The Perfect Match

Behind the girls, Cash Lawless stood, sexy as hell in a black suit and Kelly-green tie, his crisp white shirt making his tan seem darker, his angular face all the more arrestingly handsome. But in spite of the formal clothes that fit his athletic body to perfection, something primitive glinted in his eyes—as if he were constantly aware danger could be right around the corner, and he’d damned well be ready to meet it.

The exquisitely beautiful woman standing beside him was ice to his fire. Hair blond as Mac’s framed the woman’s face, but she possessed none of the fairy-like charm that surrounded the little girl. Cool, poised and elegant, the woman’s face was reminiscent of a young Sharon Stone, stylish cream pencil skirt and a tailored jacket without a single crease skimming a figure Miss America would envy.

So this movie queen goddess clone was Cash Lawless’s wife.

Rowena didn’t know why the fact should bother her. No doubt it was a holdover from that whole “matching” curse Auntie Maeve had stirred up in her mind so long ago. Making people and animals fit where they belonged.

Obviously Cash Lawless had a strong opinion where Ice Goddess belonged. In his bed, underneath him, fulfilling all those fantasies the woman must have inspired in every other red-blooded man she met.

The kind of hot fantasies Rowena would never inspire. Sighing, she smoothed a hand down her own jacket, realizing the man would be hard-pressed to discern whether she had breasts or not beneath the flowing yellow cloth. Not that she wanted Cash Lawless to notice her breasts, she amended hastily. Or anything else about her except what a perfect pet Clancy would be for his lonely daughter.

Rowena peered again at the woman’s face in the picture, trying to probe beyond the one-dimensional image to the human qualities that ran far deeper. That made the woman a wife, a mother. One who seemed to have disappeared.

Was she the reason Charlie and Mac had seemed so terrified their father would leave them? What had happened to her? To them—the perfect little Stepford family in the Easter picture?

Rowena pulled her gaze away from the image and caught sight of a much smaller photo. It wasn’t one of those perfectly posed varieties. Instead, it looked a bit off-center, a little blurry. Charlie perched high in the forked branches of a tree, bracing a board while her father nailed it to what must be the floor of a tree house.

Rowena scarce recognized the child in the picture as the ghost who’d scowled into her shop window for weeks. Charlie’s eyes sparkled with excitement, her grin so wide and carefree.

Even more amazing was the difference in Cash’s face. Dressed in a faded Police Academy sweatshirt with the sleeves torn out of it, he looked ages younger.

He wasn’t even looking at the camera. His gaze fixed on Charlie’s face as if there was nothing in the world more beautiful to him than his child, or more important to him than this moment he shared with her.

Rowena felt a jab of envy. Making memories, Auntie Maeve had called times like the tree house moment captured on film. Rowena could still remember the spry old woman warning the ever-busy Nadine Brown that such opportunities were fleeting. Once gone, they never came again. Lost in her own wistful memories, Rowena was startled by Cash’s voice when he called out.

“This is taking a little longer than I thought. Head on back. Mine’s the room at the end of the hall.”

Rowena figured she could make a break for it, but if patching her up would make him feel better, she might as well let him. Besides, the man piqued her curiosity more than ever now.

The first two times she’d met him, he’d seemed so hard-edged, almost military in his need to be in control. But today with his disabled daughter, she’d glimpsed cracks in that facade. Saw in the desperation, the determination limning his face along with the sheen of sweat, a sense of isolation that yanked at her heart.

Hurts, Daddy… Mac’s tear-choked voice raked Rowena’s memory. I hate you when you hurt me…

I hate myself.

What must it be like for him? Suffering through Mac’s tears day after day? Realizing that no matter how hard he fought, there were some things beyond his power to control? And that one of them was his daughter’s pain?

Entering the room he’d indicated, she looked around, trying to connect the man to his surroundings. But again, the setting didn’t fit him, his room yawning spaces of emptiness broken up by even more clusters of family pictures that marked places where furniture must have been.

A double-sized box springs and mattress sat on the floor, the bed made up so precisely Rowena could have bounced a quarter off of the simple navy spread. A folding TV tray to one side held a windup alarm clock, yet another ugly lamp and a James Patterson novel splayed pages down somewhere toward the beginning, the one and only thing in the house that actually had a thick layer of dust filming its cover.

After a moment, Cash strode in. “First aid kit’s in the other room.”

She jumped, feeling as if she’d intruded in something painful, something private. “Right. I, uh, was just looking at your pictures. The one of the tree house in the hall is terrific,” she scrambled to explain, trying to break the sudden tension. “I always wanted a tree house when I was a kid. But my mom and dad weren’t big on that kind of stuff. You know, doctors’ schedules, volunteer work, making sure their kids had a jillion after-school activities that would look good on applications to Harvard Medical School.”

What was she doing, telling him stuff like that? Next thing she knew he could ask the six million dollar question—with those family expectations, how did she end up here, in White-water, running a pet shop? Fortunately, he was too distracted by the picture tacked to his wall.

His gaze narrowed and he ran one fingertip over the tree house. “I never finished building it,” he said. “Mac got hurt.”

So Mac’s disability had come from an accident of some kind. Had she fallen out of the tree? Rowena wondered. No wonder he’d quit working on the thing. But it seemed somehow cruel to ask him outright.

“How long has she been in a wheelchair?”

“Two and a half years.”

“Mac’s injuries…what did the doctors say? Are they permanent?”

His eyes blazed. “My little girl will walk again. Got that? She won’t just walk, she’ll dance the way she did when she was three. I won’t let that wheelchair be all she ever knows.”

“No. Of—of course not.” Her chest ached as she remembered Mac in the little ruffled chick outfit, Mac with the purple tutu around her tummy when she’d been doing therapy.

Mac, the little fairy child…everyone knew that fairies had to dance.

“It must have been hard for you…and your wife.” She couldn’t help thinking about the perfect woman in the picture. The deputy’s face went cold.

“Yeah,” he said, scorn dripping from his voice. “It’s been pure hell for Lisa.”

Present tense. So the woman was alive. “Is their mother the reason the girls got so upset in the shop, worried about you leaving them?”

“We’re divorced and they haven’t seen her for months. Is that what you want to know?” he challenged, making her feel like a nosy jerk.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure as hell not. Let’s get that cut taken care of and get you out of here. I’ve got Mac’s therapy to finish.”

Rowena fled into the master bath, its walls stark white, almost painfully clean, nothing on the counter to show a man actually lived here.

She stiffened, startled as Lawless’s big hands closed around her waist, set her up on the bathroom counter as if she weighed no more than a cotton ball. She sensed he must’ve done the same with his daughters countless times. But there was nothing innocent in what Rowena felt in the wake of his touch.

His intensity seared into her, the imprint of his hands still burning as he opened the bathroom closet and stretched up to snag a Gortex bag from the highest shelf.

“Just hand me a bandage,” Rowena said, not sure she wanted him to touch her again. “I’ll get out of here before—” Before you realize you flustered me so badly…

Turned you on, you mean, she forced herself to acknowledge. It’s just a reflex, Rowena. With all that fire, all that passion in him you’re off to save the world again. Cash Lawless might be hard on the outside, but inside, where no one can see, he’s bleeding. And you could never stand for any living creature hurting that way to be alone…

He dampened a corner of his white towel. “This will just take a second.” He cupped her face with his long fingers, dabbed at the cut. Tingles shot down to Rowena’s breasts. The man might not be able to see them with her jacket on, but apparently they sensed him just fine.

He took out some antibiotic lotion, the kid-friendly kind that didn’t sting, and squeezed some onto an Elmo bandage. As he carefully stretched Elmo to hold the cut’s edges together butterfly fashion, his forearm brushed the tip of one nipple. Her breath hissed between her teeth.

“Hurt?” He gave her a concerned glance. She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

Oh, Lord, don’t let him feel how pointy I got…

“Looks like we’ll be even after today,” he said, unexpectedly trailing his fingertip down the side of her face. He had to feel the way her blood suddenly pounded in that tender spot where her jaw met her throat.

“Even?” Rowena squeaked.

“You’ll probably have a shiner come morning.”

A black eye? Rowena thought. That was all he was talking about? At least he didn’t know what that casual touch of his had done to her long-dozing libido. An instant later relief gave way to alarm. Drat. Drat. Double drat. Cash wouldn’t be the only one talking about her eye. Her bruise should be in all its purple glory by the time Wednesday hit.

“Great,” Rowena muttered aloud, pointing to her bandage. “I can’t wait to explain this to my mom when she stops by the shop on Wednesday.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be explaining things to your mom?”

“Heck, no. There’s no statute of limitations when it comes to mom-worry. She’ll be fussing over my scrapes and bruises until I’m eighty.”

“You’re lucky, then.”

She saw Lawless’s mouth tighten and thought of the blond goddess in the picture and his little girls, so afraid of being left by him.

Blast. She’d meant to make a joke. Instead she’d managed to stick her foot in her mouth again.

“Your family lives nearby?” he asked, ironing the emotion out of his face.

“No. Mom’s just swinging by on her way home from a medical conference in Iowa City to check up on me. Perfect timing, as usual.”

He stared at her, and she got that sensation she’d had before, that he was seeing things she’d rather keep hidden. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you tell the good doctor about your little performance today,” he said.

“My sister Ariel says that fibbing is legal when it comes to soothing mom-worry. Why tell her things that will only get her upset?”

“In this case, she’d have every right to be. Anything could have happened. You charge in here, alone, and try to wrestle me to the floor. I outweigh you by at least fifty pounds. I’m a cop with a temper you know can be dangerous and I’ve made it clear I don’t like you.”

“First impressions are deceiving.”

“Not in my experience.” His gaze skimmed slowly from her wayward curls to her non-existent breasts, then back up to her face as he seemed to consider. “My gut’s almost always right when it comes to getting a bead on someone’s character. A cop’s life depends on it. And on being smart about the risks he takes.”

His eyes darkened for a moment. Rowena wondered if he was thinking of the chances he took every day when he put on that uniform, and about the possibility that his little girls’ worst fears could be realized. Someday he might not come home.

“Is there a single soul on earth who knows where you are right now, Ms. Brown?” he asked.

“Well, um…” Clancy. But she supposed the deputy would say he didn’t count. The dog was smart, but even a Newfoundland couldn’t file a missing persons report.

“I thought not,” the deputy said soberly. “If I had been in the middle of abusing my daughter when you interrupted me what did you think would happen? Did you think I’d just let you sashay out of here and report me?”

“No.” She wasn’t an idiot, after all.

“Didn’t you have some sort of plan?”

“My plan was to stop you.”

“And mine would have been to shut you up, once I knew you’d discovered my secret. The wrong kind of man could have hurt you.” He touched her injured cheek so gently it rocked her to her core. “Could have killed you.”

He was right.

The thought chilled her as his fingers fell away, but she raised her chin, defiant. “What was I supposed to do?” she demanded. “Stand out on the front porch with my cell phone and wait for help to come? I know you think I’m silly or naive or reckless, Deputy, but I’ll be damned if I’d ever stand by and let anybody hurt an innocent little girl like Mac when I’m around!”

His eyes warmed, melting some of the hardness in his face. Revealing bare hints of a far different man buried beneath. “You know what, Ms. Brown? I actually believe you.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“But I am.” A perplexed crease carved deep between straight dark brows. “Do you have any idea how many people I see every day who won’t get involved? Something unthinkable happens right in front of their noses, but they turn away, pretend ignorance. Turn up the volume on the TV set so they can’t hear the screams. They’re too busy, too scared or too apathetic to take a risk or even just inconvenience themselves.”

His tone softened, his gaze bound to hers by some fragile thread. Respect? Rowena wondered.

“I’ll tell you this much for certain, Ms. Brown,” he continued. “If either of my girls ever did wander off and run into trouble, I’d hope like hell that you were the one who saw them.”

Rowena swallowed, astonished at just how much his admission meant to her. “Deputy, are you actually saying something nice to me?”

The left corner of his mouth ticked up. “Under the circumstances, maybe you should call me Cash.”

“Okay. Cash.” She fidgeted with a button on her jacket. Bad move. It just reminded her of that whole tingling breast episode. “And what—what are you going to call me?”

“Trouble.” He smiled then. A real barn burner of a smile. For a minute Rowena forgot to breathe. “You know, you still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Why did you show up on my doorstep in the first place?”

“Oh, it was nothing much,” Rowena started to hedge, her cheeks burning. Then something in his face made her decide to go for broke. “I just stopped by to convince you to give up your egocentric ways and think about your girls for a change. After all, what’s the big deal about adding a dog to the family?” She grimaced in self-disgust. “I figured maybe I could guilt you into letting Charlie have Clancy.”

“And now?” Something in his eyes reminded her of Charlie, something tender, vulnerable, hurts she ached to heal.

“Now you’ve ruined my whole plan. You’re not a self-absorbed ass. You obviously love your daughters. And maybe—just maybe, mind you—you don’t need me to sweep in here on my broomstick and straighten your priorities out.”

“Thank you for that.”

“Deputy…I mean, Cash…” The name sounded so strange, intimate on her tongue. “I still wish there was some way to…I just can’t help but feel that Charlie needs this dog.”

The words hurt him. She could see his guilt twisting, a sense of inadequacy in this man that stunned her.

“If this was before the accident and Mac wasn’t in a wheelchair…” He raked his hand through his hair. “Hell, I’d let Charlie get a dog. Not one the size of a Shetland pony, mind you. And sure as hell not Destroyer.”

For the first time, Rowena didn’t bother to correct him.

“But you have to see that under the circumstances it’s impossible.” It clearly mattered to him that she see what he saw, understood his reasons. The knowledge humbled Rowena, made her ache to close the distance between them. A distance far greater than this small room. A distance filled with pain she couldn’t heal. Wounds she couldn’t cure. Vulnerabilities he’d never allow anyone to understand.

She reached out and squeezed his hand. It felt so big, so strong beneath her fingers as he looked at her in surprise. Still, he didn’t pull away.

“I don’t believe in impossible,” Rowena confessed, feeling somehow unutterably young.

“Then I envy you.”

She could see from his haunted expression that he really did.

“But Mac walking again…you believe in that.”

“That’s different.” He tugged his hand free, his voice roughening. “She has to walk. If she doesn’t I’ll never forgive myself.” Self-blame twisted Cash’s features, as if there were secrets inside him jagged as broken glass.

“Were you…with her when she got hurt?”

“No. Lisa was driving.”

Driving. So it had been a car accident that injured the little girl. Rowena laid her hand on his arm. “There was nothing you could have done, then. It’s not your fault.”

He wheeled around, banged one fist on the wall. “Don’t tell me what’s my fault and what’s not! You don’t know what happened. Nobody does—” He broke off with an oath as a tense voice sounded from the far end of the hall, running footsteps coming toward them.

“Daddy!”

Charlie. Rowena’s heart sank. The child raced into the room, slammed to a halt, her glasses sliding askew. Charlie gripped her hands together tight as she saw Rowena.

“Oh, Daddy, is it true?”

Rowena felt Cash try to melt the tension in his shoulders, uncurl his fists by force of will. “Is what true, cupcake?”

“Hope says it’s a surprise for me. I didn’t believe her, but she says I must get to keep him. ’Cause why else…” Charlie hesitated, almost as if she didn’t dare put it into words. “But, Daddy, why else would my dog come here?”

Such a wistfulness filled Charlie’s old-soul eyes Rowena wanted to cry.

Rowena saw Cash’s jaw harden in dismay, as if someone had twisted a knife in his chest. She was the one who had put it there.

“Hi, Charlie,” Rowena said softly, sliding down from her perch on the counter.

“My dog. He’s in the car. He—he threw the football right out the window to me.” Charlie nibbled her bottom lip, looking from Cash to Rowena.

“I’m sorry I got you all excited,” Rowena began, knowing the apology could never be enough for the pain she’d caused the little girl or her father. “I just stopped by to…um, apologize to your daddy. It was very wrong of me to get your hopes up the way I did, telling you that Clancy belonged with you. I didn’t understand that…well, that your sister…”

“Oh.” The tentative sparkle of hope vanished. It was as if the sun went behind a cloud. “It’s okay, Rowena. I know. He might knock Mac down, or eat stuff off the kitchen counters or—or run away like my mom did.”

The child was thinking in disasters again. Rowena wondered how long it had been since little Charlie had imagined unicorns and princesses and happy endings all her own.

Rowena hunkered down. She squeezed Charlie’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. For making you sad.”

“Oh, I’m never sad,” Charlie protested, looking at her father in alarm.

“Everybody gets sad, honey,” Rowena said. “I’m sad because what I did hurt you. And your daddy. I never meant to.” She looked up into Cash’s pain-filled eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Maybe you’d better go,” Cash said. He didn’t say “so I can mop up the damage.” He didn’t have to.

She was ready to flee, but as she brushed past him, he caught her wrist for a moment, his hand warm around the fragile skin. She looked up to see his forced smile, his gaze pulling her in. “See you, Trouble.”

Rowena’s eyes stung at the unexpected tenderness in the words. Maybe the most merciful thing she could do from now on was to stay out of Cash Lawless’s way. Because one thing she’d learned for certain by coming to his house.

When it came to trouble, the man had more than enough of his own.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS GOING TO TAKE a hell of a lot of coffee to pry his eyes open this morning, Cash thought as he paced to the counter and grabbed the heart-spattered mug Charlie had painted for him last Father’s Day. But once again, his former partner and current nanny, Vinny Scoglomiglio, didn’t disappoint. The sixty-eight-year-old ex-cop brewed coffee so thick and black and strong Cash was convinced someday some archeologist was going to stumble on a cylinder-shaped object that would be a cup of Vinny-style joe standing on its own, even the mug crumbled away. Yep, after Armageddon, all that would be left were cockroaches, piles of Styrofoam and Vinny’s coffee.

“You look like hell this morning.”

The gravelly voice should have startled him, but he’d grown so used to the old man letting himself into the house at all hours, he didn’t even flinch.

“Right back at you, Mr. Google,” he said, casting a bleary glance over his shoulder. The girls had christened Vinny with that nickname soon after the man had started babysitting them. Cash still wasn’t exactly sure if they’d just massacred the guy’s last name or if the soubriquet came from the fact that Vinny spent every spare moment on the Internet.

Vinny shoved half-glasses up his nose, abandoning his morning crossword puzzle. “I should look like hell. I’m practically dead. Considering all the Jim Beam I drank and the cigars I smoked I expected to be six feet under thirty years ago. What’s your excuse, junior?”

Cash Lawless took a long swallow of coffee, waiting for the bitter brew to do its stuff. “Haven’t been getting much sleep lately.” Lately? More like the past week and a half. Ever since Rowena Brown had walked out the door.

Vinny eyed him like a mother hen with one chick. “Been having those nightmares again?”

Cash’s jaw tightened. He hated the damn things—flashbacks, the counselor the force had sent him to had told him. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances, the woman had soothed. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Except they made him feel like he was caught in a crossfire with his pistol jammed.

“Been a while since one of those sons of bitches laid into you,” Vinny observed, squinting up at him. “Usually happens when your stress ratchets up. Something going on around here that you haven’t told me about? That ex-wife of yours isn’t causing you trouble?”

The very mention of Lisa usually sent a jolt of bitterness and anger through Cash. And yet, it wasn’t his ex-wife’s coolly elegant image that rippled across the surface of his mind today. It was a gypsy of a woman with sunshine hair and blind faith in her eyes, a woman who’d barreled into Cash’s thoughts the way she’d charged into his house, with no thought at all to her personal safety.

Yes, Rowena Brown was trouble, all right. And she’d changed Cash’s understanding of the word forever. Where had she gotten that fire of conviction, the courage that drove her? That fierce belief that she could make things better if she tried?

I don’t believe in impossible…

Cash had to agree it was true. Anyone with half a brain would have known her trip to Cash’s house could only end badly. If she’d actually knocked on the door instead of charging in, he would have verbally lambasted her so harshly for coming near his children again that her ears would still be ringing.

She had to have known the kind of reception she’d get. And yet the reckless woman had come to Briarwood Lane anyway, that menace of a dog of hers packed in the back of her van as if she actually thought she might have a chance to convince Cash to take Destroyer in.