by Dani Collins
Paige nodded. “I know,” she murmured.
“I get why Grady was being such an ass about it. Lyle had it rough with April and losing their baby. I know that. But I still can’t be married to him. Your dad wouldn’t let it go,” Britta admitted glumly. “Zack came home in the middle of us arguing. He didn’t know what we were fighting about, thank God, but Grady doesn’t understand how hard raising kids is!” She threw up two hands in frustration. “He was barely there for you and Lyle. I don’t know how I would do it again, Paige. I really don’t.”
“I’m going to be here for the next few months,” Paige stressed. “You’re not alone.”
“So you’ll what? Gestate the weekends for me? You can’t do anything, Paige. Not really.”
“I know, but—” She had to do something. Her protective reflexes were leaping off the scale. Especially because Britta was a born nurturer. She was in crisis right now, but Paige really didn’t know how Britta would live with terminating a pregnancy. “Listen, if you’re worried about money—”
“It’s not money.” Britta shook her head, and sat back as the waitress approached.
Actually, not a waitress. Cam.
“Hey.” Britta’s smile was flustered as she stroked her fingertips over the duck-tails at her nape.
“Am I interrupting? I wanted to buy you ladies a drink,” he said.
“Oh, that’s not necess—” Paige began, but Britta spoke over her.
“Thanks. That’s sweet. And join us? I’ll have a glass of Chardon— No, maybe just a cola. Actually, no caffeine. Ginger ale.”
“Soda water with lime, please.”
“Tee-totallers.” Cam said with a thoughtful tilt of his head and walked away.
Britta watched him go, her expression soft and dreamy.
“You knew he was coming here?” Paige surmised.
“He said he might.” Britta saw Paige’s expression and her smile fell away. She used a fingertip to trace the pattern in the hardwood tabletop.
“Are you and he...?”
“Kind of.” Britta shrugged. “He’s a deputy with the Sherriff’s office. Did you know that? We were in the same juvenile law class in Lasser all summer. A few weeks ago he— I wanted to tell you, but it didn’t seem right to bring it up while you were finalizing your divorce. Then Grady went into the hospital and I found out I was...” She shrugged, then bit her lip. “What do you think?”
She had to be kidding. Paige thought it was one giant, freaking disaster, of course. But Britta was looking at her with kicked-puppy eyes, so Paige said, “He always seemed like a good guy in school.”
“He is. He’s so great,” Britta assured her, eyes wide and eager for approval.
Money was definitely not the issue with Britta keeping this baby.
~ * ~
Sterling walked into The Mill to see Paige sitting across from a guy Sterling hadn’t seen since they’d been trading sarcastic remarks in American History senior year at Liebe Falls High. Willard Cameron. Wanted to be a cop, if Sterling recalled correctly.
Paige’s friend was here, too, the one from high school who’d married Lyle.
They were relaxed, grinning. He couldn’t help but be drawn to Paige when she was finally looking like she wasn’t sitting on a tack. He walked over and pretended it was to say hello to Cam.
“Hey, Cam. Long time. Good to see you. Britta. Paige.
Paige tensed in the time it took for him to get to her name.
“Sterling. Heard you were back.” Cam stood to shake his hand, confirmed that yes, he was now a deputy, off duty right now. “Join us.”
“Love to,” Sterling said, ignoring the way Paige’s expression tightened and Britta gave her a look. “It’s been a hard day,” he added, glancing at Paige. “Hasn’t it?”
“Paige was just telling me you two are taking over the factory.”
“I’m really not,” Sterling said, signaling for a beer as he pushed in beside Paige. “And given how likely I am to kill my own father, I could very well wind up on a plane tonight.” He glanced at Paige, wanting her to know he felt her pain where dealing with Walter Roy was concerned.
She shimmied deep against the wall, obviously avoiding any sort of accidental touches.
“What happened?” Britta asked. She’d turned out pretty hot considering she’d spent most of high school wearing glasses, braces, and a pair of ponytails that looked like mouse ears.
“I’m used to people paying me for my opinion and liking what I say. This is the opposite.” The idea of going back to his parents’ house to continue pressing for necessary changes had been more than Sterling could face. He’d come here to cool down first.
He gratefully scooped up the beer the waitress set beside his elbow. As he took a long draw on the bottle, he took a longer look at Paige. That snug shirt she’d been wearing under her suit coat all day was made from a kind of material so delicate a man would hesitate to run his hands over it, for fear he’d tear it. It had tiny buttons, probably too small for his big fingers. It was prim. Defensive. It wasn’t helping his frustration at all.
“Does it seem like there are a lot of people in here for a Monday night?” Britta asked.
Sterling took a reading, recognized most of the faces, noted that many of them were directing their attention toward their table. “Looks like a factory-wide confabulation over today’s events.”
“You guys taking over is big news,” Cam mused.
“Honestly, that’s not what we’re doing,” Paige insisted, starting to sound as annoyed at the accusation as Sterling was. “I’m going to audit the books so we can settle on a price for Walter to buy out Dad.”
“And I’m committing professional suicide,” Sterling said, taking another pull of icy beer that soothed the heat in his tight throat, thinking of Patty’s call, when she had relayed some strong words from their client in Texas that put the whole contract in jeopardy.
“Hey, it’s all my favorite people.” Lyle came up to their table, an unlit cigarette pinched in his lips. “Cam, you movin’ in on my wife?”
“Ex, darling,” Britta said with a fake smile. “I know you’ve never learned the entire alphabet, but I wish you’d remember that one letter.”
“Door’s always open for a reconciliation. You know that.” He winked.
Cam gave Lyle a lethal glare. Sterling liked the Deputy more than ever.
“You driving home tonight?” Cam asked Lyle. He was still slouched in his seat, but there was an underlying alertness in his voice.
“Hell, no! Walking.”
“I’ll drive you,” Paige offered. “I’m leaving.” She nudged Sterling.
“Hell no again,” Lyle said. “I’m just getting a buzz on.”
“That didn’t take long. Were you drinking on the job or did you cut out early?” Sterling asked him, ignoring the pressure of Paige’s arm against his shoulder.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I was in at six thirty and off at three, Boss, so you can stand down from questioning my hours.” Or take it outside, his tone suggested.
Sterling held his gaze, tempted.
“How about you give me your keys so everyone feels better?” Paige suggested. “Move please,” she said firmly to Sterling.
He stood, more to force Lyle into taking a step back.
As Paige scooched to the end of the bench seat, Sterling automatically put a hand under her elbow to help her stand, felt her slightness and had a sudden, sharp perception of how her slenderness would feel against him. God this woman made him hungry.
“That okay with you, Pidge?” Lyle nodded at where Sterling had his hand cupped around her elbow. “You need me to come home with you? Keep the big bad wolf from the door?”
Paige pulled free, blushing lightly, but under a scowl. “No.”
He shrugged and fished his keys from his pocket, threw them on the table and walked away.
Paige snatched them up and dropped them in her purse. “I suppose I can leave cab fare with the
bartender?” she said tightly.
“The amount Lyle spends in here, they ought to cover it,” Britta muttered.
Paige jerked a shoulder in a silent, Whatever. “Thanks for the drink, Cam.”
Sterling didn’t bother to sit, thanked Cam, and caught up to Paige at the bar.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He answered by dropping some bills on the gleaming wood and indicated with a nod that he wanted a delivery to the booth he’d just vacated. “Buying them a drink.”
“You’re not staying?”
“With the sweethearts? I’d be diabetic in minutes.”
“Well, you’re not leaving. Not right now.” She tucked her wallet into her purse.
“Yeah, I am.” He walked her to the door.
She hesitated, then let him hold the door for her and walked outside in a stalk of annoyance.
“What?” he asked, when they were at the bumper of her car.
“Oh, just now everyone thinks I left with you.”
“You know we’re all grown up, right?”
She pivoted on her heel, heading for her driver’s door.
The lights had come on over the parking lot, but it wasn’t quite dark and the overcast sky turned everything to shades of gray: her suit charcoal, her hair cobalt, her skin a pale pearl.
“Look—” He didn’t know what he wanted to say. Mostly, he wanted to step close, take her face in his hands, and press her against the door of the car.
She paused to look at him, searching his expression then dropped her head to study the keys in her hand. “What?”
He pushed his fists into his pockets. “Will you be all right, going home alone?”
“Yes.” She frowned, like that had been the stupidest question in history.
He still didn’t want to go home. Ever.
He wanted to go home with her.
As he watched Paige maneuver out of the lot, a partial solution struck.
Chapter Ten
That sadist was following her home. Didn’t he get that he made things worse by doing stuff like this?
Paige stewed as Sterling’s headlights stayed in her rearview mirror all the way up Main Street and down Fourth. A dozen scathing comments buzzed in her head, until she couldn’t wait to pull up in front of her father’s house and unleash them.
Then the menace pulled off a block before her street.
Maybe it hadn’t been Sterling behind her after all.
Cooling down, she climbed from her car and looked along the side of her father’s house.
Through the shadows of Lyle’s mini-junkyard of broken down cars, between the gaps in the fallen fence, she could see lights pulling into the driveway of Sterling’s grandmother’s house.
What was he doing over there? It was empty. Condemned, according to his mother.
And why did it disappoint her that he hadn’t followed her?
She trotted out of the rain and unlocked the front door, kicked off her shoes on the landing, then skipped upstairs, depressed by the silence.
“Rosie?” she called, even though the house was dark and Rosie’s car hadn’t been in the driveway.
Was the heat off? Paige hugged herself as she hung her suit coat on the newel post at the top of the stairs.
Actually, that was a draft making her shiver. A window was open. She could hear the rain picking up.
Rubbing her arms, she went around the corner into the dining area. The sky was almost dark and very little light reached from the bulb over the stairs, but she could see the glass door onto the deck stood wide open. Lyle rarely came upstairs so she doubted he’d left it open. Rosie might have, but a glance into the kitchen didn’t show any evidence that Rosie had been home much today.
Paige walked over to close the door and felt something pebbly beneath her feet. Tiny cuts pinched through her pantyhose into her soles.
She caught her breath at the sting, taking several surprised steps that only made the pinch worsen. Glittering shards of glass littered the carpet. A jagged shape beside the door handle wasn’t a torn screen but a hole smashed through the pane of the door.
Oh, shit.
She held still, listened, heard only her own racing heartbeat while her stomach curdled.
Which way to run? Was the intruder gone? Still here?
The distant crunch of footsteps on gravel was barely discernible over the patter of rain, but she knew who it was. Sterling. At his grandmother’s house.
Ignoring the nip on the bottoms of her feet, she stepped onto the wet deck, shot down the outside stairs into the back yard and sprinted to the fence line, then ran down the side of his grandmother’s ancient bungalow. “Sterling!”
“What the hell.” He was heading back to his SUV and spun in surprise.
She halted in the pool of light cast by his headlights.
“Some...one...” Oh, geez, she really needed to start a cardio program. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Broke in.”
“To your house?” He came straight at her, hands wrapping around her upper arms while he stared over her head.
“I was scared to stay.”
“Rosie?”
“Her car isn’t there. I don’t think she’s been home today.”
Releasing her, he handed her his keys and said, “Get out of the rain. I’ll go check it.” He started toward her father’s house.
“What if he’s still there?” Don’t be a hero, Billy.
“Did you leave your phone there? Here.” He dug his cell out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Call the police.”
“Sterling! What if he’s still there?” She caught a fistful of his sleeve.
He cocked his head, listening. “I’ll just have a quick look.”
“Fine.” She released him and hugged herself, chilled as the rain began penetrating her clothes and the wind came up. “Get yourself shot. But don’t expect me to come running over to save you. I’ll be sitting here picking glass out of my feet.”
“What?” He turned back to her, looked down to where she balanced on the sides of her feet.
“I stepped in broken glass.” She took a step toward his grandmother’s porch so she could sit down.
He scooped her into his arms so fast she let out a little yelp. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She had an impression of warm, hard muscles, a smell like man and wool and wood dust, then he boosted her onto the warm hood of his SUV.
She squeaked and wiggled as the beaded water soaked her butt, would have slid off, but Sterling steadied her, grinned an apology. “I just want to see.”
“I’m getting soaked.”
“Me too, but— Yeah, that’s a trip to the hospital.” He twisted her foot toward the headlight and stooped to examine the damage. She could feel the strength in his hands and the heat of the light. A queer sensation in the pit of her stomach had to be leftover fear.
“You need stitches.” He angled the other one for a peek. “Definitely.”
“No. A pair of tweezers and a couple of bandages will do it.”
“You wish.” He grunted as he hauled her into a cradle hold against his chest.
“Oh, please.” She resisted his touch with her entire body, stiffening against what felt like tenderness. “Put me down, Tarzan.”
He walked to the passenger side and jerked his chin at the door. “Open.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“Walk back to your house and prove it.”
“Put me down and I will.”
He gave her a little toss to redistribute her weight and free his hand enough to catch at the door latch.
“I’ll bleed all over your floor mats.”
“It’s a rental.” He set her on the passenger seat, but kept her angled with her feet out the door.
She was stupidly, insanely aware of his hands on the outsides of her thighs, keeping her balanced on the edge of the seat, warming through her damp clothes.
“This is stupid,” she muttered, giving a wiggl
e like she was going to climb from the vehicle.
“No, I got it. Your pantyhose are a write-off. Ball ‘em up and you can rest your feet on them. It’s only a few minutes to the hospital.”
She didn’t want to go to the hospital with him. She sure as heck didn’t want to undress in front of him.
“I don’t want stitches,” she argued.
“I’ll hold your hand.”
The persistence of the man. “I’ll call Britta to come get me.”
“You’d rather wait in the rain for fifteen minutes than let me drive you?” When he said it like that, he made her sound like she was being ridiculous.
She was being ridiculous. Groaning, she said, “Fine. Turn around.”
~ * ~
Sterling drove over to Grady’s long enough to let the headlights shine on the front door, but when Paige tried to get out with him, he decided not to check the house. Not if she wouldn’t let him do it for her. Shoot, the woman was reluctant to rely on him for something as simple as a lift to the hospital. What would she have done if the situation had been more serious?
What if he hadn’t been there for her to run to at all?
With her foot in her lap, she used the hem of her skirt to soak up seeping blood, drawing air through her teeth as she did.
“You should report that break in. Especially if Rosie is likely to come home.”
“Yeah.” She had left his cell phone in the console between them and reached for it. “It’s not exactly an emergency, though. Maybe I can catch Cam at The Mill.”
“You know the number?”
“Dad and Lyle live there,” she pointed out.
And didn’t that say everything he needed to know about her reluctance to rely on anyone. He didn’t know much about her Mom, took a moment to wonder.
“It’s Paige,” he heard her say after asking for Cam. “I know you’re off duty, but there was a break in at the house. Dad’s, yeah. No, I’m okay. Well, sort of. I cut my foot and Sterling’s taking me to the hospital— No, it doesn’t need stitches!” She paused. “At the back. The doors off the deck. I’m worried about Rosie coming home. Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I get patched up. Thanks, Cam. Is Brit still there? Tell her I’m okay, but I don’t have my phone. I’ll call her later.” She dropped the phone back into the console. “He’s going to have someone on duty drop by.”
