The You I've Come To Know (A Mother's Love Book 1)
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Thinking about Willa and satisfaction began a stirring that Joel tamped down. It was a useless expending of energy. He couldn’t see having an affair with Willa when she lived next door, and would still live next door once any relationship they might have was over.
And it would be over. That was the promise he’d made himself when he’d sworn the bigger oath to serve and protect. Of course this whole train of thought was ridiculous.
But the fact that he was having such thoughts at all proved that he desperately needed to get back to work before he did something stupid.
Like seducing his neighbor.
Chapter Four
“HEY, SWEETIE.” WILLA LIFTED THE waking baby from the pallet on the floor in the front room where Leigh had slept for close to an hour. Gordy got to his feet as well, stretching first in forward then in reverse.
The dog had spent Leigh’s nap time on self-appointed, border-collie guard duty four feet away. Now he padded behind Willa toward the couch, his short nails clicking on the hardwood floor. When she sat, he sat, taking up position near the cushion where Willa placed the baby.
“Good dog. Good dog.” She rewarded her loyal friend with a scratch behind his ears then reached for Leigh’s diaper bag. Changing time. Leigh rubbed her fists in her eyes then stared up at Willa.
This baby was a heartbreaker. Even a heart as pliable as Willa’s wasn’t immune to those big Bambi-browns. “You had a nice long nap, didn’t you, Sweetie?”
Earlier in the day, Leigh had accompanied Willa to the kennel area at the back of the wooded lot. From beneath the shade of tall, tall pines, the toes of her white shoes scuffing at the carpet of green needles, the baby had watched from her saucer seat with rapt interest while Willa tended to the rescued dogs.
She’d listened to the soothing tones Willa used to calm the most frightened and fragile of the animals. Watched and listened until the combination of the sun’s warmth filtered by pine boughs and the soft breeze had her chin bobbing against her chest, her long lashes brushing her cheeks. A whisper of air had lifted her white-blond curls like gossamer ribbons on angel wings.
And Willa’s heart had swelled. She’d lifted the baby and cradled her close.
Once inside, she’d spread a layer of thick blankets on the hardwood floor of the cottage’s front room, managing to do it with one hand. She’d been uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the little sleepyhead alone, tucked deep into the sofa cushions of blue and white ticking, while she finished with the dogs.
And she couldn’t leave Leigh in the back of the house, her knees drawn up beneath her tummy, her diapered bottom in the air, to sleep in the bed in the one big room that served as Willa’s personal sanctuary. Not that Leigh wouldn’t have loved the thick comforter and decadent mountain of pillows as much as Willa did. Of course, she would have. What girl wouldn’t? But the gauze panels hanging from the black iron canopy bed might present a dangerous temptation to a curious baby rousing from a nice nap.
In the end, the pallet had been a sanity-saving stroke of genius. It put Willa within easy hearing distance of the baby’s sweet waking noises, coos, and giggles. She’d used those noises as a legitimate excuse to escape the table in the kitchen and the look in the Big Bad Wolf’s eyes.
The better to see you with, my dear.
She shivered and struggled longer than she should have with the tapes on Leigh’s diaper, though the way the baby was twisting to reach for Gordy’s snout required uncommon dexterity to begin with. Still, Willa had to be honest with herself. The baby’s antics had little to do with her inability to focus, to shake the kitchen scene from moments ago.
Willa had an excellent sense of recall. And the way Joel had studied her then, sitting across the table from her there, was unforgettable. It was as if pages of thoughts had opened like a book, as if every word that had run through his mind had been spelled out in text beneath those gloriously thick lashes.
It was as if he had wanted her to read him, to know he was thinking about wanting her. Oh, the things she’d seen written behind those eyes so green—words lush and erotic and seductive and raw. Words whose meanings she understood in her mind, and felt in her body—deeply, fully in her body. Words she could enjoy physically, but could never take to heart.
“Okay, Sweetie,” she said, arranging the baby’s rumpled dress over her freshly changed and padded bottom. Willa got to her feet, lifting Joel’s now wide-awake munchkin to her hip as she did. “Let’s see what Uncle Joel thinks about finding you some lunch.”
“Uncle Joel can’t think of anything he’d rather do right now.”
His voice held the same decadent temptation as dark chocolate. Why, oh why, did she have such a hard time saying no? She turned to find him leaning against the archway that opened to the kitchen.
She didn’t doubt he hungered for lunch, but the way he stood, the way his eyes devoured her, told Willa that he sensed and shared the turbulence that had propelled her out of the kitchen minutes ago.
He had listened to the words she hadn’t spoken. Known what she’d intended to say with the ones she had. He was listening now. She knew it. And she tried so very hard to still her thoughts.
The better to hear you with, my dear.
Ha! What good would it do to still her thoughts when he could surely hear her pulse racing, the thud of her heart in her chest, the wild battle being fought between emotion and intellect?
She hadn’t been prepared for this when she’d looked up this morning to see him making his laborious way across her yard, a darling baby’s arm around his neck. He was her neighbor, the cop, the Big Bad Wolf next door. She had to keep this attraction in perspective.
“However,” Joel said, intruding on Willa’s thoughts as he walked into the front room. “Finding the munchkin some lunch is going to require a trip to the store. Jen only left enough food for last night. Lucky for Leigh there was a box of instant cereal in the bottom of her bag. That took care of this morning. But we’re up a creek now. I have a fridge full of steaks and burgers and that’s about it.”
Having caught sight of her uncle, Leigh let out a happy squeal and reached for him with both arms. Willa made her way to where Joel stood and surrendered the precious armful. Once Leigh settled her head against Joel’s shoulder Willa stroked the baby’s hair. The blond curls sifted through her fingers like strands of fine silk.
“I’m not much help in the food department.” Willa crossed her arms, missing the comfortable weight of the baby, still smelling the scent that was a baby’s alone and Leigh’s in particular. “I think I have one artichoke and a quart bowl of black bean soup.”
Joel grimaced. “Ugh. You’d better come with us.”
The suggestion had been on the tip of her tongue, but having Joel ask brought a smile. As did his obvious male disgust with anything vegetarian. “I’m fine with the food, but I thought you might need help managing the logistics of the trip. Do you have a car seat?”
Joel blew out a frustrated sigh, shoved his free hand over his forehead and back through his thicket of hair. “That would look good, wouldn’t it? Getting ticketed in my own neighborhood. Jen is gonna owe me big time when she gets home. Then again, my parents have one, and she expected them to be the ones hauling around the munchkin, not me.”
Willa kept her mouth in a straight line though the effort was not a battle, but an entire war. His soft spot for his pack was enormous, as vast as the extent of her love for the animals who shared her home. Joel was truly an attractive man. A Big Bad Wolf with such big teeth and so little bite.
The better to eat you with, my dear.
He shifted the squirming Leigh to the other arm and Willa suppressed her take-over tendencies along with a rush of blood that sang through her veins. The baby had spotted Gordy who had moved to sit at Willa’s feet. But dealing with his niece was Joel’s call. Not hers.
“Hey, Scout.” Joel bounced the baby against his hip. “That pup’s not used to you like Shadow is. You get hold of him he’s lia
ble to get hold of you right back.”
But the baby wouldn’t stop twisting and turning and seconds later added a vocal protest. A very loud vocal protest. Willa didn’t want to challenge what Joel thought best, but she did know her dog.
“He’s very gentle.” She spoke quietly, rubbing behind the dog’s ears as she continued. “He doesn’t have the energy or the inclination to be anything else. He ran his heart out until a couple of years ago when he decided to retire. He’s been my right-hand man ever since.”
Joel’s eyes twinkled like dew on morning grass. “Retired, did he?”
She nodded, sinking down to her haunches next to the dog who nuzzled her shoulder with his head. “Now he helps me out when he’s not busy entertaining small children.” She lifted her gaze to Joel’s face, asking for his trust. “That’s his biggest joy, you know.”
“No. I didn’t know,” he answered, and when Willa reached up he lowered the anxious baby. Their hands met, hers over his beneath Leigh’s outstretched arms. His skin was warm and electrically charged, as it had been when he’d held her hand in the kitchen, when he’d pressed his thumb to the pulse in her wrist.
He gave up the baby to Willa’s keeping and eased down to the floor, his back against the curve of the archway. One leg he stretched out in front of him, the other knee he drew up and used to rest his wrist.
His hand dangled there, his fingers long, his hand wide with prominent veins and a sprinkling of golden hair that grew thicker over forearms defined with muscle.
Willa experienced a sweet urge to touch his hand as he’d held hers earlier. To explore further—the pads of his fingers, the width of his knuckles, the breadth of his palm, and the shape of his nails.
To feel more than the touch of his hand in return. A continuation of the touch he’d begun there in the kitchen. The wanting was sensual more than sexual, yet the thought lingered. Lingered...
Denying a shiver, Willa sat cross-legged, hugged Leigh to her side. At the pat of Willa’s hand on the floor, Gordy padded over to the spot. When she clicked her fingers, he sat and awaited further orders.
Joel shook his head. “Nicely done. Think you can teach me that trick. I could use it with Leigh this week.”
It was rubbing up against her again. That sensation of something so right. Purring and insistent in that way her female intuition worked. There was a chance here worth taking, a chance she needed to allow herself to take.
But first things first. “Well, it was six or eight months before Gordy and I were on the same wavelength.” She scratched beneath the dog’s chin. “From what I understand that doesn’t happen between parents and children until... eighteen? Nineteen? Twenty-five?”
The quirk of Joel’s mouth was a knowing one. “Sometimes as late as thirty.”
“And sometimes never,” Willa added automatically, keeping her eye on tiny fingers tentatively exploring the dog’s face. She and her parents had yet to reach the same wavelength. A situation that deteriorated each year she remained single.
They’d never come to terms with her inability to bear children. The fall, the surgery... to this day they hadn’t admitted that no one was at fault. That no one deserved the blame. That accidents did happen.
Their insistence on taming their tomboy in an exorcism of ruffles and bows and patent leather had sent Willa scrambling up towering trees, mad-dashing down gullies, squeezing into drain pipes, pole vaulting over fences... and then, the damage was done.
Willa had come to terms with her injuries early on. The tomboy in her had worn the scars like a warrior. She was a warrior still. And the woman she’d become knew she hadn’t lost her worth that day long ago. She was sad that her parents thought it so.
No, they were not on the same wavelength at all.
A smile tickled its way across Willa’s mouth. She felt the curve of her lips and let it go. Oh, how her parents would love her to land a man like Joel Wolfsley.
And oh, how she loved his laugh. A deep male rumbling that spoke of good humor and good nature and did good things to that determined tickle low in her belly.
“‘Never’ is probably way too accurate,” he said, picking up her train of thought. “I think that’s called the generation gap. I see it every time the Wolfsleys get together. The kids speak a language foreign to everyone but each other.
“And half the time I’m not sure I understand what my folks are talking about.” The green in his eyes twinkled with affection. “But then they’ve had their own language for forty years now.”
Willa watched Joel’s light show of emotions, the shake of his head, the quirk of his lips, the mesh of lines at the corners of his eyes. The combination was explosively engaging. As was his appreciation of what his parents shared.
She wondered what a relationship like that, for so long, years and years, would mean to a person’s life. She wondered if Joel had a similar wish for his future.
And then she poked around to see if a shred of wanting something similar for herself remained. It did, but the spot wasn’t as tender as it had been the last time she checked. She liked that. It was a good sign that her life was her own and that she was happy.
“You do that a lot? Get together?”
Joel made sure Leigh’s curiosity about Gordy’s teeth didn’t cost her a finger. “Not a lot. The usual occasions. Christmas. Thanksgiving. Those are the times everyone shows. Whoever can makes it to the rest. Memorial Day. July Fourth. We try to do something on our folks’ birthdays but it’s hit or miss.”
Leigh was now planting big sloppy kisses on the long-suffering dog’s snout. Gordy turned imploring eyes to Willa and blinked. She moved the baby to sit in the cradle of her lap and her dog smiled. “How often do you have your family out to your place?”
“Me?” He poked his thumb at his chest. “The guy with nothing in his fridge but steaks and burger and stock in Royal Oak charcoal?”
“Sure. Why not? July Fourth is a perfect canvas for your Royal Oak skills.”
He frowned, removed Gordy’s ear from Leigh’s fist and tweaked his niece’s nose. She slapped at his hand with both of hers. “I pitch in when we cook out. Macho-man cooking, you know,” he added and flexed a biceps until the muscle bulged against his T-shirt in a most mouthwatering display. “I just don’t do it out here. At my place.”
“Why not? You have the space and privacy, room for the kids’ spitting contest.” She was truly curious, as curious as Leigh had become with the way Gordy lifted his tail every time she reached for it. Baby giggles filled the silence that was less tense than somber. Thoughtful.
Joel grimaced. “It’s hard to explain. But I figure I have two lives. One on-duty. One off. And I try not to let the first pollute the second.”
“Is this a Jekyll and Hyde thing?”
He wiggled both brows like a mad scientist. “You see the movie I Was A Teenage Werewolf?”
It was a terrible image that came to mind and she laughed. “Then the rumors I hear of Detective Joel Wolfsley are true. The Big Bad Wolf lives up to his name.”
“Well, yeah. I do.” He looked into her eyes as he said it. And though a remnant of a smile remained and a glimmer of “Aw, shucks,” sparkled with Huck Finn faux innocence; there was no mistaking the ferocity of the Big Bad Wolf.
Or the willingness to use deadly force by the man who bore the name.
Comprehension dawned. But she let the silliness ride. “That’s why you don’t have the family Fourth of July at your place. Because you might mutate. Or forget to shave.”
This time he tweaked Willa’s nose. “It runs deeper than that, but, yeah, that’s the nutshell version.”
“What’s the rest of it?” she asked, knowing she had no right to pry and that he certainly had no reason to trust her with such a confidence. He’d made his life decisions just as she’d made hers.
But he had just tweaked her nose. An intimately playful gesture that showed they’d reached a fair level of comfort. He might not answer, but she’d had to ask.
“Not to your family, surely?” she asked, then considered his posture and his protective instincts. “But there is, isn’t there? A danger.”
He shook his head. “Not now. There has been. In the past. A couple of creeps have made lame threats involving my female relatives.” He paused, moving to take Leigh’s tiny hand in his own, cupping her chin, looking into her eyes and dropping a kiss onto the button of her nose.
When he spoke, his voice was low, deep—a growl that rumbled up from the back of his throat. He leaned closer, into Willa’s space. “There are a lot of females in my family, Willa.”
She didn’t know what to say. She barely managed to take a breath. He was a hunter, protector, leader of the pack. Bold, brash, arrogant. And dangerous. Oh so incredibly dangerous.
He was a man unlike any she’d met. Her intuition and instincts and female heart wanted to know him better. “And you want to keep them safe.”
His smile had the look of the devil himself. “I will keep them safe.”
Willa drew in a huge breath. “Well, Detective Wolfsley. The females in your family are fortunate women.”
He huffed at that and the tension vanished. Smoke in the air. “Ask any one of them and they’ll say they’re smothered, stifled, perfectly capable of looking out for themselves... and that’s just what they say to my face. No telling what they really think.”
“I know what they really think,” she said and grinned.
Joel frowned. “Uh-oh. This is one of those female things, isn’t it? Like going to the ladies’ room in groups? Or managing to have every dish ready to eat at the same time? Or knowing you can’t wear red if you have red hair?”