He caught her staring. The slightest smile turned up the corner of his mouth, and a blush heated her face.
She turned away from the light and opened her front door. AnnaBelle pranced out onto the porch. Despite the fierce barks, the golden retriever was all feathery wags and whines for the newcomer.
“Nice dog.” He leaned down to stroke her head.
“She belongs to Carson,” she said.
Grant stopped midpet. Devastation crossed his face, sadness aging him years in the span of a moment. “I didn’t know they had a dog.”
“They haven’t had her long. Lee picked her up at the animal shelter over the summer. AnnaBelle and Carson are best friends.” She stepped into the house and toed off her boots. Turning, she patted her thigh. “Come on, AnnaBelle.
“Are the children coming home?” Ellie asked, tears filling her eyes. “Social services wouldn’t let me keep them, and my application as an emergency foster spent the weekend in bureaucratic limbo. Background checks take time, they said.” The dog circled her legs, tripping her. Catching her balance, she nudged the overly affectionate retriever out of the way. “They let me have the dog.”
“The kids will be home early tomorrow.” He wiped his feet on the mat. “They wouldn’t call for them tonight. Policy.”
“Yes. I learned all about social services policy over the weekend.” Ellie swallowed her bitterness.
The dog and man followed her into the house. As she moved through the hall, she broke open the shotgun action, plucked out the shells, and locked the rifle in a gun case in the hall closet. “You’re still in Afghanistan?”
“Yes. I’m on emergency leave.”
She led him past her gutted living room.
“How’s the remodel going?” he asked, gesturing through the archway, where supplies and tools occupied the space that should have held a dining room table.
“Slowly.” She walked into the kitchen. The cabinets shone with a painful shade of Day-Glo yellow, and the peeling wallpaper featured sunflowers the size of a human head. The faded vinyl tiles underfoot used to be black. The overall effect was nauseating. “I can’t wait to do this room. It feels like you’re being attacked by bumblebees. The kitchen will be gutted next. Walls have to come down. It’s going to get ugly.”
“When we talked last, you were working on the master bath.”
He remembered. Warmth filled Ellie. They’d met a few, memorable times. Kate had been obvious in her attempts to push them together. She’d invited Ellie to more barbecues during Grant’s two-week visit last May than in the whole summer that followed.
Ellie gestured toward the table. “Do you want to sit down? Can I get you some coffee?”
“No,” Grant said. The confines of the small room amplified his size. The man was solid. He must spend considerable time training in the Middle East. He had muscles on top of muscles. Not that she was staring. Much. “I’d just like to get settled for the night. It’s been a long trip.”
“I’ll bet. Let me find that key.” She opened the drawer and rummaged through bottle openers, pens, and other assorted junk. “I know it’s here. I just used it the other day.”
Slippers scuffed in the hall, and Nan walked in, her insatiable curiosity drawing her to their guest like a bee buzzing around a can of Orange Crush. She sized up Grant in the bright kitchen light in one head-to-toe visual sweep. Under her fluffy helmet of dyed brown hair, Nan’s gaze changed from suspicious to interested in one blink.
Uh-oh.
Ellie gestured. “Nan, this is Major Grant Barrett. Lee’s brother. You were in Florida last spring when he visited.”
Nan’s gaze softened. She walked closer and took both his hands, her eyes shining with tears. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Major. Your brother was a nice man.”
His mouth tightened, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Thank you. Please call me Grant.”
“Grant needs the house key.” Ellie spied it on a wall hook. AnnaBelle followed her to the key rack and back. “Is there anything else we can do for you?”
“Not tonight,” he said, taking the key from her hand. “I might have some questions for you tomorrow, especially when the kids come home. Thank you for taking the dog and for watching the house.”
“It was the least I could do.” Ellie went to the pantry and hoisted a fifty-pound bag of dog food up onto her hip.
Grant rushed over. “Let me get that.” He tucked it under one arm as if it didn’t weigh more than a bag of flour. She kept her eyes off the bulges under his sweater. Mostly. This was hardly the appropriate time to appreciate the major’s attributes. But she knew they were all sorts of fine. An image popped into her head of Grant playing outside with Carson last May. Carson had turned the hose on his uncle. The vision of Grant stripping off his wet T-shirt, ringing it out, and chasing his giggling nephew across the yard had been imprinted in Ellie’s brain for the last ten months. And replayed itself a thousand times like a video on YouTube, usually at very inappropriate and inopportune times. Like now.
She set a coiled leash on top of the bag. “She doesn’t wear the leash much. If you call her, she’ll come.”
“Mom?”
All heads turned toward the doorway. Her daughter, Julia, stood under the arch.
“Do you remember Major Barrett?”
Julia nodded. “I’m real sorry.” She sniffed. A tear leaked out of a swollen eye, and she heaved a long, shaky breath. She’d taken the Barretts’ deaths hard. In addition to babysitting Carson and Faith, Kate was Julia’s figure skating coach. Ellie went to her daughter and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Her sexy thoughts of the hot major faded, adding another layer to her sadness. If things were different, if he wasn’t an ambitious military officer constantly moving all over the world, if she wasn’t so bound by the betrayal of her past, if their current meeting wasn’t mired in grief, then maybe something could happen between them.
But that was way too many ifs, all impossible to change.
Grant shifted his weight toward the front door as if he couldn’t escape fast enough. “It’s late. I’d better go. Thank you again.”
He called the dog, who went willingly, always thrilled to meet a new human. Ellie escorted them outside to the front porch. AnnaBelle followed Grant across the grass and up onto the stoop of the house next door. Ellie shut the door and locked the deadbolt.
“Night.” Rubbing her biceps, Julia went upstairs.
Nan stood in the kitchen, one fist propped on a hip, brows pinched in deep thought. “That man’s going to need help.”
Ellie crossed her arms over her chest. “If Grant needs help, he’ll ask for it. Until he does, we are going to mind our own business.”
Nan ignored her, bustling around the kitchen. “Nice-looking man. Fit. Clean-cut. Always did love a man in uniform.”
“He wasn’t in uniform.”
“I have a good imagination.” Thank God Nan had been away last year. If she’d seen Grant without a shirt . . .
“Oh, no.” Ellie wagged a finger at her grandmother. “Don’t even start.”
“Start what?” Nan lifted an overly innocent shoulder. “I was simply making an observation.”
“Well, don’t,” Ellie said. “He’s on leave. He’s not staying.”
“Uh-huh.” Nan pulled a loaf pan from the cabinet.
“I don’t do casual.”
Nan snorted. “You don’t do anyone.”
“Nan!” Ellie protested.
Her grandmother held up a forefinger. “Look, you made a mistake when you were young. The only one still making you pay for it is you. I can count the number of dates you’ve had in the last few years on one of these veiny old hands. You need to let it go and move on with your life.”
“I’ve been involved with a man who wasn’t around. I’m not doing that again.” Ellie would rather renovat
e than date. “You’re exaggerating. I’ve dated more than that. It’s just been a while. I’ve been busy.”
“Not much more.” Nan pulled her recipe box from the back of the counter. She flipped through rows of handwritten, butter-splotched index cards.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m wide awake.” Nan took the flour out of the pantry. “I’m going to bake.”
“It’s after eleven.”
“When Carson comes home, he’ll want something familiar to eat.” How like her grandmother to turn her insomnia into a comforting meal for a sad child. “And men the size of Grant need sustenance.”
When Ellie had turned up on her grandmother’s doorstep pregnant at seventeen, with the baby’s father absconding for the West Coast and Ellie’s parents issuing a their-way-or-the-highway ultimatum, Nan had taken her in without a single reproach. What’s done is done, she’d said. Let’s focus on the future. The next day, they’d picked a theme for the nursery and started painting the spare room.
Nan paused, baking pan in hand, staring at their reflection in the dark glass of the kitchen window. “I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about Lee and Kate and those poor children.”
Her grandmother didn’t have to finish. Ellie couldn’t get their friends out of her mind either. Her throat filled and her eyes burned with unshed tears.
“Grant will get the kids back tomorrow.” She gave her grandmother a one-armed, sideways hug.
“Thank God.”
“Yes.”
They stood in silence for a minute, each thinking her private thoughts.
Nan’s were probably about Grant.
But Ellie was not setting herself up to be left again. She was just fine on her own. Lonely, but fine.
“I’m going to bed.” Ellie returned to the living room to make sure her tub of Spackle was tightly closed. In her bedroom, she looked out the window. Lights glowed in the windows next door. How would Grant fare with the children? Carson was an easygoing kid, but grief would make even him challenging. Then there was Faith. How would a military bachelor handle the hours upon hours of screaming? Kate used to say that the baby had the lungs of an Olympic athlete.
Poor Kate.
Ellie might have known Lee longer, and he was the one who’d talked her into buying this house as her next project, but she’d formed a friendship with Kate since becoming their neighbor. They had a lot in common. Both of them were estranged from their parents. Kate knew what it was like not to be able to call her mom on holidays. Now Faith and Carson wouldn’t have a mother to call either.
Breath hitching, Ellie went into the master bath, the first room she’d remodeled when she bought the property. Creamy porcelain tiles replaced the 1950s pink-and-black motif. She turned on the rain shower, stripped, and stepped in. The water was still cold. She slid down onto the tile and let the tears come, picturing Carson crying in the backseat of the social worker’s car, the baby wailing, the dog whining and pulling against her collar. Ellie could still feel the bite of night air on her tear-dampened face, as cold and real as the shower water running over her skin now.
How long was Grant’s leave and what was he going to do with the children when he returned to the military? Even more important, what would the children do without him? Lee had two additional siblings, but where were they? Kate hadn’t seen her parents in ten years, and from the stories she’d told, the kids were better off without them. Ellie’s chest ached with grief for those orphans.
The water warmed, smoothing her goose bumps. Ellie climbed to her feet and washed her face. Lee and Kate’s children weren’t Ellie’s responsibility. Neither was the dog she missed already. The woman from social services had made that clear. Like Ellie had told Nan, she intended to mind her own business unless Grant asked her for help. He had his own family. He didn’t need nosy neighbors butting into an already difficult situation. But with the hot major and two children she cared about living just next door, keeping her distance wasn’t going to be easy.
Grant unlocked the front door of his brother’s house. He whistled for the dog, who was sniffing a circle on the snow-covered lawn. “Here, girl.”
Three females and their tears were more than he could handle. Their collective sympathy threatened to challenge his tenuous hold on control. But Ellie Ross’s long dark hair, scattering of freckles, and big brown eyes could tempt a man to accept some comfort.
He jerked his attention away from the pretty neighbor. In less than a month he’d be back in Afghanistan. Ellie, with her baseball-and-apple-pie wholesomeness, wasn’t a casual fling type of girl.
Grant was too focused on his military career to squeeze a relationship into his life. Making general required 100 percent dedication. He’d seen too many of his comrades miss their families, and he’d shipped too many parents home in flag-draped coffins. In his own youth, he’d witnessed firsthand the sacrifices made by an army family. Grant only dated female army officers who weren’t interested in the whole domestic deal. But somehow Ellie had already encroached on his imagination on more than a few cold, lonely desert nights.
AnnaBelle sniffed a shrub in the flower bed that fronted the porch, then trotted through the open door. In the entryway, Grant tossed the keys on the hall table and sat in the adjacent chair to remove his wet boots. More than a hundred years old, the Victorian had a classic center stairway design, with an abundance of small rooms and narrow halls. Everything was dark, from the scarred pine floors to the heavy case molding around the windows and doors. The house wasn’t appealing. Why had Lee wanted it so badly? He’d talked of renovations, knocking down walls and adding windows to bring some light into the gloomy house, but it didn’t appear as if any improvements had been made since Grant had visited last year except for boarding up the nonfunctioning dumbwaiter in the butler’s pantry. Grant smiled, remembering Lee’s rare childish excitement when they’d first moved into the house. He’d wanted to fix the old pulley and lever system. But Kate had been terrified Carson would fall down the hole. As usual, the practical Kate had won.
The dog followed him into the kitchen. Grant filled a bowl of water and set it on the floor. A bay window behind the table looked out onto the snowy woods behind the house. Last spring, Lee and Kate had hosted numerous barbecues, all not-so-subtly designed to bring Grant and Ellie together, in that backyard. He could picture her now, standing on the grass, her sundress showing off smooth shoulders and a length of bare, tan leg, a wide smile tempting him to get to know her better. Much better. It had taken all of Grant’s determination to keep his distance. Just a few weeks away from deployment hadn’t been the best time to start a relationship. As if he had ever had time for a personal life.
He dropped onto the sofa in the adjoining small family room. Picking up the remote, he turned on the TV. He flipped through channels until he came to a hockey game but barely saw the screen. Lee and Kate’s deaths seemed so senseless and surreal. Tomorrow the kids would be home. How was he going to manage a baby he’d never met and a grieving six-year-old he hadn’t seen in ten months?
Chapter Five
Donnie crouched behind the driver’s seat of his van and watched the big man and dog go into the Barrett house down the street. He lowered his binoculars. Who was that?
Fuck.
He did not need this shit. Yanking off his knit cap, he rubbed the stubble on his scalp with a brisk scrubbing motion. He couldn’t get lucky with this job. Three nights he’d attempted to get into the house, and all three times he’d been spotted. That bitch next door kept calling the cops. She seriously needed to be taught a lesson. With some hard-core punishment, he could teach her how to be submissive. There were so many different ways he could violate her body.
A memory intruded in his fantasy as he remembered his own lessons. He could still feel the concrete under his palms and knees and the blows to his face and body as he was beaten until he’d begged for it to be over
. The humiliation of not only being forced to submit to the ultimate physical violation, but to have pleaded for it just to end the torture, had crushed his soul. Blood had dripped into his eyes and mouth. He was so fucked up now that the metallic taste or smell of it still gave him an instant hard-on.
When this job was over, he’d release his frustrations. He turned his attention back to the house he was watching. This whole job was backward. The killing was supposed to be the hard part, and the recovery easy. Instead, the murder had been almost effortless—beyond effortless—euphoric.
There had been so much blood spreading out across the icy street he’d needed to exorcise a few demons with his new girlfriend. Good thing she dug pain as much as he enjoyed inflicting it.
He chewed on a ragged cuticle that tasted like hamburger grease. The longer he sat here, the greater his chances of getting caught. Although, according to the news, the cops had nothing. Sure, they pretended they were embroiled in an “ongoing investigation,” but he knew that meant they didn’t have squat. His fingerprints and DNA were in the system. If he’d left any personal trace evidence at the crime scene, his mug shot would have been on the news. He didn’t shave from head to foot as a fashion statement.
He was clean on the murders, but his client was holding back the balance of payment until the whole job was complete. He couldn’t sit out here forever. The neighbor was bound to notice him. He copied the license plate number of the sedan in the driveway. Probably a rental, but he’d check. Then he could try to hack into the rental company’s website and get a name on the big bastard that was holding up his job.
He should have stuck with cyber crime. It didn’t require him sitting out in a cold van, freezing his nuts off. But after eighteen months in prison, violence called to him. Rage built up inside him, the internal pressure growing until his very skin grew itchy and tight. Killing the Barretts had released the tension. Hurting people was a need. He might as well get paid to do it.
Hour of Need (Scarlet Falls) Page 4
