From Father to Son

by Janice Kay Johnson

  It was the granddaughter. The curvy package with the fabulous legs, exposed almost as effectively in snug jeans as when she wore short shorts. Those were her two kids. The dog… Was it theirs? The husband was probably one of those men.

  An expletive escaped Niall’s lips. They were moving in. An entire family was moving into Enid’s house, separated from his cottage by the width of a lawn and one old apple tree.

  He kept staring, shock almost—but not quite—numbing him. There would be a swing hanging from the branch of that apple tree before he knew it. The dog would crap all over the lawn and set up an uproar every time Niall came and went. The kids would have friends over. Soon, there wouldn’t be two of them, there would be half a dozen.

  This was his worst nightmare.

  He’d have to break the lease.

  And pay massive penalties, unless Enid’s granddaughter was as eager to see him gone as he was to go.

  Uh-huh. And where would he be going to?

  Maybe it was time he bought a house, he reflected. He could certainly afford to. But the idea had always filled him with uneasiness. It still did. A one-year lease was all the commitment he’d ever wanted to make. Actually owning his own house, his own piece of land, putting down roots… Making some kind of unspoken promise, if only to himself, to stay here, in his hometown....

  He let the blinds spring back into place but stayed where he was, staring at them. Outside the pandemonium continued.

  There had to be another rental somewhere that would be suitable. This was Sunday. Once everything settled down out there, he’d slip out and grab his newspaper. Maybe he’d spot an ad that said something like, Nice house, Privacy! No near neighbors!

  Rural. That’s what he needed, Niall decided grimly. So what if it took him longer to drive to work, if come spring he had to fight the traffic congestion caused by tourists out to view the tulip and daffodil fields?

  God help me, he thought, and stumbled into the tiny kitchenette to put on a pot of coffee. Clearly, going back to bed wasn’t happening.

  AT FOUR-THIRTY IN THE afternoon, a firm rat-a-tat-tat on his door made Niall go on sharp alert. He’d been lying on his sofa brooding, feeling trapped. Would he never be able to come and go without risking the possibility of having to exchange neighborly greetings?

  He swore under his breath and stood. It would be her, of course. No, maybe not. Maybe he’d get lucky and be able to deal with the husband. If there was one.

  No such luck. Not only the woman stood on his doorstep, but her two children, the little girl latched on to her leg and gazing suspiciously at him, the boy’s eyes filled with curiosity. The dog was trying to shove between them and get in the door. Niall automatically stuck out a foot to foil the break-in.

  His gaze traveled up—although it didn’t have to go very far—to meet the young woman’s. She was sort of a blonde, with big brown eyes. Bangs were pushed to one side, and the rest of her baby-fine hair was in a ponytail. Maybe her hair was really brown and she’d had it highlighted.... But Niall shook off that conjecture immediately. She wore no makeup, the bangs looked like she trimmed them herself, and she had a big splotch of what could have been mustard on her faded T-shirt. Which, he couldn’t help noticing, fit snugly over generous breasts. C cup for sure.

  He became aware that, as he studied her, she was likewise inspecting him from his bare feet to his equally faded T-shirt. He thought she looked both wary and apprehensive. His mouth quirked slightly when he noticed that the little girl, who had moonlight-pale hair but Mommy’s soft brown eyes, had an identical expression on her face. Her clutch on her mother’s thigh tightened.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” the woman said.

  He actually did know hers, he’d realized yesterday even before being handed the program for the service. Enid had mentioned it a couple of times. It had caught in his memory only because Rowan was an unusual name.

  “Niall MacLachlan,” he said. “I assume you’re Enid’s granddaughter.”

  “Yes. Rowan Staley.” She had a beautiful voice. The trill of laughter he’d heard earlier had to have been hers. “These are my children, Desmond and Anna.”

  The boy piped up, “Hi.” The girl only stared, her eyes narrowing.

  Niall had the thought that he could develop a soft spot for her.

  “Hello,” he said and then waited, meantime keeping a cautious eye on the dog who had made an enthusiastic, tail-wagging circuit of the yard and was now closing in again. The damn thing looked as if he’d been put together with spare parts. Niall had seen garden art in which rusting springs, trowels and what-not were welded together to form fantastical animals. The dog was even rust-colored.

  “We’ve moved into the house,” Rowan said.

  No shit. He nodded then couldn’t resist saying, “Pretty quick.”

  Her eyes narrowed, increasing the resemblance to her tiny daughter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. I was surprised, that’s all.”

  “I’m Gran’s sole heir. There’s no one to object and no point in the house sitting empty while the will goes through probate.”

  His answering stare was deliberately bored. She flushed, giving her a rosy-cheeked look. No elegant cheekbones here. She wasn’t plump, but she had a lot of curves packed onto a frame that couldn’t possibly top five-foot-two or -three.

  “I’m now your landlady,” she said sharply.

  The dog sprang forward, forcing woman and children to stagger aside, and flung himself happily at Niall.

  “Sit!” he snapped. Apparently surprised, the animal dropped to its haunches. Equally surprised, his family stared at him. Niall said, “Have you looked into that ugly dog contest? There might be prize money.”

  “That’s not nice!” the boy exclaimed. “Super Sam is…is…”

  Something like a chuckle was welling up in Niall’s chest. He suppressed it.

  Rowan looked as indignant as her son. “How can you say that? Sam’s…cute.”

  The cute came out kind of weak. Niall let his silence speak for itself.

  The little girl said in a sweet, high voice, “We love Sam.”

  The dog leaped up, ran a wet pink tongue over her face and bounded off. After a small sigh, Rowan said, “Speaking of Sam. One of the things I came by for was to ask that you keep the gate closed. He doesn’t have an awful lot of common sense, and he, er, likes to dig holes, which some of the neighbors might not appreciate, so we really need to keep him confined.”

  That was a nuisance, but not unreasonable. Niall nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Thank you.” She was trying for crisp sarcasm, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Not her style, Niall thought.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “I haven’t yet had a chance to study the rental agreement,” Rowan said. “Once I have, perhaps we can talk about it.”

  “What’s to talk about? Unless one of us doesn’t intend to honor it?”

  She didn’t look away. “And which one of us would that be?”

  “Depends on how things go, doesn’t it?”

  Her lips compressed. “Yes. It does.” She backed up a step, taking her children with her. “Mr. MacLachlan…”

  “Detective. I’m with Stimson P.D.”

  He saw the moment she made the connection. “I read about you in the paper.” And, clearly, hadn’t liked what she’d read. She opened her mouth to say more, glanced down at Desmond and changed her mind. “What a pleasure it’s been to meet you,” she said, and this time the sarcasm worked better. So well, in fact, that he couldn’t help smiling.

  His new landlady looked momentarily startled, then mad. She gave a nod that made her ponytail bob and her bangs swing, then steered her kids off the porch. Both their heads were
turning to look back as she marched them across the lawn.

  Still smiling, Niall closed the door. With luck, his all-too-close neighbors wouldn’t come calling again in the near future. The kid—Desmond—was right. Niall wasn’t very nice. He reflected that he’d been inspired by the hot pepper stuff orthodontists gave parents to apply to their kids’ thumbs when they wouldn’t quit sucking on them. A preventative measure.

  His smile died, though, at the memory of overhearing his sergeant grumble about how his five-year-old had developed a taste for the damn pepper, and was sucking her thumb even more now.

  Okay, not foolproof, but worth a try.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GUILT WAS GETTING him down.

  He’d expected to struggle with some complex emotions regarding the shooting. Niall didn’t question his decision to take down the bank robber, who’d been doing his damnedest to kill Niall and very possibly would have shot the poor teller once he didn’t need her. The adrenaline kept surging, though, at unexpected moments. That was okay; he knew from experience that this was a problem time would cure.

  It was the sight of the toddler in the car seat that was haunting him, waking and sleeping. Two days ago, Duncan had called to let him know that the bloody bullet embedded in the car door beside the little girl wasn’t Niall’s. Relief had dropped him into a chair with a thud. Thank God, was all he could think. He already knew she’d gone home after only a two-night stay in the hospital. The bullet had barely creased her skull.

  Not my bullet.

  But, damn, it had been a close call. He’d known how high risk a shoot-out was in the middle of town with civilians all around. People often sat waiting in a parked car—although he was still infuriated at the father who had left a child that age alone while he went into the bank. Niall couldn’t seem to stop asking himself whether he’d done the right thing. If he’d backed off somehow, given the guy space to make a getaway… But he couldn’t figure how he could have done that. And then there was the hostage.

  In the week since the incident, he’d gone around and around a million times, never arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. Unfortunately, Niall had had an abundance of time to brood, since he was on routine leave following the shooting. Instead of doing desk work, he had chosen to use vacation days. He had a hell of a lot of them saved to use.

  And now he felt like crud over being so rude to a woman who was probably perfectly nice and had been well-intentioned. Two little kids, too, who’d stared at him with shocked eyes by the time Mom hastily bore them away. No, he wasn’t the friendliest guy on earth, but he knew he’d have been more civil if he hadn’t been sleep-deprived and on edge.

  He finally ventured out two days after that initial meet-and-greet to ease his conscience. Rowan and the children were in the backyard. She seemed to be happily setting pink flowering geraniums into pots on the porch. A green plastic sandbox shaped like a turtle had appeared yesterday, and the girl sat in it with a shovel and bucket. The boy and dog both had crawled beneath the giant rhododendrons that had grown dark limbs together along the fence line.

  The girl—Anna—and Rowan both turned their heads at the sound of his door and watched him as he walked across the grass toward them. He half expected tiny Anna to bolt for her mom, but she didn’t move.

  Rowan eyed him without welcome. Damn, she was pretty, he thought, dismayed at his seemingly unstoppable physical reaction to her. She was more wholesome than his usual type, but that might be because he avoided the home-and-hearth kind of woman like the plague. This one had such a lush body, what man wouldn’t notice?

  “Hi,” he said. “I, uh, thought maybe I could be a little more civil than I was the other day.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard.”

  He grinned. “No. I guess it wouldn’t.”

  “Did you get out of bed on the wrong side?”

  “Something like that,” he admitted. He glanced to be sure neither kid had gotten too close. “You read about the shooting, I gather.”

  Rowan nodded, expression cool.

  “The aftermath of something like that is always…unsettling. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “I read it wasn’t you who shot the child.”

  “No. I was trying to be very conscious of how many people were in potential danger. Even so…” He sighed. “It was a relief to know it wasn’t my gun.”

  “But it could have been.”

  “I actually only pulled the trigger a couple of times, when I was pretty certain I had a clean shot to take him down. He was the one spraying bullets all over the parking lot.”

  She looked down at the trowel in her gloved hands. “At least she’s okay.”

  Niall made a sound of agreement even though he felt defensive. Maybe he still hadn’t resolved in his own mind how much responsibility he bore for that little girl’s near miss, but that was different than seeing judgment in some civilian’s eyes.

  “You did some nice things for Gran,” Rowan said.

  He shifted uncomfortably. Sure, he’d done a few repairs, rebuilt those back steps Rowan’s feet rested on, picked up groceries and prescriptions a few times, but that was common decency, nothing above and beyond.

  Those soft-as-a-pansy brown eyes met his. “Do you intend to stay?”

  He hesitated. “I’m not a hundred percent sure.” How did he say, It depends how noisy and intrusive your kids are? “Do you have a husband in the picture?” He hadn’t seen one, but could have missed him.

  Her face tightened. “I’m a widow.”

  He said the polite thing. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged.

  “Well,” he said. “I was depositing the rent directly into Enid’s account. Let me know how you want me to handle it now.”

  “All right.”

  The boy crawled back out from beneath the rhodies, followed by the dog. The boy had acquired a few scratches and quite a bit of dirt. The dog—well, his coarse, rusty coat probably never looked clean. Spotting Niall, the dog tore across the lawn, the boy following at a trot. Niall braced himself for possible impact.

  “Sit!”

  The dog sat.

  “How do you do that?” Rowan asked, eyes wide with astonishment. “Super Sam and I went through an obedience course, and it didn’t do a speck of good.”

  “I mean it, and he can tell.”

  She glowered at the dog, who was obviously desperate to leap up. His tail was swinging furiously, his butt waggling with it, and his big brown eyes, a deeper brown than his mistress’s, were fixed on Niall’s face.

  With resignation, Niall said, “Okay, boy,” and submitted to a fervent greeting. The boy hung back shyly, but looked as if he, too, would have liked to bound at Niall.

  “I have a goldfish.”

  He looked down to see the girl had abandoned her sandbox to come stand beside him. Her head was tilted back to allow her to stare up at him.

  He cleared his throat. “Do you?”

  “Uh-huh. You wanna see?”

  No. Hell, no! He was going to be so sorry if he let these kids think he wanted to be buddies. He shot a helpless look at Rowan, who was smiling softly at her daughter, apparently oblivious to his discomfiture.

  “Uh…I’ve seen goldfish.”

  “My goldfish is named Goldie. ’Cuz he’s gold.”

  “Goldfish are really orange,” Desmond said importantly. “You should have named him Orangie.” He cackled at his humor.

  His sister ignored him. “I won Goldie.”

  “At the school carnival,” the boy said. “She threw a quarter into a jar.” His tone suggested it had been an accident. “She picked Goldie, ’stead of one of the stuffed animals.” His gaze slid to Rowan. “Mom wasn’t very happy. She tried to talk Anna into trad
ing Goldie in for a panda bear, but she wouldn’t.”

  “Goldie’s alive,” Anna informed him.

  Niall’s sense of humor was apparently alive and well, too, in defiance of his recent crappy mood. He was trying to hide his smile when he met Rowan’s, rueful but beautiful.

  A small hand crept into his and tugged. Niall started.

  “Come see Goldie.”

  “Anna…” her mother began, but he shook his head.

  “It’s okay.”

  Desmond stuck close as they went in the house. Super Sam let out a pitiful whine when the screen door slammed shut in his face. As he allowed himself to be pulled through the house and upstairs, Niall heard Rowan talking to the dog.

  The family was far from unpacked, but Anna’s bed was covered by a pink-and-purple comforter imprinted with unicorns and princesses and a castle. Her white-painted dresser had pink ceramic drawer pulls. Goldie lived in a glass bowl atop the dresser. A very small castle sat on the bottom of the bowl, and a couple of strands of fake seagrass waved in the water as he swam hopeless circles around the perimeter.

  Niall learned that Goldie liked being talked to. Desmond fed the fish a few flakes; Mom wouldn’t let Anna feed the fish, he said, because she dumped in too much food, which wasn’t good for him.

  “I get to feed Sam, too. He’s my dog.”

  Anna’s lower lip shot out. “Is not!”

  “Is, too.”

  “Is not! He’s our dog. Mommy said so.”

  “Well, I take care of him.”

  She wanted to argue about that, but evidently couldn’t. She contented herself with a scowl, unnatural on her small, elfin face.

  Niall took a look at Desmond’s room, too, where a spaceship was under construction with Lego bricks. Plastic as well as stuffed dinosaurs seemed to be the dominant theme. He resisted their invitation to look at Mommy’s bedroom, too. That was a picture he’d just as soon not have in his head.