“Today.”
Chapter Two
Hair rose on the back of Amy’s neck. Of all the arrogant, overreactive statements! She bit back a sharp retort while trying hard to see Reed’s point. Ten seconds later she gave up. His point was ridiculous. Besides, the idea of moving in with Reed, for any reason, made her feel…funny.
“Don’t be silly.” She spun away and stalked out of the bedroom. Sammy and Dexter followed, little legs sprinting to keep up. They knew from experience that when Mommy moved, she moved fast.
She was already down the wooden staircase and making the turn toward the ransacked kitchen when Reed caught up with her. He grabbed her elbow. Amy stopped, not that she had much choice with fingers of steel and nearly two hundred pounds of muscle latched on to her.
“Come on, Amy, be reasonable. You have to.”
Keeping her tone even, she said, “No, Reed. I don’t. Now, kindly let go of my arm.”
Reed glanced down at the place where he gripped and dropped her arm like a hot potato. He took half a step back, swallowed hard and looked about as comfortable as a grizzly in a tutu. If she wasn’t so annoyed, Amy would have felt sorry for him.
“You’re not safe here.” Reed’s words were ground out with all the gentle persuasion of a pencil sharpener. “You need protection.”
“I can take care of myself.” When the police chief looked as if he would argue, she held up one finger—and discovered the thing was still trembling. She yanked it down to her side.
“The subject is closed. I am not leaving my home.”
Especially to move in with Reed. The idea of being in the same house day after day with him was—well—strange. Uncomfortable for some reason—though they’d been friends forever. Maybe that was the point. Reed and Ben had been friends, and Ben’s final letter to her niggled at the back of her mind constantly. He’d written the usual things at first—his love for her and the boys, his faith, the business—but then, as if he’d known he would never return, Ben had asked the unthinkable. If anything happened to him, he wanted her to find someone else. And he wanted her to do it before Christmas.
Now Christmas wasn’t that far away. Neither was Reed Truscott.
Fact of the matter, he and the boys dogged her footsteps all the way into the kitchen. Reed stalked her like a grizzly—and growled like one, too. Her sons had the deer-in-the-headlights look as their eyes volleyed between her and the police chief. Neither said a word. Dexter, she noticed, edged up against Reed’s leg. The police officer dropped a wide hand on her son’s small shoulder. Emotion curled in Amy’s belly, but was snuffed as quickly as a candle in gale force winds.
“I’m not suggesting anything illicit. My grandmother lives with me,” Reed said, still grumbling and insistent. “It’s not like we’re in love or anything.”
Amy fought down a blush. Illicit? In love? An uncomfortable flutter invaded her chest. Reed Truscott had to be the most confusing man on the planet.
To avoid his penetrating gaze, she turned a chair upright. Egg dripped off the seat cushion, the smell ripe. She curled her nose. Cleaning would take forever.
Keeping her voice even and cool, Amy said, “I think the world of your grandmother.” Irene Crisp was a tough little sourdough who looked as if a good Chinook wind would blow her away. But looks were deceiving with Granny Crisp as well as with Amy. Reed should know that. “But I can take care of myself and my boys.”
“You don’t know what you’re up against.”
It was so like Reed to shoot out orders and expect them to be obeyed. Granted, he was a great cop and often right, though not in this case. “I appreciate your concern, Reed. Really, I do.”
But she didn’t want to hear another word about moving in with a man who could propose a loveless marriage and not understand why she turned it down.
With the subject closed—at least in her mind—she took Sammy’s hand to stop him from going farther into the messy kitchen.
“Why don’t you and Dexter go into the living room and watch TV while Mama cleans up?” she said to the upturned face. “Then I’ll make some dinner, and everything will be back to normal.”
Sammy wasn’t buying it. He stuck a thumb in his mouth and shook his head. He hadn’t sucked his thumb in a long time. Not since Ben’s funeral. Dexter didn’t move from his position next to Reed, but his gray eyes remained wide and worried.
Amy’s heart pinched. She crouched down to their level. “Boys, we’re okay. The bad guys are gone.”
Sammy’s wet thumb popped from his mouth. “Will they come back?”
Amy pressed her lips together and couldn’t keep from looking at Reed. If he said one word—
“Whoever broke in wasn’t kidding around, Amy. Look at this place.” Reed made a wide arc with one arm, taking in the scattered belongings, opened drawers and spilled foods.
“They will keep trying to find that treasure.”
“Thanks a lot, officer,” she said with a tinge of sarcasm. To the boys she said, “Tonight we’ll make a tent in your room and all of us will sleep together. Just like one of Mama’s wilderness tours. You can be the guides and I’ll be the cheechako. Okay?”
Sammy nodded at the idea of Mama behaving like a green-horn, but Dexter, wise and old at nearly five, was silent.
“I’m serious, Amy,” Reed said. “You can’t stay here. You have to let me help.”
Help was one thing. Moving into his house was quite another. “No thief is going to run me and my babies out of the only home we’ve ever known.”
She and Ben had spent blood, sweat and tears remodeling this old house that her ancestor, Mack Tanner, had built for his reluctant bride more than a hundred years ago. It was old and crotchety and drafty in the brutal months, but the place had character and was filled with love and wonderful memories.
Reed shifted heavily and it occurred to her, reluctantly, that he was as exhausted by the last few months as she was. Like her, Reed would not back down. His sense of duty was legendary. And it was that sense of duty that bothered Amy. She didn’t want to be anyone’s “duty.”
“What if they come back?” he asked.
Her blood chilled at the thought. She rubbed her palms along the arms of her sweater.
“I’ll manage,” she said, with more bravado than she felt. She was single-handedly running a business, booking tour guides, dealing with love-hungry women, directing the annual church Christmas pageant and raising two little boys. She might be tired, but she could handle anything. “I’m not helpless, you know.”
Dark eyes narrowed in Reed’s rugged, weather-tanned face. “Never said you were.”
She jammed a fist on one hip. “Same as.”
Reed rolled his eyes heavenward. “You are the most exasperating…”
Amy
