Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good ManPromises Under the Peach TreeHusband by Choice

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Yeah, I think Paula and I are going to start taking turns making the rounds.” He gave a rough, unhappy chuckle. “Give us a couple nights, we’ll be feeling like new parents constantly having to get up with a screaming baby.”

  “Yeah, you can’t keep doing that. I might sneak out and set up surveillance some night.”

  “In this weather?”

  “You’ve got some empty cabins.”

  “Let me know so I don’t shoot you if our paths cross.”

  “Good enough. Hell.” Reid rubbed the back of his neck and discovered his hand felt like a block of ice. “I don’t like this,” he said unnecessarily.

  “You and me both.”

  “I wish you were inside the city limits.”

  “What would you do, send patrols by?”

  Of course he couldn’t do that. “All right,” he said. “Let me know if anything develops.”

  “Glad you’re here,” Roger said unexpectedly and then was gone.

  The foot traffic had thinned somewhat while Reid had stood out in the cold talking. Snow crunched underfoot until he was back on the sidewalk, where the smooth sole of his dress shoes skidded. To hell with this, he thought. Nobody would notice or care if he wore dark boots with a decent tread. And...this was March. With April to follow. How many more times was it likely to snow before the seasons turned?

  He wasn’t looking forward to his day. The morning plan was for him to interview a couple of applicants for the personal-assistant position. He’d been just as glad his temp apparently hadn’t wanted the job; she didn’t seem to be all that well-informed and he had the impression he’d scared her. He was hoping to hire internally; he felt so damn ignorant, it would be good to have a PA who knew the ropes. About once an hour, he cursed Colin McAllister for having taken his PA with him when he changed jobs.

  This afternoon, he intended to take a tour of every department in the building, starting with Records in the basement. He was beginning to realize that he’d misinterpreted his “territory” when he arrived in Angel Butte. He’d felt satisfied after driving damn near every road inside the city limits, memorizing the way house numbers ran, which neighborhoods looked run-down, where the bars and taverns were, the location of parking lots that would be dark enough at night to put women walking alone to their cars in peril.

  Truth was, he should have been mapping this building and the maintenance garage, where most of his responsibilities lay, so he had the slightest idea how to respond the next time someone came to him with a request.

  Once the first applicant showed up, Reid blocked everything else from his mind, including both his afternoon agenda and the threat to Caleb and the shelter. His skill at compartmentalizing was useful.

  This applicant currently worked in Technical Services and might be a whiz at computers and social media, but the way her eyes shied from his and her cheeks stayed rosy the whole time they talked, he could tell she was intimidated by him, too.

  Irritated after he saw her out, Reid wondered—not for the first time—why he had that effect on so many people, not only women. He was a big man, sure, but lean, not mountainous. He didn’t have an alarmingly ugly face. He rarely raised his voice. So what the hell was the problem? Why couldn’t he find someone like—

  There she was, in his head again. Anna Grant, of course. She hadn’t been afraid of him.

  So, okay, he needed a woman like her, someone brisk, businesslike, organized and determined. And, please God, someone who knew the police department from the lowliest of supply closets to the most obscure of requisition forms.

  Applicant number two turned out to be a maybe. This one was a man who at least didn’t jump every time Reid shifted in his chair. He was internal only in the sense he was already a city employee, however; his current position was second assistant in the mayor’s office.

  Maybe, Reid thought, hiding his grin, that was why the guy wasn’t scared. After all, he’d presumably gotten used to Mayor Noah Chandler, who was an ugly bastard and, rumor had it, tended to be brutally direct.

  Reid thanked the man for coming, said he’d let him know and glanced at the clock. He was embarrassed at how much he looked forward to lunch.

  Last week, Lieutenant Renner had told him the best place to eat lunch in Angel Butte was the Kingfisher Café, only a couple of blocks from the police station. Reid had given it a try on Friday, walking down there late enough to miss the lunch rush. The door had opened before he reached for the handle, and he’d found himself face-to-face with Anna. She had appeared as startled as he’d felt. After their dinner at the A&W, he sure as hell hadn’t intended to seek her out again.

  But courtesy demanded they exchange a few polite words, during which he’d asked whether she was a regular at the café.

  “I come at least two or three days a week,” she had admitted, then wrinkled her nose. “I know I shouldn’t eat out so often, but I’m not a morning person. Half the time, I forget to pack a lunch.”

  “Ah. Well, maybe I’ll see you here another day,” he’d remarked and was unable to interpret a look that might have been wary, shy or hopeful.

  Damn it, after that accidental meeting, she’d been in his head all weekend, with the result that here he was Monday morning, panting to sit down to lunch with her. Stupid thing to do or not, he wanted to talk to her.

  Since finding his brother and moving to Angel Butte, Reid had never felt lonelier. He didn’t understand it and sure as hell didn’t like it. No matter who he was with, he felt an uncrossable distance.

  The one exception was Anna. He refused to analyze why. Did it matter? She was someone he could talk out some of his confusion with, that was all.

  He was going to be very disappointed if this happened to be one of the days she’d remembered to pack herself a lunch. It wasn’t quite time to leave yet, though, which gave him a few minutes to brood.

  He envied Mayor Chandler his view of Angel Butte, the volcanic cinder cone that rose right in the middle of town and was topped with the huge marble angel that gave the town its name. His office looked out on the brick wall of the jail. Not bothering to swivel his chair to look out the window, instead, he frowned, unseeing, at the closed door while he let his thoughts rebound to the shelter and the fact that a second fire had been set only a week after the first.

  He briefly pondered the timing. The first fire had been set on Saturday night, the second on Sunday night. Chance? Or was there a reason their arsonist had chosen weekends?

  This fire wasn’t an escalation. That was a positive. The lodge or one of the occupied cabins, now, that would have been scary. This fire, too, could have been set for entertainment value. It could have been a warning...although of what, Reid couldn’t figure. What worried him most was the possibility it was part of a campaign of terror. Everyone at the resort must be edgy now. No one would be sleeping well. The boys would all be watching each other. The fight Caleb had been in wouldn’t be the last.

  Nobody out there would feel safe.

  This was where, reluctantly, he had to ask himself whether it was a coincidence that Caleb had been the most recent arrival.

  What if Caleb was angry enough to light the world on fire? Or what if this was a campaign not to terrorize, but to make Reid believe he should take his brother home to live with him?

  To keep him safe.

  Or—and this was the most unwelcome speculation of all—was there any possibility that their father had found his runaway youngest son? Had Reid screwed up big-time by moving to Angel Butte? Could he absolutely swear that when driving out to the old resort a couple times a week, he hadn’t been followed?

  “Damn,” he murmured.

  He hadn’t let Caleb know how much that phone call from their father had shaken him. In the nearly twenty years since he had seen Dean Sawyer, Reid had tried to think about him as little as possible.
He didn’t like knowing how much he resembled his father physically. Sometimes he’d stare at himself in a mirror with an incredulity he had to shake off. But he couldn’t have so much as described his father’s voice.

  But the minute he heard it on the phone, the hairs on his arms had stood on end as if he’d come in contact with a bare electrical wire. The feeling that rushed over him had been bad. He’d been thrown back, as if all the years since had never happened. Dad had just walked in the door, and Reid could see that he was mad about something. Could have been anything—some imagined slight at work, a detective junior to him getting a headline for a press-worthy arrest, an asshole who’d cut him off on the drive home. Didn’t matter what, unless the “anything” had to do with Reid directly. Say, the school counselor had called and said, “We’re concerned about the number of bruises your son has had recently.” Those days were the worst.

  By fifteen, Reid had been as tall as his father; he thought he must be a couple of inches taller now that he’d reached his full height. But then he’d been skinny, like Caleb was now. Unable to stand up to a muscular, angry man.

  He shook off the recollection, if not the shadow of the memory, of blows falling.

  The day he’d called, the first words out of his father’s mouth had been “So you’re a cop like your old man.”

  “Not like you,” he’d said flatly, just as he had to Caleb. “I’m the kind of cop who should have investigated Mom’s death.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Dean had snarled.

  “Sure you did. I was young, not deaf and blind.”

  “You ever make an allegation like that, you’ll find yourself in court and I’ll take you for every cent you make in the next fifty years.”

  He had managed to sound bored. “Is there a point to this call?”

  And that was when he’d demanded to know whether Reid had snatched Caleb.

  It wasn’t even a lie to say no. Helping the boy get away was a whole other story.

  But mocking his father...that wasn’t a good idea. It was bound to have made him suspicious.

  Shit, Reid thought again. I need to find out whether he could be in Angel Butte.

  His gaze strayed to the time at the bottom of his computer monitor.

  Yeah, he’d have to make a few calls...but not now. Right now, he was going to wander down to the Kingfisher Café and hope to feed his unexpected craving for another person’s company.

  * * *

  ANNA TOLD HERSELF she’d chosen to sit where she did because the light was better if she ended up pulling out her book to read while she ate. Not so she could keep an eye on the door. If Reid happened to eat here again today, what were the chances he’d be alone? He’d consider the lunch hour to be a good time to conduct business.

  But she remembered the way he’d asked You come often? And every time the door opened, she glanced that way.

  The waitress was taking her order when he came in. Alone. He scanned the entire restaurant in one lightning sweep, analyzing and dismissing everyone he saw, until his gaze reached her and stopped. She felt as if a heat-seeking missile had just locked on target.

  He lifted an eyebrow, the slightest of quirks, but it was enough to ask a question. Throat closing, Anna inclined her head toward the chair opposite her. He smiled, ignored the hostess as if she wasn’t there and crossed the room to Anna’s table.

  “May I join you?” he asked in that deep, velvety voice.

  The waitress turned, startled. “Oh!”

  “Of course you may,” Anna said, then, to the waitress, “Why don’t you hold off on my order until Captain Sawyer decides what he wants?”

  “Yes. Um, of course.” Plump and tattooed, the young waitress retreated in disarray.

  He pulled out the chair across from Anna, immediately making her feel crowded. This table beneath the window was tiny, sized for two who knew each other really well. His knees bumped hers, and he murmured, “Sorry.”

  She shifted to give him room. He made no move to open the menu she handed him. Instead, they looked at each other.

  Deeper than usual lines creased his forehead and carved crevasses between his dark slash of eyebrows.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said slowly.

  “What?” He sounded startled.

  “You look... I don’t know. Disturbed.”

  He stared at her. “Hasn’t been the best of days,” he said finally. Now he did pick up the menu, but she sensed he was doing it as much for camouflage as anything else.

  She waited until he’d apparently made a decision. Then she said, “Is it Caleb?”

  The lines on his face became deeper. “Partly,” he said gruffly.

  “What’s the other part?”

  Now both eyebrows rose. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a nosy woman?”

  She grinned. “I consider that a compliment. I wouldn’t be any good at my job if I wasn’t.”

  “Speaking of...”

  She raised her eyebrows, but he’d broken off at the waitress’s approach. Once he’d given his order, he said abruptly, “It’s the job.”

  “Isn’t it...well, similar to what you were doing? I gathered from the article in the newspaper that you were supervising quite a few people at your last job.”

  He grimaced, more expression than he usually allowed himself. “Supervising, I’m comfortable with. On the investigations side, I’m not used to always being one step removed. I get the feeling I’ll rarely be going out to a crime scene, for example. I’ll be sitting behind the desk nodding while my underlings report to me.”

  “You mean, you won’t be doing real police work.”

  “Right.” The trace of discomfiture lingered on his face. “That’ll take an adjustment, but I can make it. When it comes to the support-services part of my job, though, I feel like a fish out of water. What do I know about fleet and facility maintenance, for God’s sake? Did you know we have communication technicians? I’ve got to tell you, they talk right over my head.” He tugged his hair as if he wanted to tear it out. “Thank God Personnel and Human Resources are handled by the city.”

  “You must have known you’d be heading those departments when you took the job,” she said tentatively.

  His grunt was half laugh. “Sure I did. I just thought I’d be accountable for their budgets, hiring or firing heads of departments.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know they’d expect me to understand what they actually do.”

  Anna wondered if he knew how plaintive he sounded, but suspected he did and hated it.

  “So, how are you handling it? Dodging phone calls?”

  This rough laugh was closer to the real thing. “Something like that.”

  Their orders arrived, but neither reached immediately for their forks. “Is there any reason you can’t admit ignorance and say, ‘Educate me?’”

  “Sure, if it was just one area. But across the board? I don’t even work on my own car. Who am I to decide whether we ought to be performing the regular maintenance on the vehicles in our fleet every three thousand miles versus four thousand, or, hey, five...? And I’m competent on a computer, but do you know how fast technology is changing?”

  She frowned at him. “Yes, but that’s why you employ experts in every department. You can’t know everything. Anyway...” She hesitated. This probably sounded stupidly elementary, but she decided to say it anyway. “I’ll bet you’re good at research. Why not look at each problem the way you would some aspect of a crime you’re investigating? Haven’t you become an expert, however fleetingly, on some esoteric field because it was entwined in a crime?”

  She couldn’t read his stare at all until he nodded slightly. “Yeah. I have. I know more about health regulations on tattoo parlors than you’d want to hear, and the handling of bodies in funeral homes. Not to mentio
n midwifery—that one turned out to be a murder—and appropriate practices in pest control.” His eyes crinkled with a real smile. “Thank you.”

  “Surely you’ve been going at it already with that attitude,” she said, wondering if he was humoring her.

  But he shook his head. “I’ve been discovering how much I dislike feeling out of my comfort zone.”

  “You look so—” She tried to stop herself, but that eyebrow of his insisted she finish. “I don’t know. Untouchable. Invincible.” Not a word she could ever remember using before, but it seemed to fit.

  “Invincible,” Reid echoed in a strange tone. “We can try, but is achieving that possible?”

  “I...don’t know.” Was he saying he wanted to make himself impervious to all human failings? Or the tumult of human emotions? “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to go for it.”

  “No,” he said. “Not you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  His mouth curved. “Nothing that deserves your indignation. Only that...I’m beginning to think you’re always willing to care.”

  “Beginning to think?” Now she was indignant.

  He held up a hand. “Pax. I’ve met plenty of social workers who are just going through the motions, not throwing themselves in heart and soul.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I do that.”

  Reid only smiled and began to eat. After a moment, Anna did the same.

  He started talking, telling her a few anecdotes that had led to his awareness of how deep and wide his ignorance was, and when he asked about her week, she told a few stories in return.

  She liked listening to him, and the way his attention never wavered from her when she talked. What she didn’t do was make the mistake of thinking this happenstance lunch meant their relationship was going anywhere. He’d made it clear enough he had no intention of letting that happen.

  She was nosy, though, so she asked over coffee how things were going with his brother.

  “No better.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I’m following your advice and hanging in there.”