“Fix Trey’s plate,” Tyler said. It wasn’t such an unusual request. If Kendra or another friend stopped by when she was cooking, Sam automatically put food on a plate for them at the same time as she served herself and Tyler. But fixing Marco a plate felt different.
Lips firming just a little, Sam put two pancakes and some bacon on the plate she had set out for herself, and slid the plate to the spot beside Tyler.
“The food’s getting cold,” she said over her shoulder to Marco as she turned toward the refrigerator to get out the carton of milk so she could fill Tyler’s glass. Unlike the clothing that had come with the town house, the food she’d found in the refrigerator and pantry when she had checked was varied and for the most part actually stuff that Tyler would eat. He loved pancakes, for example, and since he’d been cheated out of his Saturday morning ritual, when she’d gotten up that morning and found that the supplies included pancake mix and bacon she had decided to fix his favorites. The familiar ritual of making breakfast had brought thoughts of Kendra and poor Mrs. Menifee and home and everything that had been left behind rushing into her head, but she had deliberately forced them out again. Worrying about what she could do nothing to change didn’t help anyone. It certainly didn’t make the present situation easier.
“It looks great.” Marco was easing himself down into the chair beside Tyler when she returned with the carton of milk. His crutches were propped against the wall within easy reach. He cast a quick, assessing glance up at her as she filled Tyler’s glass, and she noticed a kind of shadow at the backs of his eyes that made her wonder if he were in pain. Having slid her glass over in front of him when she’d repositioned her plate, she automatically proceeded to fill the glass that was now his with milk, too.
“Thank you,” he said politely. Something in his expression as he flicked another look up at her immediately brought on a vision of him telling her, I’m a little older than four, you know. A lightning memory of everything that had taken place between them after that exchange rolled through her mind like the most unwanted highlight reel ever, and was just as quickly pushed away.
You are not going to fall for this guy.
“You’re welcome.” Her tone was maybe a little less than friendly. She set the milk carton down on the table with a definite plop. “Eat.”
“I’m stealing your breakfast, aren’t I?” The look he gave her was impossible to read.
“No.” She nodded at the plates in the center of the table. There were still several pancakes and a few strips of bacon remaining. She’d made extra, just in case Tyler was super hungry, or she had wanted more than her usual one pancake, or—well, just because she could. Usually she had to be careful about the amount she cooked to stretch out the number of meals she could get out of the ingredients. Since Tyler’s birth, being thrifty had become like her religion. It had been nice to make a little more than they maybe needed. “Like I said, there’s plenty. Don’t kid yourself: if there wasn’t, no way would you catch me giving you my breakfast.”
That made him smile. Because she found it sexy, and charming, and it made her want to smile back, his smile earned him another quick frown.
“Don’t you like Trey, Mom?” Tyler asked through a bite of pancakes, looking from her to Marco with a flicker of trouble in his eyes. For about the millionth time, Sam was reminded of the truth of the saying that little pitchers had big ears and vowed to watch what she said and how she said it around him, especially now. Keeping things calm and unterrifying for Tyler had to be the name of the game for her at the moment. If she had an issue with Marco, it was something to be dealt with between the two of them when Tyler wasn’t around.
“Sure she likes me.” The wickedly teasing look Marco sent her made her long to dump the glass of milk she had just poured for him over his head. “Don’t you, Sam?”
What could she say? “Of course I do,” she said to Tyler. Sitting down at the table and eating breakfast with Marco and her son was not something she wanted to do under the circumstances, but there didn’t seem to be any way around it.
“So sit down and eat.” Marco nodded at the other side of the table.
Every instinct she possessed warned, bad move.
How breakfast might be rescued from turning into a cozy, pseudofamily meal with just about the last man she wanted to encourage either herself or Tyler to think of in that way burst upon her then in what felt like a brilliant flash of insight. Acting on it, Sam said, “I’ll be right back,” and walked out of the kitchen in search of whatever marshal was on the premises. She found him almost at once. Clean-shaven but grim-faced, wearing what looked like the same clothes he’d had on since she had first set eyes on him, Sanders sat reading the newspaper in one of two rust-colored recliners on either side of a tan leather couch in the great room. The seating arrangement faced a big stone fireplace with a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall above it. Coupled with the usual tables and lamps, a few pictures on the white-painted walls, and more of the beige carpeting on the floor, the furniture was both comfortable and practical. To her left, Sam could see the front door, solid wood, painted white, hopefully equipped with something on the order of a triple dead bolt. It opened into a tiled entryway that was separated by a half wall from the great room. Directly opposite the door were the stairs that led to the second floor. Despite the brightness of the day outside, the heavy, brown burlap-looking curtains in the great room were closed over the two smaller front windows and a large window that, Sam thought, must look out over the backyard. The lamps plus track lighting overhead provided ample illumination, but Sam preferred natural daylight, and under other circumstances she would have swept open the curtains as soon as she could. The reason that the curtains were drawn on this gorgeous, sunny day hit her almost as soon as she pictured herself opening them: no one was supposed to be able to see in. Why? Because they were in hiding from a pack of vicious killers who at that very moment were doing everything they could to hunt them down.
At the reminder of the very real and immediate nature of the danger she and Tyler were in, Sam felt a chill run down her spine. Why it had taken the closed curtains to drive it home she couldn’t have said, but they did and her stomach knotted even as she transferred her attention from the curtains to the marshal whose job it was to keep them safe.
Sanders hadn’t even looked up as she entered, nor did he acknowledge her presence in any way now, although she was looking at him from only a few feet away. Sam knew that she and Tyler were unimportant to the marshals—Marco was the reason for all the protection—but at least the others were reasonably friendly. Sanders didn’t even bother to be minimally polite.
Yeah, well, she loved him, too.
“I made pancakes,” she said, striving to sound at least slightly more enthusiastic about the prospect of him eating them than she was feeling. “There are plenty, if you want some.”
Glancing up at her at last, he shook his head. “I’ve eaten.” There was no smile on his face. He barely even seemed to see her, and Sam was reminded once again that in terms of importance she and Tyler were barely a blip on his radar screen.
After that, there wasn’t anything to do but return to the kitchen, defeated. So that’s what Sam did, casting a disgruntled look at the table where her son and the criminal who’d burst into their lives and blown them to smithereens sat chatting and eating her pancakes like neither of them had a care in the world. Which in Tyler’s case she was glad of, but when it came to Marco—not so much. Crossing to the counter, fulminating silently over the unfairness of life in general and the absolute unbelievable ongoing crappiness of her life in particular, she poured herself a cup of coffee, snagged a clean plate and some silverware, and finally gave up and sat down at the table across from them.
Only to find Marco glancing at her coffee with such longing that, mentally heaping scorn on her own inner marshmallow, she immediately got up again and poured him a cup.
“Sugar? Cream?” she asked over her shoulder from the kitchen c
ounter. Her tone was maybe a little short again, because she was still disgusted at herself for noticing, much less caring, that he obviously wanted coffee. And noticing and caring, too, that it was hard for him to maneuver easily with the crutches, and that carrying a cup of coffee while on crutches would be pretty nearly impossible, which meant that if she didn’t bring it he probably wouldn’t get any.
What she told herself was, she needed coffee too much in the morning herself to deny it to a fellow human being. If the truth was maybe something a little different, well, she wasn’t going there.
“Black is fine.”
When she returned to the table, setting the coffee down in front of him before sliding back into her seat, Marco mouthed, “Thank you,” and smiled at her again even as, beside him, Tyler chatted away. When Marco turned his attention back to Tyler, listening to her son describing the various misadventures of a friend’s puppy with every appearance of real interest, Sam’s eyes narrowed on them. The last thing in the world she needed Marco to be was nice.
So maybe he couldn’t help the fact that she’d found him in a car trunk and been thrown in on top of him. If he hadn’t been what he was, none of this would be happening. Which made the whole terrifying mess still all his fault. And made him a dangerous man, in more ways than one.
“Why are you frowning at Trey like that, Mom? I thought you said you liked him.” Looking her way suddenly, Tyler caught her off guard.
Over his coffee cup, “Trey’s” eyes met hers and twinkled.
“I’m tired, okay?” Sam said, putting her own coffee cup down and reaching for a strip of bacon. “Eat your pancakes.”
Tyler obediently took a huge bite. “How did you two meet, anyway?”
Mumbled around a mouthful of pancakes, it was such an obvious question that Sam, crunching into the bacon, didn’t know why it surprised her. The hopeful interest in the look Tyler sent from her to Marco and back told the tale. It confirmed for Sam the direction her son’s thoughts were taking: just as she had been afraid would happen, in his head he was pairing them off. It was a problem that caused her increasing worry. The older he got, the more he seemed to miss having a father figure in his life. If he even saw her talking to someone remotely suitable, he started matchmaking. Which was one more reason she rarely dated anymore, and almost never brought the men she did occasionally go out with anywhere near Tyler. Unfortunately, under the circumstances keeping him away from Marco was going to be difficult. So was staying away from Marco herself.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she told him repressively, putting down the half-eaten strip of bacon, while Marco—so helpful!—forked a pancake onto her plate and pushed the syrup in her direction as he answered Tyler.
“I was in trouble, and she saved me. I owe her, big time.”
Tyler’s eyes widened. “She saved you? Like a superhero?”
“No,” Sam answered crossly, while Marco nodded and replied, “Just exactly like a superhero. A superhero who showed up in a wrecker.”
Tyler chortled. “Wrecker-Woman! That’s you, Mom. You could be in, like, the Avengers. We could get you a costume.”
He was so obviously finding the idea funny that Sam forced a smile even as she shook her head at him. “Forget it, buddy. And finish your breakfast. I don’t want to be in the Avengers. And I really don’t want a costume.”
“Think how tight those superhero costumes are.” Marco paused in the process of lifting a heaping forkful of pancakes to his mouth to shoot another twinkling look at her. “All that spandex. You could really rock one if you wanted to be Wrecker-Woman.”
“You don’t think she’s too skinny?” Tyler asked Marco with a touch of anxiety.
Marco shook his head. “I don’t think she’s too skinny at all.”
Sam couldn’t help it; she felt a spreading rush of warmth. Despite Tyler’s presence, she shot Marco a dark look. He grinned at her. It was such a purely masculine grin, so damned engaging, that it blasted through a few of the barriers she was trying to erect between them and reminded her of just exactly why she had kissed him the way she had. In pure self-defense, she frowned fiercely back at him.
“So what kind of trouble were you in?” Tyler asked him. Sam could have told Marco: Tyler never forgot anything you said. Once you mentioned it, if it interested him, sooner or later you would be called upon to explain it.
“Those bad guys the other night?” Sam cringed a little as Marco so matter-of-factly brought up what she felt it would be better not to remind her son of. “They were after me first.”
“And Mom saved you from them?” Tyler looked at her with dawning pride. “She saved me, too.”
“Then I’d say we both owe her, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Glancing at her, Tyler nodded, and then his attention was once again all on Marco. “Did you see her gun? She shot out the window in my bedroom with it so we could escape.”
Tyler’s tone when he mentioned the gun was way too enthusiastic for Sam’s liking.
“I did indeed see her gun.”
The look Sam shot Marco forbade him to so much as think about mentioning what he had seen her do with it.
“Guns are dangerous,” she told Tyler firmly, reinforcing a theme she had repeated to him so often that she was starting to feel like a recording. But as a woman living alone with her young son in a bad part of town, she’d felt that it was necessary to have a gun where she could get to it in case of emergency. At home, she kept the weapon locked up, and warned Tyler repeatedly against ever touching it. When she worked nights in the truck, she took it with her. “I used ours because I had to. But you know better than to ever pick one up.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I know, I know. You’ve told me like a zillion times.” He made an impatient face at her. Then he looked at Marco again. “But she saved me and her with it.”
“She saved me with it, too.” Marco’s eyes met hers. He wasn’t smiling now. They were serious and dark with something she couldn’t quite identify. Whatever it was, it made her heart start to beat a little faster. Hastily she looked away.
Tyler said, “And then you came and saved us both.”
“I did.”
“You won’t let them get us again, will you?” Tyler asked, so earnestly that Sam felt a knot start to form in her chest.
He is afraid. Then she thought, Of course he is. He’s four, not stupid.
“No. I won’t let them get you again.” Marco was promising something that Sam was pretty sure he had no power to deliver on, but she was glad he was promising it anyway. Tyler clearly took the promise as gospel, looked relieved, and started scarfing down pancakes and milk.
“You fell asleep fast last night,” Marco said to Sam under the cover of Tyler’s renewed attack on his breakfast. It was such an innocent-sounding observation on the surface, and so loaded with subtext given what had happened between them, that it was all Sam could do not to choke on the coffee she was in the act of swallowing.
“I always fall asleep fast,” she replied, just as soon as she succeeded in getting the hot liquid all the way down. And was proud of how cool and unbothered she sounded.
“I was worried that”—here the tiniest of pauses caused her to read all kinds of meaning into the inscrutable expression in those coffee-brown eyes—“you might have trouble sleeping. Considering everything.”
Yeah, like how hot he’d made her. “I didn’t,” she assured him.
His eyes slid over her face, lingering just a second too long on her lips. To her chagrin, Sam felt the urge to wet them. Her pulse started to pick up the pace.
I love the way he kisses. The thought sprang full blown into her mind. Horrified at herself, she dismissed it instantly. But even instantly wasn’t quick enough to stop her from feeling a quick rush of desire.
“So what should we do today?” Tyler piped up, directing the question at Sam. She almost jumped. She was glad of the interruption, of the chance to redirect her thoughts before th
ey could travel any further down the road they seemed hell-bent on taking. Tyler’s question was one that they always asked each other on weekend mornings, and it helped her to get her bearings. The very normalcy of it underlined the absolute abnormality of the situation. Pushing away the last of her breakfast (pancakes and bacon were Tyler’s favorites, not hers; she actually preferred something like half a peanut butter sandwich, peanut butter having been a staple food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when she was growing up), Sam looked at her son and found herself at a loss for words. She had no idea what rules governed this new existence they had been thrown into: was going to a park, or a swimming pool, or for something as ordinary as a walk, even an option?
“You can help me clean house,” she countered with a playful smile, because on weekends at home cleaning house was one of the things they did. Not that Tyler liked being part of what she called the Jones family cleaning crew. But he did it.
“No way. We’re on vacation. Anyway, it’s not even our house,” Tyler objected.
Vacation? Sam didn’t say it aloud, but her eyes shot to Marco, because she was pretty sure that there was only one place the idea that they were on vacation could have come from and it was from him. He was chomping down on the last of his bacon when their eyes met and she frowned suspiciously at him. His reply was a wry half smile, and a shrug.
Translation: guilty.
“It’s like a vacation. Kind of,” he replied to the look in her eyes.
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