Saving Alyssa. Loree Lough

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СКАЧАТЬ this ‘agent’ gig, Preston. I’ve seen it before. That’s how I know you’ll be sorry if you don’t soon get a handle on your yes-man tendencies.”

      He didn’t want to talk about Alyssa, or how hard it was to deny her anything. The 9x12 envelope sat on the coffee table, and he was anxious to read the letters from his family.

      Max followed his gaze and picked it up. “So my sources at the agency were right. You did get mail today.” Fingering the envelope’s flap, she added, “So what’s up in the Windy City these days?”

      “Don’t know. I was just about to read the letters when you showed up.”

      In typical Max fashion, she gave an unladylike snort. “Well, don’t let me stop you.” She toed off her high-heeled cowboy boots and propped both black-socked feet on the table. “Can’t remember when I last heard a Bonnie Raitt tune. Lord, but that woman can sing!”

      She leaned into the backrest and closed her eyes. “Well, what are you waiting for? Christmas?”

      Noah sighed. The woman knew just about everything else about him. Why not add Watch me fall apart...again to the list?

      His mom had stapled a newspaper clipping to her note, and he read the headline out loud. “Gina Judson Takes Six Blue Ribbons in Baking Category.” Beneath it was a full-color photo of his mom, standing in front of the DuPage County Fairgrounds entrance. “Man. I haven’t seen that in years.” He put the article on the coffee table, and while Max looked at it, he read his mom’s letter. Amos Miller next door had finally chopped down the messy mimosa tree that stained his mom’s prized brick driveway, she’d written, and the last of her tomatoes were ripening on the sunporch.

      He could picture them, lined up in tidy rows on the glass-and-rattan table, could almost hear his mom scolding his dad for swiping the ripest for a sandwich, instead of leaving it for her famous tomato-watermelon salad.

      “She has lovely handwriting,” Max said when he handed her the letter. “You just don’t see that anymore, what with email and texting and social networking.”

      While she read, Noah opened Eddie’s letter. His brother, as usual, had started out by lambasting the Chicago Bears’ coaching staff, and went on to grouse that if the Cubs’ management had one functioning brain among them, the team might actually get into the playoffs at some point during his lifetime.

      “Clearly,” Max observed, “your mom focused all her ‘neat penmanship’ energy on you, because Eddie’s writing is horrible!” She fanned herself with the pages. “Why doesn’t he type his letters on the computer, so people who aren’t hieroglyphics specialists can read them?”

      “Keep it up and I’ll revoke your reading privileges,” Noah said wryly. “And to answer your question, he writes because our mom insists it’s more personal.”

      And as he opened Grace’s letter, Max zipped her lip.

      Noah’s sister and her firefighter husband still shared their sprawling rancher in Glendale Heights, and her letter read like a to-do list for Stan. The porch needed a coat of paint, and the boxwood hedge hadn’t been trimmed since last summer. Stan’s excuse? That Eddie had borrowed the hedge trimmer and the paint sprayer, and as usual, hadn’t returned either.

      Noah hit Replay on the CD player while Max read Grace’s letter. “Another beer?” he asked.

      “Better not,” she said. “How would it look if a cop stopped me on the way home?”

      Noah tossed both bottles into the recycling bin.

      “I’m wondering...do Grace and Stan have kids?” she asked.

      “No, but not for a lack of trying. I’m wondering something, too.”

      Heavily mascaraed green eyes opened wide. “About?”

      “You.”

      “Uh-oh...”

      “You’re great at what you do, there’s no getting around that. But are all these questions you ask the result of careful training? Experience? Or were you just born nosy?”

      Max rolled her eyes. “It’s stuff like that makes me wish I’d set you up at the Comedy Club instead of this bike shop.”

      “Well, it’s a natural question. You’re too young to be so nosy.”

      “Now there’s a backhanded compliment if ever I heard one!”

      “So why aren’t you married?”

      Max sat up straighter. “Aren’t you just full of questions tonight.”

      “Reading mail from my family makes me nostalgic. So shoot me.”

      “Can’t. The agency makes me account for every bullet fired....”

      “You’re not getting off that easy,” Noah said. “If you’d had a mind to, you probably could have been a model. So which is it—you’re a workaholic or a man-hater?”

      Max threw back her head and laughed. “Neither. I just don’t believe in mixing business with pleasure, and all the good marshals are spoken for.” She shrugged. “But you’re a fine one to talk. Three years in the program, longer than that since your wife died...why are you still unattached?”

      Noah frowned. “I can’t believe you’d ask such a question.” For one thing, Jillian didn’t simply die, she’d been murdered. Even if his conscience allowed him to see other women, his fatherly instincts would never permit him to trust anyone to babysit Alyssa.

      Max nodded. “Yeah, well, other people in your situation manage it. At least they didn’t become monks.”

      A stony silence descended. Max rolled her eyes, then asked, “So how’s that li’l princess of yours?”

      “Still a happy, well-adjusted kid,” he said, nodding toward Alyssa’s door. “Mostly thanks to you.”

      Max waved the compliment away. “Knock it off, will ya? You know how easily I blush.”

      “Yeah, well—”

      “If you’re about to go over that same old ‘it’s my fault’ ground again, spare me, okay? Sit down. Read your dad’s letter.” Max paused, softened her tone. “I know you like to save his for last.”

      He couldn’t deny that he’d gone down that road too many times to count. Couldn’t deny that he enjoyed hearing his dad talk about the crazy antics of his microbiology and immunology graduate students. This time, however, the letter sounded more like an official report on Senator O’Malley and others affiliated with Noah’s downfall.

      “Listen to this,” he said to Max. And then he read aloud, “‘I can’t prove it, of course, but rumors are circulating that indicate a certain slimeball is still cutting deals and calling the shots from his Stateville prison cell. But don’t worry. I’m keeping an ear to the ground.’” Noah met Max’s eyes. “What does he mean by that?”

      She sat up straighter, reached for the letter. “Don’t get your boxers in a knot. It’s probably nothing.”

      “No СКАЧАТЬ