She’ll freak.” He lowered his voice and sidled closer. “I didn’t smoke, I swear. Did she send you in here?”
Royce’s heart thudded heavily against his ribs. He stalked past the boys and kicked open the stall doors. Nobody lingered inside. He turned to meet the nervous gazes that skittered away from his. “I didn’t see anything, okay? It’s your health. Pretty stupid and I bet the sheriff would love to get his hands on whoever gave you the cigarettes. But I want to know something else.”
“What?” Jeremy asked.
“Did you guys see anyone slinking around here?”
“Like who?”
“A stranger. Or maybe somebody you know acting strange.”
A cocky smile split the face of the kid with the butt under his shoe. “Other than you?”
His patience wearing thin, Royce stepped closer to the boy. “I don’t have time for this. I just caught a kid slashing my tires. While he was inside this bathroom, some guy slipped him half a hundred-dollar bill to do it.”
Sirens echoed off the cement walls, heralding the arrival of Winter Falls’s finest.
“I didn’t see anyone, Mr. Graham.” Jeremy’s voice cracked. Whether with fear or hormones, Royce couldn’t guess. But he took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Jeremy was all right.
He had to tell Sarah. He turned to the doorway and found her leaning against the jamb. Her smoky eyes full of questions, she stared at him. “Dylan’s here, talking with some kid who’s a little bruised.”
One of the boys gasped.
Royce dragged a hand through his hair and exhaled a breath of relief. The kid with the knife hadn’t run for it. Any other city, any other kid, and he would have been gone before Royce had released his shirt. The kid had to know more, had to have some clue to the identity of Jeremy’s would-be kidnapper.
Or was there a kidnapper? Was it all the sick joke Sarah was desperate to label it? He hoped so, but the muscles tightened in his gut again. Instinct told him this was no joke. And that it had everything to do with his search for Sarah.
SARAH FUMBLED with the security pad by the front door, very aware of the tall, lean man who hovered too close behind her. His heat dampened the silk of her blouse, molding it to her back. With trembling fingers she flung open the door and stepped inside her temporary home.
Her entire body vibrated with anger she could barely contain. She wanted answers to questions she hadn’t been able to ask in front of Jeremy. While Royce and Dylan had questioned the kid Royce had caught slashing his tires, she had kept Jeremy occupied by helping him with his homework at one of the parlor’s outside tables. For once he wouldn’t have to do it while eating breakfast Monday morning.
Jeremy bounded past the adults, oblivious to the tension radiating between them. For that she could be thankful. For the moment. He skidded across the slate flooring. “I’m gonna take a shower, Mom.”
To wash away the traces of cigarette smoke still clinging to his hair and clothes. She hoped he hadn’t been smoking. A pre-teen rebellion was the last thing she had envisioned for Jeremy. She had thought he would be smarter than she’d been.
“Nice house.” The voice rumbled close behind her.
Sarah jumped, not that she’d forgotten his presence. How could she forget the stranger in her home? “It’s not mine. I’m staying here while I’m having a new place built.”
“You must have good references.”
She braced herself to face him, turning her head and finding him close. The warmth of those sandy-brown eyes wrapped around her, stealing the heat from her anger.
“I…uh…” What had she been about to say?
“Good security system, too.”
She heaved a sigh of relief when he moved away to walk across the slate floor to the security panel by the sliders. She wanted this stranger out of her home. Her questions could wait until Dylan returned from talking to people around the ice cream parlor. “You don’t need to stay until Dylan gets here. Jeremy and I are perfectly safe.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head. “No, I need to wait for Dylan.”
For what? To make sure Dylan was here before he left? But somehow she didn’t think he had any intention of leaving. Yet.
“And anyway, I said good system, not great. Not foolproof.”
She shivered and admitted to the fear in her heart. She didn’t want to be alone right now. But perhaps being alone was safer than being with this stranger. She knew his reputation and that most people considered him a hero; Dylan considered him a friend. But he was no friend of hers. Whatever he had alluded to back at the parlor that he had to tell her, she knew she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t care why he’d come to Winter Falls; she just wanted him gone.
“Evan bought the top-of-the-line system,” she said.
He lifted a brow until it disappeared into the hair hanging over his forehead. “Evan?”
“The owner. He’s staying in an apartment in Traverse City right now when he’s not traveling.” She’d lived in the town twenty minutes away, too, before her husband’s fatal heart attack. Afterwards the house they’d shared had seemed too big and empty, especially for Jeremy. Knowing Winter Falls was a good place to raise a child, she’d wrestled her bad memories, buried her pride and returned to her hometown.
He nodded. “Well, Evan bought last year’s security system.”
“Of course…he built this house a year ago.” She wanted to remain in the hall, anywhere but near him. Yet, she needed to see what he saw. Her heels clicked as she crossed the floor to the patio doors. The scent of butterscotch wafted over her when he turned his head.
“The pros have already figured out how to bypass last year’s security system.” He stared into her eyes, his intense.
Her breath hitched. “If you’re trying to scare me, it’s too late. I’m already scared. And I’m mad. And I’m confused. And I want answers!”
He stepped back to lean wearily against the glass doors. “I’m not trying to scare you.”
And perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was just telling the truth. Could she expect that from Dylan? Someone who cared about her might try to cushion the blow. But Royce Graham? What did he care about? This client who had brought him to Winter Falls?
“So tell me exactly what happened at the parlor,” she urged.
He rubbed his hand along his unshaven jaw. “I don’t know.”
She expelled a ragged sigh of frustration. “I thought you were into telling it like it is.”
He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I don’t know what it is, Sarah. I wish I did. It’d sure make things a lot simpler.”
The next sigh to break the silence was his.
She reached out, brushing her fingers across the tensed muscles of his forearm. “But you’re familiar with…”
She couldn’t say crimes against children. Not when one of those children could be her son. And somehow she was reluctant to bring back what seemed like painful memories for Royce. Perhaps it wasn’t that he didn’t care about anything but that he cared too much.
She let her fingers slide away, wishing she could shake off the wistfulness as quickly. She was pragmatic. She’d learned that at an early age. If a man acted as though he cared about nothing, he probably did.
Like Jeremy’s father. He hadn’t been the wounded soul she had thought him. He hadn’t needed her youthful, healing touch. At least not after he had gotten her pregnant.
“Sarah?”
She