His shoulders slumped. “You always have to get back to work.”
“I know.” Hearing his sigh as they exited the vehicle and headed across the sparsely grassed, hard-packed sand yard, she thrust aside memories of the well-cared-for landscape of their former home. She placed a hand on her young son’s shoulder. “But I go to work because te amo. Sí?”
I love you.
And she did, with every breath she’d taken since she’d first suspected she was pregnant. She’d held him even closer to her heart since his father’s murder two summers ago. Duke. Her hero, whom she’d learned not long after his death had more than a bit of tarnish smudging his shining armor.
But there was no point in rehashing that and making herself miserable. It was what it was. She could never have foreseen how his gambling debts would come back to haunt her, draining his life insurance and their savings and leaving her and Cory in dire circumstances that they had yet to dig out of. But Duke had otherwise been a good man. A loving father. A courageous cop.
“Oh, man.” Cory’s groan startled her as he jerked to a halt and dropped to his knees, frantically searching through his backpack. “Oh, man.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I left my ball glove at school.” The glove his father had given him. He looked up at her, his dark eyes reflecting panic. “We’ve got to go back and get it, Mom. Someone might steal it.”
She looked at her watch, torn. Why did he always do this to her? Forgetting things she’d reminded him about a million times. She’d even warned him that very morning not to take the baseball glove to school, but he’d apparently sneaked it into his pack.
“There’s no time. I’ll be late getting back to work again.”
“Oh, man.” But Cory didn’t cry or beg as he might have several months ago. Instead, he cut her a dirty look, snatched up his backpack and raced ahead of her into the open door of the fourplex’s miniscule entryway.
Her stomach knotted. That baseball glove meant the world to him, but she couldn’t go back to hunt it down. Last month a coworker had been let go for being late. Like Elise, she was a single mom juggling the logistics of a full-time job and kids, but chronic tardiness and absenteeism at the clinic hadn’t been tolerated for long.
With a glance at the potted pink geranium she’d set on the front step last spring—a pitiful remnant of her former lush gardens—she followed her son into the building, passing the lockboxes where residents received mail. All except her. She had a post-office box elsewhere, ensuring no friends or family members could search for her street address online and learn the truth about the neighborhood where she now resided.
Slowly she climbed the threadbare carpeted steps to their second-story apartment, a sparsely furnished space unlike any she’d ever imagined living in.
Yes, Duke had been a courageous cop. But his surreptitious penchant for playing the ponies had been his—and her—downfall.
Which brought her back to Cory’s fascination with policemen—like the well-built, good-looking guy at the school that afternoon. All spit-shined and polished in an official black uniform for his career day appearance, his dark chestnut hair neatly clipped, he exuded that quintessential cop aura. Confident. Authoritative. A bit cocky.
And a proud Texan.
She could see it all there in the flashing seconds when he’d held her gaze. He hadn’t even had the courtesy to cloak his appreciative glance as it fleetingly swept over her, his expressive eyes questioning if she returned his interest.
Which she did not.
She’d never again willingly put herself in a position to wait up late at night, anxiously listening for the garage door to signal the safe return of her hero. There would be no more haunting reminders, when embraced in the arms of a body armor-clad man, that the bulletproof vest was there for a reason. No heart-stopping moments when an unidentified police officer was reported as injured on the 5 o’clock news. She’d never again risk the nightmare of two somber officers at the door in the dead of the night, waiting to take her to the hospital. Or endure the heartbreak of not getting there in time to say goodbye.
No, never again. She hoped she’d made that plain enough when she broke visual contact with Cory’s Officer Wallace and hurried her son from the building.
“Mom?” His face still a thundercloud as he waited at the apartment door, Cory jerked past her when she let them inside. “How old do you have to be before you can be a policeman?”
The cop thing again. But at least he was speaking to her. “Much older than you are now.”
“How old?”
“Depends. Twenty-one, usually.” Twenty-one. That’s how old Duke had been when he’d moved to Texas where his bilingual fluency and three years of law-enforcement coursework were much sought after.
He hadn’t lived but a week beyond twenty-six.
Three years her senior, he’d been her childhood sweetheart in their small Arizona hometown. Which was why she couldn’t move back there, no matter how much she wanted to. Not yet. Not until she could return with her head held high, her finances restored and the weakness of Tomas “Duke” Lopez well-hidden from family and the community.
Cory flung his backpack to the hardwood floor and flopped onto the worn couch of the diminutive living room. Then, as if coming to a sudden conclusion, he scrambled to the sole end table, opened a drawer and pulled out the massive city phone book.
His reading skills were rapidly progressing, but he still had a considerable way to go. Nevertheless, he determinedly flipped through the thin-sheeted pages as she speed-dialed his sitter, their downstairs neighbor Billie Jean.
“Change out of your school clothes, Cory. Don’t dawdle.”
She glanced impatiently at her watch. It was disruptive enough to her employer that they’d accommodated her taking a midafternoon lunch hour each day. Even with the school situated between home and work, when traffic was congested there wasn’t much wiggle room to pick up Cory, deposit him at Billie Jean’s and get back to the clinic.
“Mom?”
As she waited for her friend to answer, she turned to her son, who still lingered over the phone directory spread across his lap.
“Yes?”
“I’ve got to get my ball glove back, so I need the help of a policeman. How do you spell Wallace?”
* * *
“Thank you again for coming.” Miss Gilbert, an attractive blonde in her early twenties, smiled at Grayson. “You and the other professionals made quite a positive impression on my class. On the whole school, in fact. But especially on Cory Lopez.”
“Cute kid.” With a gorgeous but stuck-up mom. “Too bad about his dad.”
“Yes. The sudden loss continues to take its toll, as is apparent from his behavior.”
“His behavior?”
“According to his former kindergarten teacher, it’s been like night and day compared to last year. Restless and distracted. Playing rough. Aggressive. Almost obsessed with following in his father’s footsteps and getting even with the man who shot him.”
Grayson frowned. “They have the guy in jail. I know it’s not been the customary swift Texas justice, but he’s awaiting trial.”
“That doesn’t mean much to a little boy.”
“No, I imagine not.”
“I couldn’t help but notice, though, how he settled down almost from the moment you arrived. Do you have children of your own, Mr. Wallace?” Her quick glance took in his left hand prominently supported by the sling, then her smooth cheeks flushed. He smiled to himself. Checking him out for a ring,