by Julie Miller
He clucked his tongue behind his teeth. “We have a crime wave in our neighborhood.”
“A crime wave? You mean the police car that was here earlier?” She summoned a smile to reassure him that whatever was happening was only happening to her. “The situation has been taken care of.”
“Has it?” He came halfway up her front walk, as if she couldn’t hear him tsk-tsking over the short distance already. “Some punk vandalized your house. I have trespassers in my backyard—one of my boxwood bushes was trampled on.” He peeked around her, eyeing the gun strapped to Harry’s thigh. “Men with guns are roaming at will—”
“Harry is not roaming the neighborhood.”
Suddenly, Harry was interested in joining the conversation. He trotted down the steps to join her, holding up his phone. “Mr. Finch, do you mind if I take pictures of the footprints in your backyard?”
Jeremiah seemed taken aback to be addressed directly by the bigger man. “As long as that’s all you do.”
With a nod, Harry jogged through the snow and disappeared around the corner of the house.
Once Harry was gone, Jeremiah tugged on Suzy’s leash so he could lean in toward Daisy. “Don’t think I didn’t see your thug sitting outside your house the night before last. He was probably casing the joint. He’s casing mine now. But I could hardly stop him. And you’ve invited him into your home. After what happened with your last boyfriend, I would think you’d be more careful about who you associate with. I try to keep an eye on you and protect you—”
“First of all, Master Sergeant Harry Lockhart is no thug. He’s a decorated Marine. Second, my student may be a misguided young man, but he is not a punk and he is no threat to you. If he damaged one of your bushes, I’ll make sure he pays to replace it. And third, what happened to me is my business, not yours. How I protect myself is none of your concern.”
“I can see you’re upset.” Jeremiah’s face had turned red all the way up to his hairline. “So, this person—is a bodyguard? What kind of threat are we talking about?” He clutched at his chest. “Am I in danger?”
“No.” Daisy reached down to pet Suzy when the tiny dog put her paws on Daisy’s knee. Dogs had always been a stress reducer for her. She couldn’t imagine losing any one of hers the way Harry had lost Tango. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. I’ve been receiving threats. Harry is a...friend...who’s helping me keep an eye on things.”
“I see.” Jeremiah tugged the Chihuahua back to his side. “I still don’t like seeing guns in my neighborhood. And your friend is so...rough-looking. Are you certain you’re safe with him?”
Wasn’t that the question of the hour?
“I know you were friends with Mom and Dad, and you have been friends with me—but to come over to my home and lecture me about my choices...” Even if they were bad ones, he had no right to make her feel stupid for trusting her heart or wanting to help a good man. Mr. Finch didn’t have that right. Harry didn’t. No one did.
Jeremiah glanced over to the side yard where Harry had gone. “Well, if something happens and you do need me, you have my number. Come along, Suzy.”
As Mr. Finch and Suzy moved on down the street to continue their walk, Daisy pressed her hands over her mouth, fighting back the urge to cry or cuss up a blue streak. She wouldn’t apologize for defending the people she cared about, but there had to be a better way to cope with the fear and uncertainty and raging need to have control over her own life again. Maybe this was what Harry felt like when he lost it. But she was years past her trauma while his was still fresh. The stress was getting to be too much. She was tired of being afraid, of suspecting everyone she knew. She needed this to be done.
“Daisy?” She started at the clipped voice behind her, and quickly swiped at the tears in her eyes before they could fall. “Are you all right?”
She turned to face Harry, wishing she had the right to walk into his arms and be held. But there was a tension between them now that hadn’t been there before, an underlying sizzle of attraction that was complicated in a big way by far too many issues that neither of them could control.
When she didn’t answer, he pulled out his phone. “I found something important. Something that should exonerate Angelo.”
“I never believed he was sending me those gifts.”
“But would it make you feel better to know for sure? To have one less person around you who could be a suspect?”
He was trying to make her feel better? That earned him the shadow of a smile. He wasn’t offering comforting words or a hug. But it would be nice to be able to look over her classroom on Monday and not have to be afraid of anyone there. “What did you find?”
“The footprints were made by two different kinds of shoes. Angelo’s has a tread, like a running shoe. The prints in Finch’s yard, like the ones by your window the other night, were made by boots.”
She wasn’t comforted yet. “Maybe Angelo wore boots the other night to peek in my window. He’s not so poor that he can’t afford more than one pair of shoes.”
“Only if he figured out a way to shrink his feet.” Harry pulled up the pictures on his phone and showed her the images. “It’s not scientific, but it’s enough to make me suspicious.” Harry had photographed all three sets of prints frozen in the snow, using his own boot as a marker beside each one to compare the size. Angelo’s running shoes were a good two to three sizes bigger, while the others were smaller and skinnier than Harry’s foot. “I’m going to send the pictures to Pike. He’s not a detective, but he’ll know who to show them to.”
“Thank you.” Daisy appreciated the effort he was making to ease some of her fear. Maybe it was the only way he thought he could help.
“I’m sorry I thought the worst of that kid. But it does prove that this guy isn’t just targeting you at school. He knows where you live. He’s been here. Watching you.”
“And the gloom and doom is back.” Daisy marched up the stairs into the house. She shooed the dogs ahead of her while Harry locked the door behind her. “You think I don’t know that he’s watching? That I don’t feel him around me all the time?” Harry followed her into the kitchen where she poured herself a cup of coffee and held the steaming mug between her hands. “This is where you’re supposed to say something to make me feel better.”
When he didn’t say anything, she shrugged out of his coat and tossed it at him. He dropped the coat onto a chair and followed her to the refrigerator. “I heard you defending me against Finch. You didn’t have to do that. I was losing it with that kid. I got territorial with Coach Riley. I was making decisions without asking you. I’m fighting to keep you safe. But the way I talked to you—the words, the tone? I could tell I hurt you. Last night was...amazing. A perfect moment out of time between all the nightmares.” Just as she closed her eyes to let the raw poetry of his words warm her battered heart, he added, “But I’m not good for you, Daisy. Maybe I am a thug.”
She refused to believe that.
“Normal people have arguments just like we did. Normal people lose it every now and then. You’re not going to be cured after one late-night conversation and...” a perfect moment out of time. Hugging the creamer to her chest, she closed the fridge and turned to find Harry standing right there. He was close enough to touch, close enough to stretch on tiptoe to kiss that handsome, awkward mouth that had loved her so thoroughly. But she did neither. The mixture of pain and longing stamped on his chiseled features tore at her heart. “You’ve taken a big first step toward healing. But there are bound to be relapses. Fight through them. Accept that sometimes you’re going to fail, then move on. You don’t think I get depressed sometimes? That I don’t get angry? Look at me yelling at poor Mr. Finch. You have to give it time.”
“Time is one thing I don’t have. If I don’t get my head on right before I return to the Corps in six weeks, they won’t take me.” He captured a st
rand of hair that had fallen over her cheek and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers before smoothing it behind her ear and backing away. “Maybe no one should.” He grabbed his coat and headed to the front door. “Lock yourself in with the dogs. I need to clear my head.”
Daisy hurried after him. “You can’t go for a walk with your foot cut up like that.”
“Then I’ll drive.” He opened the front door and pointed to the lock behind him. “I’ll be back by lunch. Anything happens, you call me or the cops.”
“What if something happens to you?” That stopped him.
Then he tunneled his fingers into the hair at her nape, cupped the back of her neck and pulled her onto her toes for a hard, potent kiss. He kissed her a second time. And a third. “I’ll think about that. And how much I want...to be fixed. For you.”
Chapter Ten
Harry returned two and a half hours later with several new strings of outdoor Christmas lights and an eight-foot Scotch pine tree for Daisy’s living room. He’d also purchased a properly sized winter coat for himself in basic beige and a lavender parka with a bow on the belt he guessed would be about Daisy’s size. The thank you hugs were a nice bonus, but he hadn’t let her smile or welcoming arms sway him from his mission. He had something to prove, not only to Daisy, but to himself.
This time, he hadn’t hiked through the snow or spent a couple of hours breathing fresh air. Sure, he’d driven around the neighborhood for about ten minutes, thinking he needed to clear his head. But then he realized he didn’t need to clear anything—he needed to accept everything that was jumbled up inside him and attack it with a plan. He needed to think like a Marine.
Protect the base. Get intel. Know your enemy. Trust your allies.
He’d called Pike to drive over and keep an eye on Daisy’s house while he was gone. Then he’d asked his brother-in-law about the photos he’d taken, and ended up talking to one of his friends, a Detective Nick Fensom, who was familiar with Daisy’s assault case. The detective confirmed to Harry’s own peace of mind that Daisy’s ex was still incarcerated, and that the people around her, Bernie and Stella Riley, Angelo and Albert Logan, didn’t have criminal records. Nick reminded Harry that just because a person didn’t have a record, it didn’t mean he or she didn’t have it in for Daisy. She might be the stalker’s first target, or he simply hadn’t been reported or caught for this kind of behavior previously.
Detective Fensom also wanted to know more about the threats she’d been receiving, and promised to contact both the Central Prep principal, Ryan Hague, and John Murdock at the KCFD to get details on the events that had happened at the school. Fensom also wanted to document the messages and gifts Daisy had received, along with a timeline so he could put together a case against her stalker once he was caught. And he would be caught, if Harry had anything to do with it.
When he got back to the house, Pike and his son, Gideon, were building a snowman in the front yard, away from where the shards of broken bulbs still littered the snow. Hope was in the kitchen helping Daisy fix them all some lunch. By the time Gideon and Hope lay down for afternoon naps, he and Pike had put up the Christmas tree, swept off the deck and put all the dogs through their paces in the backyard. Caliban was an old pro, slow but responsive to each command. Patch picked up on the training quickly, even learning a couple of new tricks. And Muffy was, well, what the dog lacked in attention span he made up for in personality. The misnamed Shih Tzu was never going to make it in the K-9 Corps, but he sure knew how to sound an alarm. Whether he was letting them know that Albert and Angelo had arrived to help clean up the yard, or he was chasing a bird off the fence, Muffy had something to say about it.
After they ordered pizza and finished dinner, Hope and her family and the two teenagers left. Trying to remember that he was the tenant/bodyguard and not the crazy boyfriend who wanted to peel the bright red Chiefs sweatshirt and matching glasses off Daisy and see if the miracle of last night had been a fluke, he put the dogs out, checked the locks, then resolutely ignored Daisy’s blue-eyed disappointment and went upstairs to shower and get whatever sleep he could.
After his shopping trip that morning, he’d also come back with personal supplies he needed to put away, and a wood train set for his nephew that he hid on the top shelf of his closet until he could get it wrapped. All in all, it was a productive day. A healthy, normal, “worn out by work instead of an ongoing mental battle” kind of day. He hadn’t wigged out and he hadn’t hurt anyone.
Now if he could do this again tomorrow. And the day after that.
Harry toweled off and pulled on a clean pair of shorts and the faded USMC sweatpants he slept in. The lights were off downstairs and Daisy and the dogs had gone to bed. Alone in the soothing quiet, he stowed his service Beretta in the nightstand and dumped out his recent purchases on the bed. He packed the fresh bar of soap, disposable razors and condoms in his toiletry bag, set the pack of gum on the dresser beside his wallet, and opened the box of bandages and antibiotic salve before sitting down to redress the cuts on his feet. None of them were bad enough to need stitches, but an infection was the last thing he needed right now. When he’d finished medic duty, he folded down the quilt, piled the pillows against the headboard and picked up the package of ink pens and the spiral notebook he’d bought.
This was going to be the hard part.
Harry flipped open the notebook and stared at the blank piece of paper. He breathed deeply, steeling himself for the task at hand. He might not be a natural talent for this relationship stuff, or understand the intricate workings of the human brain, but he knew how to follow orders.
He started writing.
Day one. Mission accomplished.
A list was easier than coming up with sentences and paragraphs. He stated his objectives, and how well he’d met them.
Lt. Col. Biro had ordered him to get a Christmas tree and eat too many sweets. Check and check.
The lieutenant colonel had also ordered him to kiss a pretty girl. Definitely a check. Multiple checks. If he succeeded with this plan of action, he hoped to fill up this entire notebook with check marks on that assignment.
But for now, he’d sustain himself on the memory of Daisy’s patience with him, her acceptance of his scars, her passionate abandon to touch and be touched that forced him to tip his head back and breathe deeply to cool his body’s desire to march down those stairs to be with her again. She’d probably welcome him to her bed because she was Daisy—the woman who cared too much and forgave too easily. But Harry had every intention of proving he was worthy of that compassion and forgiveness before indulging his physical needs. He didn’t want to be another rescue mission for her. He wanted to be a whole man—one who never left her second-guessing her willingness to trust him. He wanted to be a man she could love without any regrets.
The objective was clear. Follow orders. Complete the mission.
Back to the notebook.
Dr. Polk had advised him to get plenty of exercise, journal his thoughts and keep his appointments. Check. Check. Check.
Daisy said to write her letters.
Harry hesitated. What exactly was he supposed to say to her that wouldn’t sound pitiful or controlling or downright scary?
He clipped the pen onto the paper and rolled out of bed to do twenty reps on the pull-up bar he’d hung over the door. When he focused on the burning muscles, the memories in his head sorted themselves.
Daisy liked to talk. And if he was a smart man, he would listen.
You’re giving me value by trusting me with your fears, by sharing your darkest feelings, by helping me understand you.
He went back to the bed, turned to a new page in the notebook and started writing.
Dear Daisy...
* * *
HARRY LED A normal life for the next four days.
He drove Daisy to school and p
icked her up afterward. He restocked her groceries and took out her trash. He spent a long two hours babysitting Gideon so that Hope could take a break and have lunch with a friend. He and Daisy met with Nick Fensom in her classroom, handing over the evidence from her desk and briefing the detective on anyone she suspected.
Since his feet were too sore to do a daily run, Harry put the dogs in the truck and hauled them to a dog park for a good workout. He discovered Patch had an affinity for catching flying discs and Albert Logan had an interest in learning more about training dogs. He’d picked up Albert after a tutoring session with Daisy and brought him to the house to teach the young man some of the skills he’d learned as a handler. He took Daisy out to dinner one night on a real date, even kissing her good-night at the front door before heading upstairs to his room as if they were getting newly acquainted. Daisy was frustrated with the distance he was keeping. The frustrated desire was wearing on him, too. “I’m trying to get your Harry back,” he promised her. Ultimately, she seemed to understand that he needed to do this and gave him the space he asked for.
There were no more messages from Secret Santa, no odious gifts delivered. Bernie Riley kept his promise and stopped leaving items for her at school. The quiet spell seemed to back up Riley’s claim that someone had been swapping out the innocent gifts his wife had picked out with the cruel taunts and graphic images. Daisy wanted to believe that, with no outlet, the threats had stopped for good. But neither she nor Harry really did. This was simply the calm before the storm. Harry suspected that, like an enemy whose line of propaganda had been cut off, the pervert’s frustration was building like a volcano about to erupt. Without a daily avenue to get his message across to Daisy, he was probably planning something even bigger and more terrifying to grab her attention. Harry intended to be ready to protect her from whatever that threat might be.
Harry might be broken inside, but he’d been trained to adapt and overcome to get the job done. If his job was proving to Daisy, and more importantly to himself, that he was healthy relationship material, then he was going to do whatever it took to make that happen.