SB01 - The Guardian's Mission

by Shirlee McCoy

  “I’ll be fine from here.” Marti spoke quietly as they approached the church’s open front door. It seemed she actually thought he was going to leave her there.

  “I know, but I think I’ll join you anyway.”

  “You might want to rethink that. I’m planning to volunteer in the toddler nursery.” They might not need her there, but at least closed in the nursery, Martha knew she could avoid the questions her women’s Sunday School class was bound to ask.

  “And you think that will scare me away?”

  “I’ve seen lesser men felled by the prospect.”

  Tristan laughed, the sound dry and a little harsh. It had been a while since he’d found anything to be truly amused about. Life as Sky Davis hadn’t been something to laugh at. “Good thing I’m not lesser men.”

  She leaned back, giving him a slow appraising look that was more joke than flirtation. “Yes, it is.”

  He laughed again, hooking his good arm around her waist and tugging her the last few feet to the church door. “Thanks for the laugh, Sunshine.”

  “Thanks for playing bodyguard. Of course you know that as soon as church is over, I’m sending you on your way.”

  “I know you’ll try.”

  “Martha!” The strident male voice greeted them as they stepped into the building. The speaker, a lean blonde with hard eyes and a weak jaw, hurried toward them, his gaze on Martha. “I’ve been trying to call you all weekend.”

  Marti stiffened as he approached, but her smile was pleasant. Unless Tristan missed his guess, this was the fiancé. The ex-fiancé.

  “Yes. I know.”

  “And you didn’t think it necessary to answer the phone, or to return the calls?”

  “A lot of people were calling me, Brian. I couldn’t get to everyone.”

  Brian. Yep, the ex-fiancé.

  “If you organized your time better that wouldn’t be a problem. What you should have done was make a list and—”

  “Prioritize. Yes, Brian. I know. Fortunately, that’s not something you need to concern yourself about anymore.” Marti smiled again, her teeth gritted in an obvious effort to keep from saying something she’d regret.

  Tristan had no such compunction. “I’m sure you did prioritize, Sunshine. There’s no doubt in my mind you managed to contact the people who warranted it.”

  Brian frowned, seeming to notice Tristan for the first time since the conversation had begun. His dark gaze dropped to the arm Tristan had wrapped around Marti’s waist, his frown deepening. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “You’re right. We haven’t. I’m Tristan Sinclair.” He offered his hand, not surprised that Brian put a little too much strength in the shake. He was a man who seemed determined to be the top dog. Unfortunately, he was probably closer to being the runt of the litter.

  “Brian McMath. Martha’s good friend.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call us friends, Brian.”

  “Of course we’re friends. Just because we broke up doesn’t mean we don’t still care about each other. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking that we could—”

  “Don’t we need to get to the nursery?” Tristan cut off what threatened to be a long-winded attempt to win Martha back.

  “Yes, we do. Nice seeing you, Brian.” Martha moved away, and Tristan started to follow only to be pulled up short by Brian’s hand on his shoulder.

  “I think we need to talk.”

  “Do you?” Tristan eyed the other man, wondering what Martha had seen in him. Obviously he had an overblown sense of importance and a penchant for cutting people down.

  “You may not know this, but Martha and I were engaged.”

  “I’d heard talk of it.” While Tristan lay in a hospital bed recovering from surgery on his arm, his brother Grayson had spent the previous day gathering information. A Lakeview local who’d transplanted from their childhood home in Forest, Virginia, Grayson was a lawyer and good at getting the information he wanted.

  “Good. Then you’ll understand my concern. She’s vulnerable right now. It’s going to take her a while to get over our breakup.”

  “I heard Martha broke up with you. I doubt it’ll take her long to recover from that.”

  Brian’s face went scarlet and his eyes flashed. “No one broke up with anyone. It was a mutual decision.”

  “If that’s the way you want to see it.” Tristan didn’t know why he felt the urge to needle the man. Sure, the guy was arrogant, but most of the time Tristan ignored people like him. Then again, most of the time, he didn’t have to deal with arrogant jerks masquerading as caring Christians.

  “Look, my point is that Martha needs time to recover from everything that’s happened to her. A relationship at this point would only be a rebound reaction to her loss. It’s probably best if you give her some space.”

  Space? Not likely. At least, not until Johnson was found. “I think I’ll let her tell me that. If you’ll excuse me, I promised to help her this morning.” He strode away before McMath could respond, just catching sight of Martha’s deep blue dress as she hurried into a room at the end of the hall.

  Tristan followed, peering into the nursery and grimacing as he caught sight of his worst nightmare—fifteen kids the size of peanuts waddling around crying, giggling and babbling. Cute, but dangerous. He’d learned that the hard way on more than one occasion.

  He stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind him. Three women eyed him with curiosity. The fourth studiously avoided glancing in his direction. Too bad. He wouldn’t mind getting another look in Martha’s gold-green eyes.

  “Ladies.” He tipped his head in greeting and used his good arm to lift a rambunctious little girl from the floor. The angelic-looking kid gave him an impish grin and popped him in the nose. “Hey, that hurt!”

  “Better watch out for that one. She’s got a reputation for making boys cry.” An older lady with salt-and-pepper hair and amused blue eyes pulled the little girl from his arm. “I’m Anna Patrick.”

  “Tristan Sinclair.”

  “Nice to meet you, Tristan, but I don’t think you’re on the nursery roster for this morning.”

  “I’m with Martha.”

  “With Martha?” Anna and the other women glanced in Martha’s direction.

  Martha’s face went three shades of red, but she managed a smile. “We’re…friends. Tristan offered to lend a hand in here today.”

  “A hand is right.” A thirty-something blond woman with bright brown eyes and a quick smile gestured to Tristan’s sling. “You’re going to have a hard time with only one hand. This is a busy bunch of kids.”

  “He looks like the kind of guy who can handle anything.” A sharp-faced brunette eyed Tristan from a rocking chair across the room. He recognized the interest in her gaze, the sharp gleam of a huntress on the prowl. He’d met plenty of women like her, had even dated a few. But women like her weren’t what he was looking for. Not anymore. Now, he thought he might like to find someone more solid, more down-to-earth.

  More like…well, Martha.

  There. It was out. A truth he’d been avoiding since he’d awakened after surgery on his arm. Martha had been the first one he’d thought of. The only one he’d really wanted to see. Sure, he’d made conversation with his parents, his brothers and sister, the doctors and nurses and coworkers who’d been a streaming distraction while he lay in the hospital bed, but it had been Martha he’d wondered about. Martha he’d pictured over and over again. Gold-green eyes, wild curls. Strength and determination, wrapped up in a very attractive package. Thinking about Martha, wondering how she’d fared after the raid, had provided Tristan with more of a distraction than any of his visitors. Much as he might tell himself he was here to catch Johnson, the truth was a little more complicated. Sure, he wanted to stop Johnson, but he also wanted to keep Martha safe.

  And get to know her.

  No matter how bad of an idea it might be.

  And it was a bad idea. The life he led didn’t lend itself
to family. It was stressful and hard. Not just on the men and women who worked the job, but on their families, as well.

  “Why don’t you come have a seat in one of the rocking chairs.” The brunette waved him over. “You can tell us how you and Martha met.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve had a few too many days of forced rest. I think I’ll stand for a while.”

  “Did you break your arm?” The brunette didn’t seem to be getting the hint that Tristan wasn’t interested, and Martha seemed determined to ignore them both rather than join in the conversation.

  “Yes.” He didn’t add that a bullet had shattered the bone and that rods and pins were currently keeping things in place.

  “You’re probably one of those extreme-sports junkies. Skydiving. Snowboarding. That kind of stuff.”

  “Actually, I prefer long hikes in the mountains.” He crossed the room and knelt on the floor next to Martha who was building a block tower with one of the toddlers.

  She met his gaze, acknowledging his comment with a smile. There were freckles on her nose and cheeks that he’d noticed the first time he’d seen her. Cute freckles to go with the curls that were escaping the sleek hairstyle she’d managed.

  “What?” She brushed a hand down her cheek. “Is there something on my face?”

  “Just freckles.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t remind me. They were the bane of my elementary-school years. Jeremiah Bentley used to call me Paint Splatter. Eventually that was shortened to Splat.”

  “Jeremiah must have had a serious crush on you.”

  “Jeremiah was a pest. Until tenth grade. Then he was captain of the football team. At that point I decided it was better to have him call me Splat than to not have him call me at all.”

  He chuckled, pulling a little boy away from another child’s toy. “Captain of the football team, huh? And you were what? Head cheerleader?”

  “Cheerleader? Hardly. I was more likely to be hiking through the woods than dancing and flipping in front of a crowd.” Martha didn’t add what she was thinking—that she’d never been one of the popular crowd, and that growing up without a mother had made it difficult to figure out the kind of girlie things that were so valued in high school. Makeup, hair, clothes. She’d learned them all by trial and error. And, she had to admit, there’d been a lot more error than success.

  “Martha, a cheerleader? You don’t know how funny that is.” Jenny Gardner brushed a thick wave of dark hair from her forehead and stood, moving across the room, her hips swaying in her perfectly fitting knee-length skirt. She looked good and she knew it. But then, Jenny had never had a bad hair day in her life. Or at least, not in the fifteen years Martha had known her.

  “Funny? Why?”

  Of course, Tristan had to ask, and, of course, Jenny was more than willing to answer. Martha had seen the way she’d been eyeing the man in their midst. Like a chocoholic at a candy buffet.

  “Martha was a science geek. Always outside traipsing around in the forest, coming into school with twigs and leaves in her hair, mud from feet to knees. I don’t think she’d have ever cleaned up enough to be in a cheerleader uniform.”

  “A science geek, huh?” Tristan met Marti’s gaze, his eyes bright blue and assessing, scanning her face, touching on the freckles that she had always hated. Under his intense but clearly approving stare, they didn’t seem quite so bad.

  “Half the time the poor dear looked more like a guy than a girl with her baggy pants and hooded sweatshirts.”

  Martha’s cheeks heated, but she refused to be pulled into Jenny’s grade-school behavior. Sure, she’d been a geek, but that was years ago. Now she was an accomplished, confident adult. Really. She was. “That was a long time ago, Jenny.”

  “True, but you still do love to wander around in the woods. That is how you ended up involved in that…incident…Friday, isn’t it?”

  “Incident? Marti could have been killed! I’d call that a little more than an incident.” Anna jumped into the conversation, and Martha let her take over. She was too tired to go a verbal round with Jenny.

  Martha stood, brushing off her dress. Deep sapphire blue, it had been a spur-of-the-moment purchase. One she’d regretted immediately. Brian had liked it, of course. The slim-fitting sheath had an air of sophistication that made her seem almost elegant. Almost.

  And that was the problem. No matter how hard she tried, she could never measure up to women like Jenny who oozed style from every pore. In her opinion, it was better not to try at all than to end up looking like a want-to-be-fashionista.

  She sighed, gently tugged a toddler from the nursery door. Why she was even thinking about her lack of style, she didn’t know. She’d accepted herself for who she was long ago and didn’t bother making apologies for it. So she liked to hike and camp more than she liked to shop for clothes. Was that a crime?

  “You and I have a lot in common.” Tristan moved up beside her, a pigtailed little girl in his arm.

  “Do we?”

  “I was a science geek, too.”

  “You? No way.” She laughed, sure he only said that because he thought Jenny’s comments had bothered her. They hadn’t. Much.

  “I was president of the science club three years running.”

  “Not four?”

  “I would have been, but Sheryl Greeson wanted the position and I decided she could have it.”

  “She was cute?”

  “Beautiful. And smart. Of course, she only had eyes for the captain of the football team. I wound up going to the prom with a cheerleader who had a thing for geeks.”

  She doubted it was Tristan’s “geekiness” that had appealed to his prom date. “Well, I can one-up you on that. I didn’t go to the prom.”

  The words slipped out before she thought them through, and she winced. She’d made herself seem pathetic.

  Before she could try to rectify the error, Jenny spoke up. “Marti was too busy working. She was always one of those goody-goody daddy-girls. Too busy helping out at her father’s store to cut loose and have a little fun.”

  “Some kids have to work, Jenny. That’s just the way it is.”

  Cries filled the room as one toddler after another decided to take up a chorus of tears. Much as Marti hated to hear them cry, at least the sound kept Jenny from commenting further.

  Or Marti from saying anything else that might give Tristan the idea that she’d been a pitifully awkward teen.

  Not that it mattered what ideas he had. She’d dated enough to know that she didn’t want to waste more of her time mooning over a man. She’d been engaged long enough to know that it wasn’t worth the hassle. No, from this point forward, she was man free and happy about it.

  Tristan caught her eye as she scooped up one of the criers and smiled the kind of smile meant to melt female hearts. Marti’s heart didn’t melt, though. Maybe it softened a little, but it definitely didn’t melt.

  Because she really was happy about not having a man in her life. And she really planned on staying that way.

  SEVEN

  Church service started peacefully enough. Aside from the fact that Marti was sitting next to the best-looking man in the building, the day seemed like any other Sunday. If she tried hard enough, and avoided looking at Tristan, she might even be able to forget that she’d almost been killed two days before, that a murderer was wandering free and that he might be coming to find her.

  “Doll! I thought you were staying home today.” The raspy sound of her father’s voice made Marti smile, and she stood to greet him as he moved down the aisle toward her. Though he’d been to her house the previous day, his eyes were lit as if he and Marti hadn’t seen each other in months.

  That was her dad. Her biggest fan. Her only fan.

  “I thought I was, too, but I changed my mind at the last minute.” Marti leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, the leathery warmth of his skin as familiar as sunrise. “Where’s your better half?”

  “Chatting with some friends out
in the hall. She’ll be glad to see that you’re okay. She’s been worrying something fierce. We both have.”

  “There was no need. I’m right as rain.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I still worry. That’s what fathers are supposed to do.” His gaze shifted to the region beyond Marti’s shoulder, and she had a feeling she knew what he was looking at. Who he was looking at.

  She turned and saw that Tristan had moved up behind her, his silvery eyes focused on her father.

  “Dad, I want you to meet Tristan Sinclair. He’s a…friend of mine. Tristan, this is my father, Jesse Gabler.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Gabler.” Tristan extended a hand, his arm brushing Martha’s as he leaned past her, the warmth of his body seeping through her dress and making Martha’s cheeks heat.

  “Call me Jesse. Most everyone does. You’re a friend of Marti’s, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where’d you meet?”

  “Dad, the service is about to start. We don’t have time for the third degree.” She cut the conversation off before it could take wing. Knowing her father, he’d push for as many details as Tristan was willing to give. Right now, she didn’t want him to give any. As soon as Dad found out who Tristan was, there’d be an explosion of questions. Maybe even of temper. Her dad was a lot of things, but meek and mild-mannered wasn’t one of them.

  “Then we’ll talk about it over lunch. You are planning to join us for lunch, Tristan?”

  “I’m sure he’s got other plans.” Martha shot Tristan a look that she hoped would convey her feelings about lunch—she didn’t want to have it with him.

  Either he misinterpreted her look, or he didn’t care. “Actually, I don’t. I’d love to have lunch with your family.”

  “Glad to hear it. Sue is always excited about an extra mouth to feed. Speaking of which, here she comes.”

  Sure enough, Sue was barreling toward them, her lively green eyes riveted on Tristan, her squarish frame nearly humming with energy. Where Jesse was reserved and slow to act, Sue was outgoing and quick to rush into things.

  She was also quick to speak, and Martha didn’t think that now was a good time to have a conversation.