Christmas at Twilight (4 page)

“Hang on. I'll get those laces for you.” She squatted in front of him, but kept her head ducked so that she wouldn't be eye-to-eye with his crotch.

She untied his shoelaces, rocked back on her heels, and stood up.

He toed off his shoes and, using his palms, felt his way into the shower. The water hit his chest first. He fumbled for the nozzle, found it, and tilted it up to catch him squarely in the face.

With her gloved hands, she picked up his shirt, redolent with the stench of pepper spray, and stuffed it in a trash bag she retrieved from the bathroom cabinet. Smelling the stuff secondhand in the closed space made her eyes and her nose sting. She coughed against the fumes, stripped off her gloves, and tossed them in the trash basket.

“I'll wait outside,” she told him. “Holler if you need anything.”

He simply grunted.

She sneaked a peek over at him. Water splashed his face, sluiced down his bare chest. His wet jeans were plastered against his body, and thankfully his erection was gone.

Meredith closed the door behind her, paced the hall, and wrung her hands. He was going to need something to put on. The last thing she wanted was for him to come strutting out of there wrapped in nothing but a towel.

Strut? Considering the shape he was in, Captain Brian Hutchinson wasn't going to be strutting anywhere anytime soon. And it was her fault.

Cringing, she thought about going across the street to ask Jesse if he could lend Brian jeans and a T-shirt, but the captain was a lot bigger than Jesse.

What about the spare upstairs bedroom on the second floor where she and Ben lived? Maybe there was something in that room that he could wear. She wasn't a snoop. She'd never been in that spare bedroom, but perhaps that's where he stayed when he came to visit his sister.

Torn between waiting by the door to see if he needed anything and the need to find him clothing, Meredith hesitated.

She knocked. “You okay?”

He didn't answer.

She knocked again, raised her voice. “Brian?”

Nothing.

Oh no. What if he had passed out in there?

She wrenched open the door.

He was standing there in front of her, wet and naked as the day he was born, glaring at her with bloodshot devil eyes.

She yelped.

He snorted like an angry bull.

She peeked down.

He was no longer erect, but even so, he was still frighteningly large.

She slammed the door, raced into the living room, her heart pumping so fast it set her head spinning.

It wasn't his fault. She had gone charging in there.

But he hadn't answered her. Surely he'd known she would come in there if he didn't answer her. Why hadn't he answered her?

From the top of her scalp to the bottom of her toes, every nerve ending in her body tingled. Her cheeks burned. She plastered her palms on either side of her face. Her arms quivered. Her knees buckled. What
was
this feeling?

Not fear.

Why
wasn't
it fear?

Instead, she felt bizarrely ultra-alive, the way she did as a kid when she and her playmates had played tag between the chase-crew vehicles and hot air balloons being inflated across flat grassy fields. The rhythmic whoosh of the gas burners, the damp scent of morning dew, the freedom, the thrilling pleasure of running to reach base ahead of the tagger just as dawn broke brilliant over the horizon.

A crazy smile yanked at her mouth and for a moment, she thought she might be losing her mind. Finally, she identified the feeling.

Giddy. She was giddy.

But why?

Maybe it wasn't giddiness as much as delayed relief that the intruder was not her stalker and the grateful realization that now Brian was here, he could figure out what to do about Ashley.

H
utch's eyes still burned like flamethrowers. The cool shower had helped and the swelling was slowly going down, although his blister-hot lungs cried out for cold fresh air.

With a towel wrapped around his waist, he stepped from the bathroom. He glanced left, then right, searching for the woman. No sign of her.

Maybe she'd hightailed it out of here. Who was she anyway? One of the strays Ashley inevitably took in?

Great. He'd have to be the one to send her packing.

He lumbered down the hallway, still unsteady on his feet. That was some potent pepper spray, as heavy-duty as the variety that riot cops used. He paused at the foot of the stairs, wished he could call out and warn her in case she was quivering in some corner somewhere armed with more pepper spray.

Ouch. He winced at the mere idea of being sprayed again. Cocking his head, he listened for sounds of her.

Silence.

Coast clear.

He went up to his bedroom, retrieved the duffel bag he'd dropped on the floor when he arrived. Dressed in cargo pants, a green T-shirt, and a pair of deck shoes and no socks. He felt naked without his dog tags. After more than a decade in the military, he missed the tags almost as much as he missed his ability to speak.

Forget it. Move on. Somehow, he'd muscle his way through this confounded PTSD and get his voice back if it killed him.

Hutch started to go back down the stairs, but on impulse stopped outside the bedroom across the hall. He turned the knob, booted the door open.

It wasn't the empty bedroom he'd left behind on his final deployment.

Girly lotions and potions were lined up on the dresser. A pair of pink bedroom slippers were tucked under one corner of the bed, and a matching bathrobe with frayed sleeves hung from the hook outside the en suite bathroom door. A slightly wrinkled brown and gold uniform, the pocket embroidered with “Hot Legs Spa,” lay draped over the foot of the bed. The uniform rang a bell and he remembered the woman had been wearing it when he sidled up to the window of her minivan.

On the side table was a picture of a young boy about the same age as his niece, Kimmie. Nestled in the nook of the bay window was a trundle bed covered with a Thomas the Train bedspread.

Hutch veered over to finger the bedding. Was the boy in the photograph the one who was sleeping in this bed? Was this the Ben the woman had spoken of?

From the look of things, Ashley had not only picked up another stray, but this one had a pup as well.

Ah hell. He knew he should not have allowed Ashley to move in here last Christmas, but she'd had nowhere else to go and the house would be standing empty while he was overseas. How could he refuse his sister a place to live when she had Kimmie to look after?

Hutch exhaled cautiously, rested his head against the wall, and closed his eyes.

“What are you doing in my bedroom?” came an indignant bark from behind him.

He pivoted, opened his mouth to enlighten her on just whose bedroom it was, forgetting for a second that he could not speak, and a harsh garbled noise scraped up his throat. He sounded like a wounded animal caught in snare trap. Instantly, he slammed his jaw shut.

“Out.” She pointed a trembling finger toward the door. “Get out of my room.”

He held up both palms. Surrendering. Getting out of her space. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, or so they said. Never mind that he owned the place, Miss Pepper Spray was in charge and she knew it.

Hutch wished his vision was better so he could adequately size up his opponent. She wasn't big. No taller than five-six and no heavier than a hundred and ten pounds. She needed some meat on those bones. But she was brave and she wasn't going to take any guff off him.

That coal black pixie haircut made her look all of fourteen years old. She wore holey jeans that bagged on lean hips. Not trendy jeans made to look worn out for an exorbitant price, these were plain old Wranglers she'd probably had since she
was
fourteen. The light blue sweater, which hugged high, pert breasts, was only slightly less worn out than her jeans. He noticed a moth hole in the right cuff, also noticed her pull the sleeves down over her petite hands until all he could see were delicate fingertips, the nails painted a shimmering pale pink the color of dawn.

Her pupils widened and she nibbled on her bottom lip. The column of her slender throat moved visibly when she swallowed. A gulp? Was she still scared of him?

He was making her uncomfortable and that was not his intention. He nodded, turned, and trekked past her.

“Wait,” she said, her voicing lifting at the end.

He paused, glanced back at her over his shoulder.

“We need to talk.”

He raised his right eyebrow. Letting his face ask the question that his mouth could not.

“But not right now. Your face . . .” She swallowed, lowered her gaze. “Let's wait until your . . .” She waved her hands in front of her eyes.

He got it. She was having troubling looking at him. Too bad. If she was tough enough to pepper-spray him, she was just going to have to deal with the aftermath of her handiwork.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asked.

His parched throat cried yes, but he was afraid drinking something would reactivate the burning. He shook his head.

She sank her hands on her hips. “This strong, silent-type routine isn't working for me. Say something.”

He put three fingers to the base of his throat, and then to his lips, shook his head again.

“You're deaf?” She pressed a palm up her forehead, distress pulling her mouth into a grim line as if she was the one who had caused his pain. “And here I've been nattering on. You must read lips though, right?”

He scowled, shook his head sharply, cupped his palms around both ears and nodded.

She frowned for a moment, but her lips parted on a quick uptake of breath as she caught on. “You can hear but you can't talk?”

Yes. Yes. He pumped his head up and down.

“Oh dear. You and I need to have a serious conversation. How is this going to work?”

Serious conversation? About what?

He held up a finger, indicating that she should give him a minute and he stepped back across the hall for the Magic Slate. She tagged along after him, not waiting, and when he turned, she was so close to his elbow that he almost ran into her.

The urge to step back away from her was strong, but he wasn't going to let her see how much she ruffled him. He grabbed the stylus attached to the Magic Slate. SO TALK.

“Not here,” she said. “Let's go out on the deck and watch the Brazos roll by.”

WHY? Hutch wrote.

“You need fresh air and I'm afraid I've got bad news to deliver about your sister.”

T
he Brazos River was a sight for pepper-sprayed eyes, soothing Hutch all the way down to the marrow of his bones. The water held a magnetic pull over him. When he'd been in those dry desert mountains of Afghanistan, he dreamed almost nightly of this liquid beauty. He could read the river like an engrossing mystery series authored by Mother Nature. Her sly twists and turns evolving over time, continually surprising and delighting him with unexpected secrets.

He thought of his boat parked in the boathouse and securely covered with a tarp, the pull of the water whispering at him to ignore winter weather and get his ass out there.

The house had started out as nothing more than a simple fishing cottage that he'd bought right out of high school with his half of the money their mother had left them. When he was on leave from the army, he slowly added on to the house when time and money permitted, building the second story and the backyard deck with his own two hands, learning as he went. It had taken him four years to complete, but when he was finished, the worth of the house had doubled and he held the title free and clear.

He meant the place to serve as a waterside getaway between deployments and nothing more, figuring that when he met the right woman, they would buy a place together. Now, he was simply grateful he had a place to call home.

But this stranger was also calling his house home, a cute stranger that he couldn't seem to stop staring at.

When he arrived that afternoon, the temperature had been a balmy sixty degrees, not at all uncommon in early December in North Central Texas. But with the approaching twilight and damp wisp rising up off the water, it was at least fifteen degrees colder.

He dragged in a deep breath, inhaling the scent he would eternally associate with homecoming—the earthiness of wild mushrooms, the tinny odor of minnow buckets, the sluggish tug of ore-rich soil. The woman was right. The cold air was helping.

She had grabbed a faded jean jacket from a hook at the back door and she stood on the opposite side of the deck from him, hugging herself tightly.

He tilted his face to the graying sky and took another long, deep breath, his chest aching against the pepper spray residual.

“I apologize again for—”

He held up a palm and shot her a let-it-go look. No sense making her feel bad. It was over with, done. In the grand scheme of things it was nothing worse than a case of hiccups.

She turned up the collar of her denim jacket and lifted her shoulders to her ears at the same time she tucked those shy hands up inside her sleeves again.

He inclined his head in the direction of the house, raised an eyebrow.

“No,” she said, picking up on his sign language. “This is helping you and I'm okay.”

She joined him at the railing, but stayed several feet away, and stared down at the Brazos churning below. The higher water level and rapid current told him that it had recently rained. The orange rays of dying sunlight caught her hair, gave a bluish tinge to the coal black locks. The color didn't suit her pale skin or match her light brown eyebrows. Why did she dye it that dark?

A sand crane swooped gracefully over the water, looking for a safe place to bed down for the night. Somewhere downriver came the sound of a johnboat engine. A fisherman was headed home for dinner. From the loblolly pine tree that sheltered the right side of the deck, a squirrel scolded and swished its tail as it scampered higher into the branches.

“It's weird,” she said. “I can't swim, but I'm not afraid of water. I love the water, in fact. It's so peaceful. Of course, whenever I go in, I always wear a life jacket, and I do worry about Ben. But I started putting him in swim lessons every summer after he turned two. I don't want him to end up like me. Twenty-seven years old and not knowing how to swim.”

She was nervous, babbling. He wanted to ask her why she'd never learned to swim, but they had more pressing matters to discuss.

Her eyes glued to him. Kind blue eyes full of sympathy and remorse. Her inner goodness was almost touchable, a purity as white as fresh snowfall, and for a moment, all he wanted to do was make snow angels.

But that was stupid. Dirty as his soul was, if he touched her, he would stain her for life.

He scribbled on the Magic Slate. WHAT'S YOUR NAME?

She hesitated for a second—just long enough for Hutch to wonder why—and then she murmured, “Jane. Jane Brown.”

Funny, she didn't seem like a Jane. PLAIN NAME.

She shrugged.

He lifted the top sheet of the Magic Slate, making the words disappear, and jotted, SOUNDS LIKE AN ALIAS.

Her eyes widened and the muscle at her temple jumped. “My parents were unimaginative. Deal with it.”

Prickly. Her calm was gone. What was that all about? He was the one entitled to the bad mood.

He didn't write anything else. Just waited.

She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, and cleared her throat. “I didn't know until two days ago that Ashley had an older brother. I thought she owned this place.”

He shook his head. MINE.

“So I've gathered. I've also gathered you didn't know she was renting the upstairs bedroom to me and my son.”

He shook his head.

Jane drummed two fingers against her chin. “So Ashley has been keeping us a secret from each other.”

That did not surprise him. His sister was full of secrets.

Hutch fumbled the Magic Slate. It hit the deck. He leaned to pick it up, but because of his missing finger, misjudged the distance and had to swipe at the ground twice before he managed to scoop it up. How long would it take him to get used to his loss? Trying to look unflustered, he straightened and scratched his message: WHERE IS SHE?

The woman sank her hands on her hips. “Well, you see, that's the thing. I don't know. Not for sure. She took off on us.”

Hutch closed his eyes. He had suspected as much when Ashley had not answered his texts or returned his phone calls. She'd taken off without notice before. More than once. Opening his eyes, he penciled on the slate. SHE LEFT KIMMIE WITH YOU?

“Yes. Your niece is safe. I've been looking out for her. Ashley is the one I'm worried about.” The Jane-who-didn't-look-like-a-Jane proceeded to tell him a story about his sister running off to Acapulco with a man she barely knew.

Yes, it wasn't the first time something like this had happened. But since she'd had Kimmie and started seeing the counselor he paid for, Ashley had been somewhat less impulsive. Stupidly, he'd been lulled into thinking that becoming a mother had tempered his sister's emotional instability. Friends and neighbors in their tight-knit community kept tabs on her for him and no one had raised a red flag. He should have known better. Parenthood hadn't stemmed his own mother's recklessness. Why would it work for Ashley?

Denial packed a humdinger of a sucker punch, seducing him into believing that everything was going to be all right. He had traveled this same road with his mother, but still he'd let himself hope that things could be different for Ashley.

Borderline personality disorder was so tricky. People who suffered from BPD looked so normal from the outside, and then, boom, their emotions would overwhelm them and their behavior would turn irrational and they would do anything—even push you away and threaten suicide—to avoid abandonment, as paradoxical as that seemed. He'd spent his life trying to understand his mother and sister's erratic and illogical thought processes, and he was no closer to figuring it out than he'd ever been.

He wrote: MY SISTER HAS BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER.

Jane's mouth opened into an innocent O, her eyelashes fluttered, and a why-didn't-I-figure-that-out expression pulled her lips back over her teeth. “I didn't know. That explains a lot. Is she on medication?”

He shook his head, silently mouthed the words he could not speak.
Medication doesn't work
.

“Therapy?”

He nodded.

“I've never seen her go.”

He ran his tongue over his upper teeth, got a lingering taste of pepper spray. Dammit. He should have paid the therapist directly instead of sending Ashley the check. But he wanted to show her that he trusted her. That idiotic denial again.

The porch light came on against the encroaching darkness. On the water, a fish slapped its tail against the surface. Hutch's vision was slowly improving and he could make out Jane's features more clearly. Her jawline was soft, ultra-feminine, in contrast to her nose. Size-wise, the nose fit her face, but it was crooked at the bridge, as if it had been broken, maybe more than once.

His fingers worked the stylus. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING HERE?

“Six weeks.”

About the same time he had been trying to come to grips with the fact his entire team had died. HOW DID YOU MEET ASHLEY?

“The transmission in my minivan conked out on me. I was standing on the side of the road, my son on my hip, with no one to call.” She gave a little laugh that was filled with anxiety instead of humor. There was nothing remotely funny about what she'd just said.

Hutch wrote: NO MAN IN YOUR LIFE?

Her chin hardened and for the flash of a second, he saw in her eyes the same expression he'd seen on the faces of Afghan villagers—distrust, distaste, disgust. Some son of a bitch had treated her badly.

“No.”

His fingers ached from all the writing. YOUR SON'S FATHER?

“Dead,” she said flatly, cleanly, as if she was glad for it. “Ashley drove by, gave us a ride, and the rest is history. Your sister has a very generous heart.”

IMPULSIVE, he wrote, and a cramp spasmed through his hand. He flexed his fingers, shook it out.

“I suppose you could look at it that way. She was a great housemate, though. That is, until three days ago.”

The sun slipped below the horizon, the twilight sky deepening from cool purple to deep blue. The scent of someone's dinner, spaghetti and meatballs from the smell it, surfed the breeze.

“What are you going to do about your sister?” she asked.

He shrugged. There was nothing he could do. It had taken him some time to come to the realization that Ashley was responsible for herself. She was an adult and he could not fix her. Kimmie, however, was another matter.

Kimmie.

Ah, hell. What was he going to do with his niece? He was in no shape, either mentally or physically, to take care of a four-year-old girl by himself.

“You're not going to do anything about her?” She sounded horrified.

He shook his head.

“But what if this guy she's gone off with is a rapist or worse?”

BEYOND MY CONTROL.

“Well,” she said, sounding pissed off. “You're certainly no help.”

A stiff silence stretched between them. Finally, to ease the tension, he wrote on the slate. YOU'RE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HER EITHER.

“Ashley took me in when I had nothing. She got a friend of hers to fix my minivan and he's letting me pay him out. She gave me a place to live. Helped me find a job as a masseuse at Hot Legs Spa. I owe her.”

He curled his finger around the stylus. YOU'RE TAKING CARE OF KIMMIE. CONSIDER YOURSELF EVEN.

“I don't turn my back on friends.” There was that stubborn chin, hardening again. Extreme loyalty had caused her problems in her life, Hutch could just tell.

ASHLEY TURNED HER BACK ON YOU.

She squinted into the darkness, trying to read what he'd written. He stepped closer so she could see.

She puffed out her cheeks with air, ran a hand over her short cap of curls, and then let out a defeated sigh. “Ben and I will be out of here tomorrow.”

He penned, WHERE WILL YOU GO?

“I'll find something.”

TAKE YOUR TIME.

“No. I can't stay here with you. This is your home. Tomorrow. We'll be out of here tomorrow.”

He didn't know why, but her words brought a sting of rejection. He was happy to be rid of her. I'LL GIVE YOU MONEY FOR A MOTEL UNTIL YOU CAN FIND A PLACE TO LIVE.

“No,” she said sharply. “I do not take money from men.”

REFUND ON YOUR RENT.

“I paid that money to Ashley, not you.” She stepped back, almost disappearing into the thickening shadows.

Jane Brown was a complicated woman and she piqued his interest. Who was she exactly and how had she come to end up broken down on the side of the road in Twilight, Texas? He wasn't in any shape for this prolonged conversation. He was bone-deep exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse into his bed and sleep for a week. He told himself to let her go. He had enough troubles of his own without taking on hers.

“I've got to pick up the children. It's time for their supper.”

He touched his chest with a quick flick of his hand, pointed at her and then at the door to indicate he wanted to go with her.

She nodded, but moved quickly to get ahead—or away—from him.

They passed through the sliding glass door, through the kitchen, and out the front of the house, Jane several feet ahead of him.

He left the Magic Slate on the foyer table and hurried after her, anxious to see Kimmie again. During the course of the past year, whenever his job allowed, he chatted with his sister and niece over Skype conversations on the computer, but he hadn't had contact with Ashley since August when The Unit was sent on a counter-terrorism black ops mission.

After the ambush, he'd asked the military not to tell Ashley that he'd been wounded. They wouldn't have told her about the operation anyway and he hadn't wanted to worry her. Little things could throw her world out of kilter. The more routine her life was, the better she did.

He wondered what had thrown her out of whack this time, but the woman striding up the sidewalk to the Calloways' home was answer enough. Having new people in the house couldn't help upsetting Ashley's routine.

The closer they got to the front door, adorned with a cheery candy cane wreath and twinkle lights, the tighter the knot in Hutch's chest grew as it all fully sank in. What if his sister never returned? On the other hand, what if she did? Could he really ever trust her with Kimmie's welfare again?