Merline Lovelace - Military Heroes Bundle - A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

“Well, you came here to see your father, and instead, you’re living in my house, protecting my daughter, and your father’s at the other end of the county.”

He sat facing her, stretching his legs out before him. “It’s good to be useful. As for Micah and me...we have no history to speak of. There’s a silence between us. It may take years to cross it.”

“But you can hardly do that while you’re stuck here.”

“Do you want me to go?”

Part of her did, but most of her didn’t. “No. No. That’s not what I meant. What kind of silence are you talking about?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“So many things are.”

“They seem to be,” he agreed. In another flash of light from outside, she saw him rub his bearded chin. “There’s a time,” he said, “when silence speaks best. A time when just being with someone gradually creates a knowing. This is one of those times. He only just learned about me, and I never knew anything about him at all, really. It’s not as if we can simply sit down and share the last thirty-some years in a burst of words.”

“I can understand that.” But she thought how odd it must be. It would be like that for Sophie, she realized, if that son of a gun ever returned. She prayed every night he never would, because with hindsight she could see that he’d never had a thing to recommend him, and she certainly had no reason to think he’d changed. “Has it been hard?” The devil made her ask as she thought of her daughter.

“Not knowing him? Not really. I understood why my mother chose as she did, and I respect that. There were a few times when I felt a little resentful that I didn’t have a father the way other kids did. But not often.”

Connie sighed. “Sometimes I worry about that with Sophie.”

“You couldn’t have raised her with that man.”

“Absolutely not! But how old will she have to be to understand that?”

“Maybe not very old at all. Like I said, I understood, and my mother’s reasons were very different from yours. Micah never abused her. She just didn’t want to live the lifestyle. Her choice was purely selfish, and yet I understood it.”

Connie tipped her head to one side. “Are you so sure it was purely selfish? Maybe she was thinking about trying to raise a child in those circumstances.”

“It wouldn’t have been easy,” he agreed. “But I don’t think she really loved him, either. It was, as the song says, just one of those things.”

“Perhaps. You’re very philosophical about it.”

“I’ve had time to think.”

She nodded and transferred her gaze to the window as the wind took a sudden turn at battering the house. “This is going to go on all night.”

“Seems like.”

“So everything went well when you met Micah?” she asked, quickly changing tack.

“Better than I expected. Faith wanted me to move in.”

At that, Connie chuckled. “She’d mother the whole world if she could. They make a truly interesting pair.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you wouldn’t ordinarily think of the two of them together, they’re so different in so many ways. Yet she seems to touch a place in him, and he in her, that welds them. When they’re together, you feel the sense of magic.”

“I noticed that.” He crossed his legs at the ankle. “Some families seem to make a circle around themselves, like a spell. They have that.”

Connie nodded. “Exactly.”

“So do you, with Sophie and your mother.”

Connie smiled. “Thanks. I like to think so.”

“I can feel it. It’s good.” He rose without warning and went to the window. He didn’t speak, and Connie found herself holding her breath, waiting. The rain had stopped, but the wind still rushed.

“I’m going outside,” he said.

“Why?”

“I just want to walk around the house.”

“God, you’re creeping me out! Did you see something?”

“No. No. It’s just my training.”

“What training?”

“A storm is good cover for an approach. It doesn’t mean anything except that I won’t be able to relax until I check.”

She watched him stride out, thinking that his life had marked him deeply. Very deeply.

Most people carried scars from the past, but his wounds remained deep and fresh.

Would he ever let down his guard?

Chapter 8

Over the next several days, life began to return to normal. Children again played in the park after school, the school itself resumed regular recesses, and while kids still walked in groups, as advised, parents no longer hovered over them every instant.

Even the police presence seemed to have lightened, although Connie knew that was far from true. Most everyone else assumed the creep had moved on. Not Connie. That creep had known her daughter’s name.

Even so, she had to allow Sophie to return to some semblance of normalcy, walking home with her friends again, laughing and playing. She couldn’t keep her daughter under constant lock and key.

But she remained watchful, and she was sure Ethan did, as well, even though he sometimes appeared to be invisible.

For her part, Gage assigned her to an in-town beat during the days, which meant she was available for Sophie at any time. Ordinarily she disliked working in town, preferring to cover the county’s wide-open spaces and deal with the ranchers’ families. Working in town usually bored her.

Not right now.

Her third day on the shift, Micah Parish shared the car with her. She wondered what Gage had been thinking, if there was some particular reason.

Apparently so. Micah, usually a quiet man, opened a conversation several hours into the shift. “How’s it going with Ethan?”

“Fine,” she admitted. “He’s not a problem, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh.” She waited, knowing from experience that pressing Micah often led directly to a stone wall.

“I was just wondering what you think of him.”

“He seems like a pretty nice guy. For some odd reason he reminds me of you.”

Micah laughed. “Faith said exactly the same thing.”

“You’re not getting much of a chance to know him.”

“That’ll come.”

Connie hesitated. “It must have been a shock when he showed up.”

“Not exactly. Somehow, at some level, I almost expected it.”

“As if you knew?”

“As if I knew.”

“Maybe you should come over to my place after school gets out. You could spend some time with him.”

“He’s not ready yet.”

She glanced at Micah, then took the risk. “How can you know that?”

She expected the stone wall of silence, but he surprised her. “I just do. He knows where to find me.”

Connie managed to stifle a sigh of exasperation. Ethan had come all this way, to the virtual middle of nowhere, to find his father, and now he wasn’t ready to talk to the man? Why did she find that so hard to believe?

Yet Ethan had said much the same thing. Something about needing the silence first.

She was still thinking about that near shift’s end, and she positioned herself strategically to keep an eye out for Sophie as she pulled up near the school and Micah got out. He walked up the street, as if checking the cars parked along the curb.

Even with the cover of routine patrol and Micah checking cars for parking violations, he was still too visible, Connie thought. Still too visible to someone trying to avoid them. This wasn’t exactly the porous surveillance Nathan had recommended. Yet how far could she let the risk run?

Life was all about risk. She knew that. Complete safety existed only in a padded cell, and perhaps not even there. But while she could risk herself, she found it impossible to risk her daughter.