He’d washed about half the dishes when the timer went off. After drying his hands, he took out the pizza, cut it and dished up three slices each on two plates, then carried them along with two soft drinks into the living room. “Turn that down while we eat.”
She pretended not to hear him, so he set down the food, then used the remote to crank down the volume to a respectable level.
He’d eaten one piece of pizza and started on another one before he finally broke the silence. “When does the new school year start?”
She mumbled three indistinct sounds that gave the definite flavor of I don’t know.
“Does it start in August?”
“Hm.”
“Toward the end of the month?”
She shrugged, then gave him a sweetly sarcastic smile that reminded him so much of her mother he couldn’t stand it.
“Counting the days until you’re free of me?”
“No.” Drawing a breath, he forced himself to go on. “Believe it or not, Lexy, I’ve liked having you here.” After living totally alone for so many years, it was a big change, having someone to come home to, to share meals with, to entertain and be entertained by. He didn’t want to even think about how empty his life was going to be once she and Hallie were gone. He would have to learn living alone all over again, and instinct warned him it was going to be a hell of a lot harder this time than the first time.
“But…?”
He shook his head. “No ‘but.’”
“There always is. But you’ve had enough now. You want your life back. You’re tired of the hassle.”
He shook his head again. “There’s no ‘but.’ Sorry to disappoint you.” After a moment, he added, “I was thinking…maybe you could come back at Thanksgiving.”
Her jaw literally dropped open as she stared at him in astonishment. She hadn’t expected an invitation to return. She believed he was her father, but she’d thought that once this visit was over, he wouldn’t want to see her again.
Hallie was right. If he tried to send Lexy home now, before her visit was scheduled to end, she would never buy the story that he was concerned about her safety. She would believe he was using the break-in and the attempted kidnapping merely as excuses to get rid of her. She’ll just have to live with that, he’d told Hallie—an adequate response if they were talking about a normal kid with a normal upbringing and a mother who loved her. But Lexy’s life had never been normal, and she’d never known with any certainty that anyone had ever loved her.
He knew how that could damage a person. He knew all too well how it could affect a person’s entire life.
And whether she was his daughter or someone else’s, he didn’t want her to grow up like him.
“Thanksgiving,” she echoed. “S-sure, th-that would be grea—okay.” Then she grinned sheepishly. “Nah, that would be great.”
“Then we’ll get your airline reservations before you go home, okay?”
Still grinning, she bobbed her head.
They polished off the rest of the pizza, then returned to the cleanup. By eleven o’clock, everything was back in its place and, except for all the missing breakables and the two-by-four nailed across the back door to secure it, the house looked none the worse. Brady glanced around the kitchen, then yawned. “I’m going to bed.”
“I think I’ll watch a little TV first.” Lexy started out of the room, then came back, raised onto her toes and brushed the slightest of kisses to his jaw. “Good night,” she muttered, her face turning red as she hurried away.
He stared after her a long time before turning down the hall and into his bedroom. He didn’t bother with a light, but undressed in the dark and slid underneath the top sheet. He could see out the window that the Tucker farmhouse was dark, which very well might mean Hallie was in bed asleep. Or in bed not asleep. Or in bed and not alone. Or maybe she wasn’t there at all. Maybe….
He rolled onto his side, away from the window, and closed his eyes. He’d been satisfied with living alone the past six years, until first Hallie, then Lexy, had come into his life. Of course he’d been needy those years, though he didn’t like to admit it.
But when had he become so greedy?
The sound of the screen door opening was soft, familiar, but so out of place in the middle of the night that it woke Brady from a restless sleep. The night’s silence was heavy as he listened to a bird’s call, a gurgling from the refrigerator in the next room, the tick of the kitchen clock. Then came more sounds that didn’t belong—the scrape of metal on metal, the creak of the front door, a couple of little bumps as the screen door closed.
He sat up on the side of the bed and eased into the jeans he’d taken off a few hours earlier. From the closet he grabbed a T-shirt, then unlocked the gun cabinet and removed his pistol. Sliding the safety off, he held it close to his side as he moved cautiously into the hallway.
Light flickered from the living room. Lexy must have fallen asleep watching TV, he thought, but the hairs standing on end at the back of his neck said it wasn’t her sneaking around. He passed the dark bathroom and was approaching the living room when a shadowy figure stepped into the hallway, stopping in front of Lexy’s bedroom door. It was a man, dressed all in dark clothes, and just as he reached for the doorknob, Brady brought his pistol up and took aim.
“Hold it right there,” he said quietly. “Get your hands up where I can see them.”
The man froze, then slowly raised his hands. He was gripping a flashlight in one.
“Drop the light and move into the living room.”
“Hey, look, I’m not up to anything,” the man said as he obeyed and Brady followed. “I just came to see Les. She said you’d be asleep by now. She left the front door unlocked for me because, hell, I’m too old to be climbin’ in windows.”
Not believing him for an instant, Brady stopped just inside the door. “Put your hands on the back of the sofa and spread your feet apart.”
The guy turned to face him. “Hey, come on. You got a problem with her and me, you need to talk to her about it. I just came to see her, like she told me. I’m not doing anything wrong.”
Brady recalled Hallie’s description of the man who’d hassled Lexy on the street—early twenties, brown hair, fair skin and not particularly memorable except for a slick grin. It was a damned accurate description, right down to the grin. “Put your hands on the back of the sofa,” he repeated coldly, “and spread your feet.”
The man’s gaze flickered from Brady’s face to his weapon, and he swallowed hard before turning to obey.
Brady had just taken a step toward him, intending to pat him down, then get the truth out of him—one way or another—when the floorboards behind him creaked. Instinctively he stepped to the side as he turned, but he wasn’t quick enough to avoid the flashlight that smashed down on his right wrist. The force of the blow sent him staggering into the window behind him, where the shattering glass threw him off balance. He sank bonelessly to the floor, pain washing over him with such intensity that his stomach churned. He was barely able to see for the stars bursting in his brain, but he could see enough to tell that he’d dropped his gun and it had skittered across the floor, out of his reach.
“Did you get it?” the second man asked.
“No.”
The second man swore. “Jeez, do I have to do everything myself?”
“Hey, you screwed up, too, the first time.”
The second intruder turned toward Lexy’s room, and Brady forced himself to his feet. His right hand was useless, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing the smaller man by the collar and half lifting, half throwing him toward his partner. The man stumbled into the end table, and the light flickered wildly as the oil lamp swayed with the impact. His smile nothing less than evil, when the man regained his balance, he picked up the lamp, hefted it above his head, then smashed it to the floor between them and Brady.
The glass shattered and oil spread across the wood floor in a fiery puddle before flames shot up
, their heat forcing Brady back a few steps. Across the room the bastard threw the second lamp toward the kitchen, where it, too, exploded into flames. Laughing, both men ran from the house.
Brady banged on Lexy’s door, rattling it open. “Lex! Get up!” He reached her bed in two steps and gave her a shake. “The house is on fire! Come on, we’ve got to get out!”
She blinked, looked at him, then her eyes opened wide. A roar came from the living room as the flames consumed everything in their path. He dragged her from the bed, and she scrambled into sandals, grabbed her backpack, then raced down the hall ahead of him. When she would have turned into the kitchen, he grabbed her shirttail and pushed her into his bedroom. “The back door’s nailed shut, remember? Use that chair to break out the window and screen.”
While she grabbed the ladder-back chair in the corner, he went to the phone in the kitchen and called 911. A moment later, coughing from the smoke, he returned to the bedroom and closed the door.
“Come on, Brady, we gotta go!” Lexy shrieked from the window.
“Go on, and wait right outside. I have to get something…” In the closet, he grabbed the two rifles and the shotgun from the rack and dropped them on the bed, then dragged a canvas bag filled with ammunition from the corner.
“Forget the guns!” She was bouncing on the balls of her feet at the window. “The smoke’s coming in under the door! Please, Brady…!”
As long as he was saving things, he added his gun belt, tossed his two Stetsons to Lexy, then returned to the closet for the only truly important items—the stack of photographs he kept locked in the gun cabinet. He slid them into his pocket, then reached the window as flames licked through the gap under the door. He lifted Lexy to the ground, wrapped the sheet around everything on the bed and handed it out, then slid out himself.
A fire engine and the chief’s truck were pulling up as they came around the front of the house. “Anyone inside?” the chief yelled.
“No, it’s just us.”
“If you have your keys, we’ll move your trucks out of the way.”
Brady started to reach into his pocket for his keys, but the pain sent nausea washing over him. “Lex, can you get my keys?”
“What’s wrong— Oh, God, what happened to your arm?”
He gazed down at her as she tossed the keys to the fire chief, then dryly said, “You’re a sound sleeper, aren’t you?” Sliding his good arm around her shoulders, he walked her out toward the street. There he looked her over, head to toe. “You okay?”
She nodded, then burst into tears.
As he pulled her against him, he realized he’d been wrong earlier. If he’d lost the photographs, he wouldn’t have lost anything truly important. Photographs could be replaced.
But Lexy couldn’t.
When Hallie was upset, she didn’t sleep well. After catching Max and Lilah together, she’d lost so much sleep that she’d begun looking haggard in spite of the best cosmetics money could buy—and haggard was not a good look for her. Tonight she’d done everything to ensure a good’s night rest—taken a long, relaxing hot bath, lighted tension-relieving aromatherapy candles, drunk two cups of chamomile and valerian tea, listened to the most soothing jazz CD she owned.
And none of it had worked. She was still wide awake.
Rolling onto her side, she gazed out the window toward Brady’s house. She’d managed not to look over there even once in the past two hours. The last time the house had been dark and still, and she’d wondered if he and Lexy had missed her tonight even one-fourth as much as she’d missed them. Probably not, she’d decided. People didn’t tend to get as emotionally attached to her as she did to them. She had always hoped that was a flaw in the people she got attached to, but she was beginning to think it was a flaw in her. She just wasn’t the sort of woman people really committed to. Even her own mother and sisters could go months without thinking of her, while they were on her mind practically every day.
Someone was up at the Marshall house, she saw, with lights blazing from every window. She wondered if Brady had gotten another emergency call, or if Lexy was sick, or—
Stiffening, she leaned closer to the window. There was a whole lot more light than there were windows over there, and it was flickering, rising, falling, like a—a—
Oh, God, like a fire.
She jumped from her bed, pulled a jumper on over her chemise, then shoved her feet into shoes. She was halfway to the front door, clutching her keys in one hand, when the phone rang. She hesitated, then kept going. If it was important, the caller would leave a message or try again.
It took only two minutes to reach Brady’s house, though she had to park half a block away. There was a fire engine in the driveway, as well as sheriff’s vehicles up and down the street. Everyone was standing idle, though. Just a glance showed that nothing could be done to save the house. All the firefighters could do was douse the flames if they started to spread.
She found Brady and Lexy standing arm-in-arm at the edge of the yard and hesitated. What could she offer that they might possibly need? A place to stay? Brady would probably prefer Motel Le Dump over her guest room. Concern? They had enough concern for each other. Support? No doubt that was why all the deputies were there.
They didn’t need her at all…but she needed to see for herself that they were all right.
Taking a deep breath for courage, she crossed the last ten feet and circled around in front of them. “Brady, Lexy, are you guys okay?” she asked, and they both automatically reached for her, enveloping her in a three-way hug that filled the emptiness inside her with an incredible sense of warmth and satisfaction.
“Oh, Hallie, they came back and burned our house down!” Lexy exclaimed. “They tried to kill us, and they hurt Brady!”
Her nerves clenching, Hallie pushed back and looked at him. “Where?”
“It’s nothing.”
“They broke his arm,” Lexy said, “but he’s too stubborn to go to the doctor.”
In the insufficient light from the street lamp, his arm certainly looked broken to Hallie. His wrist was swollen to twice its size, it was badly discolored, and his fingers were cool to the touch.
She gave Lexy a reassuring smile and a wink, then said, “The key to dealing with a stubborn man is to be so stubborn yourself that he’ll give in and do what you want just so you’ll stop pestering him. So, Brady, do you want to show that you’re also an intelligent man and save us both the trouble?”
His blue eyes were shadowed with pain as he gazed down at her. “Don’t let this go to your head,” he warned, “because it doesn’t mean you’ve won. I just don’t have the energy to argue with you tonight.”
“Sounds like a victory to me.”
He insisted on talking to several of the deputies first, then allowed Hallie and Lexy to help him into the passenger seat of his sheriff’s department SUV. “Reese fired the last deputy who let his girlfriend drive his patrol unit,” he remarked as she slowly drove past the other vehicles.
“But Reese isn’t here. And you’re not a deputy. And I’m not your girlfriend.” Though she wouldn’t mind playing the role for a time. A few weeks or…oh, a few decades sounded about right.
“Where are we going?”
He gave her directions to the nearest hospital, some thirty miles away, then related the events of the night to her. “I should have expected someone else,” he said, chagrin in his voice. “I shouldn’t have let him sneak up behind me.”
“You’re right,” Hallie agreed. “After all, you are a superhero…or so you seem to think.”
He scowled at her, but it took more energy than he had to spare, apparently. “It was stupid to think it was just one guy. I mean, there were lights inside, and my pickup and this truck parked outside. Just one guy isn’t knowingly going to break into a house occupied by a cop.”
And generally, it seemed to her, no one would break into an occupied residence—a cop’s or not—unarmed. Brady and Lexy had been very fortunate that
the second intruder hadn’t had anything deadlier than a flashlight in his hand.
“Did you lose everything?” she asked softly.
“Lexy got her backpack,” he replied.
Lexy spoke up from the back seat. “And Brady got his guns and bullets. We’re about to be burned to a crisp, and he’s getting bullets. Can you believe it?”
He tilted his head back. “Ammunition will explode in a fire, and I had a hell of a lot of it. I didn’t want to put the firemen in any more danger than usual.”
“Oh. Okay. I apologize for thinking you were crazy.” Lexy reached up to pat his shoulder, then sat back. “Damn—I mean, darn, I don’t have any clothes. Just my pajamas.”
Good, Hallie thought. “I’ll take you shopping tomorrow—” Remembering how angry Brady had been that afternoon, she broke off, then lamely finished, “If that’s all right with your father.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, then Brady murmured, “Better you than me.”
It wasn’t much, but at least she could accept it as an indication that he didn’t intend to keep her out of their lives. Maybe it was pathetic, but she was grateful for it.
They must have made quite a picture walking into the emergency room thirty minutes later, Hallie thought. She wore no makeup and hadn’t combed her hair; Lexy wore blue-and-red plaid boxers, a green T-shirt and flip-flops; and Brady was un-shaven, barefooted and smelled of smoke. No one paid them any mind, though, as they whisked Brady away for treatment.
Nearly an hour had passed before he returned with his right arm encased in a cast from elbow to fingertips. He looked so handsome…and so fatigued. Hallie was starting to feel that way herself.
As soon as they got to the truck, Lexy lay down in the back seat and was softly snoring before they got out of town. Hallie glanced at Brady. “Why don’t you recline the seat and try to get some sleep?”
“I’m okay.”
“Yeah, you really look it.”
“Hey, let’s not see who can be ornerier at three-thirty in the morning, okay?”
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