on a decent note. “I’ll be on Social Security before I’m through, but it’ll be worth it.”
“Nah,” he answered, feeling a funny clutching in his chest. “It’s only June. You’ll have everything shipshape before Christmas so you can bake cookies and deck the halls and do all that other stuff you and your mom get involved in during the holidays.”
“Maybe so,” she murmured.
Ike could tell that she, too, was remembering that their one-and-only Christmas together had been cozy and warm, and Ike could almost smell the homey fragrances of pine boughs and cookies baking in the oven. Then the emotional silence stretched out too long, and things got awkward.
“Better leave a window open tonight,” he said gruffly as he stepped onto the porch. “You shouldn’t be breathing in those fumes.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Of course she would, he thought as she followed him out, the screen door creaking shut behind them. She was a paramedic. She knew the dangers better than most people did.
As he moved to the top of the steps, Ike scanned her peaceful neighborhood. Night was on its way. The air had cooled a little, and the crickets were already ringing out a cadence, the vast, open sky filling with stars. Some distance away, the turret atop the Spindrift light began to glow and turn.
He met her soft green eyes again, and damn if that clutching in his chest didn’t come back. “If you change your mind—”
“I won’t. I’m all she has left. Dad’s gone. Ricky’s gone. I can’t let her think—”
“What? That you’ve thrown in with the enemy again?”
“Ike, that’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not,” he replied grimly. “It never was.” Then without looking back, he descended the stairs, crossed her lawn to the driveway and climbed into his SUV.
Lindsay watched until his taillights disappeared and he headed toward town. Then, feeling her heart sink and her tears begin to flow, she went back inside.
Eighteen months. Heaven help her, she’d thought she was cured, settled, finally free of those clawing regrets and the blame she’d never wanted to place on him, but had—and still did. She couldn’t help herself. Love between a man and woman was a powerful thing, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d ignored all the pleading and warnings and now her brother was dead.
Once again, memories rushed forward, poignant then wonderful, then terrible and bittersweet. And though she tried her best to push those images aside, they just kept coming. But every warm, laughing, touching scene with Ike was always superimposed over Ricky’s trapped expression the day Ike took him away. And it hurt. Heaven help her, it hurt so much.
Thoroughly frustrated with herself for backsliding, Lindsay wiped her tears and strode quickly into the hallway off her living room, through her kitchen and to her back porch. There was work to be done, and she would do it. But within minutes, she was sealing the varnish can, cleaning her paintbrush in the mudroom and sobbing so hard she could barely see what she was doing.
Damn him. How could she let him do this to her? How could she long for his arms and his warmth so desperately, and at the same time, resent him for bringing back memories she didn’t want to face? If he’d just let Tank take Ricky in, if he’d just listened to her, and respected that family was a tender, fragile thing, maybe she’d be varnishing woodwork for their home, not hers. Maybe Ricky would have arrived at the jail hours later, and the man who’d taken his life would already have been processed and sent to another facility.
Except…now Ike believed that Ricky’s murder wasn’t a random killing. He believed her brother’s death was inevitable.
Suddenly something Ike had said came back to her, and Lindsay’s thoughts sped off in a new direction. He’d said he’d find another way to accomplish his search. What had he meant by that? Would he go to her mother on his own? Get her all churned up again, too? More than he had already?
That thought sparked a related one and Lindsay’s heart shot into her throat. Dropping the brush in the sink and wiping her hands on the front of her shorts, she rushed to her empty dining room where her computer was set up. Her mother hadn’t called to warn her that Ike was on the way—and she would have phoned if she was able.
Seconds later, she sighed in relief when she heard the monotonous beeping coming from the phone on the hutch and saw the receiver tilted in the cradle. Earlier, a telemarketer had called, and in her eagerness to get back to work, she’d been careless hanging it up.
She’d scarcely bumped the receiver back into position, when the phone shrilled. Wiping her eyes again, then noisily clearing the tears from her throat, she picked it up and said hello.
Arlene Hollis’s usually loving voice was irritated when she replied, but Lindsay was still glad to hear it because she knew her mother wasn’t ill.
“Lindsay?”
“Yes, Mom, it’s me.”
“Oh. You sound funny.” Suddenly, concern entered her voice and she murmured, “Honey, are you crying?”
Holding back a sigh, Lindsay sent her gaze skyward and prayed for help from above. She didn’t want to get into any of this with her mother. Not tonight. Not anytime. “I’m fine, Mom.”
“I hope so. Because I’ve been speed-dialing you for the past fifteen minutes, and all I’ve been getting is a busy signal.”
“I’m sorry. My phone was off the hook. I just now hung it back up.”
A heavy silence stretched between them, then continued for so long, Lindsay wondered what was going on. She got her answer when her mother spoke again in a suspicious, far-from-gracious tone.
“Why was your phone off the hook?” she asked. “And whose idea was that?”
Chapter 2
Ike walked in the darkness to his courtyard room, and in the glow of a moth-covered porch light, let himself in. After clicking on the lamps, he shut the door and tossed his duffel on a nearby chair.
His head was pounding like a freaking kettledrum. Digging some aspirin from his pack, he strode into the tiny bathroom for water to wash them down, bending to drink directly from the tap. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Now he had other images banging around in his head—not just Ricky and a boatload of hope and guilt. Now…now she was there, and she was there with a vengeance, strangling him with memories that were best shoved aside.
Dammit, he should have phoned her instead of driving up here. Even if she’d wanted to, she wouldn’t have hung up. She had too much class for that. But the little pot-stirring troublemaker in his head had insisted that his chances for success would be better eye-to-eye, and idiot that he was, he’d listened.
Ike yanked off his cowboy boots and let them clunk to the floor, then stripped off his shirt, jeans and socks and added them to the pile. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of himself in the mirror, and he stilled. He took a tentative step closer and stared gravely at his reflection.
Did
