RaeAnne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One: Blackberry Summer\Woodrose Mountain\Sweet Laurel Falls (19 page)

He firmly believed a kid was entitled to his secrets as long as they weren't dangerous. All the same, he was too much of a cop not to be curious. “So what were you doing so late? Over at a friend's house?”

Owen shook his head.

“Out on a date?” he teased.

“Ew. No!” The kid screwed up his face in horror at the idea.

“Then what?'

“Promise you won't tell my mom?” he asked after a pause.

“That depends,” he answered honestly. He had a strict policy not to lie to kids for the sake of convenience. Probably because he felt like the first four
teen years of his life when he thought he had a happy, normal family had been basically a lie.

“Are you doing something illegal or is your secret something that your mom needs to know for your safety or well-being?”

Owen snorted. “No, nothing like that.” He paused again. “I've been making a present for my mom.”

“Ah, the secret mom present. Got it.”

“You know it's Mother's Day on Sunday, right?”

He winced. He'd forgotten that particular day and made a mental note to ask his sisters what Mary Ella might have her eye on. He had to make up for the dozen years of Mother's Days he'd spent in California. “Thanks for the reminder. Guess I better get shopping.”

“My mom's birthday is right after Mother's Day, so I should really be giving her two presents.”

“Ooh, double whammy. That's rough, man.”

Owen giggled again and Riley grinned into the rearview mirror, feeling better than he had all week.

“I wanted to do something awesome, but I don't have very much money. So Evie at my mom's store is helping me make her something.”

“Something out of beads?”

“Yeah. My mom has this cool watch thing that she can switch like, with different bands, you know? So Evie's helping me make her a new one.”

He couldn't have said why that touched him so much, but something about the image of this very rugged little boy with the bum arm making a bead thingy for his mom slid right to his heart. If he was this mushy over
it, he could only imagine Claire would bawl like a newborn calf. “She'll love it,” he assured the boy.

“I hope so.”

“Where does your mom think you are?” he asked as he turned onto Blackberry Lane.

“I told her I was going to my friend Robbie's house after school.”

“What if your mom called Robbie's mom to check?”

“Robbie's mom works at the bank until six. His big sister tends him after school, so I told her I'd have Evie make her some earrings if she…” He paused, and in the mirror, Riley saw guilt flash over his features.

“If she gives you an alibi,” he answered for Owen.

“Yeah,” he answered, his voice sheepish. “You won't tell my mom, will you?”

Something told him Claire was going to have trouble with this one and his elaborately orchestrated schemes. “Are you kidding? I wouldn't ruin the surprise for her or for you.”

Owen grinned. “Thanks a lot.”

“You be sure and let me know how she likes it, okay?” Riley said when he pulled into the driveway. The windows of her house looked warm and welcoming in the fading, gloomy light.

Although it went against everything he'd been telling himself all week about staying away from her, Riley knew he had no choice now and he opened his car door.

“You don't have to come in,” Owen said. “I'm okay.”

“You might need somebody there to help you explain the mud on your cast. Anyway, your mom is an
old friend and I need to check on her, see how she's doing. And we've got a bike to fix, right? Between you and your mom, you've only got two good arms. I can give you a hand.”

“Do you know anything about fixing bikes?” Owen asked, his voice laced with suspicion. “My dad can never fix my bike when something goes wrong. Or Macy's, either. If we have a bike that needs work, we always have to take it to Mike's Bikes, even for a flat tire.”

That's because your dad is a jackass pansy,
he thought—but of course didn't say.

“When I was first a beat cop, I used to ride a bike.”

Owen looked intrigued. “Like a motorcycle?”

“Nope, like a bicycle. Two wheels, pedals, chain. The whole bit.”

“Cops don't ride bicycles.”

“Maybe not in Hope's Crossing. It doesn't make a lot of sense here. But in a city without a lot of snow, a bike is a great way to get around quickly.”

“Especially downhill.”

“True enough.” Riley smiled. “When you're chasing a bad guy running down the street with some lady's purse, you don't always have time to stop and take your bike into a shop. We often had to fix our own rides on the fly.”

“Do you still like to ride a bike?”

He thought of his three-thousand-dollar mountain bike currently taking up space in the spare room at his rented house. One of the main reasons he'd decided to take the job—besides his burnout in Oakland—had
been the recreational opportunities that abounded in Hope's Crossing. In the summer a person could find world-class climbing, hiking, biking, fishing. And of course the winter featured challenging downhill skiing and cross-country trails.

So far, he had been too busy to enjoy any of it, a pretty sorry state of affairs.

“I've got a bike at home. Maybe when you get the cast off you can show me if there are any new trails around here since I was a kid.”

“Sure, that would be fun,” Owen said as he pushed open his front door. Claire's droopy-eyed dog greeted them with a polite bark and a sniff at their wet shoes.

“Hey, Mom. I'm home. Where are the bandages?”

There was a pause of about five seconds, before he heard Claire's voice growing louder as she approached them. “In the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, right where they've always been. Why do you need a bandage?”

She came from the kitchen on the last “bandage,” without the wheelchair, he was happy to see. She walked on crutches that had been rigged up to compensate for her cast, with a little platform to rest her arm. She wore a flowery cotton dress, a pale lavender this time that made him think of a meadow full of wildflowers.

She stopped in the doorway with an almost comical sort of double take. “Riley! Oh! Hello.”

He looked at her mouth and suddenly couldn't remember anything but that shock of a kiss. When he dragged his gaze away to her eyes he saw the memory
of it there, in the slight widening of her pupils and the sudden flush on her cheekbones.

“Hi,” he said stupidly, unable to think of another damn thing to utter. His mind seemed filled with remembering the softness of her skin, the springtime taste of her, her tiny ragged breaths against his mouth.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “And why does my son need a bandage? Owen, why are you covered in mud? And blood, apparently.”

The boy grinned. “I crashed my bike in a stupid puddle and flipped over the handlebars. It was awesome.”

She looked at her son as if he was some strange exotic creature. A clone fighter himself or something. Because she'd never been an eight-year-old boy, she probably didn't grasp the particular nuances of the situation and how very cool it could be to endo your ride.

“Awesome,” she repeated.

“Yeah, like something on the X-Games. You should have seen it.”

“True story,” Riley put in. “A genuinely spectacular crash.”

She looked from one to the other. “You're both insane.”

Riley met the kid's gaze and they shared a grin. When he turned back to Claire, she was shaking her head, but he thought she looked more amused than annoyed.

“And how exactly were you involved in this, Chief McKnight?”

He offered what he hoped was an innocent smile.
It had always worked on his sisters, anyway. “Only an eyewitness, I swear.”

She raised an eyebrow and he was compelled to come clean. “Okay, I think I might have distracted him from paying as much attention as he probably should have to the road when I honked and waved.”

“It wasn't your fault. It was that stupid pothole's fault.”

“Something you can be sure I will be bringing up with the city council in the interest of public safety, of course.”

“He says he can fix my bike, Mom. We won't have to take it to Mike's Bikes. Cool, huh?”

She smiled. “Frosty.”

Riley gestured to her crutches. “Are you supposed to be walking around? Last I heard, I thought the docs wanted you to use the wheels for a while yet.”

She looked slightly guilty. “I tried. I really did. But I got so sick of it. I kept banging into doors and I felt trapped, not being able to tackle even a step. At my last appointment, I made Dr. Murray fix me up with crutches. It's still not easy to get around and most of the time in the house I end up using that office chair to roll from room to room, but it's better than trying to maneuver the stupid wheelchair.”

Riley could completely relate. When he'd been shot in the leg a few years back—a minor injury from a drug bust that had gone south, which he had decided not to share with his mom and sisters for obvious reasons—he had lasted about three days on sick leave before he'd been hounding his lieutenant to let him back on the job.

“So you're feeling better?”

“Much. I'm going a little stir-crazy, if you want the truth. I need to get back to the bead store.”

“Hey, Mom, I'm starving. What smells so good?”

The house
did
smell delicious, the air rich with something Italian, full of tomatoes and garlic, basil and oregano.

“Your sister's making dinner. It should be ready soon, but we need to clean up that mud before you can eat, young man.”

“And I still need a bandage.”

“Right.” She made a move as if to pivot, but Riley stopped her.

“You need to sit down. Point me in the right direction of your first aid supplies and I can take care of it.”

“I'm fine. You don't have to…”

He cut her off. “Bathroom, you said, right? I'm on it. Owen, see what you can do with some paper towels to wipe off the mud, okay?”

He headed into the same room where he'd washed up after he had hauled away her branches the other day, a clean, comfortable space with textured walls painted a rich Tuscan gold and umber.

After grabbing a box of bandages off the shelf and some antibiotic ointment, he followed the sound of voices to the kitchen. He found Owen recounting his fall all over again, this time to his sister who was standing at the stove wearing a red-checkered apron and stirring something in a stockpot on the stove.

“Wow. It really smells good in here.”

Macy flashed him a pleased smile, looking very much like he remembered Claire at that age.

“Thanks. Hey, Mom, how much fresh rosemary did you tell me again?”

Claire was standing at the island in the kitchen, quartering tomatoes for the tossed salad in a bowl in front of her, he was annoyed to see. “One teaspoon ought to do it. Do you need me to check the flavor?”

“No. I told you I can handle it. You said you would sit down. So sit down.”

He decided Macy was an uncommonly sensible girl.

“Just a minute more. I'm almost finished,” Claire insisted.

She shifted her weight slightly on the crutches and he saw a spasm of pain cross her features. With a frustrated sigh, he set the first aid supplies on the kitchen table, where Owen sat near the dark, rain-splattered bay windows, then moved behind Claire and in one smooth motion, he scooped her into his arms and carried her toward the table.

Macy and Claire both made the same shocked sort of sound but Owen just giggled.

“Put me down,” Claire insisted. “Right this minute.”

Now why would he want to do that when she was soft and warm and smelled like strawberries and springtime? He smiled down at her and had the guilty satisfaction of seeing her gaze rest on his mouth briefly before she jerked it away.

“I plan to,” he answered calmly. “See? I'm putting
you down right here in this chair. I'm not going to stand here and watch you overdo.”

“Fixing broken bicycles, bandaging boo-boos, carting around invalids. You're just overflowing with helpfulness, aren't you?”

He smiled at her tart tone. “Doing my civic duty, that's all.”

He finally decided he'd held her long enough—probably longer than was smart—and lowered her into a chair at the kitchen table adjacent to her son, who was watching the whole thing with amusement.

“What would you like me to tackle first? The boo-boo or the salad?”

She glared. “Oh, do I get a choice now?”

“If you can choose wisely.”

She rolled her eyes, but he thought he saw a hint of a smile lurking there. Might have been a trick of the light, though. “I can fix up Owen from here. I could actually slice the tomatoes from here, too, but because I have a feeling you're going to insist on doing something, you can finish the salad.”

“Wrong. I'm going to insist on doing both. You've only got one good hand. Just relax.”

She looked frustrated, but he also saw the lines of pain around her mouth, so he didn't let her annoyance bother him.

“Let me wash my hands and I'll take care of the BMX casualty here first.”

He took off his jacket and hung it over a chair, then headed to the sink where Macy was watching the whole scene with interest. “It really does smell delicious,” he
said as he rolled up his sleeves and lathered his hands. “What are you fixing?”

“Spaghetti. It's not very hard. I just have to boil the pasta. Grandma brought over the sauce, but we like it a little spicier than she does, so we always add some stuff to her sauce.”

Claire didn't look exactly thrilled by her daughter's confession—or maybe she was still annoyed at him.

“Whatever you're doing, it smells perfect.”