Forever After (6 page)

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

Meredith snapped from her reverie to focus on her daughter. “Nothing, sweetie. Everything’s right, absolutely right.”

Over the next
two days, Heath’s life was a whirlwind. The recall petition was causing a stir, and he’d been called before the board of county commissioners three times, only to accomplish nothing. He refused to toss teenagers into overcrowded cells, even for short stays until their folks could come get them.
A look at the dark side, up close and personal?
Not while he was sheriff. As for calling parents, no problem. He just needed fifteen more deputies and another pair of hands to do the job.

Then there’d been the accident, for which Heath would always believe Tom Moore had been responsible. At final tally, seven boys had lost their lives, all honor-roll seniors who would have gone on to universities next fall on football scholarships. They’d been well liked by their teachers, popular with classmates, and deeply loved by their families. It was a devastating loss. Heath had attended the memorial service, and he’d spent most of the first day after the wreck at the school, giving lectures on teenage alcohol abuse, counseling kids with drinking problems, and enrolling drinkers and nondrinkers alike into prevention programs, sponsored by businesses in the community.

In addition to the problems caused by recall and the accident, Heath had been dealing with what he was coming to think of as the “Moore Factor.” The younger man was about to drive Heath and everyone else at the department
crazy. The possibility of Heath’s recall pleased the deputy, no end. For the last two days, his uniforms had been starched so stiff, they looked as if they could walk by themselves. And when he came in to work, he all but danced a jig. He actually seemed to think that he would have Heath’s job in the bag if Heath were out of the picture.
Right
. Moore had a lot of growing up to do before he’d be ready. In ten years, maybe,
maybe
being the keyword. If he kept pushing Heath’s buttons, he might not live that long.

Being so preoccupied, Heath might have forgotten the pretty little brunette down the road but for one small detail: nearly every time he drove past her house, she was outside tackling some chore that made him feel guilty as hell for not stopping to help. One time, she was building a fence, which he assumed was to keep Goliath out, the next time swinging a hoe as if she were killing snakes. Another afternoon, she was trying to fix a section of fence between her yard and the pasture, wrestling with a post bigger than she was. Two days later, he saw her removing a sheet of particle board from the top of her battered Ford sedan. What in the hell was she up to over there?

He’d chewed on that question ever since.
Not my business. The lady wants nothing to do with me, and if I’m smart, I’ll keep it that way. What am I gonna do? Repair the place for her? Like I have time for that
.

Logical reasons notwithstanding, Heath still felt like a heel for not helping. Not that she’d accept. He wouldn’t be welcome if he went back over there, dog or no dog.

This is ridiculous, Meredith thought one morning as she stared at the black dog hair on the edge of the bathroom sink. How could there be dog hair in the house after all her efforts? She’d washed Sammy’s bedding and the clothes she’d been wearing the night Goliath got in the yard. Plus, she’d dust-mopped the floor in Sammy’s room three times since. But the hair kept appearing. It was as if the stuff was procreating.

When Meredith went to the kitchen and sat down across
from Sammy at the table, she found another dog hair in her oatmeal. “Sammy, has Goliath been coming over to visit with you through the fence while you’re playing outside?”

Holding a spoonful of cereal poised halfway to her mouth, Sammy gazed across the table at Meredith with guileless blue eyes. “No, Mommy.”

While scooping the short black hair from her dish, Meredith observed her daughter, who looked as innocent as an angel. Maybe a little too innocent.

“Have you been letting Goliath in the house at night?” she asked gently.

“No, Mommy.”

Meredith had never caught her daughter in a lie, and she had no reason to believe the child might be fibbing now. Even so, she looked deeply into Sammy’s eyes, searching for…what? Some sign of duplicity? She was dealing with a little girl who wouldn’t turn five for several more weeks, not an accomplished liar.

“Sweetheart…”

Meredith hesitated. She couldn’t spout dire warnings. Did she want the child to be terrified to go outdoors? “Hmm,” she mused, looking back down at her bowl. “This is too weird. I guess you’re still picking up dog hair on your clothes when you play outside.”

Sammy hunched her shoulders, looking as bewildered as Meredith felt.

“Well, so much for my finishing breakfast,” Meredith said with a sigh. “Somehow, a dog hair in my mush doesn’t do great things for my appetite.”

A few minutes later Meredith settled down at her desk to put in her daily four hours working. Telephone solicitation was a dead-end, no-brainer job, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. But working in computer programming, the field she loved, simply wasn’t possible right now, not when she had an emotionally unstable little girl who needed her mother at home. Sammy had just been taken from the only world she’d ever known and plopped smack-dab in the middle of an unfamiliar one.
She needed time—time to heal and time to forget.

Later when Sammy was stronger and able to attend school, Meredith would return to her field. There were mail order places where she could purchase a fake diploma to get her foot in the door at a company, and once there, her experience would carry her. For now, though, she was content to call strangers and book them for a free carpet shampoo, compliments of Miracle Kleen. For every shampooer her customers purchased from the sales rep who did the demonstrations, Meredith received a commission. She wasn’t getting rich, but the paychecks kept the wolves from their door.

As she was making her first phone call of the morning, Meredith noticed several dog hairs on her desk blotter. Seeing them stunned her.

“Hello?”

The irritated voice at the other end of the line startled Meredith into speech. “Uh, hello, Mrs. Christiani? This is Meredith Kenyon, your local Miracle Kleen representative. My company’s offering a few carefully selected dogs in Wynema Falls a free carpet cle—”

Before Meredith could say more, the woman hung up in her ear.

Two nights later, Meredith was jerked from a sound sleep by a piercing scream. Then, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Accustomed to her daughter’s nightmares, Meredith was on her feet before she came fully awake. Not taking time to search for her slippers, she raced through the house, tugging on the chenille robe she’d grabbed from the foot of her bed.

“I’m here, sweetie!” she cried as she flung open Sammy’s bedroom door and flipped on the light. “It’s okay, punkin. Mommy’s—”

Meredith’s words died in her throat, and she reeled to a halt. Heath Masters’ dog lay in the middle of her daughter’s bed, a hulking black presence. Meredith glanced at the double-hung window, which had been pushed open, then jerked
her gaze back to her daughter, who was hugging the dog’s stout neck, her tear damp face pressed against his ruff. The Rottweiler lay with one foreleg curled over Sammy as if to return her hug, his massive head resting on her shoulder, his jowls dripping drool down the back of her pink pajama top. Every time Sammy sobbed, the dog whined softly, snuffling the child’s hair and licking her ear.

Always before, it had been Meredith’s job to comfort Sammy when she awoke from a nightmare. Now, it seemed, Heath Masters’ Rottweiler had assumed that role.

Amazement coursed through Meredith. How many times had Sammy let the dog in? Judging by the way she clung to Goliath, the two had done some serious bonding.

Meredith took a cautious step toward the bed. Goliath emitted a low, rumbling growl. Meredith stopped and hugged her waist, her gaze fixed on those gleaming white fangs.
Oh, God
. She had no doubt that the dog would leap on her if she went closer.

Gathering all her courage, Meredith took another step. Goliath’s snarl gained force, seeming to vibrate the walls. She pressed a hand to her throat, afraid to move. In a frenzy, the Rottweiler might turn on Sammy. The only things Meredith had in the house to use as weapons were a butcher knife and a tack hammer, and it would take her at least a full minute to go get either one.

She retreated to the kitchen and ran to the wall phone. By the light from Sammy’s room, she could see well enough to find Heath Masters’ phone number.

He answered on the second ring, sounding surprisingly alert. “Masters, here.”

“Get over here! Your dog is in bed with my daughter! I can’t get close to her!”

“Meredith?”

The fact that he’d somehow learned her name barely registered. Throwing a frightened glance over her shoulder to make sure the dog hadn’t begun devouring her child, she cried, “Of course! Who else would be calling you at two in the morning?”

“I’ll be right there.”

The line went dead. Hanging up, Meredith pressed her back to the wall, wondering how long it might take him to get there. Five minutes?

Shaking and almost beside herself, she ran her hands into her hair. Oh, dear heaven, her
hair
! She couldn’t answer the door like this.

She charged to the bathroom. In her hurry, she knocked the contact case off the counter. One side popped open. Falling to her knees, she carefully palmed the linoleum for the lost bit of fragile plastic. She had a spare set of lenses, but she couldn’t recall which drawer she’d stuck them in. Oh, God, please…

She nearly sobbed with relief when she finally found the lens. Then she almost lost it down the drain as she rinsed it off. After popping the colored disks into her eyes, she groped for her dark wig, jerked it on her head, then reached for her generously padded bra. At just that second, a loud knock resounded through the house.

Heath Masters looked bigger than life when she saw him standing on her rickety porch, his partially buttoned uniform shirt revealing an expanse of well-muscled, deeply bronzed chest, his faded jeans encasing powerful legs that seemed to stretch forever. Dim light fell across him, casting his dark, chiseled features in shadow and glistening in the sleep-rumpled waves of sable hair that curled loosely over his forehead.

Slate blue eyes still bleary with sleep, he asked, “Where is he?”

Meredith stepped back and beckoned him inside. “Careful of the flowerpots.”

She led him to the kitchen, where two rectangles of light spilled across the floor, one from the bathroom, the other from Sammy’s bedroom.

“They’re in there. Sammy had a nightmare. When I went in, there he was.”

Heath stepped to the doorway. After taking in the situ
ation, he bent to pat his knee. “Goliath! Come here, buddy.”

When Meredith heard the dog leap off the bed, she expelled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She backed away when Heath led his dog to the kitchen.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said as he tugged the dog past her.

Meredith ran to her daughter. After checking to make sure Sammy was all right, she tucked her back under the covers. “I’ll be back in just a minute. Okay, sweetness?”

Sammy, who seemed to have recovered with record speed from her bad dream, caught Meredith’s hand. “Don’t be mad at G’liath, Mommy. I’m the one who sneaked.”

Meredith reached down to smooth her daughter’s hair. “Oh, Sammy…”

“I di’n’t fib. Honest, Mommy. You asked if I
let
him in, ’member? All I done was open the window. G’liath comed in all by hisself.”

“I see.” Meredith looked deeply into her child’s eyes. Little angels, it seemed, could be as duplicitous as adults. “And why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“’Cause you was scared.” Sammy wrinkled her nose. “You di’n’t really build a fence to keep the cows away. You fibbed, di’n’t you, Mommy? It was for G’liath.”

Meredith felt heat creeping up her neck. She couldn’t chastise Sammy for fibbing when she’d done it herself. “Well…we’ll talk more about this in the morning, all right?”

“Do I gots to sit in the corner?”

Meredith sighed and drew the covers more snugly under Sammy’s chin. “No. I’ll probably let this slide. But we must have a discussion about your splitting hairs.”

“I di’n’t split ’em, Mommy. More just comed off G’liath and got all over. I think, maybe, ’cause G’liath likes to lay in the tub.”

The bathtub? Little wonder she’d been finding hair in her bathroom. That horrible dog had been wandering loose in her house? The thought made Meredith shiver.

“We’ll definitely have a long talk about this in the morning,” she told Sammy softly. “Right now, though, I have to see Sheriff Masters to the door. Okay?”

“I’m in trouble, huh?”

Gazing down into her child’s worried eyes, Meredith couldn’t hold onto her anger. “No, sweetkins, you’re not in trouble. Finding Goliath in here just caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

“The sher’ff man was right, Mommy. Goliath loves little girls, and he was lonesome for a friend. Now he’s my ’tector, like for fires and stuff.”

Recalling Sammy’s initial terror of the dog, Meredith could scarcely credit this. “How did you figure out that he wanted a friend?” she couldn’t resist asking.

“He told me.” Sammy plucked at her quilt. “In dog talk. He comed to the window and scratched, and told me. Then he gived me kisses through the glass till I wasn’t scared he’d bite me no more. Will you tell him g’night for me?”

“Absolutely.” Good night and good riddance. Meredith bent to press a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “No more nightmares, okay? Just sweet dreams.”

As she left the bedroom, Meredith drew the door closed behind her. Turning to face Heath Masters, she flipped on the light switch by the refrigerator, then hugged her waist. A sharp edge of torn linoleum jabbed the underside of her big toe, and she sucked in a surprised breath, the faint scent of musk aftershave drifting to her.

Nice
, she thought, then scowled. This man was an enemy and presently stood in her kitchen like a tree that had put down roots, the chipped yellow tabletop not quite reaching his hip. Tongue lolling, Goliath sat at his feet, so well behaved he might have been a poster dog for obedience training. She couldn’t decide which of them to watch.