Jeannie Watt - A Difficult Woman

“Good. I’m hoping to be able to come out tomorrow and take a look, see if there’s anything I can do.”

Matt gently set his bottle down as he tried to come up with a way to say this without getting Luke’s dander up. Finally he just said it. “Maybe you should take it easy a while longer. You know…let the medication take effect?” He didn’t want his friend to hurt himself, but he didn’t want to insult him, either. Thin line there.

“Maybe,” Luke replied after a lengthy silence. He pulled the tea bag out of his cup and squeezed the last bit of moisture out of it. “How’re you sleeping?”

Matt raised his eyes to meet Luke’s. He hadn’t told Luke about his insomnia, but he supposed that his exhaustion had to show.

“I know stress,” Luke said as he put the tea bag aside. “I saw action similar to yours while I was in the service. I was only twenty.” Luke shook his head. “You gotta experience it to understand it.”

That was an understatement.

“How’d you get past it?” Matt shifted back in his chair, not certain he wanted to explore this.

“Time. Change of scenery. More time.”

Luke let the comment sit for a bit as he stirred sugar into his tea. “When I heard from my brother how things had been going for you—your dad…the standoff—I had a feeling. Thought maybe you should get away for a while, and since I needed help…” His mouth quirked up at the corner. “But you’ve figured that out. Time and a new place. It helps. Some.”

After an uncomfortable silence, Matt said, “I appreciate it.” He didn’t necessarily think the change of scenery would provide a wonder cure, but it couldn’t hurt. And the time away would recharge him, help him get ready for the next stage of battle. He gave Luke a half smile and a gentle warning. “I don’t know I’ll be as talkative as the last time you helped me out.”

Luke nodded his understanding.

The last time, Matt had been an unhappy kid, working for his stepdad, Luke’s brother, building apartments while on vacation from college. Torn. His mom had been pushing him to study engineering, education, law—anything but criminal justice. She hadn’t wanted him to become a cop like his biological father.

Matt, however, had been fascinated by law enforcement. And hungry for approval from the man he’d only seen a week or so every summer after his parents’ divorce.

Luke had been his crew’s boss, and he’d also been the only person who simply listened to Matt without offering an opinion, the only guy who just let him talk.

“Mom thinks it’s ‘lovely’ that I’m spending my vacation with you.” A corner of Matt’s mouth lifted. “I’d kind of appreciate it if she kept thinking that.”

He hadn’t given her any facts, except what was printed in the newspaper, and in the paper he’d come off looking pretty good. She didn’t know about the insomnia, the dreams, the lieutenant’s vendetta. Matt was thankful she lived almost seven hundred miles away.

“I wouldn’t dream of telling her otherwise,” Luke replied. “My brother would kill me if I upset your mom.”

“Thanks.” Matt didn’t want his mother upset. Again. She’d suffered enough trying to keep him out of law enforcement and, ironically, after all of the turmoil Matt never did develop the relationship he’d hoped for with his father, even after landing a job in the same PD. Their relationship had never felt like that of a father and son. It was more like that of two guys who worked together, two guys who didn’t have a lot in common. Later, after his dad had been killed, Matt and the rest of the department discovered his father had a good reason for not letting anyone into his life.

He wiped condensation off the bottle with one finger. “What’s Sanchez’s relationship with Tara?”

“I don’t know the particulars,” Luke replied, apparently amused by the abrupt change of topic. “But I think if you upset Tara, you’ll be dealing with Rafe.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Matt said dryly.

“It’d be easier if you just didn’t upset Tara.”

Matt shrugged. “Too late for that.”

Luke’s eyebrows drew together for a split second and then he burst out laughing. He was still smiling when he gestured Becky over and ordered up another round of Budweiser beer and Lipton tea—hold the sugar.

MATT CONNORS was MIA.

The table was set and his breakfast—or what was left of it—was shriveling up in the warming oven. They’d made a deal the day before and she’d agreed to give him meals in lieu of some pay. He’d seemed to like the idea, so she didn’t understand why he’d skip out on the first day.

She finally gave up waiting and started painting another bedroom, but every now and then she paced to the window, scanned the county road. Where was he?

It had been over two hours since she had fed Nicky and sent him to Reno with a shopping list almost as long as he was tall and instructions not to come back for at least two days. Nicky had spent six years of junior high and high school in Reno while Tara went to college, earning first her bachelor’s degree, then her master’s in English, and she knew he had friends to see and stuff to do before he headed south again. He’d already spent most of his short vacation scraping, sanding and painting. Enough was enough. Nicky was still a kid.

A sudden ominous thought struck her and she tucked a loose wisp of hair behind her ear as she laid down her brush and headed for the phone. Tara dialed the number to the Anderson house and tapped her foot as the phone rang. And rang.

Tara’s nerves started to hum. If Eddie and his numbskull buddies had hurt her carpenter in some kind of misguided attempt at revenge, she was going to—

“Yeah…?”

The voice on the phone was thick with sleep.

“Matt?” Tara said cautiously.

“Tara.” His voice was instantly alert. “What time…?” She heard fumbling and then he muttered an expletive. “Sorry…I overslept. Give me twenty. I’ll be right over.”

He hung up before she could reply. Fifteen minutes later he was at her door, his hair still damp from a shower. He hadn’t shaved and the dark stubble gave him an entirely different look. An incredibly sexy look.

Tara suddenly realized she was staring and stepped back, letting him in.

“So what’d you do last night?” she asked as she led the way to the kitchen. “Tie one on?”

“I was up late.”

He didn’t look so much hungover as exhausted, so she let the subject drop and tackled the matter at hand. “I’d like to get the porch finished and the gazebo fixed and painted, but…” She paused, studying him with a slight frown. “I need you to adjust the height of the new doors before you do that, so that I can stain them.”

She had bought several solid wood doors to replace damaged and missing ones in the house, only to find that while the doorframes were consistent in width, they were not consistent in height. In fact, some of the frames weren’t even true and it was going to take finagling to get the doors to hang and swing correctly. It wasn’t something she wanted to leave until the last minute.

“Show me what you got,” he said. She watched as he crossed the room to the porch door, thinking, in spite of herself, that he wore those worn-out Levi’s very well and wondering why she hadn’t noticed it before.

Until he’d taken on Eddie, she hadn’t realized his long lean body was almost solid muscle. That awareness was having a definite effect on the way she was looking at him now, so she was glad he didn’t have the ability to read minds when he glanced over his shoulder and caught her staring.

“Do you want your breakfast?” she inquired innocently.

“What kind of shape is it in?”