by Lisa Childs
The lie burned in his throat because there was someplace farther he’d rather drive her…to a dying man’s bedside. The doctors and his old man were wrong. Bart would come out of the coma…for Sarah Mars.
“You’re sure?”
He fought to not squirm under Dylan’s penetrating stare. He hated putting off revealing the reason for his trip to Winter Falls even for a minute. But a public park was not the place to discuss a dying man’s wish. He nodded.
Sarah gasped. “I can’t believe you’re talking about me as if I’m not here. I don’t know this man—”
Dylan’s hand settled on her shoulder. “But I do, Sarah. I trust him.”
Royce winced, thinking of the conversation to come. Then he turned toward Sarah. “You don’t want the kid to know what’s going on, right?”
When she answered, she spoke slowly as if she suspected Royce was dimwitted. “Of course not. I don’t want to scare him.”
“You mean any more than you already have by running onto the field earlier?”
Her pointed chin tipped up, and her eyes flashed at him. Smarting pride painted her elegant cheekbones a bright pink.
He sighed and mentally kicked himself for being insensitive. But God, he was tired, and her prickliness irritated him. “I’m sorry. I know you’re rattled. But if you don’t want to scare the kid, we need to get him away from here before the car is dusted for prints.”
Dylan nodded. “He’s right, Sarah. You don’t want Jeremy to know there was a threat, especially if it is just some sick joke.”
If. But what if it wasn’t? What did that mean for a man who lay dying in a hospital bed in Milwaukee? Short of kidnapping her, Royce figured he wouldn’t get her out of Winter Falls while her son was in danger. And he didn’t blame her.
But then what did he know about mothers? He’d met some in the course of his job that he’d thought cared about their kids. Then they had proven him pathetically wrong.
Dylan stepped close to him. “You okay, Royce?”
He nodded. “Yeah, yeah, just tired. Is this game or practice almost over?”
Pulling a whistle from his pocket, Dylan called a stop to the action on the soccer field. As the kids scrambled over, another car entered the lot. Lights flashing, sirens blaring, the patrol cruiser stopped near Sarah’s Mercedes.
“Subtle.” Royce shook his head.
The sheriff sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about that deputy.”
First the kids fell silent, then resumed excited chatter. Dylan raised one hand and blew the whistle again. “It’s nothing. Just Deputy Jones.”
Parents who had watched their children or were just arriving to pick them up swarmed the field and the sheriff.
Despite not being familiar with casual touches, Royce found himself cupping Sarah’s elbow and steering her away from the crowd, as much for his protection as hers. During his years with Milwaukee PD and the FBI, he’d done the mob scene. Remembering the crush of bodies, the lack of oxygen, he dragged in a quick breath.
“You don’t need to do this. I can wait. I’ll think of something to tell Jeremy.” She pulled her arm free of his grasp.
The silk slid through Royce fingers, and he dropped his hand back to his side. For some reason he liked touching her. Probably just because it ticked her off. “I agreed to do this. I’m not reneging. Where’s your son?”
He turned to find a boy standing near them, the boy who looked like Dylan. Golden-blond locks stuck to the perspiration on his high forehead. Concern clouded his otherwise bright-blue eyes. “Mom? You okay?”
“Yes, I am. I’m sorry about earlier…”
“Were you visiting the hospital again? The sick kids?”
“I was at the hospital earlier.”
He offered a reassuring smile. “I’m okay, Mom. Totally healthy.”
She laughed. “I know. Hey, you looked good out there.” Her red lips curved into a proud smile, which faltered as she followed her son’s gaze to Royce. “Jeremy, this is Mr. Graham. And this is my son, Jeremy Mars.”
The boy stuck out his hand, an ID bracelet dangling from his wrist. Such an uncomplicated kid. How’d he come from such a complicated mother?
Royce shook her son’s hand. The boy’s grip was firm. “Nice to meet you.”
A thought flitted through Royce’s head and lodged like a cramp in his gut. Dylan had claimed this child was his in a manner of speaking. Despite his wedding ring, how involved was the sheriff with Mrs. Hutchins? Except for how it affected his plan to bring her to Milwaukee, it shouldn’t have mattered to him if she slept with every married man in Winter Falls and bore them children. But it did matter.
Under the adults’ tense silence, Jeremy squirmed, flushing from more than his physical exertion. “I saw you talking to Uncle Dylan earlier…”
“Uncle Dylan?” The cramp eased.
The boy nodded. “Yeah, pretty cool having the sheriff for my uncle. He’s my coach, too. He couldn’t get out of uniform today because of the breakin. That’s gotta be why his deputy came here with the sirens on.” Excitement blazed in those blue eyes.
Royce’s mouth quirked into a grin as he recalled his own youthful fascination with every aspect of the law. “A breakin?”
“Yeah, at Doc’s office. He’s the only doctor in town. I hope they stole his shots.” The kid shuddered. They probably had.
“So how do you know my uncle?”
The kid would make a good interrogator. “We’re friends. I’ve worked with him before.”
“You’re a cop?” The blue gaze flicked over Royce’s unshaven face. “Narcotics, like Uncle Dylan was in Detroit?”
Royce fought a grin and shook his head. “Private investigator.”
“I thought cops didn’t like ’em.”
And the kid was well-informed. “That’s not—”
“True all the time.” Dylan chuckled. “Just most of the time.” He slapped a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder.
Royce glanced around and noticed the other kids and families had dispersed. He drew an easier breath. “Yeah, yeah, until the private investigator is called in to bail the police out of a jam.”
Dylan chuckled again. “Also helps when the private investigator is ex-FBI.”
“FBI?” The kid’s brows met his hairline, and his eyes rounded. His voice cracked with reverence. “You were an FBI agent?”
Sarah sighed. “Oh, no…”
Royce suppressed a chuckle at her reaction and nodded. He didn’t have any more to say about his time at the FBI, especially to a kid. Hell, there wasn’t much in his life, past or present, that he could tell a kid. “Ready for me to drive you home yet?”
“You’re driving us home?” Jeremy’s glance slid over his mother’s face.
She didn’t jump to offer a lie, so Royce did. “Yeah, she has some car problems. Dylan and the deputy will see to it. But I’ll be happy to give you and your mother a ride home.”
Despite his fatigue and his godfather’s last hope hanging on a thread in Milwaukee, he wanted to give Sarah a ride. How long had it been since he’d held a woman? The fact he couldn’t remember didn’t reassure him. His hand on her elbow was the closest he’d been to one in a long while. Taking a step closer to her, he drew in a ragged breath and inhaled the scent of orange blossoms. His brows rose. He’d expected something heavy and expensive.
“Where’s your car, Mr. Graham?” the boy asked.
“The silver Avalanche.”
The kid gasped, law enforcement obviously not his only interest. He loved trucks, too.
Royce turned toward Dylan. “I’ll wait at her house until you come by. Then we’ll talk.”
Dylan nodded.
The deputy rushed forward when they neared the parking lot. “Mrs. Hutchins, are you all right?”
She nodded, but Dylan answered for her, his deep tone a warning in itself. “It’s just car trouble, Jones. We’ll deal with it.”
“But—but I can drive her home…”
&nb
sp; Under her breath, which caressed the side of his neck and stirred the hair he never found time to have cut, she murmured, “Everybody wants to drive me home.”
He flashed a glance at the deputy. The young man was a minute from tongue-lolling in his blind adoration of the gorgeous widow.
“Jeremy and Sarah are riding with me.” The kid had already rushed across the lot to the SUV, his fingers streaming along the silver fender as Royce’s itched to stream along Sarah’s thigh. Her silk trousers, molded against her by the slight breeze, silhouetted long, graceful legs. In his overtired, fevered mind, he could picture them wrapped around his hips as he buried himself inside her.
He muffled a groan, surprised at his powerful reaction to her. She wasn’t his type at all, not that he could remember exactly what his type was.
“Who are you?” The deputy’s tone rankled with suspicion and jealousy. Had Sarah given the young guy any reason to believe he had a claim on her?
Dylan cleared his throat. “He’s a friend of mine, Jones, and I asked him to drive Mrs. Hutchins and Jeremy home.” He lowered his voice. “We have to check the car for prints. What did you learn from Doc’s office?”
Mottled red rushed into the deputy’s face. “I—I—uh, Doc said only two things were missing from the breakin.”
Royce shook his head. Some things didn’t matter, whether big city or small town. “Drugs?”
A smug smile slid over the deputy’s face. “No.” His dark eyes flashed with victory and dismissal.
Royce had been dismissed enough for one day. Although he probably should have escorted Sarah to the Avalanche, he lingered. “So what was stolen?”
The deputy waited for the sheriff’s nod before he responded. “Two medical files.”
The muscles tightened in Royce’s stomach as his instincts kicked. “Whose?”
“Sarah’s and Jeremy’s.”
“This just happened?”
“Late last night is the doctor’s best guess.” Dylan answered this time.
Not long after Royce had arrived. He’d found Sarah, but in doing so, whom had he led straight to her? If her son was in real danger, Royce was as much at fault as whoever had followed him.
If he hadn’t already accepted it, he would have realized then that he had the right Sarah Mars because long ago he’d stopped believing in coincidence. The breakin at Bart’s, the shooting, the threat…what was the link? He didn’t doubt there was one.
Sarah gasped. “Our records?”
“Royce?” Dylan nudged his shoulder. “Let me give you directions to Sarah’s place.”
Sarah sighed. “Obviously I’m being dismissed. I’ll accept that for now, but I still want an explanation about this theft, Dylan.”
The sheriff’s brow creased with new tension lines. “Sarah…”
She drew in an impatient breath. “Later. Now I’ll leave you two alone, but before I go, how is Lindsey?”
Royce lifted a brow.
“My wife,” Dylan answered his unspoken question. “And she’s not happy at being confined to bed.”
Before a smile could tip up Royce’s mouth, the sheriff added, “She’s pregnant and keeps going into premature labor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you and me both. So far the doctors have managed to stop it. The baby can’t come this early.” More worry lines creased his forehead.
“Let me know if I can do anything…” Sarah trailed off. Until she knew what the risk was to her son, Royce doubted she’d be able to think of anything else.
“You can go home, Sarah, and take care of Jeremy. We’ll figure out what’s going on with this threat.”
Royce surreptitiously surveyed the lot, then passed her the keys. “I’ll be there in a sec.”
She nodded, frustration gleaming in her smoky eyes. “Don’t shield me, Dylan. My parents did that years ago, and we all suffered from their lies. I want the truth this time!” She glanced toward her son. “Later.” Then she stomped away, her heels nearly raising sparks on the asphalt.
Dylan winced. “She’s right, and I didn’t handle that well.”
Royce shrugged. “She’ll get over it.” He hazarded the guess.
“I don’t know about that. Sarah doesn’t forgive easily.” Dylan squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I should have asked her to stay.”
“So you’re not just giving me directions?” Royce’s stomach knotted. Maybe Dylan had seen through him already. Maybe he’d made a connection between Royce’s arrival in town and the threat to Sarah’s son.
“No.” Dylan glanced at his blatantly eavesdropping deputy, then led Royce to the middle of the lot.
Royce braced himself for an ugly confrontation with a man he’d always respected. “So?”
“I’m asking for direction, Royce.”
“What?”
“This is what you’ve built your reputation on.”
Royce squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out a barrage of images from his past. When he’d begun his search for Sarah Mars, he’d never imagined it might lead him back into a past he hadn’t been able to handle. “I don’t do that anymore, Dylan. Give me a missing diplomat in a foreign country, not a kid. I left the FBI a while ago, Dylan. And for a reason. You know that.”
“I know you’re still called in when local law enforcement gets desperate. And I know you still come despite your reservations. You can’t walk away from a child in need, Royce.” Dylan’s fingers squeezed his shoulder, then slid away.
Although Dylan spoke the truth, he didn’t know what it cost Royce.
Another little piece of his soul. And he didn’t have much left to spare.
His gut tightened. If he were smart, he’d walk away now. No, he’d run. Nobody had guaranteed that Bart would come out of the coma. In fact, they all doubted he would. So maybe he’d never know Royce hadn’t kept his promise.
But Royce would know. He sighed.
“Dylan, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m called in after the fact. I’m called in to track down the missing person. Jeremy’s not missing.” He’d kept the Avalanche and the boy in his sight at all times. And a certain red-haired woman, too.
“I intend to keep it that way, Royce, but I need your help. I would handle it on my own, but with what’s going on with my wife…I’m too distracted.”
Another reason he was relieved he was still single, thought Royce, as he saw the agony of worry in the sheriff’s blue eyes.
“I hate to ask because I know you’re already working on something. But Royce, this is my nephew. And the theft of those medical records…”
Royce nodded. “It’s not good.”
“That’s happened before?”
He nodded. “Yeah, kidnappers like to know about the kid’s medical conditions. If they’re not close enough to the kid personally, they’ll steal records. That way they know what meds he’s on, that sort of thing.”
Dylan groaned. “I knew it was a bad sign.”
Royce lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Could be a good sign, too. They want to keep him alive.”
He’d seen other cases where the kidnappers hadn’t cared. His stomach burned, the ulcers he’d left behind with the FBI threatening to return.
“So that note wasn’t the joke Sarah believes it is.”
Royce narrowed his eyes on the red-haired woman who stared back at him, her chin lifted at a challenging angle. “No, Sarah doesn’t believe that.”
A ragged sigh gusted out of Dylan. “I need your help, Royce. I need to keep Jeremy and his mother safe, and with Lindsey’s precarious medical condition, I’m not going to be able to do it alone.”
“Was their address on these medical records?” he asked.
“No, Sarah and Jeremy just moved into a friend’s house. I’m sure their records had the old address.” The sheriff blew out a relieved breath.
“Okay, I’ll drive them home. That’s all I can promise for now. We’ll talk more later.”
Dylan nodded. “I know you have other ob
ligations. I appreciate whatever you can do.” He squeezed Royce’s shoulder again and walked back to his deputy, leaving Royce standing alone in the middle of the lot.
He glanced back at his friend and intercepted the dark stare of the younger officer. Resentment radiated from Deputy Jones. He’d gladly drive the young widow and her son home. Royce could retrieve his keys from Sarah and leave Winter Falls. He could pretend he’d never found Sarah Mars.
“Mr. Graham!” Jeremy called out and called him back to his past. He never could walk away from a child in need. Damn.
“Yeah, Jeremy?” Long strides carried him toward the boy and his mother, who stubbornly hadn’t used his keys to get inside his truck.
“I know you’re busy and all, but a lot of the team stops for ice cream after practice…” Hope brightened the already bright eyes.
Royce’s gut tightened. More exposure to danger. But was going straight to their house the best idea? What if the danger had followed him? Wouldn’t it continue to follow him right to their doorstep?
“Jeremy.” Sarah’s voice carried a note of caution. Something Royce had heard friends’ mothers use on their sons. He couldn’t remember his own mother’s voice.
Jeremy turned those eyes on her. “But maybe Mr. Graham’s hungry.”
Royce suppressed a chuckle, barely. The irritated frown creasing her forehead verified she’d caught it despite his attempt to disguise it as a cough. He liked messing her up a bit, ruffling that serenity she wore like a shield. He’d like to see another kind of passion on her face besides that of anger. He’d like to see her flushed with desire.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah, I’m a little hungry.” And a lot crazy. What the Hell was he thinking?
“Really, I think it’d be smarter to just go home,” Sarah protested.
Playing the unfamiliar role of gentleman, Royce opened the passenger door for her while Jeremy vaulted into the backseat. When she moved to climb into the SUV, Royce stepped closer. Her indignant gasp brushed across his cheek. And he dragged in the scent of her again. Orange blossoms.
He dropped his voice and lowered his mouth until his lips brushed the silky strands of hair near her ear. “It might be smarter not to go straight to your house, if you know what I mean.”