Kimberly Cates - The Perfect Match

His eyes darkened for a moment. Rowena wondered if he was thinking of the chances he took every day when he put on that uniform, and about the possibility that his little girls’ worst fears could be realized. Someday he might not come home.

“Is there a single soul on earth who knows where you are right now, Ms. Brown?” he asked.

“Well, um…” Clancy. But she supposed the deputy would say he didn’t count. The dog was smart, but even a Newfoundland couldn’t file a missing persons report.

“I thought not,” the deputy said soberly. “If I had been in the middle of abusing my daughter when you interrupted me what did you think would happen? Did you think I’d just let you sashay out of here and report me?”

“No.” She wasn’t an idiot, after all.

“Didn’t you have some sort of plan?”

“My plan was to stop you.”

“And mine would have been to shut you up, once I knew you’d discovered my secret. The wrong kind of man could have hurt you.” He touched her injured cheek so gently it rocked her to her core. “Could have killed you.”

He was right.

The thought chilled her as his fingers fell away, but she raised her chin, defiant. “What was I supposed to do?” she demanded. “Stand out on the front porch with my cell phone and wait for help to come? I know you think I’m silly or naive or reckless, Deputy, but I’ll be damned if I’d ever stand by and let anybody hurt an innocent little girl like Mac when I’m around!”

His eyes warmed, melting some of the hardness in his face. Revealing bare hints of a far different man buried beneath. “You know what, Ms. Brown? I actually believe you.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“But I am.” A perplexed crease carved deep between straight dark brows. “Do you have any idea how many people I see every day who won’t get involved? Something unthinkable happens right in front of their noses, but they turn away, pretend ignorance. Turn up the volume on the TV set so they can’t hear the screams. They’re too busy, too scared or too apathetic to take a risk or even just inconvenience themselves.”

His tone softened, his gaze bound to hers by some fragile thread. Respect? Rowena wondered.

“I’ll tell you this much for certain, Ms. Brown,” he continued. “If either of my girls ever did wander off and run into trouble, I’d hope like hell that you were the one who saw them.”

Rowena swallowed, astonished at just how much his admission meant to her. “Deputy, are you actually saying something nice to me?”

The left corner of his mouth ticked up. “Under the circumstances, maybe you should call me Cash.”

“Okay. Cash.” She fidgeted with a button on her jacket. Bad move. It just reminded her of that whole tingling breast episode. “And what—what are you going to call me?”

“Trouble.” He smiled then. A real barn burner of a smile. For a minute Rowena forgot to breathe. “You know, you still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Why did you show up on my doorstep in the first place?”

“Oh, it was nothing much,” Rowena started to hedge, her cheeks burning. Then something in his face made her decide to go for broke. “I just stopped by to convince you to give up your egocentric ways and think about your girls for a change. After all, what’s the big deal about adding a dog to the family?” She grimaced in self-disgust. “I figured maybe I could guilt you into letting Charlie have Clancy.”

“And now?” Something in his eyes reminded her of Charlie, something tender, vulnerable, hurts she ached to heal.

“Now you’ve ruined my whole plan. You’re not a self-absorbed ass. You obviously love your daughters. And maybe—just maybe, mind you—you don’t need me to sweep in here on my broomstick and straighten your priorities out.”

“Thank you for that.”

“Deputy…I mean, Cash…” The name sounded so strange, intimate on her tongue. “I still wish there was some way to…I just can’t help but feel that Charlie needs this dog.”

The words hurt him. She could see his guilt twisting, a sense of inadequacy in this man that stunned her.

“If this was before the accident and Mac wasn’t in a wheelchair…” He raked his hand through his hair. “Hell, I’d let Charlie get a dog. Not one the size of a Shetland pony, mind you. And sure as hell not Destroyer.”

For the first time, Rowena didn’t bother to correct him.

“But you have to see that under the circumstances it’s impossible.” It clearly mattered to him that she see what he saw, understood his reasons. The knowledge humbled Rowena, made her ache to close the distance between them. A distance far greater than this small room. A distance filled with pain she couldn’t heal. Wounds she couldn’t cure. Vulnerabilities he’d never allow anyone to understand.

She reached out and squeezed his hand. It felt so big, so strong beneath her fingers as he looked at her in surprise. Still, he didn’t pull away.

“I don’t believe in impossible,” Rowena confessed, feeling somehow unutterably young.

“Then I envy you.”

She could see from his haunted expression that he really did.

“But Mac walking again…you believe in that.”

“That’s different.” He tugged his hand free, his voice roughening. “She has to walk. If she doesn’t I’ll never forgive myself.” Self-blame twisted Cash’s features, as if there were secrets inside him jagged as broken glass.

“Were you…with her when she got hurt?”

“No. Lisa was driving.”

Driving. So it had been a car accident that injured the little girl. Rowena laid her hand on his arm. “There was nothing you could have done, then. It’s not your fault.”

He wheeled around, banged one fist on the wall. “Don’t tell me what’s my fault and what’s not! You don’t know what happened. Nobody does—” He broke off with an oath as a tense voice sounded from the far end of the hall, running footsteps coming toward them.

“Daddy!”

Charlie. Rowena’s heart sank. The child raced into the room, slammed to a halt, her glasses sliding askew. Charlie gripped her hands together tight as she saw Rowena.

“Oh, Daddy, is it true?”

Rowena felt Cash try to melt the tension in his shoulders, uncurl his fists by force of will. “Is what true, cupcake?”

“Hope says it’s a surprise for me. I didn’t believe her, but she says I must get to keep him. ’Cause why else…” Charlie hesitated, almost as if she didn’t dare put it into words. “But, Daddy, why else would my dog come here?”

Such a wistfulness filled Charlie’s old-soul eyes Rowena wanted to cry.

Rowena saw Cash’s jaw harden in dismay, as if someone had twisted a knife in his chest. She was the one who had put it there.

“Hi, Charlie,” Rowena said softly, sliding down from her perch on the counter.

“My dog. He’s in the car. He—he threw the football right out the window to me.” Charlie nibbled her bottom lip, looking from Cash to Rowena.

“I’m sorry I got you all excited,” Rowena began, knowing the apology could never be enough for the pain she’d caused the little girl or her father. “I just stopped by to…um, apologize to your daddy. It was very wrong of me to get your hopes up the way I did, telling you that Clancy belonged with you. I didn’t understand that…well, that your sister…”

“Oh.” The tentative sparkle of hope vanished. It was as if the sun went behind a cloud. “It’s okay, Rowena. I know. He might knock Mac down, or eat stuff off the kitchen counters or—or run away like my mom did.”

The child was thinking in disasters again. Rowena wondered how long it had been since little Charlie had imagined unicorns and princesses and happy endings all her own.