[Kate's Boys 05] - A Lawman for Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

Shutting the door, she got dressed at lightning speed. If she kept moving quickly, concentrating only on what she was doing, she wouldn’t have time to think, to reflect on the glaring fact that she needed to have her head examined.

  But why? a small voice inside her pressed. You’re not the one with a problem, Donnelly is. He loved his wife so much, he’s completely turned inside out. This isn’t about you, Kelse, it’s about him. About the pain he’s feeling.

  She was her mother’s daughter. By the time she was finished getting dressed, her embarrassment—and her anger at being made to feel that way—had vanished. It was replaced by genuine concern for the man she’d left in the other room.

  Coming back out, she found Morgan waiting for her, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. She hadn’t been in a position to fully appreciate it earlier, but the man had a washboard stomach the likes of which made her own stomach quiver. She was surprised some woman hadn’t thrown a net over him and dragged him off to her lair way before now.

  He appeared uncomfortable. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he apologized.

  “You didn’t.” All right, it was a lie, she thought, but his apology had smoothed things out. It also made her want to reach out to him. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  she coaxed.

  “It?” he repeated. Was she referring to their lovemaking? She hadn’t struck him as one of those women who constantly needed and wanted to talk about feelings, wanted to explore every moment and its significance ad nauseum. Had he been wrong about her?

  She was willing to leave it in vague terms, letting him be the one who elaborated. But nothing that had to do with Donnelly was easy. “Your guilt at being alive when your wife and daughter aren’t.”

  He wasn’t about to be psychoanalyzed. “I don’t feel guilty.”

  Kelsey didn’t back off. “Don’t you?”

  He shouldn’t have apologized. It had given her a whole new head of steam. “I’ve got an early morning,” he told her, cutting her short.

  “So do I.” As she spoke, Kelsey made her way to the front door, picking up her purse where she’d dropped it when they came in. “Give me a call when you finish up the car.”

  The car. He’d forgotten all about that. For a while there, he’d forgotten about everything. Except her. “Yeah.”

  They left it at that, the single word hanging in the air between them long after she went out the door. Morgan couldn’t get moving, couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d behaved like a jerk. Both in allowing himself to get carried away with Kelsey and then in saying what he had to her.

  Behaving like that just proved his basic belief: that he had no business getting involved with anyone socially outside the job. He was better off keeping to himself. He’d had happiness with Beth for a short time in his life, but that was over now. If he thought that lightning could strike the same heart twice, well, even that didn’t mean that he was a candidate. Until he’d married Beth, he hadn’t even thought it could happen once. That it had was a miracle. Guys like him weren’t candidates for miracles on any sort of a recurring basis.

  Despite her smart mouth, Kelsey Marlowe was a nice girl. He didn’t want to mess with her life—any more than he already had, he amended silently. The cushions on his sofa smelled like jasmine. Jasmine mixed with vanilla. He’d come into the house, exhausted after the double shift he’d been forced to pull. It was the second one in three days. Robbins and Daniels had called in sick—there was a bug going around—and the lieutenant had asked him if he could fill in for one of them. With nothing and no one waiting for him at home, he’d agreed.

  But now he was drained. Really drained.

  Dropping down onto the sofa, Morgan had instantly detected the scent. It made him think of Kelsey. And just like that, he wasn’t drained any longer. He was wired. He thought of the car still sitting in his garage. None of this would have been going on if he’d just let Kelsey take it to a professional mechanic. It wasn’t like him to volunteer to do something without thinking it through first, without weighing any and all possible consequences. He’d know better next time, he silently promised himself.

  Because he felt so wired, Morgan decided to try to erode his sudden surge of restlessness by working on the car. It was close to being finished. He just needed to paint the fender he’d picked up at a salvage yard. The fit was damn near perfect.

  Perfect. Not a word he encountered often, he thought, stopping at his refrigerator to take out a can of beer. But he did have that one night with Kelsey, he remembered, letting the memory drift through his mind in full, animated color.

  The next second, annoyed with his lack of control, he dismissed all of it, especially Kelsey. No point in seeing the woman again and further messing up her life. He wasn’t exactly a prize worth having in his present state.

  And Morgan was fairly confident that he’d never be in any other state.

  The phone rang just as he was about to go into the garage. He considered ignoring it, then decided that he should pick it up. No one called him at home if it wasn’t about work. More than likely, this was the lieutenant, wanting him to come back in for some reason. Picking up the receiver, he barked, “Donnelly” into the phone. When there was no immediate response, he started to hang up, then tried again just in case it was the lieutenant calling on his cell. Occasional interference in the area tended to block out the clarity of the signal.

  “Hello?”

  Instead of a deep male voice, he heard a bright female voice say, “Hi.” He knew it was her instantly, even before she identified herself. “It’s Kelsey. I’m just calling to find out how the car’s coming along.”

  Morgan did his best to ignore the fact that his stomach felt as if it had just encountered a tourniquet and was being squeezed.

  “The car’s fine.” He realized he’d just given human properties to an inanimate object and given her no information on top of that. “It’s almost finished,” he added.

  “And you?”

  “I’m not almost finished,” he replied tersely.

  “No,” she said patiently, “I’m asking if you’re fine, too.” When he didn’t answer, she phrased it another way. “Are you okay?”

  Ordinarily, he would automatically respond in the affirmative, even if the exact opposite was true. He wasn’t into “sharing.” And yet, he heard himself saying,

  “Depends on your definition of ‘okay.’”

  “The opposite of going to hell on a toboggan,” she supplied.

  The doorbell rang. He glared over his shoulder at the front door. What the hell was this, Grand Central Station?

  “Hold on. There’s someone at the door,” he told her, crossing back to the living room.

  “Yes, I know.” She smiled at him as he opened the door. “It’s me,” she concluded brightly as they made eye contact. Morgan punched the off button on the portable phone, then dropped his arm, still holding on to the unit. “Are you stalking me?” he said.

  “No.” Although it wasn’t visible, she could have sworn she detected a hint of a smile on his lips, one that he was fighting to hide. “It used to be called ‘being concerned,’” she told him, closing her cell phone and slipping it into her pocket. “I was just passing by and saw the light.”

  He found that highly suspect. “How do you just ‘pass by’ a house in a residential community, especially if that house is at the end of a cul de sac?”

  Undaunted, she said, “I could have friends in the neighborhood.”

  She was lying. And yet, she looked so innocent. He had a feeling that she made a hell of a poker player.

  “Do you?”

  “Depends.” She raised her eyes to his in a movement that whispered of sex. The tourniquet around his stomach tightened again. “Are we friends?”

  He heard himself laugh and was more surprised by the sound than she was. Morgan shook his head. “I’ve never been friends with a crazy person before.”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled at him. The
smile was warm, seductive, and it made him want to make love with her despite all the vows he’d made to the contrary.

  “First time for everything,” she told him. “How do you feel about weddings?”

  The question knocked him for a loop. Damn woman did that on purpose, he thought, to see his reaction. “In general, specifically or my own?”

  “Yes, yes and no.” Before he could ask another question, Kelsey handed him a small, delicate off-white envelope with scalloped edges. His name and address were written in precise handwriting across the front. There was no return address and no postage affixed. She watched him look the envelope over, as if he was debating even opening it. She saved him the trouble. “It’s for Travis and Shana’s wedding.”

  “Travis,” he repeated, then shook his head. Why would he be invited to the wedding? “I’m not even sure which one of your brothers that is.”

  Kelsey laughed and quipped, “As long as Shana knows, that’s all that’s important.”

  And then she became more serious. “My mother said to tell you that she’d really like you to attend.”

  Kate was a very nice woman, but why would she care one way or another if he attended. “Why?”

  “Because she thinks you need to be around people a little more.”

  If anything, he’d welcome the reverse. “I am around people. Five days a week, I’m around more people than either you or she encounter.”

  “Happy people,” Kelsey emphasized, “not people who are angry or hurt.” She eyed him pointedly. “My mother likes to fix people.”

  Where the hell had that come from? And just what was she trying to tell him?

  “And you?” he asked.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth as a smile slowly unfurled on her lips.

  “They tell me I take after my mother.”

  He rather liked the woman’s mother, but that didn’t mean he was willing to give Kate Marlowe or her daughter a pass to meddle in any aspect of his life. He was fine just the way he was.

  “Well, no disrespect to your mother intended, but I’m not broken.”

  The minute he said it, he could hear the trap snapping shut around him.

  “Then attending shouldn’t be a problem,” Kelsey told him.

  He laughed shortly. “I was doomed from the start, wasn’t I?”

  This time, he could almost taste her smile. Was this what an addict felt like, wanting something that wasn’t any good for him?

  “Pretty much. This really will mean a lot to Mom. To all of us.”

  He couldn’t begin to understand why a group of relative strangers would care whether or not he showed up at a family wedding. But he had a feeling that if he really pushed for an answer, Kelsey would tell him. At length. It was much easier—and far more peaceful—just to go along with it. So he did. He sighed. “I guess I can’t say no.”

  “That’s the general idea. Now that that’s settled, can I see how the car’s coming along?”

  “Yeah, sure, why not?” At least he understood cars, he thought, taking refuge in the familiar.

  Morgan led the way to his garage.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Y ou have no idea how glad I am that you came,” Kate told Morgan, clasping his hands between her own. The wedding had been beautiful and the reception was being held at Trevor’s restaurant, Kate’s Kitchen. Trevor had named the establishment after her since she was the one responsible for his having enough nerve to follow his dream. Up to the point when he went off to culinary school, his father had been counting, none too secretly, on his becoming a lawyer and joining him in the firm along with Trent.

  It had been a very hectic morning and afternoon and this was the first opportunity that Kate’d had to say something to Morgan that didn’t revolve around instructions or dealing with yet another wedding emergency.

  She sounded sincere, Morgan thought, and his mouth quirked in a half smile. Ordinarily, when he heard those words, it was because he’d arrived to help a citizen in some sort of trouble. Technically, he supposed that actually did apply here, seeing as how he’d had to step into someone else’s shoes to prevent what Kate had called a “wedding disaster.”

  With a self-conscious shrug, he murmured something that sounded like “No problem.”

  Dressed in a full-length light blue dress, Kate looked more like the groom’s older sister than someone old enough to be his mother. Feeling a little emotionally and physically spent, Kate took a seat at the table.

  “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t stepped in at the last minute, taking William’s place,” she told him, her blue eyes sparkling. William Allen was to have been one of Travis’s ushers, but according to Travis, he’d called last night to say that he’d tripped over his enthusiastic Great Dane and broken his arm. With profuse apologies, William had dropped out of the wedding party.

  Morgan looked at Kelsey’s mother. The half smile on his lips grew a tad larger. They both knew it was more of a matter of being “pushed” in than “stepping” in. For reasons that made no sense to Morgan, William’s withdrawal had created a huge problem. Before he knew it, Kelsey asked if he minded taking William’s place. Stunned, he’d said that yes, he did mind. Moreover, he had no desire to march down an aisle with a church full of strangers watching him. He remembered Kelsey smiling indulgently at him. “No offense, Morgan, you are really good-looking and all, but that church full of people will be watching Shana. A couple of them might be watching Travis,” she allowed, “but it’s the bride who’s the star at a wedding, not a groomsman. Still,” she’d continued, “you do have the right to turn my mother down.”

  “Your mother?” Even as he spoke, he’d felt the trap closing around him. “I thought that I was turning you down.”

  “It’s a package deal,” she’d informed him. “And if you don’t take William’s place, I’m going to have to drop out of the wedding, too.”

  He’d tried to understand what one thing had to do with the other but failed.

  “Why?”

  “We’re short one groomsman,” she’d reminded him.

  “So?”

  “So,” she’d elaborated, “Shana’s a little superstitious about odd numbers.”

  Definitely a trap closing around him, he’d thought. But he wasn’t about to agree to this without making Kelsey work for it. “Let me get this straight—if I say no, you don’t get to be in it, either?”

  She’d taken a breath and then released it in a heartfelt sigh. All that was missing, he remembered thinking, were violins. “You got it.”

  He debated making her twist a little longer, then decided there was no point to it.

  “All right, I’ll do it,” he’d agreed, then asked, “Does anyone ever get to win an argument with you?”

  Kelsey had looked at him, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. “Happens all the time.”

  Good as she was at keeping a straight face, he hadn’t believed it for a moment.

  “Let me know the next time it happens.”

  She’d laughed then and promised, “You’ll be the first one to know,” just before she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him to express her gratitude. That had set the tempo for the rest of the evening.

  As it turned out, Morgan was the same size as the former groomsman, so getting a tuxedo at the last minute hadn’t posed a problem. Not that he’d actually figured it would. Somehow, between Kelsey and her mother, he had a feeling that they probably would have conjured one up if the present tux hadn’t fit. When it came right down to it, witchcraft was the only way to explain how he’d actually allowed himself to be roped into taking William’s place. Not only roped into doing it—and this was the real kicker—but not minding it.

  When it came right down to it, Morgan had no idea that witches came in size 4 or that they had hair that captured the rays of the sun and shone like spun gold in the late-afternoon sun.

  In response to what Kate was saying to him, he shrugged again. “Kelsey would hav
e roped someone else into taking that guy’s place if I had turned her down.”

  “But you didn’t turn her down,” Kate pointed out. “And you made life a lot easier for all of us by saying yes.”

  As a policeman, he’d trained himself to pick up nuances in a person’s voice, and something in Kate’s made him think she was leaving a lot more unsaid than said. His curiosity was aroused, but asking for an explanation would only get him further entrenched in a family affair. And although they acted like it, this wasn’t his family. There was no sense in allowing himself to pretend—even for a moment.

  He was an outsider and he always would be.

  “Ah, there she is,” Kate announced, looking past his shoulder.

  He turned to see Kelsey weaving around the small tables, making her way to them. To him. If he’d been given to believing in fairy tales, she looked like one of the princesses so easily found in those stories. Except that, no matter what she said to the contrary, he had a strong feeling that Kelsey was not the type who would ever need rescuing.

  But the prince might.

  Kate rose the moment her daughter reached the table. “Does Trevor need any help in the kitchen?” she asked. Kelsey shook her head. “He’s got everything under control. He even asked Emilio to come in and take over so that he could enjoy Travis’s wedding.” Turning to Morgan, she said, “Emilio used to be Trevor’s assistant chef until Trevor staked him to a restaurant of his own,” she explained for his benefit. “It was hard on him, losing Emilio, but he knew that Emilio would never have enough nerve—or money—to go off on his own unless he pushed him out of ‘the nest.’”

  Morgan had learned, at an early age, that life was hard and you had to take care of yourself because no one else would. He’d never thought that people like the Marlowes, people who went out of their way for others, actually existed.

  “I need to say hello to Emilio,” Kate said to him, excusing herself.

  “Brace yourself,” Kelsey called after her mother. “He’s grown a beard.” When she turned back to Morgan, she found him studying her. “What?”

  “Are all you people do-gooders?” he asked.