“Just me and my pop.”
It was more than he had offered before, and though she was curious about his mother, she contained herself from asking about her. “What prompted you to go into the army?”
“Same thing that prompted your dad to get out. Death.” He looked over his shoulder at the softly jangling swings. “When’s the last time you were on one of those?”
She was used to bouncing around from topic to topic with her patients, so his abrupt shift didn’t unduly throw her. “I can’t even remember,” she admitted with a faint laugh. “I’m not sure I played much on the swings or the slides even when I was a child. I was more the studious type. Always had my nose in one book or another. You?”
“Broke my arm jumping off a swing set when I was seven.”
“Somehow, I am not surprised.”
He raised one eyebrow.
“You seem the adventurous type.”
“Well, I liked sports,” he allowed. “Adventure tends to have a price. Learned that after fifteen years in the army. Reason I got out. Got tired of fighting a battle that I’d finally realized was unwinnable.”
She had the distinct sense that the battle he meant hadn’t been a military or political one. But he didn’t give her an opening to pursue the subject further. “You going to finish that here,” he nodded toward her sandwich, “or take it back with you?” He’d already polished off the remainder of the coleslaw.
She shook her head. “This is my favorite sandwich. Only thing I like better from Ruby’s are the cinnamon rolls. But as a leftover, I am happy to pass. You want it?” She nudged it toward him.
Considering his seemingly endless appetite, she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t hesitate to finish it off in a few bites. “Guess we’re running out of time, Doc.”
She felt only too aware of it, but instead of packing up, she impetuously swung her legs back over the bench again and stood, nudging her skirt smooth again. “We’ll come back and clean up in a few minutes,” she said as she started across the sidewalk toward the playground. When she reached the sand that softened the landing area around the swings, she removed her shoes, left them on the cement and continued on barefoot. “Come on.”
“It was just a question, Doc.” His voice was lazy and amused. “Not a suggestion.”
“I know.” She wrapped her hands around the chains of one of the swings and sat down on the rubber seat. “You were changing the subject. A tactic I’ve been known to use myself, as you know.” Stretching out one leg, she pushed off slightly with the other. “Come over here anyway.” She tilted her head toward the other unoccupied swings. “Shame that the only thing moving these around right now is the breeze.”
He unwrapped one of the brownies before standing and crossing over to sit on the swing beside her. He downed half the brownie in two bites. “You’re never quite what I expect.”
She wasn’t swinging high at all, but she was still surprised by the exhilaration she felt. “Spilling food, ruining shirts and passing out drunker than a skunk?” She made a face. “Not very appropriate for the town shrink, I’m afraid.”
“Psychologist,” he corrected dryly and she couldn’t help but smile. “So why were you drunk?”
She tilted her face upward toward the sun and closed her eyes. The warmth felt good on her face. “That is a conversation for another day, I think. Would take too much time.”
“And your two o’clock will be waiting soon.”
“Yes.” She heard a soft jangle of chains but didn’t open her eyes until her backward arc was caught mid-swing, halting her motion abruptly. Startled, she looked up to see Seth standing behind her. “What are you doing?”
“What I’ve wanted to do for a long time.” He leaned over her head from behind and brushed her mouth with his.
She’d barely inhaled the surprise of it along with the taste of chocolate on his lips when he straightened again and gave her a strong push that sent her swing flying three times as high as her modest efforts had. The sound that came out of her throat was half screech and half laugh. “Seth!”
He was already crossing back to the picnic table where he collected their debris and deposited it in one of the metal trash bins. Then, after gathering up her unfinished bottle of water and the remaining brownie, he returned to stand on the sidewalk in front of her. “I have a promise to keep.”
She’d never once been reluctant to do the job that she loved. But she was reluctant now. “Am I going to shock you if I admit I don’t really want to go back?”
He smiled slightly. “No. All work and no play isn’t good for anyone. You’re a shrink. You probably preach balance—” he drew out the word mockingly “—to all the crazies who lay on your couch.”
She did talk about balance with her patients who clearly didn’t possess it. And she tried not to think about the irony, when her own life was heavily skewed toward work. But she didn’t want to talk about that now, so she leaned forward, her ponytail sliding over her shoulder as she swung away from him again. “No ‘crazies,’ as you so indelicately put it. Nor do I have a couch in my office.”
“Neither do I.”
Which served to remind her that she wasn’t the only one on a lunch break. And whereas she was her own boss, he was not. So when the swing scooped forward and back again, she let her toes drag through the sand, slowing the motion enough that she could jump off. And when she stumbled forward, she wasn’t surprised at all that he was right there to catch her before she fell. But as soon as she was steady, his hand dropped from her shoulder and he held out the brownie to her.
Exhilaration was still flowing in her veins as she took the plastic-wrapped treat. “You seem very tall,” she admitted breathlessly. She was five-seven and he had a good half foot on her.
His eyes crinkled. “You seem very short,” he returned and bent over to pick up her shoes. He dangled them in front of her. “Without these.”
“I’m still not short,” she countered and took them from him. She set the pumps upright on the sidewalk and slid her feet back into them, which brought her eyes considerably closer to his. Instead of making her feel more in control, though, it just made her more aware of how close the added height brought their lips.
“My sisters, now,” she said quickly, “are short.” She briskly set off for the parking lot and silently noted the way her fingers had squeezed the brownie from a perfectly cut rectangle into a near bow-tie shape. “The Trips, I mean. They’re five-two if they stretch. Which is an inch more than their mom.” He’d left the door unlocked, so she pulled open the squeaking passenger door and quickly tucked the brownie out of sight in a side pocket of her briefcase. She hadn’t been worried about her belongings. The truck had been in full sight the entire time, and there wasn’t a soul around except them anyway.
Stepping up onto the running board, she pulled herself up into the high seat and fastened her seatbelt while he got behind the wheel. Only then did she reach for her cell phone, also inside her briefcase.
Seeing she had four missed calls from Tristan Clay had her grimacing. There was only one reason he’d call her directly, and that was because of Jason McGregor.
“Something wrong?”
“Don’t know.” She unclicked her seatbelt again. “Would you mind waiting for a moment?” She didn’t really wait for an answer as she pushed open the door and climbed back out again, moving a few feet away from the truck before listening to the only message that had been left.
* * *
Seth watched her from inside the truck. He hadn’t seen the display on her phone so had no way of knowing who or what had put the serious look back in her eyes. Could be a patient. Could be McGregor for all he knew. Or it could be something more personal.
At the moment, he was just sorry to see that the lighthearted smile inside her chocolate-warm eyes had departed.
<
br /> When she looked at her phone and tapped the screen before holding it to her ear again, moving even farther away from the truck, he decided it was a patient. A few minutes later, she ended her call and returned to the truck, her lips set.
“You all right?”
“Yes. A small crisis, I’m afraid.” She chewed her lip and seemed to come to an abrupt decision as she looked at him. “With a...a friend. Would you mind dropping me at her house? She lives closer to here than if I went back to the office to get my own car. I’m sure you have to get back to Cee-Vid—”
He backed out of the parking spot. “Where’s her house?”
Hayley’s lips and eyes both softened slightly. “Turn left at the end of the block. She lives in that new development out past Shop-World. Toward Cee-Vid’s airstrip. I assume you know where that is?”
His hands tightened fractionally around the steering wheel. The safe house was in the general direction she described. “I do. I’m surprised that you do.” Not many people did.
She exhaled, as if relieved. “Last year, Mr. Clay loaned one of his Cee-Vid planes to Casey so that he could take Jane to a funeral. She told me about it.” She refastened her seatbelt while she called Gretchen and asked her to reschedule the rest of her appointments for the afternoon.
Even though Hayley held the cell phone tightly to her ear, Seth could hear the laugh in her secretary’s voice as she said, “My, my. Lunch went that well, did it? I have never been happier to reschedule Mrs. Pittman.”
Hayley’s gaze skittered over him. Her cheeks were pink. From the sun, possibly, but he’d already seen for himself the way she could blush. For a woman whose profession was delving into the minds and emotions of others, it was a curiosity to him that she could still blush at all.
“It’s not like that,” he heard her mutter into the phone. “I’ll check in with you in a half hour. Thanks, Gretchen.” Then she was tucking the phone back in the side pocket of her briefcase. “Sorry.”
“Why?”
“Because—” She broke off and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She pointed out the turn ahead. “Left there.”
And a few minutes later, it was a right. Then another left.
The closer they got to the safe house, the tighter Seth’s nerves got. For all he knew, she could have a friend living out this way.
But the prickling at the base of his neck was telling him otherwise.
And when she gestured vaguely a few minutes later and said he could just stop on the street and drop her off, he knew his instinct had been right on the money. “You need me to wait?”
She looked genuinely surprised. “Oh, no. You’ve done enough already.” She gathered the strap of her briefcase and pushed open the door. “I don’t want to keep you any longer than I already have.”
“It’s not a problem. I have an understanding boss in Mr. Clay.” He hoped to hell she would never know how ironic those words were.
Her cheeks looked even brighter. “My friend can get me back. Thanks, though. And thanks for lunch, Seth. I really enjoyed it.”
“So did I.” The words were true. So much more than they should have been, considering the situation.
She looked over her shoulder at the quiet house and then back at him. “I’m still holding you to dinner. After everything calms down.” She pushed a blond lock of hair that had come down from her ponytail back behind her ear. “With the wedding and all.”
And all, he figured, included McGregor. “Sure. Maybe I’ll even see you at the wedding. You can save a dance for me at the reception.”
A shy smile bloomed on her lips. “I’d really like that.” Then, seeming to realize that she was just standing there smiling at him, she quickly shut the door and headed briskly up the walk toward the front door of the safe house.
He was pretty sure the chaos surrounding Casey and Jane’s wedding would be well over long before things were resolved with Hayley’s “patient.”
And he was even more certain that when it came to Hayley and him, Seth wasn’t going to be able to wait that long. Not now that he’d tasted her lips again. And no dance at a wedding reception attended by half the town was going to suffice.
He waited until she reached the front door, which opened the second that she got to it. Without a backward glance, she disappeared inside and the door closed once again.
He pinched the pain between his eyebrows and turned the truck around, driving back the way he’d come.
He’d barely pulled into the Cee-Vid parking lot when his own phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and let out a long, low curse at the sight of “Boss” on the screen. Reluctantly, he put the phone to his ear. “Yeah?”
“What the hell do you think you are doing?”
He sighed. The pain between his eyebrows deepened. “You were at the house,” he surmised.
“And saw you drop off Dr. Templeton.” Tristan’s voice was terse. “I want an explanation.”
Rather than enter the Cee-Vid building, Seth veered off to one side where he could speak without being overheard. “She had a crisis with a ‘friend.’ Her words. I dropped her off.” His boss’s silence spoke volumes. “We had lunch together,” Seth finally added.
“Why?” It wasn’t curiosity in the other man’s tone; it was demand.
Seth rubbed his hand down his bristled cheek. Even though he had spent fifteen years answering orders in the army, he’d spent the past five happy to remove that from his daily routine. Right along with looking like a clean-cut recruiting poster model.
But Tristan was still his boss. And Seth had no desire for that to change. He didn’t like the situation with McGregor, but he understood the need for the Hollins-Winwords of the world. So he answered.
“Because I like her,” he admitted. “She has no idea that I know what’s going on inside that house.”
“You want McGregor’s hide nailed to a wall,” Tristan countered. “You could never prove your father’s partner killed him, but you’re damn sure going to make sure McGregor doesn’t get away with killing your friends.”
Seth sucked down the emotion that rose hot and quick inside him. He’d been too young and green to do anything about it when the authorities had decided that Chuck Banyon’s drowning on a boating trip with his business partner had been only a tragic accident. That the business deal they’d been at odds over hadn’t been adequate motive.
But that had been two decades ago. And despite knowing he’d failed to unearth the truth, Seth was no longer a devastated kid. “Because I like her,” he repeated tightly.
“Then unlike her,” his boss said flatly, “or be damned certain that her appeal has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she’s the only one McGregor is talking to. I don’t want anything messing up this case, and that includes you messing with Dr. Templeton!”
Chapter Five
“Vivian.” Hayley maintained a calm tone despite the frustration building inside her. “You promised you’d go with me to the wedding tomorrow.”
Vivian’s diminutive figure was wrapped in a heavy gold silk robe. But even dressed as she was for bed, she still had a long strand of pearls around her neck. She was working them between her fingers as if they were worry beads as she paced across Hayley’s small living room. “You’re going to be busy, dear. I haven’t been a maid of honor since the Stone Age, but I do remember it is a busy time. The styles may have changed, but I highly doubt that has.”
Hayley sank down on a chair and toed off the shoes that she’d been wearing for the past several hours, all through Casey and Jane’s wedding rehearsal and the dinner they’d thrown at their place afterward. It was late. And on top of a nearly full day at work before that, it felt even later. She wanted sleep. She wanted someone to put their arms around her and solve the world’s problems.
Who was she k
idding?
Problems were what she was supposed to be good at solving.
She wanted Seth to put his arms around her, period.
But Seth wasn’t here. She hadn’t seen or talked to him since he’d surprised her with lunch three days earlier.
And her grandmother was here. “When’s the last time you were out of the house? Besides your morning walk?”
Vivian’s lips tightened. She was eighty-six years old but the same dark brown eyes that Hayley also possessed still held plenty of life, and right now they clearly broadcast her displeasure. “If you want me to leave, Hayley, you need only say the words.” She sniffed haughtily. “You wouldn’t be the first family member to wish me gone, after all.”
“I don’t wish you gone, Vivian,” Hayley said quietly. Honestly. “You surely know that by now.”
Her grandmother sighed heavily, some of the starch leaving her rigid posture. She crossed to the couch and sat in the corner, looking smaller than ever and unusually delicate. “You’ve been hospitable for six months.”
“It’s not hospitality driving me,” Hayley corrected. “You’re family. Maybe if you’d just tell me what happened between you and my father and Uncle David, I could—”
“They’re unforgiving souls,” Vivian said abruptly. “That’s what happened.” Her lips tightened again. “They’re not at all like their father. He forgave anything, even when doing so proved ruinous.”
Hayley’s bed was so close, yet further away than ever. “Tell me more about what he was like. My grandfather.” Vivian had already told her how they’d met. She’d been a violin-maker’s daughter and Sawyer had been a rich young man who’d played the violin. “Besides the fact that he played violin.”
“Rich,” Vivian said so immediately that Hayley couldn’t help but smile even as tired as she was.
One Night in Weaver... Page 6