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

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Good.” She smiled at him. “At least he’s taking your calls. If he really wanted to reject you, he wouldn’t.”

  Something fleeting crossed his face. As usual, she was unable to interpret it.

  “He...dodges me when he can,” he said. “Speaking of dodging.”

  Had they been? Oh—departmental queries.

  “You said you don’t have any kind of relationship with your father,” she said, remembering, and then discovered how completely he could close down.

  “No.”

  She’d never heard a word uttered so impassively, while conveying emotions so bleak. All she could do was nod.

  “How’s Yancey doing in the new foster home?” Reid asked in an obvious change of subject. He hadn’t so much as moved a muscle, but she somehow knew he was itching to be gone.

  “Really well.” She finished her coffee and reached for her wallet from the messenger bag sitting at her feet. “Carol insists he’s musically gifted and has put him in piano lessons. Apparently, he played the trombone back in fifth and sixth grades, and now he may join the middle school jazz band.”

  “Ah. Clever woman.” He barely glanced at the waitress, but she veered toward the cash register.

  “Carol has a gift for, well...”

  “Finding out what other people’s gifts are?”

  “Exactly.”

  The waitress presented their bills. Reid tried to take both. Anna said, “No,” and handed hers with a twenty-dollar bill back to the waitress. “I don’t need change,” she said pleasantly and tucked her wallet back into her bag. When she stood, he did, too, and walked out with her. Fortunately, she’d been lucky enough to find a parking spot right in front. She used her remote to unlock before looking at him. “Thanks for your company over lunch.”

  “I’m the one who owes you the thanks.” This time his voice was a little huskier than usual. “You give good advice.”

  “My gift.”

  “Maybe,” he said. She passed him to step off the curb, and he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Any chance you’d like to meet about the same time here on Wednesday?”

  Anna went utterly still. “So I can give you more advice?”

  “Because...I like you.” He frowned a little, his hand dropping from her arm. He stepped back. “If you’re not here—” and now he sounded completely indifferent “—I’ll get the message. Have a good day, Anna.” And he walked away, leaving her stunned, even though I like you wasn’t exactly the stuff of soaring romance.

  After a moment, she circled her Toyota and got in.

  * * *

  REID DECIDED TO make the call to the Spokane P.D. right after lunch, before he began wandering the departments under his authority.

  “Sergeant Sawyer has today off,” the voice on the phone told Reid woodenly. “I can switch you to his voice mail if you want to leave a message.”

  Sitting at his desk staring at a blinking red light indicating an incoming call waiting, Reid thought, Sure. I want to leave a message on the voice mail that Dad can access from anywhere. Say, Angel Butte. That would answer all his questions.

  “No. Uh, what about Mike Reardon? Is he in?”

  “He retired last year.”

  Retired? Well, damn. Reid adjusted his thinking. Yeah, some of Dad’s cronies had been graying even back then. Stood to reason they were getting up to retirement age now.

  “What about Bob Sarringer?”

  There was a little silence. The guy was polite enough not to ask whether this was old-home week. “Let me check.” He came back in a moment. “Lieutenant Sarringer is in.”

  A familiar voice came on. “This really Reid? Dean’s kid?”

  “That’s me.”

  “You’ve got a nerve calling. You know what you did to him?”

  A hot flash of temper seared Reid’s usual composure. “I know what he did to me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” his father’s old friend blustered.

  “You were around. You heard the rumors. The allegations. And you’re surprised I lit out? And, what a shocker, his younger son did the same?”

  “He was hard on you. That’s all. He wanted you to be half as tough as him.”

  “You have any idea how many broken bones I had? How many implants and bridges I have in my mouth to replace teeth he knocked out? For Lee’s sake, I sure as hell hope your idea of raising ’em tough wasn’t the same.”

  The silence felt stricken. Reid had been friends with Lee Sarringer. He’d never had the guts to ask whether Lee’s dad knocked him around, too.

  “You being straight with me?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Yes.” Suddenly impatient, Reid said, “I’m trying to find out if Dad’s in town. I’m told he’s off today.”

  “He’s taken some time. I think he’s looking for Caleb— Wait, do you know where he is?” Suspicion had crept into Sarringer’s voice.

  Reid managed a natural-sounding snort. “I don’t care where Caleb is, as long as he found a good bolt hole. I didn’t even know I had a brother until recently. Dad called and threatened me. I’d just like to know if he’s completely gone off his rocker and is hunting me, or whether he’s actually showing up for work mornings and acting more sane than he sounded.”

  “He’s taken a couple of long weekends,” his father’s crony finally admitted. He sounded shaken. “Like I said, he’s looking for his boy. He didn’t say anything about you. I didn’t even know if you were still alive.”

  “Oh, it turns out Dad’s known where I was for years. I took a new job a couple of weeks ago, and he knew all about it. I admit, recently I’ve had a few moments of wondering if Daddy isn’t watching me. Don’t much care for that feeling of having the hair rising on my neck, if you know what I mean.”

  Sarringer was a cop; he knew. But he had his loyalties, too, even if Reid had just damaged their underpinnings. He asked what Reid did for a living, and they had a reasonably civil chat.

  When Reid ended the call, there it was, that prickling feeling on his nape.

  The drive from Spokane to Angel Butte wasn’t that long. His father could have set both fires. Maybe swooping in to recover his youngest boy and getting the Hales shut down wasn’t enough for him. If he’d figured out that this was where Reid, too, had gone to ground all those years ago, he might like the idea of a punishment that, in his eyes, fit the crime. A little psychological torture might be just his style.

  And if, in the end, some of the boys who lived there got torched, too, he’d figure they were getting what was coming to them.

  Reid swore out loud.

  * * *

  CALEB SWUNG THE ax and watched the round of pine split in half. Man, his shoulders ached. Hearing voices, he immediately positioned one of the pieces and swung again. Truong and Diego appeared around the corner of the lodge. Working in silence, they filled their arms with another load of the firewood he had split. Instead of carrying it to the woodshed, they’d been ordered to start a pile under a sheltering eave on the other side of the lodge. Not until they were out of sight around the lodge did they start talking again.

  So much for Diego being his friend, Caleb thought.

  He stretched and groaned. It pissed him off that Roger was driving them all so hard. It was almost spring. They wouldn’t need most of this firewood until next winter. Why not let it dry, and then they could split and stack it on a warm summer day instead of a shitty day like this, when each piece fell into slush and his feet were both wet and cold? Big brother hadn’t mentioned his perfect sanctuary included forced labor.

  In the days since the second fire, things had gotten really lousy. Mostly, everyone was looking at him. TJ was second in contention, no surprise—they were the two newest, and neither of them had a roommate, which supposedly made it easier for either
to sneak out whenever they wanted. As if Roger and Paula weren’t listening for them. And the front door of the lodge was heavy and thudded when it closed, while the hinges on the kitchen door squealed like a girl who’d just seen her best friend after a two-hour separation. And then there was the fact that TJ and him, they heard each other whenever they had to get up to piss.

  Like last night. However quietly TJ opened his bedroom door, Caleb roused enough to notice. He’d waited to hear either the bathroom door or the toilet flushing, but instead there had been a long silence followed by...a creak. He knew that creak. It was the third step from the top. You couldn’t avoid it without skipping the stair altogether. Tensing, he’d waited. Was that the back door? What happened to the squeal?

  Wide-awake by then, Caleb had gotten up and peered out the window, but hadn’t seen anything. No dark shape slipping around the side of the lodge, no orange glow of fire. He had thought about waking Paula or Roger, but TJ might have had some other reason for wanting to go out. Or maybe he had gone downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat, or wanted to go online without anyone knowing. Things were bad enough between them already. Caleb wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else, but he was a little bit afraid of TJ, who was older, bigger and meaner than him.

  It had to be an hour before he heard the soft sound of the bedroom door across the hall closing again. No squeak on the stairs. He’d remembered to step over that one this time.

  Caleb had stayed awake for quite a while longer anyway, expecting...something. He’d seen the square of his window turning lighter before he’d dropped off again.

  This morning, the first thing he’d done after going downstairs was to experimentally open the back door. No squeal. Heart pounding, he’d closed it and turned, only to find Roger right behind him.

  “Somebody oiled the hinges,” Caleb blurted.

  Roger stepped past him and opened and closed it a couple of times. Then he studied the hinges, finally touching them. When he withdrew his hand, Caleb saw the thin streak of fresh oil on his fingertip. His expression when he looked at Caleb was hard.

  “You’re right. Somebody did.”

  Feeling sick, Caleb didn’t say anything.

  “You knew,” the older man said.

  “No, I—” A lump seemed to be jammed down his throat. “I just...opened it.”

  “Caleb, if you know something...”

  “I don’t!” he had yelled. “You think I’m stupid? I want to get burned alive?”

  Roger had studied his face for a good minute before his jaw flexed and he’d nodded abruptly. “All right, son. Breakfast is on the table.”

  Halfway through the meal, Roger had said suddenly, “Thanks to whoever oiled the hinges on the back door.”

  Heads jerked up, including Paula’s. Watching surreptitiously, Caleb saw only surprise or indifference. TJ had kept eating, his expression flattest of all. Caleb had gone back to his breakfast without looking at TJ again.

  Now he wondered if Roger would call Reid and tell him about the door hinges. Whether Reid, too, was beginning to wonder about him, Caleb.

  Filled with turmoil, Caleb swung the ax and then again when one of the two pieces remained standing. If TJ was doing all this crap, why hadn’t he pointed his finger at Caleb?

  Right now, everybody probably figured he and TJ were in it together. The fact that they detested each other...they could be faking it. Good theory, he thought bitterly.

  He set the ax down and peeled off one of his gloves to inspect his stinging palms. Damn. One of the blisters had burst and it now seeped bloody pus.

  “You’d better go put something on that.”

  Caleb started. He hadn’t heard Diego approaching, but he was right there, looking over his shoulder.

  Caleb shrugged and pulled the glove back on. Like a bandage was going to help. Without a word, he grasped another round and set it in place, then reached for the ax. Diego backed up, and Caleb swung.

  Thud.

  One thing you could say for this wood, he decided. As green as it was, it might not burn even if it was saturated with gasoline.

  Good thing, since it was being stacked right underneath his bedroom window.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ANNA PUT ON her boots while Reid pulled the skis and poles from the cargo space of his SUV and laid the skis flat on the snow. It was Saturday, clear and cold for the last weekend of March. Although the Nordic Center was still open, they’d agreed to try a trail she knew at a higher elevation, in Forest Service land. She’d been glad when they pulled in to see another couple of vehicles ahead of them. Untracked powder could be fun, but the last snowfalls definitely didn’t qualify as powder. Slogging through a layer of heavy new snow sounded like hard work.

  When they had lunch on Wednesday, she’d suggested this outing. She still didn’t know exactly what he wanted from her, but he wanted something. Maybe just to be friends. She’d been intending to get her skis out once or twice more before real spring arrived anyway.

  Reid’s eyebrows had twitched, and then he’d said thoughtfully, “I haven’t been in a long time.”

  “Do you have equipment?” she’d asked.

  “No, but I’ve been meaning to buy it anyway.” He’d nodded. “I’ll do that tomorrow.”

  “Should be like riding a bike,” she’d told him and had been shocked by his laugh. Oh lord, what it did to his face.

  “Hoping I’ll take a dive?” he’d asked, and then she’d laughed, too, because, okay, she might get some secret pleasure from watching Captain Cool floundering in the snow.

  Watching now as he stamped into his bindings, tugged a black fleece hat onto his head and gripped his poles, Anna had a suspicion she’d been right in the first place. Skiing was one of those once-learned, never-forgotten skills. She was taking pleasure instead from looking at him. The stretchy, close-fitting pants clung to the long muscles in his legs and outlined a hard butt, presented when he bent to test his binding.

  “Ready?” he asked, and she suppressed her sigh.

  “Yep.”

  The track showed the passing of quite a few skiers before them. Initially, they climbed, using a cross-hatch technique. By the time they topped the rise, Anna’s thighs were already feeling the burn and she was almost too warm in her close-fitted SmartWool jacket. Ugh. She hadn’t been getting enough exercise. She’d either better start hitting the gym more often or make herself run, miserable weather or no.

  Of course, Reid moved fast and effortlessly. She would have taken the hill at a slower pace, but pride wouldn’t let her lag behind.

  Reid stopped at the top, his head turning as he took in the deserted white landscape around them. Above them arched a crystal clear blue sky. Any other skiers were hidden in the trees. From here they had a view north toward Mount Bachelor and the Three Sisters. The surrounding forest was silent, the evergreen branches bowed with a heavy weight of snow.

  “Look.” By instinct, Anna kept her voice low. She pointed the tip of her pole toward some animal tracks. Tiny ones.

  “Hare, I’ll bet.” His face had relaxed amazingly. He inhaled deeply and with obvious delight. “God, it’s good not to breathe in smog.”

  “Of course, it’s probably eighty degrees in L.A.,” she felt compelled to point out. “You could be running on the beach.”

  “True,” he said, “but I’d gotten so I hardly ever did. Not like I could afford to live in Newport Beach on a cop’s salary.”

  “You weren’t a surfer.”

  His teeth flashed white in another of those rakish grins. “I took it up for a while.” He shrugged. “You get busy, don’t make time.”

  “Well, I try to keep making time to ski,” she said. “This is more fun than killing myself on the elliptical at the health club.”

  “Yeah, it is.” He gestured
ahead. “Ladies first.”

  “You go first. You weigh more than I do. You’ll run me down.”

  Besides—she’d rather look at his ass than know he was looking at hers.

  He chuckled and pushed off, almost immediately bending to decrease wind resistance and go faster. Anna was right behind him, loving the exhilaration of the smooth glide, the rush of chilly air, the absolute silence but for the shush of their skis on snow.

  They didn’t talk much in the next couple of hours, only exchanging brief greetings when they passed two men returning on the same track. With his sharp eyes, Reid spotted some elk huddled beneath the branches of ponderosa pines. A hawk soared above them, searching for unwary hares or rodents.

  Eventually they, in turn, decided to go back the way they had come rather than taking what she knew was a longer loop that would eventually return them to the parking lot, but add another couple of hours to the trip. She had an appointment this afternoon for a visit to a potential foster home, and Reid had said he was going to work, too.

  During the last long glide to the parking lot, she realized she was tired but also happy, laughing out loud as she skidded to a stop and caught herself on the side panel of his Expedition.

  “That was great!” she exclaimed.

  He slid more deftly to a stop beside her and grinned. “Yeah, it was.”

  A ruddy glow from the cold slashed across his sharp cheekbones. Anna had the sudden, disconcerting realization that his eyes were the same deep green as the pines.

  And she was staring.

  Flushing—hoping it wouldn’t show when her face was probably already red—she bent to get out of her bindings. When she straightened, he hadn’t moved. He was watching her, no longer smiling. A couple of lines between his eyebrows had deepened, as if he was disconcerted by something.

  He reached out and touched her nose with one gloved finger. “Rudolph.”

  Oh, great. Her nose glowed. Well, probably her cheeks, too, but she didn’t have the same kind of elegant cheekbones.

  “I have to be careful,” she heard herself telling him. “My skin doesn’t like too much sun, too much cold, most brands of soap or suntan lotion. I either flake or get a rash.”