Family Matters (DiCarlo Brides book 4) (The DiCarlo Brides)

by Tullis, Heather

  “Did you give it to her?” Cleo asked.

  “Nope. And I won’t, either. She’s not going to bother me anymore. Or you.” She tapped Cleo on the nose.

  “Good. She’s mean.” She added milk and some melted butter to the bowl and then dug through the drawers until she pulled out a wire whisk. “We should stay for dinner again. We should eat with Harrison a lot. He cooks good like you.”

  “I think that can be arranged,” Harrison said, joining them at the counter. “If Rosemary’s okay with it.”

  Rosemary looked up at him and felt a flutter in her chest. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

  “I think we should get her that statue of a unicorn,” Cleo said as Rosemary urged her from the store window.

  “Are you sure she’s the one who wants it? I could swear one cute little girl is really the person who has a thing for unicorns,” Rosemary said as she guided Cleo into a boutique next door.

  “Clothes.” Cleo frowned, looking at the merchandise around them. “She has a lot of clothes. She doesn’t have any unicorns.”

  Rosemary just grinned and led the way back to the accessories. “She does have a lot of clothes. Cami likes clothes. You know what she doesn’t have, though?”

  “What?” Cleo was a little sullen now that it was clear she wasn’t going to get her way.

  “A really fabulous scarf.”

  Cleo stared her down. “She has lots of scarves.”

  “Not like this.” Rosemary reached for a hand-felted alpaca wool scarf in swirls of peach and green that would go beautifully with Cami’s new pea coat. “It’s even pretty soft. Feel.” She brushed the wool against her daughter’s cheek.

  “It tickles a little.” Cleo said, starting to thaw. “I think Cami would like it better than a unicorn.”

  “How about you?” Rosemary picked up a raspberry one and wound it around her daughter’s neck. “Are you sure you don’t like this? Because I think you might need one.”

  It was too fancy for a girl her age, but Rosemary decided Cleo could use something nicer to go with her dress coat, and the bright smile that flooded Cleo’s face when she caught a peek of herself in the mirror took away any second thoughts.

  Cleo stroked the soft wool and twisted it a little to catch the sparse synthetic fibers that winked in the light. “It’s pretty. Can I really have it?”

  “It’s not for rough housing in the snow,” Rosemary said.

  “I won’t. I promise.” Cleo bit her lip and gave Rosemary a hopeful look.

  “Okay. Is that the color you want, or do you like one of the others better?”

  “I like this one! And that one is perfect for Cami too. Can it be from me?”

  “Yes. I’ll find another gift to put my name on.” Rosemary picked through the store and ended up with a funky but understated necklace in gold and semi-precious stones that would go perfectly with a new blouse Cami had worn to work a few days earlier.

  “Can we get ice cream now?” Cleo asked as they waited for the clerk to run the transaction.

  Rosemary had hoped Cleo would forget about that. “You want ice cream? It’s fifteen degrees out there.”

  “You promised!”

  “I didn’t promise,” Rosemary said. “I said ‘we’ll see.’ That’s not the same thing.” Still, it was nice to have a day out with her girl instead of being cooped up in the hotel or at home and she’d like to extend the time a little, so Rosemary nodded. “Frozen yogurt then. There’s a nice place around the corner.” Cleo wouldn’t really know the difference between the two, and Rosemary didn’t need the extra fat from ice cream.

  The roads were busy. It had snowed the previous day and five inches of fresh powder brought the skiers out in droves. The sidewalks had been cleared and salted, but Rosemary was still careful about her footing. “Why couldn’t Dad have opened his new resort in Florida instead?” she asked no one in particular.

  “Then we’d have alligators come onto the grass and scare people away.” Cleo frowned a little. “I don’t like alligators, ‘cept in the zoo, because they can’t hurt anyone there.”

  “That’s right.” It had been a long time since Rosemary had been to a zoo—she had gone with the Markhams when they took Cleo for her third birthday, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. “I’ve heard rumors that there’s a zoo in Denver. You want to go when it warms up a little?”

  Cleo’s eyes widened. “Yeah! Do you think they have unicorns there?”

  Rosemary laughed. “Honey, you know unicorns aren’t real.”

  “Mom said there are unicorns in the Bible so they must be real.”

  There was no arguing with that. “Well, then. There you go—they were real. But they must be extinct because I’ve never heard of any sightings these days. I bet they have a lot of other really cool animals at the zoo though.” She slid her free hand into Cleo’s and felt contentment wash over her.

  “Can we call Harrison to have ice cream with us?” Cleo asked.

  “Not this time.” But Rosemary thought the idea was a good one—if it weren’t middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday. He’d been able to get away to pick up Cleo from school for an emergency, but she was pretty sure this didn’t count as an emergency.

  She reached for the door handle to the frozen yogurt shop when she heard a light crack and the window in the door shattered. She yanked Cleo to the side as two more shots fired off and people inside the store started screaming. No stranger to drive-by shootings—despite her middle-class address—Rosemary pulled Cleo close and hunkered behind a nearby car, putting the engine block between them and the street. Her heart pounded and the taste of fear was strong in her mouth while Cleo screamed into her coat.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Rosemary kept her voice low, trying to give comfort, but heard the quavering in it.

  Cleo didn’t remove her face, just kept crying. She didn’t seem to be bleeding, so Rosemary turned her thoughts to protecting her daughter. She fumbled with her cell phone even as she tried to figure out which direction the shots had come from, but all she knew for sure was that they had originated outside the store, and not from the sidewalk, or she would have been hit instead of the window. While she dialed 911, her mind zoomed through the possibilities of who would want to kill her or Cleo.

  “911, what’s the address of the emergency?” A woman’s nasally voice asked.

  “I’m outside Pauline’s Fine Frozen Yogurt in Juniper Ridge. Someone shot at me and my daughter.” Rosemary held Cleo tighter to her.

  “Is the shooter still there? Did you see them?”

  “No. I don’t know. We were just about to go inside. I didn’t see anyone. Maybe someone else did.” It happened so fast, Rosemary was having trouble putting it all together.

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Not that I know of.” She looked into the yogurt shop and saw a couple of people wiping at little streaks of blood off of their faces or hands, but there wasn’t a crowd around a body on the ground, so the shooter must not have hit anyone. “It looks like there might be a few cuts from the glass, but I don’t know about more.” She tried to make her mind work, but it refused to click into gear.

  “Okay, I’m sending officers and an ambulance. Can I get your name and phone number?” The dispatcher took the information and Rosemary heard her talking in the background as she paged officers.

  The wail of sirens seemed to appear immediately and Rosemary put up a silent prayer of thanks and relief. No way was she moving an inch until she knew for sure they were safe, or that their current location was less safe than moving.

  In ten or fifteen seconds, the sheriff’s office cars double-parked in front of the store, their lights flashing.

  Rosemary stayed where she was as a couple of cops—some with the county sheriff, and some state troopers—spilled out of their vehicles and walked around the area, checking it out, their guns ready.

  Rosemary squeezed Cleo between herself and the car, covering as much as possible while Cleo sobbed, the
sounds still muffled against her.

  A moment later a state trooper approached her, his gun back in the holster. “A couple of the other guys are still checking out the alleys, but it looks like the shooter is gone.” He hunched beside them. “Are you Rosemary?”

  “Yes.” She looked up and around them, still not feeling safe.

  “You told the dispatcher that you thought the shooter was aiming for you?”

  “Yes. I’ve had several odd things happen lately, accidents that didn’t seem to be real accidents. I don’t know why, though.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  Rosemary ran back through the details from the time they left the boutique until the black and whites arrived. By the time she finished, the ambulance had pulled in and the EMTs had come out to check on the people who had straggled out of the shop, trying to keep them separate from the people spilling out of the nearby stores. The other cops returned to take statements and scribble notes. Cleo still had her arms wrapped around Rosemary, but she was sniffling and listening, adding a detail here and there instead of crying. It was a big improvement.

  “Why does someone want to hurt you?” Cleo asked Rosemary when the officer stood and moved away.

  “I don’t know, hon. I wish I did.”

  “Rosemary?” Joel’s voice rang over the din of the milling crowd and Rosemary stood, her legs cramping, and looked for him. She’d sent him a quick text while they spoke with the officer, saying that there had been an incident and to come get them. If she had someone shooting at her, she wanted him and his Glock by her side.

  He caught sight of her almost immediately and headed in their direction. Rosemary grabbed Cleo’s hand, and just barely remembered to collect the bag with their purchases in it. Looking nervously around her, she met Joel halfway.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Details later. We need to get somewhere safe now.” She felt an itch between her shoulder blades and couldn’t help wondering if the shooter had joined the roaming crowd.

  He took her back to his Range Rover—they’d send someone else for her car later. When they were headed for home, Rosemary filled him in on what happened, though she tried to downplay things a little. She couldn’t believe she’d put her daughter in danger by taking her out in public when someone obviously wanted her dead. Eventually Cleo would get caught in the crossfire. How could she be so stupid?

  “Okay,” Joel said as he pulled into Sage’s spot in the garage and closed the door behind him before letting them out of his vehicle. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You stay here while I check out the house. I’ll double-check all of the door and window locks and close all of the blinds. Then you’re staying home, out of sight. I’ll have everyone come home for a meeting tonight and we’ll see if we can figure out what’s going on. An officer might end up on your doorstep again, but other than that, don’t let anyone in except for family.”

  Rosemary nodded, feeling both a tiny bit more nervous about his hyper vigilance and better about the situation knowing he was on the job, though she couldn’t figure out how the two feelings could be inside her at the same time.

  “Why does someone want to hurt you?” Cleo asked from the back seat again.

  “I don’t know, bug.” Except it was looking more and more like nothing that had happened since they returned to Juniper Ridge could be considered an accident.

  “I’m not stupid, you know. I heard you tell the cop someone’s been trying to hurt you.” Cleo’s face crumpled a little. “Why?”

  “I have no idea. I wish I did so I could fix it.” Rosemary squeezed between the bucket seats and released Cleo’s seatbelt so they could snuggle together in the back.

  Joel was probably only gone for a few minutes, but it seemed like longer. He came back into the garage, looked at his vehicle—the only one parked there at the moment—and his eyes widened in surprise for a second before he caught sight of them in the back seat. When he pulled the door open he huffed. “You about gave me a heart attack when I didn’t see you in the front seat. Everything’s clear in there, but somebody’s still opening her window and forgot to lock it.” He shot Cleo a knowing look.

  She glanced away, hunching into her seat a little. “Sorry. I won’t do it again. I just like the bird sounds outside.”

  “I know you do, but until Joel says it’s safe, we need to keep the windows locked, okay, and always while we’re not at home. Always, always.” Rosemary didn’t think she quite managed to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

  “Okay.” Cleo sounded thoroughly chastened.

  Rosemary pushed the hair back from Cleo’s face and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “No harm done. Let’s go inside.”

  “You better cook up a storm,” Joel advised. “Our crowd always demands food.”

  “Great. Decisions by committee are always so much fun.”

  “Don’t smile too wide, it might stick there,” Joel teased, straight-faced.

  “That’s highly likely.” Rosemary turned back to her daughter. “All right, kiddo. Let’s go inside and warm up. You have homework, too, don’t you?” She fought the shivers inside her, the way she wondered what would happen next and if they’d really be safe at home alone even as she tried to act unconcerned for her daughter’s sake. If they went back to normal routines, would that help Cleo feel safer?

  “I don’t feel like doing homework.”

  “All right, you twisted my arm. You can do the dishes first.”

  “Rosemary!” she whined.

  Rosemary laughed. “All right, if you insist, you can do homework and I’ll do the dishes.”

  Cleo stomped inside, but at least she was irritated now instead of scared, so Rosemary considered it a win. “Thanks,” she said to Joel before going inside.

  “You’re welcome. Call if anything looks hinky or I’ll see you in a couple of hours. I’ll queue up the surveillance system from work while I finish reports.”

  “Okay.” That made Rosemary feel better too. If Joel kept an eye on the house via camera, she could breathe a little easier.

  Harrison had been feeling twitchy all afternoon. The hair on the back of his neck kept prickling and he couldn’t focus on work. He stood to take a walk around the halls; a few minutes away from his desk might help him focus for what was left of his day.

  He had taken only a few steps away from his office door before Joel stopped him.

  “We need to chat.” He set a hand on Harrison’s shoulder and guided him back into the office, then closed the door behind them.

  “What’s wrong?” Harrison’s twitchiness increased.

  “Rosemary ran into a little trouble downtown. She and Cleo are completely fine, but I have the feeling she might not call and I didn’t want you to hear about it from one of the staff.”

  Alarm ripped through him. “What happened?” Rosemary hadn’t called him; was she really okay?

  “They were downtown shopping and someone shot at them.” Joel shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal, but the dark blankness in his eyes said differently. “The police haven’t ruled out anyone else as the target, but it’s pretty clear to me that it’s about Rosemary. She texted me after the police arrived and I got them out of there and back home. They’re perfectly fine, not even a scratch on them, just shaken up. I double-checked the house before I let them inside and everything’s locked down.”

  Harrison felt both relieved that they were okay and more worried than ever that someone was so determined to kill her—and the shooter had put Cleo at risk as well. His stomach churned at the thought of either of them being hurt.

  And then there was the nagging thought that she hadn’t called him herself. She hadn’t thought to let him know what was going on or apparently considered that he would worry about her or that he could help. How could he get her to think about him as part of her world, as someone she could lean on if she needed something?

  “Hey, you okay, man?” Joel asked.

  Harrison nodded, making hims
elf push back the worry. “If she’s okay, I’m okay. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Get someone to take you out to get her car?” Joel passed over Rosemary’s keys. “It’s just down the street from the frozen yogurt place. I told her to cook for a crowd tonight.”

  “I’ll do that.” He clenched the keys in his fist and told himself that their relationship was still new, even if his feelings weren’t. It might take a while to get her to think of herself as part of a couple.

  Joel excused himself, mentioning something about dinner on his way out the door. As if anything would keep Harrison away that night. He turned his fist over and noticed his knuckles had gone white, felt the key digging into his palm and decided he needed that walk more than ever.

  As much as he wanted to run straight to her place and check on her, in his current mood it would start an argument, and that was the last thing he needed to do. So he’d walk it off, then close things out for the day and pick up her car. There would be time to discuss their relationship that night—when he got her alone.

  Dinner was nearly ready when everyone started to trickle in through the garage doors a couple of hours later. Rosemary stood over the stove checking the vegetables when Harrison walked in from the garage. He set her keys on the edge of the counter and crossed the tiles, wrapping his arms around her. “Joel told me what happened. You should have called me. How are you doing?” He pulled her tight and she returned the hug, needing the warmth and reassurance when everything had gone so haywire.

  “I’ll live, apparently, but I’m scared to death. I spent the past two hours thinking of all the ways it could have gone wrong.” She tucked her face against his shoulder, grateful for his strength and comfort. “I should have called, but I didn’t want to bother you when we were safe.”

  He touched her chin and tipped her chin up until their eyes met. “Next time, bother me, okay?”

  “Okay.” It was all she could say before he touched his lips to hers, the contact brief but reassuring.