by Dora Hiers
He stalked to the window in the family room and opened it, so hard the window slammed against the child-safety device. Grimacing at the pain in his side, he gritted out words past clenched teeth. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I’m sure Jennifer worries about you.”
“Not anymore. We broke up.”
“Oh, Ryker. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. My heart wasn’t in it, and she knew it.”
He glanced over a shoulder at her as he opened another window, this time with a little less force. Dane’s brown eyes looked like roasting coffee beans. “Don’t do that Dane.”
“Do what?”
“Look at me like that.” It had taken him six months to put to rest any ideas he might have had about lifetime commitments, about family. To rebuild the brick barrier around his heart. He wouldn’t allow Dane to tear it down so fast.
“Just because you broke up doesn’t mean Jennifer would stop worrying about you.”
“Drop it, Dane.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know, Ryker. You’re a big boy. You can take care of yourself.”
“Yeah.” He gave his head one emphatic nod.
“Even so. You can’t stop me from caring about what happens to you. About your break-up. About how you must feel to step into a house that you haven’t been in since your mom and dad and sister died. It’s me, Ryker. Danae. I’ve been your friend since you were thirteen.”
Ouch. She knew how to push the dagger deep, enough to make him bleed. He grabbed her neck with one arm and drew her into a hug, into the side that didn’t hurt. “Thanks, Dane. I appreciate your concern, really. But I don’t—”
“Anybody home?” From the front door, a male voice echoed through the empty house.
Ryker grinned and turned around, loosening his hold on Dane, but keeping her tucked next to him.
Gunner sauntered in, followed by Trent, hobbling along with the help of a cane, clutching a grocery bag in his other hand.
“Uh-oh, Trent. He already has a housewarming present. I knew we shouldn’t have bought this.” Gunner teased, holding up three boxes of pizza and a bag of two-liter sodas.
Trent smiled and plunked the grocery bag on the kitchen counter.
Ryker couldn’t stop staring at the pink blossoming in Dane’s cheeks and neck.
Gunner cleared his throat. “Since our buddy here seems to have his tongue tied in knots, I’ll—”
“I’ll take it from here.” Ryker found his voice, releasing his hold on Dane. He didn’t want the guys to get the wrong idea.
Were her cheeks pink from embarrassment? Or was she not feeling well? He stole a peek at her. “You guys know Stephen. This is Stephen’s sister, Danae Huntley. Dane, the jokester is Gunner Chapel. The normal guy over there is Trent Burdine. Friends of mine that live here in Serenity Ridge.”
Dane showed brilliant white teeth in her smile, those killer dimples, too. She must be feeling all right. So what was up with the blush? “Pleased to meet you guys.”
The three teens tromped into the room from whereabouts unknown. “I thought I smelled pizza.” Jason’s gaze honed in on the boxes of sweet smelling goodness on the counter.
“Ryker, why didn’t you tell us you already had the muscle to help out around here?” Trent teased as he pulled cups and plates out of the grocery bag. “Hey, guys. Help yourselves.” Trent introduced Gunner to the teens.
“You know each other?” Ryker angled his head, his eyebrows scrunched, as he slid a couple slices of pizza onto a plate. Was he missing something?
Trent smiled. “This is Serenity Ridge, Ryker, not big town Charlotte. Did you forget my wife is the high school guidance counselor? There are always teenagers hanging around our house.”
“You forgot to mention the teen shelter.” Kyle piped up, a wad of pizza tucked into his cheek.
“That, too.” Trent placed a hand on Kyle’s back. A truck’s backup sensor beeped loudly outside. “Looks like it’s time to get busy.”
****
“Bye, guys. See you at church tomorrow.” Danae waved out her open window, watching the boys head to their respective cottages at Quiver Full. The orphanage consisted of four individual cottages with two house-parents and up to six kids.
Danae sighed. Right now kids were crammed into every available bed at Quiver Full. Too many kids made their homes here. The houses were busting at the seams. The orphanage needed more homes. Or less kids. But that wasn’t happening anytime soon. Maybe her speech tomorrow night at the city council meeting would garner some financial support.
“Want to grab some dinner before we head back to the house?”
Danae’s heart hiccupped. She glanced down at her shirt and jeans, blanketed with dust and dirt, imagining what her face looked like, and cringed. “Do you mind stopping by my house so I can change clothes first?” And splash some cold water and soap on my face? The soap to clean the grime, the cold water to dash some reality into her brain. Ryker didn’t mean for this to be a date.
“Sure. We’ll swing by so you can change.”
“Thanks.”
When he maneuvered the truck into her driveway, his body tensed beside her. His lungs dragged in a huge gulp of air.
Danae looked up from digging the keys out of her purse. “What?”
She followed Ryker’s narrow-eyed gaze and locked on to the “ghost” standing on the porch next to the window. The ghost turned around to face the oncoming headlights. “Aw, look, Ryker. A trick-or-treater. I forgot they’d be out tonight because tomorrow’s Sunday.”
Ryker slammed the truck in park and jerked open the door. “Stay in the truck.” His tone sounded terse, demanding.
“What are you—”
He bolted out of the truck and sprinted to the porch, a hand gripping his side. The man really shouldn’t be running while he recovered from spleen surgery. What was he thinking, chasing some poor kid?
She shook her head. She was in love with a nutcase. A nutcase who would need a fresh bandage. Her hand reached for the door handle. She needed to rescue the poor kid before Ryker pummeled him into oblivion.
The ghost had already stumbled off the front porch into the darkness beyond. Ryker redirected his course, pushing branches away from his face as he followed the ghost into the shrubs, heading toward the cemetery.
Danae opened the door and hopped down from the truck. “Ryker!” She yelled into the blackness.
No answer. The man was crazy. What was he thinking?
She closed the truck door. She’d have to go after him. He didn’t know his way around the cemetery, not like her. He could be one of those people who got creeped out, especially after dark. Not like she visited the burial grounds at night, either, but somebody had to talk some sense into him.
Danae headed to the front of her yard, not through the shrubs like Ryker, hugging the sweater closer to her chest. The temperature had fallen since they’d been working at Ryker’s house, easily dipping into the forties.
She rounded the corner of her yard and shrub line and hesitated, her ears tuned to sound. Any sound, but specifically the sound of Ryker’s pounding footsteps.
Nothing. Except for the sound of her pulse swooshing through her ears and the occasional car driving by on the road behind the cemetery.
She edged past the first grave marker. Something about walking through the tombstones at night seemed so sinister. Spooky. Almost irreverent.
Fear prickled along her arms. Dampness popped up on her palms. She didn’t mind touring the gardens during the day. She read the epitaphs, imagined how these people lived, what they did, how they died.
But, now? After dark? Alone? She wasn’t so crazy about the idea.
But Ryker needed her. What if he had tripped, fallen, and reopened his wound? He could bleed to death.
She could do this. She lifted her chin, pressed her shoulders back, carefully stepped a few more paces. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the black of night.
Her soles crunched agains
t humongous dried maple leaves, echoing in the silence.
Where was Ryker anyway? Shouldn’t she see him by now? She edged farther down the hill, sidestepping the tombstones. Maybe she should go back to the house? Or at least walk along the road that wound through the gardens.
Yeah, that’s what she’d do. Move closer to the road. She’d feel safer under the street lamps.
She angled a path toward the road, the scent of decaying leaves and freshly dug dirt smacking her in the nose. And something else.
Something human.
A hand brushed her cheeks and squelched her shriek. Another grabbed her around the waist.
She reached up, grappling with an arm, trying to open her mouth to bite the hand that gripped too tight, leaving her legs dangling in the air.
“Dane, it’s me, Ryker. Settle down.” His whisper ricocheted off the grave markers.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, this scenario a little too familiar, too freaky to happen here. In a cemetery. She wrestled his hand away and gave it a good swat, a battle going on between her lungs and her brain. “Good grief, Ryker! Let me go!” she hissed.
“Would you be quiet? I’m trying to see where that guy disappeared to.”
Thirty seconds. That’s all Danae would give him. She didn’t see any bodies moving, dead or alive. Apparently, Ryker didn’t either. He gripped his side with one hand. The other towed her back to the house, his hand warm, strong, giant. She didn’t remember Ryker’s hands being so large. Or the way it felt to be held by him, even if it was only his hand and not his heart.
She unlocked the front door and tugged him inside, then bolted the door. She turned to face him, unable to keep quiet any longer, her nerves taut tighter than an elastic band ready to zing across a room. She clutched his forearms. “Okay, Ryker. What guy are you talking about?”
“The guy that was standing on your porch.”
Golden eyes studied her face. The marshal wasn’t joking, not that she thought he was. Not after chasing a kid through a cemetery in the dead of darkness.
A glimmer of crimson caught her attention. She glanced down and winced at the blood oozing through his shirt. Bummer! How could she have forgotten about Ryker’s wound?
She released his arms and headed toward the kitchen and the first aid kit. “It was a trick-or-treater, Ryker. You know, the little ones that show up every Halloween asking for candy.”
He followed her. “Was he carrying a candy bag?”
Hmm. Good question. She turned the faucet on, lathered soap onto her hands. “I don’t remember seeing one.”
“That’s right. Because he didn’t have one.”
She dried her hands with the dishtowel. “Okay, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t—”
“How tall would you say he was?”
She motioned for him to pull off his shirt and turned away to hang the towel, not trusting herself to keep from staring at the man’s bare skin. She opened the cabinet door and grimaced. Why did she have to rent an older house with cabinets a gazillion feet tall? She backed up, intending to reach for her step stool but stopped against something hard. Rock solid hard.
Ryker’s chest. Pine, and musk, and the smell from the coolness outdoors enveloped her as the marshal reached around her, his long arms grasping the kit from over her head. She closed her eyes, hoping to extinguish the longing in her heart. No, not longing. The need to feel loved by a man, embraced, protected.
She snorted, annoyed with herself for imagining those happy-ever-after dreams again. That’s all they were. Dreams. Fairy tales. Book endings. They didn’t happen in real life. At least, not to her. For Stephen, yes. He’d been lucky enough to find true love, but he was a guy. Things worked differently for guys. Danae didn’t hold out hope for herself, though. Her mother had taken care of that. She shifted, moving out of Ryker’s arms before she embarrassed herself.
Like leaned back and pulled his arms to wrap around her waist…
She cleared her throat, hoping to dislodge the lump of frustration that had settled there.
How tall was the kid? Now that he mentioned it, the kid did seem rather large. “Maybe he was a little taller than the average trick-or-treater. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a teenager out having fun.”
Ryker sat down. “How many teenagers do you know hang out alone?”
Ouch. He had her there. Teens definitely tended to travel in packs. Danae opened the box and pulled out clean supplies, keeping her gaze low, away from his strong shoulders and bare chest. Afraid of what would happen inside her if she allowed herself to dream. Would she turn out like her mom?
“What about his shoes? Did you get a good look at his shoes?”
Shoes? Why would she look at his shoes? She hadn’t, but Ryker apparently had. “Uh, no. What about his shoes?” She tested the bloodied bandage. “This may hurt a little.”
She jerked it off, and he only blinked. The man was made of steel. But, if he kept chasing strangers through bushes, he’d be back in the hospital. Steel or not.
“I would guess they were about a man’s size twelve, maybe larger. Not flip-flops or sneakers like the boys at the orphanage wore. Hiking boots. Expensive hiking boots.”
She gulped and lifted her face. Oh, she didn’t realize how close he was. She took a jerky step back and, with trembling fingers, finished taping the fresh bandage in place. “Wow, Ryker. You got all that in one glance?”
“Marshals get paid to notice things, Dane. Things, or people, that spell trouble.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why didn’t you stay put in the truck like I asked you to?”
“I thought you might need help.”
“You thought I might need help?” He repeated slowly, his head angled to the side, as if he didn’t believe her.
Or insinuating that she was the one always needing assistance, the one always in trouble.
She glared at him. Ryker looked away first, those gorgeous golden eyes darting from the open kitchen cabinet to the back door. Escape in mind?
She hadn’t talked to him in months, years. How many years had it been since she’d seen him last? Two? Three? Why would he think she needed help?
Stephen.
Ah ha. She clicked her tongue, disappointment knocking the air from her lungs. “Stephen put you up to this, didn’t he?”
He still avoided her gaze. So that’s the way it was.
Ryker wasn’t here because he cared about her as a friend. He was here because Stephen had asked him to be here. To look after Danae. Stephen’s little sister, the one always in trouble.
Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. When would she ever learn? What was she thinking? Why did she put herself through this, volunteering to help Ryker, working in his house all day, bumping elbows with him in the kitchen, dreaming about the way things could be?
He would never care about her the way she wanted him to. All he saw when he looked at her was Stephen’s pesky little sister, the Danae he grew up with. The one constantly trailing after him and Stephen, asking a gazillion questions, begging them to let her play or just to hang out with them.
Why couldn’t Ryker see her for the Danae she was now? Independent. Strong. Capable of taking care of herself.
A female who didn’t need her brother anymore.
She didn’t even need Ryker.
****
Dane needed him.
Ryker knew that. But it was killing him.
Hanging out with her, the boys, and his friends, joking, laughing, and working together. Enjoying every minute of it.
But, he’d buried the dreams about growing a family big enough to fill the home he’d just moved into. Buried them deep.
Love was just a bubble destined to be popped. Like driving down a dead end street, leading to nowhere. Like Dane used to say, a string of vows meant to be broken.
Forever for him meant…spending it alone.
He mashed a hand through his hair and focused his gaze on the kitchen sink. Anywhere but Dane.
Whatever. Protecting Dane, hanging out with her, inhaling her berry shampoo, listening to her tease the boys, smile and chat with his friends, watching her unpack his dishes and put them away in his kitchen. All of it was pure torture. To the nth degree.
He should have stayed in the hospital. Should have ignored Stephen’s text. Turned off his phone. He was too weak from the surgery to handle this.
Man up, McLane.
Yeah. Ignoring Stephen’s request to look after Dane would have been the coward’s way out. He could be called a lot of names, but coward would not be on that list. Wasn’t in his DNA.
Ryker finally dared a glance at the woman. Standing with her hands planted against slim, jean-clad hips, her customary smile noticeably absent from those beautiful full lips, she was fighting to keep the pain of betrayal from slipping out of those warm brown eyes.
It wasn’t working. She’d gone into defensive mode. But, she was still a fighter. He’d give her that. She never backed away from a fight.
Probably because she knew that Stephen and Ryker would never let her down. They’d be there to pick up the pieces. Just like always. That’s what brothers did. Families took care of each other.
Dane might as well be his sister. His responsibility.
And she was hurting right now.
He stood up, the cold air drafty against his bare chest, and tugged her arms, bringing her into his embrace and resting his chin on her head. Silky hair tickled his face, the sweet berry scent wreaking havoc with his already taut emotions.
“I’m sorry, Dane. Stephen didn’t mean to hurt you, you know. He’s your brother. He loves you.” Just like I do. As a brother. Ryker wouldn’t let anything happen to Dane whether she liked it or not.
She quivered, then drew in a deep breath, still fighting. He loved that about Dane. She never gave up.
“It’s all right. I should have expected that Stephen would have called you.”
Ryker didn’t respond, wouldn’t rat out his friend, but he should never have agreed not to say anything. Or make promises he couldn’t keep.
But, there was one promise he had no intention of breaking. He wouldn’t let anything happen to Dane. Not on his watch. He would do everything, anything, to keep her safe.
