mouth tighten and thought of the blond goddess in the picture and his little girls, so afraid of being left by him.
Blast. She’d meant to make a joke. Instead she’d managed to stick her foot in her mouth again.
“Your family lives nearby?” he asked, ironing the emotion out of his face.
“No. Mom’s just swinging by on her way home from a medical conference in Iowa City to check up on me. Perfect timing, as usual.”
He stared at her, and she got that sensation she’d had before, that he was seeing things she’d rather keep hidden. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you tell the good doctor about your little performance today,” he said.
“My sister Ariel says that fibbing is legal when it comes to soothing mom-worry. Why tell her things that will only get her upset?”
“In this case, she’d have every right to be. Anything could have happened. You charge in here, alone, and try to wrestle me to the floor. I outweigh you by at least fifty pounds. I’m a cop with a temper you know can be dangerous and I’ve made it clear I don’t like you.”
“First impressions are deceiving.”
“Not in my experience.” His gaze skimmed slowly from her wayward curls to her non-existent breasts, then back up to her face as he seemed to consider. “My gut’s almost always right when it comes to getting a bead on someone’s character. A cop’s life depends on it. And on being smart about the risks he takes.”
His eyes darkened for a moment. Rowena wondered if he was thinking of the chances he took every day when he put on that uniform, and about the possibility that his little girls’ worst fears could be realized. Someday he might not come home.
“Is there a single soul on earth who knows where you are right now, Ms. Brown?” he asked.
“Well, um…” Clancy. But she supposed the deputy would say he didn’t count. The dog was smart, but even a Newfoundland couldn’t file a missing persons report.
“I thought not,” the deputy said soberly. “If I had been in the middle of abusing my daughter when you interrupted me what did you think would happen? Did you think I’d just let you sashay out of here and report me?”
“No.” She wasn’t an idiot, after all.
“Didn’t you have some sort of plan?”
“My plan was to stop you.”
“And mine would have been to shut you up, once I knew you’d discovered my secret. The wrong kind of man could have hurt you.” He touched her injured cheek so gently it rocked her to her core. “Could have killed you.”
He was right.
The thought chilled her as his fingers fell away, but she raised her chin, defiant. “What was I supposed to do?” she demanded. “Stand out on the front porch with my cell phone and wait for help to come? I know you think I’m silly or naive or reckless, Deputy, but I’ll be damned if I’d ever stand by and let anybody hurt an innocent little girl like Mac when I’m around!”
His eyes warmed, melting some of the hardness in his face. Revealing bare hints of a far different man buried beneath. “You know what, Ms. Brown? I actually believe you.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“But I am.” A perplexed crease carved deep between straight dark brows. “Do you have any idea how many people I see every day who won’t get involved? Something unthinkable happens right in front of their noses, but they turn away, pretend ignorance. Turn up the volume on the TV set so they can’t hear the screams. They’re too busy, too scared or too apathetic to take a risk or even just inconvenience themselves.”
His tone softened, his gaze bound to hers by some fragile thread. Respect? Rowena wondered.
“I’ll tell you this much for certain, Ms. Brown,” he continued. “If either of my girls ever did wander off and run into trouble, I’d hope like hell that you were the one who saw them.”
Rowena swallowed, astonished at just how much his admission meant to her. “Deputy, are you actually saying something nice to me?”
The left corner of his mouth ticked up. “Under the circumstances, maybe you should call me Cash.”
“Okay. Cash.” She fidgeted with a button on her jacket. Bad move. It just reminded her of that whole tingling breast episode. “And what—what are you going to call me?”
“Trouble.” He smiled then. A real barn burner of a smile. For a minute Rowena forgot to breathe. “You know, you still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Why did you show up on my doorstep in the first place?”
“Oh, it was nothing much,” Rowena started to hedge, her cheeks burning. Then something in his face made her decide to go for broke. “I just stopped by to convince you to give up your egocentric ways and think about your girls for a change. After all, what’s the big deal about adding a dog to the family?” She grimaced in self-disgust. “I figured maybe I could guilt you into letting Charlie have Clancy.”
“And now?” Something in his eyes reminded her of Charlie, something tender, vulnerable, hurts she ached to heal.
“Now you’ve ruined my whole plan. You’re not a self-absorbed ass. You obviously love your daughters. And maybe—just maybe, mind you—you don’t need me to sweep in here on my broomstick and straighten your priorities out.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Deputy…I mean, Cash…” The name sounded so strange, intimate on her tongue. “I still wish there was some way to…I just can’t help but feel that Charlie needs this dog.”
The words hurt him. She could see his guilt twisting, a sense of inadequacy in this man that stunned her.
“If this was before the accident and Mac wasn’t in a wheelchair…” He raked his hand through his hair. “Hell, I’d let Charlie get a dog. Not one the size of a Shetland pony, mind you. And sure as hell not Destroyer.”
For the first time, Rowena didn’t bother to correct him.
“But you have to see that under the circumstances it’s impossible.” It clearly mattered to him that she see what he saw, understood his reasons. The knowledge humbled Rowena, made her ache to close the distance between them. A distance far greater than this small room. A distance filled with pain she couldn’t heal. Wounds she couldn’t cure. Vulnerabilities he’d never allow anyone to understand.
She reached out and squeezed his hand. It felt so big, so strong beneath her fingers as he looked at her in surprise. Still, he didn’t pull away.
“I don’t believe in impossible,” Rowena confessed, feeling somehow unutterably young.
“Then I envy you.”
She could see from his haunted expression that he really did.
“But Mac walking again…you believe in that.”
“That’s
