by Julie Miller
Harry leaned over the back of the couch to kiss Hope’s cheek. “I’m fine. I just need to run an errand.”
“Take the spare keys,” Pike advised. He strode into the kitchen and pulled a ring of keys from the nearest drawer before tossing them across the room to Harry. “In case you’re out after we’ve turned in. I’ll put Hans in his kennel, Remember, the down command is—”
“Platz. Yeah, I know.” He knew a lot about working with trained dogs like his brother-in-law’s K-9 partner. That had been his job overseas. Him and Tango and... Nah. Don’t go there. Shutting down the memory he couldn’t yet face, Harry stuffed the keys into his pocket. “Hans won’t be a problem.”
“Let us know how Daisy is doing,” Hope prompted.
No sense lying about where he was headed. His sister knew him better than he knew himself. Harry paused in the open doorway before letting himself out. “I will.”
Chapter Four
Sleep wasn’t happening tonight.
Although the logical part of Daisy’s brain told her that the scratching noise at her bedroom window was the wind blowing bits of wintry debris against the panes, she sat up for the third time, clutching her spare pillow against her chest. She stared at the gingham drapes, her vision blurred by nearsightedness and shadows, half expecting them to fly open and reveal a man standing on the other side. Fighting to form a coherent thought over the pulse thundering in her ears at that unsettling idea, she picked up her old tortoise-shell framed glasses from the bedside table and blinked the glowing red numbers of her clock into focus.
2:49 a.m.
Her breath seeped out on a weary sigh. Her six o’clock alarm was going to beep mighty early if she couldn’t shut down her fearful imagination and get some sleep.
She flipped on the lamp beside her, flooding the room with a gentle light. Muffy stretched his short legs on top of the quilt, scooting closer to reclaim the warmth from the crook of her knees where he’d been sleeping. Patch sat up behind her on the far side of the bed, his posture indicating he was alert and ready to start his day.
“Not yet, you silly boy,” she chided. But her smile was the only invitation Patch needed to climb into her lap to lick her chin in exchange for some petting. Daisy indulged in a few seconds of warmth and affection before looking past him to see Caliban curled into a ball at the foot of the bed. The older dog seemed annoyed to be disturbed from his slumber yet again and tucked his nose under his front leg and tried to go back to sleep.
The furnace kicked on and Daisy startled again, rattling the headboard against the wall. Damn. Who needed some creeper sending her unwanted gifts when she could spook herself with her own imagination? By the time she reminded herself that the drapes were swaying because the vent beneath the window stirred the air and not because a Peeping Tom had moved them, all three dogs were sitting up, looking at her intently, no doubt wondering if they were going to be taking another jaunt with her around the house in search of an intruder they knew wasn’t there.
A floorboard creaked overhead and Daisy tilted her gaze up to the ceiling. Again, logic said the noise was the old wood of the house shifting with the changing temperature of heat ducts running through the walls and beneath the floors. But the board above her creaked a second time, and a third, and logic became a voice her fears wouldn’t let her hear anymore.
That sounded like footsteps. It shouldn’t be possible. The dogs would be barking. The police had taken her statement about the tracks in the snow. She’d locked all her doors and windows.
Downstairs.
She hadn’t been upstairs since she’d hung the lights and greenery on the bannister earlier in the week. Not that there were any outside doors or even fire escapes on the second floor where someone could...
Something banged against an upstairs wall and she jumped inside her skin. Brock had shattered the lock on her apartment door the night he’d broken in to assault her. The locks on this house were doubled, heavier.
Didn’t make any difference.
She heard another bang. Then another that was slightly muffled.
“Sorry, guys.” Daisy couldn’t stay there a moment longer, fighting her imagination. Pushing the dogs aside, she tugged on her sticky-bottomed slipper socks and tied her chenille robe over her flannel pajamas. “If I don’t double-check what that noise is, none of us will be getting any sleep.”
While the dogs jumped down from the bed and stretched, Daisy crossed to the window. She pulled aside the edge of the drape and window shade underneath, bracing for a gruesome face staring at her from the other side. Relieved to see nothing but the dim glow of moonlight reflecting off the snow in her backyard, she exhaled the breath she’d been holding. Quickly tucking the window coverings back into place, she pulled her cell phone and keychain with its pepper spray from her purse and opened the bedroom door.
Daisy had no qualms about running up her utility bill if it meant feeling safe. She flipped on the hall light and the mudroom light, along with lights in the kitchen, dining room and living room. After a quick check of her office, she flipped the switch to illuminate the second-floor landing and climbed the stairs. Muffy followed at her heels, with Patch darting up ahead of them.
“Please be a tree branch caught in the wind and knocking against the side of the house. Or snow.” Snow was good. Normal. Maybe a clump had melted off the eaves and landed on a window sill. Ignoring the logic against anything melting in this single digit weather, Daisy nodded, liking that explanation for the discomforting noises. “Please be snow.”
A sweep of the empty landing allowed her a moment’s reprieve to look back down to the foyer. Her heart squeezed in her chest when she saw Caliban standing with his one front paw on the bottom step, anxiously looking up at them. He bravely hopped up two more steps, but his paw slipped from underneath him on the polished wood and he reversed course, returning to the area rug at the foot of the stairs and sitting at attention. “It’s okay, boy. You keep an eye on things down there.”
Although she suspected he’d push through his phobia and obey the command to join them if she called to him, Daisy turned her back on Caliban’s big brown eyes and flipped on the switch in the first bedroom. This was the room she planned to rent out, along with the bathroom across the hall. This was where she’d heard the floorboards creak, and the thump against the side of the house. Her eyes had barely adjusted to the bright light when Caliban let out a deep warning bark. Daisy answered with a startled yelp. A split second later, someone banged loudly at her front door and she clutched her chest at the double shock to her heart. “Brock is in prison,” she reminded herself out loud. “He can’t hurt you.”
But Secret Santa could.
All three dogs ran to the door, sounding a ferocious alarm. Her thumb hovered over the numbers on her phone. 9... 1...
“Daisy! Daisy, open up!” Did she know that voice? A man’s voice. Loud enough to be heard above the barking dogs. Brock had a scary, loud voice, usually slurred by alcohol. But this voice was sharp, succinct. “It’s Harry Lockhart. Open up!”
“Harry? What...?” The relief surging through her veins made her light-headed as she raced down the stairs. She pocketed her phone and pepper spray before attacking the locks.
He was a broad, imposing silhouette outside her storm door until she thought to turn on the porch lights. Adding the glow of Christmas colors to his stern features did nothing to ease the frantic mix of urgency, confusion and relief that made her hands tremble on the latch. Her fingers lost their grip on the storm door as he pulled it right out of her hand.
“Caliban, sitz!” Harry ordered the dog to be quiet and sit while he clamped his hands around her shoulders and pushed her inside.
“Is that German? What are you doing here?” she asked, obliquely marveling that her Belgian Malinois obeyed commands in two languages, while Muffy managed to ignore orders in
any language. “Is that a gun?”
She barely had time to recoil from the holster cinched around his thigh with a web belt before he trapped her between the thick wood door and his equally solid body and locked the dead bolt. The holster and webbing were military khaki in color, a sharp contrast against the dark denim of his jeans. The wood was cold against her back as he flattened her there, folding his shoulders around her as his chin swiveled from side to side, his gaze inspecting the crossroads of archways that met in the foyer.
“You turned on all the lights. What’s wrong?” he demanded in the same clipped tone he’d used with the dogs. Without surrendering the shielding posture of what she could only describe as warrior mode, he pulled back just enough to look down into her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she echoed. Daisy curled her fingers into the nubby weave of his charcoal sweater exposed by the unzipped front of his coat, feeling so off-balance by his surprise visit she needed something to cling to. She wanted to push some space between them. The heat of his body was too close, his gun too hardpressed against her hip, his masculine scent too distracting for her to think straight. But all she could do right now was hold on. “Have you been watching my house?”
His gray eyes narrowed on her face. “Your glasses are different.”
“What?” Oh, right. She was wearing the brown frames. That observation was as random as her own thoughts right now. Damn, the man had muscles. With his coat hanging open she could see that the burn and shrapnel scars on his face and neck ran down beneath the collar of his sweater. He had been so terribly hurt. An explosion? A fire? He’d nearly lost his eye. And that would be a shame because they were such a beautiful, deep color, like an endless, storm-tossed ocean. Focus! Daisy shook her head, still not comprehending why he was here. But she could answer his question. “I have different frames for different outfits. These are my knock-around-the-house pair.”
He pulled away as suddenly as he’d pinned her there, and her knees nearly buckled as chilled air rushed between them. He peeled off his gloves and stuffed them into his pockets. “Caliban, fuss.”
Foos? Apparently, that meant heel, at least to Caliban. Harry spun away to inspect her living room, with the three dogs trotting behind him. Once she thought she could walk again, Daisy tightened her robe around her waist and followed them in a circle through the house, watching Harry stop at every window and door.
When they ended up back at the front door, Daisy caught the sleeve of his coat and halted his search. She could think now, at least clearly enough to know that she still didn’t understand why Harry Lockhart was prowling through her house at three in the morning. “What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t check your locks before I left earlier.”
Was that supposed to make sense to her?
“Why did you turn on all the lights?” he went on. “Something’s happened. I thought someone might have broken in.”
He was spying on her. Daisy tucked her hair behind her ears, unsure whether to be flattered or creeped out. He couldn’t know about those disturbing gifts she’d been receiving, could he? Why was this man who’d been so anxious to leave her the last time they’d met so eager to protect her now?
“Daisy?” he prompted. “Why did you turn on the lights?”
She responded to that succinct tone as readily as the dogs had. “I heard noises upstairs. Something hit the side of the house. We went to check.”
And then he was off again, taking the stairs two at a time with Muffy and Patch right on his heels.
Daisy knelt on the rug beside Caliban, hugging her arm around his shoulders to stroke his chest, soothing the thrumming energy quaking through the muscular dog’s body. Either she was absorbing his edgy alertness or she was just as anxious as Caliban to know what Harry was seeing up there before muttering the word “Clear” as he left each of the three bedrooms and bathroom.
She pushed to her feet as he turned off the second-floor lights and came back down the stairs. Patch’s entire butt was wagging with excitement at the late-night adventure as he propped his front paws against Harry’s thigh. But Harry pushed him away and signaled for the Jack Russell mix to sit. With Muffy dancing around his legs, paying no heed to either voice commands or hand signals, Harry muttered something under his breath and bent down, picking up the dog.
“Har...” For a split second, Daisy reached for the Shih Tzu, worried that Harry’s limited patience couldn’t tolerate another yap. Instead, he set Muffy down between Caliban and Patch, pushed the dog’s rear end to the rug and ordered him to sit. He repeated the process twice more before Muffy got bored enough with the exercise that he stretched out on his tummy and batted at Harry’s boot.
She arched an eyebrow in apology. “He’s a hard-headed one to train.”
“Yep. He needs an exercise program like fly-ball or agility training to get rid of some of that energy.” Harry straightened, propping his hands at his waist, reminding her of the military issue gun strapped to his side before his chest expanded with a heavy sigh. “You got any irate neighbors?”
“What?”
“Kids who’d be out roamin’ the neighborhood on a school night?”
“No.” Not the questions she’d expect from a man who hadn’t found anything to worry about. Daisy was suddenly aware of the icy remnants of slush left from Harry’s boots on the foyer rug soaking through her socks and chilling her from the toes up. “What did you see?”
He pulled back the edges of his coat to splay his fingers at his waist. “The house is secure. No signs of forced entry.”
“But?”
“It’s hard to tell from inside, but it looks as though someone used the side of your house for target practice.” He inclined his head toward the stairs. “You’ve got a snowball stuck in the screen of that bedroom window. I opened it up to knock it clear, but it looked like a couple more splats of snow just beside the window, too.”
A few minutes ago, she’d been hoping that snow was the culprit. Not so much now. “Someone was throwing snowballs at my house at three in the morning?”
“Whoever threw them isn’t there anymore.”
“Or never was.” She thought of the sick gifts hidden inside her desk at school and wondered if she was just being paranoid to think that that terror campaign had somehow followed her home. “Maybe the snow fell from the roof or blew off the branches of Mr. Finch’s sweet gum tree.”
“Don’t discount your instincts. Being aware of danger is half the battle of protecting yourself from it.”
But Daisy wasn’t any kind of Marine. “Sometimes my imagination gets the better of me. I remember that night Brock broke into my old place... I told you about him, didn’t I?” She interpreted his unblinking glower as a yes. “I know he’s locked up in Jefferson City...” She put up her hands, blocking the mental images of her ex’s bared teeth and wild eyes, and that bloody knife poised above her. “Bad guys don’t get to win.” Brock didn’t even deserve the time and space inside her head to sour her thoughts. “A few snowballs aren’t any kind of threat. I let the noises of the old house get to me.”
“The ghosts caught in our heads can be—”
“Relentless.” His gray eyes locked on to hers, wide with surprise before narrowing to question her response. That look was too intense for her to hold, so she shrugged, nervously catching her hair behind her ears before looking directly at him again. “You said that in one of your letters.”
“I remember. Didn’t think you would.” Harry shifted on his feet and glanced at the front door, as though an alarm had just gone off inside him, warning him it was time to end the conversation and leave. But then that piercing gaze was on her again. “One of the parts that made you cry?”
“I suppose I wear my emotions pretty close to the surface.” While he barely showed his at all, other than this urgent need to escape her company. A
gain. “Crying isn’t a bad thing.” When he nudged aside the dogs and turned toward the door, Daisy followed, stopping him before he could leave. “Do I make you nervous, Harry? Is it the dogs? Do they remind you of Tango?”
“Tango?” He glanced over the jut of his shoulder at her.
“Your K-9 partner.”
“I know who Tango is.” A muscle ticked across his taut cheekbone and he reached for the doorknob. “Was.”
“I’m so sorry you lost him. I can’t imagine what that must feel—”
“Like I said, everything looks secure. I’ll walk around the house to see if I can find signs of where the snowballs came from before I leave.”
“You’re leaving?”
Of course he was. Only the crazies wanted anything to do with her. Harry just had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, the kind of alertness and protective instincts she’d expect from any career Marine. He might be her friend on paper. She might have fancied herself half in love with the uniformed hero from their letters. But that was her fantasy, not his.
That still didn’t stop her from moving between him and the door and sliding her arms beneath his coat, hugging him around the waist. With his coat unzipped, she could get closer than she had yesterday evening. Turning her cheek against the thick wool of his sweater, she felt his body warming hers. She breathed in the rugged smells of soap and Harry. “Thank you for looking out for me.”
A fraction of a second longer and she would have pulled away. But his thick arms folded around her, his hands settling between her shoulder blades to gently pat her, almost as if he was trying to burp a baby. Not the most romantic embrace. But this was just a friendly hug, right? At least he wasn’t holding himself completely stiff or pulling away. Maybe the taciturn tough guy with the scarred-up face was shy? Smiling against the beat of his heart at that tender notion, Daisy snuggled beneath his chin. She knew he wasn’t married, and he’d never mentioned a girlfriend—past or present—in his letters. His sister, Hope, seemed to be the only woman in his life. Could his reticence to carry on a social conversation extend to the physical expression of emotion, as well? But if he was willing to hold on right now, she was more than willing to surround herself in his strength and heat.
