Do You Take This Cop?

“Already? He was supposed to give me time to prepare you first.”

Phone still at her ear, Faith walked over and stood behind Austin, who tipped his head back to look up at her. “Mr. Coletti’s here,” he said.

“I can see that.” She made the mistake of meeting Nick’s unflinching, cool gaze. In her stomach, it felt as if a baby bird was about to take flight. “Why don’t you put your shoes away and then set the table for me?”

“Are you talking to me?” Britney asked.

“Now why on earth would I ask you to put away your shoes?” Faith said.

“Well, I did leave them by the door…”

Faith smiled and shook her head. “I was talking to Austin. Just…hold on a minute, would you?” She nudged Austin’s shoulder.

“Bye,” he told Nick.

“See ya, Austin.”

She waited until her son was out of earshot. “Britney says you didn’t give her time to prepare me.” Still holding the phone to her ear, she kept her other hand on the door frame, blocking his entrance to her home. Her sanctuary.

If he didn’t get the message she didn’t want him here, he wasn’t as bright as she’d given him credit for.

He set his toolbox on the blue-painted wooden porch. “Should I come back later?”

“Tell him not to go anywhere,” Britney demanded. “Even if you’re mad at him—”

“I never said that.” She bit into her apple. Hey, she hadn’t eaten anything since she’d tried to finish her leftover ham sandwich hours earlier. She was too hungry to worry about crunching in someone’s ear.

“He told me how you got upset about him paying Austin to run an errand.”

Her face heating, Faith leaned against the doorjamb. As soon as she’d walked away from Nick that morning she’d known she’d been out of line. But her fear that he’d been trying to somehow get close to her son by giving Austin something he wanted so badly had overridden her good sense.

“And now he’s standing on my porch with a toolbox at his feet because…why?” Faith asked.

“I asked him to look at your water heater.”

“I’d hate to put him out,” Faith said, straightening.

Nick hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and rocked back on his heels. She squeezed her apple so hard, she half expected to wind up with sauce on her hands.

“He might be able to fix it, which will save you from having to pay a plumber—a plumber who might not even get to it for days. If Nick can’t figure out what’s wrong, he’ll collect his tools and go home. No harm done.”

No harm done? The harm was having Nick Coletti in her house, in her personal business.

“Crap,” Britney said. “Michael’s beeping for me. I have to go. Just let Nicky look at it, okay?”

She hung up in Faith’s ear.

“What’s the verdict?” Nick asked, as if he couldn’t care less one way or the other what she decided.

“I’m not sure why Britney asked you to come over—”

“She’s got a big heart. It’s her greatest weakness.”

“And you’re enabling that weakness?”

“I have a hard time telling her no. Besides, she laid it on thick, told me how much she’d consider it a personal favor to her….”

“She guilted you into coming over here?”

“She’s good at convincing people to do what she wants,” he said, so solemnly that Faith blinked. “She thought if I helped you with your water heater problem, it’d make up for you being ticked off at me and we could all hold hands, sing songs of friendship and skip off over some fairy-tale rainbow.”

Faith cleared her throat. “I don’t think that’ll ever happen.”

“Yeah, well, Brit wants everyone to get along. She’s always been that way, even as a kid.” He tapped the toolbox with the toe of his work boot. “She loves me and considers you a friend, so she wants us to tolerate each other.”

Panic knifed through Faith. Friends? Her and Britney? Why did all the Colettis want to be her friend? Britney was her boss. Period. Besides, when you were friends with people they did things like send their brother to your house. She hadn’t missed all those hints Britney had given her these past few months about how wonderful Nick was, how perfect he’d be for some lucky woman.

That lucky woman obviously being Faith.

“If you want me gone,” Nick said, “just say the word.”

Oh, she wanted. But she’d long since learned that it didn’t matter what she wanted.

She’d play nice with Nick, show him she was just a single mother trying to get by, and then he’d stop looking at her as if she was a suspect in one of his cases.

Damn it, she and Austin were done running. And Nick Coletti wasn’t going to change that.

“I APPRECIATE YOU checking the water heater.” Faith sounded sincere. So why did Nick have the feeling she’d rather eat her apple core then let him in?

“No problem.” He picked up his toolbox and stepped over the threshold, his bare arm brushing against hers, causing his skin to prickle with awareness.

Faith shrank back as if she wished she could disappear into the wall. She shut the door. “Uh…it’s in the basement.”

Nick nodded and took the room in with a quick glance. She sure liked bright colors. If the porch hadn’t proved that, her living room did. The walls were painted a sunny yellow, the plump sofa was green with pink-and-white pillows that matched the high-backed, pink-checked chair in the corner. He squinted and hoped all the cheeriness didn’t burn his retinas.

Talk about a surprise. Going by how she dressed, he would’ve guessed Faith’s home to be more subdued. And much more beige.

He followed her as she put the phone back in its receiver on a small green-painted table next to the sofa before going into the long kitchen. The cupboards had been painted white and in the middle of the room stood a narrow island with a cooktop on one side and an eating bar on the other, flanked by two high-backed wooden stools.

Austin sat on one of the stools, reading. “I’ll get dinner going as soon as I show Mr. Coletti where the water heater is,” Faith told her son.

Nick shifted his toolbox to his other hand. “Why don’t you let Austin show me where it is? That way you can go ahead and work on dinner.”

She looked at him as if he’d asked her the impossible. See? It was things like that, along with her reaction to his giving Austin that five bucks, that had him so damn curious about her.

“That’s not necessary,” she assured him, tossing the apple core into the garbage can in the corner. “It’ll only take a min—”

“I don’t want him to lead me into battle,” Nick interrupted. There he was, trying to do her a favor, and she acted as if she didn’t trust him around her kid. “If it makes you feel better, why don’t you point me in the general direction of the basement? I’m sure with a map, a compass and maybe a decent GPS unit, I’ll find my way before nightfall.”

“That won’t be necessary.” But her tone indicated it wasn’t altogether out of the realm of possibility, either.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Austin said. “I’ll show him.”

He jumped off the stool and Nick followed him to a door at the end of the room. Austin flipped on a light and led the way down the wooden stairs, trailing his hand along the stone walls as he descended. The farther down they went, the cooler it got. And the mustier it smelled.

Nick followed Austin past the washer and dryer, a furnace that had to be at least as old as his mother, and a few large plastic totes that had “Winter Clothes” printed neatly on the sides. That was it for storage.

He set his toolbox down, opened the lid and took out his trouble light. “I take it your mom’s not the sentimental type?”

Austin wiped the back of his hand under his nose. “Huh?”

Spotting an outlet, Nick plugged the hanging light in and flipped it on. Laid it on the floor, where light shot up onto Austin’s pale face. The kid sure didn’t spend much time outside. When Nick was Austin’s age, he’d already turned two shades darker. Of course, his olive complexion tanned easily, whereas Austin seemed to take after his fair-skinned mother. That and his eyes were about the only similarities between mother and son.

“Sentimental. You know, mushy about baby clothes and old toys. Most moms keep everything from drawings you made when you were three, to your first lost tooth, to all your report cards.”

His mother’s basement wasn’t half this size, but she’d managed to stuff it with a whole lot more than Faith had. Hell, when Nick had gone down last winter to change her furnace filter, he’d spied his old hockey skates. Why did women hold on to stuff like that?

Austin shrugged. “My mom’s not like that. She says the most important thing is that we’re together, not holding on to material things.”

And if that wasn’t a direct quote from Faith, Nick would eat his badge.

“Your mom’s right. People are more important than things.” Although he couldn’t imagine any mother who didn’t have at least a small box of keepsakes. But if Faith had one, she didn’t keep it in this eerily empty basement. “And now you have more room to store all your winter stuff.” When Austin stared at him blankly, Nick added, “Things like your sleds, shovels, boots and hats and gloves. Not to mention all your holiday decorations.”

“We don’t have any of that,” Austin said.

Nick searched for somewhere to hang his light, trying not to reveal what he was thinking. It was weird they didn’t have any winter gear. Weird, but hardly illegal, or any reason for his instincts to be kicking in. There could be a reasonable explanation. “I take it you’ve never lived up north during winter before? Never been around snow?”

Austin shook his head—either as a negative response or to flip his hair out of his eyes. “Nah, I’ve seen snow. We had a shovel and I even had a sled when we lived in Serenity Springs and—”

Guilt and panic, two emotions Nick saw often when he interrogated suspects, flashed across Austin’s face. Apprehension, suspicion, tickled the back of Nick’s neck. He rubbed at it but the tickle wouldn’t go away.

He wasn’t going to interrogate the kid—just ask him a few questions. Maybe get a feel for the real story behind Faith’s secretiveness. What was the worst that could happen? If he was wrong, getting the kid to talk about himself wouldn’t hurt anything.

Hey, he was a cop. He justified using sneaky tactics all the time.

“What kind of sled did you have?” Nick asked.

“A round, plastic one,” Austin muttered, staring at the floor.

“My nephew has one of those,” he said, giving up on hanging his light. Hopefully, it’d cast enough of a glow from the floor for him to see what he was doing. “That thing really flies.”

“Yeah, it was sweet.” The boy scratched at a scab on his knee. “I don’t have it anymore. We, uh, decided to move, and I couldn’t take it with us.”

“You must’ve had a ton of stuff if you couldn’t find room for a sled that size.”

“Mom said it would be easier to buy a new one.”

“Can’t argue with that logic. Better watch out,” Nick said. “I’m going to turn the water on to see if I can figure out where the leak came from.”

“It came from the bottom.”

“You sure? Not from any of the pipes or maybe this faucet?” He squatted and pointed to the brass faucet at the bottom of the tank.

Austin squatted, too, mimicking Nick’s stance. “Nah. It sort of poured out of the bottom.”

“Let’s double-check.”

He stood, reached up and twisted a handle. No sooner had he moved back than water streamed out from the bottom of the tank.

“Damn.” Nick stepped over the water to shut off the valve again.

“Told you,” Austin gloated. “Sir,” he added quickly, when Nick glanced over his shoulder at him. But Nick noticed he was fighting a grin.

Which was good. The times he’d been around Austin, the kid had seemed too serious. Too mature.

Neither of which any nine-year-old boy worth his salt should be.

Having already figured out the water heater was toast, Nick stepped over the small puddle of water. “Got any towels handy so I can clean up this mess?”

“Sure.” Austin ran off, coming back almost immediately with a large bath towel.

“Thanks.” Nick knelt and mopped up the water. “Do you play baseball? We have a short rec league that starts soon. Sign-ups are this weekend if you’re interested.”

Longing filled Austin’s eyes. “I don’t play baseball.”

“No? What about midget football? Or if you’re into skating, we have a youth hockey league—”

“No!” Austin’s hands were now fisted at his sides, his shoulders rigid, his lips a thin line. “I mean…no, thank you. I…I don’t want to play any sports.”

“Hey, it’s no problem.”

Austin nodded and blew out a breath. Either he had a personal—and vehement—hatred of organized sports or there was a whole lot more going on with this kid than Nick had realized.

“So, you’ve lived in a lot of difference places?” Nick asked. Austin shrugged, which Nick took to mean yes. “How are you liking it here?”

“It’s okay.”

“Where did you live before you moved to Kingsville?”

When he got no response, Nick glanced up. Austin shrugged again. “Just around.”

Nick tightened his grip on the towel. Obviously Austin took after his mother in more ways than just his eye color. Trying to get to know him was like trying to convince Britney to stop dressing like a sixteen-year-old pop star. Both were exercises in futility.

And frustrating as hell.

“Around, huh? What about that town you mentioned earlier? Serenity Springs? How long did you—”

“I have to go,” Austin said, his face red, his eyes suspiciously shiny.

Nick straightened, the wet towel in his hand dripping onto his shoe as he watched Austin race up the stairs. You’d have thought he’d suggested the kid go play in traffic or something.

He walked to the washing machine and dropped the towel into an empty laundry basket. There was something going on with Faith and Austin. The kid had looked so guilty when he’d mentioned Serenity Springs, it was as if he’d just blurted out a state secret.

Nick already knew they’d moved around a lot before settling in Kingsville. Britney had gleaned that much information from her employee. But not much else. Nick hadn’t really wondered about it before. He’d figured they hadn’t found the right place to settle.

But now…now he couldn’t ignore the little voice in the back of his head. The one telling him there was more to the story. The one whispering that maybe Faith and Austin were running from something.

Or someone.

CHAPTER FOUR

STEPPING ONTO THE first stair, Faith stopped short when Austin came barreling around the corner. “Hey,” she said as he took the stairs two at a time, “I was just coming down to see how things were going.”

Because though she’d been telling herself he was fine, she couldn’t stop worrying. He’d rarely been alone with any other adult since they’d left New York, and she’d made sure he was never alone with a man. Nick was the golden boy of Kingsville. Well liked. Honorable. A man people turned to when they needed help. But she knew all too well that a spotless reputation was no guarantee of a man’s true nature.

“It’s going fine,” Austin mumbled, brushing past her.

She caught up with him by the sink. “Are you sure?” She searched his face. His cheeks were pink and he kept his gaze averted. Her fingers tensed on his shoulders. “Did something happen? Did—did Nick say…or do…something to you?”

Austin pulled away from her. “No.”

“If someone upsets you or makes you feel…uncomfortable…you need to tell me.”

“Nothing happened.”

She straightened at the tone in his voice. “I’m glad to hear that. But how about you lose the attitude? Or at least save some up until you hit your teens.”

“Sorry,” he said, as the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs reached them.

“I have some bad news.” Nick set his toolbox down by her most prized flea-market find, an antique pedestal table with a distressed white finish. “I also have some almost good news.”

“Can I finish reading my comic now?” Austin asked.

“Sure,” Faith said slowly. “But only for fifteen minutes. Then I’m going to need you to set the table and take the garbage out.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Bye, Austin,” Nick called as the boy walked away. Her son lifted a hand but kept right on going.

“I’ll take the bad news first,” she told Nick, vowing to talk to Austin about his lack of manners once they were alone. If he said nothing had happened in the basement, she had no reason to doubt him, but she couldn’t shake the feeling there was more going on than her son had told her.

“You need a new water heater,” Nick announced.

“I figured as much.” She washed her hands and began mixing the ingredients together for meat loaf. Cold, raw beef squished between her fingers. “I appreciate you taking time out of your day off to look at it.”

He stood at the counter next to her. “Don’t you want to hear the almost good news?”

What she wanted was to show him the door. Too bad she had a part to play. “Of course.”

“I called a friend of mine. He can get you a new water heater at cost. Plus, if I help him install it, he’ll give you a break on the labor.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because I asked him to.”

She was becoming even more jaded than she’d realized if the idea of someone doing a friend a favor made her suspicious.

She shaped the meat mixture into a small loaf, set it in a glass baking dish and washed her hands. “I wouldn’t feel right imposing on him, or you, that way.”

It was funny how things worked out. She’d spent most of her life searching for a man to take care of her, and now when a guy did offer his help, she couldn’t get away fast enough. Yeah, life sure was a freaking riot.

“It’s no imposition on either of us,” Nick assured her. “He’ll still get paid, but it’s up to you. It won’t save you a lot, just a couple hundred dollars.”

“Did he happen to mention how much he thinks it’ll cost?”

Nick named a figure that, while still high enough to make her checkbook whimper, was two hundred dollars less than the quote the plumber had given her over the phone this morning. She stuck the meat loaf into the preheated oven, rinsed two small potatoes and picked up her coarse vegetable brush.

It was only one more time, a few more hours of having Nick in here, around her son. And he wouldn’t really even have to be around them. She could leave Nick and his friend to do their job while she and Austin steered clear. Surely they could get through it unscathed.

“On second thought,” she said, scrubbing the potato so hard she almost took the skin right off, “I’d be…grateful for your help.”

“No problem. We’ll swing by tomorrow after work. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so to finish the job. Six o’clock work for you?”

“Sounds good.” Could he stop staring at her now? She’d given in. What more did he want? Pleasant conversation? That was just way beyond her acting capabilities at the moment. Besides, she needed to get back to Austin, to reassure herself he really was okay.

She set the potatoes aside and, inwardly cringing at her own rudeness, said, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

As a nudge, it was less than subtle, but at least it worked. Humor lit his dark eyes. “Right. I can find my own way out.”

“Oh, no, let me just—”

But he picked up his toolbox and left, with Faith racing after him. She stopped in the doorway to find Nick crouching next to the couch, talking to Austin.

“I was apologizing,” Nick said to her, even though he didn’t look her way, just watched her son while Austin kept his gaze glued to his comic book.

Her stomach dropped. “Apologizing for what?”

“I’m not exactly sure.” Nick drummed his fingers against his knee. “But I think it had something to do with my asking if Austin was interested in playing baseball.”

“I’m not,” he muttered.

“Yeah.” Nick nodded. “I got that. Anyway,” he told Austin, “I didn’t want you to think I was trying to pressure you—”

“I didn’t,” the boy said, still not so much as glancing Nick’s way.

“Does that mean we’re okay?”

Austin lifted a shoulder. Faith opened her mouth to scold him but caught the quick head shake Nick gave her. “Great.” Nick stood and grabbed his toolbox once again. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He held out his fist. For a moment, Faith had no idea what he was doing until Austin, still staring at the comic, bumped his own fist against the man’s much larger one. Nick grinned, gave her a wink and walked out the door.

Faith watched him leave.

Then she crossed the room and locked the door behind him.

“HOW COME I GOT this end?” Nick asked the next evening, struggling down Faith’s steps backward while he and Ethan Crosby hauled a new water heater to the basement.

“Quit bitching. I had the low end when we moved that Ping-Pong table, remember? And that thing weighs at least fifty pounds more than this.” Ethan shifted his side of the heater a few inches higher. “I have two kids to send to college—”

“They’re both still in diapers.”

“—and I can’t risk having my neck broken because you can’t hold up your end.”

“Get over it,” Nick said, referring to Christmas Eve two years ago when Ethan had helped him move an assembled Ping-Pong table into Kathleen’s basement. “You only needed four stitches.”

Nick took a careful step backward, his arms stretched wide to hold on to the bulky, heavy box. He glanced over his shoulder.

Three more steps and they made it to the bottom without any casualties. Most importantly, they made it without dropping the damn thing. After carrying it to the far end of the basement, they set it upright and took a moment to catch their breath.

Faith came down carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade, two glasses and a small plate of chocolate chip cookies. She faltered when she spotted them, but it was so brief, Nick doubted Ethan even noticed.

“I’ll just leave this here,” she said, setting the tray down on top of the short stack of storage totes. She wore baggy jeans and an oversize black T-shirt. He wondered if she even owned a pair of shorts. And what her figure looked like under all those shapeless clothes she insisted on wearing. “Uh…if you need anything, I’ll be outside.”

Ethan smiled. “Thanks.”

She returned his smile with a nervous one of her own and went back upstairs, her thick ponytail swinging in time with her movements. Ethan picked up a cookie and took a bite.

“How about you eat when we’re done?” Nick asked, grabbing a plastic bucket. “I’d like to get home in time to watch the ball game.”

“Game doesn’t start for two hours.” Ethan helped himself to another cookie, then wiped his hand on the side of his khaki work pants. “And you’re not usually in a hurry to get away from a pretty woman. Usually they can’t wait to get away from you.”

Nick set the bucket underneath the spigot and turned it on to drain the remaining water from the heater. “The only reason I’m doing this is because Brit nagged me into it.”

“Bullshit,” Ethan said cheerfully. “You’re interested in Ms. Lewis. What’s the matter? She have enough sense not to be interested back?”

“I wonder,” Nick said thoughtfully, tapping a wrench against his palm, “what Lauren would say if she discovered what really happened the night of your bachelor party.”

Ethan’s smirk faded. “That’s cold, man. She can’t ever find out about that.”

Nick feigned a puzzled expression. “No? Huh.”

“I was drunk.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll keep my mouth shut about her dog’s Mohawk—and who really held the clippers—and you can keep your mouth shut about me and Faith Lewis.”

Eating another cookie, Ethan shrugged belligerently, which Nick took as a yes. Nick slapped his friend’s shoulder. “It’s a sad state of affairs when a man is afraid of his one-hundred-and-ten-pound wife.”

Ethan snorted. “About as sad as a man putting in a new water heater for a woman who’s clearly not interested.”