by Julie Miller
“Brooke. What that means is I won’t break my word to you, either. You’re too important to my family. And I’ve—”
A knock at the back door ended the conversation abruptly. Everything inside Brooke froze, but Atticus was already moving.
“Damn.” He checked his watch. “McCarthy’s men aren’t due for another half hour.”
Louise shouted from her bedroom. “That’ll be for me!” She and Peggy must have been hiding out in order to give Brooke some alone time with Atticus. Averting her eyes as though hoping she was interrupting a romantic moment, Louise breezed through the kitchen. “You two go about your business. I’ll get it.”
“I’ve got it.” Atticus snatched the journal off the counter and pushed it into Brooke’s hands.
“No, really. I—”
But Atticus was already at the door, blocking Louise’s grasp and preventing Brooke from seeing their early-morning visitor. “What do you want, Fierro?”
“Well, if it isn’t Brooke’s friend.” Tony Fierro’s voice was about as friendly as Atticus’s wary posture. “Good morning to you, too.”
“Detective!” Louise protested, uselessly pulling at Atticus’s arm. “Let him in.”
“Atticus.” The instinct to protect her aunt—even from Atticus’s refuse-to-budge demeanor—finally pumped some fire into Brooke’s veins. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
“What do you want?” Atticus repeated, each word a well-placed bullet.
“Cool your jets, detective. I haven’t broken any law. I’m here for Miss Louise.” Brooke could see the dark blue of Tony’s bandanna head-wrap over Atticus’s shoulder now. His posture must have puffed up to meet Atticus’s unwavering stance. “She’s expecting me.”
“What’s going on?” Peggy had joined them as well. The concern in her voice prompted Brooke to take action. “Has something else happened?”
“Something else?” Tony’s voice lost its flippant edge and colored with concern. “Is anything wrong, ma’am?”
“It’s okay, Aunt Peg,” Brooke hastened to reassure her. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”
Summoning the strength to move—to be proactive about taking charge of her life—Brooke reached up and cupped Atticus’s shoulder. His muscles bunched beneath her touch, and the urge to pull back skittered across her skin. But she refused to retreat. “Please.” She didn’t know what kind of influence, if any, she had over him, but if she could diffuse the distrust and dislike that had blossomed between the two men, she would. “He does work for us. He has a right to be here. And you’re scaring Peggy and Lou.”
“Somebody around here should be scared.” Atticus angled his jaw toward her but didn’t budge. “What do you really know about this guy? I’ve tried to find out and have come up with next to nothing.”
“You checked me out?” Tony taunted.
“Ex-con? Three women? What do you think?”
Peggy walked up between Brooke and Louise, peering around Atticus. “Brooke received a disturbing phone call last night, and Atticus is understandably concerned about who we let into our home.”
“Disturbing? Hey, it wasn’t me. Is that what you think?” Tony actually retreated a step onto the deck, wanting to put them at ease. Brooke watched his face go unnaturally pale. “I wouldn’t make a crank call like that, ma’am. And you know me better than that. Right, Miss Louise?” He held up his hands, turning his argument on Atticus. “I’ll give you my cell number. You can check the phone records—I never called here last night.”
“Oh, I will.”
“Think about it logically, Atticus.” Brooke tried reason when her personal appeal failed. “He can’t be our man. Even if he called from another phone, I’d have recognized Tony’s voice.”
Atticus’s shoulders rose and fell with a long, controlled breath. “You have a lot to learn about self-preservation, honey.”
“And you have a lot to learn about having faith in people.”
Atticus’s unsmiling countenance took in all three women before turning back to their visitor. “Fine. I’ll let you three outvote me this time. But don’t expect to stay long.”
The last remark was for Tony before Atticus stepped aside. But he didn’t move far, just a few feet back to retrieve his coffee and position himself at the sink so he could keep an eye on everything—and everyone—in the kitchen area.
Finding she was a little leery of Atticus’s watchful gaze herself, Brooke left to stick the journal in her purse. When she returned, she poured milk over her cereal and carried the bowl around to the far side of the island to sit. Though it tasted like straw on her tongue, she forced herself to eat. The effort wasn’t just about nutrition, but about the need to withdraw to a quiet place inside herself for a few minutes. Atticus must be counting on her more than she’d imagined to help uncover any clue as to John’s murder. The pressure to be successful was almost as keen as the disappointment she felt at confirming his protection over her wasn’t as personally motivated as she might have hoped.
Atticus cared about her. But he didn’t… care. Not the way she wanted him to. Not the way she—oh, my God—loved… him. She quickly jabbed a spoonful of milk and straw into her mouth, needing some kind of sensation besides the pain whipping through her. After only a couple of kisses, had she really expected some kind of miracle to happen?
And the world went on around her despite the heartache she was feeling.
“I picked up that tiller you ordered, Miss Louise.” Tony Fierro handed Louise a rental receipt. “I know we just have it for the day, so I wanted to get an early start. Besides, if the temperature is steaming up to a hundred degrees again today, I want to get the hardest of that sod-breaking done this morning while it’s still relatively cool.”
“Sounds like a plan, Tony.” Louise linked her arm around the twisting serpents that seemed to crawl with each ripple of Tony’s hard muscles, and escorted him to a metal stool. “But not until you eat some breakfast. Did you have donuts again?”
“No, ma’am. Just a cup of coffee.”
“I thought so. Can’t expect a day’s work of a man who hasn’t had a decent breakfast. Now sit.” She tilted her chin toward Atticus, her expression indicating that she found his hosting skills suspect. “Is that all right with you, Detective?”
His gaze never left Tony. “Breakfast is fine.”
“Peggy? How about another plate?”
Tony hesitated until Louise pushed his shoulder and urged him onto a stool at the opposite end of the counter from Brooke. He didn’t need to be asked twice as his pale face warmed with a smile. “Is that bacon I smell?”
Peggy retied her apron and set about melting some butter in the fry pan. “It sure is. One working man’s special coming up.”
“So, Fierro,” the cop in Atticus wouldn’t rest, “where were you last night between, say, midnight and 1:00 a.m.?”
Please. Maybe he should just tell a joke to see if Tony’s laugh sounded familiar. But Atticus seemed incapable of even smiling this morning. Brooke caught her necklace up in her fist and worked the chain between her fingers, seeking an outlet to dispel the awkward discomfort building inside her.
“I was at home in my apartment,” Tony answered. “I put in a full day of hard labor out in the heat yesterday. I was passed out by eleven. And no, no one can vouch for me. But like I said, the phone records will show that I didn’t make any calls to anybody last night.”
“How many pancakes will you eat?” Peggy interrupted, no doubt feeling the same tension that was driving Brooke into her shell, judging by the vigor with which she was stirring that batter.
“However many you want to serve, ma’am. A home-cooked meal is a real treat for me.”
“Make him a stack of four, Peg,” Louise ordered, setting out a glass and pouring milk.
With her aunts bustling about the kitchen, the ensuing lull in the conversation didn’t register until Tony spoke again. “Where’d you get that?”
Brooke stopped c
hewing when she realized the handyman was looking at her. No, staring at the charm that dangled between her fingers.
A ripple of unease cascaded down her spine at the unwelcome scrutiny. Swallowing the last lump of food she could manage, she curled the necklace into her palm and tucked it back inside her blouse. “The charm is a family heirloom. My father gave it to me when I was born.”
“Who’s your father?” Odd. Freaky odd that a relative stranger would be so interested in something of hers.
“Leo Hansford. He passed away when I was a baby.” Her gaze slid over to Atticus, who stood up straight and was watching the exchange with an intense interest. “The charm belonged to my mother.”
“Your mother?” Tony’s gaze never wavered from her chest.
Brooke’s spoon clattered in her bowl. “Do you mind not staring at me like that, please?”
“Sorry, ma’am.” Tony turned his attention to the plate Peggy set in front of him. Louise had brought him his milk, too, before he spoke again. “I lost my mother when I was ten. I never got anything to remember her by.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Perhaps growing up without a strong parental influence had led to his spree of robberies and eventually prison.
“In my head, I’ll never forget what she looked like, though.” His gaze wandered back to Brooke and lingered. She’d been watched like this before. From a distance.
She hadn’t even known Tony then. But she knew him now. He was studying her face. Watching. “Mr. Fierro!”
He picked up his fork and attacked the pancakes and bacon Peggy set in front of him. “My bad. I sometimes forget my manners when I get around a pretty lady.”
Pretty lady. “What did you say?”
That drained the blood right out of her.
“Brooke.” But before words could form, before a coherent thought could get past the instant panic that phrase stirred in her head, Atticus was there. He pulled out the stool between her and Tony and sat. “Dish me up another plate of those pancakes, too, Peg.”
“Aren’t you worried about being late for work?” Peggy asked. “I thought you needed to be on the highway by seven-thirty.”
“Nope.” He was completely in charge, completely cool, completely in control of the entire room. He slid his hand beneath the edge of the counter and wrapped his comforting grip around her ice-cold fingers. “I’m not not going anywhere until McCarthy and his men get here.”
I’m not leaving any of you alone with this man.
Brooke tried to get back to that rational place of self-reliance inside her head. It couldn’t have been Tony’s voice on the telephone. And while the bulky build of the man she’d seen in the truck that first day made her think of Tony, she couldn’t remember seeing any tattoos. And that man in the purple K-State cap had been blond. Tony’s dark hair and dark eyes spoke of his Mediterranean heritage.
As someone who’d often wished the same for herself, Brooke had been adamant about giving Tony the benefit of the doubt. Yes, he had a criminal record. But he’d served his time, and he’d been employed without complaint by Truman McCarthy for nearly a year. He was sweet to her aunts, respectful to her, and had done the work of two men since signing on as their handyman.
But had she been too trusting, too naive, to insist on hiring him? For three days she hadn’t thought so. He was rough around the edges, yes, but she’d always thought he looked more solitary than sinister.
He looked a hell of a lot scarier, though, when she imagined that he could be the man on the other end of that phone call last night.
She altered her grip and hung on tight to Atticus’s hand.
Chapter Ten
“You know I can’t give you that information, Detective Kincaid.”
Atticus hadn’t really expected much help from FBI Agent Riley Holt, but he figured it was worth a shot to call in the favor. Atticus and his brothers—Sawyer, in particular—had helped Agent Holt in his manhunt for three escaped prisoners earlier that year. Learning that one of the fugitives was Ace Longbow, the ex-husband of Sawyer’s wife, Melissa, had made joining Holt and his team a personal mission. Though Longbow had ended up dead in a hostage standoff, Holt had ended up smelling like a rose, maintaining his image as the Bureau’s resident golden boy.
He owed the Kincaids a favor.
“But you know something about Fierro, don’t you?” Atticus had reasoned out that a man could erase his past in one of two ways—either he was a relocated government witness in a protection program, in which case, Holt could access the information—or he was a bad guy with some very powerful, very covert connections. The kind of connections that nobody—not a veteran cop like his father, and certainly not an innocent woman like Brooke—should be messing with.
He was praying for the witness angle.
“There’s some sketchy information on his background I can share.” Holt’s voice dropped to a hush as Atticus passed a slow-moving truck on the interstate. His drive to K.C.’s latest crime scene at the landfill south of town had offered him the private time to make the call to Holt’s office in Chicago. He held his breath and waited. “Fierro is in the watch files with several aliases. He always uses Antonio as his first name, but Fierro is only one of a dozen surnames we’ve searched under. He was born in Europe, but I can’t even tell you if he’s Italian.”
“You can’t tell me or you don’t know?” Another mile marker sped by as Holt paused. Atticus checked his rearview mirror and pulled back into the driving lane. His turnoff was coming up fast, and then he’d have to focus on the body a bulldozer operator had found. His time was running out. “Holt. I’m a bright enough boy to figure out Fierro isn’t who he says he is. Can you tell me if he has a record of crimes against women? Stalking? Assault? Rape?”
“Here’s what I can tell you. Fierro’s not in the witness relocation program.”
Atticus swore. One word. Pithy and to the point. “Thanks, Holt. Let me know if you find anything on Fierro.”
“Yeah.” After disconnecting the call, Atticus hooked his phone back on his belt. So Fierro was a very, very bad guy. A watch list meant he could even be connected to a terrorist cell.
What the hell was he supposed to do with information like that? Show Brooke the forged birth certificate? And say what? I can’t prove who your hired man is, but since I don’t like him, fire his ass. Hell. That would make a lousy argument. Atticus believed in his gut that Tony Fierro meant trouble for Brooke and her aunts. But he was a cop. A man of reason. He needed facts to prove his case.
And while he was solving life’s mysteries, what the hell was he supposed to do with Brooke herself?
Besides keeping her safe. Beyond tapping into that clever brain of hers. Atticus wasn’t a man who was easily stumped by a puzzle. But Brooke Hansford had his thoughts spinning in circles.
She wasn’t plain so much as he’d never taken the time to notice that she wasn’t. The warm caramel color of her hair, which, when the curls were freed from their practical bun, seemed to have a delightful mind of their own.
Not unlike the woman herself.
He’d known Brooke for years, but was just now discovering the real beauty of her big green eyes, the way she was always thinking—sometimes overthinking—but always engaged in the people and things around her. The soft, true-green irises spoke of an intelligence that aroused him, that awoke an enticing challenge in him to explore those thoughts and match those mental dynamics by stepping up his own intellectual game.
He’d spent too many years thinking of Brooke as a pleasant enough addition to his circle of family and friends. But over these past few days, she’d created unexpected tidal waves in his ordered, predictable world. She laughed off her clumsiness, picked herself up and kept moving forward. She guarded a secret well of passion and threw herself into a kiss with an abandon that was unpolished natural talent and utterly hot.
And that body. He blew out a slow, steadying breath at the way things kicked to attention south of his belt buckle just th
inking of her long, lithe limbs wrapped around him. Last night, she’d cradled his hips against her most feminine warmth as her pert little breasts beaded to attention and branded his chest with the evidence of her desire. If he hadn’t come to his senses—remembered the time, the aunts’ impending arrival, and just how hard a granite countertop could be—they would have christened that kitchen.
And lived to regret it in the morning.
She’d been totally turned on last night, maybe more than even she realized. Her guileless enthusiasm had been a total turn-on for him, as well. Forget about the psych it was to his male ego to have no doubts about how much a woman wanted him, it had been surprisingly refreshing—almost cleansing to his soul somehow—to realize that Brooke Hansford wasn’t playing any games with him. She probably didn’t even know how to play the games that Hayley had used to make a fool of him.
He’d been surprised when she’d first initiated that kiss, then curious to see how much she knew, how far she’d go. He’d invited her to repeat the experiment, thinking he’d teach her a thing or two about kissing. But somehow, he ended up as the very willing student.
What Brooke lacked in style, she made up for in raw, unfiltered passion. There was something about her innocence, her enthusiasm, that had slipped beneath his jaded hide. He’d been so on guard against another Hayley poisoning his life that he never saw Brooke coming.
Now she was here. In his thoughts, under his skin, perilously close to something much more vulnerable and irrational—even deeper inside him. She was an undiscovered treasure who could be his for the taking.
Which was the heart of the problem. The cause for a restless night’s sleep and a cold shower this morning.
He might be the vigilant explorer who had discovered the secret passions and hidden beauty of Brooke Hansford. But with that discovery came an unexpected responsibility. Family friend. Like a daughter to his late father. He’d promised his mother he’d take care of her, for damn sake.