by Sara Orwig
“My business is necessary,” she argued, suspecting she was not getting anywhere with her reasoning.
“Your life is in danger, and driving into town every day will make you a sitting duck. We can eliminate the extra risks by your working here temporarily.”
“All right. We'll do everything your way,” she snapped, knowing she had lost this argument.
“For the time being, and then I'll be out of your life.”
She studied him, remembering Dan and feeling another pang of loss. “You're all alike,” she said, knowing that he could hear the bitterness in her voice. “You like the adrenaline rush. You love your work.”
“If I didn’t, how long do you think I could stand to do this?”
The tension rose between them. Their sparring had an edge to it that disturbed Jake because he found her so appealing. “I'll get your work things moved here.”
Rebecca wanted to refuse, yet she had to think of the girls' safety. “I suppose I could work in the barn. It’s empty because we don’t have a horse. The girls would like one, but I just can’t afford to keep a horse.”
He glanced out the window at the barn, and she took the opportunity to study him. He was the first man she had been acutely aware of since she’d been widowed. He was single, but even if he was interested in her, she wouldn’t want to date him. She thought about Dan’s violent death and how it still hurt. Jake Delancy was another man who courted danger. She never wanted to risk falling in love with a man who lived that kind of life again. Even though he had been a fire fighter, Dan Bolen had been gentle, kind, full of fun. Jake Delancy looked dangerous, determined and strong-willed. Not the man for her, no matter how physically attractive she found him.
“I don’t like the idea of you going back and forth to the barn.”
“Detective Delancy—”
“Jake,” he reminded her gently with a smile, and she caught her breath. The man had a charming side that would win over a zombie. His smile brought creases to either side of his mouth, an appealing crinkle to the corners of his eyes, and a mellowing of the harshness of his rugged features. His voice was warm and coaxing, quite different from his gruff, take-charge manner.
“Jake,” she repeated, thinking it sounded more personal than it should. “I have to get these jobs done on time or give them up to someone else. Surely I can get from here to the barn. I need this business to survive.”
“Not if your life depends on it,” he answered flatly, all the charm gone from his tone, swept away by an arctic chill.
“The barn is only yards away. I have to get out of the house occasionally—groceries, gas.”
He fell silent again, as if lost in thought, and then looked at her. “The barn it is, but I go with you.” He wasn’t going to yield, his tone was implacable, yet he hadn’t raised his voice in the slightest.
“Do you do this often?”
“No. The last person I had to protect was a politician who had been threatened by organized crime. And that incident occurred over eight years ago.”
“Don’t the women in your life worry terribly about you?” Again the question was out before she could think about it. It was too personal. If she kept everything businesslike between them, it would be easier to deal with him.
“If they worry too much, they break off seeing me,” he said, his voice becoming lighter. “Believe it or not, I do have a date every once in a while.”
She knew he was teasing her, yet beneath his amusement, there was a hint of anger. She couldn’t resist giving him a smile.
Jake’s pulse jumped as he saw the flash of her white teeth and a dimple appeared in her left cheek. Her smile was irresistible, and he wanted to coax her into smiling again.
“Jake, Lenny Meskell is a threat, but I'm not going to let that man ruin my life or ruin my girls' summer.”
“I think he'll make his move soon. Once he does, this will be over and your life will return to normal. Until then, you can’t take unnecessary risks and neither can they.”
Anger surged in Rebecca, anger at Lenny Meskell. She knew Jake was right, so she nodded. “You'll have to move a table out here.”
“Fine. I'll have the arrangements made.”
She opened her purse and withdrew a small datebook, flipping it open. She glanced up at him. “There’s another problem.”
Jake braced for the worst. So far, Rebecca Delancy was a disaster waiting to happen, with her unlocked windows, her noisy air conditioner, and her house in the middle of nowhere. What other disasters awaited them?
Chapter 3
“What problem?”
Rebecca braced for his objections, raising her chin and looking him in the eye. “I'm supposed to be the dinner speaker at the Austin Businesswomen’s Annual Banquet tonight. I'm the main speaker, and it’s entirely too late to cancel something important like that.”
Jake wondered if Richard Vance had known about the banquet; he suspected Vance had decided to let him learn about it on his own. “Call and tell them you need a substitute.”
She shook her head. “They asked me to be the speaker a year ago. I can’t call hours before the banquet and cancel. This is the only thing I have to do! Surely you can protect me for a few hours in town. I have to do this.”
“It’s totally against good judgment.”
“I can’t cancel on a big organization like that. Do you want me to show you the article in today’s paper about the banquet tonight?”
“It’s in the paper?”
“I'm not mentioned. It’s just a listing about the banquet. I feel I have to do this. I won’t cancel this late in the day.”
He mentally ran over what he could do to beef up security at the banquet. “How do I have to dress?”
“It’s a banquet. A suit will do.”
“Then we have to go to my condo on the way. What had you planned to do about the girls?”
“I have a friend in town who’s keeping them with her six girls.”
Jake thought a moment. “You might put your friend at risk. I can call my brother and his wife. They live in Round Rock, so that’s far enough away that your girls should be safe.”
“That will just put your brother and his wife at risk!”
“No. Meskell won’t know anything about them, so the girls should be out of harm’s way. My brother is with the FBI. He’s armed, trained, and the girls should be safe. My brother and his wife don’t have any children, but Sally is good with kids. She’s a kindergarten teacher at Lowell, in Austin. Would you trust them with your girls?”
Rebecca stared at him, thinking that she suddenly had to trust a lot of strangers. She thought about Leah and her children and knew she didn’t want to put them in danger. She had a friend whose children went to Lowell. She would call Angie this afternoon and ask if she knew Jake’s sister-in-law.
Rebecca nodded, praying she was making the right decision. She thought about the girls. “Shall I bring the girls back in here to talk to them now? Is there anything else to discuss before they join us?”
“Nothing they can’t be privy to.”
Rebecca left the room, relieved to get away from his direct gaze for a few minutes. The girls were eating apple slices.
“Mr. Delancy wants to talk to all of us. Let’s go back to the living room.”
When they entered the living room, Sissy crossed the room to Jake and leaned against his leg, holding up the bowl of apple slices.
“Would you like some apple?”
“No, thank you,” he answered politely.
She munched a slice and continued to lean against him and study him. “Do you shoot people?”
“I carry a gun to protect people, not to shoot them.”
“Sissy, come sit down here,” Rebecca said, and Sissy crossed the room to perch on the sofa beside her.
“We need to take some precautions. Your mother can tell you,” he said to the girls.
Rebecca went through everything and received a groan from the girls when she said they
had to stay inside. “You're to stay inside unless you specifically ask and receive permission to play outside.”
“Lenny Meskell’s a wanted man, and everyone is on the lookout for him,” Jake said carefully. “His picture has been in the paper and is posted all over the country. The Texas Rangers are involved, as well as the Austin police and the FBI.” Jake leaned forward to reach into a hip pocket and withdrew a picture. “This is the man. I want you to look at his picture so you'll know him if you see him. If you see a stranger around the house, come tell me at once, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Tara said, and Sissy nodded, as they walked up close to look at the picture. Rebecca stared at it from across the room, remembering too clearly Lenny Meskell’s blue eyes and long face, his blond hair and muscled arms.
“He doesn’t look bad,” Tara said.
“No, he doesn’t, but he is,” Jake answered matter-of-factly.
“Is this man going to hurt us?” Sissy asked with wide eyes.
“I'm here to see that he doesn’t,” Detective Delancy answered with quiet assurance. “But I’d like you to be careful, so you stay where I can see you.”
Sissy nodded as if satisfied, and Rebecca was grateful for his calm manner, because the girls didn’t seem unduly alarmed. Was Jake Delancy accustomed to children? He was relaxed and at ease with them, and the girls seemed drawn to him.
She heard a car motor and watched through the window as two police cars stopped in front. Men spilled out of the cars. With a lithe unfolding, Jake Delancy stood and crossed the room. As he left to meet the men, he took the kit off the shelf and carried it out. Rebecca saw Tara watching him.
“What was in the box?” she asked Rebecca.
Rebecca didn’t know whether to tell them or not. She saw Tara waiting while Sissy switched on a cartoon and flopped down on the floor in front of the television.
Rebecca motioned for Tara to come closer. “That man was here and left a warning note for me. Detective Delancy is taking it to some policemen who want to look at it for fingerprints.”
“The man was in our house? Here?”
“Yes, he was. He came in through the front window. Mr. Delancy is going to put locks on all our windows. Tara, I want you to keep Sissy with you all the time when you're outside.”
“Yes, ma'am. Is Mr. Delancy going to stay with us now?”
“Yes, he is, and another policeman will be outside. They're here to protect us.”
“Good. I'm glad Mr. Delancy’s here.” Tara went to the window to watch the policemen, and soon two men entered and crossed to the window to study where Meskell had entered.
Rebecca carried the empty glasses to the kitchen. Through a front window she could see Jake standing with his hands splayed on his hips while he talked to one of the men. She phoned her friend Angie and in minutes replaced the receiver, reassured about Jake Delancy’s sister-in-law.
Watching the men through the window, she saw Jake striding toward the woods behind the house, a pistol in his hand. The wind caught locks of his brown hair and blew them away from his face. His gait was confident, as if he were looking forward to meeting Meskell. Her skin prickled as she looked at the shadows cast by the trees. Jake was walking toward them without hesitation. What would it take to make him afraid? He seemed to have nerves of steel.
Outside, Jake stalked across the ground, his gaze running over the pines and the dark, shaded area beneath them. Drawing his pistol, he lengthened his stride.
He stepped into the cool shade of the trees, standing still and looking around. Birds sang, a slight breeze blew. He glanced down at the pine-needle-strewn ground, knowing it would be difficult to spot tracks. He moved through the trees, trying to decide exactly where he would stand if he wanted to watch the house, thinking he would want the back door in full view, because that would offer the best shot.
An object caught Jake’s eye, and he knelt. Pulling out a glove and a plastic bag, he picked up a cigarette stub. A few feet away he found a scrap from a package of gum. A few more feet and he found another cigarette butt. There were more cigarette butts on the ground a few yards away. Jake burned with anger at the thought of Meskell standing out in the shadows waiting to take a shot at Rebecca.
Hatred for the murderer boiled up in him. He easily remembered Meskell leaning out of the car and firing at Dusty, watching Dusty fall. Jake recalled the moment when he had arrested Meskell, the surge of satisfaction he’d experienced, especially after he had punched him out. He’d love an opportunity to do it again.
He pulled out his radio and spoke softly to one of the other men in the area, giving them what he had found. Jake surveyed his surroundings again while listening to the response, looking up in the branches overhead, his attention shifting to the house.
Inside, Rebecca moved from the kitchen windows to the living room, looking for the men. They were nowhere in sight, and she guessed they were searching through the woods and around the house. She turned away to get some household chores done, trying to forget the threat hanging over them.
It was over an hour later before the lawmen piled into their cars and left, and as they drove away, Jake returned to the living room. He crossed the room with deliberation, his hazel eyes studying her, and her pulse started drumming. He reached out to take her arm, and the moment he touched her, she tingled with awareness.
“Stay back from the windows, Rebecca.”
Her name, said in his bass voice, affected her deeply. On one level, she was acutely aware of him. On another, she was annoyed by his autocratic ways.
With a frown, she stepped back, conscious that he had dropped his hand to his hip. “It’s going to take me a while to get accustomed to this.”
“Not used to taking orders?” he asked quietly, his hazel eyes holding her gaze.
“No, I'm not, and I don’t like becoming a prisoner in my own house.”
“Get over it,” Jake said forcefully, knowing that for her own safety she had to cooperate with him. “Someday I'll be gone, Lenny will be in prison, and you'll be your own boss again.” Jake flashed her a smile. Something flickered in the depths of her eyes. She had to be aware of the currents tugging and flowing between them, Jake thought. She gave off sparks like metal in a microwave.
He felt an urgent need to put distance between them. If he didn’t, he’d reach for her. He mentally swore, because he did not want to be drawn to someone he was assigned to protect. Rebecca Bolen was business. And he didn’t want to be attracted to the kind of woman she was. He was not into lasting relationships, and she had an air of permanence that hovered over her like a guardian angel. He turned away to gaze out the windows, trying to shift his thoughts to Meskell.
Rebecca’s pulse raced as Jake moved away. The quick smile he had given her was devastating. As tough and assertive as he was, his smile could still disarm, melt and captivate a woman. His teeth were even and white, a contrast to his tanned skin. There were moments when he seemed likeable and nice, moments when she felt far more secure because he was there.
As swiftly as those thoughts came, caution followed. She did not want to be attracted to a cop. Not in the next ten lifetimes. She never wanted her life bound to a man who courted danger again. She looked at him standing in front of the window from which he had warned her to stay away. He flirted with peril, she reminded herself as her gaze ran across his broad shoulders and down over slim hips and long legs.
“Was there any sign of Lenny Meskell outside?” she asked.
Hazel eyes met her squarely. “He’s been in the woods behind the house. He must have left the area before we staked it out. He’s gone now.”
“How can you be sure?”
“We've been over the area thoroughly, and another team of men are still out there and beyond the woods. They'll make certain before they stop the search.”
Jake studied the windows. “If you don’t mind having a small hole drilled in your window frames, I can get these windows secured easily.”
“No, I don’t m
ind. The house isn’t a candidate for an elegant-homes magazine.”
“I'll get my tools,” he said, and left to go to his car. He returned in minutes with an electric drill, and a small box. The moment he switched on the drill both girls came to watch. In seconds he had bored tiny holes in the frames of each window.
“Whatcha doing?” Sissy asked.
“I'll show you,” he said, unplugging the drill and placing it carefully on the floor. He opened a box and removed a tenpenny nail. “See, we'll slide the nail into the hole I just drilled, and no one can raise the window, but if anyone inside the house needs to get out,” he said carefully to the girls, “just pull the nail out and raise the window. I'll put these around the house and over the air conditioners so no one can slide the window units out of the windows easily.”
Knowing her routine had already been destroyed, Rebecca tore up her schedule for Saturday and tossed the pieces in a wastebasket. As Jake Delancy worked, the girls trailing after him, she went to the kitchen to get dinner for the girls.
Twenty minutes later, while she checked a pan of steaming carrots, Jake drilled holes in the kitchen windows. She turned from the stove at the same time he turned, and she bumped him.
He steadied her, his hands going to her waist. She had been conscious of him before, but now the tension was electrifying. His hands held her lightly, yet she felt the imprint of his fingers and palms on her hips. She gazed up into the hazel eyes that met hers. His expression seemed to hold mild curiosity, and his gaze lowered to her lips. She felt trapped by a force that took her breath. Her lips tingled, and she experienced an intense physical response to his merely looking at her. And what frightened her most of all was that she wanted to lean closer to him.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were close behind me,” she said, moving away from him. She was talking too fast, unnerved by her reaction to him. Had he felt something, too? And had he been as startled by it as she had been?
Probably not. The man surely dated regularly and responded to many women. She hadn’t dated in a long time, and maybe that was the problem. Yet she knew that wasn’t the answer because she knew men through her work and through organizations and church, men who had been friendly, but to whom she’d had no such fiery response.
