by Karen Rose
She took her keys gingerly, not even brushing his hand in the process. And he felt disappointed. Then felt annoyed at feeling disappointed. He sat back firmly in his seat. “You put the card for the towing company in your purse. They said your car would be ready by tomorrow at noon. And don’t forget to call the Raleigh PD for their report for your insurance company.”
Her expression went blank for just a moment and she blinked. “I’m sorry, my brain just crashed. What was the name of the officer again?”
“You’re feeling the aftereffects of an adrenaline high,” Steven explained, reaching for a pen and one of his business cards. He scrawled the officer’s name on the back. “His name is Al Pullman and he’s with the Investigative Division.” Steven hesitated, then blurted, “My office number’s on the front. Call me if you need anything else.”
She took the card, her lower lip clamped between her teeth. “Do you have another card?”
Silently he gave her one and watched as she wrote on the back in neat block letters. She looked up, still biting her lower lip, and he felt the sizzle of lust head straight down along with the urge to bite her lip himself. But that was crazy. Primal and crazy. In a few minutes, he’d be gone, never to see her again.
She held out the card. “I’m not making a ...a... pass at you, Mr. Thatcher,” she said softly. “Truly. I just wanted you to know I care very much about Brad. If you need to talk, here’s my home number and my e-mail address.” She gave a little shrug. “He’s important to me, too.”
He slipped the card into his pocket. “Thank you.”
“I guess I’ll get out of your hair now. Thanks for everything.” She got out and waved.
He watched her limp up the sidewalk. The apartment unit had a floor-to-ceiling window, three stories high, and through it he could see the flights of stairs winding to the top. That meant there was probably no elevator. And she’d written Apartment 3-D on the back of his business card. Third floor. He continued to watch as she limped inside and climbed to the first landing, one plodding step at a time. Then stopped to rest. And slip off her ridiculous shoes.
Steven sighed. He was the cause of her injury, even though her shoes were ridiculous. Sitting here while she navigated the stairs alone went against everything his mother had ever taught him. Open doors, hold umbrellas, pull out chairs and assist those you’ve maimed. Well, Mom had never said the last one, but she would have, had the occasion come up. Helping would be the gentlemanly thing to do. Helping would also give him one last opportunity to feel her brush against him and to smell the soft fragrance that made him wonder if it was any stronger on her bare skin. He drew a deep breath. Bare skin. That particular picture was one he should put out of his mind that minute. But once there, the picture stubbornly refused to budge. It was a very nice picture.
If he was perfectly honest, he wanted to see her to her door, whatever his motivation. So do it, putz, he told himself. He didn’t need to tell himself twice. He was out of his car and at her side by the time she was halfway up the next flight of stairs.
She made a face at his appearance. “Now I’m really going to feel guilty at keeping you from your kids. I’m fine. Go home, Mr. Thatcher.”
He took her shoes in his right hand and offered his left arm. “Steven,” he said before he realized the correction was coming out of his mouth. Once said, the wall of formality couldn’t be rebuilt. Even if he’d wanted to. Which, given the picture still flashing in his mind, he didn’t want to.
She took his arm, embarrassed gratitude in her expression. “Jenna. And thanks. You really don’t have to.” She hopped up a step, leaning on his arm. “But thanks just the same.”
By the time they reached her apartment she was flushed and heated and he more so, and very glad he was wearing his suit jacket. It was a good thing he was never seeing her again. His heart couldn’t take it.
“Thank you, once again.” She smiled and extended her hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Steven. Thank you for being there when I needed you.”
He took her hand. “Thank you for caring about my son.” Her next words were cut off by a pandemonium of barking. She glanced at her door and gently pulled her hand from his. “I need to go.” She gestured at the door. “I have to, um, walk the dog.”
“What kind of dogs are they?”
Her eyes darted sideways. “Just one,” she said brightly. “Just one dog.” She glanced over to her neighbor’s door and rolled her eyes. “I’m all right, Mrs. Kasselbaum. No need for concern.”
Steven looked to his left, just in time to see the neighbor’s door close. “Nosy neighbor?”
She rolled her violet eyes again. “You have no idea.” The barking continued and she put her key in the door. “Well, um, thanks again.”
Steven raised a brow. She was trying to get rid of him and he thought he knew why. “Your dog get any media attention, Jenna?”
She looked startled. “Why would you say that?”
He shrugged. “Seems to me a two-headed dog would be the toast of the talk-show circuit.” He leaned forward. “That’s an awful lot of barking for just one canine,” he murmured and watched her cheeks color up and her brows snap together in irritation.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she snapped and opened the door. “Come in and close the door.”
He followed her into her apartment, unsurprised to see two identical German shepherds crouched, teeth bared. Their barks had turned to ominous growls.
“I’m fine,” she told them. “No bark. Down.” Both dogs dropped to their bellies, barking ceased, but eyes still narrowed and wary. “They’re trained,” she said defensively.
“Impressive.”
“They wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Steven shook his head. “I don’t know about that.” “They’re trained to defend. If they perceive me to be in danger . . .” She shrugged.
He lifted his eyes from the dogs and looked around her living room. It was decorated in warm browns, a large soft-looking sofa dominating one wall. The far wall was covered in a collage of framed photographs. He would have liked to walk over and inspect each one, to learn more about this woman who cared for his son. But the one step he took brought new growls from the defending duo. “Why do you have two dogs trained to defend? And why all the secrecy?”
She limped over to an antique rolltop desk where every piece of paper was tidily filed in the various slots. She opened a drawer and began rummaging. “I’m a woman living alone. I thought it was safer than having a gun. Where is that ace bandage?”
He nodded. “Wise. So why the lie? Why did you say there was only one?”
“Here it is.” She pulled out a rolled bandage and sat down on the chair in front of her desk. “Turn around, please.”
“Excuse me?”
Her face flushed once again. “You’ve already seen more of me today than I show at the beach. I want to wrap my ankle and my stocking’s in the way. Please, turn around.”
Steven’s breath caught in his throat even as he turned around obediently. The memory of those long legs with the sheer stockings was enough to suck the air right out of his lungs. He gritted his teeth at the sound of whispering silk, knowing it was sliding across that long expanse of leg. He clenched his hands into hard fists, wishing it were his own hands doing the sliding. He breathed in. Breathed out. It didn’t help.
He really shouldn’t be here. He should leave. Just a few more minutes, he promised himself. He cleared his throat. “Why lie about having two dogs?” he asked.
“Because my lease says I can only have one,” she answered. “You can turn back around now. I’m decent.”
And to his chagrin, she was, her skirt back in place, her fingers nimbly winding the last few inches of bandage around her ankle. “So why do you have two?”
She secured the end of the bandage before looking up with a grimace. “Because I’m a sucker who can’t say no to sad eyes and a wet tongue,” she replied, her tone wry. “I used to volunteer at the local shelter and
one day somebody brought in a very pregnant female shepherd they’d found abandoned. She had a litter of eight pups and I took one.” She pointed to the dog on the left. “Jim, shoes.” The dog got up and trotted back to the bedroom. “Jean-Luc here was passed over again and again because he had a bad eye, and he was coming up on his time limit.” She sighed. “I couldn’t let him die—I’d taken care of him from the day he was born. So I brought him home with me.” She snapped her fingers. “Jean-Luc, slippers.” The other dog got up and followed the path the first had taken. “Jean-Luc’s eye cleared up eventually. I’m only supposed to have one dog here, but I’m on the waiting list for some places that allow two.” She shrugged guiltily. “So I walk them one at a time and keep hoping everybody will think they’re the same dog until I can get into one of the multi-dog apartments.” She frowned. “Mrs. Kasselbaum suspects,” she said darkly. “She’s just the sort to rat on me to the building manager and get me evicted.”
Steven shook his head, unable to hold back the smile. “Today little white lies, tomorrow you’ll be robbing banks. It’s a slippery slope down the path of moral decline, Dr. Marshall.”
“Jenna,” she corrected and narrowed her eyes warily. “You won’t tell, will you? Because if you plan to, I’ll have to kill you and feed you to the boys.”
Steven shuddered. “No, I promise your landlord won’t hear it from me.”
She nodded once. “Well, all right then. So long as we’re clear. Oh, good, here they come. What took you guys so long?”
To Steven’s amazement both dogs came trotting back, one holding a pair of running shoes in his mouth, the other a pair of oversized fuzzy slippers with Tweety Bird’s head on the toes. “I wouldn’t have believed that if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. They must have spent a lot of time in obedience school.”
She grinned and his heart stuttered. “I tried to teach them to fetch pizza and beer from the fridge, but they kept confiscating the goods en route.” She scratched each dog behind the ears in turn.
“But you didn’t teach them to defend in obedience school.”
She shook her head while slipping her wrapped foot into Tweety Bird. “No, there was a rash of robberies near here when I first moved in so I found a training facility out past Pineville.” She looked up from tying her running shoe on the uninjured foot. “I hate guns, so I put the boys to work for their kibble.”
Pineville. Steven glanced at his watch and grimaced as she got up and limped to her coat closet. He still had hours of paperwork to do before bed tonight and he still hadn’t talked to Brad.
“So are you ready to stop procrastinating?” she asked from inside the closet.
Steven frowned. “What are you talking about?”
She reappeared, a golf club in one hand. “You’ve been putting off talking to Brad.” She followed up the accusation with a smile. “It’s okay. I procrastinated myself today, grading his test, then calling you. A bit of apprehension is perfectly normal. I don’t mind being a temporary distraction under the circumstances. But it’s time to go home, Steven.” She picked up a leash from her lamp table and clucked her tongue. One of the duo jumped up and she snapped the leash on the dog’s collar. “Good boy.” She opened the door and waited for him to follow.
“I am not procrastinating.”
She shrugged. “Okay.” She looked over her shoulder. “Make sure that door closes behind you.”
He closed the door and followed her down the stairs, the dog happily behind at her side. Once at the bottom, she stopped on the sidewalk next to his Volvo.
“I’m not procrastinating,” he repeated, a bit more weakly this time. “I don’t think.”
She smiled again. “Well, it’s either that or I’m utterly fascinating and a brilliant conversationalist—and I know that’s not true.” She hesitated, then lifted her hand to his upper arm and squeezed. “Have courage, Steven.”
She was standing close enough that he caught the faint scent of coconuts. Without her ridiculous shoes the top of her head was level with his chin. She’d fit perfectly in his arms. He knew it instinctively. Just as he knew she was wrong about one thing. He did find her utterly fascinating. With her face lifted up, her forehead was inches from his mouth. He looked into her eyes and for a brief moment thought about pressing a kiss to her forehead, then took a mental step back. It was crazy. Sheer lunacy. But he still wanted to.
God knew he didn’t get everything he wanted.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice husky. “For Brad.”
She took a few steps backward, leaning on the golf club, the dog matching her step for step. “Go home, Steven. Take care.”
Friday, September 30, 7:30 P.M.
Steven pulled into his driveway and simply sat for a moment, trying to quiet the riot in his mind. He was having a devil of a time focusing on anything. His brain would flip from Brad to Samantha Eggleston to Jenna Marshall’s violet eyes and her soft voice telling him to have courage. Then back to Brad and the whole damn slide show would begin again, accompanied by the rhythmic throbbing in his head. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
Brad. His son who had changed before his eyes. His son who was the most important person in the world right now. His son who needed him. His son who had responded to every overture in the last month with hostility and a defensive wall Steven had found unscalable.
A knock on his car-door window had him nearly jumping out of his skin. But he had to smile at the little freckled face whose nose was currently smushed against the glass, whose mouth was distorted into a terrible grimace by little fingers. Steven narrowed his eyes, then responded with a horrific face of his own, his eyelids pulled back, every tooth exposed, then stuck out his tongue.
They held their individual poses, each waiting the other out until Nicky folded and pulled back from the window. There had been a long time when Nicky couldn’t play. He still rarely laughed and never slept through the night. Steven could only hope soon they’d reach the end of those horrible days, never to return. He climbed from the car and pulled his baby into his arms, hugging him tight. Nicky pushed against him, struggling against the hug and Steven immediately loosened his hold. It had been that way since “the incident” six months ago. Physically unharmed, his son’s spirit had been broken. Steven missed Nicky’s giggles and spontaneous laughter.
But he missed Nicky’s hugs most of all.
Steven hoisted his littlest boy high.
“Sorry, baby.”
Nicky pursed his lips. “I’m not a baby.”
Steven sighed. “Sorry, I forgot. You keep doing that growing thing, no matter how many times I tell you to stop.”
Nicky lifted a brow. “The book didn’t work either.” Steven chuckled. It was their favorite parley these days. He’d threaten to stunt Nicky’s growth by putting a book on his head and Nicky would grab the heaviest book he could carry. His little arms were growing stronger—last week he’d grabbed the thickest dictionary on Steven’s shelf. “I’ll just have to get a bigger book.”
“Can’t. Aren’t any bigger in the whole house, Daddy.” “Then we’ll have to go to the library.” He lifted Nicky to his shoulders and jogged toward the house, bouncing Nicky all the way. “Duck,” he said just before they passed through the front door. Inside, Steven drew a deep breath. “Smells good. What was for supper?”
“Pot roast with mashed potatoes.” Nicky wiggled until Steven set him on the hardwood floor. “Aunt Helen saved you a plate. She said you were going to get fat from all that fast food.”
“And wasn’t that just so kind of her,” Steven said dryly. Nicky poked him in the stomach. His still very flat stomach. “She said you’d never be able to catch a pretty wife if you got fat.”
Steven rolled his eyes. Catching him a wife was Helen’s mission in life. He crouched down and motioned Nicky to come closer. “We guys got to stick together. Warn me true. Does Helen have a new lady lined up?”
Nicky covered his mouth with both ha
nds. And winked. Steven laughed aloud even as he dreaded this latest battle with his aunt. A tenacious matchmaker, she never gave up. He ruffled Nicky’s red hair. “Benedict Arnold.”
“Who’s that?”
“A traitor.” Steven straightened and looked around, seeing neither of his other two sons. “Where are your brothers, honey?”
“Matt’s playing video games.” His face fell. “Brad’s in his room.”
Steven looked up the stairs, wishing he knew what to say when he reached the top. “Can you do me a favor, Nicky? Can you tell Aunt Helen I need to take a shower and head back out?”
“But—” Nicky started, then sighed. “Okay, Daddy.”
The beleaguered acceptance hurt more than a temper tantrum. He was spending more and more time away from home these days. “Nicky, what do you say we go fishing next weekend?”
His baby’s face brightened marginally. “Promise?” Given the Eggleston case, that might be a hard promise to keep. “I can promise to try.”
Nicky looked away. “Okay. I’ll go tell Aunt Helen.” Wishing he could make an honest-to-goodness promise that he could keep, Steven watched his youngest drag his feet on the way to the kitchen. Wishing he weren’t so bone-tired, he climbed the stairs and knocked on his oldest son’s bedroom door. “Brad?”
“What?”
Steven closed his eyes at the belligerent reply. “I need to talk to you, son.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
Steven’s temper simmered and with an effort he slapped a lid on it. “Tough. You’re going to.” He pushed open the door and entered, closing the door and leaning back against it. His eyes took a ride around the room, looking for anything that was out of place, not sure what he’d do if he found it. But everything looked normal, with the exception of the unmade bed and his unkempt son sitting against his pillows, his dirty high-tops perched unapologetically on the rumpled blanket. Brad’s dark hair was dirty and uncombed, his face heavy with dark stubble, his bloodshot eyes narrowed suspiciously. Clean and kempt, Brad was the spitting image of his mother. At this moment his son looked like an extra from a biker flick.