as soon as they drew up to her car, that vision of his pants around his ankles hit her again—like there was some kind of mental video player attached to her vehicle. Maybe she should buy a new car; maybe that would fulfill her wants, if not her needs. The inane thought came and went.
To be replaced by a sense of panic. Tad was different from any man she’d ever known. The way she responded to him was different.
But she couldn’t be an honest half of a partnership. Any partnership.
When she’d run, the idea of having a lover, or a boyfriend, or anything along the lines of a male companion, hadn’t even entered her mind. She spent two years in a women’s shelter outside of Santa Raquel before moving to the city four years ago, and it hadn’t been a problem since.
But now it was.
She didn’t want to live the rest of her life alone.
Did she have a choice?
“Ethan’s, what, six?” Tad asked, startling her out of her reverie.
“Yeah,” she said. She must be tired. Working too hard. Spending too much time identifying with Marie.
The woman’s case spoke to her on a personal level more than most. Probably because of Danny.
“He’s in the first grade,” she said, forcing herself back into the moment. Tad had met Ethan twice. Brief introductions both times.
After the second time, her son had teased her, saying she should go out on a date with Tad. They’d run into Tad at the grocery store one evening and she’d stopped to chat. Ethan’s reaction had surprised her. She’d never thought of her son as thinking about her personal situation. She was Mom. That was all.
But maybe it had been her son’s grinning little push that was her problem here. Was he missing a male figure in his life? Had that prompted his teasing remarks?
And was her current fascination with Tad merely reaction to that?
Just thoughts that Ethan’s comment had put in her head?
Yeah, if life were that simple.
“Could I take the two of you out to dinner?” Tad asked, while her mind continued to fly off course.
Her stomach flip-flopped. She almost dropped her keys. Struggling to find a way to say no when what she wanted to do was ask how soon, she said nothing as he continued. “I’d like to spend some time with Ethan, since he’s so close to Danny’s age. Just to observe. It would help me get a better feel for things. In case I ever need to speak with Danny again. Dropping my drawers was a little extreme and I don’t think it would work a second time.”
She nodded, trying to school her features—feeling she managed, at best, a cross between a frown and the grin that was trying to break through.
Dinner was all he’d asked. To observe her son. No big deal.
And complicated as hell.
“I’m sorry about that, by the way,” he said when her feelings continued to flay around inside. “The dropping of the pants thing. And thank you for not mentioning it.”
“It was unconventional, not to mention unexpected, but I thought the idea was brilliant,” Miranda spoke the complete truth. Probably because she could. Her tongue needed to fly along with her brain waves, but most of them weren’t traveling in the same atmosphere.
“And... I like you in blue.”
What? Had she lost her mind? I like you in blue?
Oh my God. She was flirting with him?
Dinner was definitely out.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Tad’s tone was so easygoing, her raging blood settled a little. A lot, actually. She felt completely put in her place.
Which meant that... “Dinner would be fine,” she said, sane again. He needed her help with Danny. And Ethan would be with her. She was clearheaded every second of every day that she was with her son. She was all he had in the world, and she was conscious of that fact first and foremost. “When?”
“Tonight? Unless you have other plans? I’m already on Danny duty and am eager to get what help I can so I don’t blow it with him.”
His “duty” entailed a few minutes a few times a day, driving by wherever the boy was, according to the schedule Marie would text him each week, with nightly changes if there were any. Marie could call or text him if she got in a bind. Miranda knew, because she’d been sitting at the table when the plan was devised. She knew what every participant in the plan was doing—including their medical office. They were all on alert. And careful to make sure that only handpicked personnel were alone with Danny any time he was in for treatment.
That brought her back to this morning. Tad in the examining room.
She was dying to know what had happened to him in the past. The details.
But she didn’t ask. Instead, she agreed to meet him at Uncle Bob’s, a hamburger diner on the beach with a sandbox for kids to play in, at six.
She didn’t have time to stand around and chat right now. Ethan would be out of school in ten minutes, and unlike Marie, she didn’t have a team of experts watching out for her son.
Because, unlike Marie, she’d escaped her past. She was safe.
As long as she kept her mouth shut.
* * *
In his rented apartment with a view of the ocean, Tad took a long, hot shower, turning the water to cold when the heat failed to relax him.
He was supposed to be recovering, and in the interim, doing a man he respected a favor as a private way of repenting for the wrong turn his career had taken. He was supposed to be getting his shit together, not losing it over the woman he’d been sent to find.
Pulling on a pair of black jeans one size larger than he normally wore, to accommodate the thigh that was still painful sometimes and had a tendency to swell, he took a T-shirt from the top dresser drawer. He followed that with a button-down white shirt from the closet, careful to line up the empty hanger in its proper place, and yanked open the little side drawer on the dresser for a pair of socks.
The arrangements in his apartment weren’t all as he would’ve preferred them, but the place had come furnished and that was what he cared about. His clothes back home in North Carolina were in the house he’d purchased the previous year in an upper-middle-class neighborhood.
Reaching inside one of the socks he’d retrieved, he pulled out the burner phone that had traveled across the country with him six weeks before. Fridays were call days. North Carolina was three hours ahead of California and he didn’t know how late he’d be out.
“Chief O’Connor.” North Carolina’s newly appointed state chief fire marshal always picked up on the first ring.
“Just checking in, sir. I told you she’s working as a physician’s assistant in a pediatric office and I had a chance to see her in action today. Like you, she’s not afraid to think outside the
