Pete’s daughter, Rachel, and the boys sat cross-legged on the floor, adding their two cents’ worth.
Of course, none of them could agree.
Through all this, Andi sat on the couch, holding Missy in her lap and not saying much at all. She hadn’t come near him, which must have made him look like a rejected suitor to anyone watching. And everyone was.
Maybe he should have gone along with her about ditching the engagement plan. Should have just walked away. But if he’d done that, he could never have forgiven himself. Andi wouldn’t admit it, but she needed his help. For her sake, he had to go through with this farce.
Thinking of it like just another undercover op—a successful op—would get the job done.
When Tina appealed to Andi about the tree, she shook her head. “Oh, no, I’m staying out of this.”
“What’s that saying about too many cooks?” Mitch asked. The women promptly hushed him into silence.
From time to time, Trey would clap his hands and yell, “Bi-i-ig tree!”
Mitch couldn’t hold back a grin...until the time he looked across the room and caught Andi staring at him. As soon as she saw he had noticed, she glanced away. Her cheeks turned pink. Good. She looked like a blushing bride-to-be.
After a last turn of the tree, and Tina and Jane’s assurance the position was perfect, he went to take a seat beside Andi. From the corner of his eye, he saw her stiffen. That didn’t fit her role. He wrapped his arm around her and leaned close. “Remember,” he murmured, “do what’s natural.”
That went for them both, didn’t it?
He brushed his cheek against hers and kissed those tiny lines near her eye.
Missy lifted her arms to him. He shook his head. “Not now, baby. After messing with that tree, my hands need a good washing.”
Cole looked down at his hands. “So do mine.”
“You both look like you could use an introduction to the shower,” Jed said.
“Good idea,” Cole agreed. “I’ll use ours upstairs.”
Tina nodded. “Mitch, Andi can show you to the one in the family wing. And Cole can lend you a clean shirt.”
“No, that’s fine. I can head home and get cleaned up there.”
“Nothing doing,” Jed said. “After lunch, we’ve got a busy afternoon scheduled. You don’t think you can set that tree up and then leave the hard part to everyone else, do you?”
“Decorating, you mean? That’s the fun part,” Mitch corrected. “I always supervised my brothers and sisters when it came time to doing the tree at home.” How many tree-trimming parties had he missed over the years? And who had taken his place since he’d left?
“I thought you told me you tend to drop ornaments,” Jed said drily.
Mitch gave him a sheepish grin. When they had talked at SugarPie’s, he felt sure the old man had seen right through that excuse.
“Mitch,” Robbie said, “we gots cowboy boots to put on the tree! And cowboy hats!”
“Hats,” Trey echoed, clapping again.
Mitch smiled. Suddenly, he had the urge to stay, no matter how Andi would feel about it. One way or another, he’d soften her up to the idea. And, again for her sake, he’d get her loosened up in front of her family. He’d consider it a badge of honor to coax a genuine smile out of her.
“I’ve got a change of clothes out in the truck,” he said.
“Well, that’s settled, then.” Jed grinned. “We sure wouldn’t want you to miss out on any family fun.”
“We don’t plan to miss a thing. Do we, Andi?” He glanced at her.
“Of course we don’t. And we’ll count on you and Cole to put all the decorations on the highest branches.” She gave him a glowing smile. He tightened his arm around her.
He could see the effort she’d made, and the smile looked damned good. Genuine and loving, as if she’d really meant it just for him.
This close, he’d wager only he could see that the sincerity didn’t reach her eyes.
He ought to be angry she wasn’t doing a better job of playing her role. He definitely was done with her pretending she didn’t need him to play his. No problem—he had a few solutions for that.
Deliberately, he trailed his fingers down her back and curved his hand around her hip. The smile stayed in place, but he heard her sharp intake of breath.
Yeah. As he’d said to himself about her once before, he knew how to handle a challenge.
* * *
ANDI DIDN’T KNOW how she was going to make it through another minute of being around Mitch. She had had as much as she could take of seeing his smile, of hearing his laugh. He had done a lot of both during lunch in the dining room, then even more since they had spent the afternoon in the sitting room decorating the tree.
“Cole,” he said now, “you call yourself a wrangler? I could’ve done a better job of roping and tying that garland to the tree, and I haven’t worked this ranch in years.”
He sat on the couch with Missy on his knee and the boys and Rachel close by on the floor near his feet. All afternoon, he had talked with them and teased them and treated them as if they were his own kids.
She’d had enough of keeping up pretenses in front of her family. But he continued playing his role. He had brought her into conversations, too, when she would rather have been quiet. He had taken every chance available to put his arm around her. He had smiled at her like a man in love.
It all made her heart hurt.
Her mother-in-law had left the hotel for a visit of her own to friends in Santa Fe. That provided a reprieve, but not a long one. She would be back in a couple of days.
And there was still her family to deal with. Other than Jane, she couldn’t share the truth with the rest of them. She was having a hard enough time pretending everything was happy and normal. She couldn’t drag them all into this farce, too.
She rose from her chair. “I’ll bring some more punch.” She was only halfway through the doorway into the lobby when laughter broke out behind her and she felt a hand on her arm. She turned to find Mitch smiling at her. Because he knew he had to. The thought left her misty-eyed.
He still held Missy, who had curled her fingers in his hair.
With his free hand, he pointed upward. She didn’t need to look to know exactly what she would find. She stood directly beneath the sprig of mistletoe Jed had hung from the door frame.
“Oh, boy,” Rachel said, laughing. “Grandpa Jed told me what that means.”
She knew what it meant, too. But she couldn’t stand here and kiss Mitch in front of all her family. She might be playing a role for them, but his mouth on hers would be all too real.
“I think I caught you,” he murmured.
A long, long time ago.
“Yes,” she said with an exaggerated sigh, “I think you did. Well, never let it be said I passed up a great opportunity.” She smiled, leaned forward and kissed her daughter’s cheek.
He scowled.
She laughed along with everyone else, then darted away and across the lobby.
“Hey, Mitch,” Cole called, “who’s the better wrangler now? At least I held on to that garland, which is more than you can say about your girl.”
“We’ll see about that.”
She heard Mitch’s boots thundering across the lobby’s wooden floor. She was halfway down the hall to the kitchen when he caught up with her and swung her to face him.
“Hey, you forgot something.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t.” She matched his teasing tone, saying the words loudly enough for those in the sitting room to hear. Then she lowered her voice. “We’re alone now. You can drop the act.”
“Who’s acting?” he said huskily. “At Christmastime, nobody ignores the mistletoe and gets away with it.”
“I didn’t ignore it.”
He grinned. “All right, then—nobody ignores me.” Taking her by the hand, he led her the few feet to Jed’s den and closed the door behind them. Then he turned and wrapped his arms around her.
<
br /> Everywhere his body touched hers, she felt the heat, as if a string of Christmas lights draped between them had sparked to life. Those lights definitely twinkled brightly as he lowered his head to steal the kiss she had refused to give him. She wanted to refuse him now, but he had his mouth on hers and his fingers threaded through her hair, holding her close and steady, just the way she liked him to kiss her.
Just what she didn’t need.
She pulled herself away and backed off, still feeling the tingle everywhere they had touched.
He ran his hand through his hair and looked as dismayed as she felt.
“Well,” she said, exhaling heavily, “I don’t think our agreement calls for kissing in private.”
Mitch exhaled just as heavily and watched as Andi moved to lean against Jed’s desk. She shook her head, making all that blond hair he’d just run his hands through tumble around her shoulders. His hands and his mouth and his body ached to get back to where they’d left off.
“I think we’d better call a halt to this playacting,” she said. “I can’t keep doing it anymore.”
“We can take a break from it for a few days.”
“Take a break? How is that going to work?”
“I could try not talking to you, the way you’ve done all day with me.”
“So that’s what this is all about?” She gestured between them. “Male pride? I wouldn’t talk to you and then I wouldn’t kiss you, and this is how you get your feelings across?”
“I don’t do feelings. And this is all about what it’s been all along. Helping you cut the cord to your in-laws.”
She had the grace to blush. It did nothing to ease his irritation. “Look. I’ll admit we do need a break. I’ll find a reason to stay in town tomorrow, and then I’ll be leaving for LA.”
“Leaving?”
She sounded startled. He wished she sounded sad, then wished he hadn’t had any reaction at all. “I’ve got a visit lined up with the surgeon who operated on my knee. If all goes well, I should be declared fit for duty again soon.”
“I hope you get a good report.”
Now he heard only politeness in her tone. He had known she wouldn’t feel overjoyed at this news. The fact that he didn’t mean more to her made him want to walk away without another word.
And still, he couldn’t leave without trying to do what he could to help.
“I hope the report is good, too,” he said seriously. “I’ve had some bad things happen on the job, Andi. Seen some bad things go down. They only reinforced what I’ve always known—there are no guarantees in life. That doesn’t mean folks stop living. I don’t think you get the point that life goes on.”
“Of course I do. That’s exactly what losing Grant taught me.”
“No,” he insisted. “I’m not talking about becoming independent—which is what you’ve claimed all along to want.”
“Because it is. That’s why we agreed to this fake engagement. So I could show Ginnie how I felt.”
“No,” he said again. “You told me that, most of all, you wanted to show your mother-in-law life goes on after a loss. Yet you’re not willing to take your own advice and move on.”
“But I am moving on.”
“Yeah. As long as wherever you go, you’re working with a safety net. That’s not always going to happen, no matter how well you plan.” He rubbed his jaw and sighed. “This trip to see the surgeon... You wanted to know what happened. The injury occurred at the same time I lost my partner in an op that got shot to hell. And it was my fault he died.”
He had never stated the truth that plainly to anyone but himself. “I can’t discuss an open case, and the details aren’t important, anyway. What matters is, my partner on the op and I were undercover, working at a warehouse targeted for a raid.
“I’d had a bad feeling about the perps we were dealing with. And though my partner hadn’t had his cover blown, he’d run into some trouble with them. He outranked me and had the bigger role in the op. The day the raid was scheduled, he wanted to stay in role and canvass the warehouse ahead of the team.”
“If he was in charge, then how could what happened be your fault?”
“Because I didn’t follow my instincts.”
“He made the decision, you didn’t. And you said he had seniority.”
“Yeah. He pulled rank, and I gave in.”
“I still don’t see where you’re at fault.”
“I knew—I knew—he shouldn’t go near that warehouse. And because I didn’t stop him, because I didn’t listen to my gut, he was caught in an ambush.”
She closed her eyes, the way she had done at the inn. Her face turned pale.
This time, he was the one to look away. He didn’t close his eyes. Experience had taught him he would see the scene too clearly. “By the time I got inside, he was dead and so was one of the perps. The other turned his sights on me. I managed to get off a couple of rounds, but my weapon was nothing against his AK. It blasted my knee—and that was the good news. It was the only thing that saved me. I landed flat on my ass just as our backup stormed in.”
He looked at her and saw her eyes shimmering with tears. He had to get some distance before he could tell her the rest. He walked to a corner bookshelf, where he stood looking down at a photo of Jed and Paz and the Garland clan.
“They slaughtered my partner,” he said, knowing he had to keep his voice low or he’d lose control altogether. “He was only a few years from a full pension and had a wife and three kids. They carried me out on a stretcher, but they took him away in a body bag. Because I didn’t follow my damned gut.”
From behind him, he heard her choke back a sob. His throat tightened. He looked down at the photo again and took a deep breath.
Then he turned back to Andi. He could see the horror in her tear-filled eyes.
“If ever a time could have come when I would debate handing in my shield, it would’ve been then. But even with all that—surgery and rehab and knowing I could have saved my partner if I’d done the right thing—even after all that, I’m still on the force. I told you, it’s what I do. But it’s more than that.” He sighed.
“I know what you’re looking for, Andi. And I know how you feel. But if you can’t accept the work I do, there’s nothing more I can say. Because for me, being a cop isn’t just a job. It’s who I am.”
Chapter Eighteen
In his surgeon’s offices in LA, sitting half-undressed and freezing his butt off in an examining room, Mitch flipped through an outdated magazine, studied the anatomy charts on the wall and tried to guess the number of surgical gloves in a monster-size carton near the corner sink.
Anything to keep from thinking about his last conversation with Andi.
The doctor entered the office carrying a file folder. He usually looked like a blue-eyed basset hound who’d had his last bone stolen. Today, he appeared to have gotten a new treat.
“Good news, Doc?” he asked hopefully.
“The X-rays show improvement. Let’s see how the rest measures up.”
The man put him through his paces, checking range of motion, stability, flexibility and a list of other things. Mitch aced the tests, gave ratings of pain on a scale from one to ten, and earned another smile.
“You seem to be following the exercise program.”
“Yeah.” He thought of his night in Santa Fe with Andi and knew he probably had her to thank for some of these improvements.
He also realized he’d now have to accomplish any future progress on his own.
The doctor went over the list of modifications to the exercises, scribbled something on a form, then finally slapped the file folder closed. “Questions?”
“Any idea when I’m going back on duty?”
He knew his return would also depend on the shrink’s report but felt sure he would ace that evaluation. He was more concerned now about questions he couldn’t put into words. Mentally, he was back where he should be, but physically...
The man gave him
his basset-hound smile. “As you know, the final decision regarding your status isn’t up to me.
“At this rate,” the surgeon went on, “I would anticipate seeing you back to full strength by your next appointment with me. But from this point, everything depends on you.”
“And I’m nothing if not reliable.”
He froze, waited, considered. A few weeks ago, he’d have had second thoughts after making that statement. Now, nothing. Except the knowledge it was true. “Don’t worry, Doc. You can count on me.”
The surgeon eyed him for a moment, then nodded. “Good. And I’m recommending your immediate return to desk duty.”
He hadn’t noticed he’d been holding his breath until he exhaled and felt ten tons of pressure leave his chest. He hadn’t realized how much he’d had riding on this report.
Even as a kid, he had been athletic, and while he didn’t expect or want to be star quarterback again, he wanted to do his job...now more than ever, since it seemed likely the job might be all he ever had.
* * *
AT THE STATION, he shook a lot of hands and received a lot of back slaps. He heard stories of ops that had ended in disaster and of cops who had recovered and moved on.
He had begun to believe he was past the worst of the memories...until he took a turn down the hall leading to the interrogation rooms and almost ran over a woman who stopped dead in her tracks in front of him. She looked at him through the familiar bright red–rimmed glasses that went with her bright red hair. She went by the familiar title of department shrink.
“Hello, Mitch.”
“Janice.” He nodded. “What brings you to my neighborhood?”
“I needed to discuss a few things with the chief. You haven’t forgotten our appointment?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” With luck this afternoon’s meeting would be their last.
She peered down at her watch. “I could fit you in now if you’d rather not wait till later.”
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