“You talked him out of it I…thank you. Where’s Douglas? Did you take him back to the store?”
“Yeah.” He knew the boy stayed in town on Saturdays, hanging around the clothing and accessories boutique that Stephanie successfully owned and managed with the mayor’s wife. The kid ran errands for some of the merchants or went to a movie. It could be a lonely life for a twelve-year-old.
Stephanie was pretty strict about who her son was with and where he went. Since Clay’s death she was even more so. That’s what Nick had heard. He didn’t see her much. He didn’t want to. Steph was a part of his past that he’d never come to grips with. The fact that she still had the power to bother him made him angry, but that’s the way it was.
Okay, he could handle it.
“Did you drive up?” She looked around for his cruiser, a four-wheel-drive utility truck.
“Yeah. Down here under the trees.”
She’d walked the half mile from the Glass Slipper Boutique to the isolated park on a rise at the edge of town, a thing she often did during her brief periods of freedom. He shortened his steps to her pace and guided her down the sidewalk and around the corner.
The cruiser was parked in the shade of some ancient cottonwoods. A creek ran along the road and under a thirty-foot bridge nearby. The spot was pretty, romantic even. There was a nice grassy area for a picnic. Bittercress bobbed and nodded in shades of pink, white and yellow.
Not that she took the time to notice.
Without waiting for him, she wrenched open the truck door and attempted to climb inside. Her skirt was too narrow. She hiked it midway to her thigh, but still couldn’t manage. He hooked his hands on each side of her waist and lifted her.
He held himself in check as her perfume wafted around them, brought out by the warmth of the sun and the exertion of the fast walk. He was aware of the hitch in her breathing and swallowed a groan that crowded his throat.
She fell back against him, and he realized he’d taken her by surprise. Strength flowed into him in a tidal wave of adrenaline and hunger. She wasn’t a featherweight, but neither did she feel heavy. In fact, she felt wonderful in his arms, but then, she’d always felt perfect to him during those long-ago days.
“You can put me down now.”
Her voice came from far away, barely audible over the roar of the blood pulsing through his ears.
“Nick! Nicholas! Put me down.”
The sharp panic that underlined the command jerked him back from the edge of control. He released her and slammed the door.
Stalking behind the truck, he paused and swiped a hand over his forehead where sweat had gathered in a fine-beaded sheen. He caught sight of himself in the tinted rear window.
Picture of a haunted man.
He yanked his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and jammed them on his nose. There, he thought, that at least hid the treachery of raging lust from her view. The anger surged anew. He didn’t want to be susceptible to Stephanie. He forced himself to calmly walk to the driver’s door and climb in.
When the engine was purring, he flicked the fan to high. Cool air swirled around them, drowning out the need to talk as he eased into gear and headed for the heart of the. town nestled in the foothills of the Rockies, an hour out from Denver.
Stephanie hopped out of the truck before Nick had a chance to come around and lift her down. His eyes, dark as bitter chocolate when he removed his sunglasses, bored into hers.
“Thanks for the ride. And for taking care of Doogie.”
“It was nothing.”
She nodded, closed the door and dashed across the parking lot to the boutique before he could say more. One thing she didn’t need was advice from a thirty-four-year-old bachelor on how to raise her son. She was only three months younger than Nick Dorelli. She and Doogie were doing fine, just fine.
Anxiety belied her shaky confidence as she walked into the cool, pleasant interior of the shop. “Doogie?” she said.
“In your office,” Pat, the assistant manager, told her.
Stephanie hurried toward the back. No surge of satisfaction filled her as it usually did when she walked through her little kingdom, as Clay had once called it.
Passing the curtained dressing rooms, she entered the back hallway and went into the office, which was piled high with catalogs and samples. Her son sat in a wing chair, one leg thrown over the arm in a careless position. She noticed his sneakers were wearing thin. He’d soon have a hole under the ball of his big toe. She sighed. Twelve-year-olds went through everything—clothes, shoes and food—so fast.
“I just spoke to Officer Dorelli,” she said, slipping into her chair behind the desk. She hooked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at her son. Really looked at him.
He was more than cute. He already showed the lanky form of her family and the stunning good looks of his father. His hair was dark, almost black, and he had brilliant blue eyes, a true blue, unlike hers that had a dusky gray tint.
Doogie swallowed, but he said nothing.
“Well?” she demanded, suppressing an urge to bawl like a baby rather than act the reasonable parent
.
She didn’t want to deal with this on top of worrying about money, mortgage payments and keeping the store profits up in face of each downward turn in the economy. She didn’t need the constant reminder of her youth and its romantic, idealistic dreams, as personified by Nick Dorelli, invading her peace of mind. Life could be cruel….
“What have you got to say for yourself?” she asked her son.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You’re caught shoplifting and you have nothing to say?” The silence stretched between them. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna keep it It was…well, like I just wanted to watch it, then I’d have brought it back.”
“You could have rented it. You got your allowance this morning. Why didn’t you do that?”
He squinched his face up as if thinking about it was really hard. She noticed the smoothness of his skin, how tan he was already this year, except for a scar running from the edge of his chin down under the line of jawbone. He’d fallen and split his chin open on a skateboard last year.
When he’d walked in the door of the shop, blood running down the front of his T-shirt like a river, her heart had stopped. She’d taken him to the emergency clinic where they’d put eight stitches in to close the cut. Had anyone ever remarked on the difficulties of raising a child alone?
The sardonic humor helped keep the despair at bay. She had a million things to do to get the store ready for the Summer Madness sale coming up next week. Time was a pit bull, always snapping at her heels.
“Doogie?”
“There was a line. It was too much hassle.” He shrugged, defiant as only an adolescent can be.
“Hassle,” she repeated. She tried to be calm, to speak without accusation in her voice. They had to get to the bottom of this. “Shoplifting isn’t a minor infraction or a fight with a friend. It’s stealing.”
“I wasn’t stealing. I’d have brought it back tomorrow.”
“Taking something without permission is wrong, no matter what your intentions might be.” Nausea gripped her as she tried to speak reasonably and appeal to his finer qualities. “Think how you would feel if Clyde took your baseball mitt without asking you first. You’d think someone had stolen it.”
“Clyde’s