The security officer called Seth while Alison called the Happy Hippo Day-care Center. Her hands were shaking so badly, it took her two tries to dial the number to let them know she was going to be late picking up Kevin. By the time the police showed up, she was shaking so violently, her teeth were chattering. The first patrol officer on the scene draped a blanket around her shoulders while he took her statement, but it wasn’t enough to warm her or keep her from shaking.
The officer was just finishing up when Seth arrived. Alison thought she’d never seen him look quite so fierce. After a barrage of questions about the incident, he offered to drive her to the hospital, but Alison refused. All she wanted to do was pick up Kevin and go home.
“You could have a concussion,” Seth said.
“I wasn’t knocked unconscious,” she pointed out.
“You’ve got a bump the size of a goose egg.”
In the end, the paramedic decided she would be fine—as long as someone kept an eye on her through the night.
“I’m taking you home,” Seth said.
“I need my car.”
“You’re not driving, Alison. Don’t be stubborn about this. I can have your car sent over to you.”
“Seth, for goodness’ sake, I need to pick up Kevin.” She glanced at her watch and suddenly wanted very badly to hold her son.
“Where is he?” he asked, pulling his cell phone from a clip on his belt.
“The Happy Hippo Day-care Center over on Palm Avenue. But I don’t—”
“I’ll have Drew pick him up and meet us at your house.”
Alison didn’t have the energy to argue. “I’ll need to call the day-care center to let them know it’s all right.”
Seth handed her the phone, and she made the call. By the time she was finished a headache was beginning to pound. She’d skinned her knees in the fall and they were smarting like the dickens. She felt cold and achy and just wanted her son and her home. She knew Drew wouldn’t appreciate his cousin putting him in such an untenable position, but she didn’t see a graceful way out of it.
Seth shoved his cell phone onto its clip. “All settled?”
“Everything is fine.” But even though her nerves had begun to smooth out, a new kind of tension crept over her. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she wasn’t sure how she felt about seeing Drew when she was so shaken. The part of her that wanted the comfort she knew only he could give her warred with the knowledge that her feelings weren’t necessarily reciprocated.
Drew’s truck was parked across the street from her house when Seth pulled into her driveway. Taking a deep breath, she got out of his BMW to see Drew and Kevin crossing the street toward her.
“Mommy!” Kevin cried.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, hoping her voice sounded normal.
“Mrs. Duffy didn’t know why you were late, so we played three games of Candy Land and I won!”
“I’m sorry, kiddo. I just got...tied up with some things at the office.” She hoped he wouldn’t notice her torn hose and skinned knees, but there was no hiding them.
“How come your knees are bleeding?” he asked, bending to stare at the scrapes.
“Oh, well, I fell down at work.”
“Boy, that musta hurt.” He touched her knee with his finger. “Do you want me to put some medicine on them?”
She choked out a laugh, reached for him and dragged him close, squeezing him tightly. “I’d like that very much.”
“Drew’s here, Mommy! He came to pick me up at Happy Hippo! Isn’t that cool?”
“Um, well.” She looked over her son’s shoulder to see Seth and Drew talking at the end of the driveway. Drew looked over at her, then back to Seth. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could tell Drew was angry. He had raised his voice and was gesturing vigorously.
“Why is Drew yelling?” Kevin asked.
Alison glanced over at them. Drew was a sight to behold when he was angry, and she thought it was a damn good thing Seth could hold his own. “I don’t know, honey. Um, he and Seth are probably discussing business.”
“He looks mad.”
“Seth is his cousin. Sometimes family members have heated discussions.”
But Kevin had already moved on to the next topic. “Can Drew stay for dinner, Mommy? If your knees hurt we could have pizza so you don’t have to cook.”
“He might already have plans, honey,” she said, easing her son to arm’s length.
“Well, we can ask him, though, can’t we?”
“Ask me what, sprout?”
Alison’s knees went weak at the sound of Drew’s voice. Kevin looked up at her, grinning from ear to ear, his innocent eyes beseeching. He mouthed the word “please” and her heart melted a little.
Clearing her throat, she mustered the courage to look at Drew. He was smiling, but she knew immediately it was only for her son’s benefit because there was fury in his eyes. “Kevin was just wondering if you’d like to stay for dinner. I was explaining to him that you’re probably busy—”
“I’d love to.” His hand was gentle when he reached down and mussed Kevin’s hair.
“Yay!” Kevin shot out of her arms like a bottle rocket and threw his arms around Drew’s hips.
She watched Drew with her son and felt the tug of something warm and uncomfortable deep inside her. It was obvious Kevin cared deeply for Drew. She did, too, if she wanted to be truthful about it. But those two things were apparently more of a problem than a solution. Drew had demons to slay. Alison had a little boy to raise. The way things stood, those two things were irreconcilable.
Turning away from them, she fumbled her key into the lock and opened the door. Kevin shot past her and ran directly to his room. She heard Drew behind her and asked, “Where’s Seth?”
“He’s heading over to Evans Yachts to make sure the office is secure.” Drew walked into the foyer. “He told me what happened. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, just a little shaken up.”
“I told him it wasn’t safe for you to be at Evans Yachts, damn it. He had no right to offer you that job. You shouldn’t have been there alone.”
Alison locked the front door then turned to face him, keenly aware that her heart was pounding. “I don’t want Kevin to know about this. I don’t want him upset.”
His eyes swept down to her knees and she saw his jaw clench.
“It’s just a couple of scrapes,” she said.
“You should have gotten yourself checked out at the hospital.”
“Now you sound like Seth.”
“You could have been seriously hurt.”
“I wasn’t.”
He crossed to her, his expression set and angry. “I don’t want you working there anymore.”
“I hate to point this out to you, Drew, but you’re not in charge of my life. I am.”
“It’s not safe, damn it.”
“Life isn’t safe sometimes. For God’s sake, it was a random mugging. Get over it.”
“It wasn’t random.”
She stared at him, a ripple of uneasiness moving through her. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s...complicated. I need to fill you in on a couple of things.”
She glanced toward Kevin’s room. “I don’t want him scared, so it’s going to have to wait until he goes to bed.”
He sighed, clearly frustrated. She started to turn away, but he stopped her by snagging her arm. “I’m not leaving until we talk about this.”
The words chilled her, and for the first time she knew there was more going on than she had been told. “What are you talking about?”
“Mommy!” came Kevin’s voice from his bedroom. “I can’t find my one-armed Spider-Man!”
“He’s on your night table, sweetie.”
Drew looked past her toward the hall. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”
Alison didn’t want to wait, but even more she didn’t want to frighten her son. She’d worked hard to give hi
m a secure home, and she didn’t want this or anything else to jeopardize that. “All right.”
He contemplated her for a moment, his gaze flicking to the bump at her temple, then down to her wet clothes. “You’re shivering. Why don’t you get into some dry clothes and let Kevin and I take care of dinner?”
She wasn’t accustomed to anyone taking care of her, but the thought appealed. She was chilled to the bone and wanted nothing more than a hot shower, a couple of aspirin and some dry clothes.
“Do you have any pasta?”
She blinked at him, surprised by the sudden change of topics. “Uh, spaghetti.”
“Sauce?”
“Mushroom. In the pantry.”
“Perfect.” He started toward the kitchen, then paused to look at her over his shoulder. “Take a shower, Alison. I’ll keep an eye on Kevin. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Alison wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe what had happened to her at Evans Yachts was a random act of violence. But as she made her way down the hall toward the linen closet, she couldn’t shake the niggling suspicion that there was a hell of a lot more going on than anyone had bothered to tell her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Drew cut tomatoes while Kevin tore lettuce and chatted about his day at the Happy Hippo Day-care Center.
“...and then Timmy Burns threw up all over his desk and Mrs. Duffy had to call his mom. I made two new friends and one of them’s a girl called Toni, but she looks kinda like a boy so I thought it would be okay to play with her.”
Drew listened with only half an ear as he set the tomatoes aside and turned to stir the spaghetti sauce on the stove. The other half of his mind was focused on the sound of water running in the shower down the hall and Alison.
He couldn’t believe some lowlife son of a bitch had hurt her. The thought of anyone laying a hand on her made his blood boil. She was a gentle person with a kind heart and didn’t deserve to be knocked around.
“Something smells great.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see her enter the kitchen, and his heart stumbled in his chest. The loose-fitting shorts and a scoop-neck T-shirt shouldn’t have been sexy, but they were. She could be wearing a burlap bag and still look sexy as hell. His eyes ran the length of her, and a sharp tug of attraction hit him low in the gut. Then he spotted the abrasions and shuddered inside. Both knees looked as if someone had taken a grater to them. He remembered how soft her skin was and felt a surge of rage at the thought of someone brutalizing her.
“Drew and me are fixing spaghetti!” Kevin said with his usual exuberance. “I got to make the salad, Mommy. Do you want some?”
She came up behind Kevin, put her arms around him and gave him a noisy kiss on the cheek. “That’s ‘Drew and I,’ honey. And, yes, I would very much like some salad.”
“Good, ’cause we fixed a lot, Mommy. Drew said you had a hard day and were going to be extra hungry.” The little boy glanced down at her knees and his smile fell. “Mommy, that musta really hurt when you fell down.”
Trying to make light of Kevin’s suddenly serious tone, Alison leaned forward and touched her nose to his. “It looks worse than what it is, honey.”
Drew stepped away from the stove and his gaze met Alison’s. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” She smiled tentatively, and he thought he’d never seen a woman look quite so beautiful. “Can I do something to help?”
“I think we can handle dinner.” He nudged Kevin with his elbow. “Think we can handle dinner, sprout?”
“Yeah! I’m almost finished with the salad.”
Turning away from them, Drew opened a package of spaghetti and dumped it into boiling water. “Kev, how about if you set out the napkins, then go wash your face and hands?”
“Do I gotta wash?”
Drew shot him a stern look, and Kevin didn’t push it.
For several minutes, the three of them worked as a team. Alison took out a bottle of merlot and proceeded to remove the cork. Kevin folded paper napkins and carefully arranged the silverware on top. Drew dumped steaming pasta into a colander. To an outsider, the scene might have looked like a family preparing their dinner. To Drew, the undercurrent of tension was palpable.
“Okay, kiddo, into the bathroom to wash your face and hands,” Alison said.
“Aw, Mommy...”
“Now,” Drew said firmly.
Huffing his displeasure, Kevin rushed to the bathroom.
“Would you like a glass of merlot?” Alison asked.
“Sure,” he said, “and then I want you to have a seat so I can see to those knees.”
“They’re only minor scrapes, Drew. I think I’ll live.”
“Hey, I’m an EMT, remember? I’m bound by an oath to render aid.” He tilted his head and caught her gaze. “Where’s your first-aid kit?”
She frowned good-naturedly. “In the small bathroom off the hall.”
“Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.” Drew walked into the guest bathroom and found the small kit in the cabinet above the commode. Back in the kitchen, he set it down on the table and motioned toward a chair. “Have a seat.”
Taking her glass of wine with her, Alison gingerly lowered herself into the chair.
“Sore?”
“A little.” She looked down at her knees and frowned. “They look worse than they really are.”
Kneeling before her, he opened the kit and studied the abrasions. “It looks like there’s some gravel imbedded in the skin.”
He tried hard to keep his mind on the business at hand as he reached for the peroxide and gauze and set both on the floor next to him. But when it came time to touch her, his concentration faltered. As an EMT, Drew had administered first aid to hundreds of people over the years. He’d always considered himself a professional, never allowing his emotions or something as banal as his libido to interfere with his work. But one look at the satin flesh of her thighs and suddenly he didn’t feel very professional at all. He felt more like an insecure teenager about to face the most popular girl in school.
Annoyed with himself, he gently wrapped his hand around the back of her calf and set her foot on his thigh. Without looking at her, he saturated a cotton ball with peroxide and dabbed it against the abrasion.
“It’s going to sting a little when I scrub,” he said.
“Scrub away. I can take it.”
Being as gentle as he could, he scrubbed gently to loosen several tiny flecks of gravel. Alison didn’t make a sound, but he could tell from the way she stiffened that he was hurting her. “Sorry. But I don’t want it getting infected.”
“It’s okay.”
He removed a tube of antibiotic ointment and rubbed a small amount over the wound. “This will do best without a bandage. Next knee, please.”
“Yes, sir.” Alison put her other foot on his thigh.
Drew looked down at the abrasions on her knee and felt a hot flash of temper that someone had subjected her to violence. Then a quick stab of fear at the thought of how much worse things could have turned out. “Did you get a look at the guy?”
“Just a vague impression mostly. It happened so fast.” She sipped the wine. “He had dark hair. Tall. He was kind of scruffy looking. I thought he was a dockworker.”
“Uniform? Jacket. Anything with a logo?”
She shook her head.
“What about a vehicle?”
“It was raining pretty hard. Visibility was bad. I was pretty shaken up.” She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “The police asked all the same questions. I wish I’d been able to answer, but I just didn’t have the presence of mind to notice details.”
“I want the son of a bitch caught.”
“So do I,” she said and shivered.
* * *
Alison tucked Kevin into bed at just before nine o’clock after a big spaghetti dinner, a few fish stories and two games of Candy Land. He’d argued with the fervor of a wrongly accused angel when she announced it was
his bedtime. But after trying several creative maneuvers to escape the dreaded march to his bedroom, he climbed into bed. She had barely finished reading him his usual bedtime story when he fell asleep.
For several minutes she sat on the bed, watching him sleep and trying very hard not to think about the man who’d assaulted her and all the terrible scenarios that could have played out.
“Good night, sweetheart,” she whispered and leaned forward to kiss his cheek. Leaving his Spider-Man night-light on, she made her way to the living room and found Drew on the sofa looking a little uncomfortable and a lot out of place. He glanced up when she entered, and her heart did an odd little jig behind her breastbone.
“Is he asleep?” he asked.
“Went out like a light,” she said, trying to ignore her suddenly damp palms.
“I took the liberty of pouring wine.” He motioned toward the two glasses on the coffee table in front of him. “I hope that’s okay.”
She thought about the man who’d struck her and grimaced. “I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”
“Probably.” His gaze skimmed down the front of her, pausing on her skinned knees. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Headachy and still half scared out of her wits would have been closer to the truth, but considering his protective attitude, she figured it would be best if she didn’t elaborate. Noticing that the glasses were situated at opposite sides of the coffee table, she took her place on the love seat across from him. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for an explanation all evening. So spill it.”
He picked up his glass and swirled the wine. “What happened to you today probably wasn’t a random act of violence.”
The hairs at her nape prickled. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t. I mean, not definitively, anyway.” Sighing heavily, he leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees and gave her a direct look. “But Seth and I have our suspicions.”
Alison stared back, mentally bracing, knowing she wasn’t going to like what he said next.
“Evans Yachts has been contracted to design and build a top-secret submarine for the Navy,” he said.
She felt her eyes widen. “A submarine? What’s that got to do with—”