Harlequin Heartwarming May 2016 Box Set: Through the StormHome for KeepsThe Firefighter's RefrainTo Catch a Wife

by Rula Sinara

  “We’ve, uh, never agreed to be exclusive, Caleb.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Lily said she was glad to be back with her family. I assume she meant not only Angela, but you, as well.”

  She was jealous! He couldn’t believe it. “I’m flattered, Grace, if that means you’re concerned about Lily and me getting back together, but there is no such possibility.”

  Her face turned pink. “I shouldn’t even have brought it up. I have no hold on you.”

  She definitely had a hold on him. “You have every right to bring it up. But, for your information, I only date one woman at a time and, at the moment, that woman is you.”

  In fact, she might just be the woman he wanted to be with forever, but he wasn’t going to admit that right now. It could scare her. Not to mention they had a few obstacles to deal with, number one being his daughter.

  She still looked uncomfortable.

  “Did Lily imply that she and I were getting back together?”

  “Not in exact words.” Grace sighed and gazed out the passenger window. “Look, I’m sorry. This is awkward.”

  They had reached Green Meadows, so he pulled in to park.

  He turned off the truck and slid an arm across the back of the seat. “Look, I don’t know what her motives are, Grace, but Lily Trejo isn’t on the up-and-up, as you know from her squatting in your empty town house. She knows who you are. She might try to take advantage of you.”

  “Why would she want to do that?”

  “Because of your connection to me. She doesn’t love me anymore, if she ever did, but I believe she’s jealous of anything that might make me happy. Don’t let her get to you. She’s turned Angela inside out. You’ve been so understanding about her from the day we met. You have no idea how much I appreciate that,” he said, meaning it from his heart.

  “I guess you have to remember Angela has a mother who wants to see her. Maybe something good will come of it.”

  “Maybe. I’ll just have to ride it out.” He looked at her. “Meanwhile, being with you is the only positive here. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Things might get even messier. I hope you’ll stick with me.”

  “If you’re honest about your intentions, you won’t be able to get rid of me.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” And he drew her closer to kiss her.

  Her lips were soft and she wound her arms around his neck. For a moment, the day’s problems and irritations melted away.

  * * *

  GRACE FELT MUCH better after she had talked with Caleb. The subject matter had been uncomfortable but he’d handled it well, making her feel as if there was real promise in their relationship. She appreciated being with a mature and thoughtful man.

  When they inspected the wall she had in mind, inside the community center, Caleb was enthusiastic. He took out his tape measure. “A nice rectangle that’s perfect for a landscape. Ten feet by what, eight feet? Do you want the mural to reach the ceiling?”

  “I think it would be better to limit it to eight by five feet, actually. It can be framed by the wall around it.”

  “Whichever, it’ll be the largest piece Angela has ever done.”

  “She could bring in a friend to help.”

  He gave her a warning glance. “Not Kiki. I’d like to see her with kids who are less problematic. I need life to be simple.”

  “I completely understand.” She hesitated a second, then said, “Maybe if we could find Kiki’s grandmother, someone who cares about the girl, it would put her on a better path.”

  “If we knew how to find her.” He considered a moment. “Maybe Mom would have some ideas of how to go about it. I’ll ask her.”

  Grace looked at her watch. “About ready to call it a night?”

  “I guess so. I enjoy being with you so much, I forget the passing of time.”

  She grinned. “That’s a great thing to tell a woman.” After the fears she’d had at the beginning of the evening.

  “I aim to please.”

  It was completely dark when they returned to the truck. Caleb opened the door for Grace and got in himself. He nosed the vehicle down the driveway and stopped before entering the highway to allow a car to pass. On the other side and a few yards to the south was a turnoff for a country road bordered by thick brush and trees. Grace glanced at that area when Caleb pulled out and immediately stiffened. Two glowing red orbs stared out at them amid the leaves.

  “Stop!”

  Caleb braked to nearly a stop. “What? A deer?”

  “No, go back. I saw something on the side of that gravel road.”

  “You saw something?” He quickly did a U-turn, after checking both directions for oncoming cars. Then he turned down the country road.

  “There.” Grace pointed. Only one of the red orbs showed as the beam of the headlights swept over the foliage. Then the other winked in the darkness. She felt gooseflesh rise on her arms. “Red eyes.”

  Now Caleb saw it, too. “Red eyes?”

  “The ghost cow?”

  “They’re not moving.” He waited a minute. “But something is flapping.” He parked the truck on the edge of the road and reached over her to remove a flashlight from the glove compartment. “We’re going to investigate.”

  She wasn’t dressed for walking over uneven ground. Her high heels sunk into the gravelly dirt, and thick weeds scratched her legs. As they made their way through low-hanging branches and leaves that slapped them in their faces, Caleb put an arm around her waist to steady her.

  “Careful,” he said, then flashed the beam of the flashlight on a nearby fence post, separated from the overgrown roadside by a small ditch.

  Grace started when something fluttered in the wind, something dark with spots. Then they saw the glowing red orbs. But it was no ghost cow they faced. It looked and sounded like plastic. A garbage bag fastened or caught on the post?

  “And reflectors,” Caleb finished her thought. “Stay here. Hold on to that tree so you don’t fall.”

  He jumped over the ditch and approached the fence post, leaving Grace in the dark. The garbage bag crackled in the breeze, followed by a ripping sound.

  “Got it,” said Caleb, grunting. “Now for this. I’m gonna tear out these reflectors. But I need a tool.” He rummaged in his pocket, coming up with something—probably a pocketknife.

  When he finished, they returned to the road and the truck.

  Caleb held a large torn piece of black plastic in the beam of the truck’s headlight. It was splotched with what looked like white paint. “I didn’t get all of it but somebody tore up a garbage bag and attached it to the post. Look at the nail holes.” He reached in his pocket and took out a three-inch translucent red disk. “This is the type of reflector farmers can buy to put on equipment.”

  “It glows in headlights.”

  “And there were two of them nailed close enough to look like eyes.”

  “Someone had to have done this deliberately.”

  “They sure did. With a hammer.”

  “Why? To look like a ghost cow?”

  “Seems like it.” Caleb mused, “Green Meadows is haunted all right, but not by a ghost. Someone is playing pranks.”

  “Angela?”

  “I hope not. But I’m going to ask her,” he said. “Have you seen this before?”

  “No, but it was kind of hidden in the brush.”

  “You spotted it tonight.”

  “And I’ve been out here after dark. I’m in and out a lot of the time to check on things.”

  “I don’t think Angela would have had time to do it, at least in the past few days,” he said. “It would more likely be Kiki.”

  Grace was angry th
at the girl kept pulling pranks. “If you think it could be her, I’d like to talk to her.”

  “We’ll have to deal with the foster family.”

  Grace hoped that was a good idea. If the girl’s situation went from bad to worse, Kiki might never have a chance at a decent life.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “THIS IS IT.” Caleb parked in front of a modest two-story house at the edge of town. After he’d picked Grace up at her office, it had taken him merely minutes to find the house where Kiki lived.

  Grace still wasn’t certain Kiki was the one responsible for the glowing-eyes contraption they’d found by the side of the road. She’d already eliminated Kiki from contention for the parking lot incident, if not the tent falling on her at the park. The girl couldn’t have been in two places at the same time. But still they needed to talk to her.

  Caleb glanced at his watch. “School is out by now, though that doesn’t mean we’ll find Kiki here. She seems to get around.”

  The blare of a TV could be heard as they climbed the steps to the front porch and knocked. A woman wearing a big frown answered the door. “Who are you?”

  “Caleb Blackthorne. And this is Grace Huber.”

  “Sarah Watson.”

  “We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes,” Caleb began.

  “About what? One of the little maniacs do something again?”

  “Maybe,” Grace answered, not liking the woman’s accusatory tone.

  “Kiki is a friend of my daughter’s.”

  “Come right in.” The woman opened the door wider. “Kiki’s not here right now, though.”

  They entered a hall that passed by what Grace assumed to be the living room, and then headed for the kitchen. Off the kitchen an addition had been built with strikingly different flooring, cheap laminate in comparison with the kitchen’s linoleum. The large space held the TV that was blasting away, a couch and chair set that had seen better days, and two unsmiling teenage girls, who were now staring at the visitors.

  Rather than introduce the teenagers, the woman said, “Kiki’s just like her no-good mother. She’ll end up in jail, too.” Then she turned to Caleb. “You might want to be more careful about who you let your daughter be friends with.” She headed for the stairs. “You can check her room.”

  Caleb and Grace followed.

  On the landing, Sarah opened a door, revealing a medium-sized bedroom with bunk beds against one wall and two single cots parallel with another. The bedspreads were the same cheap-looking blue plaid and the walls were bare except for a small drawing of a bird tacked above the cot. Sarah Watson reached over and tore it from the wall. A wave of sadness washed through Grace at the gesture.

  “I told Kiki to keep her little drawings in her notebooks.” Sarah sounded disgusted.

  Grace asked, “Why can’t they have artwork or pictures on the walls? Or a bulletin board?”

  “I want things clean and neat. These girls’ lives are so messy, it can spill over into how they function day to day. I’m not a counselor. We provide a roof over their heads and two square meals a day. Otherwise, they’d be living in the streets.” Sarah tore up the drawing and threw it in a wastebasket by the door. Then she said, “If you want to search for whatever the little thief stole, she has a couple of boxes under the bed.”

  “We’re not looking for stolen items,” Caleb said. “We’re just wondering if Kiki has been involved in some pranks around town.”

  “What kind of pranks?”

  “Knocking someone down in a private parking lot,” offered Grace.

  “Or putting up some kind of scare cow off a country road,” said Caleb. “On public property.”

  Sarah Watson frowned. “Scarecrow?”

  “Scare cow,” corrected Grace, enjoying the even more puzzled look that spread across the woman’s face.

  “We know that Kiki was in the Birdsong campground on Saturday in the middle of the night, scaring campers,” said Caleb. “Don’t you give these kids a curfew?”

  Sarah sighed deeply. “Yes, they have a curfew.” She gestured to the window. “But Kiki doesn’t pay much attention to it. She climbs out the window and gets down somehow, usually when I’m asleep. Sorry, but the county doesn’t pay me enough to watch them every minute.” She looked back at them. “Do you want to make an official complaint? Go to the police. She’ll be sent off to an institution a little sooner is all. Probably for the best.”

  Grace just gave Caleb a look as they finished up the conversation and left, heading for the car. They had lots to talk about.

  * * *

  “WE ARE NOT taking this to the police,” Grace announced vehemently as they drove away.

  After the visit to the foster home, Caleb could see why she’d reached that opinion but he still had doubts about how to handle the situation. “Not all young people are like you or me, Grace. Sometimes professionals are needed.”

  “Professionals? Such as guards and wardens?”

  “I mean social workers or counselors.”

  “A kid doesn’t get much of that in an institution.”

  “But you can’t just let Kiki go around creating havoc.” Caleb gripped the steering wheel harder. “She might really hurt someone one of these days.”

  “I won’t be responsible for putting her in a detention center.”

  “If not you or me, it could be someone else who does it, then.”

  “Surely she’s not that bad.” She turned to him. “You’ve seen her with your daughter. She’s not a serious criminal.”

  “Still, you can’t personally save every troubled teenager in the world. You need to know when to back off. Maybe it’s time we talk to Alex Novak.”

  “Turn her in? You sound like my father!”

  He didn’t know where that was coming from. “Is that bad?”

  She made a disgusted noise.

  Her irritation bothered him. “I thought your dad was in your corner when you were growing up?”

  “He was always supportive of me, but that doesn’t mean he would stand up for anyone else.”

  “Kiki has a grandmother.”

  “I only wish I knew where we could find her. Or if she might take the girl.”

  He had reached the downtown area of Sparrow Lake and turned onto the street that passed the police station.

  “Police can trace people,” Caleb said. “Heather Scofield once told me that Alex Novak has a heart for troubled youth.” He pulled into the station’s parking lot.

  Grace looked around and started. “What are we doing here? I don’t want to talk to the police! At least not yet.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do about Kiki? Let her keeping pulling pranks?” It wouldn’t hurt to talk to the police.

  “No, Caleb,” she said in a tone he’d never heard before. “No. Please drive me home.”

  She was actually upset, he realized.

  He was about to apologize when a Sparrow Lake police car drove up and parked next to them. Alex Novak got out and opened the passenger door. A freckled kid of around twelve or so tumbled out and then a huge black-and-white Great Dane that must have been at least a yard tall at the shoulder. The dog trailed a long leash.

  His window was down so Caleb could hear Alex tell the kid, “Wait here.”

  Then the police chief popped the squad car’s trunk to remove a skateboard. Seeing Caleb and Grace, he nodded.

  “Where’d you find that creature?” Caleb asked. “It’s as big as some ponies.”

  Alex laughed and nodded toward the boy. “This is Randy Beaman.” He waved to the dog. “And this is Atlas. They’ve been terrorizing the slow and the elderly around these parts.”

  “I’ve seen that dog,” mused Grace. She raised her voice. “Has Randy been having Atlas pull him on the skate
board?”

  “Wherever there’s concrete. Anytime, day or night.” Alex turned to Randy, motioning him to go inside the station. “We’re going to have to call your folks, son. You can’t use the town sidewalks for your personal speedway.” Before following the boy, the police chief asked, “Did you have some problem, Caleb?”

  “Not right now.”

  He and Grace sat for a moment, silent.

  Then Grace said, “Well, I think I know who and what ‘attacked’ Mr. Cassidy in the parking lot.”

  Caleb added, “I think I know who left the big footprint beside the Green Meadows walking path.”

  She nodded. “And the wheel marks.”

  He started the engine and pulled the truck out.

  The tense atmosphere having eased, he and Grace made small talk as they drove away.

  “Do you want to have some supper at The Busy Corner?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. I need to get home and catch up on a little work.”

  When he reached her building, she said, “You don’t need to get out and open my door for me.”

  Why not? Before he could ask, she leaned across to give him a chaste kiss on the mouth. He objected, “Hey, that’s not a real good-night kiss.”

  “It is for this night.”

  “You’re still angry. I said I was sorry for driving to the police station.” He told her, “And I am. I care about what you think and want.”

  She relaxed a bit, her expression seeming to soften. “Okay. I accept your apology.” She even laughed. “You could try being a little less pushy sometimes.”

  “I know, I know. Just push back.”

  And he reached for her again, this time for a longer, deeper kiss. He enveloped her in his arms, wishing they could stay like that forever. But there were things to do and places to be.

  Finally, she pushed him back gently. “See you,” she said, then jumped out of the vehicle.

  “See you,” he said as well, hoping that would be sooner rather than later.

  * * *

  IT TOOK GRACE a full day to forget her irritation with Caleb. Sometimes he just seemed to run over her wishes, not respecting them. Which reminded her of the not-so-great part of her relationship with her father.