Traveling incognito this afternoon?”
“In…cog…?” She frowned in confusion. She was very bright for four, but that was a new word for her.
“Incognito,” he repeated clearly. “Sort of means that you aren’t calling attention to yourself.”
“Oh.” She smiled again. “I’m in-cob-neat-o.”
“Close enough.” He’d assumed she was there with Lenore McCloud, since he knew her guardians were out of town. Looking away from the child’s beaming face, he was caught by surprise to find Deborah scowling at him over her little half sister’s golden curls. “Oh. Hello.”
Deborah looked a bit frazzled, he decided, trying to study her objectively. Her dark-blond shoulder-length hair was tousled, and there was a popcorn kernel stuck in a strand at the back. What might have been the beginnings of a tension headache had carved little V-shaped lines between her intriguingly winged dark brows.
It looked as though some dark liquid had splattered one leg of the jeans she wore with a thin, dark, scoop-necked sweater. When she moved to one side of Isabelle, he thought she dragged one foot a little, as though her leg had gone to sleep and was just tingling painfully back to life.
She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever known.
Isabelle gazed upward. “Deborah, do you know Officer Smith?”
“Yes. I wasn’t aware that you knew him so well.”
“He’s one of my best grown-up friends,” Isabelle replied happily. “Adrienne likes him, too, and so does Caitlin. And Gideon and Nate are being nice to him now because I told them to.”
“I see.”
It was obvious to Dylan that Deborah didn’t at all see how he had suddenly become so friendly with her brothers, with whom he had a long history of animosity. Actually, friendly was a bit too warm a word to describe his new truce with her brothers, but he liked both her sisters-in-law. As a matter of fact, he and Gideon’s literary-agent bride, Adrienne, had recently signed a business contract together, something he had no intention of mentioning just then.
As far as Dylan knew, Deborah hadn’t been told that Dylan and her newest sister-in-law were now professional associates. Deborah didn’t even know he had any aspirations other than being a small-town cop, working for his uncle, the police chief. He’d just as soon leave it that way for now.
“Deborah took me to the movie,” Isabelle said, clinging to Dylan’s knee. “A lady with big hair sat in front of me and I couldn’t see, so I had to sit in Deborah’s lap the whole time, and there was a baby who kept crying, and the boy beside us jumped up to cheer when the good guys won and he spilled his soda on Deborah’s leg. It was fun.”
Dylan knew better than to laugh, but it was a close call as he eyed Deborah’s expression. He sincerely doubted that she would have described the experience as fun. “It was very nice of your sister to bring you to the theater,” he said to Isabelle.
“Yes. And she’s going to buy ice-cream cones because I told her Nate always buys ice cream when we come to the movies.”
“Yes, well, we’d better let Officer Smith finish his own ice cream before it melts,” Deborah said, avoiding Dylan’s eyes.
Dylan hadn’t realized quite how much Isabelle resembled Deborah until a very familiar, very stubborn look crossed the little girl’s face. “I want to talk to him.”
“We need to get home soon,” Deborah countered. “Mother will want to see you when she gets home from her meeting.”
“I’m staying with my nanna because Caitlin’s mommy went to heaven, like my mommy and daddy did,” Isabelle informed Dylan.
He spoke gently. “Yes, I heard.”
“Will you come visit me at Nanna’s house?”
Not a good idea, he thought with a glance at Deborah’s forbidding expression. “I’m pretty busy with work right now, Princess Isabelle. But I’ll visit you soon.”
Her lower lip protruded a bit. “Deborah, tell Officer Smith he can come visit us. Maybe he could have dinner with us?”
What might have been consternation darkened Deborah’s blue eyes. “Oh, I…”
Letting her off the hook, Dylan focused on Isabelle when he said, “I have to work tonight, Isabelle. But I promise I’ll see you soon, okay?”
Isabelle didn’t appear at all satisfied, but she finally nodded her head. “Okay.”
Looking relieved now, Deborah reached down to take her little sister’s hand. “Let’s order our ice cream before the line gets too long.”
“’Bye, Officer Smith.”
“’Bye, princess. Nice to see you, as always, Deborah,” he added dryly.
“Good afternoon, Officer,” she returned, her voice chilly enough to refreeze his melting ice cream.
What kind of fool, he wondered as they moved away, carried a seven-year-old torch for a woman who could hardly stand to look at him?
A chance glimpse at the decorative wall mirror across the room gave him his answer.
He was that kind of fool.
Going to the movie had seemed like such a good idea at the time, Deborah mused as she combed her tangled hair, scowling at the popcorn kernel that fell to the floor. How could she have known what an ordeal it would become?
How could she have possibly predicted that they would run into Dylan?
Isabelle hadn’t stopped chattering about him since they’d left the ice-cream parlor an hour ago. What a nice man he was. How kind he had been to Adrienne and Isabelle when they’d been involved in a minor traffic accident a couple of months ago. How strong he had been to carry Adrienne all the way to his patrol car when she hurt her ankle. How funny he was when he teased Isabelle and called her princess.
Apparently, Deborah wasn’t the only McCloud woman to have succumbed to Dylan’s lazy charms. It had been all she could do to prevent herself from warning Isabelle not to give her heart to the man; he would only turn around and break it. Shatter it into so many pieces that she would never be able to find all the parts.
The relationship between Deborah and Dylan had been too passionate, too complex and too volatile for her, as young and as sheltered as she’d been. At times, she had felt smothered, at others overwhelmed by the intensity of their feelings. Because of those factors, it had ended devastatingly—and perhaps inevitably, considering the differences between them. What few parts of Deborah’s heart had been left intact after her breakup with Dylan had crumbled beneath the weight of her father’s betrayal such a short time later.
“Deborah?” Lenore appeared in the open bedroom door, her smile both weary and apologetic. “I’m home. I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long.”
Because Lenore looked so tired, Deborah didn’t have the heart to complain about being left in charge of Isabelle. “That’s
