He hunkered beside the boy. “How many times have you wandered out of the house without letting your mother know about it?”
Dudley looked him straight in the face, then he patted Jack on the back. “Lots of times.”
“Why do you disobey your mother?”
Dudley looked down at his feet and then gazed up at him with the saddest eyes that he’d seen in a child’s face. “The house is so small and I like it outside. I already did my lessons this morning.”
“Where is your father, Dudley?”
“He doesn’t live with us.”
“Then you have to learn to obey your mother. Come on.” He took the boy’s hand and started for Allison Sawyer’s house. To his amazement, Dudley didn’t resist going home. Indeed he seemed happy to hold Brock’s hand. He knocked on Allison’s front door.
“She’s asleep, Mr. Lightner, and I think she’s going to send me to my room.”
After a few minutes, the door opened and Allison stared up at him with a questioning expression on her face. For an answer, he looked down at Dudley.
“Oh, my Lord. Don’t tell me he was out there again,” she said in a voice laced with fear.
“You didn’t repair that lock, did you?”
She seemed defeated. “I have a deadline to meet and when he promised not to sneak out again, I decided to wait to change the locks.”
Better to shock her now than to cry with her later. He didn’t spare her. “Yesterday afternoon, I chased a wild boar from my gate. Those animals will attack a bear. If Dudley encountered one, I doubt you’d see him alive again.”
Her almost-plaintive expression opened a hole inside of him and he grasped her shoulder. “You don’t have to replace the locks. I’ll do it for you. Now. Today. You can’t watch him every minute. If it’s the money…”
She shook her head. “No, it isn’t that and I thank you for bringing him home. I’d die if anything happened to my child.”
“I know you would. I’ll be glad to run up to the store and get the locks and a chain for that fence, but I suspect you’d feel safer knowing you were the only one with the keys. I take it your windows lock. Right?”
“Yes, they do. Thank you,” she said. “I’ll drive to the store and get the locks, and I should have them around noon. Thanks. I…I appreciate your help, Mr. Lightner.”
She had a way of looking at him that made him feel as if he could twist iron with his bare hands. His breath shortened and he forced himself to look away from her. “It seems as if Jack is taken with Dudley. I suppose even dogs need playmates. I’ll see you later.”
“Can I go stay with Jack and Mr. Lightner, Mommie?”
“No, darling. We shouldn’t impose on our neighbor.” She wanted to move, but Brock wouldn’t let her. His gaze was like fingers stroking and caressing her body, warm and seductively.
He took a small notepad from his pocket, made a step toward her and said, “Call me when you get home. This is my cell-phone number.” He wrote the number on the pad, tore it off and handed it to her. A smile played around his mouth, making his full, bottom lip even more inviting. “The sooner we do this, the better.”
He said it softly, but there was no mistaking his meaning. She knew he was talking about the locks, but his words sent jolts of excitement through her, upping the sexual tension between them as well.
When Dudley began to pout, Brock patted the boy’s shoulder. “Good boys always obey their mothers. See you soon.”
Dudley reached toward Allison and took her hand. “Come on, Mommie. Let’s go get the locks now so he can fix the door.” She stared at him. In all his five years, that was the first time he’d given in without creating a scene. She realized it was also the first time he had received a gentle reprimand from a man. When Allison had left his father, Dudley had only known abuse. Lawrence had responded to Dudley’s stubbornness by slapping him, which was particularly abusive punishment for a toddler less than three.
Maybe she was doing the wrong thing. But she knew she’d been fooling herself if she thought that Dudley wouldn’t sneak out again and she couldn’t risk that. She strapped him in the backseat of her car, got in and drove up Route 28. At the general store she bought locks and a length of heavy chain to secure the wire fence.
“Buy some hot dogs, Mommie, and let’s have a picnic.”
She didn’t have time for a picnic, but Dudley needed a diversion, so she went next door to the supermarket and bought what she needed for an outdoor picnic. She’d told Brock that she’d be back home in an hour, but when he neither called nor came, her temper began to rise.
“He gave you his cell-phone number, Mommie,” Dudley said when she grumbled about it.
She hadn’t intended to use that number, but what choice did she have now if she didn’t want to risk Dudley sneaking out the next morning before she got up. She dialed his number.
“Mr. Lightner, this is Allison Sawyer,” she said when he answered. “I’m back home with the locks and the chain.”
“Good. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
When his voice seemed to trail off, she realized that he didn’t know how to terminate the conversation, at least not to his satisfaction. This is terrible, she thought. I do not like where we seem to be headed and I am not going there.
“Mommie, I’m hungry. Can we have the picnic now?”
“Mr. Lightner is coming to change the locks, so we’ll have to wait.”
He agreed without protest and she thought nothing of it. However, when Brock arrived with Jack, Dudley ran to embrace the big German shepherd and said to the dog, “We’re going to have a picnic, Jack. Do you like hot dogs?” Jack wagged his tail.
Stunned by the child’s deviousness, she threw up her hands and looked at Brock. “He’s five years old. How am I going to manage when he’s fifteen?”
“It’ll probably be a lot easier then,” Brock said. She gave him the locks and chain and walked toward the kitchen, intent upon leaving Brock alone with the job.
“This’ll go much faster and smoother if you hold this lock in place while I get this screw started,” he said. “These Segal dead-bolt locks are almost tamper-proof. I’m glad you got one for the front door as well. Here, hold this for me.”
She stood inches from him, watching his biceps flex as he forced the screws into the door’s hard wood. She looked at his fingers, long, lean and tapered, capable of giving a woman pleasure after pleasure, and her attention strayed from the task at hand as her gaze traveled over his long, lean frame. She sucked in her breath and his head whipped around. With one hand on the screwdriver and the other on the screw, he stood motionless, gazing into her eyes. She swallowed hard and tried without success to shift her gaze, for he held her spellbound.
“Are you going to invite me to your picnic?” he asked in words so soft that she barely heard him. “Are you?”
She managed to break contact with his eyes, but her gaze caught the chest hairs exposed by the open placket of his T-shirt and traveled to his bare arms, so muscular and strong.
“Well?” he said.
“Uh. Yes, of course,” she replied, shaking herself out of the trance. “As soon as…Can you fix the back gate today, too?”
“I’ll do that and anything else you need done,” he said in a tone that told her to take it any way she wanted to.
Chapter 2
Brock tested the locks. Satisfied