, handing Marie the card. “Sometimes you have to hear a professional opinion to stop the fear,” she added. “You couldn’t trust your own mind because you knew that someone else had manipulated it, that it played with you.
“I don’t want you to put off calling the doctor, or to have to wait for the office to open, nor do I want you to run up medical expenses with urgent care and emergency room visits. Of course, if it’s an emergency, go! But if you’re not sure, even if it’s the middle of the night—call me.”
Staring at the card, looking like she was fighting tears, Marie didn’t reach for it. “I can’t do that,” she said instead. “I can’t bother you like that.”
“I want you to.” To communicate how intensely she meant those words, she laid her hand on Marie’s, then turned both hands over and placed the card in Marie’s exposed palm, closing her fingers around it.
“I have to do this on my own...” Marie’s words were a trembling whisper.
“Some of it, yes.” Miranda knew she might be overstepping a line between professional and personal, but she wasn’t sure that mattered.
Not in this case.
“But you also have to know when to accept help,” she said, realizing that she was speaking to herself, as well.
“Why?” Marie’s eyes were moist as she looked at her. “Why would you do this? You’ve got your own life. You don’t need patients, or mothers of patients, waking you up in the middle of the night because they’re afraid...”
Miranda told herself to come up with some platitude. Quickly.
She couldn’t break the promise she’d made to herself never to screw up again.
Couldn’t speak of the past she’d left, ever. Doing so could expose her to someone talking to someone else who happened to be talking to someone who’d once known a woman named Dana and was looking for her...
“Just please...if your mind starts to play tricks with you, if you start getting paranoid that something’s wrong with you or Danny, if he sneezes and you worry that he could be getting pneumonia, don’t get scared. Don’t let fear take over your senses. Call me instead.”
“I don’t...”
“Think of me as your weapon in that particular battle,” Miranda said, finding strength out of nowhere. “Fear seems all-powerful, but the truth is, it buckles and evaporates when you stand up to it. Calling me is the way you look that particular fear right in the eye.”
Marie needed an arsenal. She’d collect it one weapon at a time, to face down one fear at a time.
Just as Miranda had.
And she’d need to carry it with her for the rest of her life, too. Because although fear slithered away, it always waited, out of sight, to strike again.
Chapter 6
The Santa Raquel High Risk Team was meeting every Tuesday in a conference room at the police station—for those who could make it or had news to share. Eventually the meetings would taper back down to once a month, but while the team was building, they were keeping in close contact.
In jeans and a striped shirt, with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, Tad sat and listened. He wasn’t an official member of the team, although he had his moment to report that during his dozen drive-bys of Danny Williams, he’d noticed nothing untoward. Everyone, including Danny’s mother, Marie, was following established protocol.
Sara Havens Edwin, a licensed professional clinical counselor, head counselor at The Lemonade Stand, looked relieved, and Tad nodded in her direction. In a private conversation, Sara had informed him that one of the biggest concerns in a situation like the Williamses’, one of the greatest threats to life was Marie herself. She not only loved her husband, but she’d been manipulated by him since high school. She was driven from within to keep him happy.
Miranda had her turn, too, telling everyone about Marie’s visit to her office the morning before, leaving out specific medical information that wasn’t pertinent to the case, but letting them know that while Marie had been concerned about her son’s wound, the boy’s healing was completely on track. There’d been no sign of any other injury. Sara took notes on that, too.
A few minutes of administrative discussion took place then. A new email loop was being set up; contact information was dispersed. Funding was mentioned, finances appropriated. He listened, but found himself paying more attention t
o the little park benches with primary-colored rainbows over them that dotted the scrub top Miranda was wearing.
They dipped and fell with the shape of her breasts and he knew he shouldn’t be noticing that. Tried not to. And looked again.
Her breasts weren’t the only ones in the room. And he wasn’t the type of guy who generally went around noticing them in any case. A shapely, curved butt was his more usual distraction. But those rainbow-covered breasts across from him... They were so captivating. Like the woman.
Miranda’s ability to nurture flowed from her with every breath. And he kept wondering how it would feel to lay his head on her breasts.
Wrong. Wrong, Newberry. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
They’d be soft, with hard nipples. Womanly softness with a core of strength.
And they’d smell like flowers.
Because she did. Something in her soap, probably. Or whatever lotion she used.
When he started envisioning himself rubbing lotion onto her back, into her shoulders and the sensitive parts of her neck, he sat forward. Brought his thoughts to a screeching halt—to catch her watching him stare at her breasts.
Their charged gazes held for a second.
How could something so not good feel so great?
* * *
Tad wasn’t feeling too great half an hour later as he sat with Miranda over coffee in a shop they’d visited several times before. Others had been there with them, the last of them just leaving.
“Let’s move to a smaller table,” he suggested when she didn’t get up with the others. He was pleased she’d stayed, but the look on her face didn’t bode well. Something was bothering her.
And since she’d been fine until the others left, he was pretty certain that something had to do with him.
Or rather, his wandering eyes. He’d screwed up. Badly. Bringing sexual awareness into the workplace. He of all people. Back home, at the station, he’d developed a reputation for being the one guy who hadn’t fallen under the spell of a young female cop who’d apparently joined the force to find herself a husband in uniform, not to serve and protect.
He’d also refused friendly advances from a forensic specialist he’d actually liked a lot because he knew better than to bring sex into work.
Letting Miranda pick the table, he followed her to a two-seater in the far corner, and his mood dropped another notch. He was supposed to be gaining her trust, not losing it. For her own safety. And because he’d given his word to a man he trusted.
It wasn’t about the money. It had never been about the money for him—not one day of his working life.
He had to fix this.
“I’m sorry,” he said the second they were seated across from each other at a table so small he had to turn so his knees weren’t touching hers.
Absolutely no touching. He had fences to mend, not further destroy.
“I was completely out of line, but I swear to you, I’ve never, ever had a problem keeping personal and work separated.”
Miranda’s frown made her look smart rather than confused. Assessing rather than seeking. “I’m sorry, did I miss something? What are you talking about?” She sipped from her half-full cup of latte, which had to be getting cold.
His straight-up black had been gone a quarter of an hour after they’d arrived. An espresso sounded good. He wasn’t used to all the sitting in his car staring out at life that he’d been doing these past six weeks. If nothing else, the time off was letting him know that much as he loved detective work, he wasn’t cut out to be a private investigator.
He was more of an action type of cop. Following leads. Hunting down the bad guys.
Not being one of them. “You and I... I appreciate the chance to learn about the High Risk Team, to help out while I’m here. I might have crossed a line and—” He stopped. “Uh, I want to tell you that—”
He broke off as she shook her head, and then looked him straight in the eye. “If anyone crossed a line, it was me, Tad. Letting my son talk you into playing video games with him...”
“I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was kind of hoping for a rematch,” he said. She thought she was the one being inappropriate?
“He is, too,” she said. But she wasn’t smiling. So he wasn’t getting his hopes up. Or his worries, either.
He had to talk to her father. His current boss. To let him know he could be developing feelings for his daughter, so the chief had a chance to get him off the case before anything happened between them.
And then he’d lose his reputation for good. Lose any chance of resuming his career in North Carolina, and possibly anywhere else depending on how the internal investigation into his last case went down.
“I told Ethan I’d talk to you about it,” she said, surprising him further. “But...this is all so awkward, you know? You haven’t even asked me out, or hinted that you wanted to, and it feels like we’re having ‘the talk’ or something.”
“I’d say apologizing for possibly crossing a line could be construed as a hint.” What the hell was he doing?
“So maybe it’s a little complicated, huh?”
“Maybe.” He should be walking away. Instead he was leaning in. Smiling at her. “I’m attracted to you.”
He wasn’t going to lie to this woman any more than he had to. She’d had enough hell in her life. Had already had a man betray her trust in the worst possible way.
“Yeah.” She glanced away, licked her lips in a completely natural manner that turned him on, although it clearly wasn’t meant as a come-on, and looked back at him. “I told you I haven’t been on a date since Ethan’s father died. What I didn’t tell you was that...”
He waited, not even breathing. Was she going to tell him that the man had beaten her so badly, terrorized her so horrifically, she’d had to change her identity to get away from him?
Would she tell him the man’s real name so he could verify his death and know for himself that she was safe?
He couldn’t tell her who he really was without her father’s say-so, not at that point, but if he could at least be certain that the fiend who’d hurt this woman was definitely gone, he’d be a whole lot happier.
“Well, the truth is, I haven’t even been attracted to anyone...”
Becaauuusse...
“Which is probably why I’m behaving like such an imbecile right now,” she finished, running the rim of her finger around the edge of her coffee cup.
Had she just told him she was attracted to him? Replaying the last minute or so without his own inner dialogue, he was pretty sure she had.
And while he was disappointed that she wasn’t confiding in him, he was relieved, too. Anytime she spoke to anyone about her past, she opened herself up to the possibility of being found.
He was glad to know that Miranda was taking good care of herself and Ethan.
“We’re attracted to each other,” he said, adding a lightness to his tone he didn’t feel. “We should drink to that. Can I get you another coffee?” He stood, needing that espresso in the worst way.
“Another latte?” she asked, gazing up at him, as though she’d just asked for a whole lot more and was confident he’d deliver.
He wanted to.
But was equally sure he couldn’t. Not yet.
One thing was for certain. His weekly call with the man paying his rent couldn’t come fast enough. Maybe he’d break protocol and move the conversation up by a few days.
Maybe.
Standing at the coffee bar, Tad was mostly just eager to get back to the beautiful woman waiting for him at the table in the corner.
* * *
Miranda’s stomach was in knots. Her hands shook. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d made up her mind two days ago to have this talk with Tad Newberry, or that she’d rehearsed how it would go.
He’d looked her in the eye and told her
he was attracted to her. Okay, not a major occurrence in the larger scheme of things, but in her world, it was a huge first. A guy she had the hots for thought she was hot.
In her old life, that had never happened. After all the counseling she’d had, she understood that the feminine part of her, the part that controlled things like budding sexual attraction, had been shut down by her father’s abusive treatment. Her defenses against men, against trusting men, had been acute ever since.
And now?
Now she had to have the conversation she’d set out to have. Regardless of how her belly flip-flopped and her crotch got warm as she watched Tad walk back to her.
She thanked him for the coffee. Took a sip to distract herself while he sat down. No need for her to glom on to his fly while it hung there at eye level.
This situation was not going to get out of control. She couldn’t let it.
Wouldn’t let it.
“I’m not looking for a relationship,” she said as soon as the sting of hot coffee subsided from her tongue. “No matter how I feel about someone, I’m not going to hook up, period. At least not until Ethan is older.”
There. She’d done her deed. And if it meant he walked out of here and avoided her the rest of the months he was in town, so be it.
All the better, really. Meant she didn’t have to be on her guard around him. Constantly fighting the insane need she had to feel his lips on hers.
To know how his tongue felt against hers.
When she and Jeff had conceived Ethan, they’d tried to kiss first, but had ended up laughing, instead.
Tad was still sitting there. Studying her. “Good to know,” he said, leaving her with a strong desire to be privy to every single one of his thoughts.
“You’re only here for, what, another nine months, at most?”
No. That hadn’t come out right. As though, if he was willing to hang around, she might change her mind.
There could be no hint of possibility here. No cracks in any doors or windows through which he might slip.
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