Deacon had called twice and Leah hadn’t picked up either time. She was still confused by his actions—actions that had her believing he didn’t want anything to do with her child.
The day was a blur of preschool drop-off and pick-up, grocery shopping and cleaning. By the time dinner rolled around, Leah was certain that being home with her son all day was more work than her full-time job. Both were important and she needed the money so there was no choice about working. But her fantasy that being a stay-at-home mom would somehow be easier was obliterated. Wasn’t there some kind of network that would make the job manageable and less isolating?
Even though conversation with Connor was pretty much numbers and alphabet rehearsals, she felt more fulfilled at the end of day, which struck her as weird. She’d always believed that she worked in order to find that feeling. By the time Riley arrived, Leah was ready to bounce off the walls. She needed her exercise time now more than ever.
“How was school today?” Leah asked, mostly just making conversation as she put on her running shoes.
“Best day ever.” Riley beamed.
Leah took a closer look. Her babysitter practically glowed. “What’s that smile all about? You’re sick of school, remember?”
“Do you remember me talking about Drew?” Riley asked sheepishly.
“Football team Drew?” Leah asked. “Quarterback Drew? The kid who annoyed the heck out of you in pre-calc?”
“He’s not so bad,” Riley defended.
Uh-oh.
“Anything that gets you excited about going to school again isn’t going to bother me,” Leah said. Riley had the worst case of senioritis. “What about him?”
“He talked to me today.”
Well, someone sound the bell tower.
“And?”
“That’s it.” Riley shrugged. “He told me about a party he might be going to this weekend. He said it would be cool if I showed up.”
“I don’t mean to play the old lady card here but that doesn’t exactly sound like he asked you out on a date.” Leah knew that some of the shier guys had a difficult time coming up with the right words and fear of rejection had them keeping conversation general. But she wished he’d given a clearer signal.
Was she still talking about Riley?
“He probably just wants to hang out first. You know, see if we get along before he makes it official.” Riley tried so hard to sound like she didn’t care.
“Well, kiddo, that sounds like a good plan to me. I mean, you may not find that the two of you have much in common after being around each other outside of school.” Leah had a hard time believing a quarterback of a good high school football team could be shy, but she’d seen more shocking things than that. She imagined he had young girls lining up to date him. Leah had had a terrible experience and her defenses were showing. Riley was a beautiful young woman with brains to spare. Now that she really thought about it, why wouldn’t he want to date her? Leah guessed she saw Riley with someone who spent more time with his nose in a book than outside on a playing field. But, hey, if this guy made her happy, good for her.
“It’s kind of weird because I don’t believe in, like, love at first sight. But there was just this instant boom in my head the first time we made eye contact. I was standing at my locker talking to Valerie and when I shut the door and turned around, there he was talking to one of his teammates.” She made a dramatic gesture with her hands. “This doesn’t sound like me at all, I know, but it’s all true.”
Seeing the openness in Riley’s smile, the innocence in her eyes made Leah think she was too cynical. “And he’s as smart as you?”
“He’s in the running for valedictorian,” Riley practically exclaimed.
Wow. To be young and have such an overwhelming crush. Leah couldn’t remember the last time... Well, there was Brock Garrison her freshman year. He’d given her all those giddy, giggly feelings. He’d been a lifeguard at the pool by the high school. He was a junior when she was a freshman and he barely looked her way, except that one time in the hallway before Christmas break. She’d stayed after for English tutoring and the school seemed almost empty by the time tutoring was over. Leah sat on the front steps, waiting. And then out of those same doors walked Brock. He lifted weights but he wasn’t big like some of the football players. He was more toned than bulky. He stopped and asked to sit next to her. Leah could hardly believe it. Her cheeks heated and she was embarrassingly tongue-tied but he was smooth.
The two chatted easily, and as her mother pulled up he asked for her phone number. A few days later, he called and asked her out for the coming Saturday.
The date was short-lived. He’d taken her to a party where she sat awkwardly because none of her circle of friends was there. All the kids were older. She watched as he popped open a beer. She didn’t want to get in the car with him after he started drinking and he seemed more into his buddies than he was into her, so she slipped out the back door, figuring she could walk home.
The jock who’d followed her had other ideas. Rad Clemens was a star running back. He was already being scouted by colleges in his junior year. He was also full of himself sober and worse when he’d been drinking.
Leah had figured out what was going on a few seconds too late to turn around. Music thumped from the party and no one would hear her if she screamed. A fact that Rad seemed keenly aware of, too. She’d picked up the pace, figuring that she could probably outrun him in his drunken state. He’d been surprisingly fast. His vise-like grip around her arm stopped her cold in her tracks.
She’d tried to jerk free but his fist was clamped. He’d asked her where she thought she was going. He’d spun her around like she weighed nothing and laughed at the sheer look of terror that had to have been on her face.
Biting, kicking and screaming had saved her that night. A neighbor heard the racket and came out of his house to yell at them. When he saw what was happening, he threatened to call the police if Rad didn’t let her go.
After Rad took off running back to the party, he’d told Brock that she’d come on to him. Brock had left her a nasty message on her answering machine. There was no point arguing her case the next day, either. He believed Rad.
Leah shook off the recollection and finished tying her shoe. “Be careful. Stick with a friend and don’t walk home alone.”
Of course, that was true about people in general but she tried to keep her warnings to a minimum.
“I’m not crazy. I mean, I’m taking it slow. You know, chill.” Riley was trying too hard to convince Leah. So Leah smiled.
Chill?
“Of course you are.” Leah had to stifle a laugh. Kids went through some interesting changes in high school. Oh, to be seventeen again. There was so much Leah would have done differently.
“Have a great run.” Riley was clearly changing the subject.
“I might be later than usual tonight. I need this today.” Taking her new respect for stay-at-home moms with her, Leah hoped she could exercise herself out of the funk she’d been in most of the day. Her shackles were still rankled over Deacon’s disappearing act.
It took a good twenty minutes after she warmed up to hit her running stride. Rounding the corner and seeing Deacon was the emotional equivalent of slamming into a brick wall at eighty miles an hour.
“What are you doing here?”
“APOLOGIZING FOR THE WAY I left things this morning.” Deacon had bolted out in a hurry and then had thought about her the entire day. He’d had a difficult time thinking about anything but her.
She stood there, chest heaving and arms folded but saying nothing.
“I’m not that guy—”
“You mean the one who scribbles a note on a scrap piece of paper and sneaks out the door?” Yeah, she had a right to be angry about that.
“It didn’t seem right for your son to wake up to a stranger in the house.” That was true. It wasn’t the entire reason he’d bolted. How could he explain that seeing her holding her child might just shock him back to a time when he’d fallen for another single mother? Both were dead now and he’d sworn off caring for anyone else in the same situation. Losing two of the people he’d cared about most had nearly done him in. His heart had an auto-shutoff valve engaged now to protect him from ever experiencing that level of pain again.
“I don’t make a habit of telling people my life story. I guess I figured you wrong.” Leah studied him. In her line of work, she’d have a good idea if someone were telling the truth. He was losing and if he wanted to spend any more time around her—and he did—he was going to have to give her more to go on.
“In my past, I dated a woman with a child.” He hoped like hell she could understand.
Leah’s toe was tapping out a staccato rhythm on the pavement.
“A little girl, Emery, and she had a hard time meeting new people.” Leah examined him like she was looking right through him. Did she see beneath the layers of metal into the core of him? Deacon felt exposed talking about his past. He didn’t go there with anyone, either.
“I get that,” she said. “Is that really the reason?”
She was perceptive. Smart. Beautiful.
“It’s part of it.” Deacon wasn’t a liar. “The other side of the coin has to do with me.”
“You don’t like kids?” Her question came out rushed and there was at least a hint of disappointment in her tone. She quickly covered it by squaring her shoulders.
“That’s not the problem.” He didn’t want to tell her that his heart couldn’t allow him to get attached to another woman and her child.
“Then what is?” Her gaze narrowed and her lips thinned. She was getting impatient and, hell, he couldn’t blame her. If the shoe were on the other foot, he wouldn’t like what he was hearing, either.
“It’s me. Okay? I can’t get close to another kid and...”
“I get it.” She held up her hand. “She broke up with you and you lost two people and that’s awful for anyone. But meeting my son—”
“She didn’t break up with me...” He let his voice trail off because he couldn’t say it out loud. Not even now.
Catching her gaze, her mouth formed an Oh.
It looked like the wind had been knocked out of her. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Deacon. I truly am.”
Those words shouldn’t have soothed him in the way that they did.
She said other things like, “That’s not fair.” And it wasn’t. Feeling sorry for himself, licking his wounds like he’d been doing for the past year didn’t change anything, wouldn’t bring Jackie and Emery back. No amount of pounding his fists into a wall could do that.
His hands fisted at his sides thinking about it, but Leah took a couple of steps toward him, closing the distance. He could see her breath in the cold night air as she said other words of comfort. And then she clutched his jacket and tugged him toward her. Deacon took in a deep breath, steadying himself as the world stopped spinning for the first time in twelve long months.
He couldn’t be sure how long they stood there. It was like time had stopped and the world shrank to only the two of them. He brought his hands up to her neck and pressed his forehead to hers, not wanting to think about how good she smelled when they were toe-to-toe or how much he liked the taste of coffee so much better on her lips.
Before he did something stupid, like kiss her again, he took her hands in his and dropped them down to her sides. “You want to run? I’d like to be your shadow. All I could think about today was you being safe.”
“I’m a trained officer of the law. I can handle most situations.” There was no rebuttal in her eyes. “But I’m also a mother and need to make it home to my son every night. So I won’t ask you not to follow me. I’ll be grateful for any extra set of eyes I can get.”
After standing there a few more seconds, she replaced an earbud and jogged away from him.
Deacon kept pace about fifteen feet behind Leah. They’d been running—and she was a solid runner—for almost half an hour when she stopped as a man came into view. Charles Dougherty in all black jogging gear was more than a little creepy.
“What are you doing here, Charles? You’re not a runner.” Deacon kept a distance but made sure the detective could see him clearly.
Dougherty’s gaze bounced from Leah to Deacon and back. His eyebrows were slashes and his cheeks fire red.
“I have a killer on this trail. Why are you still out here?” He glared at Leah.
“Last time I checked, this was a free country, Charles. And this is my trail. You know that.” Her voice was chillier than the air outside.
“We need to talk in private,” he demanded. There he went with that line again.
“That’s not going to happen, Charles.”
“I have another dead body because you went to the chief and filled his head with a bunch of nonsense about Henry not being my guy.” Charles took a threatening step toward her. His hands fisted at his sides.
“Hey, there. Calm down. There’s no reason we can’t discuss this like rational adults.” Deacon needed to let Charles know that his behavior was unacceptable. And if the rational adults path didn’t work, Charles was going to come to understand that Deacon would take him on man-to-man. Either way, the detective wasn’t about to lay a hand on Leah.
Leah poked her index finger in Dougherty’s chest. “You take another step or raise your fist at me and I will go to the chief. Your badge will hang over my fireplace mantel.”
Deacon almost chuckled. So much for coming to the aid of a lady when that female happened to be a cop and could take care of herself. Even so, Dougherty had an unfair size advantage and—according to Deacon—an anger management problem that needed to be addressed. Deacon remembered the story about the detective’s daughter and wife, and that caused him to soften his stance a little.
“You need to know that you’re playing with fire,” Dougherty shot back. He took a step in the opposite direction of Leah.
“There’s no need to threaten me, Charles—”
“Is the prospect of losing your job not important enough for you to keep away from him?” Dougherty motioned toward Deacon.
The detective needed to get a grip. “If you want to discuss the case with her, fine. But don’t speak down to her like that again. It’s her business who she talks to and just because we happened to run into each other on the same trail doesn’t mean we came here together.”
They hadn’t. Deacon had no problem pointing out the truth.
“Oh, yeah? What about your overnight visits to her house?” Dougherty shot back.
Deacon thought about planting a fist on Dougherty’s jaw. Leah pushed in between them as though she read his mind.
Fire shot through Dougherty’s glare.
“Say what you want about anyone else, but when it comes to me and Leah, you’d be advised to mind your own business.” Leah’s palm was firmly planted on Deacon’s chest. He had no intention of losing control or charging the detective but Dougherty needed to know he’d crossed the line.
“Is that what you want?” Dougherty wagged a finger at Deacon.
Leah seemed to realize that Deacon wasn’t a charging bull and she stepped aside. Dougherty took advantage and snapped a kick off at Deacon, nailing him in the stomach. Deacon doubled over as the heel of Dougherty’s boot slammed into his ribs and then his fist connected with Deacon’s eye.
Deacon instantly reacted with an uppercut that connected with Dougherty’s nose. Blood splattered and Deacon thought for a split second that he might’ve just broken the detective’s nose.
The man took a couple of steps back and shook his head like a wet dog. “That’s a mistake you’ll regret.”
Leah was in between them again, playing referee, when Dougherty shoved her shoulder.
“Hey—” Leah couldn’t finish her statement without Dougherty knocking her back a step.
“I’ll have your badge over your boyfriend striking an officer of the law,” Dougherty said to Leah. There was a lot of venom in his tone, which also told Deacon loud and clear that the man hadn’t gotten over her.
“Go ahead. I’ll have yours after I meet with the mayor. You’ll both be unemployed. Is that what you want?” Deacon threatened. He’d never used his family name to back someone down before but Dougherty needed a slap of reality.
“You’re about to see how bad life can get,” Dougherty said to Leah as he stumbled away.