“Bye, Daddy!” Erin chimed in. “I love you!”
His tears didn’t wait for the end of the call.
“We thought we’d let you know that everything’s just fine down here, Luke.” Kristin sounded her usual sunny, in-control self. “The girls miss you, but they’re having a good time. We’ll be back next Saturday, and we’ll call again before then. Take care.” The machine clicked off.
Helpless against his own emotions, Luke hunched over the desk. He missed them so much—his daughters and his wife. How was he supposed to live with his heart ripped out?
“Luke?” Sarah’s bandaged hand closed lightly on his upper arm. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Luke, what’s wrong?”
A quick turn of his head shook his eyes clear. She stared up at him, her brows drawn together in concern, her face a collage of bruises and scraped skin. His football jersey swamped her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
He couldn’t say, “nothing.” And he didn’t know how to explain. “My little girls—”
The grip of her fingers tightened. “Has something happened? Are they okay?”
Luke drew a deep breath. “Sure. They’re great.” Sarah started to relax, and he knew he should let the subject rest. Why tell her? Why go over any of it again? “They’re with their mom at Disney World,” he heard himself say.
Sarah smiled, then winced. “That sounds like fun.”
“With my brother.” Her look turned puzzled. “He married Kristin on Saturday. They’re on their honeymoon.”
Confusion, then horror, crossed Sarah’s expressive face. She drew her hand away and stepped back.
Furious that he’d made such an obvious play for her sympathy, Luke pushed off the desk and headed for the kitchen. “Do you want some coffee?”
The grounds were measured and the brew dripping into the pot before Sarah followed him. He glanced up as she limped stiffly into the kitchen. “Milk? Sugar?”
She lowered herself into a chair at the table, shaking her head. “Black, please. Luke—”
He held up a hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that. Let’s just forget it, okay? I brought some doughnuts for breakfast. Have one.”
But she didn’t make a move toward the box on the table, just stared at him with that serious, green-gold gaze. “You’re divorced?”
Luke turned back to the coffeemaker. “Yeah.”
“Because of…him?”
Carefully, he took two mugs out of the cabinet. “Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry.”
At that, he chuckled. “Hell, Sarah. Nobody’s as sorry as I am.” He brought the filled mugs to the table. “But for the record, it’s not as tabloid as it sounds. She was engaged to Matt first. He went missing on a classified Army assignment and they told us he was dead. We got married and Erin and Jen were born. Then, after five years, Matt came back.”
“Five years!”
“He’d been a POW the whole time, which the Army in its wisdom either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell us. Kristin hadn’t ever stopped loving him, and…and it was tearing her apart, being with me when he was around. So there you go.” Grabbing a raspberry-filled pastry, he took a sticky bite.
Sarah still hadn’t touched her coffee or the doughnuts. “You’re very honorable, to set her free.”
“A white knight, in the flesh.”
“Do the girls live here with you?”
He ran out of brittle comments. “Not full-time. Kristin and I have been sharing custody since I moved out about eighteen months ago. But now…” Luke couldn’t bear to think about the change in his life. And he surely couldn’t translate pure anguish into words.
The woman across the table accepted his silence and picked up her cup with the fingers and thumbs of both hands, taking a small sip of coffee. She chose a raspberry doughnut and finished it, along with the brew, in silence. Then she looked over. “I don’t suppose anyone’s turned in my purse.”
Luke released a relieved breath at the change in subject. “I checked before I left the station. No.”
She rested her unbruised temple on the back of her bandaged wrist. “I don’t even know where to start. I can’t get into my car without keys, and I can’t get extra keys because they’re in the condo.” Her sigh wavered. “I can’t get in there without keys and the manager doesn’t know me without ID, but all my ID—”
“Hold on, Sarah. Calm down.” Her rough whisper had taken on an edge of hysteria that worried him. “Don’t try to solve all the problems at once. You have an extra key to the car?”
She nodded, brushing a fingertip across her marred cheek to catch a tear.
“That’s good. We’ll go to the condo, and I can convince the manager to let you in.”
“How?”
“I’m a cop. Why shouldn’t he believe me?”
“She.” Her lips quivered in a near smile.
Luke grinned back. Solid ground for both of them. “She. Once we get into your place, we’ll call the credit card companies. Then—”
“Credit cards?”
“You have to cancel them, right? The guy could be running up your bill.”
She stared at him, then shook her head. “That’s—that’s right. I totally forgot about the cards.”
“Well, now you remember. So we’ll cancel them and then we’ll get your car.”
“Wait…I’m confused.” She held up a hand. “Why should you—I mean, don’t you…have other things to do?”
“Sure,” Luke lied, unable to pull up a laugh of any kind. “But you need some help and I’ve got the time to spare. We’re the perfect couple.”
Sarah’s gaze demanded a deeper level of truth. He cleared his throat. “Look, I hate what that guy did to you. If I can’t find him, at least I can help you get things back together. Any friend would do that for another. And don’t ask me why, but I feel like we are. Friends.” There. That was as honest as he could be.
She did smile then, for the first time since last night. “Me, too. Which is really weird, because—”
“Because I can’t even remember your last name.”
“Randolph. Sarah Rose Randolph.”
“Well, Sarah Rose, you’re as dressed as a lot of people ever get in a beach town. Find your shoes and let’s start putting your life back together.”
SARAH KNEW she shouldn’t let herself depend on Luke. As a capable adult, she ought to be able to get herself out of any trouble she got into. Until six months ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of imposing on anyone like this.
But, oh, the comfort of having him there. With Luke standing behind her, she found the strength to assert her identity to the condo manager, who actually believed her and let them into the house without an argument.
And with Luke around, instead of dwelling on her problems and giving up on the solutions, she felt focused enough to look through the file box she’d started for her bills, finding the