to Peggy. “Mommy’s taking me to the park. Do you know where it is?”
“The park is great,” Peggy answered. “Slides ‘n’ swings and everything.”
Before either woman could say another word, the girls were off together.
Janine regarded Vicki wryly. “I think we’d better keep up. How are you at the fifty-yard dash?”
Vicki laughed, quickly locked the door behind her and hurried along. She noticed the teddy bear had been left behind on the floor.
God, she hoped that was a good sign.
* * *
The next couple hours slid quickly by as the girls played and Janine filled Vicki in on enough local gossip that she wondered if she needed to keep a crib sheet.
“Oh, you’ll hear it all again,” Janine assured her. “And again. Eventually, you’ll even remember the names. Little enough else to talk about around here except each other. Although... I wouldn’t want you to worry...most talk is kind and general. We have to live together, and hard feelings could last a long time.”
She looked toward the swings. “I see a couple of girls who are getting tired. Or at least Peggy is. Let’s do this again.”
“Absolutely.”
Krystal practically skipped the whole way home, and after they left Janine and Peggy at their house, en route, she turned into a chatterbox, words tumbling over one another. It was the most animated Vicki had seen her daughter in ages.
Maybe, she thought, drawing in a deep breath of summer air as they walked beneath leafy trees, she hadn’t been wrong to move. Maybe the shadows that had been haunting her had haunted Krys, as well.
Lena, who kept so-called banker’s hours at her job, was already there, humming as she emptied some grocery bags. She looked up as Krys and Vicki joined her. “Don’t you two look a sight for sore eyes. Good day?”
Krys didn’t give her mother a chance to answer. She started babbling on about the park and Peggy, telling her great-aunt every delightful little moment, before running to the bathroom.
“Don’t have to worry about conversation around that one.” Lena grinned as she and Vicki finished putting groceries away.
“Not today, anyway.”
“What did you think of Janine? At least I suppose it was Janine, seeing as how I just heard all about a little girl named Peggy.”
Vicki laughed. “It was Janine. She spent the whole time trying to clue me in on the town, and I’m not sure I remember a quarter of it.”
“Most of it was probably old and outdated, anyway. We’ll have new stuff to talk about next week.”
Vicki laughed again. “So what can I do to help with dinner?”
“Not a dang thing. After all these years of cooking for one, and collaring Dan or the gals to come be extra mouths, I’m actually looking forward to making a meal big enough for four.”
“Four?”
“I invited Dan over.”
For some reason, this time Vicki didn’t feel at all uncomfortable with the prospect. “Good. He’s been scarce.”
“All but invisible, if you ask me.”
Vicki leaned back against the table, trying to stay out of Lena’s way as she buzzed around. “You see him a lot?”
Lena glanced at her. “We’re friends.”
“I would have thought he’d have a more active social life.”
“Than me? Thank you very much.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Vicki felt her cheeks heat. The last thing she wanted to do was offend her aunt.
Lena turned from the groceries and eyed her. “I know you didn’t. Like I said, we’re friends. Just like I am with a bunch of gals. But if you’re curious about him, ask him. The man’s an open book.”
Was she curious about him? Was that what had caused Vicki to speak in a way that had implied there might be something wrong with the man? Why should she care, anyway?
She couldn’t answer those questions, but their existence scared her.
She didn’t want to get involved. She didn’t want another man in her life, most certainly not a cop. She shouldn’t be curious about Dan at all...except that she was.
* * *
Oh, boy.
Dan had been trying to give Vicki the space she seemed to want, and life had cooperated. Last night there’d been a baseball game that he’d wound up umpiring, because their regular man had broken his foot. Tonight some of the deputies had suggested meeting at Mahoney’s to watch a ball game on the big screen TV, and he’d considered it, but didn’t really feel like it.
Lena’s invitation had come as a relief, in a way. He could bow out of going to Mahoney’s, and have a good excuse to see how Vicki was doing. Vicki and Krystal. He told himself he was more concerned about the little girl whose life had been upended, but he knew he was equally concerned about her mother. Been there, done that. He knew grief intimately, and he was worried about the woman.
When Callie had died, he’d stayed put for a few years, relying on his friends for distraction, and keeping as busy as he could. Occasionally, he had even allowed himself to wallow, not that his buddies would leave him alone for long.
Sometimes he’d resented their intrusions, but in retrospect he knew they’d helped him every single time they’d badgered him to come do something with them. Vicki had chosen to kick that all to the curb. He knew everybody was different, but he still worried. Other than Lena, she didn’t know a soul here.
He guessed that left him, for now, anyway. Except she had sort of made it clear that she didn’t want him getting too involved. Maybe she was right. All that stuff about her being a cop’s widow, deserving of support and whatever else she might need, was true. It was even good. Cops took care of each other and maybe she hadn’t had time to discover it. But if someone else had been walking in her shoes, she and her late husband would have been among the people trying to help as they could.
But over the past couple days, Dan had become wary, and not just because she’d intimated she didn’t want him to become too close to her and her daughter. He’d become wary of himself.
His first reaction on seeing her had been quickly swamped in the awareness of who she was, and concern for her, her daughter and Lena. But the mental image of when he’d first seen her come out the door had become engraved on his brain, and he couldn’t dislodge it.
Vicki was sexy. Her tiny waist had been accentuated by the way she had knotted that shirt at her waist. Her hips flared perfectly, and when she bent over to lift something, he couldn’t help noticing her rounded bottom. Eye candy.
The woman turned him on.
Not good. He didn’t want another woman. Some part of him felt as if he’d be betraying Callie, even though it had been years, and that wasn’t a feeling he could reason with. Then there was Vicki’s clearly wounded state. And a little girl who might well resent any man who hung around her mother too much.
So while his response to her was all natural male, Dan couldn’t afford to let it grow, not even a bit. All it could do was make a hash of everything, maybe even damage his friendship with Lena. He suspected that woman would react like a she-bear with cubs if she thought anyone might hurt her niece.
“Ah, hell,” he said aloud as he showered after a long day of riding dusty roads and answering calls, most of which had turned out to be minor. He’d even had to pull a truck out of a ditch with his winch, all the while wondering if the driver, a ranch hand, had been drunk when it happened, but had had time to sober up and get rid of the evidence before Dan arrived. The