But as she turned away from him, her mouth curved into a smile.
So, he’d noticed.
Good.
“Zach, you should at least take the day off,” Toni said as she helped Zach button his shirt. Toni had complained that he needed to stay at home. But Zach had suffered worse injuries on a mission and finished it without problem. His only concession to the situation was he let her do up the buttons on his shirt.
What he hadn’t counted on was the torture of standing this close to her and catching a whiff of her floral perfume. Nor had he counted on the brush of her fingers against his chest as she buttoned the shirt.
Her head was bent and he wanted to lean down and nuzzle her ear, to taste that sensitive skin beneath her ear that he’d caught glimpses of when her hair swayed. During the night, as Toni got up to check on his condition, he’d felt an incredible peace. Something he’d never experienced before. He’d puzzled over the feeling during the early hours of the morning and discovered that feeling was contentment. No one up to this point in his life had ever worried about his personal health. His mother, his ex-wife hadn’t given a damn.
“There,” she whispered and looked up, straight into his eyes.
Everything stopped. Toni’s hands contracted on his chest. With the slightest effort, he could bring her flush against his body and cover her lips with his own.
You’d be a fool if you gave in to the urge, he counseled himself. But damn, sometimes he wondered which path was really the foolish one.
Wanting darkened her eyes. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. It was too much temptation. His arm slid around her waist His hand splayed wide, bringing her closer to his body.
“Zach, we shouldn’t,” she whispered, but it was the sweetest denial he’d ever heard.
A smile curved his lips. “You’re right,” he agreed. “We shouldn’t.” But that didn’t stop him.
Slowly, with great care, his mouth covered hers, sinking into the softness of her mouth, molding the curves of her body into his. He was like a starved man, and she was a banquet for his soul. Her lips moved under his, opening, and welcoming him to deepen the kiss.
His tongue slid into her warmth. She tasted of coffee, woman and want. Her hands grasped his shirt as she gave herself up to the kiss.
He pulled back to trail kisses across her cheek to that place on her neck which he wanted to taste. Her head fell back, giving him access to the sensitive spot.
“We’re ready,” Lisa called out as she ran into the room.
Zach raised his head, but didn’t release Toni.
“Daddy, you’re not ready,” Lisa scolded.
Oh, but he was. He looked at his daughter. “You’re right. I’ll have Toni put on my sling, and we’ll be out of here.”
“Good, ’cause for show and tell, I want to bring Sam, and I need help with his rope.”
Both Toni’s and Zach’s eyes widened.
“Lisa,” Zach replied. “We’ll have to talk. Wait for me in the living room.”
Lisa pursed her lips and stomped out of the room. Toni’s mouth curved into a smile, and she rested her forehead on his chest.
Zach felt as dazed as she did. After what had just happened between them and his child’s actions, he felt punch drunk. He released Toni’s waist, but his hand captured her chin.
“That shouldn’t have happened, Zach,” Toni said softly, lowering her eyes so she didn’t have to meet his.
“You’re right.”
Her gaze snapped back to his.
“But it did, Toni. And both of us participated in the kiss.”
Her cheeks flamed. “So, what are we going to do about it?” she asked him.
He wasn’t ready to take the next step that her questioned implied. He wasn’t willing to give in to the passion building up inside him. “Try to ignore it.” Of course he didn’t mention that it would be like trying to ignore an elephant in your living room—or more aptly, in the bedroom.
“It might be easier, Zach, to stop the sandstorms in the spring, than to ignore this—” she motioned with her hand.
He took a deep, calming breath, trying to fight off the effects of the hunger in his soul. “You’re right. But I gave you my word, Toni. This shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry.”
Oddly enough, his reassurance and apology didn’t seem to soothe her. Rather, she frowned.
“We better go talk to Lisa before she drags Sam to the car.” She walked from the room, leaving him to put his injured arm in the sling himself.
Zach frowned at the mechanic. It was the kind of look that made a grown man gulp. Toni watched in amazement as Zach changed from the man who held her so tenderly this morning into his no-nonsense business mode. The man standing before her now was the type of man whom Toni had been exposed to all her life.
“I understand the car was towed here last night,” Zach said, each word ringing with certainty. “What I’m asking you to do is walk back there, get under it and see if the brake line has been cut.” There was no room for misunderstanding in Zach’s tone. The ugly bruising around Zach’s eye only added to the fierceness of his expression.
The mechanic’s eyes widened. “Sure, I can look.” He walked out into the lot where the wrecked cars were kept. It only took a few seconds for the man to return. “Your suspicion was right. The line had been tampered with.”
Zach’s expression hardened. “Call the police, and tell Detective Phelps about what you’ve found.”
“I’ll do that.”
“How long before I can get the car fixed?” Zach asked.
“It will take a couple of days.”
Zach nodded and headed out of the building. His jaw was clenched, and fire burned brightly in his eyes. He stopped by Toni’s car and took several deep breaths. “I could’ve had the girls in the car with me,” Zach muttered as his fist hit the hood of her car.
She touched his arm and looked into his eyes. “But you didn’t, and thankfully you are okay.”
“It could happen again, Toni.”
His words made her blood run cold. “You don’t think that Ollie had anything to do with this, do you?”
“It’s damn suspicious that I ask him about Caprock and the next thing I know, my brakes have been cut and I’m rear-ending another car.”
“What do you plan to do?” she asked, worried about the steel in Zach’s eyes. Whenever her father got that particular look, all hell was fixing to break loose.
“Don’t you have a class you have to teach this morning?” he asked her.
Toni glanced down at her watch. He was right. She needed to be at the university at ten. “I do.”
“Then why don’t you drop me off at work?”
As sure as she knew the sky was blue and Midland was flat, she knew Zach would go searching for Ollie. “Why don’t we drive by his office in the oil field and see if he’s there?”
Zach’s expression hardened. “Why?”
“Maybe Ollie was nervous talking to you. Sometimes your expressions are, uh—formidable. I’ve known Ollie for a number of years. He might talk to me.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“So, you think coming down on him like the wrath from above is going to make him cooperate?”
Surprise flickered in his eyes.
“Zach, why don’t we see if he’s in his office? If he isn’t, then I won’t bug you about it.”
He considered her request, then nodded. “But if he isn’t there, I don’t want you to pursue it any further.”
“You’ve got a deal.”
The detour to the field supervisor’s office took less than fifteen minutes. When they walked into the building, Ollie glanced up from his desk. His eyes narrowed.
Before the men could start sparring, Toni smiled. “Good morning, Ollie. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”
The older man turned to Toni. “You’re looking mighty pretty, Miss Anderson.”
“I’m a Mrs. now.”
Surprise flickered across the older man’s face. “Congratulations. Who’s the lucky man?”
“I am,” Zach said. The words fell like a lead ball into the quiet.
Ollie nervously looked at Zach. “You look like you’ve tangled with a buzz saw.”
“No. Odd thing happened last night. Seems my brakes were cut, and I ran into another car. That happened right after I talked to you about Caprock.”
“So?”
Zach crossed his arms across his chest. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Ollie’s jaw hardened.
Toni stepped forward. “Do you know anything that might help us out, Ollie? I mean, Zach could’ve had his twin girls in the car when the accident happened. And you wouldn’t want anything to happen to those precious four-year-old girls, would you?”
Ollie looked from Zach to Toni. “I don’t know anything about what happened. Now, I got some fields to see to.” He walked out of the building and hopped in his truck.
“He knows something,” Zach said, watching the older man race away.
Toni had to agree.
As they drove back to Anderson Oil, Toni recalled the slight limp in Zach’s steps. She remembered back to the night Wayne had been killed. Zach had limped then, too.
“Zach, are you all right? Were your legs hurt in the accident and you didn’t tell me?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’ve been limping. It’s slight, to be sure. It took me so long after my accident to be able to walk normally that I guess I’m just more in tune to that situation than others.” She shrugged.
He sighed. “My limp is an old injury. Whenever I get very tired or my body is stressed, the limp returns.”
Unvoiced questions filled her eyes.
He read her thoughts, and she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. But finally he said, “On my last mission, we were retrieving some missiles from a terrorist group. As we were leaving with the merchandise, an alarm went off. The folks from whom we took the items objected and shot at us. I took a few bullets in my legs, tearing up the muscles pretty badly. I’m fine now, but my legs wouldn’t hold up on a mission, so I left the military.”
So he knew about leg injuries. And maybe he identified with Lori.
“Sometime we should compare scars,” she suggested teasingly. When she glanced at him, she saw the heat in his eyes.
“I don’t think so.”
He was right.
“Are you telling me that you think Ollie Townshed skipped town?” Zach asked Martin Phelps, the detective assigned to Wayne Thompson’s murder case. After Toni had dropped him off at work, Zach had called the detective earlier in the day and informed him of his interview with Ollie this morning and yesterday afternoon. Zach also included last night’s incident with his brakes failing.
“That appears to be the case. When we went to his apartment, the manager said that Ollie stopped by his office and told him he was moving out at the end of the month.”
A curse tumbled from Zach’s lips. “The man wasn’t too forthcoming with me, yesterday. And this morning when my wife and I talked to him, he was less cooperative.”
“Did you leave your car unattended after you spoke to Mr. Townshed?”
“I drove it back here to Anderson and talked to Carl Ormand about the situation. He insisted that Ollie recommended Caprock. They pointed the finger at each other.”
“I’ll say you were lucky that all you got was a black eye and bruised ribs.”
“I know that. But I think Ollie is the key to this thing.”
“I think you’re right. I’ll look into Mr. Townshed’s background. From where the man lived, he wasn’t rolling in dough.”
“Maybe Ollie had some expensive habits,” Zach offered.
“I’ll ask the guys in bunko if they have anything on this guy.”
“Thanks, Martin. I’ve got some things here at the company to look at. It might clue me in to what’s happening.”
“I got back the autopsy report on the dead gauger,” Martin told him. “The coroner in Lubbock wasn’t too backed up with bodies. That’s why we got the report back so quickly.”
It had been a couple of weeks since they found the dead gauger, and Martin thought that timing was speedy?
Martin laughed. “I was teasing.”
“What did the M.E. conclude?” Zach asked.
“He found that the victim was hit from behind with a blunt object. The scene in the field was staged. His injuries weren’t consistent with his falling off the stairs of the reserve tank.”
“So, our victim was murdered.”
“Yup.”
“And now we have a missing field engineer and missing records from that field. This stinks more with each new piece of information we get.”
“That it does.” He paused. “I’ll let you tell your boss. I don’t believe I want that job.”
“You’re chickening out?” Zach teased. Martin had been cooperative and informative. Zach liked the detective.
“Nope, I’m just exhibiting wisdom. Your boss has a reputation.” With those words, he hung up the phone.
Shaking his head, Zach pulled up the file for Cap-rock on his computer.
When the intercom buzzed, his secretary told him he had a call.
“Zach, this is David Spears. So far I’ve checked four of those fields that George asked me to look at for you. Half of them were serviced. The other half weren’t.”
“Any identifying labels on the equipment?”
“Nope. Do you want me to investigate the rest of them?”
“Yeah, do that. I want to know what I’m dealing with here.”
“I’ll get back as soon as possible.”
Zach hung up. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“Are you ready to go home?” Toni asked from the doorway of his office.
He glanced up from the screen. “Yeah, let me print out Caprock’s account and take it home with me.” As soon as the printer spit out the pages, he shut down his machine.
Toni picked up the business card of the police detective that Zach had called. She raised her brow. “Who is this?”
“The detective assigned to investigate the gauger’s death.”
“Was he here?” Toni asked.
“Nope. I called him about Ollie earlier in the day. Martin just called back to tell me that it looks like Ollie’s skipped town.”
Setting down the business card, she sighed. “I don’t want to believe he was involved in anything.”
“We’re looking into his personal finances to see if he has any unusual habits. Also, they confirmed our suspicions. The gauger was murdered.”
“How do they know?”
“The coroner says he was hit from behind with a blunt instrument.” He further explained what he knew.
She shook her head. “It’s still hard to believe.”
“Sometimes we have to accept truths we don’t like.” He should know about that. There were a lot of ugly truths in his own life that he wished he could ignore, but knew he couldn’t.
“Let’s go get the twins,” Toni softly said.
Oddly enough, the thought of his girls brought a smile to his face. He wondered what Lisa and Lori had done today. He’d hear about it soon enough.
“We need to stop by your dad’s office. I’ve got to update him on what we know.”
Toni winced. Zach had to agree.
Zach listened to the giggling coming from the bathroom. It sounded like the twins and Toni were having a wonderful time, and he found himself walking down the hall to investigate.
“Look, I can keep the bubble up in the air,” Lori announced. He heard her blow out a breath.
“I can keep it up longer,” Lisa answered. An exhaled breath followed.
“Oh, that’s good, girls, but I bet I can do it the longest,” Toni said.
Curiosity drew Zach. Laughter wasn’t something that had filled his life. The sound was so sweet and golden
, he wanted to smile in return and join in the fun.
Zach stopped at the doorway and watched as Toni and the girls tried keeping aloft the bubbles from the girls’ bubble bath. When one big bubble started to fall, he stepped into the room and blew it upward.
“Good, Daddy,” Lisa cried out. “Keep it up.”
Toni’s startled eyes flew to his. He only caught a glimpse of her before he trained his eyes on the bubble again and tried to keep it from falling.
The girls’ giggling and Toni’s encouragement surrounded him as he kept the bubble in the air for a long time. When it popped, Lisa sighed.
“Do it again, Daddy,” she demanded.
Lori also nodded.
He couldn’t resist. He found another bubble and blew it into the air. As he followed it around the bathroom, the girls offered their encouragement. Finally, the bubble drifted into the hall and burst against the wall.
“Again, Daddy,” Lisa cried.
“I think it’s time for us to finish our bath and go to bed,” Toni answered.
Zach shrugged. “She’s right.”
“Will you come tomorrow night and do it again?” Lisa asked.
“Please, Daddy,” Lori begged. “You’re the best one of us.”
Pleasure filled Zach. “I sure will.”
He walked back into the kitchen and listened as the girls finished bathing. Had he ever played like that in his life? Not in his childhood, that’s for certain. And what he did for recreation while in the military, well none of it included bubbles in that innocent role.
“Daddy was really good,” Lisa commented. “He kept that bubble in the air a long time.”
“Yeah, and he had so much breath,” Lori added.
A smile curved his mouth and pride filled his heart. Whoever would’ve thought a conversation about bubbles would interest him so? But then again, whoever would’ve thought he’d be playing like that?
His daughters were proud that he could keep a soap bubble aloft. Reason said it was a piddling thing. But his heart didn’t accept that assessment of the situation.
Sometimes, he wondered if he pinched himself, would he wake and realize all this had been a dream? He certainly hoped not, because this reality had a certain charm.
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