Explosive Alliance (23 page)

"You know what I mean. I realize I'm your best hope for grandbabies but Paige and I are not..." But they were. "She's not..." But she could be. "Hell, I've only known the woman a couple of weeks."

And thought about her nonstop for a year since the first time she'd walked into a police station and into his life. An unforgettable woman.

"She's better than those bimbos you brought around before. And watch your language, please."

"Sure. Sorry. And I don't date bimbos." He felt sixteen again, caught behind the adjoining all-girls' school trying to cop a feel up a junior's uniform blouse. He always had been a breast man.

Sister Nic trailed her fingers through the fountain—and flicked water in his face. "What would you call the others, then, the gigglers who fawned all over you?"

"Hannah was smart." He swiped the droplets off his forehead. "She's a biochemist researcher at the medical university, for crying out loud."

"And you chased her off with that bad attitude when you were recovering from surgery."

Score one for Sister Nic. He'd been an ass to a really nice lady during his recovery. "Who? A charmer like me?"

She placed her cigarette carefully on her lap, a white slash along her dark robes. "You were a pain in the tookus after you returned from wherever it was you went and never told me about—but I found out, anyway."

What? "You found out—"

"I have my sources, but that's beside the point."

Says who? Somebody was going to pay for worrying her, but he'd deal with that person—Tag, no doubt

—later. "Then what is the point?"

"Your bimbos, and why you're no longer dating them."

"Ah, of course. And what's the lesson for today, Sister Nicotine?" For once he would welcome someone poking around in his head and offering up a few answers. He trusted her, and he didn't want to hurt Paige.

"No lesson. You're a big boy now, and it looks like you're just about to figure it all out on your own."

No answers. Damn. Stretching his legs in front of him, he crossed his feet at the ankles and tried to pretend this wasn't so important. "I think you give me too much credit."

"And I believe you don't give yourself enough." She tucked her smoke into a pocket for another day. "All this serious talk has me craving a cigarette for real and I've vowed to quit. Again. How about playing me something to take my mind off it."

"Such as?"

"Learned any new Stones tunes lately?"

"I'll see what I can come up with." He swung the guitar up onto his leg and picked through the strings, tuning.

A gasp from under the arbor snapped his attention up. Paige?

Her face paled in the glaring sunlight. Alarms jangled in his head. He shot to his feet and charged across the grass to her side.

"What's wrong?"

She clutched his cell phone to her chest. "Vic thought Kirstie was with Seth, and Seth said Kirstie had gone off with a friend who doesn't remember seeing her." Her hands shook so hard the cell phone slipped from her grasp to thud on the lush grass. "Now they can't find her at all."

Ten hours later, Paige closed the book to her daughter's favorite bedtime story, so grateful to have her child alive, her hands shook gripping
Goodnight Moon.

She still couldn't breathe without each gasp slicing icy fear through her. Even holding Kirstie in her arms safe and sound in North Dakota didn't stop the shaking that had started the minute Vic realized he couldn't locate Kirstie to come to the phone.

Everyone reassured her Kirstie had simply wandered off as kids do. Everyone except Bo. He hadn't dished up a single platitude, instead, all action, he'd raced her to the airport. Even when Kirstie had been found a half hour later, nothing would have kept Paige off that plane.

She smoothed a hand over her daughter's cool forehead, stroking back curls still damp from a bubble bath. Kirstie may have seemed unharmed, but Paige's mind kept spinning horrible scenarios of what could happen to a little girl alone during those tension-fraught minutes.

Kirstie's story? She'd been playing with an imaginary friend because Bitsy was icky and mean. Children could be cruel and, God knows, Kurt had given folks more than enough fodder for gossip. Except that didn't explain why Kirstie gave Seth and Vic the slip in the first place.

Perched on the edge of Kirstie's bed while her daughter snuggled under her Strawberry Shortcake quilt, Paige listened to Bo's guitar through the open window. Seeing him so tender with Sister Nic had stolen another little piece of her heart during a weekend that had already made serious inroads on her emotions.

Less than twenty-four hours ago she'd been in his arms, dreaming of ways they could be together again.

Something that wouldn't happen tonight when she needed him more than ever.

"I didn't mean to scare you so bad." Kirstie fished under the covers and pulled out her Strawberry Shortcake rag doll.

Parental antennae picked up on the nuance.
So
bad? As in, she'd meant to scare her a little?

Paige studied her daughter's expression for clues while a breeze wafted through the window carrying a hint of fresh-mown grass and an old Rolling Stones tune. She would have to tread warily to keep Kirstie from clamming up altogether as she'd done once Vic found her sitting outside the girls' bathroom as calm as could be. As if she could pretend her uncle wouldn't have already checked that same bathroom when she'd first gone missing. "Tell me more about your new imaginary friend."

"Who says he's new?" Kirstie picked at the yarn hair on her doll.

"He?" More than they'd known before—and frightening as hell. "What's his name?"

Kirstie shrugged.

"If you don't know his name, then he's a stranger."

"His name's Eddie and he wasn't a—" She stopped short.

"What do you mean? He wasn't a stranger?" Her suspicions took root. "And maybe he's not imaginary, either? Kirstie, honey, you have to be honest with me. This is important."

Her tiny knuckles whitened in the doll's red yarn hair. "You're gonna get upset if I tell you."

Like she wasn't already scared to death? What if some pervert... She stroked her daughter's hair in reassurance. She couldn't face what she didn't know. "I promise I won't be mad."

"I know you won't get mad or yell or anything. I mean you'll be sad if I tell you."

"Punkin, you're really scaring me more right now by not telling me."

"He said he knew my daddy."

Breathe. She needed to breathe.

And wow, had Kirstie ever nailed her prediction of her mother's emotions dead-on. She
was
upset, for a myriad of reasons. Top of the list? Kurt and his illegal ties terrified her.

Of course, it could be nothing. Kurt had plenty of old high school friends around here.

"Are you upset?" Kirstie pressed back into her pillow. "I know you don't like it when I talk about him."

Her daughter had been protecting her? Guilt on top of fear, what a toxic mix.

How to approach this? Apparently hiding her feelings had been a bust, so she couldn't lie now. "I am a little upset you didn't feel like you could tell me. And of course I'm sad thinking about your father." And all the potential he'd thrown away for a quick dollar. "When somebody dies, that makes people sad. But you don't ever have to hide how you feel from me. I'm the grown-up, remember? I'm supposed to take care of you."

"Who takes care of you?"

"Grown-ups are supposed to take care of themselves."

"But who's there when you want to cry?"

Bo, who'd held her hand on the plane all the way back from South Carolina while silent tears leaked from her eyes even though they'd already found Kirstie by then.

She couldn't think about him now or she would be a muddle of irrational emotions all over again. "We're talking about the man who spoke to you. What else did he say?"

"That he and Daddy played together when they were kids and he was just checking up on me because Daddy would want him to."

"What did he look like?"

Kirstie scrunched her nose in thought. "Really old. Like you."

Thanks, kid.

"And like Bo."

Okay, she could forgive the "old" comment after all.

"Except he's big and blond and has these really creepy eyebrows." She brought her hands to her forehead and wiggled her fingers. "Like that cartoon cat."

"Garfield?"

"Yeah."

Cute, but not helpful.

"And I think he's a fixer man."

Paige straightened at what promised to be much more significant than Garfield eyebrows. "A what?"

"A fixer-upper man. Um, you know. Somebody who fixes things like when the dishwasher broke and that worker came with his big tool belt."

"A repairman?"

"Yes. The stranger was always wearing those clothes the other times I talked to him."

Other times? Ohmigod. "How often have you spoken to him?"

Kirstie's gaze skittered away.

Paige tipped her daughter's chin. "I'm not mad, but this is important. I need to be able to trust you."

Kirstie fidgeted under her covers before meeting her mother's gaze again. "The first time, I saw him at the air show when I went out the back of the moonwalk."

Paige squelched a shiver at how close danger had been. She'd feared that, but having it confirmed scared the spit out of her.

"And then at the school playground he had on his fixer-man clothes and a visitor's pass shaped like an apple so I really thought it was okay if he pushed me on the swing for a while."

This went beyond scary shivers. Her stomach pitched, but she couldn't frighten Kirstie by throwing up.

She swallowed back bile.

"And then I saw him again at church."

Think. Think, damn it. She needed answers from Kirstie now while the conversation was flowing. "What did you talk about?"

"Just stuff, like what he and Daddy did when they were kids. He asked me if my daddy made up fairy tales like they used to do as kids, but I didn't want to talk about that. It made me too sad." Her brow furrowed with concentration. "Oh, and he usually asked about everybody here to make sure we're doing okay."

Alarms went off in Paige's head on a number of counts. Could this man have broken into the clinic, using Kirstie to track everyone's whereabouts? She wanted to believe it was still nothing more than a drug-related incident, but she couldn't ignore the possibility that they were being targeted because of Kurt. And how strange was it that somebody wanted to know about the very fairy tales Kurt had mentioned in his letters? This was too weird. So many questions without answers.

However, one thing was certain. She wouldn't be leaving her daughter again, which meant an end to fantasies about sneaking away with Bo. Her daughter needed to be her first priority.

Leaning, Paige pressed a kiss against the baby-soft skin of her daughter's cheek. "You did a great job remembering everything. I'm proud of you for being honest."

Tiny arms wrapped around her neck while the sweet scent of strawberry shampoo and healthy little girl swelled her heart. She would die to protect this child, and make sure anyone who hurt her baby suffered the agonies of the damned along the way.

"Time for you to get some sleep, punkin." Pulling away, Paige clicked off the bedside lamp, night-light plug-in glowing from across the room.

"What did it look like back there?"

Kirstie's question stopped Paige halfway off the bed. "Back where?"

"At home."

A year in North Dakota and Kirstie still didn't call it home. Had it been wrong to leave her daughter behind for the trip? She'd just wanted her child safe and protected, yet somehow things went to hell no matter what decision she chose. "It looked almost exactly the same as when we were there. A new family lives in our old house, and they planted the same kind of flowers we did."

"Merry-golds?"

"Yes, and others, too."

"Daddy and me planted a bush once."

She'd forgotten that. Putting the pain in the past had cost her happy memories, as well. "For Mother's Day, in the side yard, you two planted an azalea as a surprise for me."

"Yep, and Daddy made up one of his stories while we planted it." Her wistful voice mixed with Bo's music echoing up in the dark. "We had lots of fun doing that."

"I bet you did, punkin." She'd been so afraid of upsetting her daughter she hadn't allowed Kirstie to grieve and eventually find happy memories. Another wrong decision she'd made, but one she could rectify. "Would you like to go see that bush and the marigolds sometime?"

"Could we?"

She'd figure out a way to afford it if she had to cure all the cows in North Dakota. "Everyone should have a summer vacation."

"Thanks, Mom." Springing up onto her knees, Kirstie hugged Paige's waist so tight, she struggled not to burst into tears. Kirstie flopped back and under the covers.

"We'll visit the house and all your old friends." And she could see Bo again.

The possibility stirred a flurry of butterflies in her stomach. Other than that brief fantasy about him getting out of the service, she hadn't allowed herself to think beyond sleeping with him, but they'd gone to see Sister Nic. And he hadn't hesitated about returning with her. That didn't sound like a man who was scouting for the door after a one-night stand.

However, even if they had a second night in their future, it wouldn't be now. Call her old-fashioned, but she couldn't see sleeping with him under her brother's roof, with her daughter in the next room. Even if it was half her roof, too, since technically fifty-percent of their parents' home and land belonged to her, as well. But her brother had been footing the bill for the upkeep for so long, she considered it his.

And it wasn't as if she could count on a secret encounter, since she and Bo were so darn noisy.

No sex tonight, and honestly, fear had sapped her. More than anything, she needed to be held, and lucky for her a strong set of arms waited outside on the porch.

Bo worked his hands across the familiar feel and strings of his guitar, music offering little comfort tonight.

As if he wasn't already confused as hell about Paige, now that little girl upstairs had somehow crawled under his skin, too. The flight back to Minot had been the longest of his life. Even knowing Kirstie had been found didn't fully ease the kicked-in-the-gut feeling stronger than any enemy boot.