by Zee Monodee
Pang!
A pebble hit the glass, startling him. Small cracks appeared in the pane, and through the splintery surface on the other side, the mask of brooding fury on Emma’s face also cracked. Blimey, she seemed on the brink of tears.
Without thinking twice, he strode out of the house.
“Hello.” He greeted her with a soft nod, and kept his voice gentle and unthreatening.
Her lower lip trembled, her gaze going from the window to him.
“How’s the ankle?” He thought better of ploughing in; instead, he took a diverted approach that would hopefully reassure her that she needn’t fear him.
She blinked, opened her mouth as if to reply, then her face grew shuttered, and she shrugged.
Ouch. Tween trouble with a capital T. Poor Margo. Speaking of ... He glanced around, not finding the intriguing ‘Ice Queen’ anywhere. “You came alone?”
Emma shrugged again. “She’s in the house at the rear.”
He winced. ‘She,’ not ‘Mummy.’ What would she be doing next door?
The estate agent’s visit. The woman had called him that morning, about a prospective client for Grace’s house.
As he gazed at Emma, the wheels turned inside his head. Could Margo be settling here?
Emma rubbed the gravel in the driveway with a booted foot. The movement gathered momentum, and with a sudden lunge, she kicked a large rock with her left foot. The projectile flew high, curling in a perfect arc. He whistled—she had a good shot.
Awed, he returned his attention to her. Remembering she played football, he grinned. “Tell me something. Does the guv’nor make you take all free kicks?”
Her eyes grew wide, and her pretty, elfin face lit up. “How’d you know?”
The sullen tween had disappeared in a blink. In its place, a raving football aficionado smiled.
He’d done well to use the sport talk to break the ice.
“You’ve got a great left kick.” He pointed at her boot. “Same for the right?”
“Nah. Just the left.”
Good thing. The injury could’ve set her back. “What position do you hold?”
“I’m in midfield, left winger.”
Made sense. He imagined her as very quick and swift on her feet, able to serve the ball into the penalty box to waiting attackers with speed and precision. “Like Beckham and Zidane.”
He didn’t think she could glow more, yet at the compliment, she beamed.
He crossed the distance to reach her side. “So, that right ankle giving you any trouble?”
She shook her head. “Just some pain. Shouldn’t force it, like you said, but I’ll need to start using it soon, for the team. We’ve got a big game in three weeks, and I can’t afford to be out, or even on the substitutes’ bench.”
“Take it gradually. You also can’t afford to hurt yourself while it’s healing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Lord Almighty!” Helen came flapping out of the surgery. “Doctor, the window is broken in your office.”
Her gaze darted from Jamie to Emma, and she came to a standstill on the porch.
Recognition played on her weary face. He stepped forward, between Helen and the girl, before his nurse could berate her. Emma’s small face had grown pinched with fear, and she glanced up at him, her big eyes wide with panic. He placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s okay, Helen. No real harm done.”
“But, Doctor—”
He frowned, and she shut up. He’d thrown her that warning glare often enough in the past week for her to know he would brook no further argument. Helen had grown used to Gordy’s ways; his uncle had allowed her to rule the surgery as she saw fit. She’d have to get used to Jamie’s directions from here on.
Even for three months.
Or longer.
Indefinitely, maybe.
He gave himself a mental shake. He couldn’t hasten the decision to stay. With a nod, he indicated the house, where the phone rang.
The nurse departed, her spine straight, and her feet stomping. He hid a smile. Headstrong woman. She probably bowled his uncle over, but Jamie could be just as wilful as her. Still, he preferred to view their clashing encounters with amusement rather than frustration.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
He turned to Emma with a frown. “What’s with the ‘sir’?”
He hadn’t gotten that old, surely. The elderly people in the village hovered like a doting crew of grandparents and made him feel less than his thirty years, on most days. To have someone look up to him proved strange.
Another shrug. “Well, how am I supposed to address you? You’re way older than me.”
Well, thanks. “I think Jamie would do fine, don’t you think?”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
She smiled, which transformed her features from pretty to beautiful. In another few years, Emma Milburn would be a total looker—her father would spend a lot of time fending boys off. Who was that man, the one who’d gotten close enough to Margo to get her pregnant?
Emma trudged on the gravel, and the sound of the small rocks under her shuffling feet tore him away from his thoughts.
“I didn’t mean to break that window.”
“I know.” He paused, pondering whether to let the issue drop, or to pursue it. Something seemed to bother her. “Wanna talk about it?”
Emma threw her hands up. “She totally ruined my life!”
He smiled, and then presented a straight face when he addressed her. “I assume you mean your mother.”
“Uh-huh. Totally ruined!” She threw her hands up one more time and stomped a booted heel on the ground.
Poor Margo. “What did your mum do?”
“What didn’t she do? And she’s not my mum.”
Whoa, there. “I beg your pardon?”
Emma shook her head, as if she dealt with a dimwit. “Margo Mum is not my real mum.”
That made sense and at the same time, it didn’t. “You’re adopted?”
“No, silly. Margo Mum and my mum used to live together before, when I was a baby. Then my mum—my real birth mum—left Margo Mum. Margo Mum stayed in London.” She paused. “Some people say my birth mum wanted Margo Mum to have me if she died, but that Granny Edna didn’t agree. So Granny kept everything a secret, and Margo Mum only found out when Granny died.”
Say that again? He blew out a deep breath. That exposé had struck him as worse than Cliff Notes for EastEnders. And Emma’s mother and Margo had lived together?
Margo is a lesbian?
He groaned. Great. Just great. He’d finally met one woman he wanted to chase after, and she played for the other team. He didn’t dare hope prissy Margo could be bisexual.
To think she could come settle next door. Wouldn’t that be torture, to see her all the time and know he could never have her? He could always veto her bid, if she made one.
No, that would be mean. She must need the house, since she already had a cottage in the village.
He glanced at Emma. Margo had come to the house on the other side, and yet, the girl stood here. “Does your mum know where you are?”
Emma’s features scrunched. “As if she cares.”
He whistled softly. He’d suspected kids weren’t easy to handle, but growing girls seemed to be purgatory on Earth.
“Emma?” The panicked feminine voice drifted from a distance.
Margo must be out of her mind with worry. With a hand on Emma’s shoulder, he steered her towards the driveway leading to the other entrance of the double-fronted property.
Margo turned the corner and paused when she saw them. Her step then quickened, and she met them halfway, at the side of the dwelling.
“You scared the life out of me.”
The frantic words tumbled from those deep-pink lips, and she gripped the girl’s shoulders hard.
Her slender, manicured hand with the short fingernails brushed Jamie’s, and he almost curled his fist on the frai
l, girlish frame at the burst of electricity that shot up his fingers and arm. He let go, as if burnt.
Dead end, he reminded himself.
“Emma, don’t do that again, you hear me?”
Terror laced Margo’s voice. Her face held a delicate, pink flush, her hair in soft disarray where the locks brushed her Burberry trench. Quite a departure from the composed woman she had presented just last night.
“Oh, Mum. I was just taking a walk. No big deal, okay?” Emma twisted her body away from Margo’s hold then trudged away, towards the yard that opened in front of the other house entrance.
“I was worried,” Margo said to the girl’s departing figure.
“Yeah, whatever.”
She sighed. Her gaze on Emma, she seemed to have forgotten he stood there. She bit her full lower lip, and in that gesture, he saw all the frustration and puzzlement riddling her. She struck him as a woman who never wore her feelings on her sleeve, yet, right then, he could read her like an open book.
What he saw tugged at his heart and his compassion. She might be out of the question as a conquest and potential love interest, but she remained a person in need of help.
Of healing ...
He blinked. Where did that thought come from? Margo had to be one of those people who never let any thread in their life unravel.
In front of his eyes, right this instant, though, he witnessed her whole world crash down like fragile crystal as she gazed at Emma. Her hands clenched, as if she fought for control. She blinked rapidly; to ward off the tears, perhaps? Her shoulders and jaw tensed, and on her parted lips, he read the agony of the emotions that tore inside her at Emma’s blatant dismissal and rejection.
“All parents say it gets better,” he said to break the oppressive aura of gloom and desolation around her.
She turned, and for a moment, he thought he saw the shadows chased by a wave of longing and need as she took in his presence.
But he couldn’t kid himself. Margo Nolan would never see him that way.
*
The way he looked at her struck her as odd.
Margo turned her face away, ashamed. Of all the people to witness her failing at her task, it had to be Jamie.
Emma stopped at the corner. Her back still to them, she seemed hesitant to round the corner and go out of their scope of vision.
That tiny gesture comforted her. Maybe Emma wasn’t as tough as she wanted to project. She might want to give her grief, but only so she’d jostle her.
Margo bit her lip and chewed on the soft skin, until she realized what she did and stopped. She’d abandoned that nervous tic long ago; at twenty, to be precise, when Harry Milburn had waltzed into her world and made her yearn to be the kind of girly girl he’d favoured. Biting lips had meant eating the lipstick she’d started to wear so that the dashing and genius-type English and drama student at Cambridge would notice her.
Not the time to think of Harry.
Especially when Jamie stood a few feet away.
Turning to him, she raked her gaze over his tall frame. Dressed today in the torn jeans and a red and black plaid shirt, his big body radiated solidity and quiet strength. Gentleness, too. A hot flush crept up her face and burned her cheeks when she found herself wanting to touch the fabric, eager to know if the flannel would be as soft as the lamb’s wool jumper of the night before.
Damn hormones. Forty-two had to be too young for peri-menopause, right?
“Is something wrong?” His voice sounded thick, strained.
Come to think of it, the expression on his face echoed his tone. He didn’t look aloof as much as he resembled a man who took care to shield his feelings.
He hadn’t looked at her that way the day before, as if hesitant about her. She read his body language all too well, since it echoed every other witness’, and the people in victims’ entourages, she encountered on criminal cases.
“Emma was with you?” she asked, hoping to break the stilted, tension-filled silence between them.
“I found her outside my window, kicking stones.”
She winced. So the girl had taken it out on something, after all. “She’s angry.”
He chuckled, and she glanced up at him. Even in her three-inch heeled boots, she didn’t reach the same height as him. Day in, day out, she met men of all shapes and sizes and looked them in the eye. None intimidated or scared her—the louts, the criminals, the police officers, the psychopaths, or even the sociopaths.
Jamie Gillespie fitted none of these categories. Could that be the reason why he elicited such a daunting, immediate physical response in her? His background check had also come back squeaky-clean. In fact, he could be nominated for sainthood. Though that body spelled sin more than saint. She cringed at the same time she clenched her thighs tight to ward off the rush of desire tingling through her core.
Bugger!
“It’s par for the course at her age, to be moody,” he said.
“Hmm.” As a doctor who dealt with live people, he should know.
“Any idea why she flew off the handle today?”
She shrugged. The gesture felt unusual, almost alien to her. She never expressed anything other than competence and professionalism. But she shrugged again, and the second time, the movement of her shoulders came with more ease. The man here was Jamie—not a colleague, chief inspector, or, God forbid, her boss. She could be a normal person with him, not the superwoman of the lab and crime scenes. He’d already seen her and Emma’s relationship under its most unfavourable light. What did she have to lose, or to hide, asked the pragmatic, rational part of her?
What’s normal, Margo?
Shut up.
Jamie’s intent stare still focused on her, pierced her. She squirmed, for though his question might’ve been casual, nothing relaxed permeated the manner with which he waited for her answer.
So she turned away from Emma, who stood on the corner, and towards Jamie. She faced him head on, having to tilt her neck to peer at him.
And what a picture he presented. If she’d thought him hunky in the dark, the light of day shed flattering clarity on the chiselled cheekbones and angular jaw, highlighted the sharp relief of the aquiline nose. His eyes gleamed in the pale sunlight, the radiance of the soft rays picking up flecks of whiskey-gold in his chocolate-brown irises. A light breeze brushed his mahogany hair, the dark locks in the kind of disarray that suggested he ran his fingers through them often.
What would the strands feel like under her fingers? Silky, soft, clean ...
A small puff of air escaped her lips, before she gripped the soft flesh with her teeth. Pain jolted through her and brought her back to the moment.
“Ms. Nolan?”
“Margo,” she said, in a breathless tone she had never, ever heard from her throat before.
His eyelids came down in a slow blink.
“Margo.”
Her name came out as a low, grumbling whisper in his deep, masculine voice.
Her lips had gone so dry, they now hurt, and she darted the tip of her tongue out to moisten them.
His gaze focused on her face, and she had no doubt he watched her mouth.
Joyous power burst around in her chest. The feeling soared through her, as uplifting as when she matched clues and cause of death into the turning point in a homicide inquiry, just before she handed her findings to the chief inspector in charge.
She held the key then in her work, a moment that confirmed her as a great forensic pathologist.
And right this instant, she held another key, the one that could unlock inherent feminine power, that could make a man hers in a blink.
Like Jamie was hers then.
Who knew being a seductress granted so much clout? She soared, giddy, high, elated ...
And what a total hussy!
Margo crashed to Earth. Heat didn’t just flood her cheeks—the raging burn scorched her whole being.
She was thinking and behaving like a total trollop, like the very kind of women she despised
, because they used their feminine wiles like ruthless predators, to pounce on unsuspecting men. So many girls in her class at university had sought to win good grades by charming the male teachers. Their behaviour had made her sick.
Good grief.
Whack!
The sound clattered in her ears, and both she and Jamie turned towards the house. Emma glared at them—or at her—and kicked another rock at the brick wall. Her narrowed gaze darkened, and Margo cringed, easily able to imagine the venom in the glower. She stepped back, only to bump smack into Jamie.
Solid strength—pure muscle, she’d bet—met her from beneath the soft shirt and rough jeans. Thank goodness she had her coat, trousers, a linen jacket, and a silk camisole as layers between his warmth and her skin.
He brought his big hands up and grasped her upper arms to steady her.
She drifted into that moment. When was the last time she had experienced a man’s body close, had his subtle, masculine strength shield and protect her?
Much too long.
Or even, never, because no one had ever made her feel safe. Not even Harry ...
She wanted to burrow into Jamie, have more than his hands on her. His arms around her would be welcome, as would the firm length of his lean body pressed against hers.
A moan rose in her throat, at the same moment he unclenched his grip and released her.
He retreated a few steps, and she congratulated herself for blocking the demeaning sound before it could pass her lips.
What are you thinking?
Whack!
She had Emma to think about. Her daughter had taken matters too far.
“Stop it right this instant,” she yelled at the insolent girl.
Emma stared at her, shoulders thrown back in defiance. She then disappeared around the corner.
Lord, what would she do?
“She’s giving you trouble.”
You don’t know the half of it.
“It’s normal, you know. The mood swings,” he said with a shrug.
“Over hair braided too tightly?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Incredulity laced his voice. No wonder, because she, too, hadn’t believed a girl could throw a tantrum over hair braided too tight. Until Emma had made her point. He wouldn’t understand unless she explained, in detail. The way things went, Jamie Gillespie already pinned her down as a mother in over her head with her daughter.