Don't Mess With Texas (29 page)

Dallas took another step inside his parents’ home. His dad sat in his old leather recliner, watching TV. Problem was, the screen was black. The thing wasn’t turned on.

“Dad?”

His father jumped up as if he’d been in some kind of a daze. “Dallas. You’re early.”

Dallas spotted four beer cans on the coffee table. When his mom was alive, she’d allowed him a six-pack a week. No doubt, he was over his quota now.

“It’s six-thirty, Dad.”

“Oh. I must have dozed off. Let me get that grill going.” He looked back over his shoulder as he walked into the kitchen. “So tell me about this new case.”

His dad wasn’t staggering, so he wasn’t drunk, but the sad truth hit. He was lonely. Dallas could almost feel the emotion in the air. Sure, his dad could get out with his ol’ buddies, but Dallas remembered his dad telling him once that all his friends did was complain about their old ladies. Did they know, his dad had asked, that he’d give anything if his own old lady was at home?

Dallas saw the photo albums on the coffee table. Was that what his dad did all day? Look at pictures and grieve? Guilt punched him in the gut. He’d been so wrapped up in his own grief that he hadn’t considered how much his father must be hurting.

He stepped closer to the kitchen. “Instead of cooking, why don’t we just go out? I have to pick up a key and return it to someone, then maybe we can go to that rib joint you like.”

His dad paused. “You got the time?”

Dallas nodded. He’d make the time. “Yeah.”

His dad chattered all the way to the car about how he
hadn’t had ribs in a long time. How the dinner out was a great idea. Dallas was about to start the car when his cell rang. His heart gripped with hope that it was Nikki, returning his calls. While he didn’t like the idea of groveling in front of his old man, it wouldn’t stop him.

“Excuse me,” he told his dad and looked at the call log.

It wasn’t Nikki’s number, but then he saw the name. “B. Littlemore.” Nikki’s grandmother. Could be Nikki.

“Hello?” Hope sounded in his voice.

“You said you’d take care of my girl,” Mrs. Littlemore scolded. “And from what I can tell right now, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it.”

“What’s wrong? Where’s Nikki?” Dallas clutched the steering wheel, remembering how sweet she’d looked curled up in his bed this morning.

“She was supposed to call me when she got home. I called her and she didn’t answer. Then I got Benny to stop by her apartment on the way to play rehearsal. Her door’s been broken in. Where’s my Nikki, Dallas O’Connor?”

Dread filled Dallas’s chest. “I don’t know. Look, I’ll drive over to her place now. But calm down, the apartment was broken into last night, so I’m sure she’s fine.” He felt his left eyebrow arch upward. But damn he didn’t want that to be a lie. “Wait. Maybe she went back up to the hospital to see Ellen.”

“Nope, I called there. And I called the gallery. No answer.”

“Does she have other friends?” He hated that he knew so little about her.

“Since the divorce, she’s not been very social,” Mrs. Littlemore said.

“Okay, you keep trying to reach her. I’ll head out to
her place. If I find her, I’ll give you a call. You do the same.” He hung up his phone and looked at his dad.

“You want a rain check, right? Don’t worry.” His dad reached for the door handle. “I understand.”

In honesty, that was exactly what he’d been going to say, but the disappointment in his dad’s voice shot that idea to hell. “Or you could come with me.”

A smile lit up his dad’s eyes. “Let’s go.”

Dallas took off, and remembered another smile he’d grown fond of seeing. The thought that something bad could have happened had regret pulling at his gut.

“I’
M SO SORRY
,” Nikki repeated for the tenth time, placing a stack of wet paper towels across Austin Brook’s eyes. Then she scowled. “Why didn’t Dallas tell me he was doing this?”

“I don’t know,” Austin growled then, yanking the wet paper towels off his face, he glared at her with bloodred eyes. “Goddamn it! I almost shot you.”

“But you didn’t,” she said, hoping to soothe him. “And I really appreciate it, too.”

He yanked the inch-thick stack of soggy paper towels back over his eyes and continued to mutter. She didn’t understand everything he said, but most of it was four-letter words.

“If Dallas had told me about this, I’d never have sprayed you. It’s his fault.”

“Don’t worry,” he snapped. “He’s gonna hear about this. You got a fan?”

“In the office,” she answered.

“Bring it here and plug it in. Please.” He motioned for her to hurry.

She took off to collect the fan. When she came running back in, Austin’s phone rang. He dropped the paper towels from his eyes and stared at the cell, then answered it. “The next time you ask me to do you a damn favor, remind me to tell you to just kiss my ass!”

Tony dropped his bags so he could open the front door. It hadn’t occurred to him that LeAnn might have changed the locks until he reached for his keys. Worry swelled in his chest that she might have tried to lock him out.

When his key slipped into the lock, he wanted to believe that her not changing the locks meant something. He grabbed his bags and held tight to his hope. Stepping over the threshold, he was surrounded by the feeling of coming home.

He belonged here. What’s more, he should have never left.

Inhaling LeAnn’s scent, he looked at the kitchen clock. He wasn’t sure what time she got off, but if her hours were the same and she still worked twelve-hour shifts, he guessed she’d gone in at eight that morning and would leave at eight tonight. That meant he had a little over an hour to get his stuff unpacked, clean up, and emotionally prepare for the fireworks that were bound to happen when she found him here. He exhaled and hoped like hell his lack of sleep didn’t hinder his ability to cope.

He dropped the bag of groceries on the kitchen table. He’d gotten a good bottle of red wine, a bag of the chocolate-covered peanuts she had a weakness for, her favorite coffee and hazelnut creamer, a pack of real butter, some croissants, and a bottle of the most expensive blackberry preserves his grocery carried. Expensive
hopefully meant quality. LeAnn loved croissants and jam. Finding the wine opener, he popped the cork so it would have plenty of time to breathe. LeAnn also loved a glass of wine and a snack before bedtime.

He carried the other bags with him as he moved into the living room. His gaze fell to the empty corner of the room where the baby swing had once sat. He remembered coming home every evening, kissing LeAnn then walking to the swing and lifting his daughter into his arms.

His chest clutched when he recalled that only a week before Emily died, she’d learned to smile. And with that precious smile on her face, she’d looked so much like LeAnn. That was the day Tony had completely and wholeheartedly fallen in love with his daughter. Oh, he’d loved her before, but her first smile was a heart snatcher.

Determined to make his homecoming about good things and not about what they had lost, he shook off his grief, and went to store his things in the spare bedroom. He intended to let LeAnn know right off that his plan included joining her in their bed just as soon she’d allow it.

He opened the third bedroom and dropped his bags inside. Then he walked back into the hall and stared at the closed door that led to the nursery. Curious to see what LeAnn had done with the room, he turned the knob. His breath caught.

The crib still had the pink sheet with teddy bears. The rocker still had a burping cloth thrown over one arm. There was even a little outfit set out on the changing table.

Had LeAnn even come in here since Emily died?

He’d been so grief stricken, losing his mom one week and then Emily the next, he hadn’t stopped to consider
what they needed to do with… her things. Or how they needed to go about healing from the loss. But standing here now, he knew they needed to clear out Emily’s things. They needed to move forward.

But first he had to win LeAnn over. Prove to her that she didn’t want this divorce. He shut the door and walked into the master suite. He stared at the bed where he and LeAnn had loved, played, teased, and laughed. That’s what he needed to make LeAnn remember.

He went back to the spare bedroom and dug into his bags. He pulled out a pair of jeans and clean underwear; the shirt was optional. LeAnn had always loved him without his shirt.
You know what it does to me when you run around without a shirt on
, she’d said to him a dozen times.

Grabbing his leather bag that contained his razor, deodorant, and aftershave—the aftershave LeAnn had picked out herself—he started down the hall to the guest bath.

He almost made the door when he remembered—the guest bath only had one of those whirlpool tubs and no shower. He recalled debating with LeAnn about adding a shower when they had the extra bathroom remodeled. She hadn’t wanted to have to hang a curtain rod.
You won’t ever use this bathroom. You got the shower in the master bath
.

Smiling, he headed to the master bath. This just might work in his favor.

He stopped by the king-size bed and a memory from way back in the beginning tickled his mind. He and LeAnn had just started dating and he’d brought her to his new home to have dinner with some friends. He hadn’t
slept with her yet, because she insisted they hadn’t waited long enough, and he’d caught her spraying his bed with her perfume.

“Just a little something to remember me by,” she’d said, blushing.

“So you want me to lay here tonight and get hard thinking about you?” he teased her.

She laughed and confessed, “Yeah. That’s sort of what I’d hoped.”

It had worked, too. From the moment he’d gotten into his bed that night, all he could think about was her. That next morning, he’d gone to her apartment and convinced her he’d waited long enough.

Grinning, he took out the aftershave, splashed some on his hands and then ran his hands under her pillow.

Then he went to get ready, eager to start seducing his way back into LeAnn’s arms, back into her bed, and back into her life. He’d waited long enough.

As soon as Dallas got off the phone with a very pissed-off Austin, he turned the car around and headed to the gallery. Then he called Mrs. Littlemore. “She’s fine. She’s at the gallery. Yes, I’ll take care of her door. I promise.”

“I still don’t get it,” his dad said when he hung up. “Who sprayed Austin with Mace?”

Dallas ran a hand through his hair. He’d tried to fill his dad in on what was going on, but it wasn’t easy. “Nikki did.”

“Nikki, the girl who killed her husband.”

“Nikki didn’t kill her husband. It was her ex-husband who was killed.”

“So she killed her ex-husband.”

“No, Dad.” Dallas tried not to lose it. “Nikki didn’t kill anyone.”

“So who killed her ex?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

His dad nodded. “So why did she Mace Austin?”

Dallas pulled up in front of the gallery. “It’s complicated. Can I explain it later?”

His dad nodded again. “Is your job always this complicated?”

Being a retired plumber, his dad never had understood the whole law enforcement-PI appeal, and questioned how he could have raised two boys who did. “Not always,” Dallas said, and realized his life hadn’t felt this complicated until Nikki.

They got out of the car. “But just so I’m clear,” his dad said right before Dallas grabbed the doorknob, “someone got the Mace away from her, right?”

“I don’t think she’ll Mace you, Dad.” Dallas wondered if he should worry about himself. While he’d been on the phone with Austin, he’d heard her in the background muttering about this being his fault.

They walked into the gallery and Dallas looked at Austin, shirtless, sitting in a chair, holding a fan up to his face, and a dozen or more piles of wet paper towels at his feet.

“What? You bring your dad because you’re scared I’m gonna whip your ass?” Austin asked.

There was humor in his partner’s voice but, knowing how much Mace hurt, Dallas decided not to get too close. When he’d asked Austin to call Roxie, owner of CSCU, Crime Scene Clean Up, Austin hadn’t been happy. Sure, Dallas knew Roxie was sweet on Austin. Which was why
Austin hadn’t wanted to do it. But that was exactly why Austin had to be the one to call her. She wouldn’t have been nearly as prompt to do the job if Dallas had called her.

“Scared of you?” his dad piped up, teasing Austin. “You let a girl beat you up.”

Austin turned his bloodred eyes back on Dallas, only all the tease was gone. “I almost shot her. I had my finger on the trigger.”

Dallas remembered how he’d almost shot her last night. “Where’s she at?” he asked, worried she’d already taken off.

“Getting more wet paper towels. She feels bad. But she blames you.”

Right then Nikki walked out from the back of the gallery. Her gaze slapped against Dallas. “This is your fault.” She walked over to Austin and plopped a handful of wet paper towels over his eyes and then turned her angry blue eyes full force on Dallas.