all her sons after characters in books. He’d said something about being a cop—something about asking her out and getting to know her better.
“What are you doing here?” was the only greeting that worked its way past the guarded tension squeezing her throat.
“Melissa—your manners!” her mother chided, setting down her coffee and rising to her feet.
As her initial panic ebbed, an embarrassing self-consciousness took its place. He was looking at her in that way. The way a man who wanted something looked at a woman.
Before she was completely aware of doing it, Melissa combed her fingers through the hair at her left temple, urging a golden wave over her cheek. But just as quickly, hating even that revelation of weakness about herself, she squared her shoulders and marched across the room to pluck her son from the officer’s arms. “Benjamin’s too small for roughhousing with you.”
“Mommy, you’re wet. I want down.”
“I didn’t hurt him. Boys like to wrestle—”
“Get me again!” Benjamin reached for their guest.
“See?”
The man’s lopsided grin was just as innocently boyish as her son’s. In another lifetime, she might have succumbed to its charm.
But this was the life she had to deal with. Despite Benjamin’s squiggles to climb down and resume the game, she wedged him firmly on her hip. “Why is there a police car parked in front of my house?”
“I let Detective Kincaid in, dear,” her mother explained. “He’s only been here a half hour or so. I checked his ID before opening the door. Don’t you remember him?”
“Of course I remember—”
“Better let me handle this.” The man she’d known as Tom Sawyer, a bartender with a sweet but misplaced sense of responsibility for the waitresses who worked with him, smoothed the scattered strands of hair off his forehead and rolled to his feet. He stood. And stood. Melissa’s pulse quickened with an instinctive self-preservation and she backed away.
His warm brown gaze darted to the subtle movement of her feet. But she didn’t apologize or make excuses.
He didn’t ask for any. “It’s good to see you again, Mel.”
She forced her gaze up past the evening beard that studded his square jaw, and acknowledged his greeting with a nod. “Tom.”
He raised his focus and skimmed her face, probably noting the newer, shoulder-length cut of her hair—probably satisfying his curiosity about how her injuries had healed as well. “You look great.”
He looked…male.
Ignoring the little tremor of awareness that blipped through her brain, Melissa concentrated on all the reasons why she’d never picked up a phone to resume their friendship, never encouraged him to turn that friendship into something more. One, he was an old-fashioned kind of guy—the sort who held open doors, sent flowers and who’d try to make everything right for her. Two, nice as he’d seemed back at the casino where they’d worked together, he’d lied about who he was. What he did for a living. Why he’d been so interested in her. And whether or not the lie was unavoidable and he really was one of the good guys, she couldn’t afford to be fooled by good intentions and false promises. She couldn’t allow herself to drop her guard and be taken in by any man—even a nice one. Especially a nice one. She needed her independence in order to survive.
And three? Oh, hell. She remembered thinking Tom Sawyer Kincaid might be the one man in her life with the brawn and bravado to stand up to her ex-husband. The man who’d come galloping to her rescue. But any chivalrous fantasy she might have toyed with scared the hell out of her, too. She’d forgotten just how imposing he could be, with those broad shoulders and thick forearms, every sinew and hollow made blatantly evident by the sticky second skin of his damp white shirt and rolled-up sleeves.
She couldn’t help but compare. There’d been so many times she wished she’d met a man like Detective Kincaid before Ace had ever walked into her sheltered life back in South Dakota. But wishing didn’t help reality. There were no more fantasies to be dreamed, no trust to be given. There was only survival.
So she sloughed off his compliment and ignored the spark of interest her female instincts tried to rouse in her. “I look worn-out from a day that’s gone on way too long.”
“It’s been a long one for me, too.” He splayed his fingers at his hips, drawing attention to the badge with the black stripe bisecting it that was clipped to his belt. Did that black stripe have anything to do with this surprise visit?
“More ‘Get me!’” Benjamin pushed against Melissa’s chest, saving her from the compassionate impulse to ask about that black stripe and the length of his day.
“Not now, sweetie. It’s getting late.” She stroked his silky black hair and hugged him a little tighter, to settle her own nerves as much as his. But she kept her eyes on their guest. She needed a safer topic. “What’s it been? A year?”
“Not quite. I haven’t seen you since last July.”
Not so safe.
Last July she’d been in the hospital, broken and unconscious. Even now, the events that had put her in that ICU bed were hazy. But she remembered his last visit. Though she couldn’t recall his words, she remembered being just as frightened as she’d been pleased to see him. He’d asked for something from her, something she couldn’t—wouldn’t—give to a man again.
Her affection? Her trust? Permission to give those things to her? Was that why he was here tonight? Did he think enough time had passed—could ever pass—for her to give a new relationship a chance?
“So what are you doing here?” she asked again.
He reached for a dark blue uniform jacket draped over the back of a chair, and picked up a holstered gun he’d set high up on the mantel of her fake fireplace. He’d come here armed? With another officer sitting outside? This visit wasn’t personal, after all.
“Can we talk? Someplace private?”
Even if that grin had stayed in place, she would have suspected his motives for showing up at her home unannounced.
After a slight hesitation, she nodded. Giving him a wide berth as she circled around him, Melissa handed Ben off to her mother, trading a reassuring hug with the older woman and giving her son a kiss. “Benjamin needs to be getting to bed. Do you mind starting his bath?”
“Of course not. Thanks for the company, Mr. Kincaid.”
“I appreciate the coffee, ma’am.”
Benjamin stretched out both arms toward his new playmate and curled his fingers into a wave. “Bye, ’tective.”
“See ya, Big Ben.”
Her mother reached out and squeezed her hand. “Honey, Mr. Kincaid isn’t the enemy.” Melissa weathered a sad, maybe even apologetic, frown, then turned away as Fritzi carried her grandson down the hallway toward the bathroom at the back of the house.
“We
