He forced a smile as she came into the room with Haley. “Mommy, sit there,” Haley instructed and pointed to the seat across from Riley.
Lana offered him a distant smile and sat in the chair. She looked beautiful in a pair of denim shorts and a turquoise blouse that did amazing things to her eyes. “Isn’t this nice?” she said with a forced cheerfulness. “I was just thinking yesterday that I was in the mood for a tea party.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Riley agreed in an effort to get with the program. “And I’m so glad Teddy could make it. I know his days are busy getting honey.”
Haley giggled. “Teddy loves honey, but he loves tea parties more,” she said in a very grown-up voice.
“And now I’ll pour the tea.”
She made a big show of picking up the plastic teapot and pouring them each make-believe tea. Riley lifted his little cup to his lips and slurped loudly.
“That’s the best tea I’ve ever tasted,” he said as he lowered the cup.
As Haley giggled once again he caught Lana’s gaze, and for a moment there was such warmth in those blue depths he could scarcely draw another breath.
She quickly averted her gaze from his and lifted her cup to her lips, those lips that he wanted desperately to kiss until they spoke the words of love he wanted to hear.
For the next few minutes Haley entertained them as they drank pretend tea and ate the freshly baked chocolate cupcakes. She kept the conversation flow ing by chatting about anything and everything that entered her mind and by translating whatever Teddy had to say.
Riley tried desperately to stay focused on Haley, but his gaze and his every thought kept returning to the woman seated across from him.
She looked tired and stressed-out, and he could only guess that his little confession of love had somehow added to her burden. That wasn’t what he’d wanted. In his head he’d had a vision of an entirely different outcome.
Maybe he was the fool. Maybe he really was the arrogant, conceited ass she’d initially pegged him as when he’d first arrived in her home.
He’d been in her house less than a month and he’d expected her to love him more than the late husband she’d been married to for five years. He’d expected her to love him more than any other man she might ever meet for the rest of her life.
He suddenly realized both Lana and Haley were looking at him expectantly. What had he missed? “Excuse me?”
“I said I want to ask you a very important question, Daddy Riley. You have to pay attention,” Haley exclaimed as she placed her hands on her hips.
He bit his lower lip to hide his smile of amusement as his heart swelled with love for the tiny tot. “I’m sorry. I’m paying attention now. What’s your question?”
She sidled up next to him and looped a little arm around his shoulder. “I wanted to ask you when I could have a baby sister or brother.”
Riley shot a startled look to Lana, who looked equally surprised by her daughter’s question. Haley looked at him, obviously impatient for an answer. “Oh, honey, I really think that’s up to your mother,” he said, throwing the ball directly into Lana’s court.
“Not for a long time,” Lana replied. “Maybe after you start school.”
Thankfully, that answer seemed to satisfy Haley.
A little while later the party was called due to bath and bedtime. As Lana attended to her daughter, Riley went back into the living room and stood at the back windows, staring out without seeing.
He’d faced a hundred dangerous situations over the course of his career and he’d survived them all, but he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to survive remaining in this house with Lana.
It was torture, loving her and knowing that she didn’t return his feelings. He didn’t know how to make her love him. He felt as if he’d given her what he had to give and it hadn’t been enough.
He would have already made arrangements for another agent to take over his duty but he hated the idea of any other man seeing Lana with her hair sleep-tousled as she came into the kitchen for her first cup of hot tea. He hated to think of another man laughing with her when darkness fell outside and the house felt cozy and intimate.
But he also realized that each and every day he stayed would only make it more difficult on Haley when he left. As much as he hated to see Lana cry, he definitely couldn’t stand the thought of Haley’s tears.
Dammit, he wanted to be the father in Haley’s life. He wanted to be the man to hold her when she cried, to teach her about life and laugh with her. He wanted to be the man who walked her to the bus on the first day of school, the man who would walk her down the aisle on the day she got married.
Even worse, he wanted to be the man who woke up every morning with Lana in his bed. He didn’t just want to protect her from all the bad guys in the world, he wanted to be the good guy in her life.
He’d been a player all his life, but he didn’t want to play anymore. He wanted a real life with a family he adored and the same woman by his side until the very end.
He turned away from the window as Lana came into the living room. The very sight of her ached deep in his heart. “She asleep?” he asked.
She nodded. “Out like a light. I’m going to get a glass of wine. Would you like one?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Why don’t you just sit and relax and I’ll bring it out here,” she said, as if she didn’t want him following her into the kitchen.
He agreed and flopped down on the sofa, his heartache once again weighing heavy in his chest. She returned a moment later with a glass of wine in each hand. She handed him one and then sat with her own in the chair opposite the sofa.
The tension that had become almost unbearable during the last two days seemed to grow tauter as they sipped their wine in silence.
Finally he could stand it no longer. “Lana, I didn’t want me telling you how I felt about you to create more problems in your life,” he said as he set his wineglass on the coffee table.
Her gaze lingered on his face, and her features gave him all kinds of mixed messages. Her eyes were soft and filled with what he thought was want and yearning, and yet her lips were compressed tightly together as if in rejection.
With a sigh she worried one hand through her hair, mussing it just enough to look charming. “Riley, I still think once you get back to your own life you’re going to realize that you just got caught up in a game of pretend.” She offered him a smile that didn’t quite reach the depths of her eyes. “You’ll get back to your hook-ups and hot dates and won’t even think about me.”
“That’s not true.” He leaned forward and picked up his wineglass once again. “If nothing else comes from this, Lana, I’ve realized that I’m ready to be a husband, that I want to be a father. I’d hoped it would be with you and Haley.”
He couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of his voice. Pride be damned, he wanted her to know that the man who’d walked into her house weeks ago was not the same man who would be walking out.
“It was easy to be content with uncommitted relationships when my heart wasn’t involved,” he continued. He fell silent and took another sip of his wine, his gaze lingering on her as she stared past him and out the window.
“Lana, I’m going to tell you this one more time. I love you, and I love Haley, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than be the man in your lives.”
When she met his gaze her eyes were filled with a yearning that made him believe that she loved him, too, that she wanted him in her life forever. But she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Riley. It’s just not meant to be.”
He hadn’t really expected anything different, but her words formed a hard, painful lump in the center of his chest. “Then maybe it would be best if I contact Larry and tell him that he needs to assign another agent to you.”
For a moment he thought she was going to protest. For one joyous second he saw love shining from her eyes and he believed it was all going to be okay.
But that emotion quickly doused
and she raised her shoulders in a small shrug. “You do whatever you think best, Riley.”
What would be best was if at the end of all this they wound up together. What would be best was if she’d confess that she cared about him as deeply, as passionately as he did her.
He frowned thoughtfully as he considered pulling himself off the case. There were other things to consider besides his own emotional state.
“If another agent comes in, then Greg will know something is up,” he said.
“What difference does it make?” she countered. “At this point in the game he knows I’ve been attacked. He also knows that perhaps the police told me about the relevance of the baby’s breath. I really don’t care what he thinks or knows about what’s going on in my house. I just want all this over and done.”
There was a weariness in her tone that let him know she was reaching the end of her rope. She tipped the last of her wine into her mouth and then stood. She wore her mental exhaustion in the slight sag of her shoulders, in the tight line of her lips.
“I’m going to call it a night. You can tell me what your plans are in the morning.” She carried her wineglass into the kitchen and placed it in the dishwasher, then returned to the living room.
“Good night, Riley,” she said, then headed down the hallway toward her bedroom. Riley watched her go, his heart in his throat.
Stay or go? He needed to make a decision. The best thing for Lana’s world was for him to stay, for them to continue their fake relationship until something broke with the investigation.
His head told him to stay, but his heart urged him to go before it got so painful he never recovered. With a weariness of his own he grabbed his empty wineglass and pulled himself up off the sofa at the same time that Lana screamed from the bedroom.
He dropped the glass as he roared down the hallway, his heart thundering with the burst of adrenaline that sizzled through him.
She met him in the hall, her eyes wide with terror. “A man,” she gasped. “He was wearing a ski mask and was breaking in through the bedroom window.”
It was obvious to him that she was okay, so he turned on his heels and raced for the front door. As he hit the front porch he saw a figure in the distance running up the street.
He took off after the intruder, determined that this time the man wasn’t going to get away. He was vaguely aware of footsteps behind him as he raced down the sidewalk. Turning his head, but not breaking his speed, he saw Frank struggling to catch up.
The dark sky lit up with a flash of lightning followed by a deep rumble of thunder, but the turbulence of Mother Nature had nothing on the wild emotions crashing through Riley.
Within minutes his lungs burned and his legs ached, but he didn’t slow and began to steadily gain on the figure in the distance while Frank fell further behind.
It wasn’t Greg. The person was slighter in build than Lana’s neighbor. Trent or Seth? It was impossible to tell who it was with the ski mask that covered his hair. Trent or Seth or somebody else who hadn’t even made it onto their radar?
There was no question that this man was Greg’s partner, the man they’d all been looking to find. It was far too great a coincidence that Lana had been marked as the next victim and this man had been caught trying to break into her house.
“Halt,” he yelled after they’d gone almost four blocks. He pulled his gun from his holster as he continued to race forward. “Stop or I’ll shoot you in the back and ask questions later!”
The figure stumbled, as if in hesitation, and then slowed, obviously believing Riley’s threat. He came to a halt and slowly turned to face Riley, his long arms held up in the air.
With the ski mask and the dark shadows of night, Riley still couldn’t identify the culprit even as he drew close enough to hear his labored breathing.
“Lie face down,” Riley instructed. “With your arms out at your sides.”
“Just don’t shoot me,” the man said as he followed Riley’s instructions.
Riley frowned. He didn’t sound like Seth or Trent, but his voice was definitely familiar.
As Riley patted him down to look for weapons, Frank rushed up to help. “Who is it?” he asked.
“I’ll know in a minute,” Riley replied. “He’s clean.” He stepped back. “Sit up,” he commanded.
What Riley wanted to do was beat the hell out of the man on the ground for making Lana scream, for all the lives he’d destroyed.
“Get that ski mask off,” Riley said. Frank had his gun drawn and leveled at the man as well. The creep definitely wasn’t going anywhere. “And if you twitch wrong it will be the last move you ever make.”
He reached up and pulled off the ski mask at the same time a flash of lightning rent the sky. Riley fought back a gasp of surprise.
Randy Newsom, Greg’s nephew.
“Jeez, I don’t know what everyone is so excited about. I was just after some cash,” he exclaimed. “I wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”
“Get up,” Frank said and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket.
“Ah, come on, can’t you just let me go?” Randy asked. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said to Riley. His brown eyes glittered darkly. “It was a dumb move on my part. I just thought you might have some cash lying around in the bedroom.”
“Get up and turn around,” Frank repeated.
“Can’t we talk about this?” Randy asked as he slowly rose to his feet, a pleading expression on his face. “My mom is going to be so upset, and her boyfriend is going to bust me up.”
“You should have thought about that before now,” Frank said as he cuffed the kid.
Riley’s head was spinning, working overtime to make sense of this newest development. Randy had attempted this latest break-in. Was he also responsible for the initial attack on Lana?
“Besides, you don’t have to worry about what your mother’s old man is going to do to you,” Frank said. “You’re looking at the death penalty.”
“For what? Last I heard breaking and entering doesn’t get you the death penalty,” Randy replied.
“Yeah, but conspiracy in four murders does,” Frank replied.
Randy offered Frank a sly smile as another flash of lightning lit the sky. “You can’t prove that. You can’t prove anything except I was committing a robbery. I’m a juvenile, an honor student who’s never been in trouble. I’ll be out of jail before you two get back to wherever you came from.”
The teenager’s smugness bothered Riley. He was missing something…something important. Thunder boomed overhead.
Why would Randy break into the house knowing Riley was there, knowing that it was possible he’d be caught? It didn’t make sense. It was almost as if he’d wanted to be caught. Was it part of a plan to draw Riley away from the house? So that his partner could do the dirty work? And just who was his partner?
His brother, Ricky?
While he and Frank were here dealing with Randy, where was Ricky?
Jesus, was it possible that Greg didn’t have one partner, but two? The horrible thought roared through his brain. Two malleable teenagers who could be manipulated to kill?
Randy had run straight down the sidewalk when he could have darted into the darkness of somebody’s backyard and disappeared. He’d made it relatively easy for Riley to catch him. Why?
To waste time. To draw Riley out of the house, leaving Lana alone and vulnerable.
Lana!
Fear ripped through his gut, a frantic fear like he’d never felt before. “Take care of this and get somebody at Greg’s house to arrest him,” Riley said to Frank as he tore down the sidewalk in the direction of the house, praying that he wasn’t too late.
Lana stood in Haley’s doorway, grateful her scream hadn’t awakened the child. Lana usually joked that nothing short of an atomic explosion could wake up Haley once she’d fallen asleep. Tonight she was grateful for that fact.
With her arms wrapped around herself to ward off the chill that threatened to consume her, s
he walked to the front door and peered outside.
The only sound was the occasional rumble of thunder. She had no idea in what direction Riley had run when he’d taken off. Surely this time he’d get the man who’d tried to break in. Hopefully, this was the beginning of the end of this whole mess.
She closed and locked the front door, afraid to keep it unlocked while she was in the house alone. The chill she’d tried to avoid snaked up her back and formed a ball of ice in the pit of her stomach.
Hot tea. That’s what she needed. As she headed for the kitchen she tried not to think about Riley and what might be happening outside.
Riley had a gun. Surely he would be safe. Surely she would have heard a gunshot if there had been any real trouble.
Her hands trembled as she pulled a cup from the cabinet, and when she turned to get a tea bag from the pantry, he stepped out.
The cup she held crashed to the floor as she saw the man in the ski mask facing her. A horrible sense of déjà vu filled her as her mind worked to make sense of it. Had he somehow managed to lose Riley and doubled back here?
He moved to a position between her and the doorway into the living room, blocking her from leaving the kitchen. He looked smaller than she remembered, thinner and not quite as tall. But the knife he held was as wicked-looking as she remembered from the last encounter.
“What do you want?” she cried. “Why are you doing this?” Desperately she looked around for some thing she could grab, a weapon of some sort that she could use to protect herself, but there was nothing.
He pulled a sprig of baby’s breath from his pocket and set it on the countertop. “For the innocent,” he said. “We’re saving kids from being beaten and abused by stepfathers.”
Riley, where are you?
The back door. Maybe she could escape through the back door. Keep him talking, a little voice whispered in her head. Buy as much time as you can.
“But why are you killing the women?” she asked, and took a sliding step toward the door. “Why not kill the abusive men?”
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