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It was nearly impossible to keep her smile in place as her face flamed. She murmured something nonsensical, but it didn’t matter, because Emily moved out of the way so the giggling teens who’d manned the ticket table could enter and the door swung closed once more.
Tara returned the girls’ greetings and needlessly washed her hands. Then, instead of taking the door that led back to the gymnasium, she let herself out through the opposite side, ending up on the cold expanse of cement leading to the outdoor racquetball courts.
Her breath ringed around her head and the cold night air sent goose bumps along her limbs as she hurried along the cement. She’d walk around the building, go in the front again to retrieve her coat and car keys, and then head back home.
Simple enough.
Until she rounded the last corner and stopped short at the sight of Axel, leaning indolently against the building, her coat draped over his crossed arms.
“Forget something?” He lifted the coat with one hand. Her keys were in his other and he jingled them.
She went over to him and snatched both away, half-afraid that he’d refuse to give them to her. But he did, and she yanked her coat over her shoulders, turning toward the parking lot. “Your mother is looking for you.”
He ignored that and followed her. “I’m not going away, Tara.”
She wanted to press her hands over her ears. Instead, she quickened her steps until she was practically jogging through the rows of vehicles. Then her foot hit a patch of ice and she gasped, throwing out her hands to stop her fall. But she never made contact with the pavement.
Axel scooped her up from behind. “Easy there.” His voice was soft against her neck.
She strained against his arm, but it was immovable. “Let me go.” The words were garbled. Just as garbled as her vision thanks to the stupid tears that burned her eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He settled her carefully on her feet and muttered an oath when he saw her tears. “Ah, hell. Don’t cry. I can take most anything but you crying.”
That did not help. She felt the tears spill over her lashes and blamed the hormones pelting around inside her for her deplorable lack of control. “I’m so sorry you’re uncomfortable!” She swiped her cheeks but it was as effective as sticking her thumb in a leaking dam. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?”
He was silent, his expression unreadable. “I can’t.”
“Why not? Because of this story about Sloan? Nobody would make the mistake of thinking I matter to him, least of all me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know him.” His voice was soft—as soft as it had been in the middle of the dance floor, but his words still seemed to echo around her.
“Well, I’m glad you do, because I don’t. Not anymore.” She tried peeling Axel’s fingers away from where they were wrapped around her waist and the bunched lapels of her coat. “And I only have your word about all of this. So—”
He exhaled and released her. “Why on God’s green earth would I make any of this up?”
Certainly not because he’d need such a line to get close to her. She’d already proven how easy that was.
“I don’t know,” she admitted and turned again to head for her SUV. She could see it just four vehicles over. “And frankly, I don’t care,” she said over her shoulder as she walked, more carefully this time, toward it.
She squashed her biting conscience.
After all. What was one more lie between them?
Chapter Four
If he followed her home, Tara wasn’t sure what she would do. But she didn’t see any sight of Axel’s truck in her rearview mirror as she drove straight home from the high school.
That didn’t seem to keep her foot from hitting the gas harder than necessary, though.
She parked in the garage and when she realized she’d locked the car door, she exhaled, annoyed, and unlocked it again. This was Weaver, for heaven’s sake.
Nothing bad ever happened here, no matter what Axel said.
She went inside the house, dumped her coat over the back of a kitchen table chair and filled the teapot with water before setting it on the stove.
Which wouldn’t light.
Kicking the old stove would do nothing but scuff her pumps, so she refrained, but it took a deep exhale to stop herself. She lit the pilot light again and tried the burner. The small flame jumped to life beneath the teapot and leaving it to heat, she kicked off her shoes and carried them with her to her bedroom.
The shutters at the windows beckoned, but she resolutely avoided looking out and exchanged her party clothes for her long chenille robe. Back in the kitchen, she dropped an herbal tea bag in a mug and took the shrilly whistling teapot off the stove again.
Only when the whistling dwindled did she hear the doorbell ringing.
Since nobody ever came to her door, she didn’t have to guess hard who might be on her front porch.
There was no law that said she had to answer the door, she reasoned.
Only to go to the door and yank it open, anyway.
Axel stood there with his finger pressed steadily against the doorbell.
“Leave me alone.”
He lowered his finger and stuck a cell phone out at her. “Say hello,” he said evenly.
She eyed the phone. “Excuse me?”
He put the phone to his ear. “Your sister will be on in a second,” he said.
For a moment, her brain seemed to stop working. But then her senses returned and she glared at Axel. “I don’t know what sort of game you’re—”
“Seconds are precious here, Tara,” he interrupted.
She snatched the phone out of his hand. Held it to her ear. “Hello.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it on our birthday,” her brother’s voice greeted her.
She nearly dropped the phone. “Who is this?”
“Goober, just do what Clay tells you, and I’ll explain things later.”
Her eyes closed. Goober. Her brother’s nickname for her when they were kids. Who else but he would know that? The McCrays had never stayed put anywhere long enough for other people to take note of them. “Sloan—”
But the connection was already dead.
She still held the phone to her ear, though, as if by some miracle she could reestablish that much-too-brief contact.
Finally, Axel slid the phone out of her numb fingers and pushed her gently inside the door.
She couldn’t even muster a protest when he nudged her down onto the couch in the living room, or when he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the tea that she’d forgotten all about.
“Thought you liked coffee, not tea,” he said, taking her hands and wrapping them around the ceramic mug as he sat on the wrought-iron coffee table, facing her. “But you’ve obviously just fixed this.”
He’d removed the tea bag, she realized dimly, staring into the pale liquid. “I stopped drinking coffee,” she said faintly. “You’re really serious about all this.” She lifted her gaze to his.
His expression was solemn. “Yeah.”
Her brother’s words echoed in her head. “That’s the only time Sloan’s spoken directly to me in three years.” She lifted the mug, but lowered it again without drinking. “We used to live together, you know. We shared a brownstone.” The first place she’d really called home. But even that hadn’t lasted. “I didn’t think there was anything about each other that we didn’t know. Then he decided to go undercover, and…” She shook her head. “Everything changed. Everything.” Her life. Her brother.
“Not forever. Temporarily. That’s what you said.” Axel leaned forward, his looped fingers hanging loosely between his wide-planted legs. His deep gold hair sprang back from his tanned forehead and his gaze was steady. “This situation—me, here—will be temporary, too.”
Of course it would be.
Because his interest in her had nothing to do with their time in Braden and everything to do with his job.
She cleared her throat, but the knot there seemed destined to remain forever. “So…say I do go along with all of this—” which she wasn’t saying yet, no matter how shocking it had been to hear Sloan’s voice “—what can I expect? I mean, what do you plan to, um, to do? Follow me when I go to the grocery store? Stand guard outside the shop when I’m open? What?”
“Stay with you around the clock. There will be some periods when I can’t be with you. That’s when my backup will be in place.”
“Hold it.” She waved her hand and set her mug on the neat pile of magazines beside the muscular bulge of his jean-clad thigh. “Go back to this clock issue.”
“What about it?”
She had a fleeting image of an armed guard standing on the front step of her shop, scaring away customers.
Just because her life in Weaver was supposed to be temporary didn’t mean that she could afford to lose business. Classic Charms was no front. It was a real business. One that she’d worked hard to make successful. It kept her ancient house in decent repair, and now more than ever, she needed the shop to remain as profitable as it possibly could to tide her over when the baby came.
“I can’t have you hanging around my shop every minute that I’m open.” People would get the wrong idea. They’d start putting one and one together, and getting three.
“Not just the shop. Here, too. 24/7.”
Could this possibly get any worse? “For how long?” Her voice rose despite her efforts.
“Until we neutralize the threat against Sloan.”
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