He followed them in his own car, went into the store with them, and picked up a few things for himself: eggs, bread, mayo, tuna, and some cold cuts.
“I can take care of the meals,” she offered.
But he shook his head. “I’m here to protect you, not to give you extra work. I do know that you do a lot. My sister, Amber, is a single mom. It’s damn hard work.”
In the checkout line, he dropped a green plastic dinosaur into his cart; then, after they both paid, he gave it to Justin with a wink.
She ruffled her son’s hair. “What do we say?”
“Thank you!” Justin beamed.
And she looked away for a moment to get a grip on herself. Because for Justin’s entire life, his own father had never given him a gift, not a single toy. Seeing Joe do it now so naturally, without even any thought, made her realize how much Justin was missing. Not gifts, that was the least of it. But fatherly care and love.
She swallowed and put a smile on her face before turning back to Joe. “Thanks.”
He shrugged. “No big deal.” And it was clear that for him, it wasn’t.
On their way home, Joe stayed right behind them. She kept looking around too, but if anyone else was following her, she didn’t catch anything suspicious.
When Joe pulled up next to her at a red light, Justin waved the plastic dinosaur at him with a grin. Joe put on a startled face, as if he’d gone wide-eyed with fear. Justin dissolved into peals of laughter.
When Keith was around, Justin usually stayed quiet. Kids had good instincts.
She glanced at her son in the rearview mirror. “Do you like Joe?”
“Joe!” Justin shook the dinosaur against the window and laughed.
Maybe having Joe around for a bit wasn’t going to be as bad as she’d thought it would be. For the past couple of hours, he’d managed to keep her mind off being scared of Keith, and that was something.
Wendy focused back on traffic, pretty sparse compared to city standards. Broslin had a calming effect on her. The town was warm and welcoming, peaceful. Couples strolled down the sidewalk arm in arm; kids rode three-wheelers. The shops were all prettied up, everything clean and cared for, no garbage blowing on the side of the road, no graffiti on the buildings.
The quintessential all-American town surrounded by farmland, cows, and horses. The mushroom capital of the country, complete with signs for fresh-picked mushrooms everywhere. She briefly stared at the mushroom hats in a boutique window. There wasn’t enough money in the world to make her wear that. The mushroom soup and mushroom pie advertised in the diner’s windows, on the other hand, had potential.
She found the mushroom craze amusing. She’d never thought of fungi as something people would get excited about to this degree, but the town even had a mushroom festival. Sophie had invited her last year. She couldn’t come. Keith had dropped by to see her and had simply refused to let her leave.
That wasn’t going to happen again, she promised herself as she pulled up the driveway. She couldn’t, wouldn’t go back to living that way. Things were going to change.
Joe helped her haul in the groceries. She put Justin down for his nap, then edited and uploaded her hundred new photos to the stock photo site where she was building a sizable inventory of everyday images. By the time she was done with that, Justin was up.
She played catch with him outside for a while. Fresh air was important for kids, and movement too. She didn’t want her son to grow up in front of the TV.
Joe made a dozen calls and worked on his laptop, tracking down leads for a case. She figured it had to do with his friend’s death and stayed out of his way.
When dinnertime came, she made chicken and rice and invited Joe to join them.
“I meant what I said about not giving you extra work.”
She shook her head. “I have to cook no matter what. It’s no extra effort to put another plate on the table.”
She’d worked hard at improving her cooking skills and enjoyed creating a healthy meal for herself and her son. The kitchen at Keith’s penthouse had been for show. He ate out every night, liked to network, liked to show off his model girlfriend. Starting to cook was another way to assert her independence and make her own choices.
“All right.” Joe sat by the table. “But then we’ll take turns at cooking.”
She wasn’t going to hold her breath on that. He was a nice guy, but he was still a jock and had probably been surrounded by women most of his life. She doubted he’d done much work in the kitchen.
But he did help her clean up after dinner, then played ball with her son until she took Justin upstairs to give him a bath. She read him a picture book, then he “read it” back to her, more or less. He knew the words by heart. He was so proud of himself.
Then, of course, as his reward, she had to sing the sheep song, complete with the bleating. She sincerely hoped Joe couldn’t hear that.
Once Justin was asleep, she went back downstairs to settle down in front of the computer.
Joe was watching the local news. He glanced over to her. “Checking out colleges for Justin already?”
She turned the screen from him on reflex. She didn’t want him to mock her for trying to take some college classes. But since he’d caught the college logo already, she had to say something.
“It’s an online class.” She swallowed. “For me. Digital photography. Manipulating digital images.”
He raised a questioning eyebrow. “Want to know what it’d be like on the other end of the camera?”
She rubbed her palm over her knee. “Do you think it’s stupid? Modeling is not exactly a steady, long-term occupation. Photography isn’t much better, is it? There’s a reason for the expression starving artist.”
But he didn’t rush to say that she better rethink it. Instead, he said, “If you’re looking to branch out, you could check the Broslin Tourist Board’s website. They have a photo contest each year with some pretty good prize money. And if you win, you might get some commissions for flyers from local businesses. Weather’s supposed to be nice this week. I’ll show you and Justin around. You could snap some pictures. We have art shows twice a year at the high school. You could put up photos there and sell some, maybe.”
Okay, that completely overwhelmed her. “Why do you want to help me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Not everybody has an agenda, Wendy.”
She nodded uncertainly.
He relaxed back in his seat. “How did you get into modeling?”
God, that seemed like a lifetime ago. “I was discovered in a shopping mall in Upstate New York when I was sixteen. It felt like winning the lottery. I had to move to New York City, everything arranged by the agency.”
“Your parents must have been worried.”
“Oh God. My mother cried her eyes out. But I was living in a dream and talked them into letting me go. What sixteen-year-old doesn’t think that she’s ready for anything?” She flashed a half smile. “They simply didn’t have the energy to fight me. My mother was forty-five when I was born, my father fifty-five. By the time I was a teen, they were planning retirement.”
He nodded. “Mine passed on last year. Dad had colon cancer. Mom died of a broken heart three months later. Her heart just stopped.” His brows furrowed. “She wasn’t even sick.”
Oh. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He looked toward the window, silent for a moment before turning back to her. “Was modeling as glamorous as you thought it would be?”
And he waited for the response, as if really interested in her, not just being polite about it.
“As glamorous as expected,” she told him, “but more cruel. I was never tall enough, definitely not skinny enough. If a picture doesn’t come out right, it’s always the model’s fault. You’re assumed to be empty-headed and superficial, and definitely easy. Some of the clients routinely came around to ask for dates. Models who declined were struck from the roster with one excuse or the other.”
She shrugged.
“What I remember most of the early years was the hunger. I was expected to lose weight. Endlessly. If a model has to drink, do drugs, smoke, or throw up on a regular basis, she’s expected to do it and keep her mouth shut about it. In the world of high fashion, appearance is everything.”
He held her gaze. “That had to be difficult.”
“Early on, I was so dazzled by the city, by the sparkles, I barely noticed anything else. Later….” She pressed her lips together. “Having no voice, no choice in even the most personal things became difficult. Others controlled the color and length of my hair, the makeup I put on, and the clothes I wore.”
Her career had never been her own, not from the moment she’d signed on the dotted line at age sixteen, next to her mother’s signature as guardian.
“My career belonged to the agency. My time belonged to the customer. My body wasn’t my own. Even my fears weren’t my own. I was asked once to pose naked, wrapped in giant snakes. I just had to suck it up and do it.”
She folded her hands on her lap. “Big boo-hoo, right? Being a model and living on the top of the world. People would kill for a chance like that. It’s not like doing shift work in a factory. I was lucky.”
His face remained expressionless. “You were a kid. All that had to be scary.”
Sometimes it had been. Other times, the city and the job were exhilarating. “I met Keith in New York.”
He waited a beat. “How old were you then?”
“Eighteen. He was older, educated, sophisticated. He knew about wine and could quote black-and-white art movies.” She’d thought Keith was her knight in shining armor. “When he walked in on a client manhandling me in the hallway, Keith put the man in his place and threatened to rip off his head if he came near me again.”
Keith had been her protector. He’d been a real man, not like the boys her age she’d been partying with.
“How old was he?”
“Thirty-four.”
“He seduced you,” Joe said in a flat tone.
“It wasn’t like that. We were friends first.” He’d been kind back then, interesting, exciting. “Apartment prices being what they are in New York, I rented with three other models who were more into the party scene than I was. Drinking, some light drugs, bringing home strange men.”
She made a face. “When Keith eventually offered his plush apartment, it was like a Cinderella story come true. He wooed me, and I fell for it.”
She’d been so incredibly happy for a while. The happiest she’d ever been. But then he told off more of her clients. And then he told off her agent. He went behind her back and canceled photo shoots that he didn’t think were appropriate.
“Eventually, my agency dropped me. At around the same time, Keith’s company was opening a new office in Wilmington, and he was transferred to a more senior position here. He asked me to come with him.”
The New York fashion world was for airheaded whores, he’d told her. In a smaller city, she’d find more family-centric work. They could spend more time together. He tossed the word family around until she was dreaming about white weddings.
But that wasn’t what she got after they’d moved from New York to Wilmington. Keith became more and more controlling, and she didn’t have her New York friends for support. She had nobody she could go to for help.
Joe turned off the TV, although the news wasn’t over yet. “When you met him, you were so used to others controlling every aspect of your life, it seemed natural to give him control over everything.”
Her first instinct was to deny that, but she couldn’t. Honestly, she was just trying her best not to cry, because, by some miracle, Joe seemed to understand. Not only did he know that she’d been weak, stupid, had let herself be abused, but somehow he didn’t judge her for it. She pressed her lips together.
He pushed to his feet and strode to the window to look out, his face inscrutable. “I’ll go check on things outside.”
Okay, just because he understood her, it didn’t mean he was interested. He was probably bored with her silly story. Of course he was. This was nothing but babysitting for him. He probably had a lot better things to do, with people a lot more interesting than her.
“Won’t your girlfriend miss you tonight?” she asked from her desk. “You can go. Seriously.”
“No girlfriend. That’d interfere with my hordes of other women,” he said in a dry tone.
Oh God. He probably thought that she’d been fishing for information. “None of my business,” she rushed to say, but he was already through the door and she didn’t think he heard her.
Great. Now he probably thought she was after him.
Deathblow: Chapter Five
Joe closed the door behind him and stood on the front stoop for a minute. So there. He could be in the same room with her, want to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to bed, and he could still remain professional and walk away.
The street was quiet, no cars. The sky stretched clear over Broslin, its onyx bowl dotted with stars. He loved his town, loved every damn thing about it.
Wendy took him for a small-town jock. So maybe he was. He liked beautiful women. Frankly, he didn’t see the crime in it. Her opinion of him shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t matter.
He checked his gun, then walked around in the cold night air. He’d spent too much time on work lately, especially with the undercover gig. He needed to go out and have some fun. He hadn’t been out with a woman in a while. Since that night with Wendy.
That can’t be right. He squinted his eyes, turning his face up to the sky. Had it been that long? Huh. It had been.
A couple of weeks ago, the new waitress at the diner had asked him out for coffee, but he’d been busy. Then there’d been that old high school flame who’d been looking to rekindle things. He’d put her off too, had wanted to do extra research on the Brant Street Gang.
Which wasn’t right. A person had to make room for fun in his life, or it wouldn’t be worth living.
He walked around the house again, leaving Wendy to her online class inside, checked up and down the street, but saw nothing suspicious.
His thoughts kept circling back to Wendy.
She’d been eighteen when she’d met Keith—living alone in a big city, without her parents, only her agent to watch over her. And her agent had probably only been concerned about how much money she was making him.
She’d been a magnet for a predator.
Joe rolled his shoulders. He had some stiff tension he needed to work out of his system. What were the chances that Sophie kept some weights in her basement? Probably slim to none since she wasn’t supposed to overtax her new heart.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and called in to see if Lil’ Gomez had turned up yet.
“I just talked to the chief a minute ago,” the captain said. “Nobody has seen or heard from the kid. What happened, happened. You can’t let it get to you. You did what you could for him.”
But Joe didn’t feel like he had. He was Broslin’s favorite son. He wasn’t expected to lose. He was expected to win.
His body still ached from the crash and the beating it’d taken in the river. Circling back, he stretched his muscles on the deck. He did a hundred sit-ups and a hundred squats, then a hundred push-ups, using exercise to block Lil’ Gomez from his mind, the desperate look on the kid’s face as he’d floated downriver in the night.
Then he walked around the house one last time before going in through the front.
Wendy was still studying, all rapt attention and poised grace as she sat in front of her computer.
He tried his level best not to think of her as she’d come apart in his arms three months ago. He browsed the bookshelf, rows and rows of paperbacks, but couldn’t focus on the titles. He saw her naked before him, back arched, dusky nipples drawn into tight buds as he grazed his lips over them.
The sound of her voice had him dropping the book he was holding. He caught it before it hit the floor, turned to her. “What?�
�
“Guest bathroom is upstairs at the end of the hallway,” she repeated, then she went back to her computer. “If you want to get ready for bed.”
That unleashed another batch of X-rated images in his brain.
He went and took a cold shower. He knew exactly what his fascination was with her. She posed a challenge. She wasn’t easy. He reminded himself that he liked easy. Easy was fine. Better than fine, great. Who needed complications?
He pushed the images of their one night together out of his mind, spent another few minutes under the cold water, then put on a Broslin PD T-shirt and sweatpants.
At home, he slept naked. And alone. If he spent the night with a woman, he usually stayed over at her place. He didn’t have a rule about not taking women home; it just never worked out that way.
He checked in on Justin on his way downstairs, the kid all snuggled up with his plastic dinosaur as he slept. Joe’s nephew, Max, was about the same age. They were both pretty great kids.
Wendy walked up softly behind him, her steps barely audible on the carpet.
Joe shifted. “He’s a good sleeper.”
The soft, exotic scent of her perfume surrounded him. It mixed with the scent of baby powder in the room. She was incredibly hot, and a mother. He’d tried to avoid that kind of complication in the past. The fathers were always in the picture and could be a pain.
He liked his affairs hot and intense, and his women all to himself. He didn’t want to want this—playing house. This wasn’t who he was. Yet there was something here that reached him on a deeper level.
“You’re good with kids,” Wendy said, close enough that he could have easily reached her to pull her into his arms.
“I like them.” He gave a carefree grin to mask how much he wanted to touch her. “As long as they’re someone else’s responsibility.”
An unreadable expression crossed her face. “Never settling down, huh?”
He shrugged. “When you have a good thing going, no sense messing it up, right?”
She turned and walked back down the stairs without responding.
Heroes in Uniform: Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Rangers and Cops: Sexy Hot Contemporary Alpha Heroes From NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors Page 151