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He looked intrigued and she remembered Mary Ella talking about how much Riley had always loved a good mystery.
“Obviously that wasn’t the end of it, as your visitor tonight indicates.”
“Not by a long shot. The rest of the winter, rumors started trickling around town of others who had been recipients of this unexpected generosity. Money left in mailboxes, baskets of food on porches, bills paid anonymously. Nothing along the lines of Caroline’s car, but always coming just at a critical moment when people were most discouraged.”
She smiled and gazed at her own basket, touched all over again that someone had gone to so much trouble on her behalf. For the first time, she realized that much of the impact these little gestures had on the recipient came not so much from the tangible gift as from the act of giving itself, the idea that someone had invested time and energy and thought into meeting a need without expectation of even a thank-you.
“Somewhere along the way, somebody coined the mysterious benefactor the Angel of Hope and the name stuck. It’s become quite a legend in town, with everyone trying to figure out who it might be. So far no one’s been able to catch him or her in the act. I probably came closer tonight than anyone else. It’s been really good for the town. I don’t think any of us realized just how fractured we’d become as a community until these things started happening.”
“Fractured? What do you mean?”
“Hope’s Crossing isn’t the same place it was when we were kids. It hasn’t been for a while.”
“Back then, the ski resort was just getting off the ground, only one double lift and a few runs,” he said.
“Right. We all thought Harry Lange and the other developers were smoking something funny to ever think they could make a go of another destination ski resort when Colorado was already glutted with them.”
“Their gamble paid off.”
“Right. Here we are, needing those tourists to survive,” she said, a little glumly.
“Any insight into who might be doing the good deeds?”
“There are about as many theories about that zipping around town as I’ve got seed beads at the store. I was thinking maybe it’s your mom.”
He snorted. “You’re crazy. My mom raised six kids by herself on a schoolteacher’s salary and whatever pitiful child support my dad condescended to pay before he died. No way would she be able to afford to buy a car for Widow Bybee, as much as she might love the cranky old girl.”
“It was only a theory. I think you’re probably right, not necessarily because of the money but because once Mary Ella was out of town visiting Lila when somebody had a cord of firewood sent to Fletcher Jones up in Miner’s Hollow.”
“Playing devil’s advocate here—not that I buy your theory for a minute—but even if my mother was out of town with my sister, she could have arranged the firewood delivery over the phone or before she left.”
“True enough, but she’s been in the store with me a few times when we heard about something the Angel of Hope had done. She was genuinely shocked and thrilled when we heard someone had paid the entire hotel bill for Mark and Amy Denton when their preemie was in the NICU for three weeks in Denver. I don’t think Mary Ella could possibly be that good of an actress. She was crying and everything.”
“I don’t know. She put on a pretty good show that everything was just fine after my dad left.”
She sent him a searching look, surprised he would refer to what had been a traumatic time for his family. He looked as if he regretted saying anything, so she returned to their previous topic.
“After I discarded the theory of your mother being the Angel of Hope, I thought it might be Katherine.”
He nodded. “Now that I might believe. She and Brodie are loaded. Between the sporting goods store and their condo developments, not to mention that her husband was one of the original investors in the ski resort, Katherine could easily afford to run around town helping people out.”
“Except right now, Katherine has far more important things on her mind than bringing me blackberry fudge and a magazine or two. She’s in Denver. I’ve talked to her every day since I’ve been home and I know she hasn’t left Taryn’s side at the children’s hospital.”
She was instantly sorry she’d brought up the accident. Riley’s expression grew shuttered and sudden tension seemed to seethe and coil between them.
Chester seemed to sense something was wrong. He lifted his head from the hearth rug and looked back and forth between them. He yawned and clambered to his feet and waddled over to the side of Riley’s armchair, as if trying to offer his canine version of moral support.
Riley reached down and scratched the scruff of his neck, his mouth a tight line.
She decided not to tiptoe around the subject. “Have you been to see Maura today?” she asked.
That bleak look in his eyes made her long for the teasing rascal he’d been as a boy. “I try to stop by every day. I swung by on my lunch hour earlier.”
“I’ve only talked to her briefly. Most of the time when I call, I reach her voice mail.”
“You’re not the only one. She’s shutting everyone out. Even when I show up in person, she doesn’t want to talk. She pretends everything is just as it was.”
“I guess some pain is so deep you have to swim through it on your own.”
“True enough.”
“How are you?” she asked after a long moment. “How are you really?”
“Fine,” he said shortly.
When she continued to look at him, he finally sighed. “I’ve had better months.”
She had a feeling he didn’t admit that to many people and she was touched that he would share with her. Without thinking other than to offer him comfort, she reached across the space between them and rested a hand on his forearm.
He looked down at her fingers for a long moment and when his gaze rose to meet hers, she wanted to think some of the darkness had lifted from his eyes.
Something flowed between them, something as warm and sweet as the homemade caramel sauce they drizzled over the ice-cream sundaes at Sugar Rush.
“You looked tired when you came in. Have you been sleeping?”
He shrugged but didn’t answer directly. “Why are you worrying about me, Claire? You’re the one with all the broken bones.”
“My injuries will heal,” she said softly.
He slid his arm away from her fingers on the pretext of scratching the back of his neck. “Don’t worry about me, Claire. Worry about Maura and the rest of my family and about the Thornes.” He quickly changed the subject. “So who’s next on your list, if not Ma or Katherine Thorne for the Angel of Hope?”
She decided to let him think he was distracting her, although she wanted to inform him she would worry about him whether he liked it or not. “I don’t know. I’m running out of possibilities.”
“What if it’s a whole group of people? Some kind of loosely structured consortium?”
She laughed. “A what?”
“What if you’ve got more than one Angel of Hope? An alliance of do-gooders? It could be all of them. Ma and Katherine, maybe even your mother. I could see Angie and her husband joining in.”
She considered the idea. “Okay, that’s an option. Maybe whoever gave Caroline her car was only the one who started it all, then others joined it.”
“I like it. So, really, the Angel of Hope could be anyone. And everyone.”
They lapsed into an easy sort of silence while she mulled the likelihood of that. It did fit. She had always considered it a little unlikely that one person could be orchestrating everything.
How would such a group work? Would they act independently or gather for a vote on who to help? While the rain clicked against the windows and the wind howled in the eaves of the old house and the fire simmered in the grate, she imagined the scene. A group of mysterious do-gooders gathered in a room somewhere drinking coffee and discussing the troubles of the people in Hope’s Crossing like the court of Zeus on Olympus.
She smiled a little at the image and opened her mouth to share it with Riley when she noticed his eyes were closed—really closed this time.
His hand had stopped moving on Chester’s fur and his chest was rising and falling in a steady, even rhythm.
“Riley?” she whispered. Her only answer was Chester’s snuffly breathing.
Definitely sleeping this time. Poor man. He had all but admitted he was struggling to deal with his niece’s death. She wished there was some way she could ease his pain. No basket of goodies or envelope full of cash could fix this. Even the Angel of Hope—or angels, as the case may be—wouldn’t have any magic cure.
Nor should there be, she thought. Some pain was simply meant to be endured.
Riley looked a different person in the circle of light cast by the lamp at his elbow. When her children slept, they looked peaceful and sweet, but Riley somehow looked much more like the rowdy rascal he’d been as a boy than the contained adult he’d become.
What would it be like to have the freedom to kiss that hard mouth? To dip her fingers in that thick, wavy hair and brush her lips against his ear…
She pressed a hand to her trembling stomach. What on earth was the matter with her? This was Riley! She had no business entertaining those sorts of thoughts about him. Besides the age difference…her thoughts trailed off. Okay, three years didn’t seem like a big deal when she was thirty-six and he was thirty-three. But she could still remember him so vividly as a nine-year-old pest, driving her and Alex crazy.
She let out a breath. He wasn’t that pest anymore. He was a man, tough and muscled, dangerously attractive. And she was a divorced mother whose love life consisted of watching lush, sweeping movies made out of Jane Austen books with a box of tissues and a bowl of popcorn.
The pain pills in her system must be messing with her. Sure, she knew they caused drowsiness and could lead to stomach upset. She found it more than a little disturbing that the prescription label hadn’t once mentioned as a possible side effect inappropriate sexual urges—toward completely inappropriate individuals.
A smart woman would wake him up and send him home where he could stretch out on his own bed and take all that…maleness…with him.
She opened her mouth to do just that and then closed it again. He had looked so very tired when he came in. If he was comfortable and could rest, it seemed cruel to wake him and send him out into the cold rain.
Hadn’t she just been thinking that she wished she knew some way to offer solace? Maybe a few hours’ rest were just what he needed.
“Riley?” she whispered again, giving one more try.
He released a long sigh of a breath and seemed to settle deeper into the easy chair. Even though she had a strong feeling she would live to regret this, she didn’t have the heart to wake him. Instead, she picked up another soft throw from the back of the sofa and carefully arranged it over him.
She would have done the same thing for Macy and Owen, she told herself as she settled back onto the sofa and tucked her own blanket around her aching leg. She was only being kind to an old friend. The gesture had nothing to do with the crazy, foolish part of her that liked having him there while the storm raged outside and the fire sizzled softly in the grate.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_1417747f-40c7-5d25-828c-ce5ec312be1a)
HE HAD SOME HALF-ASSED dream that he was back in Oakland, deep undercover, his hair shaggy and long and always in the way, the two-day stubble uncomfortable and itchy, wearing clothes that stank of vodka and God only knows what else.
He was hanging with Oscar Ayala, a major player in the Catorce gang’s drug distribution network. Loud Latino music played over the rockin’ stereo in Oscar’s crib, its steady, incessant norteño rhythm making his head spin.
They were close, so close to dismantling the network. For six months, he’d been playing the part of a midlevel distributor. He had seen horrible things. Done horrible things. A few more weeks and the interagency task force would be ready to move in—if he could only keep his precarious position as confidant to Oscar Ayala. That position was in serious jeopardy because of one reason—Oscar’s chica, Gabriela, a hot little number from Venezuela who had set her slumberous eyes on Riley.
He’d been discouraging her furtive advances for weeks, but it was getting harder and harder to tactfully keep away from her. Her influence on Ayala was powerful and while Riley couldn’t let the man think he was screwing his girl, he also couldn’t afford to have a scorned Gabriela whispering trash about him to the dealer he was trying to bring down.
He was in the kitchen pouring drinks, the music pounding, when she cornered him and, apparently tired of playing coy, took the direct route with a determined hand to his crotch.
“Oscar passed out. Now’s our chance,” she murmured in the dream/memory and wrapped herself around him like a boa constrictor. She kissed him, her mouth hard and practiced.
Short of telling her he was gay—which she could probably tell was a lie by his stupid body’s natural response to suddenly finding a lithe, soft female body pressing against all his most sensitive parts after months when he’d been too busy playing a damn role for any kind of social life—he couldn’t come up with a single way to get out of the situation.
He was just about to try the gay card anyway when the worst happened. He heard a roar from the doorway and looked up to see Oscar, the prison tats on his face even more menacing than normal.
“He attacked me,” the bitch cried out in rapid-fire Spanish. “I just came in for another drink and the next thing I knew, he grabbed me. I was trying to get away, baby.”
Riley had stood there for just a moment too long, his brain stalled out, then Oscar lunged into the room, whipping out his Glock.
“Puta,” he snarled and before Riley could say anything, he fired into Gabriela’s head from six feet away, splattering blood and brain matter all over Riley.
In the dream, the moment moved frame by frame in slow motion, much as it had felt in real life.
“She’s a slut,” the dream Oscar said, with a hideous grin on his face. “I’m sick of her shit. One cock after another. I can’t take it no more. She’s gonna give me crabs or something.”
Riley stood there covered in another person’s bodily tissue. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He was a cop and he’d just seen a woman murdered in front of him. Did he arrest the crazy bastard now or let things play out for another few weeks?
“You messin’ with me?” Oscar asked. “You didn’t nail her, right?”
He wiped a hand over his face. “No, man. I didn’t touch her.”
The words scraped his throat raw, but he forced them out anyway. “I didn’t touch her. I wanted to but I didn’t. She was yours. Far as I’m concerned, you got the right to deal with her how you see fit. Ain’t my business.”
Oscar smiled that hideous smile again. “That’s right. Knew I liked you, man.”
In the dream, Riley stepped over the body and grabbed another drink, the norteño music throbbing through his chest, then watched while rats crawled out from the cupboards and started eating the half-gone face.
The slide of something wet against the back of his hand jerked him awake, heart racing. He yanked his hand out of reach of the rats, going instinctively for his weapon before he was even fully awake.
It took him about twenty seconds to realize there were no rats and he wasn’t in that miserable apartment in Oakland, pretending to be the kind of man who could watch a person’s violent death in front of him without any visible reaction.
A dog was licking his hand. Ugly, stout, sorrowful-looking. Claire’s dog, he realized. He was at Claire’s house, with its pretty watercolors on the wall and the comfortable furniture and quiet sense of home surrounding him. He was in her house, in a chair by a dying fire, covered by a nubby-soft blanket. He could just make out a Claire-size shape stretched on the nearby sofa and see the blur of her face in the darkness, her eyes closed as she slept.
He realized he was holding his weapon. Feeling foolish, he slid it back into the harness and drew in a shaky breath, disoriented by the jarring transition from hell to this warm, soft house that smelled of fresh-washed laundry and summer wildflowers and strawberry jam.
It was a smell that was quintessentially Claire. Fresh and sweet. Delicious. Was it some kind of soap she used? Shampoo? Or maybe just her. He had a fragment of memory when he was a kid of walking into his house one day after school and this bright happiness blooming inside him when he realized Claire was there because he caught her scent in the air.
He scrubbed at his face. He hadn’t thought about Oscar or Gabriela’s murder in months. Why now?
Yeah, it had been the final straw. Two weeks later, as he was coming off the assignment after the task force finally moved in and arrested every freaking one of the Catorces because of the evidence he’d collected undercover, Riley had gotten the call from Dean Coleman about his impending retirement, asking him to apply for the job as police chief in Hope’s Crossing.
He might not have considered it before, but at that particular point in his life he had been desperate for a little peace. A place where life meant something, where children didn’t sleep in filth and learn how to light a crack pipe by the time they were in elementary school.
The discordance between the ugliness of the dream and the soft, pretty colors and textures of her house was still jarring.
Had she covered him with the blanket? She must have done. He had no recollection of finding it for himself. Actually, he had no recollection of falling asleep. They had been talking about the town’s Angel of Hope, he remembered, mulling various theories as to the angel’s identity. He must have dozed off in the middle of their conversation.
He shifted and automatically began to pet the dog beneath his droopy ears, fairly humiliated that he had relaxed his guard around her. Why had she let him sleep? And gone to the trouble to cover him with a blanket, too, when she could barely move from her injuries?
He studied her sleeping form, baffled by the woman and by his twenty-plus-year attraction to her.
What was it that drew him so strongly to her? Her generosity of spirit? That air of kindness a person couldn’t help but notice? He sighed. He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he’d had it bad for Claire Tatum Bradford since he was just a stupid kid, fascinated by his older sister’s best friend.
Riley had grown up surrounded by women. Even before his father left, James McKnight had been a distant figure in their lives, busy with his career as a science teacher and school administrator, which left Riley possessor of the lone Y chromosome in his house most of the time.
Until he was about ten or eleven, Claire had been just like one of his sisters, always bossing him around and getting after him for one thing or another.
