“No, I’m not,” she protested with a sad smile. “I just expect you to get fed up with holding my hand whenever I wind up having this happen to me,” she told him honestly. Her eyes smiled as she looked at him. “I’d never confuse you with anyone else.” Sabrina looked down at the one glass of wine she allowed herself to have whenever she came here. There were no answers in the light pink liquid. “Why do they keep running out on me, Matthew? What’s wrong with me?” she asked in a very small, defeated voice.
Matt didn’t bother with the menu. He knew what the restaurant had to offer by heart. The people who ran Haven knew when not to mess with a good thing and had left it unchanged for the past few years.
When the waiter approached their table, Matt ordered the lemon chicken. His mother echoed, “Make that two.” Once the waiter retreated, only then did Matt answer his mother’s question.
He hated seeing her like this. And hated what he had to tell her, even though they both already knew this. “You have lousy taste in men,” he told her honestly. “And a good heart,” he added to temper the harsher remark. “No matter how many times this happens to you, no matter how many men take everything you have to give and then disappear, you just can’t seem to make yourself believe that not everyone is like you, that someone could actually be cruel on purpose.”
His mother laughed shortly. “I guess that makes me a sucker.”
“No,” he told her carefully, “just a good-hearted person who really needs to be a little more cautious about opening up.”
She began to speak, then waited until the waiter who’d returned with the basket of lemon chicken pieces that was to be their dinner left again.
“It’s just that I get so lonely sometimes,” she confessed quietly. Bright blue eyes looked up at him. “I miss your father.”
“I don’t think he’d be too happy about what you’re going through, either, Mom,” Matt pointed out patiently. “Listen, I have an idea. Why don’t you do some volunteer work at the local hospital?” he suggested. “They could use the help and it’ll make you feel as if you’re doing something useful for people. That’s a plus. You also might run into a better class of people than you do at your present job. Definitely another plus.”
But Sabrina shook her head. “I can’t do that and work,” she protested. “My job takes up a great deal of my time.”
The place where she worked—a bar named Sparky’s—was not the place where he wanted his mother. It was the last in a long line of less than A-list places where she’d worked.
“Waiting tables at that...club—” he finally settled on the word rather than calling it a bar “—also puts you right out there with a whole unsavory class of people. Men just looking for women to take advantage of.”
She pressed her lips together. “Meaning me.”
“Listen.” He leaned in closer. “You can quit that job. I have some money put away—”
“No, no, no, that’s out of the question.” She was his mother, Matthew wasn’t supposed to have to take care of her. “I won’t have you spending your hard-earned money on me—”
“My money, Mom,” he told her. “I get to spend it the way I want to.” He smiled at her, remembering the good times—and there had been good times. She’d tried very hard to give him a decent upbringing and he’d never doubted that she loved him. The rest of it was hard to take. “Can’t think of a better way than helping you out.”
“I can,” Sabrina told him firmly. She placed her hand over his and patted it. “Your taking time out of your busy day to see me is all I want from you. That’s already more than a lot of sons would do,” she insisted. And then she forced a smile to her lips, putting up a brave front for him and trying at the same time to convince herself that from now on, it was going to be different. “I’ll try to do better,” she promised.
He nodded and pretended as if he believed her, but this was nothing new. His mother had made the same promise before, time and again, and she’d meant it.
But each and every time she’d wind up losing her soft heart to the first charismatic con man who crossed her path.
It was as if there was some kind of electronic bulletin board with her picture on it. The note beneath it urged anyone with larcenous tendencies to come find her because she was the perfect mark.
His mother had good intentions, but this pattern of hers wouldn’t change unless he found a way to do something about it.
What he needed, Matt told himself, was to find a way for his mother to mingle with a better element of people, he thought. That was when he suddenly remembered the invitation his partner had tendered. He had his doubts if the cocky detective actually meant it once she had the time to think it over, but whether or not she meant it, he decided he needed to take her up on it.
Or rather, his mother needed him to take her up on it.
“By the way,” Matt said casually as he selected another piece of chicken from the basket—he favored drumsticks—“we’ve been invited to the former police chief’s house on Saturday.”
Sabrina’s light green eyes widened in surprise. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“If something was wrong,” Matt answered, doing his best not to laugh at his mother’s dazed expression, “we’d be going to the precinct, not his house. Turns out that my new partner’s one of his nieces and the former chief of police has a real penchant for having a lot of people over to his house for brunch and other get-togethers. Word has it that the man’s one hell of a cook.” A deep fondness filled his eyes as he grinned at his mother. “He probably can’t hold a candle to you, but we might as well give the guy a chance. So what d’you say? Will you go with me?”
When Sabrina didn’t answer right away, he prodded her a little. “Could be a lot of fun, being around a house full of honest people for a change—and me, of course,” he winked.
As if he had a dishonest bone in his body, Sabrina thought with a gentle laugh. She was and always had been very, very proud of him. Matthew was the very best part of her.
Sabrina leaned over the table and their basket of communal chicken and kissed his cheek. “You always could make everything all better just by talking to me, Matthew.”
“Maybe I should tape-record my voice, leave you with that to listen to when I’m not around.”
The smile on her lips was also reflected in her eyes. When she looked like that, his mother was downright beautiful. But, beautiful or not, she didn’t deserve to be taken advantage of the way she was. And she certainly didn’t deserve to have it happen to her over and over again. Maybe some time with the Cavanaughs would help her break that pattern, let her see the way decent people treated one another. Who knew—it might even help to build up her confidence.
“It’s worth a try,” she laughed, referring to the tape.
“Yeah, maybe it is, at that.” Matt was only half kidding.
* * *
“’Morning, Good,” Abilene said cheerfully as he slid into his chair and took his place behind his desk. “By the way, my mother says thank you for the invitation. She’ll be very happy to attend the chief’s brunch this Saturday.”
About to get started with the files he’d left on his desk last night, Abilene took a sip of his coffee. That was when he took a good look at his partner for the first time.
He wasn’t much on noticing a woman’s clothes, but he was fairly certain that he’d seen his partner wearing this same outfit yesterday. In his experience, most women didn’t wear the same thing two days in a row unless they hadn’t been home the night before.
He eyed her over the rim of his container. “Did you go home last night?”
Kendra looked up ruefully. It wasn’t something she was happy about acknowledging. Sleep last night had come when she’d least expected it and she’d wound up with her head on the desk, getting about four hours, perhaps less. It hadn’t been restful. Her neck was killing her this morning and she was pretty sure that beneath her sandy bangs was the imprint of a staple.
None of
that put her in a good mood, or even a tolerable one. The edges of her temper were already pretty frayed. And it was still early.
“Let’s get one thing straight. You’re my temporary partner, not my guardian angel,” she told him.
“Temporary, huh?” he repeated. “Is that what you think?” If it was, that explained a lot, he reasoned.
She shrugged, not about to discuss it when she felt so overwhelmingly underarmed. Her mind fuzzy, she was still having trouble focusing.
“Everything’s temporary one way or another. Who knows?” She threw the ball into his court. “Things might not work out and you might be the one asking for another partner.”
She was a Cavanaugh. He wouldn’t jeopardize his career like that. You didn’t get very far by complaining about the chief’s niece.
“Or you might.” And that, he knew by the way she’d said the word temporary, was a far more likely scenario in this case.
“There’s that, too,” Kendra agreed with a dismissive sigh he couldn’t quite interpret. “What was that you said about your mother?” she asked, looking for a way to change the subject.
“I said she wanted me to thank you for the invitation to the chief’s house.” Had the woman been here all night? he wondered. Working on the case? She certainly didn’t look as if she’d found anything for her trouble. He doubted she’d be quite this surly if she had.
Why was it so hard for her to think clearly? Kendra wondered, annoyed with herself and the fog that had set in on her brain. She used to be able to get by on four hours’ sleep—just not four hours grabbed on top of a desk, she reminded herself.
What had Abilene just said about his mother? Oh, right. That the other woman had extended her thanks. She stitched together the rest of the conversation, then, just to be clear, asked, “Then she’s coming?”
“Took a little persuading—my mother really doesn’t like to feel as if she’s imposing—” he explained, to forestall any further misunderstanding.
“Trust me, from what I know about Andrew Cavanaugh’s get-togethers, she’s not,” Kendra assured him.
“But she is coming,” he said, finishing his sentence despite the fact that they seemed to be talking over one another here. He paused for a second, then asked, “You were serious, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Right now, given her present state of nonclarity, she wondered what had possessed her to invite Abilene, but then she recalled that he’d told her about his mother’s penchant for getting taken by the men she let into her life. She supposed, in a way, Abilene’s mother and she had something in common. The men in their lives had ultimately disappointed them.
Except that in her case, it wasn’t so cut-and-dried. She was disappointed because, on some existential plane, she had failed Jason. If she hadn’t, she would have been able to make him come around and renew his hold on life. Instead, he’d gone ahead and romanced a gun, using it to end his life, rather than fighting his way back from the depths of the black hole he’d slipped into.
“So how do you want to work this?” he was asking as she distanced herself from Jason and the memory of that awful day, of finding him like that, lifeless and bleeding.
She took a breath, then focused her attention back on the case. “Well, right now I’m having a lot of photos of Burnett printed up so that we can show it around in all the train and bus stations and at all the airline terminals at the local airport. This way, if he’s leaving town any other way than by car, we’ve got him.”
“Great.” He nodded, but that wasn’t really what he was asking. “But I meant on Saturday. At your uncle’s house.” She really wasn’t here, was she, he thought, looking into her eyes again. He couldn’t help wondering what was going on in her mind.
Kendra blinked. It took her a second to refocus her thoughts, shifting them away from the case and reluctantly onto her personal life. She almost corrected him about Andrew being her uncle—except that, when she came right down to it, she really couldn’t. He was her uncle. Not in name only, but in actuality.
It was just going to take a lot of getting used to.
“Oh, that. Well, I could meet you at your place, or you could—”
She was about to say that he and his mother could meet her at her place, but then that meant she’d have to give him her address and she wasn’t in a place emotionally where she was willing to give out that kind of information to him just yet. She preferred doling out personal information slowly. When she knew Abilene better—and he was her partner of record for a while—then she’d let him know where she lived.
Maybe.
“Why don’t I swing by your place, pick you and your mother up and we’ll go from there?” she suggested pleasantly.
“All right.” He wasn’t about to ask her why she’d doubled back so abruptly. He had a feeling he knew. The woman was very guarded and she didn’t immediately “work well and play well with others,” as they used to say on grade-school report cards from decades gone by. “Give me an approximate time so I can pick up my mother first and have her back in time for when you do your ‘swinging by,’ Good.”
She could feel her temper shortening drastically. She wished he wouldn’t call her that, but obviously the more she asked, the more he seemed to “forget.” The only way to deal with this was to ride it out.
For some reason, while Abilene wasn’t being exactly sarcastic outright, it was pretty damn close, she realized. Why? Kendra silently demanded. Was he reacting to something she’d said, or—?
She was overthinking again. Her brothers and sisters always said that was her biggest fault. Thinking things to death. She hadn’t always been like that. But having a fiancé kill himself on what was to have been their wedding day sent ripples through a person’s life. Big ripples.
There were times, in the very beginning, when she’d secretly marveled that she was simply putting one foot in front of the other and not just huddled somewhere in a fetal position.
After that horrible accident, which had claimed the lives of four of his fellow firefighters, when Jason lay there in the hospital bed, so much of his body scarred by the fire, she’d come to see him every day. She and her family had been his cheering section and she had sworn to him that it didn’t matter to her if he had one leg or two, didn’t matter if he met her at the altar in a wheelchair or on crutches, just as long as he was there.
She loved him, she’d insisted, not just some part of him, or, in this case, a missing part of him.
It had gotten to the point where she thought he believed her, but obviously she’d failed somehow, failed to convince him, failed to save him. He hadn’t believed her when she’d told him that she loved him, that she would be there for him and that she wanted to help him regain his enthusiasm for life.
If he’d believed her, wouldn’t he still be here?
The thought vibrated in her brain. Tears gathered in her eyes.
“Hey, you okay?”
Abruptly, Kendra came back to her surroundings. She noted the concern in Abilene’s voice. She also realized that in her momentary lapse, his butt had somehow gotten planted on her desk. Obviously, he’d come around when she hadn’t answered him and had sat on her desk to look down into her eyes.
Not only that, but he had one of her hands in both of his and she knew he wasn’t just trying to shake it.
Something warm and unbidden rose up in response within her. Startled, she was quick to shut it down and pulled her hand away.
“I’m fine,” Kendra retorted.
Ordinarily, he would have retreated and said “the hell with it.” But something in her expression caught his attention. And captured his concern. Something was out of sync.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “For a woman who’s a million miles away.”
Damn but having him as a partner had a definite downside. During the past couple of years, she could count on Joe dozing at his desk half the time. He certainly didn’t play Twenty Questions and probe her like this.
�
��I was just thinking,” she tossed off carelessly.
He laughed shortly. “I kind of figured that.”
“Good for you.” Rising abruptly, Kendra pushed her chair in. The armrests banged jarringly against the desk. “Let’s see if the people where Summer Miller worked know if her boyfriend was hot-tempered enough to kill her.”
Sounded like as good a place to start this morning as any. Abilene gestured toward the doorway. “Lead the way.”
Her eyes narrowed. Did he think she was waiting for his permission?
“Thanks,” she said frostily. “I will.” Lengthening her stride, she walked out of the office quickly.
“Hey, Good,” he called after her, increasing his own stride. It didn’t take much to catch up to her. He saw her shoulders tense in response to the name he called her, but pretended not to. “Did I say something to set you off?” he asked.
You mean today? Or just in general? “Yes.”
“What?” he asked, curious.
“Everything,” she fired back at him, stabbing at the Down button on the wall between the two closed elevator doors.
“In other words, you don’t want me to talk?”
She came very close to saying yes, but she knew damn well that she was being unfair to him. Just because she had issues didn’t mean that she should take it out on him. Or chew him out.
It wasn’t his fault she wasn’t woman enough to save Jason.
“Sorry,” she apologized with a heartfelt sigh. “I get crabby when I don’t get enough sleep. I didn’t mean to make you feel I was chewing you out.”
“You want to go home and catch a couple of hours?” he offered. “I can handle questioning Summer’s employer and coworkers,” he told her, then added, “The lieutenant doesn’t need to know,” in case she thought he was planning on telling their boss.
“I can handle my own problems,” she informed him.
Talk about being touchy, he thought. “Didn’t say you couldn’t. Just thought you might handle things better with a couple of hours’ sleep under your belt.”
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