The Perfect Match

by Kimberly Cates

  From what Cash could tell, the crusty ex-cop didn’t need to be manning the counter on a weekend. After all, Rowena was there. But it seemed as if Vinny was finding more and more reasons to be in the vicinity of a certain tea shop owner, flirting as shamelessly as any high school quarterback with his first cheerleader.

  Cash couldn’t help but grin as he entered Open Arms. Trust Vinny to make the best of a bad situation. He might be on crutches, but he’d found a lady friend to make him smile.

  Speaking of a killer smile, Cash thought, Rowena’s was absolutely glowing as she polished something that sparkled under the fluorescent lights.

  Tables. Five of them marched in a row down the center of the store, the mosaic kind Lisa had shown him in her upscale garden magazines. The concrete tops perched on wrought-iron legs, matching chairs flanking each one of them. What the blazes was the woman doing now?

  “Nice touch,” Cash teased. “Planning on opening a kitty coffee shop?” He swallowed in an effort to soothe the rawness in his throat.

  “No. They’re for Miss Marigold. What do you think?”

  Cash crossed to take a closer look. He could make out curved handles and tea spouts, shards that now made beautiful designs. “Did you do that yourself?”

  “The girls helped.”

  “No. The designs, I mean. You’re good. Real good.”

  “I’ve never been very good at throwing things away. You should hear my sister.” She paused, looked a little shy. “About Bryony, Cash—”

  Cash actually smiled and he could see surprise and confusion cloud Rowena’s face. Better not tell her about her sister’s late-night visit. Or the little chat they’d had. “Actually, your sister and I are a lot alike. She loves you…Not that I…well, you know.”

  Rowena’s gaze snapped up to his. Asking questions he couldn’t answer. Searching for feelings that wouldn’t be there. No. Couldn’t be.

  He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’d be all stoked up, too, if I thought somebody was messing with someone I…like my brothers or Mac or Charlie.”

  Or you, he added silently.

  Was that disappointment that darted into those incredible spring-colored eyes? Just a heartbeat, and then it was gone. Replaced by a furrow of concern between her brows.

  “You sound hoarse.”

  He rubbed his throat, self-conscious. “It’s no big deal.”

  But she ignored him, reaching up, laying her soft, feminine hand on his forehead to see if it was hot. The touch felt strange, and Cash wondered how long it had been since anyone cared enough about him to do such a thing. Maybe cared wasn’t the right word. Felt…intimate enough…

  To gauge his temperature? Hell, Lawless. You act as if she stuck her hand down your pants.

  He winced at his own crudeness, and yet, he needed to muster whatever defenses he could against the sweet, seeking spell Rowena’s touch cast upon him.

  “You don’t have a fever,” she said, obviously relieved.

  “Just yelled too much, I guess.”

  “I’ve got the perfect thing to make it feel better.”

  “That’s not necessary.” Cash tried not to regret when her hand fell away. “I’ve already put you to enough trouble.”

  “How about if we make a trade? Even things up a bit?” she said. “I’ll give you my magic potion, and you can make those tables disappear from my shop and reappear in Miss Marigold’s garden.”

  “I’m happy to help,” he said. “But you don’t have to—”

  “I want to.” She walked over to a table behind the counter where she had an electric kettle. Turning it on, she dug through a bunch of little envelopes that held teabags.

  “I don’t drink tea,” he said.

  “Today you do.” She fussed with the cup, squeezing in—was that fresh lemon juice? And then honey out of a little clear plastic bear. She pressed the concoction into his hand. Cash eyed it suspiciously.

  Vinny limped out from the back room on his crutches. “I tried to piece that paperwork together for you, sweet cheeks, but it’s a—”

  “Disaster. Yeah. I know. I’m terrible at that kind of stuff.” Rowena made a face. “Oh, well. It makes a good excuse for you to charm Miss Marigold out of another cherry pie.”

  “So that’s why you look like you’re putting on a few pounds,” Cash teased his friend.

  Vinny shot him a grin. “Hey, there, junior! Look what the cat dragged in.”

  Good call, Cash thought. The junk in the cup smelled just like a donation from that snooty cat eyeballing him from some kind of kitty jungle gym.

  “Cash has a sore throat.” Rowena appealed to Vinny. “I made him some tea with lemon and honey, but he doesn’t want to drink it.”

  “Great stuff,” Vinny said, giving him the stern eye. “My grandma swore by it. Go ahead. Drink it up. Rowena made it for you special.”

  What could Cash do with Rowena gazing up at him so hopefully and his ornery ex-partner looking like he’d pour the junk down Cash’s throat if he didn’t take it like a man?

  Hell, Cash didn’t need much of a shove if drinking this mess would make Rowena’s eyes light up. He grimaced inwardly, feeling a little bit guilty at the direction his runaway thoughts led him.

  Truth was, he’d like to light Rowena up in every way a man could imagine. He’d already had it bad for the woman before Fair day. And the necklace deal—that had almost been more than he could take.

  But Rowena’s sister…damn, her sister had told him things about Rowena that had made him burn with anger, made him want to bundle her up and keep her safe. Protect her from the world, but most of all from himself.

  Considering how hard that had been to swallow, how bad could a few swigs of cat-piss tea be?

  Cash slugged the liquid back in a burning gulp. Once he got it down, he came up sputtering.

  “That stuff tastes like hell!” he complained.

  “I know. But it’ll make you all better.” She was teasing him, lights dancing in her eyes.

  If he were a different man, he would have scooped her into his arms. Pretended to turn her over his knee. If she belonged to him he’d tickle her until she laughed and he could show her just how much better she’d made him feel.

  But she wasn’t his to hold, to protect. She wasn’t his to love.

  “You know, Rowena,” Vinny teased, “you’re taking such good care of the bullheaded cuss and his girls they don’t even need me around anymore.”

  Either the time with Miss Marigold had gone to Vinny’s head or Rowena’s influence was at work, because it sounded for all the world as if Cash’s ex-partner was matchmaking. Cash didn’t know whether to scowl or smile.

  Rowena flushed. “You know that’s not true, Vinny,” she insisted.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Cash said. “She’s plenty bossy, but she sure makes better coffee than you.”

  “I make mine taste that way on purpose to try to get you to cut back on the caffeine. Maybe Rowena will have better luck reforming you.” The old man’s eyes twinkled. “She’s a hell of a lot sweeter than I am.”

  “That’s for sure,” Cash said, but it was the taste of her he was remembering, her mouth under his. “I’ll get those tables over to the garden before morning,” he added, his voice rough, but not from the shouting.

  He wished he could move other things out of the way as easily.

  Like the heavy weight lodged in the region of his heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ROWENA WOULD NEVER be able to show her face at the local Cub Foods again.

  She stared down at the daunting challenge of Cash’s stove, still dazed at how fast her day had gone from bad to worse. It had seemed like such a minor snag when the frozen homemade dinners Mr. Google had prepared in case of emergency had finally run out.

  Rowena had even teased Cash when he’d scrupulously saved them for the nights she was in charge of feeding the kids. After all, women the world over fed kids every day, Rowena had reasoned. And she’d managed to reach
the ripe old age of twenty-seven without starving. How hard could it be to fill up two much smaller stomachs, as long as she went into battle prepared?

  She’d had her arsenal of kid friendly recipes that Mr. Google had downloaded off the Internet for her. She’d tucked the shopping list torn from the magnetic pad stuck to Cash’s refrigerator door into her purse—even if the military precision of the goods penned there did give her the willies.

  A list. To shop from.

  Talk about killing the whole adventure angle of the trip. She preferred a free-spirited stroll through the grocery store, choosing whatever happened to look good to her at the time. She’d gorge on fresh pineapple one week until she had canker sores. Then it would be tuna from a can—the leftovers from that meal sending the kitties she was fostering into spasms of joy.

  More often still, Rowena settled for takeout, or whatever people-food happened to be sharing her refrigerator with the tins of stinky cat food. But she supposed you couldn’t expect a nine-year-old and a five-year-old to eat leftover pad thai straight out of the takeout carton, no matter how hungry they were.

  The one thing she’d learned for certain during her stint at the Lawless household was that hungry kids equaled cranky kids, and tonight she had already mediated her quota of sisterly arguments.

  Especially battles over who got to sit in which car seat, the one nearest to where Destroyer was riding now deemed prime real estate by the sisters. “You promised you’d let me sit wherever I wanted forever and ever,” Mac had whined. “Cross your heart and hope to die.”

  “When was that?” Rowena asked as she heaved the wheelchair into the rear compartment with Destroyer.

  “When I waked up in the hospital after they glued my legs back together. The doctors said they put them together just like puzzle pieces. I got a big scar. You wanna see?”

  “You showed me when you took your bath, remember?” Rowena had reminded her. “Look, Mac. The accident happened a long time ago. How about we give your big sister a break?”

  Charlie had looked pretty stunned when Rowena had ruled in her favor. But maybe it was because Charlie had an idea what the rest of the afternoon was going to be like. Rowena, Charlie and Destroyer had paid for her decision the rest of the ride. Whining turned into wailing, the trip to the grocery store a visit to hell Rowena would never forget.

  When they’d finally gotten back to Cash’s house, Rowena had been tempted to kiss the kitchen floor. Now she’d even resorted to sitting the disgruntled Mac in front of the television, hoping that watching an episode of Dora the Explorer with Destroyer would buy half an hour. Rowena needed at least that long to hunt down the army of gremlins taking dentist drills to the inside of her head.

  Rubbing her temple, Rowena glanced over at Charlie. The child sat at the kitchen table, its surface covered with poster board, markers and pictures cut from a stack of old dog magazines Rowena had resurrected from her basement. Charlie looked as if she could use an aspirin or two, herself. The extra-strength orange chewable kind designed specifically for those times when your little sister was driving you nuts.

  Rowena dug out the contents of the grocery sack she’d lugged in fifteen minutes before and lined her purchases up for inspection. Macaroni—check. Butter—check. Milk—check. Hot dogs—check. Corn—uh-oh. Where the heck was the corn?

  She rummaged once again through the sack as if the thing had a false bottom, like one of the antique writing desks Ariel liked to collect. But Rowena still came up empty. She could have sworn she’d put it on that conveyor belt thing at the checkout line. Rowena frowned. The kid behind the counter had looked a little shifty. He’d probably left the corn out of her sack on purpose, his fiendish revenge for the damage Mac had done to his eardrums.

  Rowena opened the cupboard door where the canned goods were usually kept. Empty. But then she had known it would be. Cash had meant to stock up at the store the night before, but one of the other deputies had called in sick. He had ended up working a double shift instead. Rowena had told him not to worry about it. She’d just make a trip to the grocery store with the girls. How big a deal could it be?

  Bryony would have warned Rowena scoffing like that was tempting fate. There were times even her interfering older sister had a point.

  Rowena closed the cupboard and leaned her forehead against it, trying to resist the urge to thump her head against the panel a few times.

  “Is something wrong, Rowena?”

  She turned toward the table to find Charlie regarding her with solemn eyes, her silver wire glasses a little crooked on her nose. “I don’t suppose your dad would consider olives a vegetable?” She was sure she’d seen a half-empty bottle of them on the refrigerator door.

  “I don’t know,” Charlie answered, considering. “But they wouldn’t taste very good with macaroni and cheese. I thought you told Mac we were having corn. It’s her favorite.”

  Forget the dentist drills. The gremlins had moved on to jackhammers. She was more than willing to tussle things out with MacKenzie when necessary. At least anytime except right now, when she was still reeling from her first experience of a full-fledged tantrum.

  But in this case, nixing the corn and substituting something else wasn’t an option. There was really no help for it. Another trip to the grocery store was a downright necessity. Who knew? Maybe she and the girls could beat some kind of record, being banned from two different grocery stores in one day.

  “Better head in and tell your sister she’s got a choice. It’s either olives, or an emergency trip to the store.”

  “An emergency?” Charlie fretted her bottom lip.

  “Believe me, if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be setting foot out of this house tonight.”

  Charlie mused for a long moment. “I could get you some,” she offered finally.

  “Corn?” Rowena brightened. “Is there some neighbor you borrow things from?”

  “No.” Charlie carefully capped her purple marker. “I can get some from me. Only you’ve got to promise you’ll put it back.”

  Rowena shook her head, trying to process the girl’s offer through the throbbing in her head. “You have corn stashed somewhere?”

  Fine lines of worry etched between Charlie’s brows. “You will put it back, won’t you?”

  She seemed so concerned Rowena made an X on her chest with one finger, just as she and Bryony and Ariel had when they were kids. “Cross my heart.”

  The familiar vow seemed to calm the little girl’s doubts. Charlie climbed out of the kitchen chair. “You can come with me to get it if you want to. As long as you promise not to tell anybody else where it is.”

  Charlie slipped her hand into Rowena’s. Her fingers felt small, warm with a trust that nudged Rowena’s heart. She suspected Charlie would head off to her bedroom. Ariel had kept Oreos in a shoe box in her closet until an army of big black ants had demanded she share. But instead of heading deeper into the house, Charlie went to the back door and led Rowena out into the fenced backyard.

  “You don’t have a secret garden where you’re growing sweet corn out here, do you?” Rowena teased, but Charlie wasn’t laughing.

  The child led Rowena to the bottom of the oak tree. “You gotta climb up. You know how to climb?”

  “It’s been a while.”

  Charlie bit one ragged nail. “Maybe we better not risk it. I don’t want to break you like I broke Mr. Google.”

  “That was just a freak accident, honey. You didn’t break anybody.” But she could tell Charlie wasn’t buying it. “I’ll be really careful,” she promised instead.

  Charlie scrambled like a little monkey up the ladder nailed to the trunk, then watched with a worried frown as Rowena followed suit.

  Rowena pulled herself onto the platform, saw the framing that would have made two walls. She looked around. “Wow. What a great tree house.”

  “It’s not a tree house,” Charlie said. “It was just s’posed to be one. It was going to be a fort, with towers and flags and even bars
on one of the windows, like a jail. And Daddy was going to make a slide so I could get down real fast if the bad guys took it over.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We were going to play cops and robbers, Daddy and me. But now, well, this place isn’t for fun anymore.” She was hovering on the edge of saying something, sharing secrets, trusting. Rowena could feel it. It should have been so easy for a child of Charlie’s age, so natural. And yet Rowena sensed the gravity in the little girl’s decision to bring someone up the makeshift ladder to a place that was no longer meant for fun.