The Perfect Match

by Kimberly Cates

  Breaking away from her cost more than he’d admit, even to himself. “I can’t do this,” he ground out.

  “What?” Her eyes were still heavy-lidded, her cheeks pink.

  “I can’t do this.” He waved his hand toward her sleep-mussed form. “I can’t kiss you. Touch you. It’s a bad idea.”

  “Is it?” Bewildered, she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

  Cash stalked away from her, putting the kitchen table between him and the scent of her, the taste. “You’re here for my kids. And from what I saw in that bedroom, you’re good for them. You can’t know what that did to me…seeing you there with all their stuff scattered around…seeing them sleeping…” His jaw worked. “I won’t do anything to jeopardize that.”

  “No. Of—of course not.” Color flooded her cheeks and he hated the stricken expression he’d put there. Shame…she should never feel shame for the way she’d kissed him. Not with just her body, with skill, with practiced technique. She’d kissed him with her heart, no games between them.

  She lowered her lashes, hiding those incredible eyes. “Cash, I—I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” Cash gave a ragged laugh. “What for? I’m the one who kissed you.”

  And would have liked to do a whole lot more.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said. But that was a lie. He’d been thinking how beautiful she was, how perfect she looked in there with his girls. He’d wanted to pretend…

  Pretend what? That he’d chosen a woman warm and real, like Rowena, instead of the one who’d left his daughters behind. Given his children a mother who’d chased away nightmares and soothed guilty consciences and let them scatter books and toys in their wake.

  A woman worlds different from Lisa, who’d fled to her wealthy sister’s Chicago loft when things got too hard, too difficult, too heartbreaking.

  Images flashed into his mind. Rowena bursting into the Sheriff’s office to ransom Destroyer any way she could. Rowena charging into Cash’s living room, so fierce, so fiery, hurling herself at him to protect a little girl she’d barely met. Rowena facing him after the disaster with Vinny, doing her best to straighten things out. Promising to help Cash, take up the slack until Vinny got well.

  Rowena, unflinching, fiercely determined to protect anyone she cared about. Who’d somehow decided she cared about Charlie. About Mac. And…he hardly dared think it. About him?

  No. She was filling in for Vinny out of guilt over the destruction her dog had left behind the night before. And she was helping with the girls because…because she’d seen how lost Charlie was, how lonely. She’d heard Mac crying, felt the kick in the gut Cash felt every time he put his child in her wheelchair.

  This wasn’t about him. Only a selfish bastard would let it be. No matter how long it had been since he’d gotten laid or how good it felt to taste a woman’s mouth, feel her hands, make her gasp and melt.

  Rowena Brown wasn’t for him. It was too late to question his decisions, too late to start over. Too late to do anything but keep his head above water, make it up to his girls for his past mistakes and help Mac learn to walk again. He didn’t have room for anything else—in his schedule or in his heart.

  “This won’t happen again,” he promised.

  “No.” Rowena sounded as certain as he was, every bit as resolved. But he couldn’t miss the wistfulness in her eyes.

  Don’t look at me like that, he wanted to say. Then, don’t turn away…

  “What, um, time do you want me to take the girls to school?”

  “I’ll do it today. I have to stop by Vinny’s anyway.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.” He was sure, all right. Sure he needed to get her out of the house. Take a cold shower. Sweep together whatever brain cells he had left. He’d been right—the minute she’d stepped in his house, he’d lost his mind.

  She hastened to where her jacket hung on the back of a kitchen chair, grabbing it up along with that giant red rug she called a purse.

  “I’d better go take care of Clancy. And then there’s the store. I’m supposed to get a shipment of dog toys in.”

  He shot her an ironic grin. “The excitement never ends. You’d better go, then.”

  “I’ll pick the girls up after school and take them to the shop like we planned.”

  “Great.”

  She was out the door and halfway down the driveway when he stopped her.

  “Hey, Trouble,” he called out the back door.

  She wheeled around as if he’d shot her with a rubber band. “What?”

  “You forgot your shoes.”

  She jostled her coat and bag, looking down at her feet as if she didn’t believe him.

  He knew the instant she saw her bare toes. Humiliation washed her face bright red. She started back toward him, stumbled, stubbing her toe. He heard her gasp of pain.

  “It was that kiss,” she complained. “It…rattled me…”

  The kiss had rattled his cages, too. Cages where he’d kept impulse and risk and faith locked up far too long.

  He carried her shoes out to her. But she was stranded between the back door and her car with her arms full. Still burning with embarrassment, she looked way too cute for his comfort.

  That kiss had just been momentary insanity, he assured himself. Look at her—all flustered and blushing and shy. She looked like a kid who’d been caught by her parents making out on the porch swing. Let her keep stumbling toward her car like that, she’d stub the rest of her toes.

  He tried not to remember just how sexy her toes had looked, how silky her ankle had felt when he’d helped her get untangled from the covers on his bed.

  “Give me your foot,” he said, crouching down on his haunches.

  “What?”

  “Your foot.” He cupped her calf with his palm and tugged. She leaned on him, struggling for balance, but after surviving two toddlers he’d gotten fast at slipping shoes on moving targets. He secured it in place, then double-knotted the laces like he did Mac’s every morning.

  “The other one,” he ordered, beginning the process all over. It took barely a minute, but somehow it made him feel better. More centered. More himself.

  Humor—how many times had he and his brothers used it to deflect emotions that got too strong? A surefire weapon against tears or sentimental garbage or even anger.

  “I’ve heard of kissing the socks off somebody.” Cash slanted her an ornery look. “But the shoes?”

  Rowena grumbled something, nudging him with her knee, almost knocking him to his butt on the driveway. Cash caught himself with one hand then straightened, stood as Rowena climbed in her car. He blocked her door before she could close it.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said you’re not that good,” Rowena fired back, regaining some of her own.

  He sobered, amusement fading. “You need to remember that, Rowena,” he said, hiding his sudden pain. “I’m not good at all.”

  She looked up into his eyes. “I don’t believe that.”

  For an instant he wanted to cling to the faith in her long-lashed eyes. But he knew better than to make that mistake. He shook his head, touched her cheek.

  “You’ve got no credibility at all, Rowena Brown,” he said, tenderly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You believe in that demon dog of yours, too.”

  He let his fingers fall away from everything soft and warm in her, then closed her door with a soft thud and stepped back from the car. She started the engine and he watched her pull away.

  He looked to the sky one more time, Charlie’s watercolor blues and pinks. He remembered the gold of Rowena’s hair and the green of her eyes.

  Then he turned and walked into the house, and the gray he couldn’t leave behind.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ROWENA TRAPPED the telephone receiver between her cheek and shoulder as she bagged some of the purchases the Delaney family had gathered for Sparky, the beagle mix they were
taking home for their son’s sixth birthday. The match had been a flawless one, as simple as Charlie’s match to Clancy had been difficult. Within half an hour, the Delaneys had been raving about what a gift Rowena had, and promising to tell all their friends.

  It gratified her, their confidence in her, one more step towards belonging in this close-knit town. She glanced over at the family, hoping they’d give her an excuse to cut short her lecture from Bryony, but Billy, his mom and dad were still in the throes of agony, trying to pick out the perfect pet bed.

  Charlie and Mac were no help, either, the two girls engrossed in the after-school play that had become the highlight of their day during the past two weeks.

  “Rowena Maeve Brown, are you even listening to me?” Bryony’s aggravated voice jarred her from her thoughts. Rowena could hear the hospital noise in the background, could picture Bryony in her tidy white lab coat, her no-nonsense glasses perched on the end of her nose as she scowled at whatever poor intern happened to be in the vicinity.

  “I wasn’t listening before,” Rowena confessed. “But I promise I’ll listen now.”

  “No wonder you drive Mom and Ariel crazy. They call up your shop and some strange man answers the phone and says he’s watching the store while you’re off running errands for this deputy guy.”

  “I was taking his daughter MacKenzie to physical therapy.”

  “Don’t you dare use that oh-so-calm tone with me, as if it makes perfect sense!” Bryony snapped. “This Lawless person tries to have your dog put to sleep. He gives you a black eye. And then his kid—who you’ve only talked to a couple of times—smuggles your dog into his house and his babysitter breaks a leg. So now you have to fill in for him?”

  “That about covers it.”

  “And this makes sense how? You don’t owe him a thing, Row. So why are you doing this?”

  “Just because…” Rowena glanced at the girls, her heart warming at Charlie’s solemn smiles and the muffled sound of Mac’s laughter. She wished Cash could hear it. “There’s something about him.”

  “Him and every other stray you pick up along the way,” Bryony scoffed. “You barely know this guy. You’ve got a new business to run, contacts to make, stuff to design. When you dropped out of vet school, you told us it was because you were the only one who can do…whatever it is that you do. That hocus-pocus animal stuff. Now all of a sudden, that doesn’t matter and this babysitter guy is watching your shop? You’re lucky the whole family doesn’t descend on you to find out what the blazes is going on.”

  “Don’t.” Just imagining that little family reunion was the stuff of nightmares. “The last thing I need is for you and Ariel and Mom to come here and make things even more complicated. It’s my shop. It’s my life. It’s my choice if I want to do this. And I do. It’s important.”

  “Important how?” Bryony demanded. “How do you know?”

  “I feel it.” Rowena held the phone a few inches from her ear and braced herself for her practical sister’s reaction.

  “You feel it. You feel it. Terrific. Good old intuition. Cuchullain’s pipe, charming the heart out of any wounded beast. If Great Auntie Maeve wasn’t already dead I’d wring her neck myself! Why you took that batty old woman’s predictions as gospel I’ll never know. At least Ariel and I had the sense to know she was loopy. You don’t see us planning our lives around some old junk that probably belongs in a flea market.”

  Rowena’s own brow knitted. “Maybe you’d be happier if you did.” She did worry about her sisters. Bryony, so driven, determined to outshine even their mother’s legacy, and Ariel, who fainted at the sight of blood, trying to tough it through her surgical rotation.

  “My life is just fine, thank you very much!” Bryony sputtered. “You’re the one in crisis at the moment. This Lawless guy isn’t a dog you’ve picked up or a cat on the side of the road, Rowena. He’s a man.”

  As if her sister needed to point that out—especially after that camera-worthy moment where Rowena had seen him fresh from his shower and wearing nothing but steam.

  “And by the way,” Bryony lectured on, “he didn’t find those kids of his under a cabbage leaf somewhere. Where’s their mother? His wife?”

  “Ex-wife.” Rowena tensed, remembering the elegant woman in the Easter picture who had denied Charlie forgiveness. “She’s somewhere in Chicago.”

  “She left her kids? Then there must be something really, really wrong there, Row. A mother doesn’t leave her children for no reason. Are you sure this man didn’t beat her up? Or maybe he slept around.”

  “No!” Rowena protested, repulsed. “There’s no way Cash—”

  “You don’t know that for sure. Creeps don’t go around with neon signs flashing on their heads.”

  “But when he’s with his girls…”

  “In front of you. For whatever time that is. Even a psychopath can hold it together for a few hours at a time.”

  “Bry, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Am I? You don’t know anything about this man except what he wants you to. His wife might be in hiding for all you know. Admit it.”

  “Okay. I don’t know why she left. I only know what I see. But what I see is enough. This little girl…her eyes draw me in.” She hesitated, Cash Lawless’s hard-edged features whispering through her mind. “And his do, too.”

  She could hear Bryony muttering something under her breath. Understood her sister well enough to know she was trying to gather patience.

  “Rowena, I know what a big deal it was for you, calling off the wedding. Like your own personal declaration of independence from family rule and all. But you’ve made your point. You don’t have to run out and pick the man most likely to make Mom’s hair turn white.”

  “Bryony, I’m not picking any man at all,” she warned. “And even if I was, what’s wrong with—”

  “What’s wrong with this guy? Let’s see. For all we know he could be—”

  “Let’s stick to facts, not fiction.”

  “Fine, then. He’s divorced. He’s got two kids from a previous marriage, one in a wheelchair, and he’s a cop. You know their divorce rates are incredibly high. Not to mention the danger he’s in every time he walks out the door. He could be beaten up, shot at, killed.”

  Rowena winced at the picture Bryony’s words painted. Cash hurt or worse. His daughters having to live without him.

  “Row, I just want you to consider what you’re getting into here.”

  “I’m not marrying him, Bryony. I’m just babysitting his children for a few weeks.”

  “If you really want to calm my fears, tell me he looks like Barney Fife on those old Andy Griffith reruns Dad used to watch. Or that he’s about five feet tall, two hundred pounds.”

  Rowena’s mind flashed back to that moment she’d seen Cash bending over the bed, his face rugged, his square jaw roughened with a night’s worth of stubble, his eyes full of secrets he didn’t want to share.

  But he’d shared them with her in the kitchen with an honesty that disarmed her. Let her glimpse past the hard façade he showed the world, that desperate need he had to hold things together. He let her see dreams he’d surrendered, responsibilities he’d honored. The sacrifice of a kid determined to do what was right.

  His mother’s words ran through her head. You’re going to be a father, ready or not…the only thing left for you to decide is what kind of man you want to be…

  And yet, was it possible Bryony was right? From the first moment Rowena had met Cash Lawless, she’d sensed he was wound so tight he was doomed to snap. She thought of the woman in the photograph and couldn’t help wondering what happened when he did.

  Had the sacrifices made him bitter towards his wife? Just how fast could bitter turn to downright ugly? Being a good father was different from being a decent husband. Bryony had reminded her of one thing it would be good for her to remember: that as unconscionable as Lisa Lawless’s decision to abandon her daughters might look on the outside, she had her own versi
on of the story to tell.

  Not that Rowena would ever hear it.

  “Rowena?” Bryony’s voice sharpened and Rowena knew her attention had been wandering again. She closed her eyes, determined to focus. “I’m waiting for you to tell me he looks like Don Knotts,” Bryony prodded.

  Rowena remembered the beautiful shape of Cash’s hands, the way he’d cradled his daughter, the way he’d touched Rowena’s cheek. “To tell you the truth, I—I really haven’t noticed what he looks like,” she hedged, but the CIA could have used Bryony as a lie detector in a pinch.