Shelter Me (35 page)

She couldn’t escape the fact that she still felt married.

Lacey touched Ray’s wrist lightly, only to have him flinch, so she pulled back. “Are you okay?”

Are
we
okay?

He’d been a good friend to her for over a year and a half, and she feared they’d just wrecked that because she was an emotional mess and she’d decided to shut down her brain for a few stolen moments.

He sat up, with his knees bent and his arms draped over them. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.” His voice sounded strained. “I shouldn’t have done that. I know you’re not ready, and I shouldn’t have put you in the awkward position of saying no.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. You’re a sexy, fascinating man with a humanitarian streak a mile wide,” and God, that made him sound like her altruistic soldier husband, which really freaked her out.

“You’re not helping matters.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s too soon. I get that. I’ve been doing everything in my power to keep my hands to myself, especially these last couple of weeks when I’ve known . . . hell, I don’t know. I guess I’ve seen chances to touch you and I’ve done my damnedest not to every other time. But tonight . . .” He shook his head.

“This wasn’t just an impulse?” Damn it, she shouldn’t have asked that. She really wasn’t helping matters. “Forget I said anything. I’m making a fool out of myself.”

“Hey.” He cupped her face, turning her toward him, and she could see how much that comforting touch cost him as his muscles twitched with restraint. “There is no possible way you could ever appear foolish.”

“Really?” She laughed, but it choked off on a tear. “Have you seen my life? I’m living on the verge of bankruptcy because I spend too much trying to save every animal. The town thinks I’m loony and wants to shut me down.”

“You have built an amazing life while facing unbelievable pressure,” he said with unmistakable intensity. “You are an incredible woman.”

His brown eyes burned with a fire she recognized because she’d felt it. For her husband. Ray Vega had feelings for her, deep feelings, and they’d crossed a line here tonight. Returning to a friendship wasn’t going to work, and she couldn’t consider anything more, not now.

A whimper from the crate gave her a convenient excuse to look away. Trooper shuffled and shifted until he sat up in the metal crate, watching her with those wide brown knowing eyes. He pawed the metal grate, still wobbly and uncoordinated. As her brain cleared, she thought back to the time one of her fosters had eaten a mushroom and underwent the charcoal treatment. And there was Lucky, who’d nearly overdosed on marijuana. Strange how all that objective knowledge about animal toxins had left her in the blind panic of the moment.

Now, she realized . . .

“Trooper doesn’t really need to stay here tonight, does he? You’ve done everything you can for him.”

“He needed the fluids and some monitoring . . .”

“Which you’ve done. But by keeping him overnight, you were just trying to protect me in case
everything
isn’t enough.”

“Is that so wrong of me?” He didn’t even bother trying to deny her words.

“For the two of us, right now, yes, it’s wrong for both of us.” She held up a hand, wanting to touch him and knowing she couldn’t, not even casually, not anymore. “You’re a fascinating, smart man, and we have so much in common—”

“Stop letting me down easy.” He pressed his palm to hers for a moment, his fingers curling to link with hers. “I get it. You’re still in love with your husband.”

“Ray, I’ll always be in love with my husband. That’s not going to change. The problem is, I’m still mourning him, and that’s not something I can rush.”

“You know that only makes you all the more special.” He squeezed her hand once before letting go. “And no matter what you say to try and make this easier for me, knowing how amazing you are makes this . . . hurt.”

She wanted to tell him that he was an equally special man. That he’d find someone else, especially being ten years younger than her . . . He had so much ahead of him. But she knew better than to minimize what he felt for her. She still couldn’t quite believe it.

“I wish I was ready for this. Trust me, I do.”

She would give anything to be able to sleep through the night. Not to hurt all the time. Not to question her choices every night as she lay awake. She gathered up her tattered nerves and accepted for the first time, she really was on her own. She couldn’t keep depending on everyone around her—not just Ray, but Sierra and even Mike. She needed to take care of herself and her family.

Starting now.

“Ray, if there’s really nothing more you can do for Trooper tonight, then let’s load him up in my car. I should go home to my family.”

His jaw flexed. His mouth was a flat line. “If that’s what you really want.”

“It is.” And she did. For the first time in months, she didn’t dread the day ahead of her. She knew it wouldn’t be easy stepping up, taking charge. But it was time to move out of the frenzied limbo mode she’d been in these last few months and take charge of her life again.

“Okay then.” He opened the crate and gave Trooper a once-over before lifting him out. He skillfully withdrew the IV line and bound the site to keep it from bleeding. “His pupils are normal, but watch and let me know if they dilate. The sleeping pills have made him groggy, but his pulse is steady, no more signs of bradycardia—uh, slow heart rate—and his breathing’s normal. But—”

“I’ll let you know if anything changes.” She touched his hand lightly, tentatively. The ease she’d felt with him was gone now, still she owed him so very much, not just financially. They were going to have to work together, and sometime soon they would need to figure out how to handle that.

Stepping back, she retrieved her purse from the wooden bench where she’d tossed it eons ago when she’d raced in here, terrified of losing Trooper. She didn’t have anything more to collect. Her shoes didn’t even match. She’d yanked on one blue loafer and one brown loafer with her big toe poking through a hole in the canvas.

She really did need to get her life together.

Ray carried Trooper through the lobby and twisted the locked front door while jostling the dog in his arms. The night air brought a cooler breeze, sweeping away the heat of the day and cooling her skin, still humming from a touch that left her feeling guilty.

Opening the front passenger door, she stepped back for him to settle Trooper beside her. She wanted him in sight at all times. She walked around to her side and sat behind the wheel, starting the ten-year-old family vehicle she and Allen had purchased for vacations.

Ray patted the dog on the chest once. “I’ll call Sierra and let her know you’re on your way home. It’s late. Drive safely.”

“Thank you, for your help tonight with Trooper.”

She wanted to say more but sensed that would only make things worse.

He simply nodded and closed the door. More of that guilt piled on top of her. She’d hurt a good man because she’d let herself lean on him too much.

The drive home passed in a blur of Tennessee farm fields and trees, her body on auto pilot as the SUV ate up the miles. She and Allen had chosen this home because of the extra land, the space to call their own after so many years living as vagabonds. They’d even hoped to buy up some of the property bordering them.

She turned off the two-lane road into the entrance to her place, stopping at the security gate—where a visitor waited for her on a four-wheeler. She clicked her lights on high beam, nerves tingling. But it wasn’t Kenneth. Valerie was the meaner of the two, but Lacey didn’t physically fear the woman so she stopped. All the same, to be on the safe side, she stayed in her vehicle and just rolled down the window.

Personal safety. Yet another thing she needed to look more deeply into when taking charge of her life. She had a family to protect.

“Valerie, what are you doing here at this time of night?”

“Waiting for you to get home. I saw you peel out of here with that young man hours ago.” She sniffed disapprovingly, looking so damn ridiculous perched on the four-wheeler while wearing a floral muumuu.

What the hell? Was the woman spying on them? She knew the Hammonds wanted her gone, but how far were they willing to go? “I’m not the one running around at night in my pajamas, Valerie. Now please move out of the way so I can go home.”

Her home. Her haven. Safe shelter for her and her family. And no one was going to take that away from her.

Valerie leaned forward on the handlebars, her face intense in the harsh beams of the headlights. “I’m giving you one last chance to handle this without a big confrontation. I don’t want to see all those animals hauled off to a shelter. Place the ones you have and stop. You’re driving down property values with those sick and mangy creatures. They’re dangerous and untrained with heaven only knows what kind of history.”

“We’ve been over this—” Lacey stopped. Screw trying to reason with this woman. Reason hadn’t worked anyway. “Not tonight, Valerie. Okay? I’m not in the mood to politely pretend you aren’t the worst neighbor and the most small-minded bitch on the planet. So if you don’t want me to call Officer Parker to escort you off my property for trespassing, you will leave. Now.”

Valerie’s beady eyes narrowed. “You’re going to be sorry. I have connections here and they owe me.”

The vindictive woman revved her four-wheeler, and the vehicle lurched forward. The headlight streaked away into the night.

Good God, could this night suck the life out of her any further? She punched in the code for the gate and drove onto her land. Toward her home. A light was on in the kitchen, and she could see two people at the table. Mike and Sierra waiting up for her, no doubt. Her daughter was clearly in love with him again, and that was something else Lacey would need to address, listening to her daughter rather than letting her keep propping up this family.

That would be first on her agenda in the morning, along with figuring out how to reach Nathan. She parked the SUV by the mudroom door.

Lacey lifted Trooper carefully, and the dog nuzzled her hand gratefully. She walked through the mudroom, past the galoshes and leashes and other beautiful details that made up her life, things she needed to start appreciating. She entered the kitchen and sure enough, Mike and Sierra waited at the kitchen table for her.

Sierra looked at her hopefully. “Doc Vega called. Trooper’s really going to be okay?”

“Appears so, but I’m going to keep him with me just to be safe.” Lacey was just too exhausted to make small talk or pretend she didn’t see the rekindled romance between them when her heart was especially tender with this new stage of widowhood. “I’m going to bed now and I’ll just bring Trooper with me so I can watch him.”

Mike shoved to his feet. “Let me carry him for you.”

“I’m good.” Which wasn’t technically true. But she would be. She really didn’t have a choice. “This is what I do. Right, Troop?”

Lacey started toward the enclosed patio, where she usually kept her sick animals while resting on a sofa. But something stopped her. She eyed the stairs leading up to her bedroom, that place she avoided.

No time like the present to start tackling her resolutions. With a bracing breath, she climbed the stairs, the weight of the dog a welcome distraction from going to her room alone. She nudged open the door to her bedroom. Hers and Allen’s. She set Trooper down long enough to pull the quilt from her bed and make it into a nest on the floor for the sick dog. He hauled his groggy body over and curled up with a sleepy sigh.

She eyed her bed, steeled herself and whipped back the sheet. For the first time since her husband had died, she pulled the covers over her and truly went to sleep in their bed.

*   *   *

MIKE HAD DREAMED
of a lot of ways to help Sierra over the years. But in all of his fantasizing, he’d never imagined he would be cooking breakfast in the McDaniel kitchen.

Gramps sat quietly at the table, thumbing through a weekly newspaper, one of the few print papers left. But Sierra ordered it for him since teaching him to use an iPad was out of the question. The paper was just one of the endless ways this family reached out to be there for each other. That was a rare gift in life.

These people were growing more important to him by the day. Not just Sierra, but all the McDaniels. He’d never had anything like this, not even when they’d been dating. He’d been more concerned with downplaying the relationship, nervous about how the Colonel felt.

He liked being able to help them, the whole give-and-take that went on around here. The McDaniels had something special in the way they knew how to be there for each other. Sierra had slept on the sofa in case her mom needed her and to be sure her grandfather didn’t slip out. Mike figured the least he could do was cook breakfast.

And yeah, he enjoyed the opportunity to flex his gourmet skills. Unable to sleep, he’d made fat butterscotch sticky buns from scratch, watching over Sierra in the next room on the sofa. The afghan draped on her rose and fell with each steady breath, her blond hair trailing down the side of the leather sofa.

The scent of the cooking pastries filled the kitchen until he could almost taste the cinnamon. He rifled through the refrigerator for fresh fruit as footsteps sounded on the stairway.

Lacey walked in with Trooper at her side, both of them looking a little haggard but on their feet. He knew weary—but victorious—warriors when he saw them.

“Good morning,” he said. “I took the liberty of making breakfast.”

“Mom?” Sierra called from the sofa, sitting up sharply, the afghan sliding to the floor. She shot to her feet, still wearing the rumpled khaki pants and blouse from yesterday, clothes they’d peeled from each other with such intense pleasure last night—a lifetime ago.

Sierra walked up behind her mom and wrapped her in a hug. “Good morning.” She walked past, shoving her tousled hair from her face and sending his pulse spiking just before she knelt to scratch Trooper’s ears. “You’re looking good, pup. You sure scared us, though.”

No kidding. Scared? Understatement. And he still couldn’t figure out how it had happened. How had the dog gotten those pills? Lacey had seemed so certain she’d stashed them safely away in her bathroom.