Morgan hadn’t counted on the Marlowe woman being able to read body language. “Oh, there’s a problem, all right,” she said.
Kelsey’s tone aroused his curiosity. “What do you mean?”
She looked at him knowingly. He realized he wasn’t dealing with some empty-headed, fluffy little blonde. There were brains inside that head of hers.
“You’re not planning to go, are you?” She didn’t give him a chance to deny it. “Morgan, my mother doesn’t ask for much. Most of the time she’s busy making sure all of us have what we need. I don’t want to see her disappointed. If she wants you at dinner, then you’ll be at dinner,” Kelsey said with finality. “It’s as simple as that.”
Oh, is it, now? “You realize that threatening a policeman is against the law.”
“No threats,” she said innocently, spreading her hands wide to emphasize her point. “Just a friendly nudge in the right direction. Now, is six o’clock okay with you?”
He shrugged. Maybe he’d go and maybe he wouldn’t. He’d see about what he’d do tomorrow. “As good a time as any.”
“Good, now that that’s settled,” she brightened considerably as she moved in closer beside him and faced the exposed engine, “tell me what you’re doing.”
He tried not to notice that her perfume seemed to fill his senses. “You’re a car junkie?” he asked.
Her smile was as sunny as her mother’s. “I wouldn’t put it that way, but I’m always open to learning something new.”
He had this unsettling feeling that she had just promised him something.
Chapter Seven
He was not looking forward to this.
But the same gut feeling that warned him of danger on the job told him that if he didn’t put in an appearance at the Marlowes’, the younger Marlowe woman would show up on his doorstep again—and keep showing up until he made good on his promise.
They were right, he thought, tying his tie for the third time as he stared into the bathroom mirror. Those people who said that no good deed ever went unpunished, they were dead-on. What he should have done the other day was call the paramedics the second Kate Marlowe had driven her car into the bushes and let them handle the situation.
But he supposed that on some level he never got over being a Boy Scout. And Boy Scouts didn’t leave people, especially women, if they needed help. It was no more in him to have walked away from Kate than it was to walk away from a drowning man in the hopes that the next person on the scene would come to the man’s rescue.
Still, his life would have remained simpler if he’d followed a different course….
Hindsight was a bear.
“You eat and you go. ‘Hi’—chew—‘goodbye,’” Morgan told his reflection with feeling. “With any luck, you’ll be back here in a couple of hours.”
The civilian looking back at him in the mirror appeared far from convinced that things would go that smoothly. Not with that little blonde with the flashing blue eyes as the wild card.
Maybe it was the clothes that were throwing him, Morgan thought, appraising himself carefully. He wasn’t accustomed to wearing anything other than his uniform or jeans and a T-shirt in his off hours. Right now, he wore a light blue dress shirt—the only one he owned—the one he’d worn to Beth and Amy’s funeral. The same could be said for his navy blue jacket. The only thing he had on that he’d worn in the last two and a half years were the light gray slacks.
When the tie still refused to come out right after a third attempt, Morgan muttered a curse, unknotted it and slid it off. With an exasperated sigh, he opened the top button in his shirt and left it that way. In his opinion, ties were only wasted pieces of fabric.
He glanced at his watch. It was just a little past five-thirty. The invitation was for six. He might as well get going, Morgan decided grudgingly. The sooner he got there, the sooner it would be over.
Instead of a comb, Morgan opted to run his fingers through his sandy-blond hair.
“Good enough,” he pronounced, taking one last glance in the mirror.
A smudge on his shoulder momentarily stopped him in his tracks. He glanced down at his jacket and didn’t see it, even when he put his thumb under the material and propped it up. Looking back at the mirror, he saw that the smudge had moved. It was closer to his chest now.
Morgan frowned. The smudge was on the mirror, not his jacket. With a shake of his head, Morgan made a mental note to clean the mirror when he got the chance. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cleaned it.
Considering the nature of his job, cleaning mirrors—cleaning anything within his house really—had rather a low priority on his list of things to take care of.
Muttering under his breath that this whole dinner thing was a complete waste of his time, Morgan walked out of the house, locking the door behind him.
A couple of hours, no more, he promised himself. It was a promise he intended to keep.
Kelsey glanced at her watch. He was late. Not by much, but he was late.
Maybe she should have gone to his place and escorted him back to her parents’ house. Not that she thought he’d lose his way—he was a policeman for heaven’s sake, and they all came equipped with an inner GPS—it was just that she strongly suspected that he’d cop out at the last moment, no pun intended.
A watched door never opens.
With a sigh, Kelsey turned away from the door she’d been staring at for the past fifteen minutes, willing the doorbell to ring. She looked at her mother.
“Maybe we should just get started,” she suggested.
“Give him a few more minutes, Kelsey,” Kate urged pleasantly. “It’s not as if Officer Donnelly has to clock in. He spends all of his time with rules and regulations, adhering to schedules. Maybe he likes to be lax when he’s off duty.”
Kelsey sincerely doubted that the man she’d talked to knew how to be lax. She had a feeling that he marched to his own drummer and didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do. At this point, she wouldn’t have put any money on his showing up.
“You did tell him it was for tonight, right, Kelsey?” her father asked her.
“Absolutely,” she answered. “I told him it was a command performance and if he didn’t show up, I’d hunt him down and drag him back,” she deadpanned.
“Bet that put the fear of God into him,” Mike speculated.
Kate raised a reproving eyebrow as she looked at her daughter. “Kelsey—”
“She’s kidding, Kate,” Travis reassured his stepmother. “That’s just her warped sense of humor—although,” he winked at Mike, “I’d be pretty scared if I were him and she threatened me like that.”
“You’d be scared if you caught your own shadow looming over you,” Kelsey countered. “Like I said, we should all just start—” The doorbell rang. Kelsey did a complete about-face, spinning ninety degrees around on her heel to face the door. “I’ll get it,” she announced before anyone else had a chance to react.
Kate exchanged glances with Bryan. Her eyes crinkled as a knowing smile curved her mouth.
Bryan knew exactly what she was thinking. He hadn’t been married to the woman all this time without picking up a few clues along the way. Kelsey was the last of their children to remain unattached, at least until the baby arrived. Kate wasn’t going to be happy until Kelsey settled down with someone. Someone they deemed special enough for her.
Obviously, in Kate’s eyes, this Officer Donnelly met the requirements.
Bryan bent his head and whispered in her ear. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
The look on Kate’s face was the last word in wide-eyed innocence. “Why, Bryan, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He knew better. “Yeah, right,” he laughed.
Kelsey yanked open the door. She wasn’t disappointed. “You came,” she declared warmly.
Morgan glanced over her head to see a room full of people behind her. All looking in his direction. People who were probably going to ex
pect him to make small talk. He didn’t make small talk.
His gaze returned to Kelsey. “Did I have a choice?”
Her smile widened, traveling into her eyes, radiating from her face. Glad she could find humor in his discomfort, he thought grudgingly.
“No.”
He snorted. “That’s what I thought.”
Kelsey lingered a moment longer. Her eyes slid over him. “You clean up nicely.”
He met her compliment with a self-conscious, dismissive shrug. He grew even more self-conscious when a second look around made him realize that he was the only one in a jacket.
As if reading his mind, Kelsey offered a semi-apology. “I didn’t think I had to tell you that it wasn’t going to be formal.”
Kate came to their rescue, greeting him warmly at the door with a quick hug that momentarily left him speechless. “Officer Donnelly, I’m so glad you could make it.”
“Your daughter was very persuasive, ma’am,” he replied.
“I believe the term is pushy,” Bryan said. One hand on his wife’s shoulder, he leaned forward and extended his right hand to the policeman. “Hi, I’m Kate’s husband, Bryan. And I just wanted to thank you in person for taking such good care of my wife.” Dropping his hand to his side, Bryan gave his wife a loving squeeze. “She means the world to me. To all of us,” he amended, nodding toward the group of people behind him.
“Bryan, you’re embarrassing me—” Kate chided, although she appeared far from embarrassed. “Not to mention that you’re making Morgan uncomfortable.”
When Kate Marlowe looked at him, Morgan immediately felt they were on the same wavelength. She seemed to be a down-to-earth, intuitive woman. He realized then that she reminded him a great deal of his own mother, not in her appearance, but in her manner, in her smile. It made enduring the evening a little easier.
“Let me introduce you to the motley crew behind you,” Kelsey was saying. “As you’ve undoubtedly guessed by now, these are my brothers. The lovely, but for the most part clueless, ladies beside them are their wives—except for Shana who can still make a run for it if she comes to her senses.”
Taking a fortifying breath, Kelsey began to recite all their names. “The guy who looks as if he’s about to analyze you is Trent. He does that for a living. The woman beside him is his wife, Laurel, and that adorable little boy is their son, Cody. On Trent’s left is Mike with his wife, Miranda. To their left are Trevor and Venus and Travis with Shana, who I’ve already introduced.”
Finished, Kelsey looked back at Morgan and deadpanned, “Hope you were paying attention because there’ll be a quiz at the end of the evening and you have to get a perfect score in order to be able to leave. Otherwise, we keep you here indefinitely.”
He laughed shortly. “You’re kidding.” When she didn’t confirm or deny his half-serious question, Morgan glanced over to the triplet closest to him. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the man’s name. “She’s kidding, right?”
“With Kelsey, you can never be sure,” Travis answered with a straight face. “Here, you might find yourself needing this. I find that it helps.” He placed a drink in the patrolman’s hand.
Bryan picked it up from there, raising his own glass of wine high as he turned toward his wife. “To my beautiful wife, Kate,” he toasted, “and the newest member of our family.”
Morgan slanted what looked like an uneasy, confused glance toward Kelsey.
She almost laughed out loud. “He’s talking about the baby,” she said in case he thought he was being absorbed into the group.
“I knew that,” Morgan answered with lips that barely moved.
The only one without a glass of wine in her hand, Kate threaded her arm through the young officer’s.
“Come with me,” she coaxed. “Dinner’s about to get cold and there’s nothing I dislike more than a cold dinner.”
“I can think of a few things you dislike more,” Mike offered mischievously, only to be poked in the ribs by his sister. “Hey,” he protested. “What did you do that for?”
Rather than apologize or answer him, Kelsey glanced at his wife. “Sorry, didn’t meant to usurp your position. Old habits are hard to break,” she explained.
Miranda dismissed her sister-in-law’s words with a wave of her hand. “Don’t give it another thought,” she told Kelsey.
Morgan didn’t know what to make of the banter. It had been a long time since he’d been in any sort of company that remotely resembled a family setting. After his mother’s untimely death, his father had completely retreated into himself, venturing out only long enough to buy more alcohol with which to drown his sorrows. For a while, desperate for a sense of family and afraid that his father was going to kill himself by inches, Morgan had tried his best to bring his father around. But the situation just grew progressively worse until his father’s body rebelled against him and he had a stroke.
Morgan had been married at that point, with a brand-new baby, as well. Caring for his new family, working as a policeman and finding time to care for his father all but drained him. But for a while he managed to keep all the balls in the air.
They fell in short order, beginning with his father’s suicide. The older Donnelly offed himself with his service revolver while he, Morgan, slept in the next room. After the inquest—he was acquitted—Morgan tried to get his life back on track. But life, quite obviously, hadn’t felt like cooperating. Just when he had begun to entertain the hope that things were finally getting better, a drunk driver driving on the wrong side of the street in the middle of the day had extinguished all his hope in one fatal move.
Morgan had heard the report of the accident over his radio as dispatch called for the closest squad cars to get to the scene. He was instructed to help direct traffic until “the mess” could be cleared away. He hadn’t a clue that the drunk driver’s victims were his wife and daughter until he reached the area and saw the car he and Beth had picked out together in the middle of the intersection, bent and mangled practically beyond all recognition.
Paramedics had arrived several minutes before he had, and they were wheeling two gurneys by him. Both bodies were covered. Something about the small form beneath the sheet on the second gurney filled him with absolute fear. He stopped the paramedics and uncovered the body. A guttural cry of anguish rang in his ears as he raced to the first gurney and repeated the process. His partner later told him that the cry had come from him.
Morgan remembered his knees buckling. He remembered little else after that.
Beth and Amy, he was told, had both died instantly at first impact. And he, well, he had died by inches just like his father. A man couldn’t survive too long when his heart had been cut out of his chest.
That was the last time he was in the company of a family.
All this, wrapped in numbing loneliness, crowded his brain and marched through his soul as he sat at the dining-room table, listening to Kelsey and the rest of them exchange barbs that were laced with thinly disguised affection.
He didn’t belong here. The sooner he could leave, the better.
Intuitively feeling his discomfort and searching for a way to alleviate it, Kate inclined her head toward Morgan, who she’d placed next to her on her right.
“They can get a little overwhelming sometimes,” she agreed, as if they had already discussed the subject at length.
Morgan looked at the woman who was responsible for his being here in the first place. Were his thoughts that transparent?
“It takes a little getting used to,” she added. “But in the long run, it’s well worth it. They’re all very good people.”
Catching the last of it, Mike turned to his stepmother. “That’s because you made us that way.” He glanced toward his father and grinned. “No offense meant, Dad.”
Bryan laughed. “None taken.” He regarded his guest and felt that an explanation was in order. “Before Kate came into our lives, I was completely at my wit’s end with these guys. They were hell-r
aisers from the word go.”
Morgan eyed Kelsey uncertainly as she gladly picked up the narrative. “Mom is actually their stepmother,” she explained. “Dad initially hired her as a nanny. They had others before her, but legend has it that they kept dropping like flies—getting out of there the first chance they got.”
“Hearsay,” Travis protested. “Completely inadmissible in court.”
“Total exaggeration,” Trevor chimed in.
Mike laughed at his sister’s description of the events. “You make it sound as if you were there, Kelse. You weren’t even a gleam in Dad’s eye.”
Kelsey sniffed. “I’ve heard the story often enough to feel as if I lived through it,” she informed Mike. “To hear Dad tell it, he was ready to run off and leave you guys without giving a forwarding address.”
“The boys weren’t that bad,” Kate said, defending them. “They were going through a tough time, adjusting to life without their mother,” she recalled, her heart filling with sympathy the way it always did when she recalled the first days she’d spent with her stepsons. “They were just a little too energetic for the average nanny—”
“Or any other non-superhuman being who crossed their path,” Kelsey interjected.
“Do you have a family, Officer Donnelly?” Bryan asked, trying to head off another round of banter before it got out of hand.
He had a feeling that Kate had some very definite plans for Donnelly and he didn’t want the young policeman to be entirely overwhelmed by his family. They were coming on rather strong. He knew that meant they were comfortable in Donnelly’s company, but the officer might not understand that.
You would think that after more than two years, he wouldn’t feel as if his insides were being skewered when he faced that question, Morgan thought.
“No,” Morgan replied quietly but firmly.
“No family at all?” Cody’s small voice had popped up out of nowhere. It was full of sympathy, as was his face when he looked up at the stranger.
Because the question had come from the lone child at the table, Morgan couldn’t bring himself to be short, or to ignore the question outright, even though he wanted to. The wound was still too new, too raw, despite all the time that had gone by.
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