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He wasn’t sure exactly at what point he figured out she was different, but he could definitely remember the first time he’d noticed her physically.
When he was thirteen, she’d stayed over at the house one summer night, as she often did to escape what he could only guess must have been a depressing home life, knowing what he did of Ruth and how she’d fallen apart after her husband’s murder.
He’d gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Claire had just been coming out of it and she’d been wearing soft sleep shorts and a tank top without a bra. It had been a cool evening and he clearly remembered being able to see the dark outline of her nipples through the thin, almost translucent cotton.
She had smiled sleepily at him before heading back across the hall to Alex’s bedroom and Riley could still remember how he had stood there stupidly far longer than he should have, his mouth dry and his body reacting, well, like a thirteen-year-old boy’s does.
That moment had been the highlight of a horny yet relatively sexually deprived adolescence, a memory he had savored far more than he probably should have.
Come to think of it, that moment was still probably one of the hottest of his life.
He stretched a little and glanced at his watch. Two in the morning. He’d been sleeping in Claire Bradford’s easy chair for going on three hours, probably the most he’d slept at a time since the accident nearly two weeks ago.
The accident. A chill seeped into his shoulders, wiping away the last trace of any lighter thoughts like that wind blowing down the canyon. A familiar pain pinched under his breastbone.
Layla.
Ah, Layla.
He closed his eyes, picturing Maura as he’d seen her earlier. He checked on her daily, always hoping for a change but his laughing, free-spirited sister was gone. She had aged a decade in the past two weeks, her skin pale and dry, her features gaunt and drawn.
She said she didn’t blame him for her daughter’s death. Just the day before, she had taken his face in her hands and told him so. “It wasn’t your fault, Ri. Don’t you dare think that. You were doing your job.”
Intellectually, he knew she was right, but that didn’t make the guilt any easier to bear.
He had seen ugly things during his time undercover, things that apparently still haunted his dreams. But in more than a decade of law enforcement, nothing had affected him as much as the accident that had killed his sister’s child.
That chill slid deeper into his bones and he glanced over at the fire and saw it had burned down to embers. The wind had quieted sometime in the night, but he could still hear the soft dribble of the rain.
A quick look at Claire assured him that she was still sleeping soundly and Riley rose and moved quietly toward the fireplace, her funny-looking dog following close behind. Someone—maybe that idiot Bradford?—had left a tidy stack of firewood beside the hearth. He stirred the embers for a moment with the poker until they glowed red, then picked up a nice-size log and tossed it in. It sizzled for a moment before the embers clawed at it and it caught fire. He gazed at the flames for a moment, then heard a slight rustle behind him.
When he turned, he found Claire sitting up, reaching for the small lamp by her sofa with her good hand. Her hair was a little mashed on the side where she’d been sleeping and her cheek was creased from the pillow, but she still looked soft and sleepy and far more sexy than she’d ever been at sixteen.
He, not surprisingly, had the same reaction he’d had in that hallway of his childhood house.
“What time is it?” Her voice sounded husky and low, which didn’t help anything.
“A little past two. You shouldn’t have let me fall asleep.”
She yawned and massaged her arm just above the cast. “You looked so tired. I figured a few moments might help you feel better.”
“A few moments, maybe. That was three hours ago.”
She gave a rueful smile. “I guess I fell asleep, too. Sorry about that. Is your neck sore from sleeping in the chair?”
“No, actually. I slept better than I have in…a while.”
Her face softened with compassion that he didn’t want to see, so he decided to go for the shock factor.
“I have to tell you, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I was fourteen and used to fantasize about sleeping with you.”
Her jaw dropped and in the dim light from the fire and the area lamp, he watched a tinge of adorable color climb her cheekbones. “You did not.”
“Oh, Claire, my dear, I most certainly did. You were the subject of many a heated fantasy. And a fourteen-year-old boy, unfortunately, can have a pretty vivid imagination.”
She still didn’t look as if she believed him. “Why on earth would you have given me more than a second thought? I was only your older sister’s friend. You always ignored us, unless you were figuring out new ways to torment us.”
In the age-old dance of idiotic boys, he had mostly teased them as an underhanded way to make Claire pay attention to him. He supposed he was always drawn to her, even before he reached an age where he saw her as a very attractive female.
Despite the emotional toll of the past few weeks, he had to smile a little at the shock in her eyes. She probably had no idea she’d been an object of lust, not just to him but to plenty other adolescent males in Hope’s Crossing.
“You’re breaking my heart here, Claire. I had a crush on you from the time I was old enough to figure out girls didn’t really have cooties. Maybe even earlier than that. I used to have all these really great fantasies where one day you’d come to me with your hair all tousled and sexy—lips pouty, eyes heavily made-up like something out of a Bon Jovi video, you know the drill—and tell me you were into me, too. Now you’re basically saying you never once thought of me that way. That’s harsh.”
Her eyes were huge and he couldn’t tell if she was horrified or intrigued. Or maybe both.
She opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out and he finally took pity on her.
“I’m teasing, Claire. Oh, the torrid fantasy part is true, much to my shame and embarrassment, but that was all a long time ago. We were completely different people back then.”
He saw her throat work as she swallowed and her hands curled convulsively on the light quilt covering her. Now he’d made her nervous.
“I should get out of here, let you go back to sleep. I never meant to stay so long. Would you like me to take the dog out before I leave?”
She swallowed again, her gaze shifting from him to the dog, then out the window at the rain-soaked darkness before returning to him.
“That would be great. Thank you. There are still far too many things I’d like to do but can’t right now, you know?”
He thought of pressing her back on her pillow and burying his hands in her hair and then kissing that delectable mouth. “I think I have a fair idea,” he said dryly. “Come on, Chester.”
Riley wasn’t quite sure how he managed it, but somehow her dog managed to look excited beyond all his inherent basset gloominess. He opened the kitchen door for him and Chester hurried out into the rain.
Riley stood waiting for him, grateful for the cool, wet air to clear out the rest of his cobwebs. He was also grateful he had the next day off so he could try to sleep in a little, though he had a feeling Claire would show up in his remaining dreams.
That beat the hell out of the alternative, though. He would far rather dream about her than those vivid nightmares about his undercover work or about the accident.
As he waited, he did a quick inventory of her lawn in the glow from the porch light.
“Looks like you’ve lost a few branches from the wind earlier,” he said after he’d let the dog back inside, dried him off a little with a towel hanging by the door and then returned to Claire’s family room.
“Oh, drat,” she muttered.
Who said drat these days? he wondered, charmed all over again by her.
That silly word was a firm reminder to him, as if he needed one. Anyone who said drat instead of the blue curses he would have uttered was far too sweet for someone like him. He had too many black marks against his soul to deserve a woman like Claire Tatum Bradford.
“I guess that’s what happens when I live in a house surrounded by hundred-year-old trees. Do you think they’re too big for Macy and Owen to clean up when they get back from Denver with Jeff and Holly Sunday night?”
“I couldn’t see all that clearly in the dark, but from what I could tell, I think you’re going to need a chainsaw for a couple of those limbs.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure I can find someone to help me.”
He hesitated for just a moment, obligation fighting against his better judgment. He had to make the offer, even though some part of him knew spending more time with Claire wasn’t a good idea. But he was in Hope’s Crossing now and that’s what people did in a small town. They helped each other when they could. Beyond that, he owed her. If not for him, she could be taking care of her own branches.
“It’s been a few years, but I’m sure I can remember how to fire up the Stihl.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “You’re far too busy, Riley. You don’t have time to be cleaning up my yard. I’ve got a man I hire to help with the heavy repairs and yard work around here, Andy Harris. If he can’t do it, Jeff could probably take care of it after he brings the children home.”
He tried to picture the entirely too smooth doctor dirtying his hands with his ex-wife’s yard work with his young, lovely wife at his side. The image wouldn’t quite come together.
“I’ll round up a chain saw and come over later in the morning. Would eleven work?”
“Riley…”
He didn’t want to argue anymore, not when it was taking all his concentration to keep his hands off her. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said shortly. “Do you need anything else before I leave?”
“No. I… Thank you.”
“What are friends for?” he murmured, then let himself out of her warm, pretty house while he still could find the strength to leave.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_f482064e-bed4-567e-a0db-e954f15d9244)
SHE SHOULD NOT BE DOING THIS.
As the hungry growl of the chain saw cut through the afternoon, Claire sat in her blasted rolling chair, Chester at her feet, sneaking another peek through the filmy curtains at her bay window, like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Only instead of spying on her neighbor burying a body in the garden, she couldn’t seem to stop watching the very attractive male currently wielding that chain saw on her downed tree limbs.
Something was seriously wrong with her.
Riley had made short work of the storm debris over the last hour. When he finished, he had poked his head in the door to inform her—not to ask, apparently, because he didn’t seem to care when she objected—that he was going to trim a few of the lower hanging limbs and any others that had been weakened by the harsh winters and heavy snows in Hope’s Crossing.
She had tried to insist she could hire a tree service, but he had only smiled and headed back out to work.
She shouldn’t be gawking at him, noticing the way his T-shirt clung to his chest and the muscles that rippled in his back as he stacked and loaded the larger chunks of branches onto her woodpile.
This was Riley. Alex’s pest of a brother, the one who used to jump around corners to scare them at every opportunity, who used to cover the spray nozzle handle on the sink so anyone who turned the faucet on would be drenched, whose favorite summer activity had been lurking in wait for them to sunbathe in the backyard so he could sneak out and soak them with the garden hose.
He was definitely all grown up, six feet and change of hard muscles.
You were the subject of many a heated fantasy… I had a crush on you from the time I was old enough to figure out girls didn’t really have cooties.
She still didn’t buy it. He had to have been yanking her chain. Still, his words had chased themselves around and around in her head since that strange conversation in the early hours of the morning.
She sighed and Chester raised his head, his eyes curious. “Sorry. Go back to sleep. Just reminding myself what an idiot I am.”
He barked once as if in agreement, then rested his head on his paws again as Claire suddenly became aware the throb of the chain saw had stilled.
She searched the backyard for Riley and found him kneeling near the trunk of her favorite old honey locust. The bright orange chainsaw case gaped open on the ground and he was fitting the saw back in.
Was he finished? Yes. A minute later, she watched him close the case and then stand up again and head for the house. Only by sheer luck and Chester fortuitously lunging out of the way, she managed to wheel away from the kitchen window just seconds before he rapped on the back door and then opened it without waiting for her to answer it.
He filled her house, large and masculine, in the space that had become rather girly since Jeff moved out.
“That should take care of your arboreal needs for a while.”
“Until the next big windstorm anyway. Thank you. I appreciate all your help.”
He shrugged. “No big deal. I had a free morning. Anyway, I’d rather be outside doing yard work than holed up in my office down at the station filling out reports.”
“Will you have some lunch? I made a couple of sandwiches.” She pointed to the table with more than a little embarrassment. The sandwiches she’d made looked clumsy and crooked on the mismatched china, all she could find in the dishwasher. She couldn’t reach up into the cupboard easily, so she’d been forced to make do.
Riley didn’t seem to notice anything wrong with her efforts. He gaped at the table and then looked back at her.
“You’re in pain and can barely move, Claire,” he exclaimed. “The last thing you need to be worrying about is feeding me.”
“I’m feeling fine. Great, actually.” She didn’t add that she had felt more useful making that pitiful excuse for a sandwich than at any time since the accident. “Anyway, it’s only a sandwich, Riley. It’s not like a five-course meal Alex would fix or anything.”
“Thank you, then,” he said after a pause. “It looks delicious and I am starving. I should probably wash some of this dirt and sawdust off first, though.”
“The bathroom’s down the hall, first door on the left.”
When he returned a few moments later, his hair was damp around his face and a couple of water droplets still clung to his neck.
He looked completely delicious. She, on the other hand, was not at her best. She had chosen a plain cotton dress with tiny sprigs of blue flowers, something easy to pull over her various medical hardware. She had pulled her hair back in a headband and even put on a little makeup, but her spruce-up efforts seemed rather pathetic.
He slid into a chair at the table and looked around her sunny, comfortable kitchen.
“I have to say, this place has really changed since the last time I saw it, back when that scary-mean Mrs. Schmidt lived here.”
“She wasn’t scary or mean. Just old and lonely.”
“Do you always look for the best in people?”
She could feel her face heat. “If you take the time to see past the gruff, you can usually find something good.”
“Maybe you should try being a cop for a day or two. That would probably change your perspective.” He picked out a pickle spear from the jar she’d managed to wrangle down off the shelf of the refrigerator and took a chomp out of it.
She sipped at her water. “No, thank you. I’ll stick with my bead store. I like being foolish and naive.”
“I didn’t call you either of those things. I actually think it’s…sweet.”
She didn’t want to be sweet. Not when it came to Riley.
“So tell me about the house,” he said. “How did you come to be the proud owner of Mrs. Schmidt’s crumbling old brick pile?”
“I’ve dreamed of living here from the time I used to walk past it on my way to school,” she confessed.
“Even as creepy as it used to look, with the grime and the cobwebs and the shutters falling off their hinges?”
“I could always see past all the dusty corners to the gem inside. The bones were good and I knew with a little elbow grease, this place could truly sparkle.”
