Second-Chance Hero

by Justine Davis

  Maybe her ex-husband, he thought wryly. But nobody else.

  A hair-dryer started to hum noisily in the bedroom, joggling him out of his reverie. That had never happened before, either, this drifting off into crazy thoughts about things that he had never dwelt on before. Just another symptom, he told himself, wishing yet again that Josh would have simply let him quit when he’d wanted to instead of pushing until he’d agreed to the bargain that had landed him here. Here, with the one woman he had never been able to forget.

  He made himself move, leaving the motor home and heading back over to the trailer. He picked up his bedroll, stuffed his things back in the duffel bag, already planning where he was going to move the motor home.

  And wondering, on top of everything else, when he’d become such a coward.

  Chapter 11

  “That has to be finished by tomorrow. The paving has to start,” Grace said into the phone, her voice a bit edgy as she paced.

  Draven couldn’t hear what was said on the other end of the call, but she was quickly apologetic. “Sorry, Nick. I’m just frustrated.”

  There was a pause while she listened again. From his seat at the small table, Draven glanced over at the sofa where Marly sat with the control for her video game player in her hands. Her hands were in constant motion, and the images danced across the television screen before her. She had on a headset for the sounds, ordered to do so by Grace so that she could work on the phone.

  “I know it’s for the best,” Grace said into the receiver, “but I don’t have to like it. Yes. Tonight’s fine for a report.” Then, with a grimace, “I’ll be here.”

  She disconnected the call, but kept pacing the floor. She tapped a finger against the phone receiver as she bit her lip and thought.

  Draven yanked his gaze away; the last thing he needed was to watch her nibble on that soft, full lip. It only made him wonder what it would feel like to do it himself. And that idea did things to his gut that he couldn’t explain.

  After a couple further circuits of the floor, from kitchen to living area and back again, Grace finally tossed the phone down on the counter. It clattered and slid across the granite.

  And then she turned on him.

  “I hate this!”

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  “How am I supposed to run this project long distance?”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “Fine? Hardly. We’re doing concrete, which is a lot different from just rolling out some asphalt. I need to inspect the final grading, check the status on the drainage system, oversee the relocating of the native vegetation, then I—”

  He held up a hand, but she was on a roll and it took her a moment to stop.

  “Never said you couldn’t go out. Just not alone.”

  “Oh.” She sounded a bit deflated, as if she’d been building up to an explosion and felt denied.

  “Now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. Then she glanced at Marly, who was intent on maneuvering some CGI character through a maze, and back at him.

  “She’ll have to come,” he said.

  “She’ll love that,” Grace muttered.

  But to his surprise, the girl took the interruption of her play rather quietly. After a heavy sigh, she shut off the game console and the television, pulled on some thick-soled shoes Draven couldn’t see how she walked in. Then she stood up, indicating she was ready.

  Grace was looking at her daughter warily, as if still awaiting an explosion that hadn’t been averted but merely delayed. Draven wondered what it was like to live that way, never knowing if, when or how the explosion would come, or what the trigger would be.

  It sounded exhausting.

  As they went about Grace’s tasks, Draven shifted his mode. Through some strings Josh had pulled—there wasn’t a businessman on the planet more respected than he was in law enforcement circles—the Redstone team had been through training given by several federal agencies, including the Secret Service presidential detail. They’d learned about bodyguarding from the best, and they put the knowledge to use on a regular basis. And they’d done well enough that the service had tried to recruit them, even knowing the likelihood of anyone leaving Redstone was slim.

  He scanned the area constantly, close in first, then mid-ground, then the perimeter. Anything that moved got attention until identified. If it shouldn’t have moved, it got inspected, once turning up a sizable lizard, and once a howler monkey that proceeded to earn its name by chewing him out fiercely for disturbing it.

  That at least got Marly to smile. But of course she decided immediately that she wanted it for a pet. Draven told her he wasn’t about to catch it, he liked his fingers the way they were. He left it for her mother to talk her out of it; he wouldn’t even know where to start. Although he guessed the first night the thing started howling at two in the morning she’d change her mind in a big hurry about its suitability for pethood.

  As they crisscrossed the site and covered Grace’s list, none of the crew commented on the new arrangements, or on his constant presence, and he wondered if Nick had put the word out. Not that it mattered, really. More eyes the better. It would only make a difference if the problem was inside, and he didn’t think it was.

  Of course, maybe he just didn’t want to believe that, since they’d had so much of that lately. It was a rarity for somebody within Redstone to turn on them; any bad apples usually never made it in, or if they did, were quickly ferreted out.

  By the end of the day, Draven realized he had underestimated Grace’s stamina. She went from job to job relentlessly, rarely stopping for longer than a minute or two. She also clearly had a tremendous amount of information stored in that clever brain of hers; rarely did she have to consult the clipboard she held for data or dates.

  When they got back to the motor home that evening, and Grace had gone to the shower, Draven sat watching Marly start up her video game once more. Watching her much more closely than was necessary, in an effort to keep his mind off of the sound of the shower, and the images the running water brought to his unruly mind.

  Watching wasn’t enough. Desperate for a stronger distraction, before Marly could turn the game on he asked, “Ever seen your mother at work before?”

  “Paperwork, office stuff, yeah. But not like this.”

  “Pretty impressive.”

  “She’s smart,” the girl said with a shrug that said even smart people could be a pain as a parent.

  She went back to her game. Draven heard the shower stop, and the door on the other side open as Grace went into the bedroom.

  Wrapped in a towel? he wondered.

  Naked?

  His breath jammed in his throat and stayed there. When he finally remembered how to breathe it was all he could do not to gasp audibly.

  Then Marly stopped in her installation and turned to look at him again. It took more effort than he could ever remember having to make to compose his expression. But he did it; the last thing he needed was this child-woman realizing he was sitting here heating up over erotic images of her mother.

  “Is it that drug guy?” the girl asked.

  He hesitated. Hesitated a moment too long, because Marly flared up at him.

  “I’m sick of being treated like I’m a child! Do you think I don’t know what really happened out there? That somebody shot at her?”

  Uh-oh, he thought. “There was no need for you to know, it would only scare you more—”

  “Don’t patronize me! I’m not a baby.”

  “Never thought you were.”

  “I don’t need to be protected from the truth. I expect that from my mother. She’s always been that way, but you’re supposed to be some real tough guy. You should be honest, too, but you’re as bad as she is.”

  “Take a breath,” he suggested when the tumble of words finally stopped.

  She said a word he didn’t think girls her age were supposed to know. Then she tossed her game controller on the couch and stomped toward the d
oor.

  “Marly,” he said warningly.

  She ignored him and yanked the door open.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he told her.

  She said that same word again, this time in a physically impossible instruction about what he could do with himself. And started out the door.

  He caught her before her foot even hit the first step. His arm around her waist, he swung her off her feet and back into the room. She yelled, and started to struggle. She kicked, and flailed her arms. Landed a couple of glancing blows he barely felt, a couple of solid ones that stung, although he never loosened his grip.

  He dragged her back in and shut the door as she screamed at him to let her go.

  “Marly!”

  His head snapped around at the sound of Grace’s wild yell as she came barreling through the bedroom door. She was wielding what looked like a heavy metal flashlight in one hand, clearly ready to use it as a weapon.

  Draven froze in an odd sort of awe at the sight of her, all maternal fierceness as she flew to the rescue of her cub. Even Marly went still.

  Grace skidded to a halt as she took in the scene. The towel, he thought, almost numbly. It was the towel. She was dressed from the waist down, but a blue towel was still wrapped around her upper body.

  The arm holding the flashlight dropped. With the movement, the towel dropped, too. For an instant he caught a glimpse of the ripe, full curve of one breast, tipped with soft pink, before she grabbed the towel and pulled it back into place.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  My blood pressure’s going through the roof, for one thing, he thought, listening to his pulse hammering in his ears. That image, that brief flash of feminine flesh, was burned into his memory. He had a feeling he’d be seeing it on an endless loop when he tried to sleep tonight.

  This is insane, he thought. He’d seen breasts before. He’d seen them on strangers. On women he was involved with. He’d seen more than just breasts. But nothing had ever affected him the way that split-second glimpse of luscious curve had. Nothing.

  “Will you let go now?” Marly demanded.

  He shook his head as if to clear it, and released her. The girl staggered slightly as her feet hit the floor, righted herself, then spun to glare at him.

  “Someone,” Grace said, in a voice as grim as any he’d ever heard, “had better start explaining here. Fast.”

  Marly crossed her arms, still scowling at him, and obviously with no intention of talking. He would have laughed at himself, at his reluctance to face this furious woman, if he hadn’t been so busy trying to figure out what to say to her.

  “A disagreement about what she needs to know,” he finally said. “Made her forget she doesn’t go out alone.”

  Grace’s gaze flicked from Draven to her daughter and back. “Need to know what?”

  “The truth!” Marly snapped. “You should try it some time.”

  Grace blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nick told me what really happened at the lagoon.”

  Grace winced. “Oh.”

  “You didn’t think I should know you’d been shot at?”

  “I wasn’t. It was the truck. The tire.”

  “Whatever. You could have been killed either way.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “So that makes it okay to lie to me?”

  “I didn’t exactly lie.”

  “Oh, yeah, like you’d buy that from me.”

  Draven felt a bit like a spectator at a Ping-Pong match. But he was glad that the girl’s resentment had shifted to her mother. Not that he didn’t feel sorry for Grace, bearing the brunt of it now, but she at least had practice at it. He had no idea how to handle teenage anger.

  “You’re right,” Grace said. “I wouldn’t buy that from you. I apologize.”

  “Yeah. Well. You should have told me the truth.”

  “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  Marly glanced at Draven, who had begun to edge slowly backward, toward the door, thinking the last place he wanted to be was in the midst of this family discussion. Especially this female family.

  “He said ‘need to know,’” Marly said. “Did you ever stop to think that I might need to know? What if I saw something, or someone, but I didn’t know to say anything?”

  She had a point, Draven thought, and he could see Grace realized it, too. Marly glanced at him again before continuing her argument.

  “He said ‘leverage,’ too, that somebody might try to use me on you. What if somebody did, because I didn’t know to avoid them, or get away?”

  Grace sighed. Her mouth quirked. She looked at Draven. “Don’t you just hate it when they’re right?”

  “Irritating,” he acknowledged, barely keeping his mouth from quirking.

  “Score!” Marly yelped, as delighted now as she’d been angry before. Draven shook his head, wondering how Grace kept up.

  “You two work this out. I’m going to make a call.”

  He left them there, Grace telling her daughter the whole—well, most, he supposed—of the real story. He stepped outside, relieved to be out of there.

  At least, he thought he was relieved. But he had to admit that watching them, and seeing how Marly had reasoned out and won her case, had been oddly pleasing.

  As for that glimpse of soft, lush breast, pleasing wasn’t the word. It was a very long way past simply pleasing. He was still aching from his response to it, and had the feeling he would be for a long time.

  It was going to be a very, very long night.

  Chapter 12

  Grace rolled over onto her left side. Not that it was going to help, she was sure. Right side or left, back or stomach, covers or none, nothing seemed to matter.

  She pounded her pillow into a more comfortable shape, not that she really thought that was going to help, either. She’d gotten close to sleep, repeatedly, so close she could nearly taste the blissful oblivion, but she always jolted wide-awake again before she’d floated away.

  Sleep was clearly not on the agenda tonight.

  With a sigh she rolled onto her back. She yawned, then listened for any sound from above her, but heard nothing. She’d heard nothing since Draven had climbed up to the roof, reminding her that the sundeck section where he was sleeping was right over her head.

  It had to be the stress. Stress over the project, which was normal, stress over the sabotage, which was not. And stress over becoming a target, which most certainly was not. That had to explain why she was in such an uproar.

  But it didn’t explain why she was so vividly aware of the presence of John Draven, mere feet away, the only thing between them the relatively insubstantial barrier of the motor home’s roof.

  She felt herself blush in the darkness of the bedroom. She was sure he’d been looking at her when the towel had slipped. She had no idea how much he’d seen, but that he had seen at least a flash, she was sure. And that was certainly more than she was comfortable with.

  But she’d been so terrified when she’d heard Marly’s scream that she’d reacted instantly and instinctively. Covering up had been the very last thought in her head. Not when her daughter was in danger. She had simply grabbed the nearest thing that could possibly be used as a weapon and run.

  She wasn’t sure now what she’d thought when she’d raced into the other room of the motor home and seen Draven hanging on to her daughter as she flailed wildly. She remembered noticing that he was doing it easily, despite how strong she knew Marly could be when she was going at full tilt, as she obviously was.

  But whatever she’d thought, it hadn’t been that her daughter was in any danger. Not from Draven. And the certainty she had about that had surprised her.

  With a sigh of surrender she sat up and turned on the bedside light. She’d read her book for a while, she thought. If it didn’t hold her interest, then maybe it would put her to sleep.

  And maybe it would keep her mind off of the man who was now just above her.

/>   Probably sleeping soundly, she thought wryly.

  She picked up the novel she’d purchased in the general store a few days ago. She was so exhausted she couldn’t even recall exactly what it was about, so she read the blurb on the back of the thriller again. She wondered if it would live up to the enthusiastic billing.

  Generally she was too tired at the end of the day to read more than a page or two, but tonight being tired didn’t seem to have much to do with it. With that perversity her mind sometimes had, she couldn’t keep her eyes open to read, yet when she again gave up and turned out the light, she still couldn’t fall asleep.

  She felt an odd sort of hum that seemed to fuzz her head from the ears up, telling her she’d gone beyond mere weariness. Not for the first time she wished the brain came with an off switch.

  With your luck, you’d never get it turned back on, she told herself, and flopped back onto her back once more.

  She straightened the tangled sheets yet again, then stretched her body as if that would help. She was disconcerted, as she often was, by her brain telling her it was feeling the texture of the sheet against her right foot. It was as real as if the foot were still there, and nothing could convince her brain it wasn’t. The therapists and doctors had told her that might never go away, and she wondered how long it would take to stop startling her. She wondered—

  A loud, electronic shriek shattered the quiet.

  Grace nearly echoed the shriek as she sat bolt upright. Even as she did, she heard a faint scraping sound from the roof, then something hitting the ground beside her window. Draven, she thought, already moving.

  “Mom?”

  Marly’s voice was sleepy and tentative from the other room. Grace rolled out of bed and grabbed her crutch to save time. It could be a weapon, too, if she needed one, she thought as she hurried into the other room.

  “I don’t know what it was, honey, but I’ll find out,” she reassured the girl, who was sitting on the edge of the sofa bed rubbing at her eyes.