Brittany took a key from her purse and unlocked the front door. Eyeing the mechanism, Nick wondered why she bothered. The lock was old and could have been jimmied with a screw driver, a credit card, or a bent paper clip, for that matter.
“Mommy said you weren’t coming until Monday,” Savannah said, still holding her mother’s hand.
Nick’s gaze swept his daughter’s face. He knew before she batted her eyelashes that he was a goner. He could interrogate hardened criminals, yet one innocent statement from that little scrap of a girl had him scrambling for an explanation. He had planned to arrive on Monday. But he hadn’t planned on this driving need to get here sooner. Saying the only thing he could think of that was still the truth, he said, “I’ve missed you.”
“Are you going to stay, Daddy?”
He glanced up and found Brittany watching him. “For a while,” he said quietly, and left it at that.
All three of them walked inside, Brittany turning lights on as she went. “It’s past your bedtime, Savannah. Tell Daddy good-night.”
“But Daddy just got here.”
Nick almost smiled at the shrillness in Savannah’s voice. It was definitely an improvement on the nightmares followed by long stretches of silence she’d been having a year ago. Going down on his haunches, he said, “Mommy’s right. We’re all tired tonight. Tomorrow, when we’re rested, we’ll spend the whole day together.”
“Promise?”
His throat convulsed and all but closed. How many promises had he failed to keep these past seven years? “I promise, Savannah.”
Her smile finished the job to his throat, her arms winding shyly around his neck. “Good night, Daddy.”
He must have answered, because Savannah allowed her mother to lead her from the room without a struggle. Nick hovered in the doorway until they were out of sight. Then, testing the shakiness of his legs, he strode into the next room and the next. There was an old-fashioned kitchen with a monstrous antique stove and a round oak table, a bathroom with a claw-footed tub and green tile floor. A door led to the backyard via a laundry room. Another door led to the side yard off the kitchen. In fact, as far as he could tell, there were three exterior doors on the main floor. And enough low windows with faulty, or no, locks to make him shudder. The house had all the security of a chicken coop.
The floor creaked slightly, alerting him to Brittany’s presence behind him. “What are you doing, Nick?”
Trying for nonchalance, he crossed his arms and slowly turned around. “Is Savannah asleep?”
At her nod, he realized he’d been lost in thought longer than he’d realized. Shrugging, he said, “I guess I was snooping. This is quite a house.”
“It has seven bedrooms,” she answered. “That’s a lot of rooms to heat, believe me.”
Nick thought they were a lot of rooms for someone to hide in.
“Isn’t it incredible?” she asked, spreading her arms wide to encompass the entire house.
The light was on in the kitchen behind him and in the living room behind her, but not in the tiny alcove where they were both standing. As if she didn’t think it was wise to stay too long in a darkened room with him, she took a backward step, then deftly led the way through another door.
Nick followed as far as the doorway. Leaning one hip against the oak trim, he watched her switch on a low lamp.
“At one time this was used as a study,” she said. “It’s my favorite room. This house was one of the first to be built in Jasper Gulch and belonged to the first doctor to settle in this part of the territory.”
She strode to a low table where she turned on another lamp. The soft bulb cast shadows into the corners, delineating the curve of her hip through the thin fabric of her dress. She was talking about the history of the house, but Nick couldn’t stop thinking about the history between them. He took a step toward her, propelled by the need to be closer and something else he’d never fully understood.
Her hair looked even darker in the soft lamplight. Tendrils curled over the collar of her green dress and clung to her cheeks, accenting the delicate hollows below her cheekbones and the darkness of her eyes. She slanted him a look, then immediately started to speak, as if she thought talking would break the pull that had always been between them. He could have told her there was nothing she could do to accomplish that, but he didn’t want her to stop talking. Lord, he’d missed the clear, sultry sound of her voice.
“See those books?” she asked, gesturing to a tall bookcase. “Some of them are the very texts Doctor Avery used to treat patients. I think he used this room as an examination room when he first started his practice.” She moved again, this time to sweep a thick curtain aside. “Look at this. Fur traders and Indians and later gold seekers and cowboys could come right in without traipsing through the rest of the house.”
Nick stared at the narrow oak panels behind the curtain. Make that four doors leading directly to the outside.
“Nick, what is it?”
Nick heard the hesitation in her voice, saw it in her eyes. He didn’t know what to tell her, how much to tell her, if he should tell her at all. He waited a moment too long to come up with an answer, because she straightened, bristling.
“I was hoping you would try to keep an open mind.”
Ignoring the stiffness he’d acquired during his twelve-hour drive from Chicago, he tried to decide whether to be relieved or angry that she’d automatically jumped to the wrong conclusion. “Don’t I always keep an open mind?”
“Pu-lease.”
“What?”
She was staring at him, mouth gaping. “Since when have you been open-minded about anything?”
He started to speak, closed his mouth and tried again, only to repeat the process. By the time he’d thought of an answer, she was trying not to smile. He almost couldn’t speak all over again. “Well,” he finally said, “I didn’t punch Forrest in the nose when he kissed you tonight.”
“It was very big of you to refrain from hitting a man who was making an innocent pass at me in a crowded room, Nick.”
He stared at her silently, then took a step closer.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh. I was just thinking about the first time I saw you. It seems to me you were with another man that night, too.”
Brittany took careful note of Nick’s features and calmly crossed her arms. “I was not with another man tonight. And the night we met I was with a boy.”
“Your hair was long then,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “It hung straight and shimmery halfway down your back. Every time I looked at it I knew I had to wrap my hands in it. Never mind that you were too young, too innocent and way too good for a boy like me.”
Brittany knew she should put a stop to all this reminiscing. Just as she knew she had to put the past in perspective. And she would, as soon as she got her bearings and reminded herself of her resolve. That had always been hard to do with Nick. If he had walked directly to her, she could have put her hand up to ward off his advance. But he only took one slow, easy step at a time, and he kept talking in that same easy way he had, melting her resolve one degree at a time.
“Never mind that I had a bear of an exam to take at the police academy at 8:00 a.m. the next morning and my brother would have had my butt in a sling if I was late,” he said, his blue eyes now as soft and mellow as lamplight.
Brittany tried to swallow the hoarseness in her throat “We went out for