Heartland (14 page)

What about you?

EJ refused to consider the answer.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to her, but we are
just
friends.” He ignored the skeptical twist to his mother’s mouth. “I’m sending Austin with you to keep him safe. Mike Ritter escaped from prison yesterday, and he’s gunning for Emily. Seth is going out on tour and taking Abby and their little boy with him, but Emily is staying here.” Leaning over the table, he cupped his hands around his mug. The warmth seeped into his suddenly cold palms.

“Why isn’t she going with them?”

“She’s afraid of the temptations of the road.”

“Because she’s a drug addict.” His mother clucked her tongue. “Another reason not to get involved with her problems. I realize you’re a grown man and have needs only a woman can fulfill, but I don’t ever want to see you in the mess of hurt you were in when Raquel died.”

“
Mom
.” He winced at his mother’s reference to his sex life. The reminder of why nothing could ever develop between him and Emily pinched his heart uncomfortably. Although accepting her baby as his own would be easy if she’d let him, he couldn’t afford to lose his heart to another drug addict. All they could ever have was sex. “Nothing is going on between Emily and me. If you don’t want to take Austin home, I’ll ask Glenda to keep him for a few weeks. I need devote time to protecting Emily from a dangerous man. Austin would be safer away from here.”

“We’ll take Austin, but protecting her shouldn’t be your job.”

He picked up his cup and drained it. “I’m the sheriff. So, yes, it is my job. Now, may we please drop this?”

His mother flattened her lips into a displeased line and stood. She rested a hand bent with arthritis on his shoulder, surprising him with her strength as she squeezed. “I’m worried about you, son. You’ve been through enough pain.”

* * * *

On Monday morning, Emily stood on the porch, drained her second cup of tea, and watched the gray clouds swirling in the south western sky. Severe weather was in the forecast, which added to her unease.

“I should cancel the tour.”

She looked over her shoulder at her father standing next to her scowling at the sky. “Dad, we’ve been over this a hundred times. You can’t cancel the tour.”

The furrow in his brow deepened and his jaw twitched as if he clenched his teeth. “I don’t care about anything but keeping you safe.”

“EJ will keep me safe. We’ve been over the plan. You even agreed it was a good one. Besides, Mike could be caught by the police long before he comes to McAllister.” After his parents, Austin, his aunt, and uncle left for the airport, EJ had come over to the Double K and outlined how he’d protect Emily. He’d let out her plan to go public with her whereabouts, but his ideas would work despite her practically inviting her deranged stepfather to come and get her.

She would move to his ranch. During this time, EJ would work from home as much as he could, and when he had to go into town, one of his most senior deputies would stay at the ranch. Emily also contacted her two bodyguards. They were flying in from Nashville today and would be here by evening. Oliver and Jason would take turns guarding her twenty-four/seven.

The thought of living in the same house with EJ had her nerves more rattled than the bad weather and Mike’s threat rolled into one. Then again, maybe all of the worry was for nothing. Mike could be caught. Reports of his escape were on every news outlet in the country, while law enforcement agencies in five states and the FBI were looking for him. He’d have to stop for food or gas sometime. Hopefully that would be when he got captured.

“About EJ, what’s going on with the two of you?” Dad sipped his coffee. “I’m glad if something is there. He’s a good man.”

She filled her lungs with the humid air of the pending storm and turned to her father. Damn, sometime she hated her decision to embrace total truth. “In all honesty, we’re playing with fire.”

“What does that mean?” Her father’s puzzled expression would have been funny under other circumstances. Sometimes he still thought of her as the fourteen-year-old girl he’d first met eight years ago.

She shrugged and set her cup on the porch railing, wishing for more tea. “We’re attracted to each other, and we’ve…eh… kissed a few times. Nothing can come of it. I’m pregnant with another man’s child.” EJ was the kind of man she would have loved to be her baby’s father, but she could wish all she wanted, it would never be true. At the thought, her heart constricted painfully. “Considering I was brought up in a similar situation, I won’t let another man take on being father to my daughter. Despite my wish that he’ll stay away, I know someday Fabian will be back. He’ll realize what he’s missed out on and…”

At the way his face pinched, she looked out over the front yard. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

He leaned against the porch post and rubbed a hand over his chest as if it hurt. Maybe it did, and she wished she could take the words she’d said back.

“No, you’re right,” he said in such a deep voice, the words trembled over her like a bass drum. “Mike may have been the catalyst that caused your mother to marry him and trick me into staying away. But I didn’t fight for you. I should have. It’s my biggest regret.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close, and placed a soft kiss on her temple. “I love you, Emily. I always have, but I wasn’t here when I should have been.”

She swallowed the sudden lump of old pain rubbed raw by all the things going on in her life now. The one question she’d always wondered about yanked on her conscious like a trout on a string. She’d never been brave enough to ask it. Despite not knowing if she wanted it answered, she had to ask. She looked over her shoulder and met his gaze. His green eyes, copies of her own, filled with pain, regret, and a storm of other emotions.

Her mouth was as dry as the West Texas desert, and her voice box constricted. She had to ask the question that had plagued her ever since she’d figured out Seth Kendall was her biological father. “Would you have come back if your dad hadn’t died?”

The moisture gathering at her father’s eyes surprised her and humbled her. He sniffed and blinked, pushing tears from the corners of his eyes. As he brushed his fingers over her cheek, he rasped, “Yes. I would have come back. I may not have come back the day I did, but I planned to come home. I realized what I--”

“Missed,” she finished for him--not unkindly, but matter-of-factly--and turned her face toward the storm.

“Oh, God, Emily, can you ever forgive me?”

Closing her eyes, she thought of the things she had to ask forgiveness for, but she wasn’t ready to dig up the agonizing confession. She brushed a stray tear from her cheek and faced him again. “I forgave you a long time ago, Daddy. But it doesn’t change the fact I’m pregnant with another little girl who will grow up not knowing her father. Though this time instead of some weird-assed crazy man keeping them apart, it’s because he doesn’t want her. He’s too busy chasing fame and snorting coke.”

She kissed his cheek and stepped away. “Now, you had better get on the road or you’ll miss your plane.”

* * * *

Emily set her purse on the dresser and looked around the bedroom EJ showed her after picking her up from the Double K. Although spare of excess decoration--the only splash of color was the multi-hued patchwork quilt on the full-sized bed--the room was spacious. A heavy oak dresser sat along one wall, while a small desk sat between the windows. Simple sheer curtains obscured the worst of the storm raging outside.

EJ set her suitcase next to the wall and pointed toward a door by the corner. “There’s the closet and the bathroom is right next door in the hall.” He rubbed his jaw. “Since I use the one attached to my room, you’ll have it all to yourself. I hope the room is okay.”

She faced him and smiled. “It’s perfect. Hopefully I’ll only be here for a few days and life can go back to normal.” Though what qualified as normal, she had no idea. Two of her bodyguards would take turns guarding the house and live in EJ’s empty bunkhouse. Until Mike’s capture, she was trapped here. Afterward, she’d have to announce her pregnancy to the world. Hiding it wouldn’t be an option any longer. EJ told her his mother guessed about her pregnancy. How many more people suspected her secret? With a shake of her head at the situation, she said, “You seemed surprised by Oliver and Jason.”

He folded his arms over his chest. The way his biceps bulged under his uniform shirt distracted her enough to cause her to miss the beginning of his sentence.

“…Dallas. I wanted to see you--”

“I’m sorry, I missed the beginning. The rain on the tin roof is loud.” She pointed to the ceiling and winced. “What about Dallas?”

He chuckled and moved toward her. Did he figure out that her inattention had nothing to do with the soft tinny patter of the rain?

At the dresser, he stopped and leaned his backside against it. Only a couple of feet separated them. “I was saying, I remembered them as the security guards from the Dallas show I saw. I wanted to see you afterward and tried to get backstage, but those two brutes wouldn’t let me go to you. Nor would they get a message to you.”

She stared at him. “You tried to see me after one of my shows? Which one? The guys have been with me for over five years since Dad hired them when I started touring on my own. Oliver and Jason even stuck with me when Fabian fired them. They worked for free for a week until I realized what was going on.”

“Christmas twenty-sixteen.” He took a deep breath and looked down at his hands. “I thought you were the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Before Fabian and Raquel. She closed her eyes and faced the windows as she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. His confession echoed through her mind. Would things have been different if he had been able to see her? Fate was one cold-hearted bitch.

“I was getting threatening letters then. No one was allowed to see me unless they’d been preauthorized.” She turned and wrapped her arms around herself as ice filled her veins with regret and anger. Back then she still had a crush on EJ. She would have loved to have seen him, and if he had thought of her as a woman, maybe… She squashed the thought in its tracks. Wishing was for fools. “I’ve often wondered if the letters were from Mike trying to scare me. Nothing ever came from the threats.”

The regret and longing in EJ’s gaze mirrored the emotions in her heart. A rumble of thunder broke through their trance, causing her to startle.

She shook her head to clear it. “Do you have any news about Mike?”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his tan uniform pants. “There was a possible sighting of Mike in a convenience store outside of Nashville this morning, but he disappeared again. He may have a woman with him. His work release detailed him to an Amarillo community center. Apparently, he conned the manager of the center and her daughter into believing him innocent. He was having a sexual affair with the younger woman. The manager is in custody, but the daughter, Brooklyn Jensen, disappeared with Mike. Ms Jensen also worked as a computer technician at the prison, and was responsible for maintaining the ankle monitors the prisoners wore.”

“I don’t understand how he could have walked away from a work detail.” Emily paced from the bed to the desk and back again. “Aren’t the prisoners under guard?”

“Mike had on a monitoring device.” EJ ran his hand through his hair, mussing the wheat-colored strands. “He was considered a model prisoner, and despite his crimes, he had a lot of freedom within the prison. That’s how he got work release to begin with. Ms Jensen’s mother said he’d worked at her center for about fifteen months. He’d first met Ms Jensen at the prison when he’d been detailed to the prison’s IT department. The FBI figures this is where he started planning his escape.”

“By seducing this woman with his sweet talk.” When he nodded, she rubbed her arms. In spite of the warm temperature, a chill numbed her to the bone. “Did the prison know about the relationship between Jensen and the center manager?”

“No, they didn’t, but the mother was in on the gig.”

The whole thing was crazy. “How did Mike get away if he had on one of those bracelets? Fabian had one once when he was under house arrest for a drunk driving offense. He couldn’t go anywhere without the thing alerting the authorities.”

“According to the manager, her daughter had done something to make Mike’s ankle bracelet malfunction several times.” EJ folded his arms in front of him and shifted his weight. “When the prison officials would show up, it would be working again and considered a fluke. He’d gone through three of the monitors during his fifteen months. Ms Jensen reported to the prison that his body chemistry somehow messed with the electronics. The last time it
malfunctioned
, the guards weren’t as fast to show up, thinking it was another glitch, but this time he’d escaped.”

Icy fear settled in her belly as she fell to the edge of the bed. “Dear God, he sounds like a psychopath.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I have to contact Kelly and Trish. He might go after one of them thinking they will lead him to me.” At least her parents weren’t going to Nashville. They were heading to her dad’s first concert in Atlanta, Georgia. “I have to let the world know where I am.”

EJ stepped toward her and pulled her up into an embrace. She wrapped her arms around him, grateful for his warmth and strength.