She grimaced. “No kidding. I thought about going in this afternoon, but I’d already scheduled staffing, so…” She shrugged. “What about you? Do you usually work Saturdays?”
And so it went. It was strange, he thought as they continued to talk, because they’d already spent a whole hell of a lot of time together, but now they were asking those first-date questions. What do you like? Not like? How do you arrange your life? What really matters to you?
He knew some of what mattered to her. Maybe most of it. What he didn’t entirely get was why, and Duncan found he was intensely curious. The store…well, that wasn’t subtle. Nobody had fed her dreams when she was a child, so she was committed to making the dreams of thousands of other little girls as beautiful as she could. The fixing families—again, fairly obvious on the surface. What he didn’t understand was why she hadn’t tried to accomplish something miraculous for herself. Was being a businesswoman really what she’d wanted most? And why not create her own family?
No, that he understood. When you grew up with a dysfunctional family, you were likely to eye outwardly perfect, loving families and wonder what was wrong with them behind closed doors—not so likely to imagine creating one of your own. By the time Conall graduated from high school, Duncan had been ready to swear in blood that he would never have children. Been there, done that, and his brothers had hated him for what he did. Lately he’d begun to wonder if having his own kids would be the same. It was Tito, strangely enough, who gave him an occasional pang.
His realistic side said, More like a muscle twinge, the kind you ignored to push on for ten more bench presses, another mile, a hundred more shots from the free throw line.
Jane had a bowl of the soup and a giant lemon-poppyseed cookie. Duncan went with the Southwestern wrap and an equally gigantic blueberry muffin. They’d managed to grab a small table to one side, out of the line of traffic. While they ate, Duncan had had to exchange greetings with a few people he knew, Jane with a couple of others, but mostly they were left to themselves.
Jane was a season ticketholder to the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. She used her second ticket sometimes to take a friend with her, sometimes one of the older dance students. She didn’t mention taking a man, Duncan noticed. Of course, most men he knew would rather go to a Seahawks game than the ballet. He admitted that he’d never seen a ballet. It occurred to him that he’d like to see one with her—to watch her face while she watched the dancers. Or maybe not; how much grief would she feel?
Was he musical? she asked. He confessed to having started the trombone in fifth grade and giving it up as hopeless by eighth. He told her about the bagpipes, too. Jane was fascinated, even more so than Tito had been, perhaps because she’d actually attended the Highland Games.
“Niall plays?” She looked delighted. “I’ll have to ask him about it the next time…” The glow on her face dimmed. “That is, if I see him again.”
She called him Niall, not Detective? Duncan was slammed with something he could only label as jealousy. It was unfamiliar and unwelcome.
“You got along with Niall?” he asked.
“Oh, sure.” She crumbled the remains of her cookie. “I mean, it’s not like we were chatting.”
Still in the grip of that unpleasant feeling, Duncan asked, “What would you call it?”
“An inquisition?”
At her tartness, he relaxed. Of course Niall hadn’t tried to come on to her. Even if he’d been inclined, he was too professional for that.
“Has he told you what he’s learned so far?”
She shook her head, her eyes anxiously searching his. “Do you know?”
“I talked to him this morning.” Fleetingly; Niall, before his morning cup of coffee, had been short to the point of rudeness. “He’s still trying to track people down. He’s eliminated a few.” Duncan dredged through his memory and mentioned a couple of names. She nodded. “He didn’t learn anything from your car.”
“Oh.” Her long, slender fingers were obliterating the cookie. “Um…did he say whether the blood was, well, real?”
He hated to see the anxiety on her face. “Paint,” he told her. “As you suspected. Maybe even from the same can as our guy used on your back door.”
“That makes sense.” She visibly processed it then relaxed. “Waste not, want not.”
Duncan’s mouth quirked. Nodding at her plate, he said, “I think the cookie is dead.”
She looked ruefully down. “Oh, dear. I could have taken it home for later.”
He was sorry then he’d said anything, because it seemed to have recalled her to the realization that they’d long since finished their lunches and perhaps it was time to go.
“This was nice,” she said after they bussed their table and he held open the door for her. “Thank you for suggesting it. I wasn’t really in a very good mood this morning.”
“Why not?”
“Oh…” Her gaze slid from his. “I don’t know. I probably got out of bed on the wrong side.”
Side by side, two kinds of awareness kicked in. One told him that she had…not lied, but evaded telling him something she didn’t want him to know. That she’d had a run-in with Hector, maybe? Duncan’s other reaction was entirely physical, triggered by the word bed. Picturing her in one came all too easily. He imagined her waking slowly, reluctantly, making grumbly little sounds as she fought off morning. He didn’t know why he was so sure his Jane wasn’t a sunny, bound-out-of-bed, loving-morning kind of woman. He was equally certain that she’d be sexy as hell while she peevishly roused to face her responsibilities. Her glorious hair would be tumbled all over her pillow—or did she braid it at night? Her eyes would be heavy-lidded, her mouth soft and sulky. He wondered if she liked to cuddle while she slept or would insist on complete independence. An odd thing for him to speculate about, since he didn’t know which way he’d tend himself. He went home after he had sex; he didn’t spend the night.
And the fact that he was painfully aroused only because he was picturing Jane waking up in the morning reminded him how long it had been since he’d had sex.
Too long, apparently.
Unfortunately, his body was convinced it wanted Jane, and only Jane. He already knew how complicated that would be. She was complicated, about as far as you could get from his ideal in a woman.
She stopped to look at something in the window of an antique store, and he frowned, watching her.
Did he actually have an ideal, beyond knowing he was interested only in temporary relationships? Maybe not, he conceded. Physically, she did it for him. Everything about her turned him on, starting with the fluid way she moved, the graceful line of her neck as she bent to look more closely at…
He followed her gaze and saw that she was staring at an ancient pair of ice skates. They looked homemade. Clumsy, and yet—Duncan looked again at her face, to see something wistful there.
“They’re too small for you,” he said gently.
“Yes, they were probably a little girl’s. Don’t you think?”
They weren’t white, so they could as well have been a boy’s, and he didn’t know enough about ice-skating to tell if the crude blade had been designed for hockey or figure skating. “Probably,” he agreed.
She sighed. “The figure skating is my favorite part of the Olympics. Actually, I watch the U.S. and World Championships, too.” More briskly, straightening away from the glass, she said, “After all, it’s another form of dancing.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
She didn’t look back. Duncan wondered what she’d seen as she studied those ice skates. Herself, twirling on a frozen pond at home in Iowa? He realized that, for all they’d talked over lunch, neither of them had mentioned their families, at least not until Niall’s name came up.
Their families were, apparently, a sore point for both of them.
“Have you ever ice-skated?” he asked.
She laughed. “A few times, with friends in college. I can go forward without falling
down. I didn’t get far enough to master going backward, never mind twirling or jumping.” She waited while he unlocked the SUV. “What about you?”
“No, although I always thought hockey looked like fun. No local rink, though.” He shrugged.
Her sigh was exaggerated. “Think of the missed opportunities. Maybe we both would have been stars.”
Amused, he shook his head. “You never know.”
But seeing the curve of her mouth as she climbed in, he thought, Dreams.
Pretty damn fragile.
WAS IT A DATE? Or a collegial lunch? Jane wasn’t sure. He hadn’t kissed her, although there was a second, right before she got out in front of her house, when she wondered if he was thinking about it.
She might have been the one to kill the mood, because, panicking as he turned to look at her, she’d said, “Oh, by the way, Hector suggested Tuesday night. Pizza—to make up for today—and an arcade.”
Duncan had grunted. “Has it occurred to you that he’s spending one hell of a lot of money on these little outings?”
Yes, it had, but even so she bristled at his tone. He refused to see the positive in anything Hector did.
“He’s in the position of a divorced father who has to do something extra to make up for what he can’t offer. Besides, there are only so many ways to entertain a twelve-year-old in Stimson.” She’d looked a challenge at Duncan. “What do you do when you spend time with him?”
“Basketball. Soccer. Walks. I helped him with his math homework.” Pause. “I admit I feed him. I told you that.”
“Hector didn’t finish high school,” Jane said. “So maybe he can’t help with the homework. And he’s probably not a very good basketball player.”
Her last glimpse of Duncan’s face as she closed the door, he’d looked irritated, probably because she was defending Hector, whom he wanted to regard as indefensible.
Jane was disconcerted to discover she was absentmindedly sucking on a hank of her hair as she brooded. She yanked it out of her mouth and muttered, “I didn’t want him to kiss me, anyway.” Defiantly.
Lie. And a lousy one besides. She might be afraid of what would happen if he kissed her, but that was different.
With a huge effort, she managed to focus again on the order she was trying to put together for hair accessories, a really successful sideline for her store. Some of the items were practical: hairnets and pins, for example. She should be using one herself right now to keep her hair out of her face, and mouth.
Others were designed for performances: glittering snoods, fancy tiaras, crystal-studded hair fans. She was getting low on some of the items, what with the shopping rush for the upcoming recitals.
Making a decision about a particular snood, filmy black decorated with tiny, diamond-bright crystals, she clicked 10 on the order amount and moved on to a new line of hair combs she hadn’t quite made up her mind about.
What would she recommend to the judge regarding Hector and Tito at the upcoming hearing? Hector was trying. Yes, he’d had his rebellious moments, but she couldn’t really blame him. Tito sometimes seemed to be quite happy in his father’s company.
She guessed what she was hanging up on was the fact that there were other times when Tito didn’t seem as happy. It’s only been three weeks, she reminded herself. His father had been nearly a stranger to him after three years in the correctional institute. And Tito was nearing puberty. Was it surprising that he wasn’t glowing with delight because his father had reappeared in his life?
No, but… It was the but she kept tripping over. Worrying about. Tito seemed to be more conflicted than she would like him to be.
Was that conflict heightened by Duncan’s presence on many of the outings? Easy answer: probably. But… In her worries, she’d cycled around again.
Sometimes, she thought Tito was disappointed in his father, perhaps thinking he didn’t measure up to Duncan.
Who did? a small voice whispered. She shook it off.
She would love to see poor Tito filled with respect and admiration for his dad. That would be the ideal. Lack of respect and admiration were not legitimate reasons for her to hesitate, however. Parents sometimes—maybe inevitably—disappointed their kids. Didn’t measure up in their eyes. That was life. And, reality was, Tito’s situation with Lupe was maybe safe but otherwise pretty much lousy.
Frowning, Jane leaned back in her chair, not even seeing the array of glittery hair combs on the monitor.
What niggled at her was a suspicion that Tito might be at least a little bit afraid of his father. And that was a problem. Despite all her bravado, she’d been afraid of hers, and she never wanted to see a child who had to be.
Tito had seen Hector angry three or four times, but he’d also seen Duncan lose his temper. Tito had definitely been scared that day on the beach. So the question was, why did he seem warier of his father than he did of Duncan? Who had also, she remembered, drawn a gun on him.
Good question. One, she felt quite sure, Tito wouldn’t be prepared to answer if she asked. Tito might not even know the answer.
Did he secretly dream that Duncan might yet change his mind and take him home as a foster son? She’d have to ask Duncan if Tito had hinted at any such thing. Unfortunately, she couldn’t ask Duncan if he’d noticed that the boy was more nervous than he ought to be around his dad.
All roads lead to Rome…
Here she was, picturing Duncan’s face, not exactly mobile or easy to read but still somehow…expressive. To her, anyway. He could convey an alarming amount with a twitch of those dark eyebrows or a deepening of the furrows on his forehead.
Maybe, she thought, the trouble was that it was awfully hard to look away from him when he was there. She thought she’d seen him close to relaxed a few times—sitting at the picnic table that day at the state park, for example—but the intensity never let up.
Niall’s force field said Keep away. Duncan’s said Reach out a hand and touch—if you dare. Or maybe she was the only one foolish enough to be tempted, Jane thought with a sigh.
Hair combs, she urged herself. Quit thinking about Duncan MacLachlan. She wasn’t interested in any serious involvement with a man of any kind, and certainly not with one used to giving the orders and being obeyed. A man who did not like, ever, having to bow to her will. He brought back too many memories.
His reasons were entirely different from her father’s, but were as set in stone. The reasons didn’t matter; the result did.
Never again.
CHAPTER TEN
THE COURT HEARING TO SETTLE custody of the Jones children was hideous. None of the attorneys could control their clients. The judge had only recently risen to the bench and spent a lot of time banging his gavel uselessly while voices rose.
Jane had come to sit in near the door, not expecting to be asked to weigh in. She’d hoped to go unnoticed, but, of course, it didn’t work that way.
If looks could kill, she thought, when heads turned her way after Judge Ritchie laid out the Guardian ad Litem’s recommendation that the mother be awarded custody, the father visitation and the grandparents extremely limited visitation. She had a queasy memory of the word Bitch crudely painted on the door of Dance Dreams, the scarlet paint dripping like blood. Was one of these people responsible for it? She found herself, thanks to Detective Niall MacLachlan’s cynicism, looking at Grandma’s hate-filled eyes and thinking, Yes, I can see her doing it.
Despite shouting and the threat to file an appeal, the judge so ruled, and Jane fled, glad to have been closest to the door. Cowardly, maybe, but she couldn’t think of a reason in the world to stay to chat.
She’d have liked to use the restroom but didn’t dare. All she had to do was remember the Ortez hearing, when Duncan had lain in wait outside the door.
She hurried down the carpeted hall, out the double doors and into the parking lot, doing her best to look like someone late for an appointment and not someone running for her life. Which, of course, she wasn’t, even though her hea
rt was thudding and she felt a dreadful urgency to get away before either the father or the grandmother could come after her.
She all but ran into, of all people, Niall MacLachlan, dressed in sport coat and tie. For a court appearance?
“Ms. Brooks,” he said in surprise. “Is something wrong?”
“No, I…” She heard the approach of footsteps and went rigid.
His eyes narrowed on a point over her shoulder.
Reluctantly, she turned. Glenn Jones, a well-dressed businessman who had been too arrogant to bother trying to charm Jane on first meeting, looked only slightly taken aback to find she wasn’t alone. Face flushed with anger, eyes boring into hers, he said, “If you thought you’d sneak away without getting a piece of my mind, you’re wrong…” His gaze did shift then to Niall. They all heard the unfinished quality to his sentence. Bitch was what he’d wanted to say. It quivered before her eyes, dripping in blood red, formed from crudely cut letters glued to paper.
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