The Perfect Match

  She had to have known the kind of reception she’d get. And yet the reckless woman had come to Briarwood Lane anyway, that menace of a dog of hers packed in the back of her van as if she actually thought she might have a chance to convince Cash to take Destroyer in.

  If that wasn’t evidence Rowena Brown believed in the impossible, then nothing was.

  “Hey, there, buddy. I asked you what’s wrong,” Vinny grumbled. “And don’t tell me nothing. I may be old, but I’m not dead yet. I can see something’s eating at you.”

  Not a bad description, Cash admitted, though he’d never tell Vinny that. Rowena had been nibbling away at his concentration for days now. He’d remember the heat of her skin beneath his fingertips, the silk of her hair against the backs of his knuckles. The way her pulse had pounded when he’d touched her throat and how she’d gasped when he’d accidentally brushed her breast with his arm. Her gold-tipped lashes had flown wide and in spite of everything—in spite of himself—he’d felt himself hardening beneath the worn cotton of his running shorts.

  She’d hardened, too. The tip of her nipple had teased his arm, and she’d looked at him as if he’d burned her. And for a moment, just a moment it was a fire they both wanted to dive into.

  He’d almost forgotten how tempting a woman’s skin could be, how tantalizingly different from his own. And for the first time in two years he had ached to sink himself deep into a woman’s wet heat…

  Vinny jabbed him with the SpongeBob pencil he was using for his morning crossword, and Cash jumped as if his friend had caught him in the act. Thank God Vinny couldn’t read his mind. “Well? What’s bothering you?”

  “It’s a woman.” The confession slipped out before Cash could stop it. Weirdly, just saying it aloud was a relief.

  “Thank you, Jesus!” Vinny flung SpongeBob to the table, the big Italian’s face gleaming. “What’d she do? Club you over the head with a baseball bat to get your attention?”

  “Actually, she tried to get me in a choke hold. I gave her a black eye.”

  Vinny scowled in confusion. “You what?”

  “It was an accident,” Cash said, suddenly enjoying his friend’s discomfiture. “But I suppose my reaction was understandable under the circumstances. She was breaking and entering.”

  Vinny glanced into his own cup, looking more worried than ever. “My coffee too weak to clear your head this morning, boy? You’re not making any sense.”

  “She heard Mac crying through the screen door.” Cash’s amusement vanished in the wake of the memory. “We were working on that new set of exercises her therapist gave us last time.”

  “Oh.”

  There was no need to say more. Vinny was the only other person besides Cash and Mac’s therapist, Janice Wilson, who knew what torture the sessions could be. It was grim work, strengthening little legs that had been broken, torn and patched back together. Scar tissue clenched the muscle fibers so tight that it was agony to stretch them.

  “So what happened then?” Vinny prodded.

  “Rowena blindsided me, charging through the door, grabbing me around the neck. A sneak attack on a cop is never a good idea.”

  “Not to mention a combat vet. And you’re both.”

  There were times Cash would have sold his soul to be in a firefight back in Kuwait instead of on that exercise mat in his own living room. War was hell, but at least he hadn’t been waging it on his own child.

  “What the hell was this woman thinking? Breaking into your house that way?”

  “Rowena thought I was abusing Mac.”

  “Hell, whoever this Rowena is, she was lucky to get off with that black eye! If I’d been here, I’d have wrung her neck for suggesting such a thing. No wonder you’re still seething.”

  “That’s the funny thing, Vinny. Once I got the picture, I wasn’t mad. I…liked her.”

  “Liked her? This…hey, Rowena—now I remember that name! Isn’t that the same dame you were wanting to ride out of town on a rail a few weeks ago?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Vern Hendersen down at the gas station went in her shop—his old lady made him, just to get the scoop after that smash and bash at the tea shop everybody was talking about.”

  Just as Cash had figured, the tale of the tea shop had leaked to the public and then some. A story like that was just too damned funny to most cops to keep to themselves.

  “Vern says this Rowena person won’t last long around here. In Whitewater, a dog’s a dog. You can get everything you need for one at the Fleet and Farm. Folks around here are too smart to waste their money on those fancy big city gewgaws she’s got in her windows.”

  “You’re probably right,” Cash agreed. And yet, now some part of him would be sorry to see her go.

  Vinny swore under his breath in frustration. “Hell, when you said you weren’t sleeping because of a woman, I thought maybe some female had stirred you up. Ain’t been using your dick for much besides holding up your underpants for the past two years.”

  “For Cripe’s sake, Vinny. I hope you don’t talk like that around my kids!”

  “Like what?” Vinny said, looking injured. “Working around here, my mouth’s cleaner than the insides of most people’s washing machines! So this woman—she didn’t flip up your light switch?” The ex-cop looked nosy as an old maid, eager to get some tasty tidbit of gossip.

  Cash pretended ignorance. “My what?”

  “Never mind.” Vinny heaved a sigh. “If I have to explain, it didn’t happen. No chance you might actually get laid.”

  The image that sprang into his mind made a body part far lower than his head throb—Rowena Brown spread out across his bed while he set out to discover exactly what feminine curves lay underneath that loose yellow jacket she’d been wearing. Somehow the fantasy only made stark reality worse.

  “Exactly when am I supposed to get laid?” Cash demanded. “In between Dora the Explorer and putting dinner on the table? Or maybe I could squeeze it in between Mac’s therapy and her time in the swimming pool? I could just lock the kids in the bathroom and go at it right here on the kitchen table. Hell, Vinny, even if I did feel like having sex, no woman in her right mind would have me. One look around here and any sane person would run the other way.”

  “You can’t be sure about that.” Vinny crossed his arms over his barrel chest and shot Cash an appraising look. “There’s no denying you’re pit bull mean and you’ve got an ugly mug on you, but you never can tell what’ll get a woman’s motor running.”

  Cash chuckled, trying not to wince as a pain jabbed behind his left eyeball. He resolutely ignored it. He didn’t have time for a migraine. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom.”

  “So this woman. She tried to beat you up and then…what?”

  “She tried to convince me to let Charlie have a dog.”

  “A dog, eh?” Vinny didn’t look nearly as aghast as he should have. He picked up SpongeBob, rolling the pencil between his fingers until it settled between two like the cigars he’d had to give up after his heart attack. “A dog might not be a bad thing, kid. Little Miss Charlotte spends an awful lot of time squirreling herself away in hidey holes. Last Thursday it took me forty-five minutes to find her. She was asleep up in that tree in the backyard.”

  “Asleep up there?” Cash exclaimed, visions of trips to the emergency room dancing in his head. “She could have fallen—broken her neck!”

  “Not that girl. She lashed herself to a branch with a chunk of rope. Said she read sailors did that sometimes when a killer storm blew up at sea—well, they lashed themselves to a mast instead of a branch, but you get the drift.”

  He did. Far too well. And the image of his little girl up in her unfinished tree house alone hurt him.

  “She’s too damned quiet for such a little thing, Cash,” Vinny said.

  “Her mother abandoned her. Her sister’s in a wheelchair. What do you think she should be doing, Vinny?” Cash fired back. “Turning cartwheels?”

&
nbsp; The ice pick jabbed behind his eye again. He went to the kitchen cupboard and reached for the bottle of pills on the top shelf. He shook one into his palm and slammed it back with a gulp of coffee. He knew Vinny had seen the prescription bottle. The older man’s voice softened.

  “I’m just saying it might not be such a crazy idea—getting a dog for around here,” Vinny said. “If it would make Charlie happy.”

  “The dog Charlie wants is the size of the girls’ playhouse and has the manners of a boatload of Vikings bent on pillage. Exactly where would you suggest we put the dog once I get Mac up on crutches? One fall could tear out the screws that are holding her femur together. And then—”

  “Alright! Alright! I get the picture.” Vinny held his hands palms up in surrender. “But wouldn’t there be plenty of time to worry about that if…” He stopped dead midsentence and looked away.

  “If what?” Cash challenged.

  Vinny met Cash’s gaze with reluctance and very real love. “MacKenzie isn’t up on crutches yet.”

  “And maybe she never will be? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Fury blazed in Cash, turning the ice pick to fire.

  “Cash, I—”

  “If that’s how you feel, maybe you shouldn’t be watching the girls. I can’t afford any negativity around here that Mac might pick up on.”

  Hell, Cash thought, he sounded like a first-class jerk. Vinny Scoglomiglio had saved his life in the chaotic weeks after Lisa had bailed on him and the girls. His friend had stepped into the role of nanny like a Mary Poppins in combat boots, taking on the mysterious woman-jobs of hair braiding and Barbie playing and birthday cake baking with Cash’s daughters.

  Okay, so the cakes were heavy as rocks, but they were homemade. Cash had almost humiliated himself by breaking down when the kids had surprised him on his birthday with his favorite German chocolate cake. Vinny and the girls had made it from scratch, using the recipe Lisa had left behind.

  “I’m sorry. I’m an ungrateful bastard, and I wouldn’t blame you if you never set foot back in this kitchen,” Cash said, voice low. “But I hope you will.”

  “And miss the sour look on your face when you take that first drink of my coffee in the morning? No way. Can’t shake me off that easily, boy. There’s a new tuna casserole recipe I clipped out of the Sunday paper I’m dying to try.”

  Cash felt the throbbing in his head start to ease. “Glutton for punishment, huh?”

  “Stayed married for twenty-six years. Be married still if Dolores hadn’t divorced me. If that’s not proof, what is?”

  Cash laughed. “I always wanted to meet Dolores so I could thank her for that. If she hadn’t served you with the papers, you’d never have quit the Chicago force, never have left the city and come here.”

  “Fate.” Vinny said succinctly. “You know, I never was much use to my own kids. Working long hours, drinking away whatever was left, trying to drown out the pictures that inner-city hell painted in my head. I’m damned grateful to have a second chance, you know? To be something better to your kids than I was to my own.”

  “I was lucky as hell when I drew you as partner.”

  “Got stuck with the burned-out alcoholic, you mean.”

  “You were off the bottle by then.” Cash remembered Lisa’s reaction to the news when she heard it from one of the other deputies wives—that Cash had drawn the short straw, gotten the screw-up from the big city. They’d fought about it for hours. Truth was, Cash had volunteered to take Vinny on. Something in Vinny’s face had made Cash trust the older man, first with his own life and later with the lives of his daughters.

  “Bookmakers wouldn’t have given me very good odds when it came to staying clean. Smart money would’ve been on the chance I’d get you killed.”

  “I placed the winning bet. Maybe I used all my luck up on that. What if there’s none left for Mac?” The doubt slipped out. He met Vinny’s eyes.

  “Luck will have nothing to do with whether that little girl of yours walks or not. MacKenzie is your daughter, Cash. Stubborn as hell. She’ll come through fine either way, no matter what happens. You’ll see.”

  “Mac has to want to walk. But Janice says I can’t—can’t make her…”

  Vinny’s smile braced him. “Then Janice doesn’t know you as well as I do, does she?”

  Cash wished to hell he could be sure Vinny was right. There had been a time when Cash believed he could conquer anything. No battle was too tough, no challenge too great. He’d been a marine. His body tough and trained. His will invincible.

  He’d taken on the Iraqi invaders with an almost suicidal belief in himself, defeat not a possibility in his world.

  How odd to think Rowena Brown felt the same thing, especially now, when he’d learned the hard truth about limitations he’d once denied. He envied her that fierce ability to believe. In healing. In hope. In the future.

  There were times Cash didn’t believe in anything anymore.

  Not even himself.

  NIGHT SHIFT STANK.

  Cash slugged down the last of his tepid coffee from the Quick Mart and tried to keep his eyelids from caving on him. Not much going on in town—a few fender benders, a disturbing the peace call and a report that half a dozen kids were partying at Mose Dillon’s abandoned boathouse down by the Mississippi.

  No booze this time—at least, not where Cash could find it. But they had stockpiled enough illegal fireworks to start a brushfire if a stray spark had fallen on the dry leaves starting to blanket the ground.

  Another deputy might have hauled them all in, but Cash and his five brothers had gotten into more than their share of mischief when they’d been that age. So he’d done his best to scare the shit out of them and followed their car to the place they were supposed to be staying overnight. He’d been relieved to see Jimmy Parker’s mom in the window, probably demanding to know where the boys had been. Last party ol’ Jimmy would be hosting for awhile, Cash had figured.

  But as the rest of his shift crawled by, Cash’s week’s worth of insomnia started catching up with him until he was bone tired and bored as hell. And one thing he knew from years on the force: anybody—even a deputy—asleep at the wheel was a very bad thing.

  Cash turned down Main Street on his patrol, looking over the row of buildings across from the school. The pet shop was still closed. Not that he’d expected Rowena Brown to open the shop for a blue light special on catnip at five in the morning, but from what he’d seen when he’d started his shift, she’d closed up the shop early the night before.

  Not that it mattered. It was just that a cop needed to know the natural rhythm of the neighborhoods he patrolled. Yeah. The whole street lay quiet, Rowena’s shop dark and shut up, Miss Marigold’s kitchen window glowing in the corner of the tea shop. From what Cash could tell, the older woman slept as rarely as he did.

  His cell buzzed—the ring tone set to the theme from Dragnet by Mr. Google himself, the techno whiz, when Cash hadn’t been watching. Damned if Cash could figure out how to change the ring back.

  Frowning, he scooped up the phone and hit the talk button.

  “Lawless here.”

  “Miss me, candy ass?”

  Vinny. The Italian’s jovial voice told Cash it wasn’t an emergency.

  “I miss you all right. Like a toothache.”

  “You never write, you never call. Yada, yada, yada.”

  “What the hell are you calling me for in the middle of the night? I’m working, you know.”

  “More like you’re about to fall asleep, and I’m saving your butt again, junior. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to keep you on your toes.” Vinny chuckled. “Quiet night, huh? Been listening to the scanner.”

  “Not much happening.”

  “Good, because you’re going to have to be ready to party down when you drag your sorry ass in come morning.”

  “Party?” Cash echoed. “I didn’t miss a holiday…or a birthday—no. Charlie’s isn’t for months. What’s up?”


  “Can’t say for sure. Big secret. The girls are up to something for sure.”

  “What girls?” Cash asked tiredly.

  “Mac and Charlie. You know. Your pride and joys. The fruits of your loins. Your—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. My girls. But both of them? Doing something together?”

  “You got it, dude.” Cash could almost hear Vinny grimace. “Damn. I’ve got to quit watching those Mary Kate and Ashley reruns with Mac.”

  “You made them, right? I mean, Mac and Charlie. Play together.”