From Father to Son

Is an independent cop the best family man?

Niall MacLachlan’s one priority is the law. He fought his way from the wrong side of the tracks to earn his badge and won’t jeopardize it for anything. After all, trusting his family nearly cost him everything as a kid. So, no. This loner has no desire for a wife and children to call his own.

So why is his entirely too attractive landlady, Rowan Staley, slipping past all his defenses? She and her young family—complete with noisy dog—are everything Niall thinks he doesn’t want. But he can’t keep his distance when she turns to him for protection from a neighborhood threat. And in the end, letting her go might be impossible.

Would a man who could be so gentle and patient hurt her?

Rowan stole a sidelong look at Niall. He hadn’t seemed interested in her that way at all, although a few times she’d seen flickers of expression that had made her wonder.

“What if I come with you Friday?” he asked.

“You’re serious.”

“I’m serious.”

Probably, she should make some polite disclaimer, but…he wouldn’t have offered if he hadn’t meant it, would he? “I would love it if you could come.”

“We’ll leave by 7:00 a.m.?”

“Ugh. Yes.”

He laughed. “Sleep tight.”

How wonderful it was to be smiling when she slipped back into the house. Feeling relief and joy and, yes, trepidation, because why was he being so nice? But, oh, she was so grateful that he was.

He was the kind of man she could—

No! Don’t even think it. Not happening.

But she still felt happy. And yes, Niall MacLachlan was the reason why.

Dear Reader,

When I first imagined a hero who played the bagpipe, I envisioned him in a kilt, the dagger thrust in his kneesock. I was influenced, I think, by the commonly known and melancholy history of the pipers stirring the Scots to fight and die at the Battle of Culloden in 1748.

What I didn’t know until I started doing some research was that the bagpipes have a far more ancient lineage than the eighteenth century. Ancient Greek writings dating to fifth century B.C. mention bagpipes. Emperor Nero of Rome may have played a form of bagpipe.

But maybe more significant, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to what the music sounds like. Or perhaps I had, and just didn’t know it. Because Niall MacLachlan was made to play the bagpipe. He mentions at one point playing the lament at a policeman’s funeral. The music he plays fits this man, expresses the hurt he’s held inside his whole life. He’s never admitted to himself how lonely he is, but he chooses to play music that will haunt the listener long after the bagpipe has fallen silent. He turns out to be an extraordinary man who has never dealt with childhood grief. This is one way he can express it while also holding on to one of his few good memories: his father teaching him to play the bagpipes.

Oh, I love heroes like Niall! And I love to torment them, too. I asked myself what kind of woman would be his worst nightmare, and there was Rowan—a young, single mother who is suddenly his landlady living in close proximity. A woman who has a good deal of pride but clearly needs help. Who brings with her two annoying kids and an even more annoying dog. Who steals his peace, and threatens the life he’s chosen for himself.

I hope you fall as deeply in love with Niall as I did.

Janice Kay Johnson

PS—I enjoy hearing from readers! Please contact me

c/o Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road,

Don Mills, ON M3B 3K9, Canada.

From Father to Son

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson writes Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PROLOGUE

NIALL MACLACHLAN LAY on the narrow, hard bunk in his cell in the juvenile detention center and stared at the ceiling. This place was a shit hole. He was bored. He should’ve taken a book from the library cart in the rec room earlier. He hadn’t wanted to look like some kind of nerd, though, so he’d played ping pong and watched part of a Mariners game even though he thought baseball was a stupid sport. But now he was alone, even though there were two bunks. Eventually, if he stuck around, they’d throw someone else in with him. Other times he’d been in juvie, he’d had a roommate.

He couldn’t believe he was still here. He’d spent the past two days trying not to think about whether Mom really meant it when she’d told the cop that she was done with Niall and that he could rot in here as far as she was concerned. Other times, she or Dad had come and gotten him. Mom especially would rag on him, and he’d slump down in his seat and tune her out. Totally out. It wasn’t as if she’d actually do anything she threatened, like grounding him or curfews or forbidding him from seeing Tyler or Beck, who she said were bad influences on him. Niall smirked every time she said that. If anyone was the bad influence, it was him.

“And proud of it,” he said to the ceiling.

The words sounded braver than he felt. Truthfully, the two days of silence from his mother alarmed him a little. Okay, he could see why she was mad. This wasn’t the best time for him to get caught smoking a joint. Not when yesterday was Dad’s sentencing. Mom was already freaked about that. But hey—anybody know what the word hypocrite means?

He laughed out loud. My dad the drug dealer. And Mom—who planned to go sit in the front row at his sentencing hearing to make some big fake showing of how Dad is a great family man—is pissed because her son was smoking a joint.

Except… Wow. Mom yelled a lot, but she came and got him anyway when the police called. Only, this time she hadn’t.

Tomorrow, he told himself, pretending the anxiety balled in a greasy lump in his belly was really his stomach rebelling against the crappy food. Mom was trying to scare him, and he was mad at himself that it was working. Some.

A guy down the row started yelling and pounding on the wall. Footsteps echoed in the corridor as a guard went to see what was happening. Eventually, the yelling escalated and there were grunts and thumps. Niall didn’t pay that much attention. There were fights in here all the time, or guys flipped out because they were addicts going cold or they were afraid their mommies would be mad or who knew.

My mom will be mad.

So?

He rolled over to face the wall, knowing lights-out would come anytime. Someone would come and get him tomorrow for sure. All that talk about sending him to a juvenile lockup was bull. For one joint? Yeah, right. They were only trying to scare him, too.

Not working.

NIALL WAS EATING BREAKFAST when a guard called his name. He took another bite to show he wasn’t in any hurry then lazily swung his legs over the bench seat—screwed to the ground so it couldn’t be used as a weapon—and sauntered toward the impatiently waiting guard.

He was ushered to one of the small visitor rooms. It was about damn time she got here. He’d be a good little boy until she got him out, and then he’d tell her what he really thought. Niall was forming the words in his head when he saw who was sitting in one of the two chairs at the small table.

Duncan. Niall’s eighteen-year-old brother, who had graduated from high school in May and was to leave for college in six weeks. A few times, Niall had thought that Duncan was already gone in every way that mattered. Spirit, heart, dreams. Only his body was left to catch up.

But now Duncan sat looking at him, his face so somber Niall felt a weird hitch of fear.

“Where’s Mom?” he demanded.

“She’s…gone.”

Behind them, the guard left and closed the door, although he stood outside where he could watch them through the window.

Niall dropped into the other chair. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Dad got ten years.”

Niall whispered an expletive.

“Yesterday, Mom said she’s done. When I got home from work, she was already packed. She waited only long enough to talk to me. She said she can’t do anything for you or Conall.” Conall was the youngest MacLachlan brother, only twelve to Niall’s fifteen. Con was already a major screwup.

“Gone.” Niall couldn’t look away from Duncan’s eyes, the same shade of gray as his own. “But…we’re her kids. You mean… She can’t just ditch us.” His voice had been rising. At the end it cracked.

Duncan had the strangest expression on his face. What he said was a flat “She did.”

Panic swelled in him until he could hardly breathe.

Mommy? Daddy? I didn’t mean it!

If he didn’t have a parent to come and get him, he would get locked up for a couple of months, maybe. And then sent to a group home. And Conall, he’d go to a foster home. Except he was so angry, he’d get in trouble right away and then nobody would want him. Niall could imagine him running away, ending up a street kid.

Niall clutched his stomach and bent forward until he was bowed over the table. “How could she do that?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s been leaving for a long time. She hasn’t even tried with Conall.”

Niall nodded. He’d wanted her to get mad because he had gotten thrown into juvie again, but the truth was, Mom hadn’t bothered in a long time. Lately, when he was in trouble all she would do was look at him with this blank expression, as if… As if she was already gone. He hadn’t known how to identify that expression, but now he did. It was just like Duncan’s. Both of them were so out of there, they hadn’t waited until their official departure dates.

Niall struggled to speak. To sound as if this didn’t matter. He didn’t realize that he was rocking himself until he bumped the table with his belly. Holding himself still, he said, “So…what? You came to give me the official notification?”

“I came to take you home.”

Dazed, Niall looked up. For the first time he noticed that Duncan looked older. Harder.

“What?”

His brother repeated, “I’m here to get you.”

“They’re releasing me to you?” Niall’s head swiveled and he stared at the guard through the window, as if that would tell him anything.

“Yes. Here’s the thing, though.” Duncan paused, then snapped, “Look at me.”

Niall straightened in the chair to stare in disbelief at the stranger his brother had become.

“Things are going to be different from now on. I won’t put up with any of the shit Mom and Dad did. Most of your friends are history. You won’t drink, you won’t do drugs, you won’t party. You will get your grades up to a minimum B average. You’ll mow the lawn, wash dishes, cook your fair share of meals. When I tell you to do something, you will do it. Do you hear me?”

His brother’s face held no compassion, no kindness, no regret. Only implacable determination.

Niall’s lips formed the word, “Yes.”

“If you defy me in any way, I will become your worst nightmare. Do you understand that?”

Niall nodded. He understood something wonderful and terrible at the same time. Duncan had given up his chance to leave for college. He’d given up everything, because his brothers needed him.

Niall understood something else, too. In making the decision not to abandon them, this big brother of his had changed. The frighteningly intense focus that had made Duncan valedictorian of his class and star athlete all while holding jobs and saving money for the future that had meant everything to him, that focus would now be turned on Conall and Niall. He would demand of them what he’d always demanded of himself. Perfection.

I can’t do it.

Duncan’s eyes had acquired a film of ice, like a winter pond. There was no love in them, only resignation and resolution so cold Niall had to repress a shiver.

He thought, I’m going to hate him, and then, with agony and shock, This is love. Hard as bedrock. The real deal.

The kind neither of their parents had ever given them.

CHAPTER ONE

MAYBE IF I WENT BACK to bed and started over.

Detective Niall MacLachlan looked down at the dead body sprawled on the kitchen floor and knew that no do-over was possible.

The body was not a murder victim. It was the corporeal shell of his landlady.

He attempted no resuscitation. He knew dead when he saw dead. Rigor mortis had set in. The old lady must have gotten up during the night. Niall knew she hadn’t been sleeping well. Heartburn, she’d told him, but she kept nitroglycerin at hand.

This wasn’t what you’d call a tragedy. Enid Cooper had turned eighty-eight in April. She’d lost two inches in height from crumbling bones and had confessed to Niall that she hurt all the time. Her worst fear had been ending up in a nursing home.

Maybe, he thought, her last emotion had been relief. He’d like to think so.

She had family who would mourn, he guessed. He didn’t know them, had been careful to avoid any introductions, but he’d seen a young woman with two little kids come and go. She’d mowed the lawn this spring and summer. Niall had kept his distance, but had paused a couple of times to admire her. She was a small, curvy package with fabulous legs. She was also, however, a mother and likely a wife. He suspected she would be Enid’s heir, too.

Which made Enid’s decision to kick the bucket very bad news for him. He was a selfish son of a bitch to be thinking about himself right now, but he had time to kill while he waited for the appropriate authority to take over. Beyond tugging down the hem of Enid’s nightgown so that her birdlike, liver-spotted legs were decently covered, there wasn’t anything he could do for her.

He’d signed a new one-year lease not six weeks ago. This would be his second year living in the tiny cottage tucked on the back of the large lot, behind Enid’s 1940s-era bungalow. Living here had worked out fine for him. Enid ignored him and didn’t mind that he ignored her. She was deaf as a post and didn’t like to be bothered with her hearing aid, which she said whined. Niall played the bagpipe. Your average landlord or landlady did not consider him an ideal tenant. Enid and he were a match made in heaven. He didn’t like to think what was going to happen now.

A uniformed officer arrived and Niall explained that he’d come to check on Enid because the kitchen light wasn’t on. This time of the morning, she would have long since had breakfast and tea. Enid tended to linger over her tea. He’d knocked on the back door, gotten no response and felt enough alarm he’d gone back to his cottage to get the key she had given him in case of emergency.

“I’d hate to die and not be found for so long I shrivelled up like a mummy,” she’d told him. “I don’t much like that idea. So if you don’t see me around, feel free to check.”

He could do that. She’d asked little enough of him. Rental payment once a month—which he deposited directly into her bank account as getting out was hard for her—and the understanding that he’d keep an eye on her from a distance.

Enid had been dead for a few hours, but the mortician would get his hands on her before she began serious decomposition. Niall hadn’t told her that in the incessantly damp climate of the Pacific Northwest, corpses didn’t dry up leatherlike. He didn’t tell her that what did happen to them was a whole lot more unpleasant than mummification.

He hoped that if she was opposed to being embalmed she’d have discussed it with her family.

It was with relief that he escaped after a silent goodbye.

As luck would have it, the first person he saw when he arrived at the public safety building that housed the police department was his brother Duncan. Captain Duncan MacLachlan, only one rung below the police chief who was currently under fire for publicly making a racist remark and who was at risk for being fired. Even though Duncan was a hard-ass, he backed his officers and was known for being fair, smart and the soul of integrity. The general hope was that the city council would give the job to him, rather than hiring from outside the department.

Niall had very mixed feelings for his brother.

They were a hell of a lot closer than they’d been even a year ago, though. Duncan had mellowed when he’d fallen in love. Niall had watched the process with bemusement.

Duncan had pushed through the doors on his way out, and the two of them stepped aside so they weren’t in the way of traffic. Although barely midmorning, it had to be eighty degrees already. A humid eighty degrees.

“You just getting here?”

“I found my landlady dead.”

Duncan nodded without apparent surprise. “What’ll that do to your lease?”

Niall grinned. Trust his big brother to hold no sentimental feelings whatsoever. Except where Jane was concerned, of course. Niall shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out.”

Rather than offering another brisk nod and continuing on his way, Duncan kept standing there. He was wearing one of the suits that made him appear more like a politician than a cop, and he had to be looking forward to the air-conditioning in that big SUV he drove. But instead of heading for it, he shifted his weight, hemmed and hawed.

“I was going to call you today,” he finally said.

Niall was entertained by the unexpected and unnatural sight of Captain MacLachlan looking irresolute.

“Yeah?”

“Jane wants you to come to dinner. Tonight or tomorrow?”

“Is there an occasion?”

Expression strangely vulnerable, Duncan met his eyes. “Jane’s pregnant.”

Niall found himself momentarily speechless. “This a surprise?” he asked at last.

Duncan shook his head. “No. I’m thirty-seven, Jane’s thirty-two. We didn’t want to wait too long.”

“My brother, a daddy.” Niall smiled broadly. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“How far along is she?”

“Three months. She wanted to wait until she was past the danger point before we let people know. You’re, uh, the first.”

Niall nodded, feeling honored even though—face it—there wasn’t a whole lot of competition here. Jane was alienated entirely from her family, and Niall was the only member of Duncan’s who had a relationship with him. Mom had made no effort to stay in touch with any of them, and Duncan had rebuffed Dad’s one attempt to reconnect. Conall hadn’t spoken to Duncan in close to ten years. That left—ta da!—Niall.

“I’ll be an uncle,” he said, disconcerted by the idea.

His brother shared one of his rare grins. “Yeah, you will.”

“Huh.”

Still smiling, Duncan clapped him on the back. “Dinner?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“I’ll tell Jane.” With long strides, he headed across the parking lot.

Niall stood where he was, watching him go. Well, damn, he thought, and felt a funny ache inside. He might have labeled it as jealousy, except he didn’t want any of what Duncan had.

Still, a baby MacLachlan. Who’d have thunk?

HOMICIDE AND MAJOR CRIMES detectives almost never fired a gun outside of the range, where they were required to keep their skills sharp. The telephone and the internet were their tools. They spent a lot of time on hold. They talked. They listened. They pretended to understand and sympathize with scumbags.

Which was probably why Niall was a little slower than he should have been reaching for his Glock.

During a belated lunch break, he had pulled into the bank parking lot with the intention of going in to deposit a check. Before he could get out of the car, his attention was caught by the sight of a guy hustling out of the bank gripping the arm of a woman who was walking really, really close to him. The incongruous part was that with both hands she clutched a black plastic trash bag, stuffed full. And—oh, hell—she looked scared out of her skull.

At the exact same moment Niall’s brain clicked into gear, the guy looked at Niall’s car which, while unmarked, shouted cop car. Plain maroon, but a big, powerful sedan. Grille behind the driver’s seat. Serious radio antenna. Then his eyes met Niall’s and he lifted a handgun.

Niall flung open the door and dove out at the exact moment the passenger window exploded.

He snatched his Glock from the holster and groped for his radio. “Shots being fired. Bank robbery in progress,” he managed to spit out before stealing a peek over the trunk.

Another shot rang out. Brick chips flew from the wall a few feet from his head.

Damn, damn, damn. The guy had dragged the woman behind a minivan in the lot. He had a hostage, and he was seriously willing to do anything to get away. Including killing a cop.

Niall hadn’t taken a shot yet. He wouldn’t until he thought he had a good one. God. Even aside from the hostage, there were other people in the parking lot, businesses across the street, passing cars.

Niall swiveled on his heels and saw a woman who had gotten out of her RAV4 standing not fifteen feet away with the keys in her hand, her mouth forming a horrified O. He gestured vehemently, relieved when she gasped and threw herself out of sight around the front of the vehicle. Other people farther away were gaping, too freaking stupid to realize a stray bullet could catch them. A man came running out of the bank yelling, but ducked back when a bullet chipped more bricks inches from him.

Niall’s car jumped when another burst of fire found metal. He dropped flat to the pavement so he could see the feet beneath the minivan. Black bag, too. He wondered if the teller had gotten a dye pack in it. He grunted. Man, this was going to be a mess no matter how it played out. The FBI would be all over it, and who wanted to deal with them? Although he wouldn’t mind if they showed up right now.

The feet were moving. Toward the rear of the vehicle. So it wasn’t the guy’s minivan, or the woman’s, either. The guy was figuring to bolt for cover behind another car. Make his way to his own, maybe. Time was his enemy. He had to get away before more cops arrived and he got surrounded.

Sirens sounded, but not close.

Niall rose to a crouch and crab-walked forward, rounding the hood of his car. He snatched a quick look, his finger tight on the trigger, and saw that the guy had pushed the woman out into view. She once again clutched the trash bag in front of her as if it were a shield. Niall had never seen such terror on anyone’s face. Was she a teller? An unlucky customer?

Wait. Wait.

The guy appeared. Not enough of him—he was using the woman for cover. He took a wild shot to pin Niall down, but it was the back window of the car that imploded. Good. He’d miscalculated which direction Niall would move.

Wait.