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Alex
bit his tongue. Talking about police work with Cruz would get them nowhere, so they generally left the topic alone, the Westmore’s version of the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room scenario.

Nick reached for the phone, his little fingers anxious. “Tell him to huwwy.”

Alex grinned, sloughing off thoughts of police, meth and wayward wives, the light in the little boy’s eyes bright and engaging. “Nick says hurry.”

“You tell him I’m on my way.”

Alex passed on the reassurance with a nod as he disconnected the call. Despite their differences, he, Mac and Cruz stood together. Right now one of them had suffered a cheap shot, but they’d be there to help him along, give him time until things got better.

No matter how long that took.

And in the meantime, two little boys needed to be tossed in the air, rolled on the ground, and wrestled into submission in proper fashion. Wisconsin men didn’t hold real well with the idea of Metro boys. Uh, uh. Boys were boys and girls were girls and Alex was convinced the differences were inspired by God himself, not to be messed with by twenty-first century pseudo-psychology.

And why that thought brought an image of Cress Dietrich to mind, he had no idea, but a good hour of little boy fun ought to erase random images of the jean-wearing, tougher-than-nails detective with a gimpy leg.

He hoped.

Chapter Seven

“You’re recommending a fourteen day chemo cycle, Doctor?”

Dr. Holland nodded. “Yes. Studies have shown the fourteen day cycle of R-CHOP 14 to be effective against aggressive NHL’s. The downside is the body loses seven days of recovery time between treatments, which can mean heightened side effects.”

Cress frowned. “NHL’s?”

“Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphomas,” the doctor explained.

“So this
is
an aggressive cancer?” Cress persisted, the frown deepening.

The doctor nodded while Gran squirmed. “I thought we were ready to get this show underway?” Her scowl traveled from Cress to the doctor. “Does a body have to share all her information with every Tom, Dick or Harry that comes along? Fourteen days is fine with me if it gets this business over and done with quicker.”

“But, Gran.” Cress turned in her seat, ready to protest.

Dr. Holland interrupted, nailing Gran with a stern expression. “You’re the one that brought Cress into this, Norma, not me. And you gave me permission to explain things.”

“Not to take all day I didn’t.”

“Gran.”

“It’s all right.” The doctor eased the moment with a smile in Cress’s direction. “Old people get ornery if we interrupt their daily schedule. You know how it is.” She slid an open wink Cress’s way. “If they miss their favorite game shows, the world as we know it might end.”

“Like I have time to monkey with things like that,” Gran scoffed, standing, her hand automatically reaching for support she hadn’t needed a year previous. “If you keep yourself busy enough, you don’t give a good hoot if the danged TV blew up.”

“Seems to me I caught you watching Grey’s Anatomy re-runs the other night,” Cress offered, keeping her voice carefully level but unable to hide the side smirk.

“That’s different,” Gran declared. She’d gotten her bearings now and headed toward the door, feet thumping. “That McDreamy guy is nothing to shake a stick at, even for an old gal like me. And I can’t imagine what he sees in that Meredith woman. Controlling little wench. I like Rose.”

“Rose?” Cress hiked a brow as they headed through the door, keeping one hand just shy of Gran’s elbow. “Who’s Rose?”

“Staff nurse that showed up for a season finale,” filled in the doctor. When Cress met her gaze, the doctor grinned. “My college-age daughter is a big fan. I try to tell her that hospitals actually aren’t all about sex and relationships, then she just rolls her eyes at me, glances at her father and says, ‘Uh huh. Right.’.”

“Because?”

“My husband is a local obstetrician. We, umm…” Dr. Holland leaned in as if sharing a state secret. “Met here. Fourth floor. Very romantic.”

“Proving television drama correct yet again.”

The doctor grinned and led them into a wide-spaced, well-lit, courtyard-style clinic. Plants lined branching walkways fanning from a fountained center garden. The words
Ripley Oncological Treatment Center
shone in polished brass from an overhead beam. “Mr. Ripley is the founder of a big biotech firm in California,” the doctor explained as they approached the centered reception desk. “His mother was a patient here. He built this therapeutic treatment wing in her honor about eight years ago.”

“Beautiful.”

Gran kept her chin in the air and her gaze focused. “Fancy doin’s don’t change a thing. Can’t see what it matters, havin’ a bunch of plants stuck here and there. When you’re sick, you’re sick. Get over it and get on with it, that’s what I say. A few flowers and trees don’t much make a difference.” Cress heard the words but noted a hint of wistfulness in Gran’s expression.

Gran had always loved her varied gardens. Cress remembered picking strawberries the size of a small child’s fist back in the day. Blueberries, taut and plump, aching with tender sweetness. “I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to be sick in surroundings like this than the totally antiseptic offerings you find in
some places.” Cress pointed to a small aviary tucked into the corner. “Look at the birds there. It’s like springtime all year in here.”

“Germ carriers.”

The doctor’s wink told Cress she recognized Gran’s snarkiness as a cover for anxiety. She patted Gran on the arm and handed them over to the main desk receptionist. “All yours, Trish.”

*

A flash of light split the dark sky, the crack of thunder quick behind. Big, fat drops of rain followed, splatting the boy’s arms, his head, his neck.

The light came again, crackling with electricity, a sizzling sound followed by another thunderous crash.

He wanted to go in. Seek shelter. Storms scared him, they always had, even way back when—

He thought he remembered someone grabbing him, tucking him in, laughing about the rain and the light and the noise, cuddling him, but when he tried to see the image,
it slid out of sight, out of grasp.

“You finish up them potatoes before the storm gets worse, you hear?”
The old lady was tucked inside, safe and warm, while he dug potatoes in the driving rain. And when he appeared at the back door, covered in mud, she’d let him have it for getting dirty, but he didn’t know how he could stay clean in the rain and the mud, so he tried to prepare himself for the smack upside the head. The cutting words, the angry voice and the empty plate. He hated gardening and he hated vegetables and most of all he hated that he was a coward. If he had guts, he could turn right now and run for the road, head for the hills, find someone, something to lead him back to a past he could no longer remember. And what would he tell them, these strangers who would most likely lead him right back her to her house and the beating to follow? “I think my name is Brian.”

They’d think he was crazy as a loon, another naughty kid, refusing to obey his aging grandmother. And they’d bring him right back to where he started. Here.

A part of him urged the chance, spurring him. He took quick, furtive looks at the road, curving beyond the long, pot-holed, puddle-filled broken stone driveway. There were no neighbors in either direction, not for a long ways. It would be just him and her, trying to outsmart each other, and she always won.

His heart hurt inside his chest. He plied the mud-encrusted shovel gently, from underneath, trying to not split the potatoes, but the mud weighted the shovel more with each thrust.

His back ached. His shoulders burned. And his tears flowed with the raindrops, mixing and mingling, the downpour washing away evidence of his weakness. At least she wouldn’t know he cried, and he was singularly glad of that.

I think my name is Brian…

*

“Cress. Hey. Get in.”

Cress strode on, head down, letting the driving rain mix with salt tears. That way she wouldn’t have to admit she was crying, not to anyone. Certainly not to Alex Westmore.

“Hey.”

Firm hands tried to slow her stride, but she struggled free, blindly moving down the sidewalk once again.

“Cress.” The voice, deep and low, came from in front of her again. How’d he get there so fast? Hadn’t she just shrugged him off twenty paces back?
Two hands caught her arms in a firm grip that wouldn’t be shrugged off quite so easily. That realization sent a momentary surge of panic through her system before she remembered this wasn’t James.

It
isn’t James.

Not now.

Not ever again.

“What’s going on?”
Alex persisted, his tone thick with concern. “Is she doing okay? Aw, man, you’re crying.”

“Am not.” She side-stepped as if to move around him, but he held tight.

“Are so.” One arm encircled her back, tugging her closer. “She had a rough time of it, huh?”

“
Stupid treatment.”

“Is she sick?”

“She had a rough reaction. Fever, chills, aches and pains. She won’t go through another course for two weeks, but I’ll be dreading every day until then.”

“And they used a slow drip?”

She studied him, surprised he understood the necessity of slow application. “Yes, I double checked. Maybe triple-checked. It just hit her hard by this evening.”

“Who’s with her?”

“Audra and Ginny. I just had to…”

She snuffed her runny nose and
Alex nodded, guiding her back down the sidewalk. “I know. Come on, get in the car. The rain’s cold and not about to stop.”

“No.” She didn’t have to tell him that the rain matched her mood. The red-rimmed eyes made that fairly obvious. And how did he happen to be around at the very moment she could use a friend?

Not that Westmore was a friend in any way, shape or form. But he didn’t feel like quite the enemy she’d wanted him to be a week ago. “What’re you doing here?”

“It’s my town. I live here.” He kept his tone light and teasing, watching her while the car’s heater soothed the chill of the late day rain. “Temperature’s dropping tonight. Could be a killing frost if the sky clears.”

“I know.” She sniffed again, wishing she had a tissue. She glanced around his car, saw nothing and swiped her wet sleeve to her face.

“Here.” He handed her a mostly clean, ketchup-scented napkin. “Best I can do on short notice.
Have you eaten?”

She thought a moment. “No, but I’m not hungry.”

He sighed. “Knock it off or we’ll have you looking like your skin and bones younger sister before too long.”

“You love how Kiera looks.” Cress capped the sentence with a stern look of indignation, not forgetting that Kiera’s name was the first one that dropped off his legal-beagle tongue in Gran’s kitchen two weeks previous.

“I love Kiera,” he corrected, signaling to move out into non-existent traffic as if it mattered. “Who doesn’t? She’s got a great personality and a face that owns the camera, but I’m not blind. She’s a stick.”

Cress pulled herself up straight in her sister’s defense. “You have to stay thin to model.”

Alex spared her a look as he stopped at the corner. “You don’t think there’s a problem there, Cress? Or you’re just not willing to admit it?”

Friend? Nice guy? Where on earth did she get that impression?
Alex Westmore was a pain-in-the-neck, money-sucking, know-it-all. “I’m not discussing this with you. Or anyone.”

“Fair enough.” He pulled into a small parking lot down the road and swung open his door. “Hop out. I’m feeding you.”

She stayed where she was. “I’m not hungry. Besides, I have to get back to Gran.”

Alex
leaned back into the car. “Audra and Ginny are quite capable. They’ll take care of Norma while I feed you. I’ll have you back in half an hour. Well.” He glanced at the plain, red-brick exterior of the Twelfth Street building. “Forty-five minutes. Come on.” He proffered a hand. “We’ll declare a truce for the night. Just smelling Rosie Andelaro’s sauce is enough to make me hungry and I had lunch. I’m pretty sure you didn’t.”

He leaned back into the car and covered her chilled hand with his. For a long moment they stayed that way, hands clasped, eyes locked, while rain beat against Alex’s back. His eyes dropped from her gaze to her mouth and lingered there one beat. Then two.

“You’re getting soaked.” Her voice was a whisper, a faint image of the tough-girl persona she wore so well. A different image, altogether.
Alex gave her hand a quick squeeze, then shrugged out of the car, closed his door, and headed for the entrance in no particular hurry, half-hoping she’d follow.

The other half?

That half wanted to ignore her completely, let her cry, whine, stomp her feet, whatever it was that snippy, big-city cops did when their world went out of whack. He didn’t want to care, didn’t want to sympathize, didn’t want to notice how vulnerable she looked when sad or angry.

That last had him wondering what put that look of susceptibility in her eyes, the occasional hint of weakness he sensed at odd moments.

Or who.

Watching her exit the car, a whole new thought broached
Alex’s sensibilities, a thought he didn’t like and wanted to dismiss as total nonsense, and he would, if it didn’t seem to fit the minor quirks he recognized.

As she strode his way, her face determined if not openly hostile, he shrugged the thought aside as unlikely if not absolutely impossible. Tough girls like Cress didn’t get themselves mixed up with low-life guys who sucked the life out of the
m before smacking them around. Did they?

“This place have good food?”

She was ignoring the moment in the car, just like him, those few seconds of skin-to-skin contact that made him oblivious to the rain beating against his back. He nodded. “Excellent. And reasonable.”

“That’s unfortunate.” At his hiked brow she moved past him, into the small, shadowed foyer. “I like costing you a pretty penny, Westmore. Makes me feel like I’m getting some of Gran’s investment back in trade.”

“Then you better be real hungry,” he shot back, wondering why on earth he’d ever seen her as sympathetic, “because it would take a whole lot of Rosie’s pasta to even begin to make a dent.”