While the girls discussed other options for show-and-tell, Hannah could see that Seth was having a difficult time following their rapid-fire exchange of ideas. Clearly, the man was out of his element.
And what was his element? she wondered. She didn’t want to pry, and she wouldn’t, but there were so many questions bouncing around inside her brain. Questions that were none of her business, but that didn’t make her any less curious. The expression on his face when she’d asked him where he’d been going before the accident had been…cautious, she decided was the best word. He’d offered no other explanation than to say he’d been on his way to Wolf River, and that it had been important.
But she was certain she’d seen something in his eyes before he’d answered. A fierce flash of emotion that was gone as quickly as it appeared.
Had he been on his way to meet a woman? For all she knew, he had been on his way to get married. There could be two hundred people waiting right now for him to show up and say, “I do.”
Frowning, she stabbed a bite of meat loaf. Well, he certainly shouldn’t be kissing her if he was getting married, the jerk. He shouldn’t be sitting here, and he shouldn’t be—
The sound of her daughters arguing pulled Hannah out of her thoughts.
“Do too!” Maddie said.
“Do not!” Missy fired back.
Good Lord. Hannah sighed. What was it this time?
“You have broccoli in your teeth,” Maddie said in a singsong voice.
“I do not!”
Maddie picked up a little tree of broccoli and stuck the tiny trunk under her top lip. “Look, I’m Missy,” Maddie teased. “I have broccoli growing out of my mouth.”
Missy’s face turned red with fury. “I’m gonna tell everyone at school you sleep with a blankie!”
“Stop this right now!” Hannah said firmly. “This is no way to behave at the dinner table, especially in front of a guest. Madeline Nicole, you apologize to your sister right now, then to Mr. Granger.”
“Sorry.” Maddie cast her eyes down.
“Now upstairs, both of you. Obviously, you need a time-out. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Heads down, both girls left the table. Hannah closed her eyes and sighed heavily. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what’s gotten into them lately. It seems like every time I turn around, they’re misbehaving.”
“So you mean they’re normal?”
Hannah opened her eyes, saw the smile on Seth’s lips. “I don’t condone that kind of behavior.”
“You might not condone it,” he said with a shrug, “but you can’t always stop it, either.”
She narrowed a gaze at him, wondered if she’d been wrong in her presumptions about him. “You have children?”
“Good God, no.” He shook his head. “But I remember my mom sending me and my brother away from the table on more than one occasion.”
“You have a brother?”
“Yeah.” The look in his eyes was distant. “And a sister.”
“Where do they live?” she asked.
He looked at her, then shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Her brow furrowed with confusion. “You don’t know?”
“It’s complicated,” he said tightly, then tossed his napkin on the table. “Let me help you clean up.”
“No, please,” she said, still stunned by his statement. “I’m fine here.”
He wanted to argue, Hannah could see it in his expression, but he relented. “Thanks for dinner. You make a mean meat loaf.”
She smiled. “I take it that’s a compliment.”
“Yeah.” He smiled back and stood. “That’s a compliment.”
She watched him limp from the room, stared after him for several seconds. He was an enigma, she thought. A confusing, complex man with a past that appeared to weigh heavily on those broad shoulders of his.
She heard the sound of her daughters laughing upstairs and was at least thankful they’d made up. She’d start their bath and then do the dishes, she decided. After that, she had a half-dozen pillows to personalize with hand-stitching, and she had to get up an hour early to start those muffins tomorrow.
As tempting as Seth was, as much as she found herself attracted to him, Hannah didn’t have time, or room, in her life for anyone or anything else.
Six
The following afternoon Seth stepped out onto Hannah’s front porch. It was a nice day with blue skies, a few puffy white clouds and the slightest hint of fall in the air. Leaves were just beginning to drop onto the neatly mown lawns, and the scent of late-blooming pink roses in Hannah’s front yard drifted on the warm breeze. He stopped and listened, was amazed at the quiet. No low-flying planes or helicopters, no buzz of construction saws, no freeway noise or police sirens. He hadn’t known a place this quiet existed, wasn’t even certain he liked it.
At least his leg felt better today. He was able to walk more easily and the swelling had gone down considerably. Now if only he could get some feedback on the condition of his motorcycle, Seth thought irritably. Hannah’s phone had been ringing all morning, but not one call had been from the repair shop. Seth was trying not to lose his temper, but patience had never been his strong suit.
At the sound of a loud, enthusiastic bark, he turned and saw Beau standing on the short picket fence between his yard and Hannah’s. The dog’s tail thumped back and forth happily, and he barked again.
“So we’re buds now, are we?” Seth grinned and limped over to give the big, black shepherd a scratch between his ears. Beau sniffed greedily at Seth’s hand.
“Apple spice,” Seth told the animal. “Hannah made enough muffins this morning to feed a small country.”
Beau barked twice in response.
“Don’t I know it,” Seth said with a shake of his head. “The woman never stops. Lord only knows what time she went to bed last night and she’s upstairs now doing God knows what in that bedroom she’s been working on.”
Beau cocked his head and gave a short woof!
“Hey, pal, I offered to help,” Seth defended himself. “But the woman gives new meaning to the word stubborn.”
She also gave new meaning to the words sexy, tenacious and tempting, he thought.
Especially tempting.
He hadn’t slept well last night thinking about how damn tempting the woman was. The taste of her had lingered in his mouth; her scent, a faint, feminine fragrance, was everywhere. He certainly hadn’t meant for that kiss to get out of hand yesterday, but it had. He simply hadn’t been thinking. Not with his brain, anyway.
He’d promised not to touch her again—unless she asked him to. He smiled as he remembered the look in her eyes when he’d said that to her in the laundry room yesterday. Her expression had been one of stunned surprise, as if it would never occur to her that she would actually ask a man to touch her.
Seth would stand by his promise, but it wasn’t going to be easy. It no longer seemed to matter what was logical or the best thing to do, or even the right thing to do. All she had to do was walk in the room and he knew he wanted her.
Beau whined and Seth frowned at the dog. “Hey, did I say I was going to do anything about it? I can control myself. I’m not an animal, you know.”
Beau seemed to agree. He barked happily, then raced away. Seth grinned at the dog’s antics, was about to turn away when Beau raced back with a newspaper between his teeth. The dog’s large paws hung over the fence as he jumped up and dropped the folded paper at Seth’s feet.
“Thanks, pal.” Seth patted the dog’s head and picked up the paper.
Maybe he would sit on the front porch and read for a while, he decided, though he couldn’t imagine there was much to report in the sleepy little town of Ridgewater. He’d return the paper when he finished, then he’d call the motorcycle shop again to find out when the hell his bike would be repaired.
He started up the stairs and opened the paper. Then after he’d made that call, maybe he’d just sort of wander upstairs and see what H
annah was—
HERO POLICE OFFICER FROM ALBUQUERQUE SAVES LITTLE GIRL FROM CERTAIN HARM
The headline stared back at him, as did the quarter-page picture of himself. It wasn’t a recent picture, Seth realized, it was his academy graduation picture.
What the hell?
Swearing hotly under his breath, he read the first few lines:
In a dramatic and daring rescue late Tuesday afternoon, Detective Seth Granger of the Albuquerque police department crashed his motorcycle through a wooden fence and swiftly climbed a tree in order to save the life of five-year-old Madeline Michaels. Eyewitnesses—
Eyewitnesses? What eyewitnesses! Seth clenched his teeth and kept reading.
—eyewitnesses say that little Maddie, caught on the jagged limb by the pocket of her blue denim pants, had dangled perilously high above the ground and would certainly have sustained serious injury if not for the quick-thinking heroics of Detective Granger.
Maddie, along with her sister Missy, had been playing…
The article went on in a long, detailed, highly elaborate exaggeration of the entire incident, taking up all of the first page and three-quarters of page two, complete with pictures of people being interviewed and what appeared to be Maddie’s and Missy’s school pictures.
Seth snapped the paper shut and stomped up the porch steps. Pain radiated up his left leg, and he didn’t give a damn.
Billy Bishop was going to die.
Sanding block in her hand, Hannah stood on the top rung of the stepladder and worked at smoothing down the repaired crack over the bedroom window. A fine layer of spackle powder covered her bare arms, blue denim overalls and black tank top. She’d pulled on a Rangers baseball cap, but no doubt a fair amount of the gritty dust had found its way into her ponytail. As soon as she finished sanding this last crack, she was headed for a shower. Between the dust, the dirt and the drops of sweat she could feel sliding down her stomach, Lord knew she needed one.
She fantasized about a bath, with fluffy white clouds of strawberry-scented bubbles. She could picture several votives flickering while she soaked in the warm water, her head resting on the rim of the tub, her eyes closed while she listened to something Celtic, like Loreena McKennitt, or maybe something romantic, like Andrea Bocelli. She could hear the tenor’s velvety voice now, the incredible, soothing tone of his rich, deep—
“Hannah!”
Startled at the sudden bellow of her name, she wobbled on the ladder, barely catching herself before she fell.
“Hannah!” Seth came barreling through the doorway of the bedroom, a newspaper in his hand. “Have you seen this?”
Oh, dear.
“Have you?” he asked impatiently.
“The newspaper?”
“Yes,” he said tightly and moved beside the stepladder. He frowned up at her. “Today’s newspaper.”
“No, I haven’t seen it.”
Which was true. She didn’t subscribe to the Gazette because not only didn’t she have the extra money, she didn’t have the time to read the paper. Besides, in a town as small as Ridgewater, she’d hear about anything newsworthy soon enough.
But she’d certainly heard plenty about the article. The phone had been ringing all morning. And since Seth had made it clear from the beginning that he hadn’t wanted any media attention, Hannah had avoided mentioning anything to him about the article.
Somehow, though, he’d gotten his hands on a copy.
“Front page,” he said with something close to a snarl and thrust the paper under her nose. “The front, flipping page!”
She looked at the paper. Good heavens, Seth’s picture took up nearly half the page. “Ah, that’s a very nice photograph.”
“Hannah.” He closed his eyes on a swear word, then drew in a slow breath. “Come down here.”
She didn’t want to. Not because she was afraid of him because he was angry, but because she felt so much more confident high up on the ladder, towering over him. “I really have to finish this sanding, and then I have to—”
“Please.” There was more starch in that single word than in a preacher’s collar.
Still holding the sanding block, she stepped down the ladder until she was eye-to-eye with him.
“Hannah.” His narrowed gaze held hers. “I’m an undercover cop.”
“An undercover cop?” she repeated.
“Yeah.” He took the sanding block from her hand and set it on the ladder step. “And what do you think would be the last thing an undercover cop would want anyone to know?”
She swallowed. “That’s he’s an undercover cop?”
“Right.”
An undercover cop. Dear Lord. “Seth, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“That’s the general idea.” He glared at the picture of himself.
A sudden thought made her breath catch in her throat. “You aren’t, I mean, you coming here, to Ridgewater—”
“On an assignment? Here?” He lifted one brow and tilted his head. “No, Hannah. I’m not working right now.”
She supposed it was a ridiculous question, but she felt better to hear him say it, anyway. “You’re on vacation?”
“Not exactly. I’m on a…what did you call it last night?” He thought for a moment. “Oh, yeah. A time-out.”
“A time-out?”
“I had a disagreement with my boss. I don’t like his policies, and he doesn’t approve of what he calls my ‘insubordination.’”
“He gave you a time-out for insubordination?”
“Actually, I’m on forced leave for punching the bastard in the nose.”
“You punched your boss in the nose?” She felt like an idiot, either repeating everything he said, or answering him with a question. “Why?”
“He refused backup at the last bust I was involved in, said it wasn’t necessary. It nearly got my partner killed, not to mention the uniformed cop who stumbled into the operation at a very unfortunate moment. It’s a miracle no one died. By the time Jarris showed up on the scene, I was…perturbed.”
Jarris. Seth had uttered that name after he’d fallen out of the tree. “So you punched him—Jarris.”
Satisfaction glinted in Seth’s dark eyes. “Yeah. I punched him.”
“And you’re on forced leave for how long?”
“Six weeks.”
“Six weeks! Good heavens, and my girls think fifteen minutes is a long time.”
He almost smiled at that, then stared at the paper again. “Six weeks will be nothing compared to what Jarris will do if he sees this. I’ll either end up at a desk filling out forms, or wearing white gloves directing traffic somewhere.”
“Oh, Seth, I’m so sorry.” Hannah sighed. “No doubt you’ve noticed by now, but not much ever happens in Ridgewater.”
He looked at her as if she’d just made the understatement of the century, but he didn’t say anything.
“This story,” she went on, “as simple and as unimportant as it might seem to you, was like a big, meaty bone to Billy. If he’d known, I’m sure he never would have run this article.”
“He’s a reporter, Hannah.” He tossed the newspaper on the floor. “That’s what reporters do. They can’t help themselves.”
She supposed he was right. Billy probably would have run the article anyway, but she was certain he wouldn’t have run the picture. She glanced up sharply at that thought. “Does this put you in any danger?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. This picture is old enough, and after my last assignment, Jarris probably won’t use me for deep cover anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Well, this might surprise you,” he said evenly, “but he seems to think I don’t follow orders very well.”
Hannah widened her eyes. “No.”
“Hard to believe, I know.” He shrugged, then leaned closer, as if he were going to tell her a secret. “He also thinks I have a bad attitude.”
“Really?” The warmth of his breath on her ear made Hannah shiver. “Why w
ould he possibly think that?”
“I like to do things my own way,” he said. “In my own time.”
She swallowed, heard the sound of her pulse beating in her head. Felt the quickening of her blood. “Is that so?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t touch her, but he moved into her, put his hands on the ladder, enclosing her on the first step where she stood. “He says I’m too unpredictable. Too impulsive.”
Hannah couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with Seth. She couldn’t believe that she was standing here on this ladder, covered with dust and dirt, no makeup and her hair a mess, and yet, with the way Seth was looking at her, she felt…sexy.
“So are you?” she asked breathlessly.
“Am I what?”
Hannah held her breath as his gaze wandered over her face, then settled on her mouth. Her heart beat like a drum, heavy and hollow, fast.
“Impulsive.”
“No.”
She felt a stab of disappointment. “Oh.”
“I always know exactly what I’m doing,” he murmured. “And I know exactly what I want. Do you?”
She couldn’t concentrate with his body so close to hers; she couldn’t think. But she managed to shake her head.
He stared at her mouth; she thought for certain he would kiss her. She wanted him to kiss her!
He straightened suddenly, then dropped his hands from the ladder and turned away. The disappointment she’d felt only a moment ago turned to sheer frustration.
She realized she did know what she wanted, but she didn’t know how to ask. Didn’t have a clue what the words were; was certain she couldn’t say them if she did know. She was grateful he kept his back to her while he glanced around the room. She needed a moment to gather her wits, to compose herself.
He wasn’t limping as badly today, Hannah noticed as she watched him walk to the window, then move to the doorway leading to the bathroom. “How’s your leg?”
“Better.” He ran his hand over a crack she’d already repaired by the doorway. “You do nice work.”
“Thanks.” Needing something to hold on to, she picked up the sanding block he’d taken out of her hands a few minutes ago. “I only have one more bedroom to finish after this one.”
In Blackhawk's Bed Page 7
