Within Range

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “If this works, he won’t be able to find you either way. Seems likely he’ll assume you’ve taken off again.”

  “I have.”

  He chuckled quietly. “Less than a mile between Dad’s house and yours.”

  They did some zigzagging along the way, Seth keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. Robin compulsively did the same using the passenger-side mirror. They had left town before the car slowed and he turned into a long dirt driveway. There seemed to be an orchard to one side and a pasture to the other.

  “Is this where you grew up?”

  His hands flexed once on the steering wheel. “Yep. I had a lot of fun here as a kid.”

  What should pop out of her mouth but “You’re...You seemed to know your way around a car seat.”

  “Is that a question?” He was clearly teasing. “I have two nieces. Sara is seven now, Ivy four. My sister brings them out here a couple of times a year, and Dad and I go to Chicago alternate years for Christmas.”

  “Oh. That’s nice.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it,” she said honestly. Not being able to see her mother and sister created a constant ache in her chest, made worse by Allie’s illness. Neither of them had even seen Jacob. She didn’t think he really understood the concept of grandmothers or aunts. Childbirth would have been so different if Mom and Allie both had been with her, had counted fingers and toes, held Jacob when he was tiny and bundled in a blanket so that only his head emerged.

  “You miss your family,” Seth said in a husky voice, even as he parked beside a farmhouse nestled in some big old trees. She’d given away more than she intended.

  Finding out how much of a family man he was made her pray anew that he never learned she had it in her power to heal her sister, and hadn’t done it.

  A side door to the house opened, spilling light across the lawn. The man coming out was close to Seth’s size with strong shoulders and a confident stride. His hair seemed to be white.

  Seth opened his door and went to meet his father. They half hugged, in that guy way. Feeling shy, Robin got out, too.

  Seth made quiet introductions before saying, “Let’s get inside. Bed ready for Jacob?”

  “Sure is. He doesn’t need a crib?”

  “No.” For no good reason, she spoke barely above a whisper, as if there had to be listening ears out there. “At home, I have his mattress on the floor, but he’ll be okay on a regular bed.”

  Michael Renner nodded. “What can I carry?”

  As before, Seth carried Jacob inside and disappeared deeper into the house. Even a few days ago, she would have felt an anxious need to trot after him. It was too easy to trust this man.

  “The bedroom is upstairs,” his father said. “I already have gates out for the top and bottom of the stairs. Had ’em for my nieces, and held on to ’em in case my daughter had another one.”

  Robin let one of the duffels slide off her shoulder onto a stool drawn up to a breakfast bar on a big, granite-topped island. The kitchen was gorgeous, with Shaker-style maple cabinets, double ovens and a wrought-iron rack for pans hung over the stove top. The room was warm and welcoming, unlike Richard’s kitchen.

  “This is beautiful,” Robin said, looking around. “Perfect.”

  His smile looked a lot like one of Seth’s, except Michael’s skin had more crinkles. He was still a good-looking man, and his hair wasn’t white the way it had appeared outside but instead blond. Or, well, probably a mix. Seth had gotten his blue eyes from his father, but maybe his darker hair from his mother.

  “I had it redone a few years ago.” His tone was elaborately casual, but Robin suspected he knew to the day when the work had been done. He cleared his throat. “My wife—Seth’s mother—had cancer. She’d dreamed of redoing the kitchen, and I wanted to make sure it happened.” He looked around. “I just wish I’d gotten to it sooner.”

  Startled, Robin saw that she’d rested her hand on his forearm, and he was looking down at it. Embarrassed, she snatched back her hand.

  He only smiled and said, “Thank you. Let me show you to your bedroom. I’m guessing you didn’t get a lot of sleep earlier.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I tried.”

  A low, rough chuckle charmed her.

  “This is so nice of you,” she hurried to say. “I mean, taking us in this way. Seth insisted you would before he’d even asked you. I guess you didn’t have a lot of choice.”

  “Nonsense.” His kindness was tangible. “Seth wouldn’t have brought you here if you weren’t in some serious trouble. I may be retired from the job, but I’m not incapable.”

  “Did Seth tell you about the man who tried to take my son?”

  “He did.”

  “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” And that included the two times she’d been certain Richard would kill her, when he’d lost even a semblance of restraint. “If anything happens, please save Jacob first. No matter what.”

  Eyes keen, he studied her face. Then he nodded.

  At the same moment, she realized Seth was hovering in the kitchen doorway and had undoubtedly heard her request. Well, she would have asked the same of him when she got a chance, anyway. She tipped up her chin, saw his eyebrows twitch. Finally, he inclined his head in acknowledgment. And agreement, if she wasn’t mistaken.

  Then he came into the kitchen as if nothing had happened. “What do you need upstairs right now?”

  Robin picked out the bag that held her toiletries and pajamas as well as clean clothes she could put on in the morning. Which was all of about two hours away, thanks to Jacob’s early-rising habit.

  Seth had wrapped Jacob in his blankie after lifting him out of the car, so she knew he had that. Blue bunny was...in that bag, she thought, along with a bunch of Jacob’s clothes and toys. She picked it up, too, before being hit with an inexplicable feeling of abandonment.

  “I suppose you’re going home.”

  Seth shook his head. “No, I’ll sack out here. Dad keeps my bedroom for me, except when my sister and her family are home and need it.”

  “Oh.” Feeling uncharacteristically shy again, Robin said, “Well, good night, then.”

  “To you, too.”

  As usual, she hadn’t a clue what he was thinking as he watched her follow his father toward the staircase.

  * * *

  HOLLOW-EYED FROM lack of sleep, pain throbbing in his temples, Seth poured himself his third cup of coffee for the morning and got on the phone as soon as he reached his desk.

  It didn’t take him long to connect with a sergeant at Seattle PD who proved willing to look for any domestic violence calls to Richard Winstead’s address.

  “Not a one,” he said at last. “You know who Winstead is, don’t you?”

  “Better than you do, I suspect. I suppose the house is on a big piece of property.”

  “I’d call it an estate. Waterfront. That part of Magnolia—” He broke off. “You’re suggesting neighbors wouldn’t have been able to hear crashes or someone screaming.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “It’s a butt-ugly house,” the sergeant said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard it’s like Bill Gates’s, wired so lights turn on when someone walks into the room and off when they leave it. That kind of thing. Heat and appliances can be controlled from a distance by an app. I guess it was on the cover of a magazine for architects, but when I drove by I thought the really nice older brick mansions on each side were doing their best to lean away.”

  “I know the kind of place you mean,” Seth said, kneading the back of his neck with the hand not holding the phone.

  “I thought Winstead was divorced,” Sergeant Hammond said thoughtfully.

  “He is. Unless he’s remarried, that I don’t know about.”

  “Ah, let me check.” The clatter of fingers on a keyboard came through
the phone. “Nope.” He paused. “The divorce wasn’t contested. Is there something I should know about this?”

  “His ex-wife is here in Lookout. I’m investigating the murder of a woman in the ex-wife’s kitchen. Victim looked a lot like the ex. I think she was the intended victim.”

  “Robin Winstead.”

  “Robin Hollis now. She went back to her maiden name. And yes. She says Winstead swore if she ever tried to leave him, he’d kill her.”

  “You got any proof?”

  “I’m working on it. Okay if I get back to you in a few days?”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  Seth modified a template for requesting medical records and printed a couple of copies, then drove back to his father’s house hoping Robin would be awake. She’d been deep under when he left, although Jacob was wide-awake and cheerful. Seth had disposed of the sodden diaper, cleaned up and dressed the little boy, and escorted him downstairs. He’d been happily settled in front of a short stack of pancakes when Seth left. Dad liked making pancakes.

  Wan and sporting purple bruises beneath her eyes, Robin sat on one of the stools in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee when he walked into the house.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Where’s Jacob?”

  “Your dad took him outside. Apparently there’s a tire swing out there?”

  “Hey, yeah.” His headache relented briefly. He half sat on the stool beside her, laying the manila folder on the granite surface of the island. “Ivy and Sara love it. Dad will watch out for him, don’t worry.”

  Her freckles stood out more than usual, he saw, probably because the only other color in her face were those circles under her eyes. He wanted to smooth some of that stress away, massage her neck and shoulders until she moaned.

  Instead, he kept his hands to himself as she smiled, looking as exhausted as he felt.

  “I know. Your father’s being really sweet. You, too. Jacob said you gave him another bath.”

  “We boys have to stick together.” Man, he needed to get out of here. Seth flipped open the file and took a pen from his shirt pocket. “I need your signature.”

  She stared blankly at the permission form. Eventually, he thought she actually started taking it in, finally signing both copies and pushing them back to him. He gently removed the pen from her hand.

  “Take a nap when Jacob does this afternoon, Robin. I’ll bet you didn’t get three hours of sleep last night.”

  She searched his face. “You look tired, too.”

  “I’ll cut the day short if I can,” he said gruffly. There was plenty he wanted to say and do, but he restrained himself, leaving with her a distantly polite “Thank you,” grating as though he’d lost a layer of skin.

  Chapter Nine

  The next day, Robin came to the conclusion that Seth intended to stay at his father’s house as long as she and Jacob were there.

  His presence both relieved and unsettled her. Robin would have felt horribly guilty if his poor father had been left alone to deal with the awkwardness and extra work of guests he hadn’t even invited. But when Seth was home, she became self-conscious, aware every second of where he was, whether he was watching her or they might touch in passing, how she looked...and of all the darkness in her past that he didn’t know about.

  When he came in the door on Tuesday, his expression was grim enough to alarm her. His face was harder than usual, the angles sharper.

  To give herself a minute, she turned on the burner beneath the water that needed to boil for the pasta. “Something’s wrong.”

  He shook his head, but the deeper lines in his forehead and beside his mouth didn’t smooth out. “Smells good.”

  She was making spaghetti, which Michael said was a favorite of his and was also a meal a two-year-old would eat. Robin asked fiercely, “Then why do you look like that?”

  “Look like—” He scrubbed a hand over his face without having any effect, then glanced around. “Where’s Dad?”

  She grimaced. “Where do you think? He created a fiend when he put Jacob on that swing.”

  A faint smile rewarded her. It vanished almost immediately. “I got some of your medical records today.”

  “Oh.” She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Several of the hospitals emailed records and X-rays. They were hard to look at.”

  “Surely you’ve handled domestic abuse cases before.”

  “I have. But damn, Robin. I didn’t know any of the women as well as I do you. I didn’t—” Seth shook off whatever he’d been about to say. “There were a couple of notes expressing doubt at how you were injured. I’m having trouble understanding why the doctors who saw you didn’t call the police.”

  She clasped her hands together so he wouldn’t see the tremor. “Richard, that’s why. He’d probably met most of the doctors at fund-raising events. He’s that well-known. Slick, too. Along with always having a believable explanation, he was really good at seeming scared for me, loving. Looking back, I don’t understand why I didn’t speak up. Maybe I thought—”

  Seth cut her off. “It’s not on you, Robin. Abused women rarely ask for help in that situation. You have to know that. Maybe you didn’t think you’d be believed, and you knew what the consequences would be once he got you home. Maybe you still loved him, had hope he really was sorry.”

  “No. Not that.” She was glad of an excuse to turn away from his troubled gaze to stir the sauce and dump the spaghetti into the now-boiling water. “I was afraid of him. And yes, he’s a lot more compelling than I am. I didn’t think anybody would believe me.”

  “Even your family?”

  “If Dad had still been alive, I would have gone to them.” She thought. “But if I’d put Mom and Allie in the position of having to defend me, I don’t know what Richard would have done. He had a temper, but mostly he was so cold.” Hard not to shudder. “He could be smiling one second, knocking me to the floor the next. No warning. I didn’t want him even remembering I had family.”

  Seth swore again. “How are you talking about this so calmly? Working on dinner as if it all happened to someone else?”

  She huffed in disbelief. “You think I’m calm? I’m refusing to crumple up in a sobbing heap, that’s all. Your people-reading skills need some fine-tuning.”

  He moved so fast, she didn’t have a chance to retreat. He was suddenly right there in front of her, inches away, his fingers flexing as if he wanted to reach for her. His visible regret, even anguish, brought a lump to her throat. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “I know better.”

  “No.” Damn it, her eyes stung. Refusing to let herself cry, she took an angry swipe at her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Oh, crud. I’m a mess.”

  “Robin.” Now his hands did close on her shoulders. “I swore I wouldn’t do this, but I think I need...” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. His hard embrace said it all.

  She responded the way she had last time, taking comfort from him she didn’t deserve but couldn’t resist. Laying her cheek against his shoulder, she wrapped her arms around him and let herself lean against that solid body and soak in his strength. It could be for only a moment; she didn’t want his father to walk in on them, and she couldn’t let herself weaken for too long.

  His heart vibrated against her breast, and she felt him rub his cheek against her hair. Or had he kissed her on the head? That lump in her throat had swelled to monumental proportions.

  “Robin,” he murmured. “You really get to me. You know that, don’t you?”

  She straightened enough to be able to see his face, eyes that had never been so blue. “Because you feel sorry for me?”

  “Angry for you,” he corrected. “You’re a strong woman.” His jaw flexed. “A beautiful woman. And I shouldn’t have even said that.”

  “Why not?”

  “As much as I want to kiss yo
u, I need you to be able to trust me more.” He made a sound in his throat. “Which means I should get my hands off you.”

  His arms tightened instead, for only an instant. Feeling his arousal, heat settled low in her belly.

  “I like your hands on me,” she admitted.

  He groaned. “I’m trying to behave myself.”

  She ached to feel his mouth on hers, but how could she initiate anything when she still had secrets? Still, she gripped his shirt in both hands, unable to look away from him.

  His head bent slowly, so slowly she knew he was giving her time to retreat. Instead, she pushed herself up on tiptoe to meet him.

  * * *

  APPARENTLY HIS RESOLVE was tissue thin, because Seth did exactly what he’d sworn he wouldn’t: he kissed the woman who depended on him to protect her son and keep her safe.

  The woman who’d drawn him since first sight.

  He might want to devour her, but he did keep enough of a grip on himself to make the first contact gentle. A brush of his lips over hers. Back again. He lifted his head and saw the stunned pleasure on her face, her eyes melting caramel, her lips parted. That’s all it took for him to lose it. He groaned, cradled the back of her head so he could angle it for the best fit, and deepened the kiss. His awareness of his surroundings blurred. All he knew was her, the soft press of her breasts against his chest, the taut arch of her back, her taste and breath and small, involuntary sounds. He gripped her butt to lift her, and somehow pulled out the elastic in her hair to free the silky mass to fall over his hand and her shoulders. He turned her, wanting to boost her onto the counter so he could get between her legs.

  But...damn, there was a voice. Not a voice—his father’s. And it was close.

  “Shoot,” he growled, bumping his forehead against hers. “Dad’s coming.”

  With a gasp, Robin tore herself away. “Jacob!”

  Her son. A boy who’d probably never seen his mommy being kissed by a man before. Even as Seth understood her alarm, he didn’t like her obvious shock. She’d kissed him as much as he’d kissed her.