unfazed by his growl, Mac flashed him a gleeful smirk then wheeled her chair down the hallway. Lawless watched until she vanished into one of the rooms. Silence fell, his utter isolation crushing all the anger out of Rowena.
“I’m…so sorry,” she said.
“Yeah. So am I.”
He turned back to Rowena, but instead of slapping her in cuffs or bellowing at her or any one of a jillion characteristically hostile actions she expected from the deputy she loved to hate, he paced toward her, a bemused expression on his face.
“You’re crazy.” Why didn’t the insult sound nearly as scathing as it should have?
“You should talk to my mother.” She grimaced, then touched her cheek gingerly as her cut stung anew.
Lawless’s eyes narrowed as if he’d just remembered the injury, as well, and he closed the space between them. Frowning in concentration, he grasped Rowena’s chin, tipped her face into the light streaming through the window. With the corner of his towel, he dabbed at the cut.
“Doesn’t look like you need a stitch,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “A butterfly bandage will work just as well.”
“In your expert medical opinion?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. We’re the first responders to accidents. We handle triage until the EMTs get there. Come on back to my bedroom.”
Rowena’s surprise must have shown in her face. She could see the instant he realized what had given her pause.
“I keep the first aid kit on the top shelf in my closet to keep it out of Charlie’s reach,” he explained. “That kid makes boxes of bandages disappear so fast I should’ve taken stock in the company.”
Rowena hated the niggling suspicion he rekindled. Neglected dogs and neglected kids often had the same markers to indicate they were in danger. More injuries than usual were at the top of the clues to look for. “Does Charlie get hurt that often?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
Lawless gave her a long look, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “No. She just has this thing about Band-Aids. She’s always afraid we’re going to run out.”
Rowena remembered Charlie’s big eyes filled with dread as she’d talked about tidal waves. Was there a good reason the girl was busy making disaster plans for their future trip to Florida?
“She seems…very worried for a child her age. I know it’s none of my business, but—”
“You’re right. It’s not.”
She’d hoped for some sort of insight, but she couldn’t exactly blame him for closing up tight. She was a stranger, after all.
“Listen, I should just go,” she suggested. “You’re being a really good sport about this, but you don’t want me here, and after this is little debacle I sure don’t want to be here.”
“You’re not going anywhere until I dress that cut. Move.” He sounded like a drill sergeant, and she doubted he’d hesitate to grab her arm and march her down the hall if she resisted. Instead, she let him herd her down the corridor.
As they passed what must be Mac’s room, the child howled for Cash to adjust the television. Rowena waited for him outside the door, her eyes finding a collage of pictures on the long sweep of wall, family pictures of the girls from babyhood until just a few years ago.
Rowena’s heart ached at the images she saw. Mac dancing in some kind of recital, her fluffy little costume making her look like a plump yellow chick. Charlie and Mac in doll-sized karate outfits. So Mac had been able to walk at one time. What had happened to change that? Rowena wondered. An illness? An accident?
She examined the center shot of the collage—an eight by ten. One of those family holiday pictures Rowena had always dreaded when she and her sisters had gathered at the family brownstone. It pictured the Lawless girls in matching Easter finery on the front steps of the gray house, ribbon-festooned wicker baskets clutched in their white gloved hands. Mac appeared angelic in rose-petal pink while Charlie looked as if the ruffles that made up her collar had developed sharp little teeth that were gnawing into her neck.
Behind the girls, Cash Lawless stood, sexy as hell in a black suit and Kelly-green tie, his crisp white shirt making his tan seem darker, his angular face all the more arrestingly handsome. But in spite of the formal clothes that fit his athletic body to perfection, something primitive glinted in his eyes—as if he were constantly aware danger could be right around the corner, and he’d damned well be ready to meet it.
The exquisitely beautiful woman standing beside him was ice to his fire. Hair blond as Mac’s framed the woman’s face, but she possessed none of the fairy-like charm that surrounded the little girl. Cool, poised and elegant, the woman’s face was reminiscent of a young Sharon Stone, stylish cream pencil skirt and a tailored jacket without a single crease skimming a figure Miss America would envy.
So this movie queen goddess clone was Cash Lawless’s wife.
Rowena didn’t know why the fact should bother her. No doubt it was a holdover from that whole “matching” curse Auntie Maeve had stirred up in her mind so long ago. Making people and animals fit where they belonged.
Obviously Cash Lawless had a strong opinion where Ice Goddess belonged. In his bed, underneath him, fulfilling all those fantasies the woman must have inspired in every other red-blooded man she met.
The kind of hot fantasies Rowena would never inspire. Sighing, she smoothed a hand down her own jacket, realizing the man would be hard-pressed to discern whether she had breasts or not beneath the flowing yellow cloth. Not that she wanted Cash Lawless to notice her breasts, she amended hastily. Or anything else about her except what a perfect pet Clancy would be for his lonely daughter.
Rowena peered again at the woman’s face in the picture, trying to probe beyond the one-dimensional image to the human qualities that ran far deeper. That made the woman a wife, a mother. One who seemed to have disappeared.
Was she the reason Charlie and Mac had seemed so terrified their father would leave them? What had happened to her? To them—the perfect little Stepford family in the Easter picture?
Rowena pulled her gaze away from the image and caught sight of a much smaller photo. It wasn’t one of those perfectly posed varieties. Instead, it looked a bit off-center, a little blurry. Charlie perched high in the forked branches of a tree, bracing a board while her father nailed it to what must be the floor of a tree house.
Rowena scarce recognized the child in the picture as the ghost who’d scowled into her shop window for weeks. Charlie’s eyes sparkled with excitement, her grin so wide and carefree.
Even more amazing was the difference in Cash’s face. Dressed in a faded Police Academy sweatshirt with the sleeves torn out of it, he looked ages younger.
He wasn’t even looking at the camera. His gaze fixed on Charlie’s face as if there was nothing in the world more beautiful to him than his child, or more important to him than this moment he shared with her.
Rowena felt a jab of envy. Making memories, Auntie Maeve had called times like the tree house moment captured on film. Rowena could still remember the spry old woman warning the ever-busy Nadine Brown that
