I’m perfectly able to—”
Her mother didn’t get a chance to finish. Morgan had pulled his car up behind them and was now at the passenger side of Kelsey’s vehicle. Placing his hand beneath her elbow, he was gently helping Kate out of the vehicle.
Kate smiled her gratitude as she gained her feet. “Thank you, Morgan.”
“My pleasure, Kate.”
He said it as if he meant it. What was the man’s angle? Kelsey couldn’t help wondering. Why was he being so accommodating?
“Once you’re settled in,” Morgan continued, “your daughter and I will get your car.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Kelsey protested. She couldn’t ask her brothers for help, but there were other people she could summon. “I’ve got friends I can call—”
“I’m sure you do,” he said, cutting her off. “But I like seeing things through. It won’t take long,” he promised, addressing Kate again. “Besides, I’ll be off duty soon.”
Kelsey eyed him a little uncertainly. “I don’t know much about being a cop,” Kelsey admitted, “but don’t you have to sign out or something?”
“Don’t worry about ‘or something,’” he told her. “I’ve got it covered. For all intents and purposes, I’m all yours.”
Kelsey was about to quip “Lucky me” but stopped herself at the last minute when she realized that Morgan was no longer talking to her. Her mother was the recipient of the “I’m all yours” comment.
“This is all very nice of you,” Kate protested, “but don’t you have something else you should be doing?”
Morgan shook his head. “Not at the moment. This all comes under the heading of ‘protect and serve.’” He slanted a look in her direction.
The man was obviously anxious to get going, Kelsey surmised. “Do you need anything before we go, Mom? Maybe you should lie down. I can take you up—”
Kate placed her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m pregnant, Kelsey, not fragile. I’ll be fine, trust me.” Dropping her hands, Kate fished out a set of keys from her purse and held them out to her. “Here, you’ll be needing these.”
Kelsey merely smiled and accepted the keys. This wasn’t the time to tell her mother that she knew how to hotwire a car, having learned how from one of the boys she’d dated while in high school. A boy who, once her brothers got wind of him and his reputation, never showed up at the house again. When it came to outsiders, her brothers had been fiercely protective of her. They still were.
“I’ll be back soon, Mom,” she promised, brushing a kiss against her mother’s cheek.
“Don’t forget, Kelsey, you’re having dinner here tonight,” Kate reminded her.
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” Kelsey promised.
Kate turned toward the departing policeman. “You’re invited, too, Morgan.”
Kelsey stared at her mother, speechless.
The invitation took Morgan by surprise, as well. It was a couple of moments before he found his tongue. “Thanks, but I’ve got plans.”
He hadn’t, but in his judgment, this evening would be tough enough for the woman without making her husband share it with some total stranger.
Kate inclined her head, accepting his answer. “Some other time then, perhaps.”
“Some other time,” he echoed.
Morgan understood the worth of a line like that. It might have actually been uttered in the belief that “some other time” would happen, but he knew it wouldn’t. The woman’s gratitude, which had prompted her to tender the invitation in the first place, would quickly fade as she returned to her routine and the need to make the invitation a reality would fade along with it.
Still, it was a nice gesture, Morgan thought, following the attractive woman’s equally attractive daughter outside.
“She’s a nice woman, your mother,” Morgan said, finally breaking the silence that had followed them into his squad car. The silence had spilled out throughout the vehicle and accompanied them for the first five minutes of the trip. It threatened to continue indefinitely.
“She is,” Kelsey agreed. “Mom is one of a kind.” She shifted in her seat, curious. “How long were you following her?”
Morgan glanced at her before looking back at the road. “Excuse me?”
“You said you saw her weaving erratically in the lane. How long were you following her? A minute? Two? Three?”
Morgan shrugged. “A minute, maybe two. I turned on Harvard where it intersected University Drive. Your mother had just driven by.”
“And when you turned on your siren, she crashed into the bushes?” Kelsey asked.
Morgan knew where the young woman was going with this. She probably thought that his following her mother had made her nervous and that she’d hit the bushes because of him, not because she’d fainted. But Kelsey was wrong.
“I hadn’t turned on my siren—or my lights yet,” he added. He’d witnessed other accidents that hadn’t turned out nearly as well. “All in all, your mother’s a very lucky woman.”
“Mom likes to call it the luck of the Irish,” she told him.
His father’s father had emigrated from Ireland when he was a boy. “Is your mother from there?”
“Why?” Kelsey asked guardedly.
“No reason. I just thought I detected a slight accent.”
Periodically her mother tried to lose her accent, but her father always protested, saying he really loved the slight Irish lilt in her voice.
“The same could be said about you,” Kelsey pointed out. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No,” he deadpanned, “I live in Tustin,” he said, mentioning the name of the city next to Bedford.
She frowned. He was deliberately being obtuse. “That’s not what I meant.”
Morgan dropped the act. “I know what you meant, Ms. Marlowe. I’m from Georgia originally. Now do I get to ask a question?”
“As long as you understand that I don’t have to answer if I don’t want to.” Her eyes met his. The ground rules were accepted. “Go ahead.”
“Is this chip on your shoulder something recent,” he asked amicably, “or is it some congenital thing?”
She opened her mouth to retort that it was none of his business what she had on her shoulder, but then she closed it again. She could almost hear her mother reprimanding her. And she’d be right. She was taking out her tension—and Dan’s
