And considering the intensity of her attraction to him that was just fine.
One day she would allow another man into her life—but next time she’d go slowly, be sure she knew him well. Next time she would choose someone who had time for her and Brody.
“Yea! Lemonade!” Brody yelped, spotting her. He turned to Whit. “My mommy makes the bestest.”
Whit glanced toward the porch. She was back. Back with that sweet innocence of hers. And that slightly haunted smile. As if there was some pain still a little too fresh in her life.
“Best, Brody,” she said. “And I don’t know if it’s all that great. But it is cold.”
“Sounds good,” Whit said. The dog at his heels, he sauntered up and took a glass.
“Looks like that animal was getting the worst end of that game you were playing,” she said. She sat down on the porch step and Whit joined her.
“Nah, the dog loved it,” he said and took a swal1 low. A mixture of tart and sweet, like the woman beside him.
“I guess I owe you a thank you for the lock,” she said softly. “You were able to repair it?”
“Good as new—and no thanks necessary. As long as it keeps the kid indoors.”
He ruffled Brody’s hair and Brody grinned, a lemonade mustache decorating his upper lip. “Can we take Wolf on a picnic to the park, Mommy? An’. an’ can Whit come, too?”
Jill understood Brody’s exuberance—and where it was coming from. But she wasn’t sure Whit did. And she knew the man must have other things to do than spend a Sunday in the park.
“I don’t think today, sweetheart,” she told him, then turned to Whit. “I’m afraid my son has a giant case of hero worship. You’re all he’s talked about since he got up this morning—you and how you were going to bring his dog home.”
“I hadn’t realized the pressure was on,” he said. He turned to Brody, whose small face had puckered into a disappointed frown. “Maybe another time, pardner.”
Whit hated to do this, but the woman had given him an out—and he was damned well going to take it. Not that spending time with the pretty Jill wasn’t a temptation in itself, but even as that thought crossed his mind, a damnable hive began to itch, the way it always did whenever he ventured too close to any form of domesticity.
And what could be more domestic than a Sunday picnic in the park with a mom and a small boy—even a dog along to complete the picture.
He scratched at the hive on his neck. Besides, he had other things to do this afternoon. A date with a cold can of beer and basketball play-offs on the tube. Definitely less threatening than Jill Harper with her pretty smile and too-tempting manner, he thought.
He finished his lemonade and placed the empty glass back on the tray. “I should be going.” He stood up.
Jill stood, too. “Well,” she said, “thanks again for returning Wolf. And…for fixing the lock.”
She looked so young, so fresh, her lips dewy-soft and inviting—and he was tempted to taste the sweet-tart lemonade on them. Instead he turned to Brody. “You and Wolf wanna walk me to the car?”
Brody nodded, and Whit tweaked the boy’s freckled nose. He remembered what Jill had said about her son’s case of hero worship. But Whit wasn’t sure hero was an accolade he was all that comfortable with. Or deserving of.
That belonged to men like his brother Steve.
Jill watched the trio go, the big man towering over small boy, Brody’s head tipped up as he listened intently to something Whit was saying.
Curiosity piqued, she wondered what the two were talking about.
Jill had brought the account books home from the shop. The antique shop, Simply Treasures, she’d opened less than a year ago was doing a brisk business. In between buying trips, refinishing small, prized pieces of furniture, polishing silver and rewiring old lamps, she had little time for paperwork. She’d hoped to find time over the weekend to get caught up.
But instead of work, Brody came first today. This morning he’d been too upset over his dog for her to have the firm discussion with him that she’d needed to have, a mother-son talk about the dangers of a small boy venturing outdoors late at night. But that afternoon they took a walk with Wolf to the park a few blocks away. Brody listened to her parental concern for a while, then looked up at her.
“I know all that, Mommy,” he said with all the earnestness of a four-year-old. “Whit told me I coulda been hurt, maybe kilt, or never been able to fin’ my way back home.”
“He said all that?”
“Uh-huh. When he lefted.”
“Left, Brody.” But she wasn’t as upset at Brody’s grammar as she was at what the big cop had told him. Killed? Did he have to scare the child to death? A simple warning would have been sufficient.
“An’. an’ Whit said I should min’ you real good.”
That part, at least, Jill couldn’t take offense with.
She didn’t want her son to grow up a namby-pamby, and she often worried about the lack of male influence Brody had in his young life. She could hardly count the few hours Michael spent with him. A boy needed more than a halfhearted, all-too-busy father.
Whit was a cop. He was tough, but she didn’t approve of the tack he’d taken with her son. Brody was just a baby. And she wasn’t ready to have him know about all the dangers the world presented.
She knew law-enforcement officials and child—safety organizations would argue with that, but she wanted to believe that she could protect her son herself, that she could let him be a child—at least for a little while longer.
Still, last night had shaken her, frightened her beyond belief. She felt torn between giving Whit Tanner a piece of her mind—or her vote of thanks.
But, at least to all outward appearances, the man’s frank talk didn’t seem to have traumatized Brody’s young psyche any. He was full of smiles and boyish spirits. And the case of hero worship he had with Whit hadn’t been all bad, either. Brody walked a little taller, a little straighter, a little more proudly than he had before.
She recognized a little of Whit’s swagger in him as he left her side and marched over to the park’s big slide for a trip down it.
She loved her son. He was her life. And she spent as much time with him as she could. When she’d first started her business, she’d taken him to the shop with her, entertaining him with toys and children’s books in the small back room. Now he went to preschool, but Jill missed those times they’d had alone together.
On their trip back from the park Jill listened once again to Brody’s chatter about his favorite policeman, but her own images of the man played in her mind.
All of them dangerous to her senses.
It was only when she heard Brody discussing his idea of show-and-tell at preschool next week that she returned her attention to her son and what he was saying.
“So can I, Mommy? Can Iple-e-ease?”
Jill glanced down at his small eager face. Her first thought was that she wasn’t sure how she could talk her son out of his enthusiastic idea. Her second thought was what Officer Whit Tanner would think of it.
“Show-and-tell duty? What the hell kinda assignment is that?” Whit demanded of his superior.