Christmas at Twilight (7 page)

He raised both thumbs.

Meredith paused a moment. Her final condition was not going to be an easy topic to bring up, but she had to say it.

“Four.” She waved all four fingers at him. “I don't want anyone to get any wrong ideas. Not you, not the kids, not the neighbors . . .”
Not me.
“This arrangement is one hundred percent employer/employee, landlord/renter relationship. You need someone to help you care for Kimmie until her mother returns, and I need a place to live through the holidays. However, living in close quarters can stir physical urges and you've been at war.”

This time his expression said,
What do you take me for? A pervert?

“We have a dicey living situation. In the interest of avoiding trouble, you don't touch me. I don't touch you. Ever.”

His eyes narrowed teasingly and she could see his mental wheels turning.

“Not ever,” she reiterated. “If I have a heart attack, go next door and get someone else to do CPR on me.”

Amusement plucked the corners of his mouth.

“Boundaries. I'm just setting solid boundaries.” She drew her spine up tall. “If there are any boundaries issues that you want to bring up in regards to this situation, this is the time to do it. Although if you think of something you'd like to add or change later, we can certainly renegotiate the terms if needed.”

He waved a hand in an I'm-good-for-now gesture.

“Do you agree to the conditions I've outlined?”

A slow, friendly nod.

“Violate my rules and I throw you out on the spot.”

He stabbed her with a hard-edged stare and settled the tips of two fingers to the center of his chest.

“Yes, you. I throw you out. The children need a roof over their heads, and right now, Kimmie needs a mother figure more than she needs a surrogate father. You'll have to find somewhere else to live until Ashley returns. At that point, my son and I will move on. Is this acceptable? If it's not, the arrangement is off.”

His mouth tightened in a grimace. He wanted so badly to say something. He needed his tablet.

She reached for the Magic Slate on the coffee table at the same time he did.

Their hands touched.

An instant tingle of hot awareness shot up her arm. Meredith sucked in a startled breath, lungs swelling, causing her breasts to rise sharply and attract Hutch's masculine gaze.

She held her breath. His gaze shifted from her chest to her face, and there was no denying his hungry eyes.

He wanted her sexually.

A shiver ran through her and she did her best to suppress it so he wouldn't see the goose bumps dotting her skin, wouldn't figure out that her treacherous body wanted him too.

“Just so you know,” she said as casually as she could muster. “I own a .40-caliber Colt Defender, and don't doubt for a second that I know how to use it.”

He looked dutifully impressed.

“Do you agree?” she asked.

He picked up the tablet, settled back in the recliner, jotted something down, and then looked at her with half-lidded eyes before he turned the Magic Slate around so she could see what he'd written.

WHEN DO WE OFFICIALLY START? BECAUSE I THINK I ALREADY VIOLATED RULE #4.

T
alk about a tough cookie. Jane was a lot feistier than Hutch originally thought. Still wide awake at two
a.m.
, he lay in bed replaying everything that had happened that afternoon.

It wasn't all bad. For the first time since the ambush, his mind was not consumed by the loss of his team, but in the span of a few short hours, his life had changed yet again. Apparently, turmoil was the name of the game. Who up there kept shuffling all the cards on him?

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Hutchinson. There's a four-year-old kid in there whose mother took off on her.

Kimmie. What was he going to do with her? Yeah, he'd hired Jane to take up the slack, at least through the Christmas holidays, but what was he going to do after that if Ashley decided to make her wild adventure permanent? He gritted his teeth. Who was the son of a bitch she'd run off with?

He closed his eyes, tried to will himself to sleep, but his mind was racing with dark thoughts and horrible what-ifs. Maybe he shouldn't have gone off the benzos cold turkey, not with all this shit getting dumped into his lap. Gupta had warned him to taper the drugs. He should have gotten that prescription filled.

He was not going to think about Ashley. That led him down some ugly rabbit holes. Think about something else.

His mind complied and produced the image of how Jane had looked when their hands brushed and their eyes made sizzling contact.

Man, what was that all about?

Even now, he could still feel the power of that single touch, and he shook his head in amazement. Whatever it was had triggered primal cravings in him, and he found himself ensnared in a swift current of stark electricity.

She had sucked in her breath and those glorious tits had risen under that faded, worn sweater. God help him, he'd tried not to stare, but he could not fight off the impulse. Could not stop thinking about what color of bra sheathed those boobs, and that had set off a whole fantasy of just how quickly he could unhook the bra and get his bare hands on her soft, pillowy flesh.

In that moment, his brain figured out what his dick had already known in the bathroom when she'd undressed him.

He wanted her.

A lot.

And even though he knew she would rather die than admit it, she wanted him too. He'd seen it her eyes, in the way she'd licked her lips and leaned in toward him. Why else make up rule #4? She needed the rule to keep her own desires at bay.

The temptation to kiss her had been ass-kicking strong. Every cell in his body hollered at him to kiss her. In the old days, he
would
have done it. Shown her exactly what she was missing by holding herself back.

But she was scared.

Underneath that sassy bravado, she'd been through some serious shit. He wasn't forgetting the pepper spray and how frightened she'd looked when he'd come up to the window of her minivan. She was broke and living with his sister when she was a mom who should have a place of her own. There was a story there, and his gut told him it was anything but pretty.

So what? You've got enough problems of your own. Last thing you need is to shoulder her baggage.

He thought about her, lying in the bed across the hall, and his dick hardened.

She was right, of course. Being in close quarters together, especially with this underlying sexual chemistry, was bound to stir up trouble. Keeping their distance was the safe choice, the right choice.

But could he keep his promise?

He had to keep it. For Kimmie's sake. His niece had had enough disruption in her life. It was his job to make her feel safe and loved and cared for, and that was a tall order for a soldier who could barely take care of himself. He simply couldn't do it on his own.

Not yet. Not until he got his voice back.

If what Gupta and Jenner said was true and his loss of speech was strictly psychological, he was pretty screwed up.

Before he could fully function as Kimmie's guardian, he had to deal with his issues, and the last thing he needed was the attraction between him and Jane muddying the water. He vowed to stick to Jane's rules.

Every last one of them.

T
he bed was empty.

Meredith blinked fully awake.

The bed was empty and the children were gone.

Adrenaline shot her off the mattress. Panic flared. She'd let down her guard. Slept too soundly, and now the kids weren't here. What if
he
had come into the house and kidnapped them?

She was on her feet, knees quivering, body reacting before her mind could reason out the situation. From downstairs came the sound of children's voices.

It was okay. Ben and Kimmie were here. They were safe.

He
hadn't found her again.
He
hadn't snuck into the house as she slept.
He
hadn't stolen the children.

Instead, Captain Brian Hutchinson had come home. That's why the kids weren't here. It was why they hadn't awakened her with requests for breakfast. Why she'd gotten the best sleep she'd had in five years.

Hutch had returned.

This was a good thing.

Why couldn't she accept that? Relax a little?

Because Hutch or no Hutch, the sociopathic stalker who'd sworn to kill her in a million horrible ways was still out there. And in spite of the frequent moves and the job changes and the hair dye and the weight loss to change her appearance and the gun in the locked box underneath her bed, she believed him. She knew what that monster was capable of.

Breathe.

She took several deep, cleansing breaths, did some yoga stretches to quell her quaking muscles, but her mind couldn't fully focus until she was one hundred percent certain that the children were okay.

It was six-forty-five. Normally, she never slept past six, even on the weekends. How and why had she slept so soundly? Not even rousing when the children got out of bed.

Quickly, she dressed in a clean uniform, and not bothering with makeup or combing her hair, hurried downstairs.

She heard their laughter before she saw them, Kimmie's high-pitched girly giggle, Ben's boyish chuckle, and Hutch.

Hutch was laughing too. A deeply masculine sound that rolled around throughout the house and immediately lifted Meredith's spirits. He might not be able to talk, but he could laugh.

They didn't see Meredith as she drifted into the kitchen. Hutch was at the stove with two kitchen chairs at either elbow, complete with a four-year-old standing on the seat of each chair. On the noses of all three cooks was a smear of yellow pancake batter, along with twin slashes of batter decorating their cheeks like war paint. All three wore aprons. The aprons were oversized and baggy on the kids. She'd never seen the aprons before and wondered where he'd gotten them.

Kimmie's apron read: “Life Is Short. Eat Dessert First.” Ben's proclaimed: “Real Men Cook.” Red rubber spatula in hand, Hutch dwarfed the navy blue apron tied around his neck. It announced in gold lettering: “My Job Is to Cook, Yours to Eat.”

Underneath the apron, Hutch wore jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt that gave him a lumberjack appearance. His face was clean-shaven. His eyes bright and clear. Fresh day. Fresh start.

A platter of crispy bacon cooked to perfection rested on the counter. On a buttered grill, poured in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head, pancakes browned. How had he managed that? It was a mystery on par with the aprons.

Meredith's worrywart impulse was to tell the children to get off the chairs and scold Hutch for allowing them to get so close to a hot stove. But they were having so much fun that she bit her tongue, pressed her palms together behind her back in reverse prayer pose, and watched.

A minute later, Hutch glanced up and met her eyes.

The way he looked at her singed her panties. She felt like she was bowling pins and he was the bowling ball, ripping down a shiny waxed lane for the perfect strike.

A vision that was completely unwanted, but there nonetheless, popped into her head. She saw herself taking him by the hand, leading him upstairs to his bedroom, yanking off his clothes to see if he really could cook up something she was eager to eat.

This was craziness.

Why wasn't she afraid of him? After everything she'd been through, she should be terrified of him. She didn't know exactly what had happened to him, but the fresh scars were clear. He was in a bad place and so was she. Why couldn't she stop thinking about sex whenever she looked at him? Why did she keep wondering what he tasted like?

This feeling had nothing to do with his steely jaw, chiseled cheekbones, prominent brow, and big, muscular body. Okay, that wasn't quite the truth. It had something to do with his handsome masculine attributes. Most women would fall at his feet. That was a given. But why was
she
doing it? She'd fallen for that testosterone-soaked, alpha male, he-man stuff once and it had turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life.

Was she that stupid?

Or had she honed her inner emotional radar enough to pick up on and decipher the small things that spoke volumes?

The innate kindness that softened his eyes whenever he looked at the children, and the sound of his laughter, hearty and honest and open, that belied the rigid set to his shoulder. His sense of humor that cropped up unexpectedly as it had last night with his joke about violating rule #4. It was in the way that Jesse had spoken about him, when he told her who Hutch was after she'd pepper-sprayed him, his voice top heavy and sincere with admiration.

In spite of his gruffness and rough edges, Brian Hutchinson was a good man.

But it didn't matter.

Meredith could not act on the attraction. She had nothing to offer him. Nothing to give. She lived on the run. Did her best to take care of her son and stay one step ahead of the dangerous man who dogged her. That was all she had the time and energy for.

“Mom!” Ben exclaimed. “Look what we made.”

She stepped over to the stove to admire the Mickey Mouse pancakes, tried not to notice that Hutch was barefooted and had the sexiest feet she'd ever seen—not too big, not too small, not too narrow, not too broad, long straight toes, trimmed nails. Perfect feet.

Eyes on Mickey
.

Meredith pressed a palm to her son's back to center her thoughts. “You made these?”

“He helpeded me.” Ben threw an enthusiastic arm around Hutch's waist.

Her son was touching Hutch and she was touching Ben, creating a physical link between the three of them. Even though she wasn't physically touching Hutch herself it was too close, too much like violating rule #4. Meredith dropped her hand, moved back.

“Unca Hutch.” Kimmie hopped down off her chair, almost tripping over her apron. “His name is Unca Hutch.”

“Unca Hutch,” Ben repeated, and beamed up at Hutch.

“Hold on, kids, let me get those aprons off you before you hang yourselves.” Meredith moved to untie the aprons from around the children's necks. “And be careful not to touch the stove. It's hot.”

“I know that,” Ben said in an exasperated, I'm-growing-up-let-me-do-things-on-my-own tone he had started using lately.

She was overprotective. She realized that, but she had good reason to smother. Disaster could very well lie around the next corner. All she had to do was let her guard slip for a second and Ben could be taken from her in the snap of a finger.

One of these days her son was going to demand independence, and then what?

Meredith pulled down her shirtsleeves over her hands. She'd worry about that when the time came. Until then, he was still within her control.

Hutch brought the food to the table and they sat down to eat breakfast together like a real family.

The atmosphere was different from last night's meal. She and Hutch had come to an understanding. Everything was going to be all right, at least through the Christmas holiday, and that was all the certainty she needed.

While it sounded good on the surface, Meredith couldn't help feeling wistful. Would a day ever come when she and Ben would have this for themselves—a strong family unit, a welcoming community, a permanent home and everything it represented?

It was a pointless question because she already knew the answer.

There would be no safety for her. No security. No freedom from fear. Not ever.

Not as long as her ex-husband, LAPD Detective Vick Sloane, lived.

A
fter Jane took the children to school before heading on to work, Hutch washed the dishes, tidied up, and then moved his things out of his bedroom and into his sister's bedroom as Jane's rules demanded. The bedroom had actually been his to begin with before Ashley moved in, but all signs of him had vanished amid the mess of her scattered possessions—clothes, makeup, jewelry. No telling when she would be back, but he didn't want to displace her things because she could pop up tomorrow, so he'd made a path through the clutter, changed the sheets, and called it good.

Once he finished those chores, he was at loose ends, prowling the house looking for something else to do and it wasn't even ten
a.m.
For most of his adult life he'd been a soldier. Every day was regimented, and the last couple of months had been consumed with his recovery.

Now here he was with time on his hands.

He could take his boat out, but it was drizzling. Not that he'd melt or anything, he just couldn't seem to rally the enthusiasm.

He could try to track down Ashley. Snoop around on her computer and see if he could unearth anything about this asshole she'd run off. But he'd been down that road before. If not this asshole, it would be someone else. The path always led to over-the-top drama and crazy, left-field accusations, in which he always came out the villain. That was the most frustrating thing in dealing with someone who suffered from BPD.

The more he tried to help her, the more it backfired on him. The same had been true of his mother before she finally succumbed to her demons and took her own life. After many years and many false steps, eventually he came to understand that he didn't have the power to fix his sister, and by continuing to try, he was actually making things worse. Growing up, she'd been his responsibility. Letting go of that mindset was almost impossible, but he had to do it for his own sanity. Joining the military had been his salvation in that regard, but now that was gone.