“Oh, Crystal,” a woman called, rushing toward them before they’d even gotten near the day-care center sign at the end of the hallway. “I was just going to come looking for you.”
“What’s wrong? Is Timmy okay?” Crystal asked, her voice gone trembly and high and her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.
“He’s fine. That’s not what I meant. Sorry,” the woman said. Ace looked at her name tag. It identified her as the director of the day-care center. “It’s just that something happened while I was on my break, and I thought you’d like to know.”
Crystal waited, looking like a frail blossom losing its petals in the fall winds. Ace stepped close and put his arm around her slender shoulders. She leaned against him.
“A man apparently came by while I was out,” the woman said. “He said he was Timmy’s uncle. The girl who met him at the door is relatively new. She doesn’t know you, and she doesn’t know that you don’t have any brothers or sisters. Of course, it could have been someone related to John, I suppose. He did have a brother, I remember, and I guess he could have had one of those moments people have when they regret things they’ve done or haven’t done in their lifetimes. I suppose that’s the way it could have been.”
“Did he ask to see Timmy? Did he talk to him?” Crystal asked.
“No, but he left a teddy bear for him. A huge teddy bear. It’s in the day-care center now. I wasn’t sure what to do. It’s not a crime for someone to give a person an unsolicited gift, but this is a child the gift is going to and…well, running a day-care center is a touchy business at times. The ordinary rules don’t always apply here.”
“Do you have a description of the man?” Ace asked.
“Not much of one. Thin. Blond. Could have been anyone.”
“You didn’t give the bear to Timmy, did you?” Crystal asked, her shoulder tense beneath Ace’s palm.
“Without asking your permission? Of course not.”
Crystal gave a tight nod. “Sorry, you’re right. And I’m glad that you didn’t. Don’t.”
“Do you want to go get him and take him home?” Ace asked.
“Yes, but I probably shouldn’t. It might scare him because he won’t understand why he’s going home early, but for today, yes, I need him to be with me. I’m going to take the next few hours off myself.”
“I wouldn’t worry about giving him an excuse,” Ace said. He massaged her shoulder, wanting to give her some warmth, a sense of safety. “We’ve got the perfect explanation. Today is a special occasion.”
Crystal frowned and shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
He held up the cage. “Bert. This little guy’s scared. He needs Timmy, and that’s no lie. We might as well let them get acquainted as soon as possible.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she gave him a genuine smile as she asked the director to go get her son. When the woman had gone, Crystal slumped against Ace. “Thank you again,” she said, turning her face into his suit jacket.
Warmth spiraled through his body. She was so slender, so fragile, she had so much responsibility, so many worries. “You think it was Branson, don’t you.”
“I…I’m not sure, but after what happened at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and that phone call yesterday, I—”
“What phone call?” He pulled back from her and tucked his finger gently beneath her chin, urging her to look at him.
Big worried hazel eyes stared back. She took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I got an obscene phone call yesterday. It was on my machine when I came home, and whoever left it tried to disguise his voice.”
His hand tightened involuntarily. She flinched and he loosened up, but he didn’t let go. “You had an obscene phone call on your machine when you came home, but you didn’t let me know when I talked to you last night. Why?” The word came out more harshly than he’d intended. He didn’t apologize.
“What could you do? I didn’t even know who it was from.”
His frown intensified. “Crystal, you’re an intelligent woman. Last week a man threatened you and tried to assault you. This week you get an obscene phone call. You know who it is. I’m not going to let him do this to you.”
“I thought it might be him,” she said, “but I have no proof, nothing to take to the authorities, and I can’t bring these things to you, Ace. I have to take care of my son and myself. I’m all I’ve got, all I’ve ever had.”
And all I’ll ever have. Ace finished the thought in his mind. That was what she meant. She wanted her independence; she needed to feel that she was in charge, in control, that she was capable of doing it all because this was the way it was going to be for her forever.
Maybe she was right.
He shook his head. “You don’t have to become overly dependent on me,” he said softly. “But let me help you now. Just until we can bring this information to the police and make sure that Hines is safely out of the picture. You can’t always do it all yourself, Crystal. Everyone has friends who help them when times are hard.”
“Do you?”
Okay, she had him. “Maybe if I didn’t move around so much, I would. But even I would call on the help of a stranger if there was an emergency, lady,” he drawled. Persuasively, he hoped.
He took a deep breath, knowing that what he was going to say next was absolutely not fair. It didn’t matter. “You have a son you’re trying desperately to protect, but you have to sleep sometime. You have to let down your guard now and then.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? That I haven’t lived all his life realizing what would happen if anything happened to me?”
“I suppose you have. I’m sorry. I didn’t make that comment to upset you, but only to suggest that if there were two of us watching him, we’d have a better chance.”
She closed her eyes, and her shoulders slumped. “There aren’t two of us. Not really.”
“There could be.”
Her eyes grew wary. She looked full into his face and took a deep breath. “What are you saying?”
What he was saying was something she wouldn’t like. At all. That wasn’t going to stop him, however.
“I think I should come sleep on your couch for a few days.”
“A bodyguard?” Her voice rose.
“Something like that.”
“You’ll be in my house night and day?” A neon sign couldn’t have given off a louder hum of electricity than what passed between them at that moment.
“When I’m not at work,” he answered, his voice thick at the thought of being in her house at night in those hours when the strongest of men and women sometimes become weak.
“You’ll sleep on the couch, you said?”
“Or the floor if you prefer,” he said with a lazy smile.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“No, it’s not, but I don’t have a better one.”
She let out a sigh. “Neither do I. And the couch will be fine,” she said, sucking in her lower lip like a young nervous girl contemplating her first hours alone with a boy in the back seat of a car.
“It’s settled, then,” he said, smoothing back her hair where it had slipped forward over her shoulder.
“Not quite.” She touched his sleeve.
He waited.
“I get a security guard,” she said, “but what do you get?”
He got relief from the terror of thinking she might get caught in a madman’s clutches while he wasn’t there to stop it, but he couldn’t say that. The truth would scare her. It scared him that he could worry so much about a woman he hardly knew.
“What do I get?” he said, pasting on a grin. “I get out of the Overton Apartments.”
She smiled and crossed her arms. “I thought you liked it there.”
He smiled back. “Too noisy. Nola and her customers are up all hours taking care of business, but I have to get up early in the morning. I’m a workingman, you know.”
“You’re much more than that, Ace,” she
said as her son came close and saw the bunny and his eyes lit up with joy. “I wonder if you even know all that you are.”
He looked over Timmy’s head. “Don’t make the mistake of making me into more than I am, Crystal.”
“Don’t worry, Ace. You’re safe. I’m not after your heart.”
In another world and another lifetime, he would have replied that he didn’t have a heart. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, that line just didn’t seem right here. And for the same reason, he felt a sharp pain pass through him right in the region where his heart should have been.
But he was sure it was a temporary pain. Soon enough it would pass. Right now it was important to get things back to normal, keep things light and flirtatious the way he always did.
“I know you’re not after my heart. You’re after my body,” he told her.
He’d thought to shock her, to make her blush, to get things back on familiar ground.
“Could be you’re right, darlin’,” she drawled.
For the second time today he could almost have blushed. Instead, he simply let heat steal through him at the thought that tonight he and Crystal Bennett would be sharing a roof. Surely only good things could come of that.
Ace was in her tiny backyard setting up a temporary rabbit hutch while Timmy lay on his stomach talking to Bert through the mesh cage.
“How did you learn to do that?” Crystal asked, coming up behind Ace, who had made a quick trip home for his clothes and was now clad in jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His forearms were strong and tanned against the snowy cotton.
He glanced up from his work as she came near and offered him a cup of coffee. “My stepfather kept rabbits as a hobby. Taught me all I know.”
“Including how to talk to one.” She smiled as he gave her a startled look. “I couldn’t help noticing that you and Bert were having a conversation earlier.”
Was that a sheepish look on Ace’s face? Was the man who could slay a thousand women’s hearts with a sexy smile and discuss bustiers and lace stockings without a moment’s hesitation looking slightly embarrassed? “Rabbits can be high-strung and nervous creatures. Talking to them helps soothe their fears just the way it soothes a human being’s.”
The way he soothed her whenever he spoke? Oh, this man had depths she wasn’t sure she even wanted to plumb, good depths, quiet strength, and the ability to calm and reassure and protect frightened creatures of all kinds. But he had issues, too. Scary, unwavering, angry issues. And his biggest issues lay with this town and the people who lived here and the subject of marriage and family. He was a man who felt very strongly about offering promises he couldn’t keep. So he kept moving.
Best not to think about that right now. There were other things to think about. Frightened rabbits and the safety of her son. And now another facet thrown in. If they were going to adopt the rabbit, it would become a family member. Timmy held tightly to things; he loved hard. If they took this rabbit—and it appeared there was no turning back now—they must not let it get sick or lose it.
“Will that hold him?” she asked, nodding to the pen.
“For tonight. I’ll build something more permanent when there’s time, but for now this will do. My stepfather taught me well,” he said reassuringly.
“Was he a good man, then?”
Ace opened the rabbit cage and gently removed Bert, releasing him into his new home. “He’ll want to sniff around and get used to things,” he told Timmy. “But if you talk softly to him like you’ve been doing, it will help him.”
Timmy looked up at Ace with adoring eyes as he settled in front of the hutch.
Ace turned to Crystal as they moved back toward the house. “My stepfather was the best man I ever knew, a principal in the private school where my mother worked in the cafeteria,” he said. “He loved her and he worked hard to make her feel like a queen, even though she insisted on maintaining her job. It was a rotten job, but I don’t think she ever felt completely secure after what Ford’s father did to her. My stepfather loved her unconditionally, but she’d been fighting prejudice and poverty for so long that by the time he came along it was something she couldn’t shake.”
“Prejudice because she had an illegitimate child?” she asked softly.
“Yes, and because we were poor. The money that Ford’s father gave her was enough to cover her mother’s medicine in her last days and a little of her hospital costs when I was born, but not much more.”
Crystal frowned at that. “That doesn’t seem right.”
He shrugged. “None of it seemed right, but she was just a housekeeper, a nobody, a girl who’d made a foolish mistake in falling for a rich Carson, a man above her station, and Ford’s father promised her that if she stayed, he’d make sure that she and her baby were shunned. He was a Carson. She knew that he could do it. As it was, things weren’t much different working for Newton Academy. I was allowed to go there only because my mother worked there, but…well, let’s just say we never exactly fit in.”
“The kids at the school didn’t accept you?”
He shrugged. “I was an interloper, a pretender, someone who didn’t belong and was only there on charity. They never let me forget that.”
His jaw was tight, and she knew that there was a world of meaning in his last statement. The sudden smile that didn’t reach his eyes told her that he wasn’t about to go into details, either, but she could just imagine that he’d learned how to fight protecting his mother’s good name and defending his right to attend classes at a rich kid’s school. Those skills he’d used against Branson had been honed young.
“But you had a stepfather who loved you, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes, I did, and I thank the heavens for that. While he was with us before he died, he tried very hard to make every day of my mother’s life and mine a blessing. We were lucky he found us. I don’t think I’ll ever meet another man in the world I admire that much.”
And yet, she couldn’t help thinking, there was a man across town he was related to. Several men, in fact. Men she’d always thought of as admirable even though she’d known they were very human. They made mistakes.
She wished the barriers between Ace and the other Carsons weren’t so high. He was a good man, and he deserved to have a loving family.
Surely there was some way for him and for them.
But when she turned and saw the way Ace was looking at her, she pushed the thought from her mind.
“I didn’t mean to tell you all that, and don’t go getting that look in your eyes,” he warned.
“What look?”
“That woman look, that I-want-to-fix-the-world-and-make-everyone-happy look. I’m content with my life and my ways, Crystal. Leave it alone.”
For a moment the wheels of her mind spun. Was she so transparent? Apparently. And obviously she was predictable, too, and she didn’t like that one little bit. She didn’t like the fact that she had upset him, either, and the only cure for that was to take his mind off the topic at hand.
“Well, I’m not happy,” she said. “Not at all.”
He blinked wide and his mouth fell open. She should try this unpredictable stuff more often. Aim to be mysterious and quirky.
“You’re not happy? Why is that?” His voice was dangerously low. She could tell that he was prepared to go out and slay dragons, to fix things the way he had accused her of trying to fix things. The irony made her smile.
“I’m hungry. We haven’t eaten yet, you know.” She grinned.
He smiled back. “All right, I’m going to report your obscene phone call and the incident at the day-care center to the police. Then we’ll eat,” he said, his voice dropping low on the last sentence. His words had sounded strangely like All right, then we’ll make love, she couldn’t help thinking.
“I’ll just go make something,” she said, turning to flee, but he caught her gently by the arm.
“I’ve invaded your house. I don’t expect you to slave for me,” h
e said.
“It’s just cooking.”
“I’ll take you out.”
“We can’t eat out every night. It’s expensive.”
“Crystal.”
“What?”
“I can afford it.”
“It just doesn’t feel right, having you pay for me and Timmy to eat.”
“It’s nothing. It’s just money,” he said.
“I can take care of us,” she insisted.
“You must be hell on dates,” he muttered. “I’ll bet you insist on paying.”
She almost gasped. “I don’t.”
“Well, then.”
“This isn’t a date.”
“Pretend it is. Pretend that I’m the last guy you went out with. I take you and Timmy to a restaurant and I pay.”
“I’d rather not pretend that you were the last guy I dated.”
He raised a brow. “You want to clarify that?”
She shrugged. “Not much to tell. He tried to stick his hand up my dress and his tongue down my throat at the restaurant, and I went home before I’d even eaten.”
Ace’s countenance darkened. He swore beneath his breath. “Lady, you can do better than that. No wonder Fiona is trying to fix you up with every man who comes down the pike. Any man has got to be an improvement.”
She felt a small trace of indignation. “I’ve had worse.”
He raised one brow and smiled. “I don’t intend to be worse.”
She couldn’t help but smile back. “I’m not a charity case, Ace.”
“Lady, you are the farthest thing from a charity case that I’ve ever seen, but I have to agree with my half sister when she says that you need some serious courting.”
“You and I are not going to get serious,” she reminded him.
“No, we’re not, but we’re going to have some fun together while I’m here. Might as well, since I’m going to be making my home on your couch. And you can get a decent meal or two out of the deal,” he coaxed. “Come on, Timmy will like it.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know my soft spots.”
“Not entirely as of yet, ma’am, but I’m hoping to learn what they are,” he said with a mock leer. And then he kissed her full on the mouth.
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