“How did your lunch with Sierra go today?”
“Great. We had fun.”
“Any news about the baby?”
“No change, which is good news.” She stopped abruptly and turned to face him. “Look, Sierra thinks we’re getting serious and maybe we are. But I need you to know that scares the hell out of me. I was hurt very badly in my marriage, and I’m not sure I’ll ever feel okay about wading into matrimonial waters again. I just thought you should know that.”
He stopped short at the base of the bridge over the frozen brook. “Um, did you happen to get the license plate number on the truck that just rolled right over me? Because I didn’t even see it coming.”
She pressed a hand to her forehead and pushed. Hard. “I’m sorry. I’m just emotional after visiting Sierra. Friends also have a way of seeing right through you, and she had a lot of questions about us that I couldn’t answer.”
He’d been enjoying the hell out of his time with Mary Hannah, but now that she’d brought up the subject, he realized she’d been closemouthed about her marriage. He didn’t even know the basics. Not that he wanted heavy-duty details, but she’d taken secretive to a new level on a very significant part of her past. And what did it say about him that it hadn’t even crossed his mind until now? “Do you keep in touch with your ex? You mentioned he moved to Ohio.”
“We don’t talk. I just hear bits and pieces periodically from a few mutual friends, less and less every year.” She started over the bridge.
He secured his hold on the lead and stalked after her, hoping Holly wouldn’t freak out on the short wooden bridge like she did last time he tried with the leash.
Mary Hannah stopped in the middle, leaning on the icy railing, looking out over the frozen surface glistening in the sunlight. “I’m not trying to be vague. I just don’t like to talk about Ted.”
Ted. The guy’s name was Ted. Was his last name Gallo, or had she reverted to her maiden name? “I’m sorry, then. None of my business.” Other than the fact he and Mary Hannah had been getting naked together every night lately. And yes, he was starting to feel jealous. “It’s been my experience that a lot of divorced people welcome the chance to vent.”
“I don’t hate him. He doesn’t hate me. I’m not inconsolable over the broken marriage. More just sad.” She chewed her bottom lip, her cheeks wind-chapped from the cold. “What? You can go ahead and ask.”
“If things were so great, why did you split?”
“I got married for all the wrong reasons.” She avoided his eyes, flicking bits of ice off, each fleck landing in a pattering shower on the frozen surface. “I wanted to re-create my childhood but with a new, better ending. And this man walked into my life who seemed to be everything perfect. I chose him for logical reasons, and that was unfair to him. He deserved to be loved.”
Still, she wouldn’t look at him, and he wondered what she was leaving out. He was good at reading people. Hell, you couldn’t work undercover for as long as he had and not be an expert. So the fact that she left big, gaping holes in this story practically stood up and shouted at him.
Not that he planned to call her on it. Maybe half the reason he hadn’t let himself think much about her past had been a need to avoid this kind of conversation. When they’d need more answers. For now, Holly shoved her nose through the bridge supports, her body crowding AJ so he had no choice but to move closer to Mary Hannah.
AJ slung an arm around Mary Hannah’s shoulders and walked the rest of the way over. “I’m willing to bet you worked yourself into the ground to be a good partner.”
She raked her hand along the bridge rail, scooping snow into a ball. “I may be the queen of organization, but that doesn’t change facts.”
“Mary Hannah—”
She stopped him with a quick kiss before saying, “What about you?” She packed the snowball in her gloved hands. “A trail of broken hearts behind you? An ex or two out there?”
Out of the frying pan and into the fire with this conversation. But she deserved to know more.
“No marriage. There wasn’t time to form lasting relationships with the undercover work, and the divorce stats for cops are staggering.” He’d watched it happen time and again. “I was engaged once, but she decided she couldn’t take the undercover side of my job.”
He’d been torn up about it at the time, and now he couldn’t even remember the sound of her voice. He knelt and packed a snowball of his own, rolling it around, making it larger.
“You loved her?” Mary Hannah followed his lead, rolling her snowball alongside his.
“I thought I did, but not enough to change jobs. In retrospect, I just thought it was the right time to be married.” His parents had introduced them. Her father was a cop. In the end that had made her more leery. “Ironic that now I can’t even do the damn job anymore.”
He perched the base of a snowman by a tree.
Mary Hannah plunked her medium-sized snowball on top. “Do you still keep in touch with her?”
He shook his head, packing another snowball to start on the head. “Never crossed my mind. That was eight years ago.”
Her forehead furrowed, but she kept working, reaching up to break off two icy branches. “What are you not saying?”
That counselor perceptiveness of hers was working overtime today.
“There is another woman in my past. One who meant a lot to me.” Even thinking about that time hurt. Bad. “On an undercover op I crossed a line. I let myself get involved with a woman, which is a betrayal on every level.”
“What happened?” she asked quietly, sticking the wooden arms on either side.
“She was the sister of a dealer. Everything indicated she wanted out of the gang and had nothing to do with the drug operation.” He just rolled and rolled, but it gave him something to do with his hands other than touch her.
“But if you were undercover as a part of that world, why did she get involved with you?”
“She said she thought she could reform me, that she saw something good inside me.” He’d seen what he wanted to see, a damsel in distress. “On the one hand it was risky as hell in case she saw through my cover and even more dangerous to think of what could happen to her after the shakedown. That world doesn’t forgive people they perceive as traitors.”
She dropped to sit in the snow. “Oh God, please don’t say something happened to her.”
“She’s alive, in jail for drug possession and child endangerment.” He shrugged, dropping the snowman’s warped head on top. “She wasn’t as innocent as she appeared, and I wasn’t as perceptive as I thought.”
“Child endangerment?” She pushed to her feet, holding a handful of icy rocks and pebbles. “Is that your . . . ?”
“No, her little girl wasn’t mine. Although I got to know the kid well, an innocent kid.” He took half of the rocks from her and worked on the snowman’s mouth. “Nobody tells you about that part of undercover work. The children. Intellectually, I knew that drug dealers have sons and daughters, babies. But knowing and seeing, those are two different things.”
Mary Hannah pushed two rock eyes into place. “How old was her daughter?”
“Two years old living in a meth house.” When she didn’t speak, he looked over. “What? No condemning comment about what kind of mother does that?”
Compassion filled her brown eyes. “I’ve seen plenty of good people trapped in situations that are completely illogical and self-destructive. It happens.”
Yeah, it happened. And it also happened that he’d woken up with that little girl during the night when she couldn’t sleep in her bed or needed a drink. He’d sung her lullabies, for crying out loud.
“But the kids, God.” His voice choked off for a second, the rest of the pebbles slipping between his gloved fingers. “The kids.”
She clasped his hand in hers. “There’s somethin
g more here.”
“Aubrey—that’s her name—was just sitting there watching cartoons like any other toddler, with her favorite blanket and a sippy cup. Except when we made the bust later, we found her under the bed in agony.” The image was burned in his brain, something he would never get over. “Someone had used the sippy cup to measure drain cleaner for the meth.”
She gasped in horror. “Is she—?”
“She survived. I called the emergency room in time. I filed my report and moved on.” He drew in breath after breath of icy air trying to soothe the fire in his gut. “I went into an apartment for a routine bust—if meth busts are ever routine. I saw a bowl of dog food by the drain cleaner and something flipped inside my brain. It was like I was there again. I couldn’t function. A few weeks later, I almost got my partner killed. Something had to change. I had to change.”
“Then you came here, only to find dogs in a meth house once more.” She slid her arms around him, her hair tickling his chin as they stood there beside their lopsided snowman. “AJ, I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through and the things you’ve had to see while trying to keep the rest of the world safe.”
His hand fell to rest on Holly’s head. “That was a bad day, but I’m glad for her sake we were there.”
“Still, somehow that isn’t giving you peace.”
She was too damn perceptive. He pulled in another bracing breath of chilly air.
“I just kept thinking how Aubrey should never have been in that house in the first place. I should have said to hell with the sting and had her removed from that home right away. But I believed Sheila when she said she was getting out and preparing to start a new life for them. I made a mistake that almost cost Aubrey her life.” His judgment was faulty when he let feelings get involved.
Mary Hannah stroked his face, the woolly mitten scratchy against his skin. “You’re human.”
“I’m a police detective.” He clasped her wrist. He didn’t deserve the comfort. “I’m trained to know better, damn it. I let my judgment get clouded by a beautiful set of eyes and a sad smile.”
“I could explain the psychology of deep undercover work, but I imagine that won’t help you feel any better about what happened.”
“I wish I could say you’re wrong, I really do.” He rested his forehead on hers, wanting to be different for her. He’d come here to escape the past, only to realize it lived inside him. There was nowhere to go.
More than anything, he wanted to haul Mary Hannah into his arms and say to hell with it all. Plunge into the future and hope he could pretend to be the man she deserved, a man who wasn’t always one step away from total burnout.
Holly nudged him again, the press of her solid body a comfort. Then Trooper barked, sprinting across the bridge to chase a rabbit, yanking Mary Hannah with him. Holding the leash, she slid like an ice-skater down the sloped bridge. AJ scrambled to catch her, tough as hell to do with Holly tugging to join her new buddy, Trooper. Mary Hannah’s feet hooked at the end of the bridge, and she went flying into a snowbank.
Damn it.
“Are you okay?” AJ picked his way to her where she lay flat on her back with her eyes closed.
His heart lodged in his throat. What if she’d hit her head on a rock? Both dogs sniffed her, whimpering. He knelt quickly, patting her face carefully. “Mary Hannah?”
Her hand shot up fast. And she pitched a snowball in his face.
Icy flakes exploded over his skin. Mary Hannah’s laughter tickled his ears. Her arms went around his neck, and she pulled him into the snowbank with her, her lips warm against his. The taste of peppermint brought back erotic memories of massaging her with that scent.
Naked.
He would have thought it impossible to have a raging hard-on while covered in snow, but Mary Hannah was tempting beyond any rationale. He rolled, settling her on top of him so the cold was against his back while they kissed. God, he appreciated how she’d distracted them both from weightier subjects, allowing them to keep things light and dodge the inevitable crash awhile longer.
She was his total opposite, which pretty much made her perfect. His mind started traveling what-if paths the way it always did when he held her, desperate to figure out a way to be the right kind of guy for her.
Holly and Trooper started barking again, and thank God they did, or he might well have made love to Mary Hannah there in the snow where anyone could have walked up on them wrapped in coats, going at it.
Lifting her off him, he sat up, his pants tugging uncomfortably at his erection. He struggled to clear his fogged mind. The two dogs raced toward the fence line, their leashes trailing. Mary Hannah’s gasp made him look closer.
The dogs weren’t just racing to the gate. They were galloping to greet a small cluster of people, one of whom had a movie camera on his shoulder. A man in a cowboy hat walked ahead with Lacey McDaniel. Two burly guys trailed them looking a lot like bouncers.
AJ pushed to his feet, dusting the snow off his jeans. “Does that guy in front look familiar to you?”
Mary Hannah shaded her eyes with her hand, peering toward the group. Her hand fell back to her side and she smiled. “Maybe you recognize him from the Grammy Awards. Or visits to the Grand Ole Opry.”
Holy crap. No wonder the guy looked familiar.
It was country-music-star legend Billy Brock.
Nineteen
Things were getting out of hand fast, talk-show style. I sure hoped these people didn’t start throwing chairs.
—HOLLY ON JERRY SPRINGER
LACEY HAD A raging headache.
She should be rejoicing over the media coverage. She had a country-music icon to her rescue with the local news documenting the entire visit, an incredible benefit of living an hour’s drive from Nashville. Billy Brock’s presence would be a huge boon for the event and her rescue as a whole.
And even more than that, she should be turning cartwheels over her doctor visit yesterday. She wasn’t pregnant. She was just “having her own personal summer.”
A perimenopausal pregnancy scare.
Good news. Right? She should have been hugely relieved, but still she couldn’t escape a lingering sadness. There would be no more babies. She drank half a bottle of wine and cried until four in the morning before falling into an exhausted sleep.
Once she’d finally managed to put her feet on the floor, she’d tossed on baggy cargo pants with bleach stains and a sweatshirt over her favorite long purple tank top. Her churning stomach totally the fault of wine this time. Her hair was pulled back with a floral neck ruffle normally worn by little dogs.
Yep, she was a hungover fashion plate for sure.
Shivering, she hugged her parka tighter around her and tried to focus on the conversation to get her best talking points on film. The singer was an animal activist supporting his message by visiting each of the participating shelters. The competition was stiff.
Lacey needed to make this interview standout amazing. “The lady walking toward us is a volunteer trainer. Mary Hannah is a mental-health counselor, and she trains service dogs, therapy dogs and emotional-support dogs. She’s working with two entries from our shelter, Mr. Brock.”
“Aw, just call me Billy, ma’am.” His long strides had her double-timing to keep up.
Billy Brock looked like a smoother version of Johnny Cash, a bad boy with a gravelly voice. He’d charmed the world with his country redemption ballads. Hollywood starlets and Nashville divas all claimed to be the subject of his songs, but he never gave names. A gentleman, Billy Brock never told tales.
And then he went right on to break another heart.
The cameraman angled his lens at Mary Hannah and AJ jogging closer with Holly and Trooper loping alongside. They looked so right together, the chemistry and connection building by the day, impossible to miss. No doubt the camera was eating them up.
AJ
extended his hand. “Good afternoon, Mr. Brock—”
“Call me Billy, my boy; you make me feel a hundred years old with that mister mess.” He shook hands, then swept off his hat. “And hello, Mary Hannah, good to see you again.” Then nodded to Lacey. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
His gesture made Lacey think of another man who wore a signature cowboy hat, Ray, an unconventional veterinarian who would have been excited about this event. Ray had left town to do mission work for a year, vowing he would return for her once she’d finished grieving. That was eighteen months ago.
She’d accepted the fact he wasn’t coming back. It had been a silly crush, a fantasy about a younger man at a chaotic time in her life. She’d moved on with Wyatt. Sort of.
Thank goodness Mary Hannah was holding up the conversation for this interview.
“It’s a pleasure and honor to have you here, Billy. Thank you for sharing your time and talent with us.”
“I’m an old country singer with a sandpaper voice these days, but if that’ll help homeless animals in this area, then I’m all in.”
“We’re glad to hear it.” Mary Hannah brought the dogs forward with a hand gesture. “This is Trooper, befriended in Iraq by Lacey’s husband, then brought here after he died in action.”
“I believe I remember reading about that story. My condolences, Miz Lacey.”
“Thank you. Trooper has given a lot of comfort to our family. He lives with my daughter and her husband now.”
Mary Hannah guided the boxer forward, which took a little more finesse. “This is Holly. She was rescued from a meth-house operation and has been paired with AJ for the Mutt Makeover competition.”
AJ stroked Holly’s side reassuringly, already in tune with the animal. “I work for the local police force. Mary Hannah’s training an emotional-support dog for me to help with decompressing from the stresses that come with the job.”
Impressive that he explained it so comfortably on camera. He’d come a long way from the initial resentment Wyatt had described when he’d proposed a support dog.
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