“Good,” she muttered.
“But maybe you could call me Del, for now, or pops, or dad...”
“I have a Dad,” she interrupted.
Not a very good one, but he kept that opinion to himself. “You don’t have to make this so hard. I’m trying, I really am. I don’t know what you want.”
He expected an argument, or a terse explanation of what she wanted, which probably did not include a brand-new father, but Noelle remained silent. He liked her defiance better than this unnatural quiet. “Vic tells me you play softball.”
“What of it?”
“She also tells me you’re pretty good.”
“I guess.”
“I used to play baseball. If you ever need any help with anything...”
Noelle sighed tiredly, and Del felt like something on the bottom of her shoe. “What, are we supposed to bond today, or something? Is this, like, a belated father-daughter day?”
In spite of her outward contempt, her hard shell, Noelle was every bit as vulnerable as Vic. Del wanted to break Preston Lowell in half for doing this to them. “I’m pushing too hard, aren’t I?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Fine,” he said, losing what was left of his patience. “Forget it. Call me whatever you want. Give me the tough-girl attitude every day. Push as hard as you can, but I’m not going away, dammit.”
“Language, Wilder,” Noelle chastised, mocking her mother.
“No, you’re not dancing out of this one with that smart mouth of yours.” He leaned closer. No more mister nice guy, no more skirting around the issue. “Like it or not, I am your father. I’m not going anywhere, Noelle. You’re not going to chase me away, no matter how hard you try.”
Her face fell. “I don’t imagine I’ll need to,” she said softly. “I imagine you’ll run all on your own.”
He leaned down until he was almost nose to nose. “I will never run,” he seethed. “You’re going to get so sick of me, kiddo, you might occasionally wish I’d run, but I won’t. I might make a great softball coach. I will probably help you with your homework whether you want help or not. And I can’t wait to meet this Chris of yours and let him know who’s boss. I’ll probably be a geek and embarrass you in front of all your friends.”
“Big surprise,” she mumbled.
His frustration faded. “I have a lot of lost time to make up for, and if I make mistakes it’s because I’ve never done this before.”
“Chill, Wilder, you’re just a...”
“Call me a sperm donor again and I’ll ground you until you’re thirty.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He turned away from Noelle, shoved the video into the VCR and returned to the couch to sit next to her. “Try me,” he said.
As the movie began he added, “And let’s work on the daddy thing. It’s just not right for a girl to call her father by his last name.”
“I’ll think about it.”
That was all he could ask, for now.
Since she’d heard Del enter the kitchen, she wasn’t surprised when he slipped his arms around her waist. “Smells good,” he said.
Vic continued to move the warm cookies from the pan to the cooling rack. “This is our ritual for hard times.”
“Cookies?”
“Homemade cookies,” she clarified. “Though to be honest, we have resorted to a bag of Oreos, on occasion.”
“That’s not right,” he said, brushing his mouth across the back of her neck. “Surely you make cookies in happy times, too.”
“Yes, but...” She didn’t want to talk to Del about hard times and good ones long past. She wanted to talk about now. “What’s Noelle doing?”
“Watching the movie again. Anything to keep from talking to me, I guess.” He sighed and drew her close. “This is hard.”
“Being a father?”
“Yeah. What if I never do anything right?”
She smiled. “You will.”
He hummed and kissed her neck again. “I can never tell what she’s thinking. One minute it looks like everything’s going to be fine, the next I’m sure she hates me.”
“You think this is difficult? You should have been around when she was two.”
Del didn’t answer, and in a heart-rending second Vic knew why. He’d missed two. He’d missed fourteen. He’d missed everything.
“You look so good in that dress,” he said, changing the subject. “And you smell like cookies. I could eat you up, here and now.” His hand skimmed to cup one breast. “I can start right here.” He moved her hair aside so he could kiss her neck properly, tongue and lips dancing over her sensitive flesh. “I don’t suppose we could make a quick trip into the pantry.”
“We’d better not,” she said. “Tonight.”
“That’s hours away,” he complained.
The sex was easy with them. Powerful, beautiful, and uncomplicated. Nothing else between them was so easy. If this was going to last, they had to have more than the physical.
“You know,” she said, no more anxious to delve into uncomfortable subjects than Del was, “you never did get me a gun.”
“Not that again,” he moaned.
“Well, it is unfinished business.”
He tried to distract her with a kiss here and a brush of his hand there, but he finally said, “When we find the chance to get to a firing range and get you properly trained, then maybe we’ll get you a little pistol or a small six-shooter.”
“Maybe?” she turned in his arms and smiled up at him. “Why are you so determined that I not get a gun?”
“You don’t need one.”
“I don’t?”
“You have me.” He tried to end the argument with a kiss, but when the kiss was over she continued.
“Are you really afraid I’ll shoot myself in the foot?”
He took her hands in his and looked down at them, kissing each palm, one and then the other. “These hands are made for better things, Vic. They’re made for holding babies and painting beautiful pictures and touching me. I have enough of guns and violence in my life. You’re… you’re...”
“I’m what?” she whispered when he froze.
“You and Noelle are the better part of my life. The best part. I don’t want to see you with a gun in your hand because I brought violence into your life.”
“But if it was Preston who did this, you didn’t bring trouble to us. We brought it to you.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s still a part of my world. Not yours.”
She didn’t like that separation of worlds. They should be living in the same world, now and forever. If he brought some of his with him, so be it. She’d make up for that by bringing love and peace to his world.
“I can teach you how to fight, though,” he said in compromise.
“Oh, you can.”
He moved back, one step. “It never hurts to know a little bit about self-defense. There are quite a few sensitive areas where a single blow can give you time to run.”
“Run?” she asked, smiling.
“Run,” he said, perfectly serious. “The first thing most women think of is to go for the testicles, and that’s okay, but most men are looking for that. So while he’s protecting the family jewels, you go for the eyes or deliver a hard blow to the nose. The flat of your hand is best. If you can’t get a good shot at the face, whack him hard in the throat. You can always go for the kidneys, or grab on tight and pull back a finger until you hear it pop.”
“Yew,” she said, sounding very much like Noelle.
Del’s jaw tensed. “You don’t want to break a finger, but you think shooting someone would be okay.”
“It’s not that,” she complained.
“You think it’s more distant, safer somehow, to pull a trigger?” His eyes were dark, and he showed her, momentarily, a Del Wilder she didn’t know. The DEA agent, the man who was accustomed to facing violence every day. “It’s not. A firearm is up close and very, very personal.” He moved back in, c
lose once again. “If the idea of breaking a finger repels you, you won’t pull the trigger when the time comes, and then that gun you want so badly instantly becomes a weapon that can be used against you.”
She rested her head on his chest. Maybe he was right. “So I should stick to curling irons for defense.”
“You should let me take care of you.”
When he said that it sounded so permanent. So wonderfully permanent. “Okay.”
“You two need a chaperon more than any couple I know.”
Del and Vic separated as Noelle entered the kitchen. “Can I have some cookies without being forced to watch this—”
“If you call me middle-aged again,” Del interrupted, “you’re grounded.”
Noelle rolled her eyes. “Is that your answer for everything?” She actually smiled. A little. She grabbed a handful of warm cookies and glanced around the messy kitchen. “Whenever Mom cooks, the kitchen ends up looking like a bag of groceries exploded.”
“Me?” Vic responded. “When you made pizza for your friends, it took me days to clean up all the sauce.” She looked at Del. “It was everywhere. Just when I thought I had it all, I’d run across another drop or two. I swear, there was sauce on the floor of the pantry.”
“It was my first time,” Noelle explained. “And the pizza was good.”
“You cook!” Del said with a widening grin. “That’s so domestic. I never would have thought it of you. Make me a pizza sometime?”
Noelle looked like she was about to refuse, but after a second thought she finally said, “Sure.” She took her cookies and returned to the movie.
Del took her in his arms again. “I don’t know if that’s a good sign or if I should hire a food taster.”
“It’s a good sign,” Vic assured him.
It was almost dark outside, but gray hung in the sky and drifted through the windows.
He found Vic in the upstairs hallway, putting away the laundry she’d done that afternoon. She’d dropped a few of Noelle’s things onto the bed in the girl’s room and had a small stack of her own clothes in her hands.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Did I hear Shock downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Any news?”
“Nothing from Preston, but Holly’s doing better. Looks like she’s going to make it.”
Her face went pale. “Has she identified Preston as the man who hired her?”
He shook his head. “No. She’s still doped up and unable to do that, but she’s going to make it. When we go to trial, she’ll be able to testify.”
Vic walked into the bedroom and placed her clothes on the dresser. “Will she?”
“Testify against the man who killed Tripp? Without question.”
She sighed in relief. “Good.” She headed for the master bath, grabbed a washcloth and, after wetting it slightly, held it to her face.
“Are you okay?” He followed her into the small room.
Her hands trembled a little, and she tried to hide that response from him by clenching her hands into tight fists. “Yeah, it’s just… I lived with Preston for years. I never loved him, and he knew that. Maybe there were times when I tried to like him, and maybe on his good days I succeeded. Most of the time he was just a lousy husband and father.”
“I know.” He pulled her close, tried to comfort her. This close, he felt the trembling she tried to hide.
“I never thought that he might be a killer. Why didn’t I see it?” She pressed her cheek to his chest. “Am I such a poor judge of character that I can’t see evil in a man I lived with?”
He picked her up and placed her on the vanity, so they were face-to-face. “No,” he said. “Evil doesn’t come with a neon sign. It hides. It waits. We never see evil until it’s too late.”
And sometimes we don't see good until it slaps us in the face.
“I’m not leaving,” he said softly, his mind made up. “Not this time. Noelle can call me middle-aged and geek and she can tell me she doesn’t want me as her father, but I’m not leaving.”
Vic smiled and stroked his cheek. “No matter what Noelle says, she needs you. If she fights it’s because she doesn’t know what to do with a father who loves her.”
He moved forward slightly. Vic’s thighs parted so he fit between them. “I’m not staying just for Noelle.”
“You don’t...”
“I would,” he said. “If there was nothing else for me here, if there was only Noelle, I’d stay. But there’s more here, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” she whispered as his hands skimmed over her bare legs, pushing her skirt toward her waist.
Without turning around, he kicked the door shut. Quietly.
Vic smiled at him. “Where’s Noelle?”
“She and Shock are eating Lucky Charms and discussing the finer plot points of Shrek."
“Good.” She cradled his head and kissed him, so sweet and sexy that he melted inside while his body grew hard.
Vic kissed him as if she were hungry, as if she were starving for him. Only him. Those hands he loved—artist’s hands, lover’s hands—caressed him gently. One of those hands slipped beneath his shirt and rested over his heart for a moment before circling around to lie against his back.
“I can’t ever get enough of you,” he said as he slipped her panties off and down and tossed them aside.
She responded with a satisfied hum as she wrapped her legs around him.
He touched her, teased her, while she perched on the vanity before him. Vic, so open and honest, let her head fall back as she moaned, low in her throat and so very intoxicating. Her body quivered against him as he leaned into her to kiss that long, bared throat.
Her fingers trembled as she unfastened his belt buckle, as she lowered his zipper and freed his erection. Those trembling fingers caressed him, long and slow, then harder, while he brought his mouth to hers.
Vic wrapped her legs tighter around his hips while she guided him into her waiting, tight warmth.
He entered her slowly, pushing deep. Making himself a part of her, and realizing that Vic was as much inside him as he was inside her.
In the tiny bathroom, Vic perched before him and hanging on tight, he made love to her without restraint. Hard and fast, he filled her, stroked her. They had made love before, slow and fast, hard and gentle. This was different. It was primal, and intimate in a way he had never experienced before. He claimed her; she took him in. She claimed him; he gave her everything he had.
She pulsed around him, came with a low, deep cry while her body shuddered around his.
Satisfied, she rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. Neither of them said a word, they just held on and tried to breathe.
Del raked his hand down her back, kissed her neck, refused to let go.
She was his, and he was home.
Chapter 16
With Preston in custody, the manpower out front had been downgraded. The surveillance detail had been cut down to two locals once again, and Del had had to beg to keep those two on duty for another few hours. His logic in coming up with Preston as his main suspect was too clear to ignore. Still, he wanted Lowell to confess, he wanted Holly to wake up and identify Preston as Bob. Until then, he wasn’t going to rest.
It was night again. Noelle was sleeping, had gone to bed early claiming—in a long-suffering voice—that there was nothing to do. In truth, the kid was exhausted. She might not admit it, but Del had seen it. He’d wanted to climb the stairs with her and tuck her in. He hadn’t even tried.
It had been a good day where Noelle was concerned; at least, he thought so. Maybe she was a little less angry than she’d been last night and this morning. Maybe she hadn’t glared at him quite so audaciously, as the day went on. Still, he didn’t think she was ready for him to run up the stairs and tuck her in. Fifteen was probably too old for such nonsense, and Noelle was certainly too cool for something so lame.
But he would check on her, after she was sound asleep and couldn’t pr
otest.
Vic was restless, and had been all day. Their coming together early in the evening had done nothing to ease her nervousness. In fact, she’d been more jumpy than before, as she’d straightened her pretty blue dress and tried to make herself look like she hadn’t just been well loved.
Something was on her mind, but she wasn’t letting him in on whatever bothered her. She paced, she studied her fingernails as if she expected to find something there, and she jumped out of her skin at the slightest sound.
He just wanted this to be over. He wanted the danger past so he could get on with his life, whatever that might mean. Changes. If nothing else, he knew his life was about to change.
His Glock sat on the table by the couch, handy in case he should need it. He’d gone upstairs to collect it after Noelle had gone to bed. What did it say about him that he felt better with a weapon within reach, always?
Vic quit pacing and sat next to him on the couch. The television played before them, the volume low. He hadn’t been paying attention to the sitcom rerun, and neither had Vic. Moving slowly, she reached over and took his hand. Her fingers threaded through his as she leaned into his side, cuddling against him. In spite of everything that had happened since his return, in spite of the bumps in the road and the uncertainty that still plagued him, it was nice.
“How about now?” she said softly.
“What?”
“How about if I tell you I love you now,” she said, not looking up, but grasping his hand more tightly. “My heart is perfectly calm,” she added. “I’m breathing very well, and we’re both completely dressed.”
“Vic...”
“Never mind,” she said. “I wanted to tell you earlier. I had to bite back the words. You accused me of only being brave enough to say those words when we make love. That’s when it’s easiest, I guess. That’s when I want to shout out the words I kept buried for so long. I love you, Del. I love you more than you will ever know.”
He knew he belonged here, he knew he would never let Vic or Noelle go. So why did the words stick in his throat?
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