confession, or if she felt a little sad to learn how few connections he had outside the Marine Corps. “Thank you. I feel like I know you better than someone I just met a few minutes ago, too. You wrote some touching things that, well, some of them made me cry.”
He made her cry? Harry shifted uncomfortably inside his coat. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. You shared the truth about what was on your mind, what you were feeling. I was honored.” She hugged her arms around her middle. “You made me smile sometimes, too.”
So why wasn’t he seeing that smile? The Daisy in his dreams always smiled. This was not going well. Daisy Gunderson was supposed to have a serene smile and a calm demeanor that made all the crap he had to deal with go away. But just because the real Daisy didn’t fit the ethereal angel he’d imagined, it didn’t mean he should blow her off. “You were going to ask me something?”
“Right.” She shrugged one shoulder. Then she pointed at him, at herself, then back at him. “I’m here by myself and I wondered... Would you...?”
Now she couldn’t come up with words? “Ma’am, I really should be going.”
Her manic energy returned in a burst that faded into breathless hesitation. “One. Don’t call me ma’am. My students call me ma’am, and it’s after hours and I’m off duty. Besides, it makes me feel like I’m old enough to be your mother. And two... I could use a man right now.” Now wasn’t that a suggestive request. The parts of him south of his belt buckle stirred with interest, even as his chest squeezed with anxiety at the possibility she wanted something more than a pen pal, too. “But I don’t have a big brother or a boyfriend or a dad to call and...” She gestured down the hallway toward the back of the house. “Would you check something out for me?”
His disappointment surprised him more than the relief he felt. “You’ve got a problem?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She tucked a stray lock of hair back into the purple and brown waves behind her ear. “I hope not, but...”
He could change a flat tire for her, or do some heavy lifting or pull something down off a high shelf. He owed the fantasy Daisy from his letters at least that much. But as Harry waited for the details, he read something more troubling than the awkwardness of this conversation in the blue eyes behind her glasses. She was scared.
Seventeen years of military training put him on instant alert.
“Show me.”
Stopping only to put on her coat and order the dogs to stay inside the mudroom, Daisy walked out onto the back deck, and Harry followed. She went to the railing and pointed down into the snow. “Those footprints. Something seems off to me.”
This was about something more than tracks through her backyard. Her cheeks should be turning pink with the dampness chilling the air. Unless the colored lights were playing tricks on him, her skin had gone pale. The buoyant energy that had overwhelmed him earlier had all but disappeared. Seemed he wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.
With a nod, he accepted the simple mission she charged him with and went down into the yard. Stepping farther out into the snow so as not to disturb the suspicious tracks, Harry switched his phone into flashlight mode and made a quick reconnaissance. This was an awful lot of traffic through the yard of a woman who lived alone. And all of these tracks were too big to be Daisy’s. His boots were digging into snow instead of sand, but the hackles at the back of Harry’s neck went up just as they had overseas when he sensed an enemy lurking somewhere beyond his line of sight.
Trusting suspicions he wasn’t sure he was equipped to deal with yet, he retraced his own path a second time, kneeling to inspect some of the deeper tracks. They’d frozen up inside after a bit of melting, meaning they’d been there long before the afternoon sun had reached them. He pushed to his feet and moved closer to the house to confirm that the deepest boot prints were facing the house, a good five feet beyond the gas and water meters. Harry looked up to a window with a shade drawn halfway down and curtains parted a slit to reveal the blackness of the room inside.
Harry glanced up at Daisy, who was watching his every move from the edge of the deck. She was hugging her arms around herself again. Something definitely had her spooked. “That’s not just a case of a new meter reader guy thinking he could get out on that side of the yard, is it?”
“I don’t think so. He’d only have to see that part of the fence once to know there’s no gate over there.” And yet her visitor had walked back and forth multiple times, then stopped here to look inside that window. “What room is this?”
She paused long enough that he looked up at her again. “My bedroom.”
Harry walked straight to the deck, braced one foot on the bottom planks and vaulted over the railing. The snow flinging off his boots hadn’t settled before he’d turned her toward the door to walk her back inside. “You need to call the police. You’ve got a Peeping Tom.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
