you…with her when she got hurt?”
“No. Lisa was driving.”
Driving. So it had been a car accident that injured the little girl. Rowena laid her hand on his arm. “There was nothing you could have done, then. It’s not your fault.”
He wheeled around, banged one fist on the wall. “Don’t tell me what’s my fault and what’s not! You don’t know what happened. Nobody does—” He broke off with an oath as a tense voice sounded from the far end of the hall, running footsteps coming toward them.
“Daddy!”
Charlie. Rowena’s heart sank. The child raced into the room, slammed to a halt, her glasses sliding askew. Charlie gripped her hands together tight as she saw Rowena.
“Oh, Daddy, is it true?”
Rowena felt Cash try to melt the tension in his shoulders, uncurl his fists by force of will. “Is what true, cupcake?”
“Hope says it’s a surprise for me. I didn’t believe her, but she says I must get to keep him. ’Cause why else…” Charlie hesitated, almost as if she didn’t dare put it into words. “But, Daddy, why else would my dog come here?”
Such a wistfulness filled Charlie’s old-soul eyes Rowena wanted to cry.
Rowena saw Cash’s jaw harden in dismay, as if someone had twisted a knife in his chest. She was the one who had put it there.
“Hi, Charlie,” Rowena said softly, sliding down from her perch on the counter.
“My dog. He’s in the car. He—he threw the football right out the window to me.” Charlie nibbled her bottom lip, looking from Cash to Rowena.
“I’m sorry I got you all excited,” Rowena began, knowing the apology could never be enough for the pain she’d caused the little girl or her father. “I just stopped by to…um, apologize to your daddy. It was very wrong of me to get your hopes up the way I did, telling you that Clancy belonged with you. I didn’t understand that…well, that your sister…”
“Oh.” The tentative sparkle of hope vanished. It was as if the sun went behind a cloud. “It’s okay, Rowena. I know. He might knock Mac down, or eat stuff off the kitchen counters or—or run away like my mom did.”
The child was thinking in disasters again. Rowena wondered how long it had been since little Charlie had imagined unicorns and princesses and happy endings all her own.
Rowena hunkered down. She squeezed Charlie’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. For making you sad.”
“Oh, I’m never sad,” Charlie protested, looking at her father in alarm.
“Everybody gets sad, honey,” Rowena said. “I’m sad because what I did hurt you. And your daddy. I never meant to.” She looked up into Cash’s pain-filled eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe you’d better go,” Cash said. He didn’t say “so I can mop up the damage.” He didn’t have to.
She was ready to flee, but as she brushed past him, he caught her wrist for a moment, his hand warm around the fragile skin. She looked up to see his forced smile, his gaze pulling her in. “See you, Trouble.”
Rowena’s eyes stung at the unexpected tenderness in the words. Maybe the most merciful thing she could do from now on was to stay out of Cash Lawless’s way. Because one thing she’d learned for certain by coming to his house.
When it came to trouble, the man had more than enough of his own.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS GOING TO TAKE a hell of a lot of coffee to pry his eyes open this morning, Cash thought as he paced to the counter and grabbed the heart-spattered mug Charlie had painted for him last Father’s Day. But once again, his former partner and current nanny, Vinny Scoglomiglio, didn’t disappoint. The sixty-eight-year-old ex-cop brewed coffee so thick and black and strong Cash was convinced someday some archeologist was going to stumble on a cylinder-shaped object that would be a cup of Vinny-style joe standing on its own, even the mug crumbled away. Yep, after Armageddon, all that would be left were cockroaches, piles of Styrofoam and Vinny’s coffee.
“You look like hell this morning.”
The gravelly voice should have startled him, but he’d grown so used to the old man letting himself into the house at all hours, he didn’t even flinch.
“Right back at you, Mr. Google,” he said, casting a bleary glance over his shoulder. The girls had christened Vinny with that nickname soon after the man had started babysitting them. Cash still wasn’t exactly sure if they’d just massacred the guy’s last name or if the soubriquet came from the fact that Vinny spent every spare moment on the Internet.
Vinny shoved half-glasses up his nose, abandoning his morning crossword puzzle. “I should look like hell. I’m practically dead. Considering all the Jim Beam I drank and the cigars I smoked I expected to be six feet under thirty years ago. What’s your excuse, junior?”
Cash Lawless took a long swallow of coffee, waiting for the bitter brew to do its stuff. “Haven’t been getting much sleep lately.” Lately? More like the past week and a half. Ever since Rowena Brown had walked out the door.
Vinny eyed him like a mother hen with one chick. “Been having those nightmares again?”
Cash’s jaw tightened. He hated the damn things—flashbacks, the counselor the force had sent him to had told him. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances, the woman had soothed. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Except they made him feel like he was caught in a crossfire with his pistol jammed.
“Been a while since one of those sons of bitches laid into you,” Vinny observed, squinting up at him. “Usually happens when your stress ratchets up. Something going on around here that you haven’t told me about? That ex-wife of yours isn’t causing you trouble?”
The very mention of Lisa usually sent a jolt of bitterness and anger through Cash. And yet, it wasn’t his ex-wife’s coolly elegant image that rippled across the surface of his mind today. It was a gypsy of a woman with sunshine hair and blind faith in her eyes, a woman who’d barreled into Cash’s thoughts the way she’d charged into his house, with no thought at all to her personal safety.
Yes, Rowena Brown was trouble, all right. And she’d changed Cash’s understanding of the word forever. Where had she gotten that fire of conviction, the courage that drove her? That fierce belief that she could make things better if she tried?
I don’t believe in impossible…
Cash had to agree it was true. Anyone with half a brain would have known her trip to Cash’s house could only end badly. If she’d actually knocked on the door instead of charging in, he would have verbally lambasted her so harshly for coming near his children again that her ears would still be ringing.
She had to have known the kind of reception she’d get. And yet the reckless woman had come to Briarwood Lane anyway, that menace of a dog of hers packed in the back of her van as if she actually thought she might have
