Читать книгу Kids on the Doorstep / Cop on Loan: Kids on the Doorstep / Cop on Loan - Jeannie Watt - Страница 16

WHILE JOHN WORKED ON the hot cider and chocolate, Renee helped the girls out of their wet and snow-caked clothing and into soft pajamas and slippers.

“These look warm,” Renee observed casually of the girls’ pajamas. “Did you pick these out?”

“Yep. On the ’net,” Taylor said, wiggling with delight into her horse-patterned top. “Mr. John said there’s no mall anywhere near here and he hates to deal with the people so Mr. John had Grammy buy our stuff on his computer.”

“That was nice of him to buy you girls some pj’s.”

Alexis nodded but it was obvious she wasn’t going to elaborate for Renee’s benefit. Thankfully, Taylor wasn’t exactly a locked box when it came to safeguarding information.

“We didn’t have any clothes ’cept for the ones that we was wearing the night we came and Mr. John said they weren’t fit to line a dog’s bed. My jeans had holes in them,” Taylor said. “But now, I got lots of jeans with no holes and I love my new shoes.”

Renee made a mental note to talk to John about the purchases made thus far. It wasn’t right for him to foot the bill. She’d have to find out how much he’d spent so she could make arrangements to pay him back.

But for the time being, the girls were running from the room toward the kitchen, squealing and laughing as they called out for their warm drinks.

Renee hung back a moment as she gazed about the room that her girls had taken over. It was much like the rest of the house, masculine in its decor, but somehow her girls had put their stamp on things with small accents. A Little Mermaid lamp here, a pink throw blanket tossed casually on the bed over there, and lots of clothes strewn about that were certainly the sign of little girl territory. It was the nicest place they’d ever lived and it hurt that Renee hadn’t been the one to provide it for them.

Smoothing the wrinkles from the comforter, she wondered if John would let her buy some girly sheets for their bed. But as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she discarded it. There was no sense in buying sheets for a bed they were only going to be in temporarily. Swallowing a sigh at the fight she’d have on her hands the day the girls had to say goodbye to the ranch and to their Mr. John, Renee shelved the unhappy thoughts and pasted a bright smile on her lips for her daughters’ benefit.

They weren’t leaving today. Her aunt used to tell her, don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow when there was happiness to be found in today.

Good advice, Renee realized, for she really didn’t want to think about that day, either.

LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER copious amounts of hot chocolate, cider, a dinner of steak and potatoes, games of Uno, and after the girls had been tucked into bed exhausted from the day’s activities, John felt himself reluctant to say good-night to the one woman in the world he ought to steer clear of.

Funny how those things work.

“I guess I should turn in, too,” Renee said, although she wasn’t making a move toward the door just yet. He took that as a sign that she was hesitant for her own reasons and much to his shame, he jumped at it.

“Come sit a minute,” he suggested, gesturing toward the crackling fire in the hearth. The dancing light threw soft shadows into the living room that offset the eerie glow from the snow-packed window. “There’s no need to run off just because the girls aren’t here. I don’t bite.”

She smiled. “Are you sure?”

“Am I sure that I don’t bite or am I sure that I wouldn’t mind some company?”

“Um, both.”

He chuckled and followed her to the sofa. “I think the girls had a really good day and I want to thank you for making that effort for them. I get the feeling that playing in the snow isn’t your idea of a good time on most days.”

“It’s not but I didn’t realize it could be so much fun, not to mention one heck of a workout. I think muscles I never knew I had are going to be protesting tomorrow morning.”

He smiled but his overactive imagination had already snagged the opportunity to be distracting and the effort was forced. Stop thinking about her curves, he instructed his brain, searching wildly for something else to fill the space in his head. Think of taxes, the fence that needs mending—anything! “Tell me a bit about yourself,” he suggested and she faltered, the light fading quickly from her eyes. “You don’t have to. I’m just a little curious about the woman—”

“Who left her kids behind?” she interrupted sharply, moving to leave but he stopped her with a firm hand.

“No, that’s not what I was going to say. Are you always in a habit of jumping to conclusions?”

She bit her lip. “Lately. I guess. What were you going to say?”

“Just that I’m curious to know more about the woman who is nothing like I thought she was.”

Renee settled back on the sofa as she said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re a bit of a wild card, if you know what I mean. Unpredictable. What I knew about you was that you left your girls behind for reasons I don’t know but then you’ve shown your fierce determination to get them back. To win their love. Something tells me that there’s more to Renee Dolling, deep down. Tell me about that woman.”

She blushed, and in the soft light with her wind-chapped lips and burnished cheeks, she bloomed into an incomparable beauty right before his eyes. He resisted the pull, the urge to sample those lips, to nibble along her collarbone and taste the silken skin, but the effort cost him.

She cleared her throat and glanced away. “You give me too much credit. I’m just a mother who made a terrible mistake who’s trying to fix it. Contrary to what it may look like, my girls mean everything to me. They’re all I have. I married Jason right out of high school. We were big dreamers with even bigger plans. Unfortunately, neither one of us had the wherewithal to figure out how to make those dreams a reality. And then, I got pregnant.”

“So Alexis wasn’t planned I take it.”

“None of the girls were planned,” Renee said drily. “But they were the joy of my life. I was just too…” she drew a deep breath “…too drunk most of the time to realize it.”

“Drunk?” An echo of her admission in court about rehab came back to him.

She met his stare. “Yeah. Drunk. I was…I mean, I am an alcoholic. That’s why I left.”

He digested her admission in silence, taking a moment to let it sink in. “What did you ex-husband think about you wanting to get sober?” he asked.

She smiled without humor. “What did he think? He tried to talk me out of it. Jason was constantly trying to get me to drink because when I drank I forgot how I wanted to get away from him. I’d been trying to leave him for almost a year when I got pregnant with Chloe.”

“So you were still having sex with him even though you wanted to leave…”

“That’s a little personal, don’t you think?” Renee’s mouth hardened.

“I’m just trying to understand, you know…connect the dots,” he said by way of apology.

“If you figure out my twisted path from then to now, leave a breadcrumb trail. Sometimes I still don’t know how I got here,” she retorted with a trace of bitterness. Then she sighed and shook her head in answer to his bold question. “No. I wasn’t.”

Dawning came quickly. “Chloe isn’t your husband’s child.”

A long moment passed before Renee slowly shook her head again.

“Yet he agreed to raise her as his own?”

“He thought it would make me stay and it did…for a while. But the drinking and the fighting just got worse and worse…until the night I blacked out and woke up with a gash in my forehead and the girls crying in the backseat of my car. I’d tried to drive away with them and I was smashed.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t kill someone.”

“I know that. That’s why I knew I had to leave in order to get sober. There was a rehab facility with an opening but I couldn’t take the kids with me. I told Jason I had to get sober for our marriage. I lied. But it was the only way he’d agree to take care of the kids. I was in for two months and toward the end of my stay, I finally told Jason when he came for visitation that I wanted a divorce. I never expected him to split with the kids. I thought he might try to intimidate me into staying with him but when he didn’t, I just assumed he agreed with me that it was over. I got out and realized they were gone. Up until that day I found them here, I’d been looking for them ever since.”

“And Chloe’s father?”

Shame burned in her cheeks as she answered, “Never knew him. It was a one-night stand that I barely remember.”

John leaned back into the sofa and exhaled softly. It was a lot to take in. Renee admitted to her mistakes and didn’t flinch from the truth even if she hated her part in it. He had to respect that even if he didn’t understand.

“You should’ve told the judge all this,” he said quietly. “It might’ve made a difference in the outcome.”

Her mouth twisted in a sad, wry grin. “Don’t you remember? I tried. He wasn’t interested in hearing what I had to say. He took one look at me and wrote me off as a bad mother who abandoned her kids. Just like everyone else in this town who knows my situation, which seems like just about half the population.”

Renee misconstrued his silence as condemnation and ice returned to her voice as she said, “I can’t change who I was…only who I am now. If you can’t deal with that, that’s your problem.” She rose stiffly and walked to the back door as if to leave but John wasn’t ready to end the night on a sour note.

“Hold on now,” he said, hurrying after her. She stopped and he could see the hurt in her eyes even though she was trying to hide it. He reached out and put his hand on the door to keep her from storming out. “There you go jumping to conclusions again. Bad habit,” he murmured, distracted by the soft heave of her chest and the gentle parting of her lips as she stared up at him. He blinked away the fuzz in his brain but his thoughts were foggy from being so close to her. Damn, she smelled good—earthy and sweet, like fresh alfalfa hay on a summer day. Where was he going with that thought train? Off track. He paused to give himself a mental shake. “I didn’t mean to rile you up,” he said.

She ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip as if she were nervous and said, “Well, you did. Rile me up,” she added with a fair amount of shake in her voice, making him wonder if she was struggling with the same odd assortment of inappropriate feelings, too. He hoped so. He’d hate to realize he was traveling a one-way street. She swallowed. “But I accept your apology,” she said, lifting her chin.

Her lips were so close, her mouth so tempting…he jerked and took a step away. When he grinned, it almost hurt. “Good,” he said. “It’s better if we get along. For the kids.”

“Where have I heard that before…” she said, but her voice was strained. “All right then. Good night.”

He watched her cross to the guesthouse and waited until her door closed before he shut himself in his own bedroom, feeling oddly discontented. Jerking his shirt out from the waistband of his jeans he pulled it off and over his head to toss in the laundry basket. He’d wanted to kiss her. And yet, he knew that was a bad idea. Laying a lip-lock on the one woman who was so not available was pure lunacy and an exercise in futility. And he wasn’t usually the kind of man who dabbled in stupid ventures.

When he was down to his boxers, he climbed into the bed and punched the pillows a few times in an attempt to fluff them more to his liking but it was really just a way to blow off steam. He wanted her. Wanted her in the worst way. He pushed at his hardened erection in annoyance. Down, boy. Nothing happening for you.

Think taxes, mending fence—yeah, that didn’t work the first time around, and it didn’t work now. He turned onto his stomach, grimacing at the discomfort from his groin and closed his eyes, determined to put the whole incident behind him and just go to sleep.

And it almost worked. But just as he hovered between asleep and awake, Renee floated into his mental theater and instead of wearing a look of uncertainty, she smiled suggestively over her shoulder and beckoned for him to come to her as her robe parted and slid to the floor in a discarded heap.

He drifted into slumber on a tortured groan.

RENEE PACED HER SMALL living room unable to sleep. She twisted her hands in agitation, not quite sure what she’d hoped would happen but definitely disappointed that nothing had.

Yet, the very fact that she’d looked into his eyes and felt a tingle zing from her stomach to her feminine parts made her extremely wary. She wasn’t supposed to be attracted to John Murphy. The man had complicated her life in a way that should make him Public Enemy #1 in her eyes but she was slowly seeing him in a different light.

And that was not good. Better to keep the battle lines firmly drawn. They were not on the same side. They were simply being civil to one another for the sake of the kids. Kinda like being stuck in a loveless marriage…yeah…she knew what that felt like.

This year was not going to be Renee Dolling’s year of living dangerously but rather the year of practical and sound decisions that do not encourage her to drink. Okay, so the thought wasn’t something she could put on an inspirational button but it had to keep her on the straight and narrow. Thus far, it had. And that was saying something after all the stress and disappointment she’d endured while searching for her girls.

She sighed. Technically, she could date. She was past the prescribed time of no dating after making her commitment to sobriety but somehow keeping her distance seemed so much safer for everyone involved. No entanglements. No conflicts. No…sex.

That’s where the pacing came in. Renee stopped and rubbed her palms down her jeans to wipe away the sudden clammy feeling. Sex. She missed it. Needed it. God, craved it.

But not with John Murphy.

Anyone but him. Why not, a voice whispered in her head and she nearly barked in laughter. Why? Because that man would likely brand her soul if he so much as touched her in a sexual manner. If they breached that intimate barrier there’d be nothing stopping her from falling headlong in love with him. Was that a bad thing? Yes! She didn’t want to love John Murphy. She wanted to leave Emmett’s Mill and put this whole awful chapter of her life behind her. She wanted to start a new life with the girls somewhere else. Was that so much to ask?

Her hormones seemed to think so because even as she berated herself for shooting periodic looks of intense longing toward John’s house, she couldn’t stop wondering what it might feel like to sample just one taste of that firm, sexy mouth.

Climbing into bed, she closed her eyes with an unhappy frown and tried to ignore the twisting tendril of achy tension that taunted her lady bits without mercy, reminding her that no matter how hard she may try, her curiosity was not fading but simply becoming stronger.

Well, she knew what curiosity did for the cat. She just needed to keep that reminder front and center in her mind when she started to feel her defenses drop around that man. That way her panties wouldn’t drop, as well.