Everything changed in that moment. Gossip roared faster than a wind-stirred fire. Even though the adults in her life had tried to keep it from her and her brother, their children heard and absorbed snippets about the scandal and a few of them had delighted in whispering about it loud enough so they knew that Claire would overhear.
Her father—the man she had adored, president of the biggest bank in town, a leader of church and community—had been having a torrid affair with a cocktail waitress at the Dirty Dog, the sleazy bar outside of town.
Apparently the woman had a jealous husband, a biker thug by the name of Calvin Waters. When he came home early one night, he caught them in bed together. In a drunken rage, he shot them both with a sawed-off shotgun before turning the gun on himself.
The scandal had exploded in Hope’s Crossing. She could still remember those awful days as she had endured stares and whispers and hadn’t known what to do with all the anger and shame inside her—or with the grief for her lost innocence.
Claire and her brother had endured those first difficult months by keeping a few friends close and basically sticking their heads down and plowing through.
Ruth, on the other hand, had completely fallen apart. She had taken to her bed for several months after the scandal, addicted to alcohol and the Valium doctors had prescribed her for sleep.
Left with little choice, Claire had stepped up to take care of the three of them. She had been the one who did laundry, who fixed lunch for her younger brother, who walked him to school and helped with his homework and comforted him when he cried for a mother who had been too absorbed in her loss and humiliation to see her children needed her, too.
Claire knew now, taking charge of her flailing family had been her way of dealing with the chaos.
She sipped at her soup, wishing the rich, creamy taste could wipe away the bitter memories. Ruth had lived in that numb state for about six months, until Mary Ella and Katherine and other friends had forced her to break free of her addiction.
She had fought it with courage and strength and Claire would always admire that in her mother. But even after rehab, Ruth had continued to rely on Claire to make sure her life flowed smoothly.
Claire knew she bore plenty of responsibility for the patterns they had fallen into. Even when she had lived away from Hope’s Crossing while Jeff was in medical school, she had handled any crisis of Ruth’s long-distance, whether that was dealing with a parking ticket or a doctor bill or calling a plumber to repair a leaky faucet.
She could justify to herself that if she didn’t take care of things, her mother’s life would fall back into chaos, but she knew that was only an excuse. This was her way of feeling needed, important, to a mother who had basically forgotten her children amid her own pain.
With a sigh, she set down her soup. She wasn’t hungry after all. She would just watch the movie, she decided. She wheeled the chair to the sink and rinsed the bowl, reaching the switch on the disposal only with the help of a large soup ladle.
She headed back to the family room and turned on the movie, eager for any kind of distraction from her thoughts. The movie apparently worked too well. She barely remembered the first scene—when she awoke some time later, the credits were rolling and Chester was standing in the doorway, his hackles raised.
“What’s the matter, bud?” she asked.
He gave that low-throated hound howl of his and scrambled for the front door, his hackles raised and his claws clicking on the wood floor.
Claire frowned but curiosity compelled her to transfer to her rolling office chair and follow him. Chester wasn’t much of a watchdog but he would sometimes have these weird fits of protectiveness. Probably just the Stimsons’ cat or maybe a mule deer coming out of the mountains to forage among the spring greens. For all she knew, her silly dog could be barking at the wind that still howled.
“Come on, boy. It’s okay. Settle down.”
Still, the basset hound stood beside the door, that low growl sounding somehow ominous in the silent house.
Claire maneuvered down the hallway after him until she reached the window beside the front door, set just low enough that she could peek over the sill from her seated position.
She squinted into the darkness and caught a flash of movement that materialized into a dark shape there on the porch.
Her heart skittered.
Someone was out there.
CHAPTER SIX
CLAIRE COULD HEAR HER pulse pounding in her ears, but she quickly tried to talk herself down.
She was seeing things. A trick of the wind or a shadow or something.
And even if she wasn’t seeing some weird hallucination, if she really had seen someone standing on her porch, the explanation was probably perfectly benign. This was Hope’s Crossing after all. Not that the town was immune to crime—as the recent rash of burglaries would certainly attest—but a home invasion robbery was an entirely different situation.
Settle down, she told herself. She was only freaking out because she was battling a completely normal sense of vulnerability, alone and helpless in her big house on a stormy night. It was only natural to start imagining somebody out there with a chain saw and a hockey mask.
She was seeing things. She was down to one pain-killer at night, but maybe even that much of the stuff lingering in her system was messing with her head.
She gazed out into the sleeting rain again, straining her eyes to peer at the dark corners of her lawn. There. Again. This time, she couldn’t come up with another rational explanation. That was definitely a person out there dressed in dark clothing, lurking on the edge of the porch.
In a panic, not really thinking about what she was doing, Claire checked to make sure the door was latched and then flicked the porch light rapidly on and off a half-dozen times.
It was probably a stupid thing to do, only serving to let the guy know she had seen him. She would have been better off using that time to barricade herself in the bathroom and calling 9-1-1 or something.
Stupid or not, though, it worked. She had caught his attention anyway. The figure turned quickly toward the front door and she caught the pale blur of a face, but couldn’t make out features or any other identifying details—even whether it was a man or woman—before he (she?) turned quickly and rushed down the driveway.
What on earth was that? Her breath came in shallow gasps as Claire reached down to put a comforting hand on Chester’s warm fur.
“You’re such a good, brave doggie. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. The bad man is gone now. We’re okay.”
Her voice sounded squeaky, as if she’d been sucking helium and she forced herself to try some of Alex’s circle breathing: in through the nose for five counts, fill the diaphragm and hold it for five, then out through the mouth for five counts.
She was only on her second rotation when Chester suddenly gave his howling bark again, his grumpy face concerned, just a second before the doorbell rang. Claire let out a little shriek. Was her intruder back?
After a frantic search for some kind of weapon, she finally picked up a stout umbrella from the holder by the door, then peered through the window again.
This visitor was unquestionably male. Hard chest, broad shoulders, a slight dark shadow on his face. Relief surged through her, sweet and pure like spring runoff.
Riley!
She fumbled with the dead bolt and the lock and yanked open the door, then shoved herself back in the office chair a few feet to give him room to come inside.
Some of her fear must have been obvious on her face. Riley looked wary. If she hadn’t known him since they were both kids, she would have called him dangerous.
“What is it? What’s wrong? I saw you flashing your porch lights as I was heading home. Are you hurt?”
Claire wanted to sink into his arms, into that peace and comfort she had found there that day in her store.
“Probably nothing. I feel like an idiot now. Sorry to make you get out of your car in the rain.”
&
nbsp; She was suddenly aware she was dressed in her nightgown, cotton and shapeless, and no bra. At least it was fairly pretty, a light, sunny yellow that one of her friends from the senior citizen center had embellished with embroidery flowers and brought over a few days earlier.
Claire didn’t even want to think what her hair must look like, tangled and flat from falling asleep on the couch earlier. Why could he never see her under better circumstances? She didn’t always look like a frowsy invalid, she would almost swear to it.
“What happened?” Riley asked.
“Chester started barking at something, which is unusual for him. I came to investigate and thought I saw someone on the porch. I flickered the lights, I don’t know, just as a distraction, I guess. I had no idea you were out there, but I’m so glad you saw them, too. Anyway, it must have worked because he bolted.”
“He?”
“I don’t know. It might have been a woman. I couldn’t tell. I just saw this dark shape take off down the driveway. Did you see anything?”
He shook his head and she saw a few raindrops that still clung to the dark strands of his hair, gleaming in her foyer light. “Visibility is pretty poor out because of the storm. I didn’t see anything except your lights flashing, but I can look around for you. Lock the door behind me and wait right here with Chester.”
Did he really think she wanted to be anywhere else? She wasn’t a complete idiot. “Thank you, Riley. I’ll feel really silly when you don’t find anything. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me. This is my job, remember?”
He didn’t give her a chance to answer before he headed back outside, closing the door firmly behind him. He waited on the other side until she clicked the dead bolt shut, then he began sweeping the lawn with his flashlight. She watched him through the window beside the door as he methodically crisscrossed her yard and then disappeared around the side of the house to check the back door.
What a relief to have Riley there. Not that she necessarily needed a man to protect her, but she couldn’t deny she found comfort from knowing she had an armed officer of the law watching her back.
An unaccustomed comfort, she had to admit. Even when she was married, Jeff wasn’t the sort to handle this sort of crisis. Once when Jeff was doing his residency, a neighbor in their condo complex had come home drunk in the middle of the night and mistaken their door for his. When his key didn’t work, he’d tried to break in through a window.
Jeff had been at the hospital and Claire had been alone with the children. She remembered how terrified she’d been, until she recognized the man and went out to talk him down and help him find his way home.
That seemed a long time ago, but she could still remember calling Jeff at work afterward, needing reassurance or comfort or something, even just the sound of his voice.
“Sounds like you handled it just fine,” he’d said, dismissing the whole incident.
That was her. She’d been handling every complication since she was twelve years old.
She petted a puzzled but tolerant Chester for another few minutes until Riley rapped on the front door again. Her hands fumbled with the lock and it took her a minute to undo the lock.
“Did you see anything?”
“No murdering psychos. At least as far as I can find.”
“You think I was seeing things, then?”
“Nope. You definitely saw someone out there.”
“How can you tell?”
He pulled a bundle from behind his back and carried it into the house. “I found this in a corner of your porch, back in the shadows. I probably would have noticed it when I came up to the door if I hadn’t been so worried about you.”
She stared at the huge basket. “What on earth?”
“Any idea who might have dropped it off for you in the middle of the night?”
“No. That’s crazy. Why wouldn’t whoever delivered it ring the doorbell?”
“Good question.”
He was wearing evidence gloves, she realized. As if this was a crime scene or something.
“You think it’s…something weird?”
“I’m sure it’s only from one of your many well-wishers. But just to be safe, why don’t I take a look since I’m here and all?”
“This is Hope’s Crossing, not Oakland, Riley. I highly doubt somebody’s left me a pipe bomb in a basket of…of magazines.”
His look was wry. “You didn’t expect anybody to break into your store and vandalize it, did you?”
She had no answer to that, so she merely pushed her chair out of the way. Riley set the basket on the console table in the entryway and began sorting through the contents.
“Looks like we’ve got something in a package that says Sugar Rush. What’s that?”
“Gourmet sweet shop down on Pine Street, opened about a year ago. They have the best ice cream in town.”
“This says blackberry fudge.”
“Ooh. Yum. My favorite.”
He gave her a sidelong look that made her toes tingle like she’d missed a step. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Though I’m not picky,” she confessed. “I like all their fudge. And the ice cream, too. Oh, and their caramel drops. Which is probably why I stay away from Sugar Rush.”
He smiled a little and reached into the basket again. “What else do we have here? Looks like lotion.”
He opened the lid and sniffed. “Nice. Smells like flowers.”
“Christy Powell makes soap and lotion. Maybe the basket is from her.”
“I haven’t seen a note yet.”
He pulled out a thick stack of new magazines, what looked like one issue of just about every offering from the rack at Maura’s bookstore, including several beading magazines, she was touched to see.
Usually Claire didn’t read many magazines. She preferred a good novel as a general rule, but when she was stressed, sometimes leafing through a magazine that didn’t require a major commitment in energy or attention was the perfect thing.
Riley wasn’t done yet. He pulled out about a half dozen of the romantic suspense novels she preferred and then a bag of gourmet hard candy, also from Sugar Rush.
“Wow. Somebody knows what I like. I bet it was Alex.”
Riley didn’t appear convinced. “Why would she bother skulking around your porch and leaving secret baskets instead of what she usually does—barging in and sticking her nose wherever she wants?”
“Good point.” She smiled a little. For all his grousing about his sister, she knew Riley and Alex usually had a great relationship. Alex adored her only brother, as did all the McKnight sisters.
“You’re right. Alex has a key anyway. If it had been her, she would have dropped off the basket on the kitchen table and then started rearranging my spice cupboard and nagging me about why I haven’t replaced the saffron I bought six years ago or something.”
He smiled. “Note to self, keep Alex out of my kitchen.”
“Wise decision,” she answered.
He reached into the basket again. “Check this out. I wonder if it came from Maura’s store.”
He pulled out a small flowered bookmark with a dangly angel charm.
Claire gazed at it for an instant and then gasped as all the pieces clicked into place. “The angel! Oh, my word!”
“Angel?”
“I must have had a visit from the Angel of Hope. Darn! Now I really wish I had been able to see more than just a dark shape out there.”
Riley carefully set the bookmark back into the basket, his wary gaze trained on her like he expected her to start speaking in tongues any minute now. “You think you’ve had an angelic visitation? You haven’t been mixing that pain medication with anything, have you? Like bourbon? Or, I don’t know, maybe peyote?”
She laughed. “Really? Hasn’t anybody in town told you about our angel?”
Riley shook his head and for the first time she realized how tired he looked. His features were drawn and his eyes wore dark
smudges underneath.
Between Layla’s funeral, the accident and settling into a new job, he must be exhausted and here she was dragging him out on a rainy night for the most ridiculous reason when he probably only wanted to find his bed.
“What angel?” he asked.
“It’s not important. Remind me to tell you about it sometime when you’re not so worn-out.”
“What’s wrong with now?”
“Nothing, but you look like you’re going to fall over if you don’t get some rest. This obviously isn’t a bomb or hate mail or anything. I think your work here is done, Chief. Thank you.”
“I want to hear about the Angel of Hope. How can I not? If I’ve got heavenly visitors in my town, I’d like to know.”
“I’ll tell you, but do you mind if I find a more comfortable spot first?” The chair was convenient but keeping her leg down like this was invariably painful.
He instantly looked contrite. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Need a push?”
“No, I’ve got a system.”
Using her cane and her right leg, she pushed herself back into the family room, grateful for the wood floors in her old house. In the family room, she went through the laborious process of transferring to the sofa with the aid of the crutches propped beside it, feeling about a hundred years old again.
“Need help?” he asked again.
“I’ve got it.”
“Of course you do.” Somewhat to her surprise, Riley took off his coat and draped it over the back of a chair, looking as if he planned to settle in at least for a while.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shook his head, an exasperated sort of look in his eyes. “It’s freezing in here. You need a fire.”
“It’s a little tough to start one when I can’t quite muck around on the hearth,” she admitted. “I can nudge up the furnace, though.”
“The furnace won’t do you much good if the wind knocks out the power, which it probably will.”
Because she knew he was right, she didn’t complain when he headed to the lovely old mantel and grabbed kindling out of the basket on the hearth. With efficient movements, he had a little fire blazing merrily in just a few moments. Chester barely waited for Riley to stand up again before he replaced him on the hearth rug, circling his sturdy little body three or four times before settling into his ultimate comfort spot.
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