Kitabı oku: «Husband By Inheritance»

Chapter One

After all these years, he still slept as though there was a possibility of someone sneaking in the room and putting a gun to his ear.

Even in Miracle Harbor, Oregon, where such things were unheard of.

He lay awake, now, listening, every muscle tense, ready, wondering what small noise had startled him awake in the deepest part of the night. The green glow of his clock told him it was just after 3:00 a.m.

The foghorn, he decided, not the creak of his front gate, badly in need of oiling. He allowed himself to relax slightly, and then slightly more, closing his eyes and willing himself to go back to sleep. He hated this time of night the most because he was unable to exercise his customary discipline over his mind. For some reason this was when the memories wanted to visit.

The sound came again.

The quiet crunch of someone’s muffled footsteps moving up the walk. He listened for and heard the scrape of the loose board on the second step up to the porch.

It was when he heard the soft groan of his front door handle being tried that he moved, fast and quiet, out of the his bed and to the window.

An old car, hitched to a U-Haul trailer, was parked out on the street. Thieves? Planning to clean him right out?

They’d be disappointed. He had no interest in “stuff.” His apartment was Spartan. No TV, no stereo, just his computer.

Had he once had an interest in “stuff”? He had trouble remembering small things like that. Though he had a flash now of his wife, Stacey, standing in front of something in a store, looking back at him, laughing at the outrageous price, but there had been something wistful in her eyes, too.

He flinched as if he’d been struck when he remembered what they had been looking at that day.

A bassinet.

A blackness that did not bode well for his intruder, descended over him. Wearing only the boxers he slept in, he made his way down the steps and through the darkened house, the of movement—stealthy, cautious, icily calm—second nature to him.

He slid out the back door, not opening it enough to let it squeak, his plan already formed. He’d use the walkway alongside the house and follow it to the front. The prowler would be trapped on the narrow porch. He’d have to go through him to get away.

Fat chance of that.

This intruder had picked the wrong house.

Home of Shane McCall, agent, Drug Investigation Unit. Retired.

The mist was thick and swirling, the cement of the sidewalk ice-cold under his bare feet, the rhododendrons so thick along the side path that his bare skin was brushing the rough shingles of his house on one side, and getting soaked by the rubbery leaves on the other. These details barely registered, he was so intensely focused. He came around the side of the house, stopped in the shadow of the fog and dense overgrown shrubs, and watched.

He saw a shape bent over the door; the night too dark and the fog too thick for more than vague impressions. A baseball cap. A build too slight to be threatening to him.

A kid, he thought, and felt his anger wane as he watched the intruder jiggle the door handle again. Was he trying to pick the lock? Shane should have just called the police. Maybe Morgan was working tonight. When the business was done they could have exchanged war stories.

Vastly preferable to going back up those stairs to bed when he’d finished here, to the memories that were waiting for him.

Knowing that calling the police was still an option, and knowing he wouldn’t take it, he moved quietly out of the shadows to the bottom of his steps.

It occurred to him that maybe he should have taken his service revolver out of retirement, that someone without the physical size to handle a confrontation might attempt to even out his odds with a weapon. A knife, a handgun. That was probably especially true of the kind of kid who would break into a house at three in the morning.

His mind working with that rapid, detached lightning swiftness that came naturally to him, Shane decided on a course of action—keep his distance, make it seem like he was packing a gun himself.

Hard to do, considering he was standing out here in his undershorts. But not impossible.

He went to the bottom of the stairs, and with the cold authority that came so easily to him, he said, “Put your hands up where I can see them. Don’t turn around.”

The figure bolted upright and then froze.

“You heard me. Hands up.”

“I can’t.” Fear had made the voice high and girlish.

“You can’t?” he said, his voice cool and hard. “You’d better.”

“I might drop the baby.”

The voice was so scared that it was quivering. The baby?

Shane went up the steps two at a time, put his hand on intruder’s shoulder and spun him around.

Her.

Two hers, a full-grown her, and a baby her, both looking at him with the same saucer-huge blue eyes. Blue eyes tinged with a hint of brown.

He dropped his hand from her shoulder, ran it through the dampness of his hair, and swore.

When her foot connected with his shin, he was reminded, painfully that he had forgotten rule one: never let your guard down ever.

“Fire,” she screamed. “Fire.”

Without thinking he clamped his hand over her mouth before she managed to roust the whole neighborhood, something he was not exactly dressed for.

She was beautiful. Blond hair, very short and straight, poking out from under a Cubs ball cap and framing a face of utter loveliness—perfect skin, high cheekbones, a shapely nose. Her eyes were her dominating feature, though. Huge, the color partly a sea blue he had only seen once, a long time ago, off the coast of Kailua-Kona, in Hawaii, and partly brown. The combination was nothing short of astounding.

Those eyes were sparkling with unshed tears.

He swore again. She was shaking now, and the baby looked anxiously at her mother, screwed up her face and began to howl.

The noise seemed to reverberate in the fog, and he glanced uneasily at the neighbor’s houses again.

“Promise you won’t scream,” he said. “Or yell fire.” Fire. All right. She was beautiful, but obviously deranged.

She nodded.

He moved his hand fractionally, and she backed away from him until she could back away no more, her shoulder blades right up against his front door, her eyes wide, her arms folded protectively around the baby. It wasn’t a small baby. In fact, she was quite sturdy looking, possibly two.

“Stay away from us, you pervert.”

“Pervert?” he sputtered. “Pervert?”

“Hiding in the bushes in your undershorts waiting for a defenseless woman to come home. That’s called a pervert.”

“Home?” He stared at her. Her voice was shaking but her eyes were flashing. She probably weighed less than him by at least eighty pounds. And he knew she was going to take him on if he came one step closer.

She nodded, licked her lips nervously. Her eyes darted by him, looking for an escape.

He folded his arms over his chest. “This happens to be my home. I thought you were a prowler.”

Her mouth fell open, and then her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

He could see what she was thinking: that perverts were damnably clever. But he could also see the confusion in her face, her eyes searching for and finding the black iron house number over the wall-mounted porch light.

He was not sure he’d ever been quite so insulted. A pervert? Him? And she didn’t seem really deranged. Just exhausted. He could see dark crescents bruising the skin under those beautiful eyes.

She studied him a moment longer, and then he could see some finely held tension ease slightly.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I’ve made a mistake. I’m very tired. I—”

To his horror, little tears were slipping down her cheeks now, too. She wasn’t wearing any mascara, which he liked for some foolishly irrational reason. Her shoulders were shaking under a jacket that looked too thin to offer any kind of protection from the penetrating chill of the night.

The baby’s howls intensified when she saw the tears dribbling down her mother’s cheeks.

Striving for dignity, the woman pulled back her shoulders, lifted her chin. The gestures wrenched oddly at a heart that he would have sworn, only moments ago, had been cast in pure iron.

“Could you just direct me to a motel?”

“I could, but you won’t have any luck.” This did not seem to surprise her. “Why fire?”

“Pardon?”

“You yelled fire,” he reminded her. “Are perverts scared of it? Like holding a cross up to a vampire?”

She laughed nervously. “I read once that nobody listens when a woman calls for help. But they will if someone calls fire.”

She wasn’t from around here, he decided. Not even close. Survival tactics of a big city woman. Her voice was intriguing. It wasn’t sweet, like her face. It had a little raspy edge to it.

“Why aren’t there any motels? There were ‘No Vacancy’ signs on every motel for the last fifty miles it seemed.” She wiped impatiently at her eyes with the back of her sleeve, and then wiped the baby’s face, and kissed her on the nose.

A magical effect. The baby, an exact replica of her mother, except with blonder hair that was, wildly curly and unruly, ceased howling. The girl turned her head enough to look solemnly at him out of the corner of one eye, but apparently the glance failed to reassure, and she began to cry again, louder than before.

“There’s a major resort going up on the edge of town. We have contractors, carpenters, plumbers…you name it they’re here.”

He doubted there was a room to be had anywhere this night.

Unless you counted his empty house. Three bedrooms. One up, two down. The place had been a duplex until a few months ago when, with his landlord’s permission, he had turned the upstairs kitchen into a workroom.

Don’t, he told himself.

But he did, feeling slightly put out that he’d frightened her so badly, but even more put out that the baby was going to wake up the whole bloody neighborhood.

“Look, maybe you better come in for a minute.”

He reached past her for the door. Which was locked. The baby’s crying was affecting him so badly, he considered a well-placed kick to the old wood, but contained himself.

“No,” she said, firmly, her suspicion leaping back in her eyes. “I’m leaving. It’s all right. Really. I’m tired. I drove too long. I must have the wrong address.”

She went to move by him and then stopped, the porch opening onto the stairs too small for her to squeeze by without touching him. It was when he saw the delicate blush rising in her cheeks that he remembered he was in a state of undress.

“Wait right here,” he said sternly, using his no-nonsense cop voice, a man to be taken seriously, even in his underwear. Boxers, thank God. The plaid kind that could be mistaken for a pair of gym shorts in a thick fog. Maybe.

She was scared still, it was written all over her face.

Scared that if he was not a pervert that had been hiding in the bushes, she had accidentally knocked on the door of Miracle Harbor’s only axe-murderer.

“I’m a cop,” he said reluctantly, “Retired.” He knew she’d see it. The stance, the look in his eyes, the cut of his hair.

Her eyes wide on his face, she nodded, then as soon as he stepped back, she flew by him, and scurried down the walk. He let her go, listening to the snap of the locks on her car doors when she was safely inside it.

Then he listened to the unhealthy grind as she turned the ignition.

Not his problem, he thought, at all. Thank God.

He went back down the sidewalk, and in his back door. He ordered himself up the steps and into bed. He made it up the steps, but his mind, never disciplined at this time of night, listened for the sound of the car pulling away. Nothing.

He opened his window, took a look out, and heard again the grind of the starter.

“Hell,” he said, and picked up a pair of jeans off the end of his bed. “Double hell.”

Despite a shin that should have told him otherwise, the woman had a vulnerable quality in her eyes. He wanted to leave her to her fate, and couldn’t. She wasn’t dressed warmly enough to be sitting out there in a freezing car, and the child probably wasn’t either.

Minutes later, snapping up his jeans, he turned on the porch light and flung open the front door.

She could come in if she wanted to.

But she didn’t.

Stubborn. That was written all over her face. Beautiful, yes, but stubborn, too. He snuck a glance out the door.

The wind lifted the fog enough for him to see her. She had her forehead resting against the steering wheel. She was probably crying. But she wasn’t going to ask for his help. Not him. The pervert.

Sighing, he pulled a jacket over his naked chest. He’d taken an oath, years ago, to protect and serve. And retired or not, that oath was as much a part of his makeup as anything else. It ran through his blood, and he found himself almost relieved at the discovery that his personal tragedy had not stolen that part of his nature from him.

He was not capable of leaving her out there in the cold.

She didn’t see him coming, and started when he tapped on her window. There, he’d managed to scare her again, which should warn him to give up any notion of a new career in the damsel-in-distress department.

She opened her window a crack. “Yes?”

“Do you want me to call somebody for you? Have you got road service?” Old habits died hard. Her license plates said Illinois. There was a parking sticker on her windshield for a lot in Chicago. He’d been right when he guessed this woman was a long way from home.

“I’ll be fine,” she said proudly. “In Chicago this is picnic weather.”

“Yeah,” he said. She was shivering. “I can see that. Is that baby as cold as you are?”

She gave the child a distressed look, and turned back to him. “Are you really a police officer?”

“I was, yes.”

“Have you got a badge?”

“Not anymore.”

“Why aren’t you a policeman anymore?”

His aggravation grew. It occurred to him it was the most he’d felt of anything for a long, long time. He actually felt alive. Aggravated, but alive.

“Lady,” he said, “are you going to make me beg you to come in?”

She seemed to mull that over, then with a resigned sigh, she undid the lock and reached for the baby. She followed him up the walk.