Serve and Protect (Heroes of Evers, Texas #3)

by Lori Ryan

  The doorbell interrupted her thoughts and she had to swallow hard to get her bearings. Man, she needed to stop thinking about Garret without his clothes. About that hard flesh. Would it be warm and hot and smooth when she ran her hands over it? Of course it would. Or maybe he’d have a smattering of hair on his chest. He seemed like a smattering of hair kind of guy…

  Oh heck. This was not good. The doorbell rang again and Ashley grabbed her purse and held it in front of her, hugging it tightly to her body to try to ward off the effects of Garret Hensley.

  Damn Laura.

  “Hi,” she said as she swung the door wide.

  Oh.

  My.

  Toes.

  The man stood in dark blue jeans and a cream-colored button-down shirt that hugged his chest. Great. Another reminder of what lay beneath. Good heavens, she needed to be less dramatic. But really. Did the man need to show up looking like that? The shirt had the look of one that had been worn many times, and her fingers itched to reach out and slide her hands over it. Just to see if it felt as soft and worn as it looked. Sure. It was the fabric she wanted to check.

  Good grief, Ashley.

  “Hi.”

  Ohhhhh. This is bad.

  Somehow, his voice had dropped an octave since she’d last heard it. It was now a come hither voice. It was a trust me, you want to lie back and open your legs for me voice.

  Bad legs. Very, very bad legs. She pressed her legs together and chastised them to no avail.

  There was a distinct hint of laughter in his eyes as he watched her, then cracked a grin her way. Maybe it was the fact that she had yet to say a word to the man. “Ready?”

  For what?

  “Um, yeah. All ready.” Sigh. She might as well just admit defeat right now, and concede she’d be up for anything with this man. Ready for anything.

  Scenes from her books whipped though her mind as they walked to his car. Heaven help her, he put his hand on her back as he reached to open the passenger door for her. And of course, he let that hand run up and down her back once, virtually freezing her on the spot. Only, there wasn’t any freezing going on. There was heat. Sizzling heat branding her back and racing straight through her body, settling—well, damn. Settling right smack between her legs.

  He looked at her quizzically now. “You sure you’re all set, Ashley?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m good.” She sat in the car and pulled the edge of her sundress in as he shut the door and rounded the car to join her.

  “So,” Garret said as he drove them to the restaurant. “Why a librarian?”

  “I like the whole sexy librarian fantasy thing. You know. The bun done up tight, eyeglasses, then whip the hair down while Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher plays in the background.”

  The car swerved a little and Ashley laughed.

  “Not nice, Ashley. Not nice.”

  The moment helped cut the tension. She allowed herself a few more laughs at his expense as he scowled at her, then gave him the actual answer.

  “I just always loved the library growing up. It was a place I could escape to, no matter what was going on in my life.”

  He squirmed in his seat and she wondered what was making him so uncomfortable.

  “Problem?”

  “I, uh, I should probably tell you, I had to run a background check on you for the case.”

  Ashley nodded slowly, not at all sure how she felt about that.

  He went on as she tried to gauge her feelings. Exactly how much did he know about her? As if reading her mind, he rushed to assure her.

  “I don’t know a lot of details. Just employment stuff and education, and, uh, that you were in the foster care system. That you were adopted. I didn’t look further than that, Ashley. I swear. Just far enough to know that you were who you said you were, and what your connection to Alice was. Just enough to see if you had a criminal record, to clear you as a suspect.”

  Ashley blew out a breath. She appreciated his up-front manner, and she would have told him the same information tonight if he’d asked, so she supposed it didn’t matter. She’d always been open with people about her background and her adoption. It was the details of how she came to the Walkers that she never shared with anyone. In fact, even Alice hadn’t known the full story. But Ashley was one-hundred-percent sure Garret was telling the truth. If he knew the full story, there was no way he’d be able to look her in the eye. No way he’d be able to hide the horror and the disgust.

  She nodded again, this time faster. Probably a little too fast.

  “Okay.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked as he parked the car outside a small restaurant she’d been to a handful of times. It was two towns over from Evers, and she remembered the food being excellent both times she’d come. He turned in his seat after putting the car in park and looked at her.

  “I’m sure,” she said, brushing off the haze of memories that clung to her. She wasn’t going to revisit those ghosts. Not here. Not now. They were ghosts best left in the dark. She opened her door and smiled. “Let’s eat. I’m famished.”

  *

  Garret felt a little like a man set out to sea clinging to nothing more than an inflatable rubber ducky and one of those stupid pool noodles to paddle with. He was taking on water and going down. Fast.

  Ashley made his head spin. In a good way. She was sexy and funny and irreverent. So damned irreverent.

  Not to mention, he could look at her all damned day and then some. Her eyes always grabbed him, but as they talked at dinner, he realized how full her lips were. Whenever she quirked a smile at him, he found himself watching the way her lips stretched wide and he had to stifle the urge to lean over and kiss them. That would be where he’d start. He’d kiss the corner, then slide his tongue along the seam, seeking—no, begging—entrance.

  “So, are you going to become my police procedural expert for all my future books?” Ashley asked him as she closed her menu and set it aside.

  Oh, he’d like to be an expert for her books, but it wasn’t police procedure he wanted to consult on. He’d ended up downloading one of her books to his eReader. He usually read thrillers and mysteries, but he’d been missing out. Her books had the mystery and suspense elements he liked, but they were sexy as hell, too. He wouldn’t mind helping her test future scenes before her books came out.

  He mentally smacked the crap out of himself and refocused on Ashley. “Of course. But from what I’ve seen, you have your facts right, so you must have a good resource already.”

  He watched as she froze, her water glass midway to her lips. Then a slow flush crawled up her cheeks, lighting her up with a warm glow as her eyes flew to his over the rim of her glass.

  “You read my books?”

  “Not all of them.” He grinned. “I’ve read Dead On and Dead Heat so far. I’m just starting on Dead Target. So, let’s see. That leaves Dead on Arrival and Dead Run, right?”

  She looked at him with wide eyes and repeated herself. “You read my books?” There was a slight squeak to her tone that made him laugh.

  “Yes. I read them and I liked them. They’re damn good. And really freaking hot.”

  She squeaked again. No words this time. Just a squeak.

  Garret laughed and looked up as the waitress came to take their order. When she walked away, he leaned back in his seat and picked up the topic of her books, but from a different angle. “So do they always have a happy ending? The guy gets the girl and all that?”

  “All that?” She grinned. “Yes. They always have a happy ending. The guy gets the girl and they live happily ever after. It’s a nice fantasy, don’t you think?”

  “Is that all it is? A fantasy?”

  There was something in her eyes when she answered. It flashed there, dark and ugly for a split second before it vanished. “Some people get lucky, I guess. My parents are definitely in love. They’ve got their happily ever after.”

  He nodded. He didn’t need to ask, but he did. “But you don’t think you’ll ge
t yours, do you?”

  Her fingers fidgeted with her glass, but she seemed to catch herself and dropped her hands to her lap. He half thought if he looked under the table, he would see her clenching them together.

  She didn’t answer him, but let the question hang out there, substituting one of her own instead. “So, if romance novels aren’t your usual fare, what do you normally read?”

  He accepted the shift and answered with his own smile. “Most of the time I’m reading forensics reports, but when I can read, I like action-adventure, thrillers, mysteries—that kind of thing.”

  They continued to chat over their meal, and he walked her to her front step at the end of the night, waiting to hear the click of her lock before going back to his car. But he couldn’t help but return to that moment in the conversation when she’d shifted topics. Because he was sure the unspoken answer to his question was no, she didn’t see a happily ever after in her own cards. And for reasons he couldn’t articulate and didn’t really want to speculate on, that made him sad. Incredibly, troublingly sad.

  8

  “What the fuck is this? What the hell did you do to yourself?” Bill’s words were slurred and ugly, making Evie glad she was already in her room for the night. She agreed with him. Her mom looked funny. Not like herself at all. She’d snapped at Evie when she asked her about it.

  Evie dragged her backpack into the closet and shut the door. The voices became more muffled as she tried to ignore her mom’s explanation for her new hair color. It was black. Completely black. And she was wearing glasses. Evie had often asked her mom if she could have a pair of glasses. Missy Tobin, a girl from her old school, had worn glasses and Evie thought they looked neat. Like having bionic eyes. She would get blue or purple glasses if she ever got them.

  Her mom’s were plain black and really thick. They looked funny.

  She unzipped her backpack and put her headphones over her ears. She didn’t have anything to plug them into, so there was no music or anything, but they muffled the sounds coming from the living room a bit more. Her mother’s words weren’t quite so loud with the headphones on, even though her mom was laughing with that fake laugh she used only with Bill. Evie knew that soon, the moaning and groans would come from Bill, followed by more of that high-pitched baby talk her mom thought men liked.

  And maybe they did like it. Her mom was pretty good at getting men. But she didn’t keep them for very long. They’d been with Bill for a while, though. Months now, she thought, although she didn’t really know for sure. But it had been cold when they’d stayed in the cabin, and it was warm out now, so that must mean months had passed.

  Maybe if Bill didn’t like her mom’s new glasses, she’d give them to Evie and she could wear them to school and be as popular as Missy Tobin. Maybe then she’d look smart and the kids wouldn’t make fun of her so much.

  Mrs. Walters had given her a banana that day. She pulled it out and started to eat. A loud thud on the stairs followed by giggling told her Bill and her mom were coming upstairs. She hoped Bill passed out soon. She wanted to sneak downstairs and get something more to eat. Her mom had been too busy with the hair dye in the bathroom to make her much dinner. She’d only had some potato chips. If she could sneak downstairs after they went to bed she could make a bowl of cereal or a sandwich.

  Whoomp, whoomp, whoomp. The rhythmic thunking of the bed told her they’d made it into his room. She finished her banana and drew her knees up to her chest, then wrapped her arms around her head, pressing the headphones more tightly to her ears with her elbows. The noise almost disappeared completely when she did that. Just a few more minutes, she hoped. Just another few minutes.

  *

  Ashley didn’t have flashbacks very often, but with Alice’s death, she seemed to be a little stuck in the past and overly sensitive to a lot of things. The clatter of a spoon hitting the floor as she and Cora set the table for dinner at their mom’s house had been enough to send her hurtling into the past. Her stomach bottomed out and nausea hit instantly. The slap across her face for dropping the silverware seemed so real to her. As though her foster mother had only just hit her that moment, not years—more than a decade now—in the past.

  Then her mother’s hands were brushing her arms, massaging softly as she whispered to her. Her words brought Ashley back to the present. Cora had left the room. They all liked privacy when they were having these moments, and even though they were now adults, the holdover from when they were young still stuck. If they were in the room when one of them had a flashback or a meltdown, they would either help if they were the only person there, or bug out if they weren’t.

  “All better, sweetheart?” her mom asked lightly.

  Ashley felt her chin start to tremble as she sank into a chair. “I can’t believe that just happened. It’s been so long,” she whispered. Then anger and frustration hit. “It’s been so long!”

  This time, the heat of her anger filled her words and she no longer whispered. Her mother pulled a chair close and sat with her, taking her hands into her own.

  “Alice’s death is bound to have raised some issues.”

  “But I’m not a child anymore, Mom. I should be able to handle this. I should be able to turn it off.”

  Her mom shook her head. “Maybe that’s the problem, Ash. Maybe instead of trying to shut it off, you need to face what you’re feeling. Alice’s death stirred things up. And that’s okay.”

  Now it was Ashley shaking her head. “I faced it all back then. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to think about it or face it again. I’m done with that.”

  Her mother looked at her quietly for a long time before speaking. “Did you, Ashley? I know you went to your counselor, and I saw improvement back then, so I didn’t push. But I’ve always felt like there was something you weren’t fully processing. Like there was something you didn’t want to deal with.”

  Ashley didn’t respond.

  “Alice mentioned it to me once, as well. When she took you out of that last house, she knew there was something you weren’t saying. She told me she never pressed because she had the grounds to remove you, and she revoked their foster license, but she knew something happened that you didn’t tell her about.”

  Ashley felt her whole body go numb. It was a feeling she was familiar with, only she’d just about managed to forget it. She knew on some level that her mother deserved a response. After all she’d been through with Ashley, heaven knew she deserved better than this, but Ashley was in shutdown mode. She went blank. Blank eyes. Blank mind. Blank heart. She was gone.

  9

  Ashley was drained by the time she got home hours later. She’d ruined dinner with her family. Even though her mom had given her time to come back out of her cocoon, it hadn’t been the same and they both knew it. Ashley went through the motions of the meal and managed a few bites, but the tension was palpable. No one had asked her about it, but Cora had given her a longer-than-usual hug before she left, and Ashley had had to fight tears at several points.

  She wasn’t used to this. She’d been out of that world—a world that required her to close herself off from others—for so long. The thought that Alice’s death had dredged all of that up terrified Ashley. She didn’t want to be that person anymore. But in truth, she wasn’t sure she knew how to avoid it.

  She pulled her car into the driveway of her small house and turned off the engine. She needed to find a way to snap herself out of this funk, she thought as she walked up the front steps. She stopped suddenly when she realized there was something lying on the welcome mat outside her door.

  Oh God. Was it a kitten? Whatever it was, it wasn’t moving. She’d forgotten to turn the outside light on before leaving the house this afternoon, so she fished her cell phone out and woke it with a swipe of the screen. She tilted the light toward the lump on her mat and jumped back when she saw what it was.

  Revulsion swept through her and she spun, looking for any sign of who might have put it there. Because that rat
hadn’t cut its own head off and fallen on her doorstep. That much was certain. She could hear her breath coming in audible pants as she scanned the street. She hadn’t seen any other cars as she pulled up, but she searched for any signs of life now.

  Nothing. The block was quiet. She couldn’t tell if the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end because someone was actually watching her, or because she’d gotten herself worked up.

  She turned back to the rat and swallowed her disgust at the sight of it. She was torn between disgust and pity for the poor thing. It had died a horrible death. Who would do something like that? She put her key in her lock and stepped over the rat, into the house. It took her only moments to grab some gloves and a garbage bag from under the sink. When she tossed the body into the garbage can at the side of the house, she threw the rubber kitchen gloves in, too. She wouldn’t be using those again.

  The outdoor light she’d flicked on illuminated the whole driveway. She still saw nothing. No cars that shouldn’t be there. Nobody lingering on the sidewalk or hidden in the bushes. No sign that anyone had been here at all. She only wished she could try to convince herself she’d imagined it, but there was nothing imaginary about a decapitated rat.

  After scrubbing her hands with hot soapy water, she sat in front of her computer and fired it up. She could probably be distracted by a little time on Facebook. One thing Ashley had discovered since becoming an author: she was never alone. She never needed to feel alone again. If her family or friends weren’t around, she had friends across the country she could touch base with. Some were other authors. Some were readers who had become fans, and eventually, true friends. And the funny thing was, they were all different ages, from all walks of life.

  The first friend she ran across when she logged on was a fellow romance author who had reached out to Ashley when she was a brand-new author in the romance writers’ realm. Ruth was online and had posted a clip of her daughter stomping on a sand castle they had just built. Her little girl was now five and as precocious as Ruth herself. The little girl laughed and said she was getting rid of her Italian villa because she wanted to build herself a leaning tower of pizza for lunch.