Certainly not free of the knowledge that Hank’s girls had seen their father killed, seen their mother taken away in handcuffs as Dave—a tad battered himself—arrived on the scene with his trusted police detective friend. The girls were in foster care now, but reportedly happy to see the letters Kimmer sent them while she investigated other possibilities. Closer to home possibilities.
Family might just be a part of her life after all.
And meanwhile the world went on. Shara Ingleswood at WEFL was happy as a pig in slop, following the dots she’d been given to build a big-crime story with connections to Watkins Glen—the Hunter Agency had been kept out of it, but not Hank. Not Susan.
Hank had done it to himself. So had Susan. Their decisions…their consequences. Kimmer had merely tried to make the right choices in their wake. Her own choices.
Free.
That was it.
Free to make her own decisions untainted by her family past. Redefining herself on her own terms. Kimmer, showing herself a different way to live.
She sat against the hood of Rio’s Element, went to cross her arms, and compromised by tucking her good arm under the bad. Rio settled onto the hood next to her and gazed up at the house in whose driveway they parked. “Well?”
“I haven’t even seen the inside.”
“You can’t just tell?” He pretended astonishment.
“That’s with people,” Kimmer informed him, haughty as she surveyed the place. Not nearly as old as her old home. Big enough for two.
Big enough, actually, for four. It needed landscaping, and it needed to lose that wretched fake well out front. She’d wait till her arm was better and take an ax to it. Kimmer fished for her camera.
“Aha,” Rio said, straightening to attention.
“Doesn’t mean anything.” Kimmer moved off to better frame the picture.
Their real estate agent, hanging quietly in the background, stepped forward. “Why don’t you let me take it—then you can both be in it. Even if you don’t like the interior of the house, it’ll make a cute picture.”
Cute. Just like the woman, a petite, rounded person with a pixie-short haircut and an ever-present cell phone. Maybe she’d give Kimmer tips on keeping it charged. Or on keeping it away from goats. Maybe she’d know of a cute replacement for that last one. Cute was one of her favorite words.
But Rio cocked his head and gave Kimmer a nudge, one of those guileless and unselfconscious things he did. Goofball-speak. “C’mon,” he said, and the sunlight hit his brown eyes just so, to light them up from the inside out.
She returned his look most thoughtfully, enough of a smile coming through so he grinned back, and finally nodded. “Okay,” she said.
Maybe one day they’d even make a memory book.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5126-1
BEYOND THE RULES
Copyright © 2005 by Doranna Durgin
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Beyond the Rules Page 26