“You’re not a very good liar, Hannah,” he said evenly. “That’s not a criticism, just an observation.”
“So maybe she won’t exactly forget.” Hannah shrugged as she turned the water on to fill the vase in her hand. “She’s probably still gnashing her teeth over the ‘heartless’ comment.”
“God, Hannah. I’m sorry.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I should never have said that—”
“It was wonderful.”
“What?”
“I said, it was wonderful.” Clear plastic crackled as she pulled the wrapper off the flowers and dropped them in the water. “You were wonderful.”
He stared at her, blinked. “I was?”
She brought the flowers to the table and set them beside the pizza box, then sat back down again. “No one has ever stood up for me like that before. Not since I was in the fifth grade and Tommy Belgarden punched Joey Winters in the nose for stealing my lunchbox.”
He reached out and took her hand, ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Good for Tommy.”
She glanced down at their clasped hands. “She wasn’t always like this,” Hannah said quietly. “When I was a little girl, she’d visit my mother here and always bring me a present. I still have an Oriental wooden box with secret compartments that she gave me when I was seven.”
Hannah smiled at the memory, then sighed. “I was eight when she married my uncle Lloyd and moved to Boston. She changed after that. She smiled less, rarely came to visit. After my mom died, she became fixated on me coming to live with her, and since my divorce and Uncle Lloyd’s death she’s become even more demanding. But I just can’t move there. My life is here, in Ridgewater. It doesn’t matter to me how hard I have to work, or how much I have to scrimp to get by. If I lose the house, then so be it. But I’m not leaving here.”
He wanted to tell her that it would be all right, that she wasn’t going to have to go anywhere, and she wasn’t going to lose her house. A few well-placed phone calls to the right people this afternoon had made sure of that.
But after this morning, he doubted she would appreciate any more interference in her life. She didn’t need to know about the phone calls he’d made, the favors he’d called in from different agencies. Sometimes it paid to be polite and knock on a door and wait for someone to open it. When you didn’t have time to wait, you simply kicked the door down. He’d kicked several doors in today, because time was one thing that neither he nor Hannah had a lot of.
Her hand felt small in his, but he knew there was strength there. He’d never met any woman that he admired more, any woman who dazzled him the way Hannah did.
The thought, and the emotions it evoked, had him dropping her hand. He shoved the pizza box in front of her. “Eat.”
Her blue eyes lit with pleasure as she took the first bite. She moaned softly. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”
His throat went dry as he watched her lick a spot of sauce from her lips. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was either, but it wasn’t for food. After the night they’d spent together, he couldn’t just sit here and not want her, not want to touch her, kiss her, have her naked and writhing underneath him.
He took a slice of pizza instead, focused his appetite on food rather than Hannah.
“I’m sorry about asking you to leave earlier,” she said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have been so—”
“It’s fine, Hannah. It gave me an opportunity to see the town, meet some people.” He took a bite of pizza. “Did you know that June and Bob Chase are expecting their first baby, and that Charlie Thomas’s truck was seen after ten o’clock parked in Mavis Goldbloom’s driveway?”
“Everyone knows that June is expecting.” Hannah’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “And Charlie’s the town plumber. Maybe Mavis had a plumbing emergency.”
“That’s what Perry Rellas said. Something about Mavis getting her pipes cleaned.”
“Seth Granger, shame on you.” She lifted a disapproving brow. “You’re a gossipmonger.”
He shrugged, plucked a pepperoni slice off his pizza and popped it into his mouth. “Then I guess you don’t want to know what I heard about Cindy Baker.”
She paused, slid a curious glance at him, then lifted her chin and sniffed. “Certainly not. Cindy Baker is an acquaintance of mine. She was a cheerleader at my high school.”
“Okay.” He finished off his pizza slice and reached for another. “This is really good pizza.”
“The best.”
“Great crust.”
“Fresh ingredients make a difference.”
They ate silently for a moment, then she set her pizza down and frowned at him. “So are you going to tell me, or not?”
“What?”
She pursed her lips. “About Cindy.”
“What happened to, ‘shame on you for listening to gossip’?”
“Just tell me before I have to hurt you.”
Grinning, he leaned forward and whispered, “She went to Dallas.”
Sitting back in her chair, Hannah rolled her eyes. “That’s it?”
“To get her pom-poms enlarged.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “That is a good one. And who told you that?”
“Billy Bishop.”
“Billy Bishop?” She slapped a hand to her chest and stared wide-eyed at him. “You were fraternizing with Billy Bishop? The man you wanted to kill a few days ago?”
“Billy’s all right.” In spite of his irritation with Billy, Seth couldn’t help but like the kid. All that youthful exuberance that hadn’t been jaded yet by all the injustice and violence in the world. “We had a couple beers at the tavern and shot a few rounds of pool. I told him if he printed one more word about me, I’d have to break his arm, though.”
“Well, you’ve certainly had a busy day.” Shaking her head, Hannah reached out and wiped a smudge of pizza sauce on his mouth. He took hold of her wrist when she started to move away.
“Sorry,” she said, blushing. “Habit.”
“A nice habit.” He brought her hand to his mouth, nibbled on the tips of her fingers. “Tasty.”
He felt the shudder run up her arm to her fingertips, saw the glint of desire flare in her eyes. “You know that you and I are part of all that gossip now,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.” He paused, looked up at her. “Will that be a problem for you?”
Shivering, she leaned closer. “Nothing I can’t handle. I haven’t done anything I’m embarrassed about.”
“Hmm.” He turned her hand over, nipped at her palm, then tasted the hot, rapid pulse at her wrist. “Maybe we should work on that.”
“Maybe we should,” she whispered. “We have at least three hours before the girls get home.”
“Three hours works.” He stood, laced her fingers with his, then pulled her to him for a long, searing kiss. “For now,” he murmured.
He led her to his bedroom, closed the door and made every minute count.
Ten
Seth had faced drug-crazed addicts, stared down the barrel of a loaded .357 and caught the tip of a butcher knife in his left shoulder. He’d been thrown fifteen feet from the blast of a meth-lab explosion, jumped through the second-story window of an apartment to dodge a bullet and been cornered by a pair of angry rottweilers.
What he’d never faced before, and had no idea how to handle, was a pair of stubborn five-year-olds.
Standing in the girls’ bedroom, he held a tray with two steaming bowls of soup. Maddie and Missy sat under the covers in their bed, arms folded, bottom lips thrust out.
“We don’t want soup,” Maddie said.
“We want Charlie Choo Choo’s Coco Crazies,” Missy said.
Seth wasn’t sure, but unless he missed his guess, Charlie Choo Choo’s Coco Crazies was a breakfast cereal with a sugar content equaling a ten-pound Hershey’s kiss. He might as well give them a bowl of M&M’s and pour milk over them.
Not that he personally had a problem with that, but these were five-year
-olds, after all.
“You’re home from school because you’re both sick.” They’d woken up on their second morning back from camp with the sniffles and low-grade fevers. “Your mother left me in charge while she’s working and told me to give you chicken noodle soup.”
Maddie made a face and ducked under her covers. “We hate chicken noodle soup.”
Missy slipped under the covers, too, and said from underneath, “It tastes yucky.”
Terrific. They’d been at this already for five minutes and he’d made no headway in changing the girls’ minds. “Maybe after your soup, you can have a small bowl of cereal,” he coaxed, though he wasn’t so sure Hannah would approve. He’d figured out enough in the short time he’d been here to know she carefully doled out sweets to her daughters, and only after they’d eaten a meal.
They both shook their heads, and Maddie said, “We want the cereal first.”
“Then we’ll eat some soup,” Missy added.
Yeah. Like he’d fall for that one.
When Hannah had gotten the early-morning phone call from Phoebe asking her to cover a shift for one of the waitresses at the diner, Seth had offered to watch the girls. Hannah had refused at first, had told him that her daughters could be very difficult when they were sick. But he’d insisted he could manage just fine and she’d reluctantly agreed. Besides, he still owed her for the Aunt Martha debacle.
What could be so hard about watching a couple of little kids? he’d asked himself.
That was before the girls got out of bed every five minutes, wanting water, crackers, juice, napkins, a story, a game and to go outside and play. He’d cleaned up the crackers they’d used as Frisbees from one bed to the other, sopped up the spilled glass of water, then picked up the three thousand sparkling beads that had fallen out of the girls’ jewelry-making kit. They grew crankier by the minute and an argument ensued when Missy took Maddie’s doll and sat on it. He’d barely gotten them calmed down before it was time for lunch.
He was exhausted.
“Look, girls, I have to do what your mom says. Give me a break here and eat the soup.”
“We don’t want soup.”
“We want Charlie Choo Choo’s Coco Crazies.”
“Maddie, Missy.” He knew that he was pleading, that he sounded desperate. He didn’t care. “One small bowl of soup, a few sips, maybe just a teeny, tiny taste. You can do that for me, can’t you? Please?”
Maddie and Missy peeked out from under the covers. “Maybe,” Missy said with a sniff. “But you have to have some soup, too.”
That didn’t sound so bad. No harm in having a little soup. “Okay.”
“And we have to pretend the soup is tea,” Maddie said.
Easy. “This soup is now officially tea.”
The girls both smiled and jumped out of bed.
“Hey—” He watched them dash over to their bookcase and grab tiny cups and saucers and spoons. “You’re supposed to stay in bed.”
“We can’t have a tea party in bed.” Maddie rushed over to the kid-sized table in the corner of the room and arranged a place setting.
Tea party? Now wait just a minute…
Missy pulled out one of the tiny chairs. “You sit here.”
Oh, no. No no no no no.
“No tea party.” He shook his head. “I’m a guy. Guys don’t do tea parties.”
Nothing on earth could make him sit at a child’s table and play tea party. Absolutely nothing.
Maddie’s bottom lip started to quiver. Missy’s eyes filled with moisture.
Seth set his teeth and gripped the tray tightly. He wouldn’t cave. They could cry all they wanted, and he just didn’t care. He refused to be manipulated by two five-year-olds.
And he absolutely, positively, refused to play tea party.
It didn’t matter that her feet hurt and her arms ached from carrying heavy trays for the past six hours, Hannah practically skipped into the house when she returned home. She had a pocket full of fat tips, plus the hourly wage Phoebe had paid her. And while it didn’t make much of a dent in her bills, every little bit helped.
The quiet that greeted her when she entered the house was a good sign. She hoped her daughters were napping. When they were sick and confined to bed, her little angels could quickly turn into little devils.
She headed for the stairs, paused at the top and listened. Based on the voices coming from their room, the girls were not asleep. With a sigh, she moved toward their bedroom, hesitated at the sound of Missy’s voice.
“Would you like one lump or two?”
So they were playing tea party, were they? Which meant they weren’t in bed. Shaking her head, Hannah was nearly at the doorway when the sound of Seth’s deep voice stopped her.
“I’d like six, please.”
Hannah peeked around the corner. Obviously too large for one of the tea table’s chairs, Seth sat on the floor. Maddie sat on a chair beside him, sipping what smelled like soup from a tiny teacup, while Missy pulled a handful of Charlie Choo Choo’s Coco Crazies from a box and counted out six.
Disbelief widened her eyes. Seth was actually playing tea party with her daughters!
Hannah ducked back around the corner before they could see her. She clapped a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh at the sight of a six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound, rugged undercover cop from New Mexico sipping from a dainty teacup.
She listened to him compliment Missy on her excellent choice of tea, then suggest to Maddie that she have another cup. Carefully, Hannah peeked around the corner again, thinking that the tea did look suspiciously like soup. Smiling, she pulled back and leaned against the wall while she listened to the girls discuss where they wanted to have their upcoming birthday party, if they were going to invite boys, and what kind of cake they should have. When Seth suggested fruitcake, the girls broke into giggles and told him he was silly.
Something swelled in Hannah’s chest. She closed her eyes, wished the intense feeling to be gone, but it only increased as she heard the silly banter between her daughters and Seth. The feeling moved up into her throat, swelled there, as well, then burned her eyes.
Damn you, Seth Granger, Hannah thought. We were doing fine before you came here. We were perfectly happy and content, just the three of us.
Hannah swiped at the tears sliding down her cheeks.
She’d fallen in love with him. Helplessly, hopelessly. Completely.
The wrong man, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.
The story of her life.
Quietly she crept back down the stairs, needing a minute alone to compose herself, plus she figured that Seth wouldn’t be too happy about her seeing him sitting on the floor with a teacup in his large, callused hand. He might think it would seriously hinder his tough-guy image that he worked so hard to maintain. He wouldn’t understand that it only made him all the more appealing. More sexy, more virile, more desirable.
It frightened her how desperately she wanted this man. Not only in her bed, but in her life. She didn’t understand how she could want that in such a short period of time, but love didn’t always fit neatly into a formula. The fact was, she did want it. All of it. A ring, the promise of forever. Babies. The thought made her chest ache.
How she wanted to have Seth’s babies.
Stupid, foolish thinking, she told herself as she dropped her purse on the end table and headed for the kitchen. Thinking that would only lead to heartache.
She’d bake a cake, she decided. A six-layer, double-chocolate with raspberry filling. That would keep her hands and mind occupied for a while.
Then later, she could eat half the damn cake herself.
That thought cheered her a little. She pulled ingredients out of her cupboard and refrigerator while she hummed the latest Dixie Chicks’ tune, poured oil into a measuring cup, then reached for an egg.
“You always were good in the kitchen.”
Hannah whirled at the too-familiar deep voice behind her. The egg slipped f
rom her hand and splattered on the floor.
“Brent.”
He stood in the doorway, watching her, his hands in the pockets of his tailored tan slacks. He’d lightened his short brown hair with streaks of blond, and he’d either been to a tanning salon, or spending a lot of time lying around the pool at his town house. Probably both, she thought. She knew that most women fell for those blue eyes and flashing smile. She’d fallen herself once.
Now that she knew what was underneath those Ivy League looks, he only disgusted her.
Her ex-husband’s gaze dropped to the floor, then slid back up to her face and his smile widened. “You’re looking good, Hannah. Working at the diner?”
He nodded to the short-sleeved white blouse and black skirt uniform she had on. If she hadn’t dropped the egg, she swore she would have thrown it at him just to see the expression on his smooth face when she messed up his white silk shirt. “What are you doing here?”
He frowned. “You could at least look a little happy to see me. Especially since I’m here with good news.”
“You’ve relocated your business to Antarctica?” she asked, then decided she was being too nice. “Or maybe your current fiancée hasn’t found out about the girlfriend you have in Fort Worth?”
He lifted a startled brow at that, clearly surprised that Hannah would know about it. “Have you been keeping tabs on me, sweetheart? Just say the word and I’ll drop by to see you, too.”
The very thought made her ill, as did his endearment. She could have told him that Phoebe’s cousin was general manager of the hotel where Brent always stayed when he travelled to Fort Worth, that he and a busty redhead rarely left the room when he was in town. But the fact was, she just didn’t give a damn.
“You can call any time you want and see the girls,” Hannah said evenly. “If you’ve forgotten the number, I’ll write it down.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been busy. Maybe I’ll come and see them at Christmas, take them to a movie or something.”
She’d heard that too many times to know he didn’t mean it. He’d never call, and for that she was grateful. Turning, she grabbed for a paper towel and knelt to wipe up the egg she’d dropped. “Just tell me why you’re here, Brent. I’m busy.”
In Blackhawk's Bed Page 12
