It Must Be Magic (22 page)

“I think that it would be best if we call off our agreement. Now that this whole murder business is over, Erika will be fine without a female influence.”

“Oh.” Somehow that hurt worse than yelling at her for being stupid or outright calling her a liar.

He stood up. Lili stood, too, hugging Einstein close. She couldn’t let Tanner tower over her.

“You shouldn’t stay alone,” he said, his eyes focused on the open kitchen screen door. Then he turned back to her. “Call your boss. I’m sure she’ll help.”

“Oh. Sure. Kate’s great.”

Pieces of her heart broke off and scattered across the kitchen linoleum. He wanted her to go to Kate. Instead of him. Maybe she should apologize.

Einstein hissed against her chest.
Don’t you dare. Stand by what you did.

Einstein was right. She’d made a mistake, but her heart had been in the right place. “I can’t apologize for what I did.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“I mean, I had to do something.” And Tanner hadn’t been willing to help. She didn’t say that though. She wasn’t going to cast blame on someone else for her own actions.

“Someone had to do something. And Lady — I mean, Patsy — came to me for help.” She squeezed Einstein until the cat squeaked. “I couldn’t desert her.”

“I know that, too.”

Then why are you so mad at me?
She bit the words off. They sounded like the sentiment of a child, not a full-grown human. “What would you have done, Tanner? Left her to her fate?”

“I didn’t leave
you
to your fate.”

His expression never changed, simply remained hard and cold. He wasn’t the man who had touched her last night. Or maybe she wasn’t the same woman. She
hadn’t
made a mistake going after Patsy. She’d done a human thing. She talked to animals, but she didn’t have a crystal ball that told her what was going to happen. She hadn’t known Hiram had been looking for Patsy with a gun. If she had, she’d have done things differently. For God’s sake, Hiram Battle had been a guest in Tanner’s home many times over. He hadn’t known there was something terribly wrong with the man. Even Roscoe hadn’t. So why was she to blame?

Anger warred with reason inside Lili. She’d never been an angry person. It took a
lot
to make her angry. Anger was as wasteful an emotion as greed or envy. And she wouldn’t let it get her now.

She set Einstein on the floor.

“Thanks for not leaving me to my fate. As you suggested, I’ll call Kate and have her pick me up. I’m sure she won’t mind letting me spend the night. Or she might stay here.”

She didn’t say anything snippy or tell him to get out.

Yet Tanner simply walked out her kitchen door. The hole in the hedge swallowed him up as she watched him through the window.

She didn’t cry until after she’d called Kate.

“I
CAN’T BELIEVE IT.
”

Elbows on the kitchen table, Roscoe held his head in his hands. Tanner felt for him. His father had known Hiram Battle almost from the first week Roscoe had moved in with Tanner. Hiram and the boys had indulged in their weekly pinochle game. He’d
trusted
Hiram, considered him a dear friend.

Now Roscoe had to face that he’d never known Hiram at all.

“I can understand about the book, that was a misguided decision because his friend was gone,” Roscoe muttered, almost to himself, “but why the murder?” He jerked his head up to look at Tanner. “He’s over seventy years old. How could his reputation matter anymore when compared to murder?”

Tanner had sent Erika to her room after telling the two of them the bare bones. She’d been thoughtful and concerned for Roscoe, but Tanner had determined the rest of the discussion should be man to man. Or son to father.

“Hiram says he didn’t kill his friend Foster for the book.” Tanner opened the fridge and grabbed two beers, twisted the tops off and put one in Roscoe’s hands. “But we’ve got to face the fact that maybe he lied about that, too.”

Roscoe took a long swallow, then shook his head, his mouth drooping in a deep frown. “He beat a man to death with that damn walking stick of his. He tried to break into our house. He did break into Lili’s house. He would have killed her, too, to hide his secret. There’s no reason he wouldn’t have lied about the rest of it.”

Tanner steeled himself against the thought of Lili as Roscoe met his eyes with a rheumy gaze. For the first time, he looked like an old man. Far older than his sixty-five years.

“The sheriff will figure it out, Dad.” He rarely called his father by the title, but in his gut, he knew it was needed now.

“How am I supposed to tell Chester and Linwood? This will kill them.”

Tanner glanced at his watch. Outside, the shadows lengthened, and the sun was going down. The late evening breeze rustled the rhododendrons by the side of the porch. “I don’t think you’ll have to tell them. By now, the whole town knows.”

Roscoe sighed, cupped his cheek in his hand and leaned heavily on his elbow. “We should order pizza. I don’t feel like finishing dinner.” He’d set pans on the stove, but never turned on the burners. The pot roast was raw in the oven.

“Pizza sounds great, Dad.”

Leaning back, Roscoe grabbed the phone off the wall, then held the receiver to his chest. “What kind does Lili like?”

“Lili?”

“She’s not going to want to cook any more than I want to. And I think she should spend the night again, too. We shouldn’t leave her alone.”

“The danger is over.”

Roscoe’s lip twitched. “It’s still going to take a long time for her to get over it. She almost got killed today.”

“She said she’d call her boss. They’re friends.”

Roscoe stabbed at his chest. “
We’re
her friends. And we’re closer, right next door.”

Damn. It had felt bad enough when he’d told Lili that he wanted to end their agreement. But it was for the best. He’d seen that out in the field today, maybe not during the bad moments, but later, when he’d realized that Lili was a law unto herself. She would always get herself into bizarre scraps, and he couldn’t be around to get her out of them. Shit, that sounded harsh. As if he were some asshole who didn’t care about tossing her to the hungry animals outside her door. What he meant was that while he found her attractive and desirable physically, he didn’t see how she could fit into their lives.

She was a good person with a good heart, but she wasn’t the stable, levelheaded influence he wanted in Erika’s life. He felt extremely calm about the decision.

“She’s better off staying with her boss,” he said, rather than try to explain the whole thing to Roscoe.

“Well, we can at least ask her.” The phone in his hand, Roscoe rose from his chair. Tanner could swear he heard his bones creak.

Hell. He had to say
something.
“I already told Lili how we feel. Just because we’re neighbors doesn’t mean we have to get entangled in each other’s lives. She’s fine with that. Let her go to her boss’s house.”

Roscoe tipped his head. “Last night
wasn’t
entanglement?”

Tanner’s heart skipped a couple of beats. “It was just an outing to the Boardwalk.”

“I’m talking about afterward. I might be old, but I’m not dead, and I know when someone’s got hot pants. And you had ’em bad last night.”

Roscoe had intimated something earlier, but Tanner had been too worried about Lili to react to it. He wasn’t about to react now, either. “Drop it, Roscoe.”

“Are you telling me you didn’t make love to her last night?”

His skin heated, a flush rising up his neck to his cheeks. “It isn’t any of your business.”

Roscoe stared at him, and truth to tell, Tanner did feel like…an asshole. He shouldn’t have touched Lili. He’d known it was wrong from the moment he’d first met her, but he’d justified it, making excuses so he could have what he wanted.

“You broke her heart, didn’t you?”

“No.” They weren’t in
that
deep. It was only a couple of times. At best, it was heavy-duty lust. She’d get over it. He’d get over it.

Except that he’d felt as if he were dying himself when he’d seen the gun in Hiram’s hand aimed right at Lili.

“She’s perfect for us,” Roscoe went on. “She’s perfect for Erika. She’s perfect for you.”

He had to say something, and he concentrated on only one thing. “Lili isn’t the kind of woman I could entrust Erika to.”

Roscoe slammed the phone down on the table so hard Tanner was sure Erika would hear it up in her room. And come running.

“Tanner, you’re my son, and I love you, and I’ve never wanted to say this to you, but you have your head up your ass.”

He laughed though it hurt his throat, rubbed his eyes, then set his elbows on the table. “You never had to
say
it. I always knew it. You don’t approve of the way I’m raising Erika. You think I make her study too hard and prepare for the future too much, and she misses out on all the fun things a kid gets to do.”

“There’s that, but that’s not why you have your head up your ass right now.”

“Tell me why then.” It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had these discussions. Ad nauseum.

“Because you could find the wonder again with Lili. Like you had it with Karen. And that would make your life so much better. It would make Erika’s life better.”

His jaw tensed. They didn’t discuss Karen. He wasn’t about to start now.

But Roscoe was on a rant. “Not many people get a second chance at a love as good as the first. Lord knows I didn’t after your mother. But you could have something as good with Lili as you had with Karen.”

“I don’t want what I had with Karen.”

“How could you not want to find love like that again? I don’t understand.” Roscoe stared at him, his lips parted, his head shaking slightly.

“This isn’t the time or the place to discuss it.” He couldn’t risk Erika walking in. “I’ll go out for the pizza.”

He rose only to have Roscoe block his path. “You need Lili for Erika. That girl needs a mother. And Lili is perfect.”

“Roscoe, drop it. Now.”

“No. I’ve wanted to say it for years, but I’ve never had the courage. Well, I have it now. You’ve become hard and uncompromising over the years, and you’re getting harder with each passing day. You can’t throw Lili away like this. You can’t throw away the opportunity to have the kind of perfect woman like Karen.”

Tanner’s blood pressure soared. His fists clenched. Despite his revelations at the Boardwalk last night, today had driven home the essential truth. One bad thing outweighed all the good things.

He kept his voice low, quiet, almost deadly. “I don’t want what I had with Karen. She
wasn’t
perfect.
We
weren’t perfect together.”

“You’re afraid to love again.”

Love. The notion beat against his eyeballs. He wasn’t in love with Lili. He was in lust. What was there to be afraid of when it was lust that had blinded him for the past few days? “It has nothing to do with love. It has everything to do with the kind of woman Lili is. And I don’t want that kind of woman again. Not for me. Not for Erika.”

“What do you mean, again? Karen was the perfect mother.”

Tanner simply boiled over, as if Roscoe had turned the burners on under everything at once. “What the hell would you know about it?”

“Everything. She and I talked.”

“You talked, yeah right. Did she tell you what she wanted to do, where she was going when she had that accident?”

“No. It wasn’t my business.”

“And it’s not your business now. But I’ll tell you so you’ll shut up once and for all. She wanted to go to Sedona to ‘cultivate’ her psychic powers. For six weeks. She wanted to leave Erika behind with a babysitter for six fucking weeks. That wasn’t being a good mother. That was abandonment.”

Roscoe’s lips tightened. “I don’t believe it.”

“Fine.” Tanner slashed a hand through the air. “Don’t believe it.” Then he pointed his finger in Roscoe’s face. “But that’s what she wanted to do. And when I said no way, she left Erika with Wanetta and took off while I was at work.”

He remembered the fear ripping his guts apart, the awful ache when he’d gotten that phone call from the highway patrol. His heart had jumped to his throat and stayed there, rendering him incapable of speech, incapable of doing anything.

He’d had that same paralyzing flash in the field today. Seeing Lili out there.

He’d made it through losing Karen only because of Erika. He couldn’t let her down. Lili was wrong for them. Lili had the potential for doing the same crazy things Karen had done.

He wouldn’t go through any of that again. Ever.

Roscoe didn’t say a thing. His mouth worked, but nothing came out.

Tanner had a point to make with Roscoe, and he drove it home. “Do you know what six weeks is to a two-year-old child? It’s forever. So don’t tell me Karen was some sort of paragon.” He heard a thump upstairs, and his heart jumped. His head pounded. “I don’t want Erika to know. Ever. I want her to keep her good memories of her mother. Understand?”

“But Karen was coming back,” Roscoe said, his voice barely more than a breath.

“She
didn’t
come back.”

“The accident wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t help that.”

“If she hadn’t left when I told her not to, she wouldn’t have
had
the accident. She’d still be alive.”

His father put his hand on his arm. “Tanner.”

Tanner fended off the show of sympathy. He didn’t need it. “The discussion is over.”

“But I’m sorry. I never knew.”

“Would it have made any difference?”

“I would have understood how you were with Erika. Worried about her. Wanting her to be practical.”

“I want her to be
safe.
And she’s not safe with Lili. So let’s not talk about her again. I’ll get the pizza.”

“Tanner.” Roscoe moved out of the way, but he took Tanner’s arm, not allowing himself to be shaken off this time. “I have to say one more thing. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I have to say it.”

Tanner’s eyes ached, his chest throbbed. “Fine, say it, Roscoe, then we’ll put this to bed. And I don’t ever want to discuss it again.”

“Maybe ordering her not to go wasn’t the best way to handle it. Maybe you could have compromised with her.”