“What I figured out from Dottie is that he didn’t tell her until right before he died. By then he thought it was too late. He gave her my mother’s name. It took Dottie a while as my mom doesn’t use her maiden name, but she found us. Dottie told my mother she planned to contact me within the month if she didn’t hear from me first. That’s what forced my mother’s hand—she had to tell me or face my anger when I found out from a stranger.”
She shook her head, closed her eyes and focused on the cold wind flowing through her hair. The wind lifted it away from her face and she breathed in the clean air that was Whidbey’s trademark. Ronald stood next to her, leaning against her leg as if to indicate he was taking it all in, too.
“Your husband was killed at the same time?”
“The same week.”
Jonas quietly whistled. “That’s harsh.”
“Life often is.” She opened her eyes and met his. “I don’t plan on making it any more chaotic than it needs to be, though. There’s not a hell of a lot I have control over, but I have the ability to choose where and how I’ll raise my child.”
“I admire that about you.”
“Do you? Really? Because it’s why I’m not budging on the house, Jonas. It’s mine, and it’s Pepé’s. He’ll have the chance to decide whether he wants to raise his own family here.”
He looked away from her and out toward the sinking sun as it disappeared in slices over the mainland. Serena knew she could come to care for this man.
Too much.
* * *
“THANKS FOR A nice afternoon, Jonas. Even with our...forest interlude.” She offered him her best lawyer smile. He stood on the porch and she deliberately didn’t invite him inside. Pepé was already in the house and Ronald contentedly sniffed the perimeter of their yard, happy to be back on his own turf.
“It was my pleasure. I only hope I didn’t make it harder on you than it should’ve been. My family likes both you and Pepé, you know.”
She did know that. She also knew that their opinion of her, while favorable, didn’t matter as much as she’d once believed it did.
“It’s been a long day, Jonas. Pepé needs me—it’s bath time.”
“Friends hug goodbye.” He held his arms open, waiting.
“Of course.”
She took a step toward him so she could give him a quick, friendly hug. Ignoring her lips and the fact that they wanted to do a lot more than smile at Jonas wasn’t easy, but she was an adult. She could do this.
He offered her a similarly light, nonsexual hug.
I am not disappointed.
Well, maybe she was a little bit bummed. Maybe a lot. Maybe she still needed that cold shower.
“Bye, Jonas.”
“Good night, Serena.”
She shut the door and because it had beveled glass windows in the frame she stood back and waited until she heard his vehicle start up and drive away. Then she fell against the door and sank to the ground.
Life on Whidbey was supposed to be her gateway to the simple life. Not the complicated, heart-twisting adventure she was on at the moment.
“Mom! Can we read Captain Underpants after my bath?” Pepé skidded into the hall in front of her, in his socks.
“How about something else tonight? What about one of your Christmas books?”
“Can we read The Smallest Christmas Tree?”
She nodded; the book by Linda Cardillo had become one of their favorites. “Sure. Why don’t you go get your pajamas and I’ll bring Ronald inside. Then we’ll draw your bath.”
“Great!” He scooted back down the hall toward his room. Tears welled up as Serena allowed herself to embrace the reality of Pepé’s life. He was a happy six-year-old. No more emotional angst over his daddy’s passing, no missing his family in Texas, since he’d been so young when she’d moved them out here.
She was about to accept her dream position at the top firm on island. They had no financial worries, and a house that was truly their home.
It was everything she’d dared to hope for.
She would not let any regrets over what Jonas Scott wanted interfere with their happiness.
* * *
SERENA WOKE TO the sound of the gale-force winds rocking the house. The eaves and roof shingles made a constant rippling noise that reminded her of dominoes falling in perfect cadence.
“Ronald?”
Ronald lay at the foot of her bed, curled up into a ball—the way he preferred to sleep during cold weather—but his head was erect and his ears were pricked. It was still a week before Christmas and not officially winter yet, but the arctic air that was dipping down into the Northwest made it feel like they lived in Alaska.
The house shuddered and sighed in the wind. It wasn’t the first gale-force storm they’d had since she’d moved here, but it appeared to be the worst to date. According to the weather reports, it might last through tomorrow afternoon at least.
Pepé hadn’t run into her room, so she sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he was sleeping soundly.
Still, she went through the checklist in her head for the house prep needed for subzero temperatures. She’d unfastened the two garden hoses, left the kitchen cabinet doors under the sink open for the pipes to stay warm and moved her SUV into the garage.
Ronald issued a low growl and Serena blinked.
The alpacas! She’d forgotten to make sure that Snowball and Cami were okay in their small barn.
“We’ve got some quick work to do, Ronald.”
Ronald jumped off the bed and she made short work of shoving on her fleece warm-up suit. She peeked in on Pepé to see him snoring softly under his Frozen comforter, his arm above his head in total repose.
Once she was at the back kitchen door, she jammed her feet into her work boots, grateful for the wool socks she’d stocked up on at an end-of-season sale last year.
Ronald alerted her. His low-throated growl and raised hackles as he looked at the back door unnerved her.
“It’s the wind, puppy. You stay here and protect Pepé. Got it?”
Ronald stilled, but continued his warning noises, no doubt expecting to go outside with her.
Serena felt completely safe on the island, and especially in their small area of Whidbey, which was protected from the major highway by acres of trees and meadows. It would take an intruder extra effort to come out here, and she’d have ample warning with her long drive the only way up to the house.
But she knew that strange things could happen, so she grabbed the baseball bat she kept near her bed.
The alpacas had to be checked and she wasn’t going to go out there and leave Pepé alone in the house, even though it was only a couple of hundred yards away, unless Ronald stayed with Pepé. In the house. Still, she felt a twinge as she made the quick walk to the new barn.
Inside she was relieved to find her two alpacas huddled near each other, blinking at her with their cartoonishly large eyes as she interrupted their humming. Pepé loved to hear them hum at night, but no way was she waking him now. Besides, school hadn’t been canceled for tomorrow. Not yet.
Confident the alpacas were comfortably settled, she shut off the light and left the barn. She locked the main door and turned around to see a large male figure not two feet away from her.
Serena screamed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Whidbey Island
Nine days before Christmas
JONAS TOSSED AND turned like a teenager with his first crush on a girl. He wanted to blame it on the storm but couldn’t muster the energy to try to fool himself.
Serena was the reason he was awake. There was more to her, more to his attraction to her, than the damn house.
He wasn’t ready for a major involvement with anyone. She’d made it clear she wasn’t the c
asual-sex type, which he’d known from the minute she and Pepé walked into the clinic a month ago.
Was it only a month ago? Barely. Was it possible to fall for someone after such a short time? The woman had a child, for Pete’s sake. And the kicker was that Jonas liked Pepé. A lot. He was a good kid. He deserved all the love Serena gave him and more.
The kid deserved a dad.
Jonas groaned. He was not father material. He loved his nieces and was happy to see how much joy the girls brought Paul and Mary. Jonas had been mobile for too long, always going to the next crisis on the globe for the past two decades. Although he planned to serve out his time on Whidbey until he retired in five years or so, he still didn’t think he was a good candidate for parenthood. Not to mention marriage.
He groaned and sat up in bed, swinging his feet over the side. What was he, seventeen?
“Maybe twenty years ago,” he muttered.
A trip to the shelter in Coupeville next weekend might be in order. A dog would get his mind off things he couldn’t have, shouldn’t entertain.
Serena.
When he kissed her she enjoyed it as much as he did. It was in her subtle reactions as well as her boldness—the way her fingers dug into him, the way her tongue fiercely matched his explorations.
He’d blown it tonight. It had been going well, and she’d been relaxing and even laughing at his stupid jokes. But he couldn’t keep his hands, or his tongue, to himself. The town house shook from the force of the wind and he paused. If it was this bad here in town, it was twice as rough out on the finger of land the farmhouse sat on. When the wind blew, the power always went, and the cold could be unbearable until the woodstove was going.
Did Serena know how to light the woodstove?
And then the pipes—they’d burst a couple of times. It happened in the lower part of the farmhouse, the part that had been added on in the eighties.
Serena was an adult. She’d managed in the house for six months. Besides, who said she’d lost power?
“I’m not her caretaker.” As a nurse practitioner, his automatic response was figuring out how to take care of someone. He had to work at not thinking that everyone’s well-being was his responsibility.
It was the very reason he wasn’t good marriage material. He got palpitations at the thought of having to worry about a spouse day in and day out. And then kids...
His throat tightened and his anxiety shifted from a slow jog to a run.
“I’m not in the med unit. I’m back home.”
Thankfully his post-deployment nightmares had been few, and this was the first real anxiety he’d experienced since he’d returned. Intellectually he knew that he was in good shape; he certainly wasn’t suffering like so many of his colleagues.
And his anxiety hadn’t stirred until...
Serena.
The bedside clock glared 3:00 a.m. and he knew sleep was going to be at least several hours away. He’d be lucky to grab an hour before he had to get ready for work.
His bare feet were cold on the kitchen tiles as he moved about the dark room. He hit the switch for the under-cabinet light and flicked on his electric teakettle. As he grabbed a mug from the cabinet, his glance landed on the kitchen faucet.
He looked at the clock over the stove to confirm the time before he picked up his cell phone.
Serena didn’t answer. She hadn’t let her battery run out, had she? They were probably without power. He’d bet asses to doughnuts that she didn’t know how to work the generator stored in the oldest shed on the property, farthest from the house.
“Come on, Serena, pick up.”
When her voice came on and told him to leave a message, Jonas unplugged the teakettle.
* * *
“IT’S OKAY! NOTHING to worry about here, lady.” The man sneered at her in the dark, his face unrecognizable in the glow of the motion detector light over the barn. She’d never seen him before.
Serena’s heart pounded and she cursed herself for resting the bat against the side of the barn when she went in. She grasped at it but it was out of reach. She wished she had a shovel or a hoe in her hand. Anything. She was completely defenseless and she sensed this stranger knew it. He was here, though, and not at the house, thank God. She’d only been gone a few minutes—and he couldn’t have gotten into her house. Ronald would attack any stranger who entered.
“Who are you?”
“A friendly soul who needs a dry place for the night. That’s all. You wouldn’t have found me if you hadn’t been so nosy.”
As he spoke his spittle shot out in front of him and mixed with the icy snowflakes that were beginning to fall. The wind drove the snow into her eyes and she blinked to keep her vision from blurring. His eyes appeared bloodshot, glassy.
What was he high on?
A shiver ran through her as she recalled recent news reports about the area meth rings. And about the heroin addicts who stole prescription narcotics to support their habit. All the headlines screamed at her in a cluster of scary possibilities.
Keep him talking. That was what she knew how to do.
“How did you get here?” she asked.
Her teeth were chattering but she had to hold her ground, keep him far away from Pepé. Oh, God, what if he had more addicts with him? Surreptitiously she groped in her pocket for her cell phone and came up empty.
Damn it, she’d left it on her nightstand.
“My car tuckered out. I walked in from the road.”
He swayed on his feet and it was clear he was under the influence of something. She didn’t smell booze on his breath, only a sweetly rancid scent, one she usually associated with sickness or death.
Think, think, think. Keep him talking.
Every instinct, everything she’d ever learned in any case study, raced through her mind and she fought to stay focused. Pepé’s life might depend upon it.
“I don’t have any narcotics in the house.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He grabbed a length of her hair. His height and his physical advantage over her kept her standing in place. As soon as he swayed again, she’d give him a shove and get past him.
“What do you want?” She used her attorney voice and thought of the many ways she would prosecute this derelict who dared to come on her property and threaten her, her home, her child.
He didn’t know about Pepé. He couldn’t.
“I just need a little help, honey. You can help me. You’ve got some painkillers up in that house, don’t you?”
He slowly blinked and bent his head toward hers as if he were moving in a dream.
Serena kneed him in the groin and shoved against his chest as hard as she could. She saw his eyes roll back as his head hit the side of the small barn, but his weight shifted again and he fell against her leg. Stars flared under her eyelids as his chin slammed into her face and knocked the back of her head against the wall.
“Ahhh!” Pain radiated through her cheekbone and she fought to stay conscious. She had to get back to the house, to Pepé.
* * *
JONAS’S GUT RARELY failed him and when he saw the beat-up car at the end of Serena’s driveway he knew his need to get to the house was warranted.
His military training had him peering at the license plate. He memorized the number. California. It could be anyone, but someone legitimately visiting Serena and Pepé wouldn’t have stopped here—they would have made the half-mile drive up to the house.
Shutting off his headlights, Jonas relied on the thousands of other times he’d gone up the driveway, since it was all but pitch-dark and the blowing wind had started to include snow.
His stomach dropped when he saw the house lights, including those in the small barn extension Serena had installed for those yarn-making animals she’d raved about.
; It took him thirty seconds flat to park, get out of the car and run to the front door where he pounded loudly. Ronald’s barking was all he heard past the roar of the wind. He ran around to the back door and peered through the kitchen windows as he tried the door. It opened and Ronald sprang out at him, teeth bared. Jonas raised his arms for protection, but Ronald wasn’t interested in him as he raced off into the dark.
Toward the barn.
Jonas dashed behind him, wishing he had his nine-millimeter handgun. He didn’t know what he was going to find when he got to wherever Ronald was running, but he knew it might be very ugly.
He’d seen villages, soldiers and civilians ripped apart physically and mentally by numerous battles. Nothing prepared him to see a huge man hulking against the barn wall, next to what he instinctively knew was Serena’s prone body. Ronald had his teeth bared and he growled ferociously a foot in front of the assailant. Jonas wasn’t ready for his emotional response but his Navy training kicked in and with minimal, almost surgical moves he took out the criminal, not stopping until the guy was flat on his back with Ronald growling over him.
“Good dog.”
Jonas heard Serena moaning, so he risked the few seconds it took to dial 9-1-1, then threw his phone onto the ground, leaving it on speaker while he tended to her.
He gave the emergency operator directions and informed her of his assessment of Serena as he went through his exam, one he’d done too many times in a war zone.
Anger threatened to break through his professional bearing more than once as he noted an egg-size lump on her forehead, a definitely broken nose and a swollen lip. He wanted to kill the monster with his bare hands.
He kept his eyes on Serena’s and refrained from doing anything that would take him from her side.
“Pepé,” she whispered between the sobs that were starting to rack her frame. He heard the sirens and squeezed her hands.
“I’m sure he’s okay, honey. I’ll go check on him as soon as the paramedics get here.”
Harlequin Superromance November 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Christmas at the CoveNavy ChristmasUntil She Met Daniel Page 45