Twice A Target (Task Force Eagle) (2 page)

Chapter 2

Maddy’s stomach muscles relaxed with relief at Holt’s
capitulation, though he’d win no prize for hospitality. When he’d confronted
her outside, she feared he might send her packing, on foot. His overwhelming
male presence had her shaking in her sneakers, but he apparently bought her
bravado. Striding past him, she caught familiar scents that brought back the
past—cow, hay, horse, leather, and male sweat from a hard day on a working
ranch.

He looked at her as if she were a bobcat that might
leap at any moment. Time had settled on him well. His shoulders had filled out,
widened with a muscular heft that tested the seams of his blue chambray shirt.
He wore his light brown hair longer than she remembered, but its frivolous
tendency to curl didn’t detract from his authoritative air.

At sixteen, a tangle with a wild mustang had given him
a boxer’s flattened nose. That and the harsh planes and angles of his
strong-boned face kept him from being classically handsome. His face was
compelling in its severity. And his blue eyes, the dark blue of a mountain lake,
still had the power to mesmerize her.

Chagrin at her attraction to Rob’s brother pleated her
brow.
Here I go again.

She set her case down inside the kitchen door. Where a
wood-burning cook stove used to reign sat a Shaker-style china cabinet. A
matching cherry table turned the space into a dining area. In the functional
part of the kitchen, all new appliances had replaced the old. “The house has
changed.”

He shrugged, his features schooled into the
expressionless mask he must use when in DEA mode interrogating bad guys. He
leaned against the kitchen counter. “Sara put up some new curtains, bought a
damn dishwasher.” His eyes narrowed to chips of dark ice.

“Rob’s wife.”

“I’m surprised you know her name.”

Her cheeks heated. “Rob wrote to me once in a while.”
She took a step toward him.

The way his mouth dropped open, she might have whacked
him with her camera bag. “He
wrote
to you? Letters?”

She raised her chin. “What do you think, notes rolled
up in little tubes and delivered by carrier pigeon? Yes, letters at first. Then
e-mails. Once a year, sometimes twice. Not so often since he married. You may
think I’m Public Enemy Number One, but Rob is—
was
more forgiving.” Her
mouth tightened at the slip-up in tense.

“You know his temper. When he finally got through his
love-mushed brain the meaning of your Dear-John note, he tried to tear the
altar apart. It was all I could do to get him out of the church.” He tunneled
his big fingers through his hair, leaving tracks in the waves, as if of bitter
memories.

This conversation was twisting her stomach, as though
spiders had woven a thousand webs. “I’ve regretted how I left every day of the
last eight years, but I had to end it. I’m sure Rob blew up. That was Rob, but
he never stayed angry. Unlike some people—” she glared at him pointedly “—your
brother didn’t hold a grudge.”

“If it eases your conscience, you go ahead and believe
Rob forgave you. I know better.”

She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Holt’s
grief was still bloody raw, so she’d let his attack on her pass. “Rob is dead,
and our sniping at each other won’t help either one of us. Or him. I don’t want
to argue about this with you. I’m too tired.”

“Oh, yeah, crossing time zone after time zone will get
you. The jet set life must be rugged.” He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms,
drawing her gaze to the bunched muscles of his forearms below the rolled-up
sleeves.

“Some jet set. I bummed a ride from Nepal in a cargo
plane. I crashed at a friend’s house before I got Faith’s email. Then I drove
here.”
And slept in my truck.
Her belly churned with emotions better
left unexamined.

His mouth thinned, and he shoved his hands in his back
pockets. “Tell me one thing, McCoy. Why did you wait until the last minute to
run? If you didn’t want to marry him, why didn’t you tell him
before
the
damn wedding day?”

Maddy couldn’t utter the words.

Rob’s and her connection had grown from shared
childhood fun and dreams into what she thought was love but stood only as a house
of cards. She had doubts but didn’t want to hurt Rob. Then what happened
between her and Holt after the rehearsal dinner collapsed the fragile
structure. Then she’d hurt and humiliated Rob.

“Holt, you know why. Do you really want to dredge up
that mud after all this time? Now if you don’t mind.” She scooted out of the
room.

Behind her, he said, “I expect you remember where the
bathroom is.”

The hallway to the left of the kitchen led past three
doors to the bathroom at the end. The first door, to Rob’s childhood bedroom,
was closed. With his only brother dead, perhaps Holt couldn’t bear the memories
every time he walked this way.

Tears welled, and she allowed them to fall this time.
She leaned her forehead against the door frame and remembered. Mostly the
memories were good.

Every summer since she was ten until eight years ago,
visits to Gramma and Grandad’s Circle-S and this neighboring ranch had nurtured
roots for a girl whose airline pilot father planted none. When they were kids,
Rob was her best friend, as reliable a presence in her transient world as he
was carefree and adventuresome. Together, they worked the animals and swam the
streams and climbed the hills.

“I don’t know if you ever really forgave me, Rob,” she
whispered to the closed door, “but I hope you did. And I hope Sara made you
happy.”

The second door stood ajar, revealing jeans slung over
a chair and clean laundry piled on the iron-framed double bed. So Holt occupied
his old room, though the feminine décor must seem alien to him.

Baskets of dried flowers, teal and rose throw pillows
and a dainty rocking chair in a teal print transformed into a trendy guest room
what had been the typical boy’s milieu of rodeo posters, football
paraphernalia, and bunk beds.

The wife again. Sara.

Older by four years, by eons to kids, Holt had watched
over her and Rob, guiding them to the shallower parts of the creek and helping
them practice roping on the smallest calves. Sometimes he dared along with
them. They explored the abandoned silver mine on Ghost Mountain, a distant,
eerie foothill on the Valley-D. Bringing in the mustang that broke Holt’s nose
was another of those times. Protective and responsible, that was Holt. The
threesome dissolved during his tenure at college. When he went on to law school
and she and Rob entered UC, everything changed.

After she jilted Rob, she left Colorado, and her
photography career took her everywhere in the world except back to the only
real home she’d known. She wouldn’t change the last several years but more wandering
had no appeal.

Maddy dragged herself away from the contrast between
chamois shirts and lace-edged pillow shams. The last door, to the master
bedroom, remained closed, but the bathroom door stood open.

Grief and exhaustion swam in her head, and she sat on
the toilet lid. Last night she spent reliving memories and regrets. Dawn found
her still restlessly tossing in her sleeping bag. She’d slept in tents on rocky
ground, in mud huts and in campers as well as in good hotels, but the trip from
the coast proved her first experience at round-the-clock driving. She’d have to
shore up her bank account somehow to pay the mechanic.

For now, she was in a real bathroom. She might as well
take advantage. She stood and dumped her denim jacket on the tile floor. After
taking care of business, she rolled up the sleeves of the green print shirt
she’d bought in Kabul and cleaned up in the sink. She’d kill for a shower but
then she’d have to explain her circumstances to Holt.

She opened the cabinet between the sink and tub for a
fresh towel. Masculine toiletries cluttered one shelf. She should’ve brought
her camera bag in with her since it contained a toiletry kit. But Holt’s
disquieting presence had unfocused her brain.

Applying Holt’s lotion—unscented, of course—she peered
deeper into the shelf and spotted a bottle of perfume that was missed when
someone cleared out Sara’s things. She whispered an apology to the dead woman
as she spritzed on Happy, her favorite scent.

With tentative fingers, she picked up his hairbrush.
Not that her short do required much brushing. The fluffy, layered style was
easy to manage—necessary on the road.

Running the brush over her hair, she heard an odd
noise like a cat’s meow. From the kitchen? She hadn’t seen a cat. Low, soothing
responses followed the squalling. Holt’s rumbling baritone sounded oddly
reassuring.

Finished, she opened the bathroom door. The escalating
cry no longer seemed feline. The wailing sounded like a—

She dashed back to the kitchen.

—baby.

Standing in the center of the large room, Holt held an
infant in disposable diapers and a blue polka-dot undershirt. A baby screaming
its head off as if Torquemada and all his Inquisition zealots were torturing
it. The crimson-faced infant, no more than a couple of months old, waved its
tiny fists in fury. Or in pain.

Her heart raced, and prickles like ants crawled over
her skin.

Holt, married? With a child?

She hadn’t anticipated that.

Then where was his wife? What was going on?

He cradled the child in his brawny arms as if it were
a precious gem. He crooned to it. He jiggled it. He rocked it.

Against her will, warmth slid into her at the gentle
way her gruff host handled the infant. She remained implanted in the kitchen
doorway. “Holt?”

He raised solemn eyes from the screech factory in his
arms. “I hoped he’d sleep longer. Meet Robert Trask Donovan, Jr., human air
raid siren.”

Robert Trask Donovan, Jr.

The name trickled into her consciousness, like water
into the desert floor. The sense of it percolated through her slow brain for a
moment before the dimensions of the tragedy found their level. Her heart
stuttered. “Rob’s son? He and Sara left a
son
?”

Nodding, he paced the length of the kitchen. “That
drive to Cripple Creek was to be their first dinner out since Bobby here was
born.”

“How old is he?” She could barely speak over the
thickness in her throat.

“Bobby’s two months old. Just yesterday.”

“Two months? Then he was only—” A month old when his
parents were killed. Tears burned again as she approached the disconsolate
child. “Maybe you should change him.”

“Done.”

“Could he be hungry?”

“Among your many accomplishments, you’re a baby
expert?” He cocked a bushy eyebrow to express his skepticism. “He ate about an
hour ago before Espie put him down.”

Two months old? She searched her memory for what
tidbits she’d picked up in her travels. “He’s on formula?”

He nodded, pacing the room with the fussing infant.
“Sara was nursing him. Obviously, I don’t have the equipment. He hasn’t
adjusted to the formula. Gives him gas pains. Doc says that’s one reason he
cries so much. That and missing his mom.”

She folded her hands in beneath her chin. “But...but
there has to be something we—
you
can do.”

“I’m doing it, McCoy. Walking him and holding him.
He’ll run down after while.” He paused in his circuit of the room and halted
before her. “I suppose
you
could do better.”

Emotions swirled inside Maddy. She’d held plenty of
babies. Haitian babies, Afghan babies, Ghanaian babies. Getting to know the
families was part of setting up photo shoots. But the moms had always been
there to take them back if they cried.

Holding babies, cuddling them, and cooing nonsense to
them—that was the extent of her knowledge. She probably knew less about child
care than Holt.

He’d had the last month to learn. On-the-job training.

But this bawling, round-faced cherub with a head of
light fluff like duck’s down entranced her. “I can’t do any worse than you, Dr.
Spock.”

Fierce concentration on his features, Holt passed his
nephew to her. “Here, hold him in one arm. Then you can rub his belly.
Sometimes that helps.”

In the transfer, his shoulder and arm pressed against
hers. She felt every muscle imprinted on her skin and couldn’t resist the pull
of his blue eyes. The other hand grazed her breast as he released his hold on
his nephew. She chalked up her leaping pulse to fear of dropping the squirming
child.

As soon as little Bobby was settled in her arms, Holt
stepped back as though from a kicking mule.

Propping the baby’s head, she jiggled him and cooed at
him. She concentrated on soothing him and forced herself to ignore the much
larger male across the room.

The screaming stopped. The wailing and gnashing of
gums ceased. Only gentle gurgles emitted from the tiny bow-shaped mouth. Tear-spangled,
spiky lashes framed rounded kitten-blue eyes. He stared at the strange woman
who held him.

Both adults sighed at the resulting peace.

“You have custody of your nephew?” She stood in place,
rocking the apparently contented child. Baby scents of powder and milk and
innocence. Too sweet for words.

Something gooey melted inside her and she tried to
harden it. She couldn’t get involved with this household. Her heart couldn’t
afford renewed attraction to this man.

“Temporary custody for now. I’ll adopt him as soon as
I can and raise him as my son.” Pride and determination roughened his deep
voice. “What did you do? Hypnotize him?”

She shrugged her dismissal of that notion. “Maybe it’s
because I’m new. Will you take him back east when you return to work?”

He lifted a tired gaze to her from Bobby, who had
discovered his fist and was sucking on it noisily. “I
am
at work. Here.
I’m staying to run the Valley-D. My resignation from the DEA became final two
weeks ago.”