Faith mumbled. And then, because there really wasn’t another choice, she added, “My place.”
After a few moments, Colin’s cries grew a little less raucous, and as Faith negotiated the wet streets, she thought back to her meeting with Luke Tripper.
As she’d confessed to him, she’d heard about him first from the teacher she replaced, and then around the school. The bus story had intrigued her from the moment she heard it, maybe because she’d brushed against evil last spring, barely surviving a malicious attack. To hear about a man who ran back and forth to an overturned bus risking his life to save others reassured her in some odd way that people were still good. The look in his eyes when he admitted he hadn’t saved everyone had touched her deeply.
So she’d wondered what he would be like—and had built a mental image of a hero: strong, fearless, able to leap tall buildings. Luke Tripper looked as though he was all those things.
He was as tall as her brother, Zac, but not as lanky, more muscular, broad-shouldered, body trim and fit, thick, dark hair cut short. And those eyes. Smoldering, yes, but also focused and intense. She’d found herself struggling not to tell him her deepest, darkest secrets.
Add to that a sophisticated air at odds with boots and jeans and a hat that looked as though it had been around the block a time or two. That inconsistency was due, no doubt, to the fact he’d only been a rancher for four or five months. Before that he’d been an FBI agent, rumored to have done covert work. The veneer left over from that career no doubt explained her desire to confide in him. Only her pledge to herself that she would solve her own problems kept her mouth shut.
Besides, Trip had enough troubles of his own.
Faith fought against a stab of pure, unadulterated self-pity. Sure, she missed Puget Sound, old friends and family, but she was in debt up to her eyeballs with medical bills and Shay was the only place she could find a decent job.
There was another reason for her decision to move, too, and it had to do with her father and brother. Last May, Zac had married Olivia, Faith’s best friend, and had adopted her four little girls. He was sheriff in Westerly, his life was busy and full, and he was happier than Faith had ever seen him.
Meanwhile, after twenty years of being a widower, her father had discovered love right in his own backyard with Olivia’s mother, Juliet Hart. The two were getting married in Hawaii over the holidays. Faith had told them she was too busy with her new job to travel to explain why she wouldn’t be at the ceremony. She hadn’t wanted to admit the truth: she couldn’t afford the trip. She hadn’t confided in either her father or her brother that her insurance hadn’t begun to cover expenses.
The point was, both the men in her life had moved on, and yet she knew their happiness was affected by her own sense of detachment, and it killed her. She was tired of pretending everything was okay and was determined to solve her own problems.
Where did that leave the little ache in her gut when she thought about Luke Tripper? In her gut, she supposed, buried and secret where it belonged.
Faith’s apartment was actually the basement of a two-story house in the worst corner of the worst part of Shay. The price for paying off her mountainous medical bills was living in a terrible neighborhood with a landlady named Ruby Lee who gave Faith the heebie-jeebies.
As she drove around the house to reach her private entrance in the back, some of her tension dissipated. The main garage was closed and the house looked dark. Hallelujah, it appeared Ruby wasn’t home. Faith parked under the lean-to attached to the garage.
“This is where you live?” Noelle asked as Faith helped her unbuckle her seat belt and collect her backpack. Noelle looked a lot like her uncle. Same dark brown hair, only on Noelle it was long and braided. Same deep brown eyes.
Faith took Colin out of his seat. The baby grabbed her around the neck and immediately stopped fussing, rubbing his damp eyes with a plump fist. Poor little guy looked tired.
“This is where I live,” Faith said as the rain pounded the fiberglass roof of the lean-to. Holding tightly to Colin and the diaper bag Trip had left in the school office, she took Noelle’s hand. “Let’s run between the raindrops to the front porch, okay?”
They dashed the ten feet to the feeble overhang covering the door. Faith struggled to keep up with Noelle, her left leg protesting a bit at the unevenness of the ground.
Juggling baby and belongings, Faith dug for her keys. She found they were unnecessary, as the door pushed open when she touched the knob. Had she forgotten to lock up when she left that morning?
No way. She couldn’t take the children into a compromised house. For a second she stood there, unsure what to do.
As she raced through her options, the porch light went on and the door opened wide.
Faith gasped as Noelle shrank back against her legs. A man of about twenty stood facing them. Dressed in black denim jeans and a torn black sweatshirt with a metallic lightning bolt bisecting the front, muscles bulged in his arms, jet black hair flopped over his forehead. He held a hammer in one hand.
“David,” Faith said, catching her breath and laying her free hand on Noelle’s damp shoulder. “You scared me.”
“I came to fix the cabinet you told Ma was bothering you.” His gaze slid to Faith’s hips and stayed there.
“Did your mother let you into my place?”
“I have my own key.”
“Your own key? Who gave you a key?” she demanded.
“I’m helping Ma. I’m taking care of things around here from now on. I’m taking care of you.”
Like hell you are, Faith thought. “Are you finished with the cabinet?”
“Almost.” He turned and walked back into the heavily shadowed room, disappearing into the kitchen alcove.
“Let’s get out of the rain,” Faith said, shepherding Noelle inside, turning on lights, trying to dispel some of the gloom. The basement, which she’d rented furnished, looked even worse with bright lights. There wasn’t a single Christmas decoration, and Faith could only imagine how cheerless it struck a five-year-old. The child stayed right against her legs as a few banging noises came from the kitchen.
“It’s done,” David said, appearing in the opening between Faith’s very modest living room and the kitchen. “You want to check it?”
“No. I’m sure it’s fine.”
David looked at Noelle again, then at Colin. “Ma said no kids.”
“I’m just watching them—they don’t live here.”
“Oh.”
“Well, thanks. But next time, please make an appointment.”
He lifted one lip, revealing a pointed incisor.
The door opened behind Faith. She and both children swiveled to look at the newcomer. Ruby Lee bustled into the room, closing the door behind her, sandwiching Faith, Colin and Noelle between herself and her son. She wore a black rain coat and silver rain boots, a silver rain hat riddled with holes, tied under her chin. Her makeup looked as though it been applied with a trowel. If
