Kimberly Cates - The Perfect Match

Rowena hunkered down. She squeezed Charlie’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. For making you sad.”

“Oh, I’m never sad,” Charlie protested, looking at her father in alarm.

“Everybody gets sad, honey,” Rowena said. “I’m sad because what I did hurt you. And your daddy. I never meant to.” She looked up into Cash’s pain-filled eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Maybe you’d better go,” Cash said. He didn’t say “so I can mop up the damage.” He didn’t have to.

She was ready to flee, but as she brushed past him, he caught her wrist for a moment, his hand warm around the fragile skin. She looked up to see his forced smile, his gaze pulling her in. “See you, Trouble.”

Rowena’s eyes stung at the unexpected tenderness in the words. Maybe the most merciful thing she could do from now on was to stay out of Cash Lawless’s way. Because one thing she’d learned for certain by coming to his house.

When it came to trouble, the man had more than enough of his own.

IT WAS GOING TO TAKE a hell of a lot of coffee to pry his eyes open this morning, Cash thought as he paced to the counter and grabbed the heart-spattered mug Charlie had painted for him last Father’s Day. But once again, his former partner and current nanny, Vinny Scoglomiglio, didn’t disappoint. The sixty-eight-year-old ex-cop brewed coffee so thick and black and strong Cash was convinced someday some archeologist was going to stumble on a cylinder-shaped object that would be a cup of Vinny-style joe standing on its own, even the mug crumbled away. Yep, after Armageddon, all that would be left were cockroaches, piles of Styrofoam and Vinny’s coffee.

“You look like hell this morning.”

The gravelly voice should have startled him, but he’d grown so used to the old man letting himself into the house at all hours, he didn’t even flinch.

“Right back at you, Mr. Google,” he said, casting a bleary glance over his shoulder. The girls had christened Vinny with that nickname soon after the man had started babysitting them. Cash still wasn’t exactly sure if they’d just massacred the guy’s last name or if the soubriquet came from the fact that Vinny spent every spare moment on the Internet.

Vinny shoved half-glasses up his nose, abandoning his morning crossword puzzle. “I should look like hell. I’m practically dead. Considering all the Jim Beam I drank and the cigars I smoked I expected to be six feet under thirty years ago. What’s your excuse, junior?”

Cash Lawless took a long swallow of coffee, waiting for the bitter brew to do its stuff. “Haven’t been getting much sleep lately.” Lately? More like the past week and a half. Ever since Rowena Brown had walked out the door.

Vinny eyed him like a mother hen with one chick. “Been having those nightmares again?”

Cash’s jaw tightened. He hated the damn things—flashbacks, the counselor the force had sent him to had told him. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances, the woman had soothed. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Except they made him feel like he was caught in a crossfire with his pistol jammed.

“Been a while since one of those sons of bitches laid into you,” Vinny observed, squinting up at him. “Usually happens when your stress ratchets up. Something going on around here that you haven’t told me about? That ex-wife of yours isn’t causing you trouble?”

The very mention of Lisa usually sent a jolt of bitterness and anger through Cash. And yet, it wasn’t his ex-wife’s coolly elegant image that rippled across the surface of his mind today. It was a gypsy of a woman with sunshine hair and blind faith in her eyes, a woman who’d barreled into Cash’s thoughts the way she’d charged into his house, with no thought at all to her personal safety.

Yes, Rowena Brown was trouble, all right. And she’d changed Cash’s understanding of the word forever. Where had she gotten that fire of conviction, the courage that drove her? That fierce belief that she could make things better if she tried?

I don’t believe in impossible…

Cash had to agree it was true. Anyone with half a brain would have known her trip to Cash’s house could only end badly. If she’d actually knocked on the door instead of charging in, he would have verbally lambasted her so harshly for coming near his children again that her ears would still be ringing.

She had to have known the kind of reception she’d get. And yet the reckless woman had come to Briarwood Lane anyway, that menace of a dog of hers packed in the back of her van as if she actually thought she might have a chance to convince Cash to take Destroyer in.

If that wasn’t evidence Rowena Brown believed in the impossible, then nothing was.

“Hey, there, buddy. I asked you what’s wrong,” Vinny grumbled. “And don’t tell me nothing. I may be old, but I’m not dead yet. I can see something’s eating at you.”

Not a bad description, Cash admitted, though he’d never tell Vinny that. Rowena had been nibbling away at his concentration for days now. He’d remember the heat of her skin beneath his fingertips, the silk of her hair against the backs of his knuckles. The way her pulse had pounded when he’d touched her throat and how she’d gasped when he’d accidentally brushed her breast with his arm. Her gold-tipped lashes had flown wide and in spite of everything—in spite of himself—he’d felt himself hardening beneath the worn cotton of his running shorts.

She’d hardened, too. The tip of her nipple had teased his arm, and she’d looked at him as if he’d burned her. And for a moment, just a moment it was a fire they both wanted to dive into.

He’d almost forgotten how tempting a woman’s skin could be, how tantalizingly different from his own. And for the first time in two years he had ached to sink himself deep into a woman’s wet heat…

Vinny jabbed him with the SpongeBob pencil he was using for his morning crossword, and Cash jumped as if his friend had caught him in the act. Thank God Vinny couldn’t read his mind. “Well? What’s bothering you?”

“It’s a woman.” The confession slipped out before Cash could stop it. Weirdly, just saying it aloud was a relief.

“Thank you, Jesus!” Vinny flung SpongeBob to the table, the big Italian’s face gleaming. “What’d she do? Club you over the head with a baseball bat to get your attention?”

“Actually, she tried to get me in a choke hold. I gave her a black eye.”

Vinny scowled in confusion. “You what?”

“It was an accident,” Cash said, suddenly enjoying his friend’s discomfiture. “But I suppose my reaction was understandable under the circumstances. She was breaking and entering.”

Vinny glanced into his own cup, looking more worried than ever. “My coffee too weak to clear your head this morning, boy? You’re not making any sense.”

“She heard Mac crying through the screen door.” Cash’s amusement vanished in the wake of the memory. “We were working on that new set of exercises her therapist gave us last time.”

“Oh.”

There was no need to say more. Vinny was the only other person besides Cash and Mac’s therapist, Janice Wilson, who knew what torture the sessions could be. It was grim work, strengthening little legs that had been broken, torn and patched back together. Scar tissue clenched the muscle fibers so tight that it was agony to stretch them.

“So what happened then?” Vinny prodded.

“Rowena blindsided me, charging through the door, grabbing me around the neck. A sneak attack on a cop is never a good idea.”

“Not to mention a combat vet. And you’re both.”

There were times Cash would have sold his soul to be in a firefight back in Kuwait instead of on that exercise mat in his own living room. War was hell, but at least he hadn’t been waging it on his own child.