Her Husband’s Partner

by Jeanie London

  Enough!

  She finally kissed Jake and arrived back in the kitchen to find Scott washing the dinner dishes and Brian drying.

  “Thank you so much,” she forced herself to say lightly. “But you could have put them in the dishwasher.”

  “I told Scott.” Brian scowled. “He wouldn’t listen.”

  Scott didn’t say a word, but Riley didn’t miss the smile playing around his mouth. She knew exactly what he was doing and liked the influence he had on Brian. He knew teenagers, which shouldn’t be a surprise with all his work at Renaissance.

  “Well, less work for me, and I appreciate the help. I haven’t gotten the kids trained to load the dishwasher yet. Well, they’re trained,” she corrected. “Let’s just say I don’t trust them completely. Anyone want coffee?”

  Another diversionary tactic.

  Brian tossed the dish towel onto the counter. “No thanks. I’m out of here. Got an assignment due in the morning.”

  “Get going then, sweetheart,” she said. “Jake already put in his request for French toast in the morning if you find yourself hungry again before class.”

  Brian bent down and kissed the top of Riley’s head as he passed. “Glad you’re home, Aunt Riley. Take it easy, dude.”

  Then he disappeared down the hallway.

  Leaving Riley and Scott alone.

  She wasn’t sure why the sound of the front door seemed to echo as if in a cavern or why her insanely large kitchen suddenly seemed to be shrinking, but that’s exactly how it felt.

  Maybe the dark night from beyond all the windows was closing in. The kitchen had actually sold her on the house when Mike had brought her to see the place. It was the hub, wide open to a dining room that had a dozen windows looking out over the duck pond and the stables. A gorgeous view no matter what the time of day or the season.

  Except on moonless nights. Like right now when the darkness pressed in until the big room felt like a closet with Scott only mere feet away.

  “Scott, would you like coffee?”

  “Only if you were going to make some for yourself. Otherwise, I’m good.”

  Very diplomatic, but not a no. “Let me ask you a question. Am I going to need coffee for whatever you want to discuss? I have to admit that it’s been a pretty long day.”

  “Make the coffee.”

  She nodded and headed toward the pot. He went to stand in front of the windows, restless for a man who hadn’t slept in a while. She could feel every inch of the silence stretch between them, not sure why. But, coward that she was, she was in no hurry to end it. Scott appeared to be so deeply in thought, his back to her as he stared out into the night. Things were changing between them, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Let alone what he might think.

  His shoulders were so broad he appeared showcased by the window frame. His glossy black hair, longer than she was used to seeing it, curled around his neck. His hair was really wavy, and she wondered why she’d never noticed before.

  “Did you get your article written?” he asked without turning around.

  “Yes, believe it or not. E-mailed it off not long after I picked up Jake from school.”

  “How’d that go? Did you take Camille with you?”

  She was surprised he’d thought of that. Then again, the man was a detective. Details were his business. “Thankfully Brian came home. He kept an eye on her. Don’t know what I’d have done without all the men in my life today.” She gave a light laugh. “Even Jake was a trouper this morning. He headed off to class without a peep. I was so proud of him.”

  “So he’s settling in?”

  Scott was making conversation, and she sensed that he was as unnerved by the quiet as she was.

  “I think that will take some time for all of us. We’ll be okay.”

  Scott inclined his head but didn’t reply. He looked thoughtful standing there.

  She brought two mugs to the table and sat down. He finally turned to face her, glanced absently at the table before pulling out a chair and sitting across from her.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “So, are you going to keep me in suspense any longer?”

  “I need to know what was on your laptop and your camera.”

  An interrogation. Okay, she could handle this. “I use my laptop mainly for work because the kids play games on the desktop. The camera had both personal and work-related photos.”

  “By any chance did you have backups? I need to know as much as I can about the events you’re covering.”

  “You don’t think today was a random theft, do you?”

  He leveled his gaze at her, and there was so much in his expression, so much she’d never noticed before. She just had to look past the vice cop persona, past the familiar seriousness, to see a man who was paying attention to the details, to her details. She saw a man who cared.

  “I’m sorry, Riley,” he said quietly. “The last thing I want to do is alarm you, but things aren’t adding up. You wound up being treated by paramedics in Hazard Creek. Then you had a break-in. Now a car theft. We need to pinpoint what’s going on.”

  She sank back in the chair. She’d nearly melted down over a migraine this morning. Where was she going to find the energy to deal with the frightening reality that someone wanted something from her, enough to break into the house and the car?

  “Mommy died. Mommy died like Daddy…”

  Riley inhaled deeply to dispel the voices in her head. She wasn’t alone. The entire Poughkeepsie Police Department had her back, as Mike used to say.

  But knowing that didn’t feel so important right now. It was the man sitting across from her. The man who’d cared enough to drive by the house to make sure she and the twins were okay. The man who’d easily stepped in to babysit her sick daughter. The man who’d wrapped her in his strong embrace to make her feel better.

  “Okay.” She pushed away from the table and stood. “Come into the office so we can figure this out.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SCOTT WATCHED AS Riley sat on a blue exercise ball in front of her office computer.

  “Why don’t you take the chair,” he suggested. “I’ll grab one from the kitchen.”

  “I’m good, thanks. Strengthens the core muscles.” She sat even straighter, sucking in her stomach a little for effect.

  He shook his head. “And limits the amount of time you spend in front of the computer, I’ll bet.”

  That got a small smile. “Saves me from dragging my children away from their games. They usually get up on their own after a reasonable amount of time.”

  “Smart.”

  “Desperate.” She rocked forward on the ball and gave a little sigh. “I’m outnumbered around here.”

  If Scott hadn’t appreciated what that meant, he’d seen the results firsthand earlier. “You’ve got it under control.”

  She shot him a surprised look. “Yeah, when tired vice cops ride in to save the day.”

  He hadn’t thought of what he’d done in that way, but suddenly the morning was square between them. He braced his hands on the back of the chair while the computer blipped and beeped through the start-up menu.

  He couldn’t miss the flush of pink suddenly staining her cheeks beneath the fading tan. “There’s nothing easy about this situation.”

  For her or for him. But at least her situation wasn’t self-inflicted torture.

  Mike would never have asked Scott to watch over his family if he’d known how his best friend had felt about his wife. But he hadn’t known. Scott thought he’d had a grip on his emotions, but he hadn’t.

  He’d been lying to himself all these years about how much he cared. And that said a lot about his capacity for self-denial. An ability he wasn’t going to complain about. Not when he’d go right back to ignoring the way he felt about her. His feelings didn’t matter. What mattered was Riley’s safety. And the kids’.

  Even if he couldn’t get back to the blissful ignorance he’d been living in for all these ye
ars, he still had the single most important tool in his arsenal.

  Free will.

  The ability to make the right choice was his and his alone. No one could take that away. No person. No life circumstance. He’d learned that lesson the hard way. That’s why he worked so hard to convince the kids at Renaissance that they had everything they needed to break away from the lives they’d been living. Free will might not seem like much, but it was everything. And for the kids he worked with, it was a start down the path to a new life.

  Just as it had once been for him.

  That’s why he was here with Riley tonight, making the right choice and doing right by his friend. He was going to scan her backup files and assess what story had made her a target.

  Scott sat down.

  He wasn’t going to notice how close they were, so close his knee almost brushed hers. He wasn’t going to remember the way she’d felt in his arms or the way her slender body had lined up against his in all the right places. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the monitor and watched windows flash open as Riley maneuvered the system.

  “So, what have you got?” he asked, sounding impressively controlled.

  “I’ve got so much stuff here,” she said. “I really need to sort through my files instead of uploading everything and forgetting about it.”

  Scott scanned the thumbnails. “This is all stuff you’ve been working on since you got back?”

  She nodded. “It’s a mess, I know, but that’s only because I don’t work on the server. I have to attach everything to e-mail and send it to the paper, so things aren’t organized the way they are on my hard drive.”

  He snorted. “I meant because there’s so much. You’ve barely been home a month.”

  “Oh. Well, yeah. Every article requires a fair amount of research and fact-checking. It’s time-consuming.” She waved a hand at the monitor. “That’s what most of this is. I open files and dump research inside from the various wire services. Then I use it to pull an article together when I sit down to write.”

  He’d read her articles before, knew she was good. “I understand. Do you have any completed articles here?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s what I want to see first.”

  “You got it.” She moved a few thumbnails around then brought up the word processing program and tilted the monitor his way. “How’s that?”

  “Perfect.” He scanned the story about a prominent money laundering case where two local businessmen had been using offshore trusts to launder millions of dollars for U.S. citizens to help them avoid paying taxes.

  Scott nodded, and Riley moved him on to another story. He found himself skimming the leads on stories he’d either read about or heard on the news. He forced his attention to the display, refused to notice the cool scent of Riley’s hair or the way the lamplight played over the curls, making them look as if they’d be soft to the touch.

  There were only two stories she considered hard news. The resignation of the chief executive that she’d started covering today, and what she called a “takeout” on a pharmaceutical company that had been offering free training and some other over-the-top benefits to doctors who prescribed its drug.

  “What’s a takeout?” he asked.

  “Basically it’s a running story. I write about the developments as they come up and put the news into context.”

  “Got it. That seems the more likely of the two. What are the chances you’ve inadvertently uncovered something that might implicate someone who doesn’t want to be implicated?”

  She leaned forward on the ball, and he refused to react when their fingers brushed as they both reached for the mouse at the same time. He would simply ignore the warmth radiating through his fingertips, ignore the blush of color in her cheeks, which suggested she’d noticed their touch, too.

  He waited while she opened file after file and skimmed through the text with a frown. “If I’d uncovered anything that was news, I’d be writing about it, trust me. I’m trying to earn my keep at the paper. But I don’t see anything here.”

  “I need to review those files and do some digging of my own.”

  “There’s a lot of information here, Scott. Can I organize it for you? I’m serious. I cut and paste. I don’t even reformat. Takes too much time for something I typically use only once.”

  Scott took the opportunity to take a breather. Shoving the chair back, he stood. “I’ve got a flash drive in my jacket. You can copy those files onto it. Want more coffee while I’m up?”

  She nodded absently, attention still on the information she’d culled for that article. Scott took both their cups and headed out of the office, appreciating the quiet stillness of the house, the way the temperature had dropped enough so the cool air cleansed Riley’s delicate scent that still lingered in his senses.

  Grabbing his jacket from the coat rack in the foyer, he threw it over an arm before heading into the kitchen to refill the coffee mugs. He glanced at the refrigerator, where a magnetized frame that read World’s Greatest Dad hung.

  Glancing at the photo of Mike, a photo from way back, probably not long after the twins had been born, Scott anchored himself to his purpose.

  Keeping Riley and the kids safe.

  This was a job he was trained for. He needed to remember that. He needed to put his imagination on lockdown. He needed to shut away any and all unworthy thoughts and be the friend that he’d always claimed to be.

  With that renewed resolve, he followed the warm glow of the light spilling from the office into the hallway.

  “Here you go.” He placed the cup in front of her. Then he produced the flash drive. “Will you copy those files onto this? I know it’s late. Not too much longer, I promise.”

  “No worries, Scott. I’m much better off busy. Nothing worse than lying in bed having an anxiety attack.”

  She tossed that out so casually he knew she must be intimately acquainted with late-night anxiety. And that was exactly why he was here. To figure out what was going on so she could get back to her life.

  And he could get back to being a sometimes visitor. He couldn’t seem to handle any more than that.

  “Take a look at these, will you?” Displaying two stories at once, she plugged the flash drive into a USB port.

  He recognized the first. The failed DEA bust had turned into a news bit hardly worth the gas it had taken for her to drive to Hazard Creek. Or the risk to her safety.

  The second was a longer piece on the painful unraveling of a criminal identity theft case, where a gang thug was arrested for a break-in and gave the victim’s information to the police instead of his own. The criminal record and an outstanding warrant was attached to the innocent victim and not discovered until months later, long after the thug had done a ghost.

  “What’s Max doing assigning you all these gang-related stories?” Scott hadn’t meant to sound annoyed. It really wasn’t his business what Riley covered, but gangs…

  “It’s not Max’s fault.” She stared at the display, giving him a view of her delicate profile backlit in the golden glow of the lamp. She looked tired, worried, and the need to reassure her hit him again. Unbidden. Hard.

  “The schedule’s flexible,” she explained. “Which is really helpful while I get the kids settled at school. After that, well, I’ve been giving that some thought. Maybe it’s time for a career change.”

  “You’re considering leaving the Herald?”

  She turned to face him, met his gaze above the rim of the mug. “Let’s just say I’ve been researching options. Between you and me, Scott, ever since that day in Hazard Creek, I’m not entirely sure this job is in all our best interests.”

  She cocked her head to the side and tried to look casual, a gesture he saw right through. She’d been as spooked as he’d known she’d been that day. As spooked as he’d been.

  “I’m thinking life is dangerous enough without me placing myself in situations where I have to outrun drug dealers on foot. I don’t want my kids to be
orphans if I can help it.” She didn’t give him a chance to react, just forged on. “I’m looking into what it will take to get a teaching certificate. I’ve got my master’s. So far it seems to be a realistic option.”

  “You want to work with kids?”

  “I like them, and I could take mine to school with me. We’d have the same schedule and summers off together. Solves a lot of problems.” She gave a smile that seemed a little strained. “Then if one gets sick, I can call a sub instead of recruiting the first nice guy who happens along.”

  He hated that she felt pressured to make these kinds of choices because she was scared for her safety. “Listen, Riley. The chief and I talked today. We’d feel better if you had protection until we figure out what’s going on.” He hadn’t intended to put the chief’s name in there, but he wanted her to know he hadn’t been the one to come up with the idea.

  She inhaled deeply, the sound of inevitability. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Nothing crazy.” But it was crazy. More crazy than she would ever know. “Just me. You can stand a few days of seeing my face, can’t you?”

  “You don’t mind, Scott? It seems like an awful lot to ask.”

  That wasn’t the argument he’d expected, which told him she was a lot more worried than she was letting on.

  “No. I don’t mind. Just like I didn’t mind being recruited today. I’m not going to get any sleep anyway until we figure out what’s going on. You don’t want me lying in bed awake having anxiety attacks.”

  She only nodded. “Camille’s got a trundle bed, I can put Jake in with her—”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll bunk on the couch.”

  She searched his face as if trying to determine how worried she should be. “I’ll make you a nest, then.”

  A nest. A loving gesture that epitomized the sort of care and concern he’d always associated with this family, a family that was stretching its arms to include him with no clue how much he wanted to be included.

  VETERANOS GOT IT DOWN. Ace cool in the game. The Busters hooked up. For a piece of curb service.