Lawman's Redemption (16 page)

He hadn't been cold a few minutes earlier, she realized.
Now
he was cold—hard, icy, unemotional except for the contempt that darkened his eyes. His movements tautly controlled, he loosened her fingers, then removed her hand from his arm and backed a few steps away. “Make your delivery, bring my truck back, then go to hell.”

“Brady—”

As he crossed the yard to the steps, he gave no indication of hearing her. When he ran into Lexy at the door, he slid his arm around her shoulders, turned her and took her inside with him.

Then he closed the door.

Hallie stood there, stunned by his reaction. Under the circumstances, it had been a fair question. After all, it was one thing to pretend to be Lexy's father for a few weeks when life was normal. It was another when the girl apparently had enemies who made the situation dangerous. Almost every parent would risk his life to protect his own child. But how many would do the same for someone else's child?

Brady would.

Hallie wanted to go inside and apologize, to tell him she was worried—not just about Lexy, but about him and Lexy. But when she moved, she didn't start toward the house. Instead, she climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine and backed out of the driveway. Neely's tile guy lived a mile or two west of town and had a workshop out back. As she drove, she located the directions in her purse, then concentrated on following them.

When she'd agreed to help out Neely by spending these few weeks in Oklahoma, she'd thought it would be exactly what she needed—quiet, a slower pace, no familiar faces, a little bit of a job to make her feel useful and plenty of time for planning her future. She'd imagined that September first would roll around, and she would be healed, renewed and ready to face the world. She would know what she wanted to do and where she wanted to be, and life would be worth living again.

Ha!

Wait a minute. Silent wasn't emphatic enough.
“Ha!”
she said aloud, and was satisfied with the scorn and disdain she packed into the one word.

She'd been living in Fantasyland.

But where else would the flighty sister live?

H
is house was a mess, and his life wasn't much better.

Brady stood in the middle of the living room, hands on his hips, and looked around. He'd cleaned up all the broken glass, put right the furniture and returned the books and videotapes to their shelves. Two trash bags held everything the punks had broken, and that was just from this room. Lexy had straightened her room and was working in the dining room now, and she was more than a little sullen about it.

He knew she hadn't overheard his conversation with Hallie that afternoon, because he'd found out later she'd been in the kitchen, talking to Mitch while he dusted around the door for fingerprints. Still, she'd been full of questions when she'd realized that Hallie had left without her, and when Hallie brought back the truck and picked up her car, then left again without a word to them, she'd gotten downright petulant.

“Lex? Let's take a break.”

She came in from the dining room and stood at the end of the couch. With the table lamps broken and no overhead lights in the room, his only option for lighting had been to pull out the two oil lamps he kept for occasional power outages during
the heavy spring and summer thunderstorms. They cast flickering shadows and gave the room a cozy, if dim, atmosphere.

Too bad he didn't have anyone to get cozy with.

“Why don't you find something good on TV, and I'll stick a frozen pizza in the oven,” he suggested.

With a shrug, she dropped down on the couch and turned on the television. He went into the kitchen, stepping over pots and pans, canned goods and empty canisters, the contents of which had been dumped in the sink. He supposed he should be grateful for that, since they could have just as easily dumped the flour, sugar and coffee all over the floor.

But at the moment, about the only thing he could find it in him to be grateful for was the fact that Lexy and Hallie hadn't returned while the intruders were still there.

He put a large pizza in the oven and set the timer, then began picking up everything on the floor that didn't belong there. He'd just gathered an armload of pans when Lexy spoke from the doorway.

“Hallie volunteered to help with all this, so where is she?”

His gaze shifted automatically to the window, where no lights showed on the other side of the pasture. That was a good question. The only two rooms in her house whose lights he couldn't see from his own house were the bathroom and the dining room. It was doubtful she was sitting over there in the dark and unlikely she'd gone to bed this early. Though she'd met a lot of people, he couldn't think of any she knew well enough to go out with, and there was no place open for shopping at this time of night.

Of course, there was always the bar where he'd met her.

He immediately dismissed that idea. She didn't make a habit of picking up men in bars.

Even though she'd picked him up in one.

But that had been significantly out of character for her.

And where was it written that she was restricted to only one out-of-character act?

She wasn't the type.

But that hadn't stopped her with him.

“I imagine she's home or…doing something.”

“But she's not
here.
Why? What did you say to her to make her not come over?”

Not much, he thought bitterly. Just
Go to hell.

Of course he hadn't meant it. He'd been angry— No. The least he could do was be honest with himself, if no one else. He'd been hurt that she, of all people, could ask that question of him.
Are you looking for an excuse to get rid of her?

She knew him better than anyone, and yet she doubted him. She believed he would pretend concern for Lexy's safety when his real agenda was to remove her from his life.

Which meant she didn't know him at all.

“What makes you think I said something?” he asked, avoiding looking at her as he ran water into the sink.

“Because she never would have left like that if you hadn't. Because she would have said goodbye, and she would have come back, like she said she would, unless
you
did something to keep her away.”

It must be nice to know that someone had such faith in you, Brady thought as he began washing the pots and pans. But it wasn't fair that Lexy had that faith in Hallie and not him. He was her
father,
for God's sake, while Hallie was only…

His words echoed in his head. He was no closer today to knowing whether he was her father than he'd been the day she showed up in town. How had he forgotten that? Was he getting too comfortable with the role he was playing?

He couldn't afford that.

He just wasn't sure he could stop it.

“Well?”

He looked at her over his shoulder. Before they'd started cleaning, she'd changed into a pair of faded cutoffs and a Marshall High School T-shirt that was about three sizes too big for her. It was such a normal outfit that he hardly even noticed the purple hair or all the piercings. He hadn't suspected that she even owned such clothes.

Turning back to the sink, he asked, “Why don't you go watch TV?”

“Why don't you answer my question?”

“I don't know where Hallie is.”

“That wasn't the question. It was what did you say to make her leave the way she did and not come back?”

“What we talked about is between her and me.”

“When it means
I
don't get to see her, it involves me, too.”

Impatience surged through him and made his voice sharper than he'd intended. “Just let it drop, Lexy. It's none of your business.”

She gave him a go-to-hell look, then spun around and stomped into the living room. A moment later she switched the TV to her favorite music channel—if that discordant, arrhythmic din could be called music—and raised the volume to ear-splitting. His nearest neighbors were an elderly couple who were both hard of hearing, but he wouldn't be surprised if even they could hear it. But instead of yelling at Lexy to turn it down—no doubt the response she was hoping for—he gritted his teeth and worked at ignoring it.

He'd washed about half the dishes when the timer went off. After drying his hands, he took out the pizza, cut it and dished up three slices each on two plates, then carried them along with two soft drinks into the living room. “Turn that down while we eat.”

She pretended not to hear him, so he set down the food, then used the remote to crank down the volume to a respectable level.

He'd eaten one piece of pizza and started on another one before he finally broke the silence. “When does the new school year start?”

She mumbled three indistinct sounds that gave the definite flavor of
I don't know.

“Does it start in August?”

“Hm.”

“Toward the end of the month?”

She shrugged, then gave him a sweetly sarcastic smile that reminded him so much of her mother he couldn't stand it.

“Counting the days until you're free of me?”

“No.” Drawing a breath, he forced himself to go on. “Believe it or not, Lexy, I've liked having you here.” After living totally alone for so many years, it was a big change, having someone to come home to, to share meals with, to entertain and
be entertained by. He didn't want to even think about how empty his life was going to be once she and Hallie were gone. He would have to learn living alone all over again, and instinct warned him it was going to be a hell of a lot harder this time than the first time.

“But…?”

He shook his head. “No ‘but.'”

“There always is. But you've had enough now. You want your life back. You're tired of the hassle.”

He shook his head again. “There's no ‘but.' Sorry to disappoint you.” After a moment, he added, “I was thinking…maybe you could come back at Thanksgiving.”

Her jaw literally dropped open as she stared at him in astonishment. She hadn't expected an invitation to return. She believed he was her father, but she'd thought that once this visit was over, he wouldn't want to see her again.

Hallie was right. If he tried to send Lexy home now, before her visit was scheduled to end, she would never buy the story that he was concerned about her safety. She would believe he was using the break-in and the attempted kidnapping merely as excuses to get rid of her. She'll just have to live with that, he'd told Hallie—an adequate response if they were talking about a normal kid with a normal upbringing and a mother who loved her. But Lexy's life had never been normal, and she'd never known with any certainty that
anyone
had ever loved her.

He knew how that could damage a person. He knew all too well how it could affect a person's entire life.

And whether she was his daughter or someone else's, he didn't want her to grow up like him.

“Thanksgiving,” she echoed. “S-sure, th-that would be grea—okay.” Then she grinned sheepishly. “Nah, that would be
great.
”

“Then we'll get your airline reservations before you go home, okay?”

Still grinning, she bobbed her head.

They polished off the rest of the pizza, then returned to the cleanup. By eleven o'clock, everything was back in its place and, except for all the missing breakables and the two-by-four
nailed across the back door to secure it, the house looked none the worse. Brady glanced around the kitchen, then yawned. “I'm going to bed.”

“I think I'll watch a little TV first.” Lexy started out of the room, then came back, raised onto her toes and brushed the slightest of kisses to his jaw. “Good night,” she muttered, her face turning red as she hurried away.

He stared after her a long time before turning down the hall and into his bedroom. He didn't bother with a light, but undressed in the dark and slid underneath the top sheet. He could see out the window that the Tucker farmhouse was dark, which very well might mean Hallie was in bed asleep. Or in bed not asleep. Or in bed and not alone. Or maybe she wasn't there at all. Maybe….

He rolled onto his side, away from the window, and closed his eyes. He'd been satisfied with living alone the past six years, until first Hallie, then Lexy, had come into his life. Of course he'd been needy those years, though he didn't like to admit it.

But when had he become so greedy?

 

The sound of the screen door opening was soft, familiar, but so out of place in the middle of the night that it woke Brady from a restless sleep. The night's silence was heavy as he listened to a bird's call, a gurgling from the refrigerator in the next room, the tick of the kitchen clock. Then came more sounds that didn't belong—the scrape of metal on metal, the creak of the front door, a couple of little bumps as the screen door closed.

He sat up on the side of the bed and eased into the jeans he'd taken off a few hours earlier. From the closet he grabbed a T-shirt, then unlocked the gun cabinet and removed his pistol. Sliding the safety off, he held it close to his side as he moved cautiously into the hallway.

Light flickered from the living room. Lexy must have fallen asleep watching TV, he thought, but the hairs standing on end at the back of his neck said it wasn't her sneaking around. He passed the dark bathroom and was approaching the living room when a shadowy figure stepped into the hallway, stopping in front of Lexy's bedroom door. It was a man, dressed all in dark
clothes, and just as he reached for the doorknob, Brady brought his pistol up and took aim.

“Hold it right there,” he said quietly. “Get your hands up where I can see them.”

The man froze, then slowly raised his hands. He was gripping a flashlight in one.

“Drop the light and move into the living room.”

“Hey, look, I'm not up to anything,” the man said as he obeyed and Brady followed. “I just came to see Les. She said you'd be asleep by now. She left the front door unlocked for me because, hell, I'm too old to be climbin' in windows.”

Not believing him for an instant, Brady stopped just inside the door. “Put your hands on the back of the sofa and spread your feet apart.”

The guy turned to face him. “Hey, come on. You got a problem with her and me, you need to talk to her about it. I just came to see her, like she told me. I'm not doing anything wrong.”

Brady recalled Hallie's description of the man who'd hassled Lexy on the street—early twenties, brown hair, fair skin and not particularly memorable except for a slick grin. It was a damned accurate description, right down to the grin. “Put your hands on the back of the sofa,” he repeated coldly, “and spread your feet.”

The man's gaze flickered from Brady's face to his weapon, and he swallowed hard before turning to obey.

Brady had just taken a step toward him, intending to pat him down, then get the truth out of him—one way or another—when the floorboards behind him creaked. Instinctively he stepped to the side as he turned, but he wasn't quick enough to avoid the flashlight that smashed down on his right wrist. The force of the blow sent him staggering into the window behind him, where the shattering glass threw him off balance. He sank bonelessly to the floor, pain washing over him with such intensity that his stomach churned. He was barely able to see for the stars bursting in his brain, but he could see enough to tell that he'd dropped his gun and it had skittered across the floor, out of his reach.

“Did you get it?” the second man asked.

“No.”

The second man swore. “Jeez, do I have to do everything myself?”

“Hey, you screwed up, too, the first time.”

The second intruder turned toward Lexy's room, and Brady forced himself to his feet. His right hand was useless, but that didn't stop him from grabbing the smaller man by the collar and half lifting, half throwing him toward his partner. The man stumbled into the end table, and the light flickered wildly as the oil lamp swayed with the impact. His smile nothing less than evil, when the man regained his balance, he picked up the lamp, hefted it above his head, then smashed it to the floor between them and Brady.