“Well, between that and the way he treated the waitress, I don’t know that I would bother seeing him again if I were you.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Emily sighed and flopped onto her couch. “Hey, I have an idea.” Emily needed some time off from the dating scene. More to the point, she needed time to get her mind off Mac, so that when she did go out with someone, she wouldn’t find herself spending the whole evening comparing her date to the verboten police officer. “How about if you and Sean go out tomorrow night and I watch the kids. I could use a dose of unconditional adoration from my niece and nephews.”
“Let me take you up on that before you change your mind. Jamie is going through a fun new stage where he flushes things down the toilet. You won’t have a moment’s peace all night.”
“Sounds perfect.” Maybe then, she wouldn’t have a spare moment to think about Mac and how just the memory his fingertips grazing her cheek made her skin tingle.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Exhausted, Mac stared at the ceiling above his bed. A small, still-working part of his brain told him to go to sleep and catch up on some much-needed REM cycles. But if he closed his eyes, he would dream of one of two things. And he didn’t know which he feared more—the nightmare of the thing that had happened or the dream of what he wanted to happen. With Emily.
Opposing parts of his brain did battle. His eyes drifted closed, only to snap back open again. He studied the details of the stucco-textured ceiling, trying to memorize the random swish and swirl patterns until they turned fuzzy and blurred to gray.
He fought the dream—knew he was descending into the nightmare—and tried to steer his subconscious in other directions.
It was no use.
He went back to that night.
Standing by his SUV, his hand gripped the gas pump.
A panicked scream drew his gaze to the station’s convenience store. A woman crouched on the floor, her arms raised in surrender. Behind the counter, the cashier struck a similar pose, arms in the air, eyes struck with terror.
Mac’s adrenaline spiked, spurring him into action. Without thought, he jogged toward the store, drawing his gun from his waistband. His angle changed, and he saw a young man, previously hidden by shelves of candy, gesturing with a gun.
Still cowering at the gunman’s feet, the woman tracked Mac’s progress with tear-filled eyes. Her stare drew the gunman’s attention, and noticing Mac, the perp raised his weapon and took aim.
Reaction. No thought. Just instinct and years of training kicked in. A loud pop and the kickback from his .44 told Mac his brain had responded without conscious decision.
The glass door shattered, leaving an opaque web of cracks that made it difficult to see inside. Mac approached, keeping his gun raised, and pushed the door open. Over the sound of falling glass, he heard a woman screaming. Inside, the convenience store was now a chapel, the clerk a priest, and the woman—in a trench coat only seconds before—now wore a white wedding dress splattered with bright red blood. And in the middle of it all, a tuxedo-clad groom. A bullet hole in his forehead. Dead center.
This was how he knew it was a dream.
The young bridegroom was a new variation of the same old theme. With each nightmare, Mac got a glimpse of another life event stolen. He’d dreamed of the gunman as a high school graduate, his cap and gown soiled with blood. He’d dreamed of a young man in a suit, probably on the way to his first real job interview. And tonight, he’d dreamed of a baby-faced groom.
Lifeless, unblinking eyes stared straight at Mac. The dead teen’s right hand rested peacefully on his chest, still gripping the gun.
Mac dropped to his knees, ready to do CPR despite the obviously fatal wound. Placing his palms on the sternum, he brushed the teen’s arm out of the way and started compressions. The kid’s lifeless hand fell to the floor, as did the gun. It skittered across the tile, a series of light tippity-taps.
Panic sent Mac’s stomach floating toward his throat. Something was wrong.
Where was the metallic thud of a heavy gun hitting the ground? He stopped compressions, reached out, and picked up the pistol, marveling at its abnormally light weight.
It was plastic.
It didn’t matter that he knew he was dreaming; the sickening wave of guilt washed over him anyway. He was drowning in guilt, awake or asleep, it was his one constant companion.
Sirens wailed in the distance. He stared down at the young groom who would never marry, lying supine on the floor, a puddle of sticky red blood growing larger by the second, creating a halo around his head. The sirens, growing louder, sounded strange. Less like emergency vehicles and more like…
Mac’s eyes snapped open, his heart racing. He sat up and a trickle of sweat traveled down his spine. He glanced at his cell phone, lit up and ringing on the nightstand. The caller ID showed Sean’s cell number. He tried to control his breathing. “Mac here.”
“Hey, man. Sorry to bug you on your night off. Did I catch you working out or something?”
“No. I, uh—” He willed his breath to even out. “—just had to run to get to my phone. What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor.” Sean’s voice sounded strained. “I’m probably worrying for nothing, but…Julie and I are at the movies—Emily’s watching the kids for us. We just called the house to say goodnight, but nobody answered. And I tried Emily’s cell, but it went straight to voicemail.”
Mac rubbed the sweat from his forehead. “Would she have taken the kids outside to play or something?”
“Not at nine o’clock at night. I can’t imagine where they’d be at this hour. Would it be totally crazy for me to ask you to stop by the house and see if everything’s okay?”
Already pulling jeans on over his boxers, Mac answered, “Not at all. I’m on my way.”
“Thanks, Mac. I seriously owe you one. Julie got herself so worked up, I thought she was going to make me take her home on the first night out we’ve had since Henry was born.”
Mac suspected Julie wasn’t the only one worked up, but he let Sean pretend. “No problem. I’m sure there’s an explanation. She probably turned the phones down so they wouldn’t wake the baby.” The line, designed to convince Sean that everything was all right, did little to slow Mac’s heart rate. “But I’ll check it out to be safe.”
“Thanks again, man. I really appreciate it. Text me when you get there and let me know everything’s okay.”
Unable to answer through his shirt, he yanked it down over his head and put the phone back to his ear. “Ten-four.”
* * *
At Sean’s house, warm yellow light glowed from each of the first floor windows and one upstairs window. That was a good sign. It meant Emily and the kids were probably home but unable to answer the phone for some reason.
Mac’s footsteps thudded on the old wooden porch steps, staccato sounds punctuating the silence of the cool dark night.
He knocked tentatively. If Henry was asleep, he didn’t want to be the one to wake him. He waited.
No answer.
He knocked again. Using the old iron knocker this time, he knocked hard enough to cause a metallic echo on the porch.
Still no answer.
He cupped his hands around his face and peeked in the sidelights on either side of the door. He could see the stairs to the second floor and part of the living room. Neither showed any sign of activity.
He tried the doorknob.
Locked.
He grasped at every rational explanation he could think of, focusing on the logical and discarding the possibilities that made his stomach turn. Maybe Emily and the kids were playing upstairs. Maybe she was giving them a bath and couldn’t hear him knocking over the running water. Maybe they’d all fallen asleep already.
Or maybe…something was wrong.
He jogged around the house, looking through windows. In the living room, toys were scattered everywhere. A floor lamp leaned against the sofa, its shade askew. In the back of th
e house, through the sliding glass doors, he scanned the kitchen. Plates, still heaped with food, littered the table, evidently abandoned mid-meal. A slowly leaking sippy cup lay tipped over, leaving a puddle of milk.
The place was wrecked.
And there was no sign of Emily, Hannah, Jamie, or Henry.
A memory sprang to mind. An image of that sleazy douche-bag, Frank, calling out to Emily, Mind if I call you sometime? What if he’d tracked her down? Oh, God, if something had happened to her…or the kids…
Back at the front door, Mac knocked again and rang the doorbell several times too, no longer caring if he woke Henry, only wanting to know that everyone was okay. Looking through one of the sidelights again, he saw Hannah coming down the stairs in a frilly purple nightgown and breathed a sigh of relief.
Hannah bit her lip and slowed her pace down the steps, no doubt unsure as to whether or not she should answer the door.
Good girl, Hannah. We don’t open the door for strangers.
Mac knocked again and waved at the little girl through the window. Speaking loud enough to be heard through the glass, he said, “Hey, Hannah, remember me? It’s Mac. Can you open the door, sweetie?”
Recognition lit Hannah’s face, and she bounded down the remaining steps. Reaching up on her tiptoes, she unlocked the deadbolt.
“Thanks, Hannah,” Mac said, coming through the door. He closed it behind him and sat on his haunches to be eye-level with the small six-year-old. “Your daddy asked me to stop by and make sure you were doing all right.” And thank God, it appeared everything was fine. “So, is everything okay?”
Hannah shook her head.
“No?” Mac asked. “What’s wrong? Where’s Aunt Emily?”
“There was an accident.”
His brain clicked into police mode, but the adrenaline surging into his bloodstream was less than professional. It was personal. “What happened, Hannah?”
The girl pointed up the stairs at the exact moment someone screamed.
“Stay here, honey.” He moved Hannah aside and flew up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He followed the sound to the upstairs bathroom. “Emily!” Prepared to respond to the worst-case scenario, Mac flung open the bathroom door.
* * *
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” Water came streaming out of the toilet, soaking Emily’s shoes and the powder blue bathmats, with no sign of slowing down. The bathroom was going to flood.
And Sean was going to kill her.
“Emily?”
She started at the sound of Mac’s voice. He stood in the doorway, his panicked expression melting into confusion. “What’s going on in here?”
She huffed. “Well, I should think it’s rather obvious, Mac. The toilet is overflowing.” She started grabbing towels off the rack, using their clean fluffiness to sop up the toilet water. She cringed. Now Julie was going to kill her too.
“But why isn’t it stopping?” he asked.
“When the water started to rise, I panicked. I knew there was something in the tank you could fiddle with to get it to stop flushing, so I took off the lid.” Her cheeks grew warm from embarrassment. Skilled handy-woman, she was not. “When I looked inside, the little flapper thingy was down, so I pulled it up and the already full toilet flushed again.”
The toilet let out one last long hiss before the water finally stopped rushing from the bowl. Hearing a low rumble of laughter, Emily looked up.
She pointed an accusing finger at Mac. “Don’t you dare start laughing!”
He laughed so hard, he doubled over and had to brace his hands on his knees.
He had a wonderful laugh—deep and robust—and somehow it helped her find her sense of humor. Standing in the middle of the bathroom, practically up to her ankles in toilet-water-soaked towels, Emily laughed too.
It was a long minute before she recovered enough to talk. She tilted her head to one side. “Just what are you doing here, anyway?”
Mac’s laughter melted into an amused grin. He looked years younger when he smiled like that, and the warmth in his brown eyes sent an answering heat straight to Emily’s center. “Sean and Julie were worried. They tried calling to say goodnight to the kids. When you didn’t answer the house phone or your cell, Sean called and asked me to make sure that everything was okay.”
Emily laughed again.
Mac’s raised brows said he was concerned for her sanity.
She tried to talk through her laughter, but couldn’t. Her eyes watered, and she placed her index fingers at the corners to stop the tears. She took a deep breath and managed to squeeze out some words. “He tried to call my phone? Any guesses where my phone is?”
His gaze went to the toilet. “Oh, no,” he said, laughing with her.
“Oh, yes. It’s my fault. Julie warned me that Jamie was going through a flush-things-down-the-toilet phase.” She went back to work, throwing more of Julie’s favorite blue guest towels down on the mess. “Damn thing’s wedged in there good too. I’ve been trying to get it out of the toilet for the last half hour. And as for the house phone…I turned the ringer down after I put Henry to bed.”
He nodded. “That’s what I figured. Where’s Jamie now?”
Emily sighed guiltily. “I put him in his room for a time-out and then…sort of…forgot about him.”
“Do you want to get Hannah and Jamie to bed while I take care of this mess?”
She appreciated his sincere offer but declined. “No. There’s no use both of us getting filthy. But, it would be a huge help if you could get them to bed while I finish up here.”
He shot Emily a dubious look. “So…like…what do I do? Just tell them to go to bed?”
“Officer McAvoy, I’m sure you can manage a three-year-old and six-year-old all on your own.”
When he turned away and headed toward Jamie’s bedroom, she tried not to notice the muscular breadth of his back and shoulders, or how tight his backside looked in his well-cut jeans. But she couldn’t help the smile that tugged her lips when his retreating form mumbled, “Well, I’m glad you’re sure. I think I’d rather mop up toilet water.”
Now that the urgency of dealing with the over-flowing toilet had passed, she surveyed the damage. Not only were the towels drowning in water, but Emily’s senses were drowning in the aftermath of Mac. She could still hear his laugh, feel the rumble of it, see the humor that lit his dark-brown eyes.
This was not good.
Tonight was supposed to be about her getting her mind off of Mac. But instead, she found herself confronted with the most dangerous Mac of all. The warm, laughing, helpful Mac.
This was so not good.
She pulled a small plastic laundry basket from the bathroom’s linen closet and hefted the heavy wet towels into it, one by one. She would do well to remember that Mac hadn’t come here to help her. He’d come at Sean’s request. He was here to help Sean. Not because he cared a lick about her.
And that was just fine. Better than fine, in fact. Because she couldn’t afford to care a lick about him.
* * *
Mac found Jamie passed out on the floor of his bedroom, lips parted slightly as he half-breathed, half-snored and drooled on the carpet. It was a stark contrast from the little blond tornado Mac had seen last week, and equally as adorable.
Where this soft spot for little people had come from, he had no idea.
He pulled back the Lightning McQueen bedspread, got down on his knees, and picked up the surprisingly solid little boy. He gently laid him on the bed and pulled up the blankets, tucking the smiling car around the toddler, and giving his unruly hair a quick ruffle before going in search of Hannah.
When he found Hannah, the little girl informed him that she had an entire bedtime routine that had to be maintained. At her direction, he brushed her hair, helped her brush her teeth—in the master bath of course since the other one was flooded—and was then informed that he should tell her a “made-up” story.
“Wouldn’t you rather I read one of the book
s from your bookshelf?”
Hannah sat primly on her bed, carefully smoothing the covers over herself and her twenty stuffed animals. “No, Daddy always makes the story up from his ’magination.”
He smiled at her mispronunciation of imagination. “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have much of a ’magination.”
“That’s okay. You can start the story, and then I’ll help you.”
Mac sighed, helpless against Hannah’s pleading blue eyes. Eyes that were so like Emily’s.
He couldn’t recall his mother ever telling him a bedtime story. Not that she wouldn’t have wanted to. She’d just been too busy working multiple jobs to make up for his father’s absence. Most nights, Mac was lucky if she made it home before he went to bed.
Desperate for ideas, he searched Hannah’s frilly girl bedroom for inspiration. “Okay. I’ll give it my best shot.” Did he know any fairy tales? “There once was a woman from Brussels…” Nope, that wasn’t a fairy tale. That was a dirty limerick.
“Brussels? Like Brussels sprouts?” Hannah’s brow wrinkled. “There was a woman who lived in a Brussels sprout?”
“Sure.” First rule of improv: just go with it. “There once was a woman who lived in a Brussels sprout. And it was cursed by a witch so she couldn’t get out.” He smiled, impressed with his own rhyme. Maybe he could do this storytelling thing after all. He grabbed a stuffed squirrel from Hannah’s collection of animals. “But the problem was—there was a great big squirrel in the neighborhood. And do you know what that squirrel liked to eat best?”
“Brussels sprouts!” Hannah said, delighted.
“That’s right! So the squirrel gobbled up the Brussels sprout with the woman inside.” Mac made the squirrel rub his tummy and make mmm noises, enjoying Hannah’s bubbly laughter.
“And do you know who loves to eat squirrels?”
Hannah grabbed her stuffed hippo and held it high in the air. “Hippos!”
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