Kids on the Doorstep / Cop on Loan. Kimberly Van Meter

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СКАЧАТЬ woman.”

      She blushed, and in the soft light with her wind-chapped lips and burnished cheeks, she bloomed into an incomparable beauty right before his eyes. He resisted the pull, the urge to sample those lips, to nibble along her collarbone and taste the silken skin, but the effort cost him.

      She cleared her throat and glanced away. “You give me too much credit. I’m just a mother who made a terrible mistake who’s trying to fix it. Contrary to what it may look like, my girls mean everything to me. They’re all I have. I married Jason right out of high school. We were big dreamers with even bigger plans. Unfortunately, neither one of us had the wherewithal to figure out how to make those dreams a reality. And then, I got pregnant.”

      “So Alexis wasn’t planned I take it.”

      “None of the girls were planned,” Renee said drily. “But they were the joy of my life. I was just too…” she drew a deep breath “…too drunk most of the time to realize it.”

      “Drunk?” An echo of her admission in court about rehab came back to him.

      She met his stare. “Yeah. Drunk. I was…I mean, I am an alcoholic. That’s why I left.”

      He digested her admission in silence, taking a moment to let it sink in. “What did you ex-husband think about you wanting to get sober?” he asked.

      She smiled without humor. “What did he think? He tried to talk me out of it. Jason was constantly trying to get me to drink because when I drank I forgot how I wanted to get away from him. I’d been trying to leave him for almost a year when I got pregnant with Chloe.”

      “So you were still having sex with him even though you wanted to leave…”

      “That’s a little personal, don’t you think?” Renee’s mouth hardened.

      “I’m just trying to understand, you know…connect the dots,” he said by way of apology.

      “If you figure out my twisted path from then to now, leave a breadcrumb trail. Sometimes I still don’t know how I got here,” she retorted with a trace of bitterness. Then she sighed and shook her head in answer to his bold question. “No. I wasn’t.”

      Dawning came quickly. “Chloe isn’t your husband’s child.”

      A long moment passed before Renee slowly shook her head again.

      “Yet he agreed to raise her as his own?”

      “He thought it would make me stay and it did…for a while. But the drinking and the fighting just got worse and worse…until the night I blacked out and woke up with a gash in my forehead and the girls crying in the backseat of my car. I’d tried to drive away with them and I was smashed.”

      “You’re lucky you didn’t kill someone.”

      “I know that. That’s why I knew I had to leave in order to get sober. There was a rehab facility with an opening but I couldn’t take the kids with me. I told Jason I had to get sober for our marriage. I lied. But it was the only way he’d agree to take care of the kids. I was in for two months and toward the end of my stay, I finally told Jason when he came for visitation that I wanted a divorce. I never expected him to split with the kids. I thought he might try to intimidate me into staying with him but when he didn’t, I just assumed he agreed with me that it was over. I got out and realized they were gone. Up until that day I found them here, I’d been looking for them ever since.”

      “And Chloe’s father?”

      Shame burned in her cheeks as she answered, “Never knew him. It was a one-night stand that I barely remember.”

      John leaned back into the sofa and exhaled softly. It was a lot to take in. Renee admitted to her mistakes and didn’t flinch from the truth even if she hated her part in it. He had to respect that even if he didn’t understand.

      “You should’ve told the judge all this,” he said quietly. “It might’ve made a difference in the outcome.”

      Her mouth twisted in a sad, wry grin. “Don’t you remember? I tried. He wasn’t interested in hearing what I had to say. He took one look at me and wrote me off as a bad mother who abandoned her kids. Just like everyone else in this town who knows my situation, which seems like just about half the population.”

      Renee misconstrued his silence as condemnation and ice returned to her voice as she said, “I can’t change who I was…only who I am now. If you can’t deal with that, that’s your problem.” She rose stiffly and walked to the back door as if to leave but John wasn’t ready to end the night on a sour note.

      “Hold on now,” he said, hurrying after her. She stopped and he could see the hurt in her eyes even though she was trying to hide it. He reached out and put his hand on the door to keep her from storming out. “There you go jumping to conclusions again. Bad habit,” he murmured, distracted by the soft heave of her chest and the gentle parting of her lips as she stared up at him. He blinked away the fuzz in his brain but his thoughts were foggy from being so close to her. Damn, she smelled good—earthy and sweet, like fresh alfalfa hay on a summer day. Where was he going with that thought train? Off track. He paused to give himself a mental shake. “I didn’t mean to rile you up,” he said.

      She ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip as if she were nervous and said, “Well, you did. Rile me up,” she added with a fair amount of shake in her voice, making him wonder if she was struggling with the same odd assortment of inappropriate feelings, too. He hoped so. He’d hate to realize he was traveling a one-way street. She swallowed. “But I accept your apology,” she said, lifting her chin.

      Her lips were so close, her mouth so tempting…he jerked and took a step away. When he grinned, it almost hurt. “Good,” he said. “It’s better if we get along. For the kids.”

      “Where have I heard that before…” she said, but her voice was strained. “All right then. Good night.”

      He watched her cross to the guesthouse and waited until her door closed before he shut himself in his own bedroom, feeling oddly discontented. Jerking his shirt out from the waistband of his jeans he pulled it off and over his head to toss in the laundry basket. He’d wanted to kiss her. And yet, he knew that was a bad idea. Laying a lip-lock on the one woman who was so not available was pure lunacy and an exercise in futility. And he wasn’t usually the kind of man who dabbled in stupid ventures.

      When he was down to his boxers, he climbed into the bed and punched the pillows a few times in an attempt to fluff them more to his liking but it was really just a way to blow off steam. He wanted her. Wanted her in the worst way. He pushed at his hardened erection in annoyance. Down, boy. Nothing happening for you.

      Think taxes, mending fence—yeah, that didn’t work the first time around, and it didn’t work now. He turned onto his stomach, grimacing at the discomfort from his groin and closed his eyes, determined to put the whole incident behind him and just go to sleep.

      And it almost worked. But just as he hovered between asleep and awake, Renee floated into his mental theater and instead of wearing a look of uncertainty, she smiled suggestively over her shoulder and beckoned for him to come to her as her robe parted and slid to the floor in a discarded heap.

      He drifted into slumber on a tortured groan.

      RENEE PACED HER SMALL living СКАЧАТЬ