In the Line of Fire: Hot Desert Heroes, Book 1 (11 page)

Delaney huffed out a sigh and rubbed between her brows. As usual Lily was full of wisdom and gave great advice. She was right.

Delaney just needed to practice patience and give Beck, give both of them, time. Which wouldn’t be hard to do with him being out of the country for who knew how long. Where it would become difficult was the next time he had a job he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her anything about. If she wanted their relationship to go somewhere, and she did, she’d have to learn to deal with it.

Patience in dealing with a man and giving him the benefit of the doubt had once been something she’d been able to do. But her ex-husband had given her life lessons, ones she’d learned very well, that trusting a man was the wrong thing to do. She’d learned not to trust. She’d learned that patience only brought her heartache. And a smack in the face.

But she knew, or hoped, that Beck wasn’t like her ex. And she had to be patient enough to find out.

Delaney opened her mouth to tell her friends just that when she heard her name called. Looking up, she saw her ex-husband. What the hell?

She shot to her feet. “What’re you doing here?” she demanded, her throat tight, which made her voice thin and full of nerves. Which she was. But she was also outraged. Of all the coffee joints in town, he had to walk into this one?

Franklin West’s dark-blond hair was as immaculately styled as always and his skin had the same healthy tan she remembered. He stood about six feet tall and wore his suit extremely well. And his face, as handsome as an angel’s her mother had once said.

Delaney’s mind called up an image of Beck, and the man in front of her, the one she’d once loved and had spent seven years of her life trying to get him to love her back, fell short. He was nothing to her now. Nothing but a small, meanspirited asshat.

Nothing like Beck.

She became vaguely aware that Rachel, too, had stood up and moved closer to her.

“You look comfortable,” Frank said. “You come here often?”

“Like you don’t know two of my best friends own the place,” she gritted. “Why are you here?”

He spread his hands. “I heard they have great coffee,” he told her. “I just came to check it out. I had no idea you hung out here, honest.”

At his words the past came roaring back at her.
There’s nothing going on between me and her, honest.
Or
Honest to God, you’re imagining things.
And the best one of all,
I have no idea what you’re talking about, honest.

“Like I believe anything you say.”

He shook his head. “You never were trusting enough, sweetheart.”

She clenched her jaw. In her presence less than ten seconds and already he’d started up with the you’re-not-enough crap. “I trusted you, Frank, and look where it got me. So now, where you’re concerned, you’re right. I don’t trust you. And I have no interest whatsoever in talking to you. So if you have nothing meaningful to say, we’re done.”

He gave her the once-over and shook his head. “Seems to me you’ve been hanging out here a little too much.” He leaned forward and said quietly, “Maybe you should think about laying off the cupcakes for a while.”

“All right, that’s enough.” Lily got to her feet. “Sir, I’m going to ask you to leave the premises. Right now.”

He looked her over too. “And you are?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m one of the owners but, more importantly, I’m Laney’s friend. So you can leave. Now. And don’t come back.”

He crossed his arms. “That doesn’t make good business sense, running off a customer. You know what they say. Every customer who has a bad experience tells ten other people.”

She gave him a sweet, toothy smile. “You feel free to tell your friends that you were a scumbag to one of the finest women I know and that’s why you got your ass kicked out.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. “Now, do I need to ask you again, or should I call the cops?”

“I’m going.” He looked at Delaney, his eyes flinty. “Things never change with you, do they?” Before she could respond, he turned on his heel and stomped out.

Rachel put an arm around Delaney’s shoulders and pulled her back down on the couch. “You okay?” she asked softly.

“How can he always make things out to be my fault?” Delaney asked in true bewilderment. When the others continued to stare at her with concern, she huffed out a sigh. “I’d feel better if he had never come in, but, yeah. I’m all right. He’s the asshole, not me.”

“Right on!”

Delaney looked at Lily as she sank back into her seat. “Thank you for that. I wish I could say you didn’t have to do it, but I really don’t want him hanging out at the same place I do.” She grimaced. “To be honest, I’d probably stop coming here if he were a regular. Even if he were a semiregular. So I appreciate what you just did.”

“Believe me when I tell you it was my pleasure. If that was the way he talked to you when you were married, and from what you’ve told me in the past it was, wow. Sweetheart, I don’t know how you managed seven years with the bastard.”

Delaney told her friends something she’d never confessed before. “I was going to leave him after the first time he hit me, but my mom convinced me to stay. She said I had a duty to uphold my vows and had me believing if I just tried harder to be the kind of wife he deserved he wouldn’t get so angry with me.”

“Wow.” Lily looked equal parts astonished and outraged. “Your mom sure is a piece of work. But, honey, you didn’t deserve to be hit. You deserved a medal for dealing with those two.”

Surprised she didn’t feel worse after an altercation with her ex, Delaney grabbed her coffee drink and took a sip, then made a face at the cool temperature. She looked at her friends. “Thank you all, so much, for dropping everything and coming to my aid. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have friends like you who have my back.” She couldn’t help but get a little misty, and when she glanced at her friends, they all had wet eyes too.

“Always!” Rachel said.

“We didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done for any one of us. That’s what friends are for,” Andi said with a gentle smile.

Delaney picked up her muffin and raised it in a toast gesture. “Here’s to great friends.”

“Here, here,” the others said.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to see Edmond leaving the shop with a dark scowl on his swarthy features. She knew it wasn’t because he was unhappy with the food or coffee because Lily and Andi never turned out any product that was less than stellar. Regardless, his bad mood wasn’t her business or her problem. She had enough to deal with on her own.

She put her attention back to her friends. The conversation turned to less pressing matters and she settled in and enjoyed spending time with her girls.

Chapter Nine

One week later, Trigg Halverson’s prediction about his department came true and on Friday late morning all five of them were laid off. Typical, Delaney thought crossly, that they would wait until the end of the week. Get all the work they could out of them then lower the hatchet.

Observed by one of the suits from TechAm, just before lunchtime she packed up the few personal items she had left on her desk and signed off her computer for the last time. She gave her now-former boss a tearful hug and a whispered “Don’t be a stranger” before she went out to her car.

As she had been doing since the baby quilt was stolen, after she placed the box in the trunk, she checked the backseat then climbed behind the wheel. She locked the doors and turned on the car, setting the air-conditioning at full blast. She really wanted to talk to Beck, but the only thing she could do would be to leave a voice mail, and that wouldn’t make her feel any better because he’d said he wouldn’t even have his phone with him. She thought it might even make her feel worse.

When she got home she carried her box inside and set it down by the front door. She’d go through the contents eventually. Just not today. Even though she knew it was coming, it had still been an emotional event. One she’d have to go through again when Colbie finally lost her job, which could happen as soon as next week. She was glad her friend continued to have employment because it would give her longer to look for work yet still have a paycheck coming in.

She plopped down on the sofa and pulled her cell phone from her purse. Scrolling through her contacts, she selected Gabriel Falco’s number and pressed the Send button. As soon as he answered, she said, “Hey, Gabe. It’s Laney.”

“Got you on my display, darlin’. Know it’s you.” Amusement filled his rich voice.

“Oh.” She still wasn’t completely at ease with any of Beck’s guys, even this happily married one. “Um…”

“Laney, what’s wrong?”

“I just got laid off,” she told him.

“Great!” he said with such exuberance it startled her. “When can you start?”

His immediate response was gratifying. “Um, Monday?” she sort of said/asked. She sounded like Colbie, giving a statement in the form of a question.

“That’s fine. If you can be here at nine, we’ll get you scanned for the entry doors and server room.”

“Scanned?” She blinked.

“We use a biometric reader that scans the veins in your palms. It’s very effective and nearly impossible to bypass. Though deliveries and visitors are buzzed in.”

“Oh. Okay.” She paused a second then asked, “Should I bring anything with me?”

“We’ve got to go through the normal new-hire stuff, so I’ll need either your passport or your driver’s license and Social Security card so we can verify your eligibility to work in the US.”

She let out a chuckle. “I realize it’s the law, but it still sounds funny that I have to verify I’m allowed to work in the country I was born in. But, yeah, I can do that.”

“Do you have plans for dinner tonight?”

“You mean besides sitting alone in my house and trying not to feel sorry for myself for losing a great job?”
Or worry about my boyfriend?

He laughed. “Yeah, besides that.”

“No, not really. Why?” Did he have work for her to do?

“Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?”

It was tempting, but… “Won’t your wife mind? Getting such late notice, I mean.”

“Viv loves having company,” he said. “And she always cooks enough for an army. Come over around five thirty. We’ll have drinks then dinner at six. I warn you, though, there are three hooligans who share the house with us, all younger than eleven.”

She smiled. “I love kids,” she told him. “I’ll see you at five thirty, as long as you’re sure your wife won’t mind.”

“She won’t. I’ll text you our address and directions. See you later.”

Because she believed a guest always brought something with them, and also because children were involved, she took the time to make brownies and piled a ton of fudge icing on them, then wondered if any of the kids had gluten sensitivity. At least she’d left walnuts out, so if any of them were allergic to tree nuts, it wouldn’t be a problem, but if she’d been making them for herself, she would have chopped up a couple of handfuls and tossed them in the batter.

She took a quick shower and changed into jeans and a purple silk blouse, one just fancy enough to dress up the jeans a bit, and paired the outfit with flat sandals. She pulled her hair back into a simple ponytail and kept her makeup light.

* * * * *

At five o’clock she made sure a lamp in the living room was lit and the outside lights turned on, then she locked up the house and headed toward Gabe’s. His directions took her up into the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains, and as she usually did whenever she took a drive up that way, she gawked at the houses she passed.

Some she knew were easily over a million dollars. When she pulled into Gabe’s driveway she knew his house wasn’t anywhere near that, but it was still more house than she could afford. And, good God, the view of the mountains he must have from the back of the house, with saguaro and prickly pear cacti dotting the foreground, was a million-dollar vista.

She parked and grabbed her purse and the plastic-wrapped paper plate of brownies. She’d barely taken her finger off the doorbell before it opened. She looked down to see the cutest little girl ever in a frilly blue dress with sparkly silver shoes. “Hello,” Delaney said with a smile.

“Hi.” Dark eyes studied her and began to twinkle. “You’re pretty.”

That startled a laugh out of her. “So are you, sweetie. Very pretty.” She squatted to get on eye level with the girl. “I like your shoes.” At a guess, she figured the little girl was about five years old.

“I like your shoes too. I’m Sofia.”

“Hi there, Sofia. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Delaney.”

“Sofie, baby, don’t leave our guest standing on the doorstep,” Gabe said as he walked toward the door. He was in dress slacks and long-sleeved shirt, probably what he’d worn to work that day, though he was missing the tie, having instead undone the top couple of buttons and rolled the sleeves up over his forearms. And he was barefoot.

Delaney straightened. “I think she was just making sure the brownies didn’t leave her sight,” she quipped with a wink at the little girl whose smile widened, showing off a deep dimple in one cheek.

“Oh, you’re a hit already.” Gabe picked up his little girl, his arm supporting her booty, her legs dangling on either side of his hip. “Come on in and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the family.”

Just then two boys came racing toward her, miniature versions of their father, with dark hair and eyes, both barefoot and wearing jeans and T-shirts, their damp hair testament to having recently bathed. They came to a breathless halt beside Gabe.

“These two hooligans are Dalton…” he indicated the taller child, “…and Raeden.”

“You brought brownies?” the shorter boy asked. She judged him to be around seven or eight.

“Yep,” she told his hopeful face. “I hope that’s all right,” she said to Gabe.

“It’s perfect. Come on. Let me introduce you to Viv.”

He put Sofia on her feet and led Delaney into the kitchen, followed by the children. As they all trooped into the room, Gabe’s wife turned away from the stove with a smile. She was in a simple cotton dress, the bright turquoise a beautiful match for her pale, flawless skin. Her legs were bare, her feet in low-heeled, white mules. “Delaney,” she said warmly, coming forward to take the plate of brownies from her. She placed it on the kitchen island and then drew Delaney into a brief hug. “It’s good to meet you.”

Even wearing flats, Delaney was at least three inches taller than the other woman and had to bend at the waist to make the hug less awkward. “Thank you,” Delaney murmured, a bit shy at the exuberant greeting. “And please call me Laney. All my friends do.” The bright look of happiness that flared in Vivian’s eyes sent warmth surging through her. “I hope my being invited at the last minute wasn’t a problem.”

“Not at all. I usually fix enough to feed a family of ten.”

“See? I told you,” Gabe said with a grin. “We eat on leftovers for days.” He drew his wife to his side, one arm around her waist, and pressed a gentle and obviously loving kiss against her temple.

She not as lovingly pinched his side. His grin indicated this wasn’t the first time she’d done it and probably wouldn’t be the last, and he was okay with that.

“He’s such a liar,” Vivian said. “The kids and I have leftovers for lunch.
He
hardly ever has leftovers.”

Delaney raised her eyebrows at him and grinned at his abashed look.

“Besides, I love having company,” Vivian said. “Especially someone who uses big words now and then.”

“Says the woman who homeschools our children.”

Since most of the schools had started back in session already, Delaney could only imagine what kind of day the other woman had already had. She clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

“Just have a seat at the breakfast bar and keep me company while I finish up.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. Guests, especially first-time guests, don’t get put to work.” She gave her a wink. “We’ll do that the next time you come over.”

More warmth spread through Delaney at the thought of there being a next time. From the little she’d seen, Gabe had a lovely family. Since Vivian seemed to have things under control, Delaney hoisted her booty onto a barstool.

“Mom, can I have a brownie?” Raeden asked.

“No.” Vivian rested a hand on top of his head a moment then combed her fingers through his hair. Her expression seemed torn, as if she didn’t want to deny her son but at the same time knew that at his age it was a bad idea. “We’ll be having dinner soon enough. You can have a brownie afterward.”

“Mom, but they’re
brownies
,” he said with such drama anyone listening would almost think the world would end if he didn’t get one
right now
.

His mother, however, had likely heard this countless times before and was obviously unimpressed. “When you’re my age you can have brownies before dinner. You can have brownies
for
dinner if you want. But when you’re seven, you can’t.”

When he continued to badger his mother, Gabe said, “Raeden. Enough. Brownies after dinner or not at all.”

That shut the boy up.

Gabe looked at Delaney. “What can I get you to drink?”

“White wine, if you have it.”

“One white wine, coming up.”

In just a couple of minutes he took a bottle from the refrigerator and opened it then placed a generous glass in front of her. He settled onto the stool next to her with a beer. When Sofia pulled on his shirt, he scooped her up and set her on his lap.

“Boys, go on back into the family room and watch TV until dinner’s ready,” he directed.

They were off without having to be told twice, pushing at each other and giggling little-boy laughs. Delaney smiled at their antics.

“You want to go with ’em, baby?” Gabe asked his daughter softly.

She shook her head and leaned against his body, her temple on his shoulder.

He rested his cheek against her hair a moment, then lifted his head and looked at Delaney. “I have a new-hire packet you can take home with you,” he told her after taking a swig of his beer. “It has your offer letter in it, outlining wages and benefits, and details what you’ll need to bring with you on Monday. I’ll give it to you before you leave.” To his wife he said, “Honey, don’t let me forget.”

She smiled and shook her head. “For such a brilliant man, you sure can be absentminded.” She glanced at Delaney. “But never when it comes to his duties. Only when it’s fill-in, like this.”

“You don’t handle hiring at all?” Delaney asked.

He shook his head and took another draw from his beer. “I leave that up to Beck and Ty, since they’re the principals in this venture. I’m just a lowly employee.”

Vivian snorted but didn’t say anything.

“Just one question.” Gabe waited until Delaney was looking at him before he asked, “How fast do you type?”

What was it with these guys’ concern about how fast she typed? First Beck, now Gabe.

“On a bad day, around ninety words a minute, after errors.”

He let out a whistle. “For that alone, I’d hire you.”

“If that was something you did, which it isn’t,” his wife reminded him. Potholders in hand, she opened the oven and drew out a casserole dish. The top was cheesy and bubbling from the heat. The sweet and spicy aromas of tomato sauce, garlic, and Italian seasoning flooded the air. She set the dish down on the black marble countertop. “Hope you like lasagna,” she said.

“I do,” Delaney responded. She looked at Vivian and gave her two thumbs-ups. “It smells fabulous. If it tastes even half as good as it smells, I’ll be in heaven.”

“I made it from an old recipe of Gabe’s grandmother.”

“Been in the Falco family for generations, brought over from the old country.” He kissed his daughter and set her down as he got to his feet. “Go get your brothers, baby,” he told her. “Then you all need to wash your hands for dinner.”

“Okay, Daddy,” she said agreeably and skipped off.

“She’s adorable.” Delaney looked at Vivian. “I really do love her shoes.”

The other woman laughed. “Those are her visitor shoes. Whenever we have company, those are the shoes she has to wear. I’m not sure what we’ll do when she outgrows them.”

“Buy her a bigger pair,” Gabe said as he approached the kitchen sink.

“So says the father she has wrapped nice and snug around her little finger.”

Gabe grinned and bumped her hip with his. He washed his hands and dried them with a kitchen towel then picked up the potholders. As he carried the lasagna pan to the dining room table, which was situated in a large alcove behind the breakfast bar, he said over his shoulder, “Make yourself useful, Laney, and grab the salad bowl from the fridge.”

She felt a little weird going into their refrigerator, but he’d told her to. She washed her hands as well before she opened the fridge. It was remarkably organized, especially for there being three children in the house. “Do I need to grab salad dressing?” she asked as she pulled out the bowl and removed the plastic wrap from the top.