Almost Perfect Read online

  It was only then that he looked over at her. Something raw and hungry flashed in his eyes for a moment, something deeper and more complicated than mere desire. Then he smiled.

  “Good morning,” he said softly. Roughly.

  “Pete,” she said by way of greeting, and was sure his name came out as a rasp. She set his coffee mug on the table, taking care not to brush his fingers with her own. But she might as well have rested her hand on his; his proximity alone made her tremble.

  The pancakes were perfect—fluffy, light and stuffed with pecans gathered, she told him with some pride, from her aunt’s trees. The coffee was dark and rich and the warmth in the kitchen seemed a mere extension of the man seated at her table.

  A certain awkwardness had existed between them since their impassioned kiss in the dark a few nights earlier...the night the Wannamachers had paid their visit, the night Jenny had interrupted Pete’s bath.

  She wondered if he was as sorry for the tension as she was, but she was nonetheless somewhat grateful that he seemed to have difficulty meeting her eyes and so carefully, studiously, avoided her touch. His diffidence made it easier for her to do the same and made it easier to believe that whatever it was she felt about him wasn’t going to make her do anything crazy.

  When finished with breakfast, the girls all but threw their plates into the sink and dashed off to curry Bratwurst before their cousins arrived. Pete took his plate to the dishwater, also, and would have left following the girls’ dust trail, but she stopped him before he could make his escape.

  “Why were you out in the desert, Pete?”

  He turned to meet her frowning gaze.

  She blushed a little. “I know I said I didn’t care, but—”

  “But?”

  She looked away from him and fidgeted with the button of her blouse. She risked a glance at him and found his gaze on her hands. She dropped her hands, suddenly aware of her unconscious body language.

  “It’s not really any of my business,” she said slowly.

  “Of course it is,” he said, leaning back against the old enamel sink and folding his arms over his chest. “I’m living in your bunkhouse, eating my meals with your family. I’m taking my baths in your house, for God’s sake. Whose business is it, if not yours? You want to know what kind of man you brought in here.”

  Halfway through his words, her eyes had flown to his and widened. In his list of things he did within her family, he hadn’t mentioned kissing her, molding her to his body, running his hands over her glorious curves. But he might as well have shouted it, for it hung between them like a palpable presence waiting to be acknowledged.

  “Is that about the size of it?” he asked.

  Carolyn nodded, feeling as if his question had totally robbed her of the ability to speak. He’d pegged her concerns so accurately she felt a combination of shame and fear strive for equal billing.

  While it seemed he understood her need perfectly and had even disagreed with her avowal that it was none of her business, she could see that her questions had hurt him in some way. And she thought of how she’d melted into his embrace only a few nights before, remembered how she trusted him to hold her in his arms, believed he wouldn’t hurt her, how she’d had a complete faith in his sure touch. Before that kiss had been the time to ask questions. Before bringing him into her home, into her life.

  “Call the FBI,” he said with a slow, bitter twist marring the line of his lips.

  “What?”

  “Run a check on me, Carolyn.”

  “No...I only—”

  “Ask them to tell you everything they have on one F. Peter Jackson.”

  “Oh, Pete...I didn’t mean...”

  “I could tell you everything about me, but you still wouldn’t know if it was true or not. Call the FBI...if you want the truth, Carolyn, go to the source.”

  He was the source, she thought incoherently. Surely he was the true source. She wanted to tell him she would believe him, would believe anything he had to tell her. She needed to tell him that, but her tongue seemed frozen in her mouth and the bitterness in his raw-silk voice left her feeling as if she’d stumbled across a land mine.

  He pushed away from the sink and didn’t look at her as he crossed the room, retrieved his parka—his new parka—from the peg beside the back door.

  Her mind seemed a maelstrom of chaotic thoughts. Why would he say “FBI” with such a bitter twist to his lips? Why would he look at her so pointedly? Oh, dear God, what had Pete done?

  What had she done?

  “Just do me one favor when you call them, will you? Don’t tell them where I am.” He pulled the door closed behind him and, while it had no more than clicked shut, the sound echoed in her mind like a slam.

  Or a slap.

  She washed the dishes without the slightest awareness of having done so. It was only as she was wiping off the breakfast table and happened to glance out the window in time to see Pete coming out of the barn with a can of paint in one hand and a brush in the other that she realized she’d been in the kitchen for thirty minutes or more actively engaged in desperate denial of Pete having committed any transgression big enough to involve the FBI.

  A person could have the FBI after him if he evaded taxes, if he committed mail fraud...or if he made bombs, sold drugs, murdered people, committed treason, shot at presidents, ate all meals with subversives, or wrote threatening letters to movie stars.

  There were a host of reasons a man would be known by the FBI. A host. And a lot of those things could be perfectly innocuous. But most of those things wouldn’t bring such a bitter twist to a pair of lips that had incited hers to riot only a couple of nights before.

  Don’t tell them where I am. Only a man on the run would want to stay hidden. Was there any other interpretation she could place on his words? Was that why he’d agreed to help her? Was that what he’d been doing in West Texas in the first place?

  She’d known somehow, that first night in the desert. That’s why she’d said she didn’t care what his reasons for being out there might be. She’d known. His neat camp, his lack of a vehicle, his utter solitude. Oh, dear God, she’d known and she’d still brought him into her home, folded him into her family.

  As protection.

  She watched his slow, steady strokes that were transforming her barn into a seemingly different structure and saw his head turn as both her trusting daughters rounded the side of the barn and asked him something. He nodded at the house and his eyes seemed to connect with hers though he couldn’t possibly have seen her with the eastern light bearing directly at the door’s window and screen.

  The girls pelted across the driveway, and they were calling for her permission to help Pete paint before they ever hit the porch.

  “Old clothes,” she said as they opened the door.

  “Thanks!” they both cried, running for the stairs, as if she’d granted them permission to ride in a spaceship instead of wield a paintbrush.

  They were layered in a couple of Craig’s old shirts—which caused her a momentary pang—and back outside in less time than it would have taken her to tell about it. She couldn’t help but smile at the long-suffering expression on Pete’s face. But her smile disappeared as he pulled two paintbrushes out of his parka’s pocket and solemnly handed one to each of her daughters. He’d known they would want to help. He’d prepared for it. And as he shrugged out of his parka and tossed it across the fence, she realized he was more than prepared... he understood the girls.

  What would the FBI want with a man who had enough savvy to take off his new parka while painting with two pint-size helpers? Why would the FBI be after a mountainsize, openly grinning Tom Sawyer?

  As the morning progressed and the temperature rose, she kept her eye on the barn-painting campaign and saw at a glance that Pete would have had the project done in half the time without the eager aid of his two assistants. Half a dozen times she’d reached for one telephone or another to dial information assistance to get hold of
a number for the FBI. And then she’d see the gamin grin on Jenny’s face or the shy adoration on Shawna’s and she’d remember how infrequently they’d giggled and laughed during this first year without their father.

  Did it really matter what Pete may have done in his past? Didn’t what he was doing now count for more? He’d helped her immeasurably and for no remuneration of any kind. Was her repayment to be an FBI check on his past?

  Doc had seemed to like him. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything; Doc was one of those people who found the good in everyone. Shawna and Jenny accepted him completely, but then children tended to like anyone who liked them. Adults, too, for that matter, she thought, remembering how she’d leaned into Pete, aching for the feel of his hands on her body.

  As she set down the phone receiver for the tenth time, she told it she wasn’t going to call anyone. “I didn’t ask him to marry me, for heaven’s sakes. He’s just helping out for a while until the Wannamachers forget about wanting our little piece of ground.”

  Besides, she told herself—and the hapless receiver—who better to roust a couple of thugs than a bad guy? Unless the FBI knew about him because he’d been in trouble over children... What about that one, Carolyn?

  She shook her head. A lot of things she might be able to swallow about Pete Jackson, but harming a child didn’t fall into any possible category. Not Pete.

  The honk of a horn made her jump away from the telephone guiltily, as if her sister-in-law might know what she was thinking. She went to greet Taylor and the triplets with both relief—which she hoped didn’t show—and genuine pleasure, which she knew would.

  The boys were already out of the minivan and inspecting the barn before she even reached the back porch. Five blond heads caught the sunlight and as they chattered, their mobile eyebrows seemed to drift on their young faces. Cousins.

  Taylor joined her on the porch steps and stood for a moment in the warmth of the midday sun to watch Jenny and Shawna showing the triplets how much fun they were having painting the barn.

  “The weatherman said it’s going to rain today,” Taylor said. “In fact, the phrase he actually used was ‘come a gusher.’ That would be such a blessing for the farmers.”

  Carolyn glanced from the congregation at the barn to the sky. She hadn’t noticed it was darkening in the northeast. It hadn’t rained since she moved to the ranch. The thought of rain now made her feel strangely hopeful.

  Pete left the scene for a few moments and came back with a second can of paint and three more brushes.

  “He’s nobody’s fool, is he?” Taylor asked.

  “No,” Carolyn said, a self-conscious grin on her lips. She was, but he certainly could never be labeled with that tag.

  Taylor studied Pete for a few minutes. “He reminds me of Craig,” she said. Was it wistfully?

  Carolyn murmured an acknowledgment, if not an agreement. She felt both vaguely uncomfortable and somewhat relieved to hear Craig’s only sister talking about Pete. “He’s different though,” she said finally.

  Taylor gave her long, steady and utterly neutral look before turning her gaze back to Pete. “I hope so,” she said flatly, her tone falling somewhere between condemnation and acceptance. “But how do you see him as different?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. He just is,” she said, turning to find her sister-in-law studying her intently.

  “You know I loved Craig. Who didn’t? But I’m no fool. I know full well he wasn’t the world’s perfect man, Carolyn,” she said seriously.

  Carolyn flushed. Of anyone, Taylor might know some of Craig’s less than stellar qualities. Or, she thought, if she was to be totally fair, Craig’s bad side was completely the same as his good: he was an equal-opportunity taker. Or perhaps it was more fair to say that Craig just leaned on people. He needed others’ support the way most people simply needed air.

  From his endearing, gamin give-me-a-hand smile to his faith in a myriad of get-rich-quick schemes, Craig seemed to drift from one crisis to another to the point that Carolyn had decided that crises appealed to him. And he always trusted his friends, his givers, his supporters to bail him out.

  Unlike Pete, who seemed to trust no one. Nor need anyone. The notion made her feel vaguely sad. People should need others, not as dependents but just as human beings.

  One of the famous Leary eyebrows rose on Taylor’s expressive face. A question or a supposition?

  “What?” Carolyn asked defensively, fighting the heat rising in her cheeks.

  Taylor shook her head, but her smile spoke volumes before she changed the subject “I brought a batch of Sammie Jo’s fudge.”

  Carolyn grimaced. Much as she was growing to love Sammie Jo, her ineptitude in the kitchen was notorious throughout the Almost countryside.

  Taylor chuckled. “This is the worst of all. It’s fat-free fudge. Luckily, Sammie Jo’s not kitchen proud so she sent along some store-bought cookies, too. And, of all the strange things, a pint of half-and-half cream.”

  “Oh, that’s for Pete,” Carolyn said, standing back to let Taylor inside the house.

  “I see,” Taylor murmured, her eyebrow flexing a little.

  Carolyn only shook her head.

  “But at least I can tell Sammie Jo that he’s got cute buns. That was her biggest question.”

  “He can be wanted by the FBI, but if he has cute buns, he’s okay in Sammie Jo’s book,” Carolyn said.

  “Is he?” .

  “Is he what?”

  “Wanted by the FBI?”

  Carolyn hadn’t realized she’d verbalized that statement with quite so much doubt. She shrugged, tried a smile and shook her head.

  “Seriously, do you know anything about him? Doc says he’s pretty closemouthed about his past. Want me to have one of Doug’s former buddies run a check on him?”

  Since Taylor’s husband had been killed in the line of duty, there weren’t many of his former buddies who wouldn’t do anything for his widow.

  “No!”

  Taylor’s eyebrow lowered as her brow creased. “You know, Carolyn, checking up on someone doesn’t mean the end of the world. It only means you’re being smart. Don’t be like Craig.”

  Carolyn smiled ruefully. “Yeah, I know. But it seems low-down, somehow. He came here at my request. He’s working for free. All I’m providing is a leaky bunkhouse—”

  “Since it hasn’t rained in over a year, that’s not terribly problematic,” Taylor interjected.

  “It’s supposed to rain this afternoon.”

  “So he can sleep in the house.”

  The thought stole Carolyn’s breath.

  “What else are you doing for him?” Taylor asked.

  Carolyn smiled self-consciously. “A little half-and-half for his coffee—”

  “While everyone else in the county makes do with milk.”

  “He’s practically transformed the place.”

  “I did notice the screen door didn’t scream to high heaven and your mailbox down at the junction was actually standing erect.”

  “So it seems kind of unfair to sneak behind his back and run a security check on him.”

  Taylor made herself at home, unknowingly sparking a pang of envy in Carolyn; Taylor was at home anywhere she went, whereas Carolyn wasn’t even comfortable in her own sister-in-law’s presence, let alone her house.

  Taylor poured herself a glass of sun tea and fought an ice tray for a couple of cubes. “I get it. Bad guys are bad all the way through. No good sides. No ponies in them anywhere.”

  Carolyn smiled. “Okay, point well taken.”

  “After what happened to you, I’d think you’d never trust anyone again. Losing your life savings and every scrap of your husband’s insurance money would make more than a Leary cautious of trusting anyone.”

  Carolyn looked at her sister-in-law with shock. She’d never told anyone in Almost, let alone Craig’s family, the whole truth, and Taylor had just casually recited the bare-bones facts as if she’d known them a
ll along.

  Taylor held up her hand as if in self-defense. “I was a cop’s wife, what can I say? The only consolation in being made a widow in your thirties is that you come into a pile of cash. And you didn’t. The family wondered why.”

  The family, Carolyn thought with a tinge of bitterness and a ton of wistfulness.

  “So, I did a little checking.”

  Carolyn’s sister-in-law carefully didn’t meet her eyes as she pulled at a stray thread on her sweater’s cuff.

  “And you found out we trusted our accountant a little too freely with our investments.”

  “That’s a kind way of describing a nest of snakes.”

  “They weren’t all snakes.”

  “No, one of them managed to scare up about ten grand for you and the girls. Enough to bury Craig and get you three to Almost. When, let’s face it, you should have been on a Dallas easy street.”

  Carolyn nodded self-consciously. She didn’t like anyone knowing how badly she and Craig had been duped. Especially since the accountant had been a close personal friend. A trusted friend. A friend she had introduced to Craig. And he’d only been one of a good baker’s dozen, each owning more of their lives than they had.

  “And after that, you’re still willing to put yours and the girls’ well-being out on the proverbial line?”

  Carolyn was spared the necessity of answering that difficult question as five pairs of undoubtedly paint-covered feet hit the back porch with the force of a tornado.

  “Stop right there!” she called, racing for the door and holding it closed with her body. “All shoes off! Any piece of clothing saturated with paint is to be discarded on the outside of the door. I don’t care if you’re buck naked. No paint is coming inside this house!”

  All five of the cousins giggled and laughed as they happily got rid of shoes and various sweaters and smocks.

  “Well, if they’re going to be buck naked, you’d better hope your Pete isn’t among the rabble on the porch,” Taylor said as Carolyn opened the door.

  Did she feel relief or dismay that he wasn’t standing on the other side of the screen?

  “Can we ride Bratwurst now?”