2
Hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, Carlo slowly walked the twelve blocks separating his home from the Underwood residence. Overhead, the sky was covered by a blanket of gray clouds that did or did not, depending upon which meteorologist one favored, hold the promise of the first snow of the season.
When he reached the foot of the cement path leading up to 221 Lincoln Drive, he came to a reluctant halt. At first glance, the house where Samantha Underwood lived with her son looked a lot like his own: older—probably built in the early twenties—constructed of brick, square in shape and two-and-a-half stories tall. It was only when Carlo peered closer that he glimpsed the subtle signs of neglect; signs all pointing to the absence of the man who had been in charge of its upkeep.
Leaves from an old oak tree carpeted the yard. The forest-green paint on the shutters flanking the front windows had begun to flake. A jagged crack marred one of the windows of the detached two-car garage.
Carlo shivered when an icy wind stung his cheeks and snuck its way into the folds of his jacket. Once again, he pondered the wisdom of the decision that had led him here. He’d half decided to walk back home when Samantha opened her front door and stared out at him.
She wore a pair of brown corduroy pants and a matching cotton sweater with a deep V neck that drew his gaze to the long, slender column of her throat. Her straight blond hair had been combed back off her forehead to fall freely to her shoulders.
At the sight of her lovely face, Carlo’s breath clogged in his throat. She was like the sunlight to a man who had been trapped in a dark cave for far too long. Try as he might, he couldn’t look away.
Damn. The awareness was still there. If anything, it had intensified. He’d hoped—prayed, actually—that it had just been a fluke, the result of a desperate man latching onto the sight of a beautiful woman standing on his doorstep. Especially now that he knew the impossibility of there ever being anything between them.
But it wasn’t a fluke. The way she made him feel inside wasn’t fading. Which meant he had to ignore it.
“Are you going to come in?” she called.
Since the choice of beating a hasty retreat had been taken away from him, Carlo moved up the walkway and climbed the steps of her front porch.
“Sorry I’m late.”
That she looked happy to see him made his breathing grow even more erratic. Actually, maybe relieved was a better description, an impression she confirmed with her next words.
“For a minute, I thought you weren’t coming.”
“For a minute, I almost didn’t,” he answered honestly.
Hand still on the brass knob of her front door, she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Having second thoughts?”
“And third and fourth and fifth. Aren’t you?”
“No,” she replied, without a hint of hesitation.
The way she stood firm in her conviction that he was the one person who could help her son illustrated how deceptive appearances could be. To look at her, a man might mistakenly believe that Samantha Underwood was as delicate as blown glass. But, though she looked slight and insubstantial, the woman had an inner strength that transcended her seeming fragility. Something told Carlo she was as fiercely and stubbornly independent as his sister. But then, she would have had to be, to survive the past year.
Unfortunately, her strength made her all the more attractive to him. He never had been drawn to women who clung tighter than the rose vines that climbed the trellis in his front yard every summer.
“So you’re having second thoughts,” she commented.
About more than just his promise to help her son. “Yes.”
“Why? Don’t you like children?”
“I like them well enough. It’s the responsibility that’s getting to me.”
She seemed to mull his words over. “From everything I’ve heard about you, you’re a man who thrives on responsibility. You wouldn’t be chief of police otherwise.”
A year ago, that had been more than true. He’d once been a man who’d prided himself on his ability to look out for others. The operative word being once.
“That may be so,” he said, “but while I’m responsible for directing the actions of the people under my charge, I always leave their mental welfare to others. I’m no mental health expert, Mrs. Underwood. I’ve never pretended to be.”
She seemed to relax. “He’s just a little boy, Chief Garibaldi. A lost little boy who needs a man’s guidance. That’s all. How about we leave his mental health to his grief counselor?”
Put that way, the task didn’t seem so daunting. “Carlo,” he said.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The name’s Carlo. Since we’re going to be seeing each other rather frequently, it only makes sense to drop the formalities.”
She stood aside. “Would you like to come in…Carlo? And please, call me Samantha.”
He stepped into a small foyer, the walls of which were lined with framed photographs. While Samantha collected his coat and hung it in a closet, Carlo rubbed his hands together to restore their warmth and allowed his gaze to rove over the gallery. Some of the pictures were very old, a few appearing to have been taken more than a century earlier; others had been shot more recently.
One in particular caught his eye. In it, Samantha smiled her radiant smile at the camera. Her arms were wrapped around a small boy who wasn’t more than three or four, and her chin rested lovingly atop his head. The openness of that smile, and the look of supreme contentment and quiet joy in her clear, brown eyes, held him riveted.
Suddenly, he wasn’t in such a hurry to leave. Not only did he want to stick around, but he wanted to see her smile that way again. Worse, he wanted that smile to be for him only. He wanted to take away the cares and worries weighing so heavily upon the pair of shoulders that appeared too delicate to bear them.
And he really was losing it, if a mere picture could affect him so deeply.
The click of the latch on the closet door signaled that Samantha had finished hanging up his coat. Tearing his gaze away from the photograph, he turned to face her.
The picture’s impact didn’t even come close to how she affected him in the flesh.
“Why’d you grow a beard?” she surprised him by asking.
His hand automatically went to the growth covering his cheeks. Since the day he’d handed in his request for a leave of absence, he hadn’t shaved or gone to the barber. In that short period of time, he’d managed to cultivate a fairly respectable beard, and for the first time in years his hair now brushed the collar of his shirt.
The question was, how had Samantha known that his beard was a recent addition?
“I saw your picture in the newspaper,” she added, as if reading his mind.
“Oh.”
