Loreth White - Breaking Free

Dylan couldn’t afford to lose this job. It was his life. He’d returned to Pepper Flats specifically for this posting. It had been his way of trying to hold on to his family ten years ago, after Sally’s affair. And even when Sally had split before the first year was out, it had still proved a good place to raise his child.

And right now Dylan’s discomfort was compounded by the fact he hadn’t been able to make it home to talk to Heidi before she went to bed—because of this case. Because of Louisa.

He needed to get home in time to catch his kid before she left for school in the morning.

Pressure weighing heavy on him, Dylan took a seat near Megan, watching her, wondering if his involvement with Louisa Fairchild’s clan would, again, cost him life as he knew it.

Megan stirred, and something weird tightened in his chest.

Her eyes flickered open sleepily, then flared wide as she sat up sharply, startled to find him looking at her.

“Any word yet?” he asked. Waiting for Louisa to come out of surgery had bred an uneasy, if temporary, truce between them.

“No,” she said, pulling the blanket higher. She looked cold. And about as exhausted as he felt.

With all Louisa’s minions, Dylan wondered why Megan was the only one here tonight. Was the old woman really so alone?

“You the only family Louisa has in town at the moment?” he said.

She pushed a thick wave of hair back from her face and moistened her lips as she weighed up his reasons for asking. Beautiful lips, thought Dylan.

“My brother Patrick was here while you were gone,” she said. “He went back to the estate to look for some of Louisa’s medical papers. The doctors think she might be on a medication that isn’t documented in her clinic files. They want to be sure.”

“So you and Patrick must be the grandchildren of Betty Fairchild?”

Interest flared in her green eyes. She sat straighter. “You know about Betty?”

“I was born here. I grew up in the valley. Old-timers talk.” She studied him, curiosity beginning to hum about her with a kinetic energy that stirred something dark and quick in Dylan. She clearly wanted to ask more about Betty, and he wondered why. Surely she knew about her own grandmother.

“How come we haven’t seen you out in these parts before?” he said.

“You going to accuse me of gold-digging again?”

“Just wondering what brings you here, and where home is for you, Megan.”

She studied him in silence. “Sydney,” she said finally. “Our side of the family was estranged from Louisa for some time. She wanted to get to know us better, so we came to visit at her invitation.”

He nodded. He wanted to believe in her.

Then he thought of Sally, and glanced away. Be damned if they weren’t similar in looks. The kind of looks that really did it for him.

A doctor passed, and they both tensed. More minutes ticked by. Dylan got up and went to the nurses’ station to ask how things were progressing, and they said he should take a seat, that the doc would be out as soon as he had word.

He paced the waiting area like a caged lion, Megan watching him.

Another half hour passed.

He checked his watch, stopped pacing. “You want a coffee? Or tea or something? There’s a machine round the corner.”

Relief visibly rippled through her, and she smiled. “Coffee would be heaven.”

He brought it back to her, and their fingers brushed as she took the cup. Energy crackled so sharp and sudden between them that her eyes flashed up to meet his. Dylan swallowed.

He took one seat down from her, bending to scratch Scout behind the ear with one hand, holding his coffee in the other, discomfited by what was clearly a powerful and very mutual physical attraction between them.

“How old is your daughter?” she said, cradling her cup in both hands, blowing steam.

Dylan slanted his eyes to her. “Fourteen,” he said.

“You’re a single dad, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

She lifted her shoulder. “The way you were talking to her on the phone.”

A wry smile tempted his lips. “You’d make a good detective, Stafford.”

“I’d know better than to arrest my aunt for murder if I was one.”

His smile faded. He continued to hold her eyes. “I’d be remiss not to have brought her in, Megan,” he said quietly. “I do have a job to do.”

“Right.” She looked at her coffee. “So what kind of party did your daughter want to go to?”

“You heard that much from the phone call?”

“I was standing right there.”

He sipped his coffee, realizing he’d underestimated this woman. “It was a B&S ball,” he said. “Being held out on one of the farms north of here. They’re—”

“Bachelors and Spinsters. I know what they are. People dress up in fancy gowns and gumboots or whatever, drive for miles to some really isolated rural area, sit in some shed or paddock in mud or dirt and drink a ton of beer from kegs around a big bonfire while decked out in all their finery.”

This time he did smile. “And then they do burnouts in their parents’ sports utes on some poor farmer’s field.”

“Great big drunken orgies,” she said.

His jaw tensed.

“I’m not surprised a father wouldn’t want his teenage daughter to go. I wouldn’t either.” She assessed him quietly for a moment. “Does her mother have a say?”

He raised his brows. Megan was fishing. And very directly so. “Her mother hasn’t been around for the last ten years,” he said carefully.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She walked out one night, never looked back.” He swallowed the last of his coffee. “She’s a big-shot interior designer in London now. Exactly where she wants to be.”

“And you?”

He got up, feeling intensely uncomfortable. “I’m also exactly where I want to be,” he said, scrunching his cup and tossing it forcibly into the rubbish bin.

She watched him, her curiosity clearly piqued, and the fact she was personally interested in him sent a hot frisson through Dylan’s gut. Discomfort, or pleasure, perhaps an odd mix of both—he couldn’t be sure.

“You’ve been with the Pepper Flats station awhile, then?”

“Ten years.”

“That is a long time.”

He knew what she had to be thinking, that someone of his age and tenure should be working higher up in the Land Area Command, or handling one of the big-city beats. Not manning a rural three-man station.

Truth was he’d had it with metropolitan policing. His stint with the Sydney narc and homicide squads had eaten up his life like a cancer, sent his marriage down the tubes, and he’d had his fill of the grit, the death, the drugs, the graveyard shifts and overtime. Marriage problems on those beats were an occupational hazard. His had been no exception. Sally’s affair on top of the usual stress had been the real killer.

Dylan had taken a demotion in order to move his young family back to the Hunter Valley, where he’d hoped to make a last-ditch go of his relationship with Sally. He’d wanted to give his kid a life—a yard, a dog, a swimming pool, access to the bush. Country values.

As unconventional as it sometimes seemed these days, he’d always dreamed of an honest-to-God traditional family.

Perhaps it was because his own family had been decimated in childhood.

Hell alone knew why, but it was what he wanted, and he’d taken the career-killing move to do it.

He’d stayed for all those same reasons, for Heidi, even when Sally couldn’t hack it. He inhaled deeply. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Megan Stafford all that.

“I believe in community policing, Megan,” he said simply. “I believe in this town.” He checked his watch, and got up, suddenly needing space. He’d said too much. It was fine for him to ask questions—that was his job. But her asking questions felt personal. Too personal. And this woman made him want to share. That freaked him. He never shared this stuff.