by Jayne Denker
Oh, he was going to kill whichever sibling it was that wouldn’t leave him alone. Probably Gabe.
Whamwhamwham.
“Get the fuck away from my door, douchecanoe! I have a gun and I know how to use it!” he bellowed from his prone position on the bed.
A pause. It dawned on Will that maybe something was slightly off in this scenario, because Gabe would have fired some profanity right back and just banged louder. Could be . . . Crap.
Will launched himself off the bed and frantically heaved the door open. Sure enough, there was his seven-year-old nephew staring up at him, bug-eyed, on the small landing. Will winced, tried desperately to turn it into a casual smile. “Hey . . . Lucas. What’s up?”
“Grandma says you have to come to the house now. Lunch is ready.”
“Right. Tell her I’ll just be a minute. Gotta shower.”
“Okay,” the little boy peeped, turning away. Just as Will was closing the door, relieved, Lucas turned back to him. “Uncle Will?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s a douchecanoe?”
Double crap. “Something you should never, ever say again, unless you want your dad to murder Uncle Will.”
The kid smiled gleefully, showing teeth in a variety of sizes, alternating with large gaps. “Cool.”
“I can tell you’re filing that away for future use,” Will called after him as Lucas darted down the steep outside staircase. “You will have my blood on your hands, boy.”
“Yay—blood!” Lucas shouted back before racing across the lawn to the large Nash homestead.
“Damn kid,” Will muttered, heading for the shower. “Gonna get me in so much trouble.”
The fact that Lucas was probably trying out his new vocabulary word on the entire family at that moment, and that Will’s mother had fired the first warning shot about lunch, should have made him move faster, but instead he took his time peeling off his sweat-soaked jogging gear as he waited for the shower to warm up. They wouldn’t even notice he wasn’t there, at least for a few more minutes. And a good thing too, because he needed those few extra minutes to process his morning.
Will knew he shouldn’t have included Maple Avenue on his jogging route. He never had before. But last week he’d had the bright idea to combine checking on Jordan with a morning run—pass the house, make sure it was still standing, and make sure Jordan was, as well. The first time he’d gone by, she’d been on the porch, looking tousled and bleary, like she’d just woken up—and she probably had—drinking coffee, examining her phone, oblivious to his passing. The second time, a few days ago, she’d caught his eye and raised her coffee cup in greeting. Hadn’t budged otherwise. He’d nodded to her, hoping his expression wasn’t revealing the riot of physical responses going on under his calm exterior.
He stuck his head under the shower’s spray with a small, disappointed groan. The sight of Jordan should not have elicited any reaction from him at all. Okay, maybe relief that she wasn’t getting into any more trouble. That could have been it, in fact. Yeah, that’s what he’d felt when he’d spotted her. Relief. As in, Ah, there she is, safe and sound. Mission accomplished. He could give Zoë a positive report: Public Enemy No. 1 wasn’t destroying, or even threatening, Marsden’s status quo.
Then there was today, when he’d felt the need to jog by again, on an unusual-for-him midmorning Saturday run. Jordan hadn’t been sitting on the wicker loveseat beside the front door, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, like before. He’d slowed his pace, wondering (hoping?) if he’d catch sight of her somewhere else—in the yard, or in her car. Just as he’d decided today was a wash, she’d appeared in the doorway to the house, behind the closed screen door.
And he’d surprised himself by stopping completely. And climbing the porch steps. “Good morning.”
Jordan had stayed where she was, holding the screen door open halfway, as though trying to decide whether to come out or barricade herself inside. She’d cocked her head to one side and offered up her usual languid snark. “To what do I owe the honor, Officer? Am I in trouble?”
“I don’t know; are you?” When she didn’t answer him, he’d gone for broke. “Can I come in?”
“You got a warrant?”
He’d smiled at that. “Aw, did you actually research your rights?” Jordan had smirked, and he knew she had. Damned if she’d tell him so, though. Of course. “That is precious. Permission to approach, at least?”
Jordan had shrugged and come out onto the porch, letting the screen door slam behind her as she’d plopped onto the loveseat and sipped her coffee without replying. He’d leaned against the nearest pillar, crossing his arms.
“Everything under control?” he’d asked.
“And why wouldn’t it be?”
“Making nice with the neighbors?”
“Always,” she’d said with a deliberately fake smile and an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes.
Then she’d glanced to her left, toward Bedelia Swift’s house, where the older woman had been putting out pots of fall mums and pretending not to watch them, but Will had caught her staring with a disapproving frown. He’d waved, and Bedelia had been shamed into nodding to him. She’d always liked Will, so her suspicious look had to have been directed toward Jordan. No doubt about it—everyone sure did remember her misspent youth. And never forgot anything. Nor, apparently, forgave. Once again, Will had felt a small pang of sympathy for her.
He’d tried again to get a conversation going. “Get out much?”
“Is this an official interrogation? Do I need my lawyer present?”
The sympathy had dissipated. “Down, girl. I’m just—”
“Checking up on me? I call in to my probation officer once a week for that.”
“I get it. You’re prickly. Duly noted.”
“What do you want, Winston?”
For you to call me by my actual name, he’d thought. Like you did outside the market, when you were frustrated and afraid. When you needed someone, and you actually let me help you, even just for a minute . . .
Will sighed heavily and braced both hands against the wall on either side of the showerhead, as if by pushing on the solid surface he could push out the other thoughts that crept in bit by bit. Other scenarios where he could demand that she call him by his proper name. Loudly. And with abandon.
Shit. He turned off the water with more force than necessary and yanked his towel off the rack. He didn’t have time for this. It was stupid and . . . way too primal. Male protect female. Male get hot for female. Male get in deep shit, both professionally and personally, very quickly.
He’d been able to control his primal urges pretty well over the years. Well, sort of. He tended to channel them into meaningless hookups, and never with someone from town. It was an okay setup for now. When the time was right, he’d find a nice, appropriate woman and have a real relationship. Jordan, however, was neither nice nor appropriate. She was just . . . intriguing. And, he hated to admit it, pretty damned tempting.
Fortunately, he was adept at avoiding temptation, as his iffy “relationship” with Kyra illustrated. A beautiful woman could be admired from afar, with detachment. With that in mind, he’d abandoned his attempt at friendliness this morning. He’d informed Jordan he was just doing his duty and reminded her it likely wouldn’t be the last time he checked up on her, either. That had made her laugh—for what reason, he had no idea. She’d definitely been laughing at him, though, as if she just couldn’t take him seriously. Yeah, he had that problem from time to time; nearly every Marsden resident over the age of thirty still saw him as a little boy instead of an adult, let alone a police officer.
He’d continued on his way, Jordan’s laughter flowing behind him as he’d hit the pavement again, staying with him long after he’d run far enough away that he could only hear her in his mind.
Will was greeted by a smack on the back of his head when he entered his parents’ house a few minutes later.
“Where have you been?”<
br />
“Um, my apartment?”
“Doing what, all this time? Never mind. I don’t want to know, do I? Did you have a girl up there?”
“Mom!”
“You should move out, bro. Oh, wait, you did. Well, farther this time.” This, from his next-younger brother, Cam, the one sandwiched between him and Jesse, the youngest. Cam was leaning against the kitchen counter by the food and watching everything with his usual permanent air of amusement.
“I don’t care if he did have a girl up there,” their mother said, “if he’d only marry one of them. Then they could buy a house of their own, and I could turn that apartment into a craft room.”
“You’ve got three unoccupied bedrooms in this place, Mom,” Cam reminded her.
“They’re full of . . . things.”
“Garage sale.”
“Blasphemy. And get out of the potato salad with your filthy fingers.”
Cam chuckled but didn’t obey, so Annie switched to smacking him instead of Will, but gently, only ruffling his light-brown hair until it fell in his eyes and he looked like some sort of surfing god who’d wandered away from the coast and gotten lost in the mountains.
“Go make yourself useful—get everyone in here before everything gets cold.”
Cam still didn’t move, so Will did the honors. He found his father in the den, in his favorite chair, ankles crossed and the newspaper hiding his face.
“Hey, Dad.”
The paper came down. “Finally, someone who doesn’t give me a headache. Where’ve you been?”
“Living over the barn.”
“Now you give me a headache too? Thanks a lot.”
“Mom says lunch is ready.”
“Like I didn’t hear her from in here. Okay, let’s go.”
“We’ve got lice!”
Will jumped back half a step as his niece, Lucas’s older sister, appeared in front of him from out of nowhere. “Uh . . . hi, Pickle.”
“They do not have lice,” Katy, Gabe’s wife, declared patiently, turning their daughter toward the kitchen. “They had a lice scare at school. They’re clean, I swear. The outbreak was kept to the kindergarten classes.”
“Are you going to come to our school again, Uncle Will?” the eight-year-old called over her shoulder as her mother nudged her through the doorway. “Scare everybody straight?”
“Why? Do they need scaring straight? We got any promising delinquents in the third grade?”
“Oh, Uncle Will,” Penelope said somberly, “you have no idea.”
Katy took the kids to wash their hands, and Will rounded the long wooden table in the sunroom that made up the back half of the kitchen. Jesse had turned up in the interim and was sitting at the end closest to the back door, elbows on the table, hands folded under his chin as he stared at the place setting.
“Hi,” Will said neutrally. Then he added, “Surprised to see you here.”
Jesse only glanced up briefly. “Mom asked me to pick up Great Aunt Tilly.”
“Did you leave her in the car?”
“Funny,” Jesse muttered, although his expression remained closed and cold. “She’s in the bathroom stealing the decorative soap or something.”
Will was disappointed. It seemed he and Jesse would never get along the way they used to, although whenever they were thrown together, he tried to act normally, hoping this time would be different. But, brothers or not, Jesse was always on his guard around Will. Hey, Will wasn’t the one who’d arrested him. The arrest was warranted—vandalism, possession—but Jesse thought it wasn’t a big deal. He was “just” lashing out against his on-again, off-again girlfriend—by taking a baseball bat to her car because they’d had a fight—and it was “only” a moderate amount of pot. Jesse had expected Will to get him off the hook, but he simply couldn’t do that. It wasn’t like when they were younger, when Will had often convinced his parents to go easy on Jesse for whatever he’d done wrong. This was the law, and Will didn’t violate it, didn’t pull strings. Not even for one of his brothers. Jesse never seemed to understand that. Or he refused to.
Will couldn’t help but try again. “New ink?” he asked, indicating a raw-looking tattoo tucked into a space near other, established tats on the inside of Jesse’s forearm, adding to the sleeve.
“Yeah.”
“Nice.”
“Thanks.”
Then Gabe was leaning over the table, examining his youngest brother’s skin. “Pretty daring, putting Veronica’s name on permanently. I thought you guys broke up again.”
“We did. I had it done when we were back together.”
“They have these things called temporary tattoos, you know. Might’ve tried that instead. Less commitment. To match your life.”
“When are we going to see that precious baby of yours again, Jesse?” their mother demanded, probably to help avoid the blowup Jesse’s glare promised.
Her youngest grimaced and tucked his long hair behind his ear. “Don’t hold your breath, Mom. Ronnie’s not exactly one to give her up even for an hour or two.”
“Well, bring Ronnie along too.”
“Mom . . .”
“Will, help your Aunt Tilly. Put her next to you, would you, please?”
He had been so distracted by Jesse that he hadn’t noticed the little walnut of a lady tottering toward him along the length of the table. He jumped up and helped her into her seat. “Nice to see you, Aunt Tilly.”
“Which one are you, dear?”
“You know I’m Will.”
“Yes, I do,” she answered, showing off her toothless gums with a broad smile.
“How are things at the home?”
“Can’t complain.”
“How’s Holly settling in?” he couldn’t resist asking, even if the mention of her reminded him of Jordan. He wasn’t asking because she was Jordan’s grandmother; he’d always liked Holly and missed seeing her around town . . . even when she’d barreled down Main Street on a skateboard or done doughnuts in a nearby farm field (and she hadn’t even been drinking). That last one had gotten her a ride home in the cruiser, and he’d been more than happy to chauffeur.
“Holly isn’t in the nursing home with Aunt Tilly,” his mother corrected him. “She’s in the independent-living condos.”
“But I see her,” Tilly said. “She and some of the other youngsters come to our building pretty often to shake things up.”
“She’s eighty-five, Aunt Tilly.”
“And I’m ninety-seven, so to me she’s a youngster. Come to think of it, I need to get back in time for dinner. There’s a rumor going around Holly’s going to start the first ever Saturday Night Streak-a-thon.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Annie rolled her eyes and changed the subject as she started passing bowls and platters of food. “I heard her granddaughter’s back in town.”
“Celia?” Cam exclaimed. “Damn, I knew she’d never last with that movie star guy.”
“No, not Celia. Jordan.”
Cam perked up. “Jordan?”
“Don’t even,” Will muttered. “She’s under house arrest. That means no consorting with any unsavory characters.”
“And you are pretty darn unsavory,” Jesse added.
Gabe agreed. “Yeah, stay away from her. She could probably lure you into all kinds of illegal activities.”
“I’d count on it. So what’d she do?”
Will never liked to gossip about any Marsden residents and their brushes with the law. Even if word got around town without his help, he wasn’t going to contribute to its spread. “Something out of town. Minor, though, and not likely a repeatable offense.” Unless she found her way onto a nearby farm and suddenly became enamored of another “pony,” of course.
“I can only imagine,” Cam snickered.
“Leave the girl alone,” their mother snapped. “I think she’s nice.”
Gabe barked a laugh. “What?”
> “Well, misunderstood, anyway. Have you seen her yet, Will?”
He choked on a bite of food, coughed, gulped some water. “Um, yeah. She had to stop by the station. Part of the whole house arrest thing, you know.”
“Where’s she staying?”
“In Holly’s house.”
“But it’s for sale—and empty! And I’ll bet she’s all alone—God knows Wendy and Alan won’t bother with her. You should invite her over for dinner sometime.”
The food that was finally about to successfully make its way down his esophagus threatened to come back up again. Time to change the subject. “Cam, where’s Summer? Working?”
“Um.” Cam’s eyes flicked to his mother’s over his glass as he raised it to his lips.
“Yes, working, isn’t she?” Annie filled in for him. “Lots of paperwork to take care of?”
“Um,” Cam said again.
“Give it up,” Jesse growled, digging at his food almost violently. “Just tell the truth for once in your life. This is your family.”
Will raised an eyebrow at Cam, who colored a bit and fiddled with the napkin on his lap.
“We’re . . . uh . . . taking a little break. From each other.”
“Can I be an axe murderer for Halloween?” Lucas blurted out, oblivious to the uncomfortable silence. Nobody answered him, and nobody responded to the Cam-related grenade either. “I want to paint my hands red so they look like they’re covered in blood. Uncle Will said I could.”
Katy hushed him.
Will ignored his nephew—although he was a little worried what Gabe and Katy were thinking regarding the blood comment—and stated the obvious. “But . . . you just got married.”
“Two years ago.”
“Like I said.”
“Leave it, honey,” his mother told him grimly.
She wasn’t surprised. She knew. How long had she known? He glanced at his dad, who was staring at his plate as though waiting for this current cloudburst to pass before he could go back to his lunch. He knew as well. In fact, it looked like everybody did, except him.
Chapter 6
“What are you pissed off about? That this happened, or that I didn’t tell you? It had better be the first thing, because if it isn’t, you’re making it about you, which would just be weird.”
