Harlequin Heartwarming May 2016 Box Set: Through the StormHome for KeepsThe Firefighter's RefrainTo Catch a Wife

by Rula Sinara

  Jack’s thoughts drifted from his family to the interview he needed to do this afternoon and then to Emily, to seeing her again, to holding her, to...

  The clang of the bell on the barbershop door cut into his thoughts.

  * * *

  EMILY WAS BREATHLESS by the time she returned to the barbershop. Fred met her at the door and shushed her with a quick finger to the lips as he escorted her across the floor and sat her in an empty chair. The other chair, she noted, was occupied. Fred unceremoniously returned his customer to an upright position, peeled back the towel and swung him to face Emily.

  “Jack?”

  He blinked, clearly as startled to see her as she was to see him. “Emily.”

  She blinked back.

  “You two need to talk,” Fred said. And then he walked out and locked the door behind him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JACK HADN’T REALIZED how much he’d been looking forward to seeing Emily until he opened his eyes, and there she was. Glossy dark hair, intelligent brown eyes behind the black, square-framed glasses she sometimes wore instead of contacts, a perfectly shaped nose with a dusting of freckles, luscious lips that appeared to be calling out for a kiss.

  Or maybe not. She did not look happy to see him, not even a little bit. He had meant to have the element of surprise work to his advantage. Instead he found himself at a distinct disadvantage, and he hated that. He snatched the towel from around his neck and used it to swipe the pre-shave off his face, then cast it aside along with the cape.

  He had planned to show up at her place later that day, unannounced. He knew she’d be surprised and most likely a little—or a lot—ticked off that he hadn’t called. He had a knack for picking up on a person’s emotions, for reading their body language, and right now, Emily was both surprised and irritated. He hadn’t expected this third emotion, though, something akin to fear.

  “How did you know I was here?” he asked, sitting up straighter. It was a dumb question, a question he wouldn’t have asked, and in a tone he wouldn’t have used if he felt more in control.

  “I had no idea you were here.” She narrowed her gaze. “Why are you here?”

  Wasn’t it obvious? “A shave, a haircut.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Here in Riverton.”

  “Oh. I have to interview a witness at the police station this afternoon.”

  “Okay.” She looked as though she didn’t believe him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I live here.”

  His turn for an eye roll. “Here, in the barbershop, not here in Riverton.”

  “Oh...I...um...”

  But he already knew the answer. “Fred texted you I was here, didn’t he?”

  Emily shook her head. “He didn’t say anything about you. He just said I needed to get over here.”

  Jack did not like the sound of that, not one bit. “Why would he do that?”

  She started to say something, seemed to think better of it and closed her mouth.

  “Why did he say the two of us need to talk? Did you tell him about us?”

  She was blushing furiously and looking guilty as all get-out. He could understand that she’d maybe talk to a girlfriend or her sisters about their night together. He knew women shared those kinds of details, but would she talk to another guy about them?

  Unless...for a few seconds, his doubts got the better of him. Were she and Fred more than friends? Or was Fred more of a girlfriend type of friend? Not that Fred’s relationships were any of his business, but there was obviously something going on here that involved Jack, and that was his business. There had to be a reason the guy had been so jumpy when Jack had walked into the shop. He planned to find out what it was.

  Jack stabbed his fingers through hair that was evidently not going to get cut after all. “Why would you do that? And how many other people know about us?”

  “Us? There’s an us? Huh. You could have fooled me.” Her tone was defensive, and he could hardly fault her for it.

  Not only had he started out on the wrong foot, now he’d made her mad. Who was he kidding? She had probably been mad for weeks. Now there was every chance he’d messed up a good thing, possibly the best thing that had happened in a long time. To make matters worse, if she had talked to Fred about their night, she would have told her sisters, too, and possibly any number of other people. This might be all over Riverton by now. No. It couldn’t be. If it was, his mother would have heard about it, and then he really would have heard about it.

  At this point, it didn’t matter who knew and who didn’t. He needed to come clean with Emily, make her understand how intense this triple homicide investigation was and explain he was an idiot who wanted a second chance. Maybe grovel a little.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Not calling you was a stupid move. Or maybe lack of a move is a better way to describe it. I meant to call, wanted to see you again. I never meant to take this long to get around to it.”

  “Technically, you still haven’t.”

  Ouch. She was more composed now. She wasn’t going to make this easy for him, and he could hardly blame her.

  “That’s true, but I was going to.” To prove his point, he jumped up and crossed the shop to where his jacket hung and then returned to the chair with her business card in his hand. “I was planning to call this afternoon, as soon as I finished my interview.”

  He glanced at the wall clock. He was going to have one antsy witness on his hands by the time he finally made it to the station, but this thing with Emily couldn’t be rushed.

  “You were?”

  “I was. I...” He considered his options before he continued. Pour on the charm? Shoot from the hip? Knowing she would see right through the first option, he decided on the second. “Look, the truth is, I’m not very good at being in a relationship when I’m working a case.”

  Her eyes widened at his use of the R word. Confident he was on the right path, he continued.

  “Really lousy at it, actually.” He’d been hauled on the carpet by several former girlfriends, and one had used far more colorful language than that to describe his single-minded absorption with a case, but this was not the time to share those kinds of details with Emily.

  “Within a few days after Eric’s funeral, there were three murders in Chicago. Different parts of the city, different times of the day over three days. Three victims who at first seemed to have no connection to one another. The only similarity was the MO. All three victims were stabbed multiple times and with the same knife.”

  Emily paled. “I remember reading about them. Didn’t pay attention to the details, though. Those kinds of news stories give me the willies, which is why I prefer human-interest stories. You had to investigate the murders?”

  “I did.”

  “I’m sorry. “

  He shrugged. “It’s what I do. It took some time, but we eventually figured out the connection. A social worker, a foster parent and a street person, all with a past connection to a young woman.”

  “She killed them?” Emily sounded incredulous.

  “No, her boyfriend did, and then she disappeared. He’s in custody now, but he’s not talking. Until this morning, we had no idea if she was dead or alive.”

  “And that’s who you’re here to interview?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why would she come to Riverton?”

  “I guess I’ll find out when I talk to her.” He checked the clock again. He really needed to get to the station, ASAP. “Anyway, none of this is an excuse for not calling you. It’s just how I am when I get caught up in a case. Until it’s solved, it’s 24/7. And since it looks like I’m not getting that shave, I need to get to the station and get this interview over with. They’re holding her on a suspected DUI, but
they can’t keep her there forever.”

  Emily studied the card he held. He couldn’t tell if she was avoiding eye contact or if she had something else on her mind. She took a deep breath, let it out in a rush. “There’s something else.”

  He had no idea what she was about to say, but he had a pretty good idea he wasn’t going to like it.

  “That night when we were...together. Something sort of...um...unexpected happened.”

  An uneasy sensation pooled in his gut.

  “What do you mean by something un—” But his question wasn’t even fully formed when the answer hit him like a commuter train. Emily didn’t say anything. She simply waited as his scattered emotions became a single, coherent thought.

  “Are you saying you’re...?”

  She nodded.

  Pregnant? His ability to think rationally had disappeared. No way. Not possible. It had been one night. One night. They’d been careful. He had been careful. These things were not supposed to happen to people who were careful.

  “You’re sure?”

  Another nod.

  He walked to the door, taking in the street, the buildings, the people he knew so well. Everything looked as it always had. Perfectly normal. He swung around and took a long, hard look at Emily.

  “Completely sure?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Just this morning he had thought Emily Finnegan was the kind of woman he could possibly, someday, maybe fall in love with. Now she was having a baby. His baby. He was going to be a father. And then his mother’s unwelcome voice penetrated his thoughts. A father who isn’t married to the baby’s mother. What do you think people are going to say about that?

  “We’ll get married,” he blurted. “Right away, as soon as you want.” The declaration caught him completely off guard.

  Emily gaped at him. “Married? Are you out of your mind?”

  “What did you expect me to say?”

  Emily sprang to her feet. “I don’t know. ‘How did this happen?’ ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

  He couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “I know how it happened. I was there, remember?” Then he sobered. Why would she think he would ask what she was going to do about it? Unless...no. He moved toward her, but she ducked out of reach.

  Okay, not exactly the response he would have liked.

  “Are you planning to do something about it?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Have it, raise it.”

  Her declaration was meant to be defiant, but it had him breathing a little better. She might not make this easy, but he had to do the right thing.

  “Okay, then. We’ll raise it together.”

  “Right.” Emily rolled her beautiful brown eyes. “That’ll be easy for two parents who live three hundred miles apart. Easy, until the next big case comes along, and you forget all about us for months on end. Yeah, that’s going to work.”

  “Come on, Emily. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I know you think I’m a thoughtless jerk, but I’m not. Give me a chance to prove it.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?”

  He couldn’t believe he was about to say what he was about to say. “We’ll get married. You can move to Chicago. I’ll take care of you and the baby and...”

  Horrified didn’t come close to describing her expression.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Oh, gee. Let me see. There is no way I’m moving to Chicago, and we hardly know one another, so I am not going to marry you.”

  “Emily, we’ve known each other for years.”

  “We’ve been acquainted for years. Big difference.”

  “They’re basically the same things.”

  “All right, then,” she said, offering up a challenge. “What’s my favorite color?”

  He looked her up and down, as though her wardrobe might offer up a clue. “Yellow?”

  “Wrong.”

  “What’s my middle name?”

  Hmm. Should he know this? Had it been mentioned during her nephew’s baptism, when the two of them had become godparents? Emily...? Emily...? He had no idea.

  “When’s my birthday?” she asked, relentlessly hammering her point home.

  Again, no idea. None whatsoever.

  “See? You don’t know anything about me, but you think getting married is a good idea. You think I should walk away from my family and my job and everything I’ve ever known, follow you to Chicago and sit around in an apartment...or a house or wherever you live...waiting for you to get unbusy enough to be a husband and a father?”

  “I don’t know, Emily. We’re about two minutes into a conversation I never expected to be having. We’re going to be parents, and I’m trying to do the right thing.”

  “A marriage between two people who don’t know one another is not the right thing, so it can’t possibly be the best thing for the baby.”

  Was she serious? “What do you suggest?” he prompted. “I ask you out on a date, so we can ‘get to know’ each other?”

  “That would be a start.”

  She was serious. “You want me to take you out to dinner and a movie? Drive you home? Leave you at the front door with a good-night kiss?”

  She sucker-punched him with her smile. “That’s as good a place to start as any.”

  Oh, man. She was dead serious. Women. Heaven help him. He would never understand them.

  “Fine. We’ll do this your way. I’ll pick you up at six o’clock.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “It’s a date.” Lamest idea ever, but if this was how she wanted to play it, then this was how they would play it, because in spite of her objections, he was going to convince her to let him do the right thing. Case closed.

  * * *

  EMILY PACED BACK and forth across her apartment’s tiny, cluttered living room. In Riverton’s early days, these second-floor spaces above the storefronts on Main Street had mostly been used as offices. This one, above what had long been home to the Riverton Gazette, had at various times been the office of a barrister, a land surveyor and an accountant. About twenty-five years ago, it had been converted into an apartment by removing most of the partitions to create an L-shaped living/dining/office area, separated from the single bedroom by a minuscule galley kitchen and an even smaller bathroom.

  Emily had fallen in love with the place the instant she saw it. She was close enough to her family that she was never, ever homesick, and far enough away to feel like the independent career woman she had imagined being.

  “What were you thinking?” she asked, her cell phone pressed to her ear. “You should not have texted me to come to the shop without telling me he was there.”

  “I’m thinking you should be grateful,” Fred said.

  Grateful?

  She stopped in front of the hamster cage that sat on a low bookcase next to her desk, and tossed in a peanut. Tadpole pounced on it, grasped it with tiny paws, her black, beady eyes bright with anticipation, and attacked the outer shell with her incisors.

  “Why should I be grateful, Fred? I wasn’t expecting to see him, and I sure wasn’t prepared to tell him about the baby.”

  “And you were going to be prepared...when exactly?”

  He had a point.

  “Still, you could have given me a heads-up.”

  “Right. And given you a chance to cook up an excuse to avoid seeing him.”

  Fred knew her too well.

  “So? How’d he take it?”

  “Better than I expected.” Jack had been kind of amazing, actually, but he might not be so accepting once the shock wore off and he had time to think things through. “He even said...” No. She wasn’t ready to say that out loud, eith
er.

  “He said...?”

  Emily watched Tadpole break through one end of the peanut shell and stuff the first nut into her cheek pouch. Life for a hamster was so easy. Eat. Run on your wheel. Sleep. Get up and do it all over again. Boring, but easy.

  “Come on, Em. You’re killing me here.”

  She sighed, knowing Fred wouldn’t let this go. “He said we should get married right away.”

  A moment of stunned silence was followed by stammering. “He... Seriously?”

  “Hey! Why so surprised? I’m a total catch.”

  Fred laughed. “Of course you are.”

  “I am!”

  “I’m agreeing with you.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re being patronizing.”

  “Sorry, Em. I figured he’d be more freaked out, that’s all. Do the typical guy thing and carry on about how you were trying to trap him.”

  She had half expected that reaction, too. Now she didn’t know what to think. Since taking the test that morning, she had roller-coastered through every emotion imaginable. This minute, she was a wreck.

  With the phone still to her ear, she stepped into the kitchen and filled the electric kettle for tea. “Under that cool-as-a-cucumber exterior, I’m sure he is freaking out, but he didn’t go ballistic.” Which was what she had expected.

  “Good. When’s the big day, then?”

  She switched on the kettle. “There isn’t going to be a big day. I said no.”

  Another moment of silence. “You said no? Em, are you sure? You’ve had a crush on this guy since we were kids.”

  Being best friends with Fred for most of her life meant he knew pretty much everything there was to know about her. Sometimes that was a good thing. Other times, like now, it was definitely annoying.

  She eyed a package of coffee longingly before shifting her attention to an assortment of teas. Mint, which Annie had once recommended for an upset stomach and was mildly palatable with a spoonful of sugar. Echinacea, for the time she’d come down with a cold last winter. However, all it did was make her tongue tingle. Red rooibos, which was supposed to be good for everything and tasted worse than all the rest put together. Mint it was, she thought, dropping a bag into her favorite coffee mug and returning to the living room to wait for the water to boil.