Warning Signs (Love Inspired Suspense) (8 page)

He left the overhead light on so they could sign.

She lifted her hands and said, “Do you always drive a cruiser when you’re undercover?”

His cheeks blotched as if he’d realized his slipup. He slumped forward and smiled. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. All I cared about was finding you. I grabbed one of the deputy’s cars still there from the fire.” One shoulder rose in a short shrug as he put the car into gear. “I guess I was worried.”

He was worried about her? She processed that as he drove the remainder of the way home. Miriam overanalyzed his reaction to death. But how often did a law enforcement officer let his decisions take a backseat to their instincts? Probably not too often, she figured. Not unless a feeling for a certain individual overpowered their senses and caused them to act irrationally. She gave herself a mental pinch to curb the direction of her thinking. Owen Matthews was not interested in her. He’d given her no indication that he thought of her in any way other than platonically.

A memory from the day after she’d met him flashed into her mind. Something she’d said...or signed. Something about him not being hard on the eyes. The words she’d signed to Nick resurfaced. Miriam inwardly cringed as she realized Owen had understood her perfectly that day! Every word.

Her stomach flipped as a laugh rumbled deep down inside. She pressed her lips tightly to hold it in, but her shoulders couldn’t be contained. They shook with abandon.

“What’s so funny?” he asked with one hand as he drove toward her house.

There was no way she could hold it in any longer. Miriam let the laughter burst forth from her lips. “I’m sorry.” She tried to sign; her fist at her chest swirled in a circle motion. It was all she could say to his perplexed expression.

“What’s so funny?” he signed again with one hand.

She tried again. “I just remembered what I said to Nick the day after we met, when I thought you couldn’t understand sign language.”

His eyes narrowed, apparently not grasping her meaning.

“I signed that you were easy on the eyes. It just hit me that you understood all that.”

His face split into a wide grin. His heart-melting dimple aimed right at her. Miriam breathed the sight in deeply. Easy on the eyes didn’t come close to describe the level of magnetism she felt luring her in.

Owen gave his nose a quick rub before signing. “Speaking of hitting, where did you learn to hit like that?”

Miriam giggled again, signing. “Oops, sorry about that, too.”

“A smile is a smile in any language,” Owen signed in the dim light of the car’s interior. “The meaning of that phrase just hit me.”

Miriam tilted her head, her brilliant smile changing to one of serene beauty. “Please, no more hitting.” Her lips quirked at the edges as she smiled.

He thought she might laugh again, and he waited expectantly for the tinkling sound to fill the vehicle.

He wasn’t sure why he wanted to hear it again. He also couldn’t describe the shift taking place inside him, either. He just knew it had something to do with her smile. One simple gesture that said more than any word she could have spoken or signed.

Her smile meant acceptance.

Owen exited the car and reeled speechlessly around the front of the cruiser. Struck mute by this offering because he didn’t deserve it.

He’d messed up. The car fire had conveyed a dangerous warning he knew was meant for Miriam. Pranks had escalated into threats against her life. He should have seen this coming. He shouldn’t have let her out of his sight. At the school, when he’d realized she’d left without him he hadn’t been able to get here fast enough. Then to come around the corner and see her Vespa and helmet in the road... Owen swallowed a growing lump in his throat just thinking about the ideas that had raced through his mind.

The main one being that he’d arrived too late.

Owen didn’t think he’d breathe another breath while he’d searched the tree line for life. Her life. Hoping he would find her in the trees and not sprawled on a rock below the cliff. When he’d caught movement in the growth, it had offered him a spark of hope.

Maybe he wasn’t too late.

Owen pulled open the passenger door and saw Miriam’s torn tights and bloodied legs.

Without another thought, he lifted her into his arms and kicked the door closed. She squeaked her disapproval, but he ignored her and carried her up to the front porch. The overhead light came on, operating under a sensor.

“The key’s under the mat,” she signed.

Owen gently deposited her back onto her feet to retrieve it and unlock the door. “Don’t leave the key here. It’s too dangerous,” Owen signed, elbowing the door wide at the same time.

“It’s a good thing it was here. After I was nearly run over, I wasn’t going anywhere near the street to get my keys back tonight.” Miriam stepped past him over the threshold.

Owen’s stomach dropped at the visual. He stopped her with a hand to her forearm, needing her full attention. The matter was too important. He reached out to the jagged scrape running along her right cheekbone. The blood had dried, and the wound would heal, but Owen couldn’t chase away his sense of foreboding that someone was still coming for Miriam. He needed to know why. “Do you know who’s involved with the drugs?”

Miriam jerked away with a swift “No.” Her pointer and middle fingers pinched closed with her thumb to make the sign for
no.

Owen raced ahead of her as she made her way through the living room and kitchen. “Listen to me.” He was in her face, but he needed to make sure she understood the danger. “These warning signs to leave the island have crossed the line to alarming and dangerous. You could have been killed.”

“Well, I wasn’t, as you can see.” She waved her hands down her body and sidestepped around him and the kitchen island. She washed her hands in the sink, her back to him, effectively tuning him out.

Owen grabbed a stool at the island to wait her out, suddenly wishing he could hear her laugh again. He liked her better when she was smiling at him instead of ignoring him.

I shouldn’t like her at all,
he admonished himself. But there was just something about her that challenged everything he knew to be true.

Like deaf people didn’t laugh.

Before the boat crash, Cole’s laughter had echoed through the house, the bubbly baby sound as infectious and pure as Miriam’s had been in the car. But after the accident, Owen had believed he would never hear Cole’s laughter again. The boy had nothing to laugh about anymore.

Except here, this woman disproved his belief.

Owen raised his gaze and caught Miriam’s reflection in the window above the sink. She watched him as she dabbed at the cut on her cheek with a wet paper towel.

Their eyes met in the glass and held in silence. He could tell by her downturned lips that she fumed, but he didn’t get the feeling her anger was directed at him. But who, then?

After a few moments, her tense shoulders seemed to relax. She tossed the towel into the trash bin and faced him. “You look sad,” she signed.

Her statement caught him off guard. She’d been assessing his lingering skeletons just as he’d been assessing hers. But would she think him crass if he voiced his? Probably, but honesty seemed the best route. “I like you better when you’re laughing.” He bit down on his back teeth before pushing on with. “But, honestly, I didn’t think it was possible for a deaf person to laugh.”

Miriam winced. Her stunned expression drove him to explain. “I haven’t heard my son laugh since before the accident that left him deaf.”

She sighed deeply and placed her hand over her heart. A simple gesture that put him at ease, knowing he hadn’t offended her. That he could talk openly with her and she would understand.

Once again, that unexpected feeling of acceptance washed over him.

Owen watched her walk over to the refrigerator. “What’s your son’s name?” she signed as she opened the fridge.

“C-O-L-E.” He signed out the letters.

“What do you call him?” She spoke with one hand as she filled her other with a carton of eggs and butter, then hip-checked the door closed. Her movements flowed in such a natural and comfortable way that Owen wondered how long it had taken her to reach a place in her life where she was okay with her disability.

“C-O-L-E.” He re-signed the letters to answer her question.

She planted her supplies on the island across from him and sized him up with quizzical eyes. “No, I mean, what is his name sign? When someone signs to me who knows me, they don’t spell out M-I-R-I-A-M. They call me...” Miriam made the sign of the word
swim
using the letter
M
with it. Both her hands, positioned in the letter
M,
paddled out in front of her in two small breaststroke motions. “See? That’s what people call me. I began swimming in junior high school. My swim coach was also a sign-language interpreter and gave me the name sign. I’ve used it ever since. So what is your son’s name sign?”

Owen sat speechless; his arms dropped slowly to the cool, yellow top of the island. He hooked the back treads of his hiker boots on the bottom rung of the wooden stool and straightened uncomfortably under her question. It hung between them like the pots and pans above the island, then banged in his head as loudly as the one she took down and dropped on the counter.

Miriam withdrew her attention from him and directed it to her cooking task. Her movements around the kitchen went from comfortable flowing to rigid efficiency. But knowing how she’d handled multiple tasks before, and conversed as she did so, told him her withdrawal from this conversation was deliberate.

Eggs cracked a little harder than necessary. Flour puffed into the air. Walnuts took a beating on the chopping block. Spoons whipped around batter-filled bowls with angry exuberance.

She was angry again, and this time it
was
his fault.

“Miriam,” he spoke aloud without thinking. The sound of his voice filled the room and bounced back at him. The echo accentuated the fact that it was the first word from his lips since he’d arrived. His contentedness to sit in silence and speak her language nearly knocked him off the stool.

It seemed signing to her came so much more easily than signing to his son. But then again, Cole was a constant reminder of Owen’s transgressions. That was a barrier Owen didn’t think he could ever get past. Nor should he. His son would never have a normal life because of him.

Except this woman kept disproving that.

Miriam bent to open her oven and placed the tray of cookies on the rack. She whisked back to the refrigerator and plucked out selections of produce, only to resume with the fierce chopping again.

Approaching her with a knife in her hand might not end well for him, but Owen needed to get her attention. Her silent treatment went beyond withholding words. The way she could literally tune him out meant he might as well not be in the room. Without her attention on him, he could say nothing to fix what he’d done wrong—whatever that was. He still wasn’t positive, but he had an idea it had to do with her disappointment in the upbringing of his son. And honestly he would have to agree that he was a horrible father, which was why Cole now lived with Rebecca’s parents, where Owen couldn’t hurt him anymore.

Owen stood and met Miriam around the island. He placed a hand on her shoulder and felt her stiffen beneath his loose grasp. When he heard the knife drop from her hand with a clatter, he took it as a good sign. Her shoulders stooped inward on a sigh before she turned to face him.

The anger that had pinched up her face had turned to melancholy. Her sad eyes stopped his “sins of the father” confession.

“My mother wouldn’t let me sign around her,” Miriam signed with slow, deliberate effort. “She said it embarrassed her. She said it made me look like a freak. She said I was the reason my dad didn’t stick around. He didn’t want me because of my deafness.” Miriam lowered her hands to her chest as though it ached. Her gray eyes pooled, and Owen took a step closer. Her hands rose to stop him and to ask the question he didn’t want to hear. “Do you not want your son because he is deaf?”

Owen gulped at her question. He shook his head to deny her words, but from where she stood it probably looked that way. How could he tell her the truth, though? And why did it feel so important to him that he did? What was this woman to him? Saying she was nothing didn’t feel right. Whether he embraced their connection or not, he had to admit there was one, and maybe, just maybe, he was here on this island for more than a drug investigation.

* * *

Owen whipped around to the faucet. He turned his back on her and her question, and Miriam took that as his answer.

He didn’t want his son because of his deafness. She bit the inside of her cheek to mask the pain she felt in her heart for that little boy. She knew firsthand how lonely a home could be when there was no one to talk to and no one who wanted to make the effort to learn how.

Except Owen
had
learned sign language. And not just a few signs to get by. He was fluent. Why would he make the effort if he didn’t plan to use it to speak with his son?

She pondered that as she picked up her knife to finish the salad. Regardless of her disappointment in his fathering, she had a dinner to make. Miriam had her first guest in her home. He wasn’t there for hospitality, but she could still share a nice meal with him.

Owen hadn’t mentioned any plans for dinner, but if he really meant what he’d said about not leaving her side, then that would include staying for dinner.

She did need to speak with him about what exactly that would mean for later. As much as she loved having a guest up on her cliff, he couldn’t stay. That would not be a good idea or an appropriate situation for a single woman living on her own. First of all, it was against her godly character to put herself in such a situation. Second, even though she couldn’t hear the whispers from the islanders, she knew they would fly.

Miriam had made sure Nick had adequate housing before she’d made the move with him for that reason. Even though their relationship was business related, having him there would not be appropriate. She’d found him an available cabin rental down at the pier. It was one of those cute little white clapboard things with a front porch that reminded her of summer camp. Plus, he had the best view overlooking the sea. She could have been very cozy in one of those cabins if she hadn’t had a house already.