Shattered Vows

“I doubt Danny needs a reminder of that. Any more than I need one about the questionable choices I’ve made.” She used her hand to make a sweeping gesture of the kitchen. “Not when they’re all around me,” she added in a voice that sounded like chipped glass.

“You don’t like the house, you can always move out.”

“I plan to, as soon as you sign the divorce papers my lawyer sent you.”

“Sent me? Your slick attorney didn’t just send them. He had a process server track me down at the briefing station and slap the damn papers in my hand.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Every cop on the shift knew what was going on.”

“I didn’t know.” The flicker of surprise in her eyes verified that. “I had no idea my attorney planned to serve you that way.”

“Well, now you know.”

“I talked to him yesterday. He said he hasn’t received them back from you. Why haven’t you signed them?”

Bran curled his hands into fists. He’d sat in his ratty apartment, staring at the document for hours, telling himself to just sign the damn thing and be done with it. The fact he had no clue why he hadn’t was like a splash of alcohol on his rekindled anger. And, hell, maybe he was ticked because she’d beat him to the punch and served him first!

“I’ll let you know when I sign them.”

“Why wait?”

Rising, he sent her a caustic look. “Why hurry?”

She lifted a palm, dropped it. “Look, we made a mistake. We ran off and got married when the only thing we knew about each other was how good we were together in bed. If we’d just stayed there, we would have been much better off. Instead, we’ve spent the past eleven months trying to force each other into molds in which we’ll never fit.”

She stabbed a hand through her hair, closed her eyes. When she reopened them, an aura of weariness had replaced the agitation.

“You left, Bran. You walked out. You belong in this house, I don’t. I’ve found a condo I want to buy. Legally, it’ll be a lot easier to do that after our divorce is final. Why won’t you do both of us a favor and sign the papers?”

He damn well wished he had an answer for that. Since he didn’t, he flipped the topic. “Let’s get back to the reason I’m here,” he said, closing the space between them. “Vic Heath.”

“Fine.” She thrust her tumbled hair behind her ears. “Fine.”

“His mother might be right about Vic being in eye-for-an-eye mode. And my having put him in prison gives him even more reason to come after me. If he shows up here, I don’t want him to find you. You can bunk with Morgan, Carrie and Grace until he’s picked up.”

“You’re the one who should stay at your sisters’ place. Heath’s after you, not me.”

“True. But if he can’t find me, he might settle for my wife. I don’t want you hurt, Tory.”

“I don’t want you hurt, either,” she said quietly.

“Well, that’s something we agree on. You can pack a bag now. I’ll drive you over to my sisters’ place.”

“Has Heath been spotted since he left the funeral home in Tulsa? Does anyone even know if he’s still in Oklahoma?”

“No, to both questions.”

“If the threat was to me, I’d go.”

Bran caught her chin in his hand as she started to move away. “Victoria Lynn, this is serious. Life and death.”

Beneath his fingers he felt her soften. Something like regret, only more complex, flickered in her green eyes. He eased out a breath. When it came to standing on her own the woman never gave an inch. “No one’s going to view you as dependent if you bunk at my sisters’ house for a few days.”

“I carry a gun for a living, too,” she said, shaking off his touch. “I know how to take care of myself.”

“The corrections cop probably thought the same thing. We’ll never know since he’s on a slab at the morgue.”

“I appreciate you letting me know about Heath.” As she moved to slip past him, her shoulder brushed his. He felt the instant connection. The pull. She was right, he thought dourly. They should have just stayed in bed having mind-blowing sex and bypassed the wedding.

When she reached the counter opposite him, she turned. “I’ve got three active cases going right now. All have surveillance involved, which means I won’t be spending a lot of time here over the next week or so. When I am here, I’ll activate the security system. Keep my guard up.” She patted the Sig she’d left beside her leather jacket. “I’ll keep my eyes open. If you have a picture of Heath, that would help.”

“His picture’s all over the television by now.”

“I’ll turn it on. Memorize his face. You’ll let me know when you find out who helped Heath escape?”

“The minute I know, you’ll know.”

He gave her a considering look. As long as she chose to stay here alone, there wasn’t much he could do about it. And, he conceded, when she’d gone with him to the police pistol range she’d proven she was his equal with a gun. She also held her own in hand-to-hand combat—he might have had her on the ground outside, but the way she’d moved had kept him from going for his weapon. Yet knowing all that, he still wasn’t satisfied.

“I’ve arranged for extra patrols of the neighborhood by both uniformed cops and plainclothes,” he said.

She slanted him a look. “Is one of those extra patrols going to be you?”

“Not officially. Everyone involved in the shootout is on desk duty until the review board completes its report.” He lifted a shoulder. “That doesn’t mean I can’t drive by, simply as a concerned citizen checking the safety of a neighborhood.”

“I’ll be careful. You don’t need to worry about me.”

A vicious case of frustration had his head pounding. He wished to hell he had even an ounce of control over the situation. Over her.

“If something happens, call my cell. Even if you get a bad sense about something, I want to hear it. That goes for everyone in the family. You need us, we’ll be here for you. You know that.”

“I know.” Her eyes softened. “It’s nice to have dependable backup who all carry badges.”

“Yeah.”

She wouldn’t call him, Bran would stake his life on that. She’d spent the entire time they’d been married showing him how independent and take-charge she could be. It was ironic, he thought, that his innate nature was to protect, comfort and soothe and he’d married a woman who wanted no part of that.

Patience had. She had always considered him her protector.

Turning, he walked back to the table. He jerked on his parka, wincing when the age-old injury to his right shoulder kicked in.

He had always figured he and Tory would get around to dealing with their unfinished business. After tonight, he wondered if the smart thing to do was just to let things go. Make the break before they heaped more emotional debris on what they’d once had.

He crammed his black ball cap low on his head. Maybe when he got to his apartment, he would sign the damn divorce papers and be done with it.

That would be the smart thing.

Chapter 2

“It’s just a ding,” Danny Dewitt said after he returned Tory’s four-door Taurus to her garage the following morning.

Her gaze razored from the vehicle’s right rear to her brother. He was tall and lean with a lopsided smile and black hair worn in a stubby ponytail. His face was angular, and his eyes a dreamy shade of green. His looks, combined with a glib tongue and the cocky sense of self-confidence that accompanied youth, often had females falling over their own feet.

Females other than his sister.

“It’s a dent, Danny,” Tory pointed out. “The size of a dinner plate.”

He gave the Taurus another look. “A small dinner plate.”

She pressed her lips together. “You took my car without permission. All of my equipment is in there. My cell phone.”

“I didn’t mean any harm.” He shrugged. “A friend dropped me off here yesterday afternoon. You weren’t around—”

“I was helping Sheila on a case. It’s called working.”

“Figured you were doing something like that,” he said, ignoring her jibe. “I came out here and saw your car. I decided the least I could do was buy you gas, a wash and an oil change.”

“Gas, wash and an oil change take about an hour. Tops.” She wrapped her arms around her, gathering Bran’s Oklahoma Sooners red-and-white football jersey closer to ward off the cold. The jersey still carried the musky scent of his cologne and made her feel even more unsettled. Hollow. “If I had intended to let you drive my car, I’d have given you a key.”

Danny grinned. “You keep an extra set in one of those magnet things under the front bumper.”

“Not anymore.” She wiggled her fingers. “My keys.”

He handed them over with an amiable shrug. “When I got to the gas station I ran into Rocco,” Danny explained. “He had a line on a poker game, so I left your car at the fast lube. Jewell was at work, and I planned to hang at the game until time for her to get off, then pick up your car and bring it back. But I started winning and couldn’t leave. This morning, Rocco took me to get your car. The manager at the lube place said it got hit in their lot. Their insurance’ll cover it. He gave me a form to fill out. In triplicate. It’s over the visor.”

“Don’t take my car again. Ever.”

“Sorry, Tor. I was trying to make things easier on you.”

How many times over the years had she heard that? And always, Danny’s good intentions took a left turn, leaving a mess for her to clean up. In triplicate.

“Want to hear how I spent last night?” she asked. “After I wasted hours looking for you and my car, Bran dropped by.”

“Bran?” A hopeful look sprang into Danny’s eyes. “Are you guys talking again?”

“Oh, we talked,” she confirmed. “First about an escaped killer who might be gunning for Bran. Then about the messages he left on my answering machine and cell. Messages I never got.”

Danny winced. “Yeah, I checked the machine. I meant to write you a note about Bran’s message, but forgot.”

“Too bad. That lapse of memory just got you barred from the house when I’m not here.” She held out her hand. “House key.”

“Geez, Tor, you’re being kind of hard, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t have to be if you’d act like a responsible eighteen-year-old.”

After Danny handed her the key, she continued. “Bran and I also discussed your driving my car.” Her stomach knotted at the memory of how their tempers had flared. “You went to jail because you racked up so many tickets and didn’t bother to pay them. The judge who granted your bail suspended your license. If a cop had pulled you over last night, you’d be in a cell right now. Did that beating you got in jail teach you nothing?”

He arched his dark brows. “Taught me I don’t want to go back there a second time.”

“Then why take my car? You’ve got one week left until your license gets reinstated. Why chance driving now?”

“I didn’t think. But at least I won playing poker.” He grinned. “How could I not when I had the best teacher in the world?”

“I taught you to play when you were ten years old. We used toothpicks, not chips. I never intended poker to become your main source of funds.”

He pulled a layer of bills from the wad in the pocket of his jean jacket and handed it to her. “Here’s the first installment on the bail money you and Bran fronted me.”

Tory glanced at the bills. The bail had not come with Bran’s blessing. She’d told him after the fact she’d used a thousand dollars of their savings. In her mind, her doing so without telling Bran first had been justified—she’d had to bail Danny out of the jail’s infirmary. He’d been beaten so badly she was afraid he would be permanently scarred without good, fast medical care.

Even now she could still feel the heat of Bran’s anger over what she’d done. Still hear the harsh words they’d exchanged. Still see the grim look on his face as he packed his bags.

Water under the bridge, she thought. Right now she had Danny to deal with. She jammed the bills into the front pocket of her jeans then leaned a hip against Bran’s workbench.

“Listen up, pal. If you get arrested again, the money I used for your bail goes down the drain. That happens, it won’t be Bran who comes after you, but me.”

Danny looked at her car. “I guess you’re plenty steamed right now.”

When she didn’t answer, he rocked back on the heels of his scuffed running shoes. “I was hoping you’d give me a ride to Jewell’s apartment. She’s probably mad, too, over me being out all night.”

“You think?” Tory asked. All she knew about the woman Danny had moved in with was that she danced at some bar under the billing “exotic performer.” Stripper was more like it, Tory suspected. “You want a ride, call your pal Rocco.”

“Yeah.” Danny moved to the door that led into the kitchen, then paused. “Tor, I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“You never do.”

She fisted her hands as he stepped into the house. Considering the way he’d been raised, she couldn’t totally fault Danny for assuming he could forever shirk responsibility.

Their mother had been brought up by overindulgent parents who had never seen the need for their only child to learn to deal with whatever complications life tossed at her. They’d just handled them all for her. And unwittingly raised a daughter who was codependent in every aspect.

Tory had no trouble picturing their mother clinging to their father, the air of helplessness hanging around the woman almost palpable in the air. Just as easily she could see her father’s face, transforming over the years until the only thing left was unbridled disgust for his wife’s pathetic weakness. He hadn’t even stayed around long enough to see his son born.

Tory had been nine years old when her father walked out, a young girl to whom her mother transferred as many burdens as possible. It was Tory who’d been saddled with making decisions about everything from finances to meal planning. Tory who’d learned everything there was to know about responsibility while their mother raised Danny into the mirror image of herself.

Then, when Tory was eighteen, their mother had died in a car wreck. Their father had passed away several years before. Since they had no blood relatives to turn to, Tory had stepped in to raise her then nine-year-old brother. That’s who she also saw when she looked at Danny: the grief-stricken boy who’d clung to her while sobbing over their mother’s grave. The boy who’d collected and recycled tin cans and bottles to help earn enough money to buy a stone to mark that grave.

No one had questioned Tory’s ability to raise her brother. After all, she’d been shouldering responsibility for years and had grown into an independent young woman. A woman who’d vowed never to make herself the kind of burden her mother had been. Growing up, it had taken all her energy to deal with the people who needed her, so she’d never let herself need anyone. Not even the man she’d run off and married.

How ironic that she’d lost her head over a cop for whom it was run-of-the-mill to deal with other people’s problems. A broad-shouldered, gorgeous man very willing to let her shift her burdens onto those impressive shoulders. A dream made in heaven for most women, Tory conceded, but not her. Never her.

And that was the crux of her and Bran’s problem. According to his youngest sister, his first wife had been a slim, shy brunette who’d welcomed having a husband who shielded and protected her. She’d been happy to have him manage the problems life had to offer. From all accounts, Patience McCall had lived contentedly in Bran’s shadow, quiet, deferring to him without conscious thought.

A visceral little pang of envy for the happiness Bran had shared with another woman tightened Tory’s heart. As did the knowledge that Bran had spent the entire time they’d lived together comparing her to his first wife. Oh, he’d done so in silence, but Tory was well-versed at reading people, and she had seen the comparison being made in Bran’s face often enough. Just as she’d seen it last night in the kitchen when his expression went distant with what she knew had been memories of another time, another woman.

A happier time with a woman who’d shown him in every way how much she needed him.

A woman whom Tory knew she could never come close to emulating. She just didn’t have it in her to allow herself to lean on a man. On anyone, for that matter. Not when just the thought of her mother’s clinging neediness put a sick feeling in her stomach.

Her gaze settled again on the workbench, sweeping over the tools that had gone untouched for months. Before she could block it, her mind flashed a picture of Bran standing there, his hands and muscled arms covered with a fine mist of sawdust, a lock of sandy hair falling over his forehead as he worked with the tools.

She felt the ache of loss through every bone and muscle. She’d felt that same sense of loss last night, lying crushed beneath his weight while everything that was female in her responded to the feel of his corded biceps, his hard chest against her breasts, the scent of his musky cologne. The damn chemical signals that sizzled through her whenever Bran got near had started nerves and needs pulsing through her in fast, greedy waves.

For the first time she allowed herself to open the door in her mind that she’d locked tight when Bran walked out. Even at the beginning there had been more between them than just that basic attraction. That physical pull. There’d been a shared affection, and what she thought had been love. All those feelings had gotten swept into the background by the conflict that had so quickly developed between them.

A bright, swift pain twisted in her heart, and the mental door she’d opened slammed shut. It hurt too much to think about how swiftly their marriage had crumbled. It was over. They were over.

Outside, the muffled honk of a horn sounded, and she figured Rocco was there to pick up Danny. Seconds later, the front door slammed.

Shoving away the memories, she glanced at her watch. She had paperwork to deal with and equipment to check before starting what would probably be a week of nighttime surveillance on one of her new cases.

While out tonight, she also planned to connect with some of her street contacts. Most of the individuals she knew who fell into that category would rather eat dirt than talk to a cop. It was possible one of her contacts had heard something about the killer who might possibly come gunning for Bran.

The thought of that happening sent a twinge of icy premonition drifting through her. Just the thought of Bran getting hurt made her throat go dry. So, while he watched her back, she intended to watch his.

One week later, Bran steered his patrol car into the driveway of the house he’d shared with two very diverse women. One calm, serene and elegantly quiet. The other wouldn’t know calm, serene and quiet if they kicked her in the head.

It was that woman he’d come to see. The fact he wasn’t sure why had him scowling.

Sure, he needed to update Tory on what the cops had found regarding Vic Heath’s associates. It was vital she have the latest info in case the escaped killer sent a pal by to exact his revenge. But Bran had already e-mailed her some of that information. And he could have driven by and slid the paperwork he’d put together last night into the mail slot. Instead, he’d called to make sure Tory was home.

So, why was he here? he wondered as he sat in the idling black and white, staring at the two-story Victorian white frame house with green shutters and a wraparound porch. After he’d walked out, he and Tory had gone three months without any contact. He hadn’t even called her on Christmas Day when thoughts of her were weighing heavily on his mind.

Their latest encounter had changed things, he conceded. It wasn’t the dismal state of their marriage that had clung like a burr in his brain over the past week. It was how it had felt to have her lying under him again. Granted, his plowing her over in the dark and her winding up beneath him had been an accident, still, it had reignited a fire inside him he had thought dead. Had wanted dead.

He dreamed about her now. Every night since then, he’d dreamed of her. Smoky, erotic visions in which he felt her soft skin and slim body under his. Saw her desire-filled green eyes gazing up into his. Felt her shudder while their sweat-slicked bodies mated and they took each other over the edge to heaven.

Those nightly carnal fantasies had left him itchy and unsettled and irritated. Like a drug, he could feel Tory seeping into his system again, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with that.

Wasn’t sure if he even wanted to. Dammit, why the hell did the woman have to be such an exact match for him in bed, and so unsuited for him in every other way?

The thought of how she had never hesitated to debate him when their discussions turned to music, politics, TV shows or even at what restaurant they should eat dinner had him shaking his head.

That wasn’t why he’d left, though. In truth, he admired the way she could hold her ground and take him to the wall in a debate. What he couldn’t handle was a wife who would rather choke on her stubborn independence before she turned to him for anything. A wife who’d totally shut him out when it came to handling problems about her brother, leaving Bran battling feelings of impotence and hot fury. Their final confrontation over her bailing Danny out of jail without giving one thought to calling her husband—a cop—had led to the type of verbal argument that could be broken up only with a fire hose.

Dammit, her concern over her reprobate brother hadn’t been the issue. He had understood her need to get Danny out of jail fast—in the holding cell, the kid had gotten on the wrong side of a skank drug addict and gotten the fire beat out of him. Bran would have done whatever it took to get his own brothers or sisters out of there and into the hands of a doctor. What he’d no longer been able to swallow was that he had a wife who refused to turn to him. To need him. So he’d walked.

That had been three months ago, but the thought of what had transpired between him and Tory still stirred his temper.

As he had so often in the past, he gritted his teeth against those stirrings. No matter how he felt about what had happened between them, she was still his wife. Because of that she could wind up an unintentional target of Heath’s vengeance.

So, here he was, Bran thought as he climbed out of the patrol car into the cold bite of the January day, coming to see the woman he’d married in a sexual haze, then months later walked out on.

And still tugging at his mind were those damn divorce papers, sitting on the coffee table in his shabby apartment. Maybe the fact he had yet to sign them wouldn’t be such a constant irritant if he could explain why the hell that was.

His breath cloudy on the freezing air, he hunched his shoulders beneath his insulated uniform jacket and took the steps up to the porch two at a time.

He bypassed ringing the doorbell and slid his key into the lock. When he’d called earlier, Tory had told him she’d likely be in the garage checking her surveillance equipment and for him to use his key to get in.

He strode down the hallway, its dark oak floor scattered with colorful rugs. Veering right, he moved through a living room that resembled a comfortable, cluttered English study. He and Patience had picked out the leather furniture, the thick wooden tables, the brass accessories, the artwork. Sweeping his gaze around the room, Bran determined that Tory hadn’t changed a picture or moved a chair.

He was glad of that, he conceded. Although he’d clung to his grief, it had faded under the demands of everyday living and the passage of time. Memories of Patience now brought more pleasure than pain and he found comfort in having a visual reminder of the wife he’d planned to grow old with.

His spit-shined black uniform boots sounded like gunshots against the kitchen’s ceramic-tiled floor. As he neared the door leading to the garage, the air began to pulsate with music. Or with what Tory termed music. To him, the stuff she blasted out of speakers was nothing but unintelligible noise that slammed the eardrums.