A Lawman for Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  He doubted if it would ever be any different.

  But the child was looking at him, his large eyes full of understanding that seemed far beyond his tender years. So Morgan confirmed what he’d said a moment ago. “No, no family at all,” he echoed.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Morgan saw the reaction on Kelsey’s face. Her eyes were full of sorrow and the thing he hated most: pity.

  It made him unaware that a rare thing had followed his answer. Silence was an unknown entity in the Marlowe household. But it came to the table now, if only for a moment.

  Chapter Eight

  A second later, the topic of conversation was deftly changed, shifting to something that everyone else at the table instinctively deemed would be a more neutral, comfortable subject for their guest.

  “You like sports, Morgan?” Mike asked, falling back on the universal topic that most men—and a fair share of women—liked to expound on.

  A vague shrug accompanied Morgan’s response. “Depends on which sport you’re talking about.”

  “Baseball,” Miranda interjected, the subject being near and dear to her heart. In his day, her father had been a famous pitcher and had recently been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

  Because he occasionally followed the game when he had a chance, Morgan replied in the affirmative. “Yeah, I like baseball.”

  Warming up to the subject, Bryan asked, “Angels or Dodgers?”

  No passion was involved either way for Morgan, so he said, “Both.”

  “Well, then, you’re in luck,” Kelsey informed him. “Mike here writes a sports column.” She flashed her oldest brother a quick smile. “He can get you tickets to any home game you want to see.”

  He didn’t want anyone going out of their way for him. The tickets would most likely be wasted anyway. He had no burning desire to see a game in person.

  Morgan shook his head. “Thanks, but I don’t get much of a chance to attend games.”

  Kelsey looked at him in surprise. Who didn’t like free tickets? Did he think they were trying to bribe him? If anything, it could be viewed as payment for his time spent on her mother’s car.

  “Maybe you should make time,” Kelsey suggested, deliberately keeping a smile on her lips.

  His expression, as well as his tone, was noncommittal. “I’ll think about it.”

  She wasn’t exactly sure why, but Kelsey felt that the reluctant policeman needed a gentle push in the right direction. Turning toward Mike, she asked, “When’s the next time the Angels are in town, Mike?”

  Mike didn’t have to check a schedule. He knew all the home games by heart, no matter what the sport. Home games allowed him to remain here with Miranda instead of traipsing around the country, following the native teams to other stadiums.

  “They’re home next Friday. They’re playing—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kelsey waved away the rest of her brother’s words. “Can you get two tickets to that game?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re planning on going, too?” Travis asked, surprised. As far as he knew, his sister wasn’t really that into sports.

  Kelsey’s eyes met Morgan’s and her mouth curved. “Yeah. I thought it might be fun.”

  As attractive as Kelsey Marlowe was, Morgan didn’t want to get sucked into going anywhere with her. Maybe because she was so attractive, he speculated. No sense in inviting trouble to pull up a chair at his table.

  He shook his head, wondering how many ways he could refuse an offer before they thought of him as rude. “No point in getting the tickets. I might still be working on the car,” he pointed out.

  “Glad you brought that up,” Bryan said, putting down his fork. “I won’t hear of you working on my wife’s car without getting paid for your trouble.”

  Morgan’s eyes met his. Bryan liked to think of himself as an excellent judge of character. As a lawyer, sometimes he had only a couple of minutes to make up his mind if a person was being truthful or artfully lying. From what he could tell, Donnelly looked like a straight arrow.

  “Not doing it for the money,” Morgan informed him, telling him the same thing he’d told Kelsey the other day. “I used to do it for extra money after school. Now it’s a hobby. I like to keep my hand in.”

  “I understand that,” Bryan told him. “But there’s no reason a man can’t make money at his hobby. Besides, I’d really feel a lot better about this if you gave me some sort of a reckoning when you finish.” Although genially stated, it was clear that there was no arguing with the man’s tone.

  Kelsey leaned into Morgan and said in a stage whisper, “You’d better do as he says. He’s a lawyer and he’ll talk your ear off if you don’t give in. My dad knows at least twenty different ways to approach any problem. Sometimes more.”

  “Twenty-five,” Bryan corrected with an enigmatic smile that was just mysterious enough to elude being pinned down. Morgan had no idea if the man was kidding or not.

  But he knew enough not to argue at his hosts’ table. “Fine. I’ll work up some sort of bill when I’m finished.” Although he’d already decided to pass the cost of the parts on, he’d intended to throw in the labor for free. Morgan made the promise to give Bryan a bill predominantly to end the discussion.

  Intuitively sensing what was on Morgan’s mind, Kelsey thought it only fair to warn the policeman. “My Dad’ll hold you to that, you know. He only looks easygoing.”

  Morgan nodded. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “I couldn’t help but notice the accent,” Trent commented. “How long have you been in California?”

  “A little more than two and a half years,” Morgan answered.

  “What brought you here? Other than the weather, I mean,” Trevor asked. He ran a restaurant that saw a good deal of traffic, both native and tourist, and people and what motivated them interested him perhaps almost as much as sports did Mike.

  “My car,” Morgan replied.

  The answer drew a laugh and drained away some of the residual tension still hovering around the room. The response was, Morgan thought, the better choice. Initially he was going to say he came here because it was as far away from “there” as he could go in the continental United States. But that would only give rise to more questions. Questions he didn’t want to answer.

  Conversation at the table continued in a more relaxed vein. Perforce dinner lasted longer than Morgan was accustomed to. Ordinarily, dinner was something he ate in snatches while doing something else—sitting on a stakeout, working on a car or watching something on TV. Dinner was not something that required his sitting down formally at a table and concentrating on what he was consuming.

  But he had to admit, his guard slipping just a fraction of an inch, he found sharing the meal with the Marlowes different and maybe, just maybe, somewhat enjoyable, as well.

  When it was over and Morgan rose to his feet, offering to clear the table and “take care of the dishes,” Kate merely patted his hand and told him not to worry about it.

  “You’re a guest here, Morgan. That means no work. Besides, I have sons, daughters-in-law, a future daughter-in-law,” she nodded at Shana, “and a dishwasher to handle what you see here. None of them would mind helping me, right?” Her bright, animated eyes swept over the other occupants at the table.

  “What about Kelsey?” Travis wanted to know. “Why isn’t she included in this ‘willing’ group?”

  “Kelsey came to the hospital, so she’s off the hook,” Kate said serenely.

  “We would have come to the hospital if we’d known,” Trevor protested. It was obvious that he wanted her to know that. To remember that each one of them loved her dearly and that she was important to them.

  “Water under the bridge, boys,” Kelsey said cheerfully.

  “I can think of something else that, with very little effort, could be in the water under the bridge,” Mike commented, eyeing Kelsey pointedly.

  “Don’t threaten your sister with a policeman here, Mike
,” Bryan said, doing his best to sound serious. “She disappears, he’ll remember.”

  “Kelsey, why don’t you take Morgan into the living room?” Kate suggested.

  Shana, Venus and Miranda were already stacking the dinner plates while Laurel was busy cleaning up the minute crumbs that encircled Cody’s plate. Miranda nudged Mike, indicating that the effort was not restricted to a single gender.

  “Perhaps offer him a drink?” Kate added, looking at her daughter.

  “If he has to put up with Kelsey on a one-on-one basis, he’s going to need more than one,” Travis told his mother, joining his fiancée. He looked at Morgan. “The liquor cabinet is over on the left as you walk in.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Kelsey apologized as they went into the living room.

  Morgan assumed that she was referring to the conversation at the table. It had gone on for a while. Somewhat amused, he asked, “Which part?”

  She watched him for a long moment. “I was referring to when Cody asked you if you really had no one.”

  Morgan merely shrugged. “He’s just a little boy. He doesn’t know better.”

  Well, that was forgiving of him. He’d surprised her. He didn’t seem the type to differentiate between children and adults.

  “I’m also sorry that you don’t have anyone,” she added in a lower voice.

  Again he shrugged, but this time he glanced away. The lack of eye contact bothered her. “It happens.”

  His tone was dismissive, but her gut told her that he was withholding something. “How did it happen to you?”

  “Isn’t this what you were just apologizing for?”

  “I apologized because Cody said what he did out in the open. This is in private.” She nodded, indicating the room. “Between you and me.”

  Their eyes met. “What if I don’t want something private between you and me?”

  A lesser person would have flinched, if not backed down altogether. But she had grown up in a love-torment relationship with her brothers and it had hardened her a great deal. Kelsey returned his gaze, never wavering for a moment.

  The tension was back. But it was a different kind of tension that crackled and sizzled between them. It made her acutely aware of just how close he was standing.

  She took a breath. “Don’t you?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  Damn, where had this sudden need come from? He neither expected it nor welcomed it. He certainly didn’t want it. Simply being aware of it was disconcerting enough.

  “You don’t want to get mixed up with me, Kelsey,” he warned her.

  Kelsey knew a challenge when she heard one.

  Oh God, she loved a challenge. Just hearing Morgan say the words heightened the warm, fluid desire suddenly and capriciously flowing through her veins.

  “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” she said philosophically. “The point is, you don’t know me well enough to say that.”

  “No,” he admitted, granting her that, “but I know me well enough to say it.”

  Had he come right out and said that he was attracted to her, it would have most likely made her step back—although she wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that. The fact that he was pushing her away for her “own good” had just the opposite effect. It utterly intrigued her. She’d always wanted what she couldn’t have.

  “Maybe,” she allowed. “But I like making up my own mind, Officer Donnelly.”

  He knew where this was going. And part of him wanted it to. Still, because he had a conscience, he warned her again. “You’re going to regret this.”

  Not at first. I’d bet my life on that. She could feel her pulse accelerating at the promise of what was to come.

  “We’ll see,” she murmured.

  Morgan couldn’t really say if he was the one who ultimately made the first move or if Kelsey had. He vaguely believed that it was him, but he couldn’t have sworn to it.

  Whatever space there had been between them evaporated completely. Within the confines of an erratic heartbeat, his lips were against hers.

  He was also aware that for however long the kiss went on, time stood still. The moment was filled with an incredible rush of warmth and a surge of desire, desire that had not been aroused or even so much as nominally nudged for the past two and a half years.

  Ever since he’d buried his wife and child, and his heart.

  Kelsey’s heart slammed into her rib cage with the force of an aimed ground-to-missile rocket. For perhaps the first time in her life, she’d gotten more than she’d bargained for.

  Kelsey drew her head back, all but completely overwhelmed by what she’d just experienced. She had to glance down to reassure herself that the ground was still there beneath her feet and that it hadn’t been fried to a crisp, the way she’d thought it—and she—had.

  “What’s your pleasure?” she heard herself ask in a shaky voice. The look on Donnelly’s face told her that she needed to elaborate. It took massive control to keep a telltale color from creeping into her cheeks. “To drink,” she added with a bit too much emphasis. “What would you like to drink?” As an afterthought, she waved her hand toward the honey-colored liquor cabinet.

  “Nothing,” he answered. “I don’t think I should have anything.” He hadn’t told her about his father, and now wasn’t the time. Instead, he fell back on a typical explanation. “I’m leaving soon and—”

  Kelsey stopped him before he could finish. “You leave ‘soon’ and I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My brothers’ll tease me that I chased you away.” Even though they were all grown-up, there was no end to the things her brothers found to tease her about.

  Kelsey had a feisty element to her. He’d tasted it in her kiss. Even when she’d leaned into him, there hadn’t been a hint of surrender. He had a feeling she was hell on wheels in any situation.

  “You do that often? Chase guys away?”

  She laughed shortly. “Most of the time, my brothers were the ones who chased guys away.” And then, because she was highly protective of them just as they were of her, and she didn’t want Donnelly getting the wrong impression of her brothers, Kelsey added, “They tend to be overprotective.”

  “I didn’t get that impression.”

  “That’s because they probably think you have the good sense not to want to go out with me.”

  Damn but this woman was sexy, and just about the last thing he needed in his life. “Is that what it is—good sense?”

  “According to my brothers,” she emphasized, her words emerging slowly.

  “I seem to recall you offering to go to a ball game with me,” he reminded her.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Things she’d promised herself to avoid melted away. “They don’t see that as a date.” Her mouth got exceedingly dry. Like cotton in single-digit humidity. “What do you see it as?”

  He heard a sigh and abruptly realized that it had come from him.

  “Something that’s not going to happen,” he told her matter-of-factly. “The vice president is arriving in Orange County for a fund-raiser. Every available man and woman in blue is being asked to turn up to make sure that the visit goes smoothly.” Otherwise, he thought, there was more than a fifty-fifty chance that he’d wind up proving her brothers wrong, despite his own common sense and logical intentions.

  Disappointment skewered her. Kelsey did her best not to show it and even succeeded in sounding somewhat nonchalant. “Why didn’t you just say so earlier?”

  He shrugged, as if his interest in the subject was barely engaged. “Maybe I was just curious to see how it would play out.” His eyes met hers. “I did say I couldn’t go,” he reminded her.

  Was he just jerking her around? Or was there something else at work here? Kelsey was familiar with self-preservation. Was that what he was trying to do? Was he afraid to make a connection?

  Welcome to the club, Donnelly, she thought.

  Out loud, she said, “Because
you said you’d still be working on my mother’s car. That meant you were making a personal choice and choosing not to go. A work detail isn’t personal.”

  “So you don’t mind being rejected if it’s because the VP is coming, but you do mind if I say I can’t make it because I’m busy.”

  For reasons of pride, Kelsey was about to deny his assumption, then thought better of it. Better to keep things simple, she decided.

  “Something like that.” And then, seeing his reaction, she laughed. “Don’t look so concerned, Officer Donnelly. I’m not measuring you for a formal tuxedo and looking at matching rings. I just want to have a little fun at a ball game.” And maybe a little more afterward. “The last thing in the world I want to do is become emotionally involved with a policeman.”

  She said the last with a finality that caught his attention.

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  This time she was the one who shrugged carelessly. Or tried to make it look that way. “Let’s just say that I discovered that Newport Beach’s ‘finest’ didn’t live up to its name.”

  “How so?”

  “You get to ask questions but I don’t?”

  “I do this for a living,” he replied solemnly. “But you can ask questions, too.”

  Looking into his eyes, she could see what wasn’t being said. “You just don’t have to answer them, right?”

  His mouth curved. God help him, but he liked her. Liked her spirit. “Right. Neither do you.”

  She rolled that around in her head for a moment. “Sounds fair,” she pronounced. “So you’re really working next Friday?”

  “Yes, I’m really working next Friday.”

  “Dodgers are in town the following weekend.” She remembered Mike mentioning that. “Anyone need guarding the Friday after next?”

  He didn’t know what it was about this woman, or why he felt this fire lighting inside of him. He knew this wasn’t going to go anywhere. Couldn’t go anywhere. For a number of reasons. It only made sense to back away right now. Make up some excuse and pull the curtain down.