Beowulf: Explosives Detection Dog (47 page)

“You put her in danger!”

“She’s not in danger. I am—she cracked one of my ribs.”

“You selfish piece of crap!” Tony lumbered toward his brother. “She’s been in hiding. Someone burned down her home. That’s why she crashed here before …” Tony couldn’t finish that sentence. “Remember that, genius?”

“Look, it was stupid.”

“You can say that again. In fact, why don’t you tattoo it on your forehead so everyone can see you coming and run?”

“Hey, back off! You’re getting awfully riled for a guy who doesn’t care about her.”

“You have no idea.” Something massive writhed within Tony. He searched for it, searched to finger what it was that coiled tight, poised to detonate. “You just don’t get it, do you?” Tony flattened his palms against the counter, drawing in a ragged, uneven breath.

He tried to work through the bevy of feelings this fiasco unleashed, but he couldn’t get past two points: One, Timbrel went on a date with his brother. Actually went out. On a date. When she wouldn’t give him the time of day for months. And two, if Bashir found out where she was… “I have to call Burnett. Warn them.”

“Tony, I’m sorry. My interest in her was genuine.”

“So was your pride.” He grunted. “Trying to make me jealous.”

“For nothing, too.”

Phone in hand, Tony eyed his brother.

“She showed up, but I could tell pretty quick she thought it was just a casual thing.” Grady sighed. “I mean, that’s the way I invited her, not wanting to scare her off. But I just got ahead of myself when she agreed without a fight.” He smiled. “I saw the hard time she gave you, so I figured if she was willing to come …” Grady shrugged. “She’s beautiful. You threw her away without a care. I didn’t think she deserved that.”

“For a man who rates Mensa, you’re really stupid.”

“Yeah? Well, who walked away from her, idiot?”

“Hey,” their mom said as she set a plate in the sink and left, speaking over her shoulder. “No need for name-calling in this family.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tony drew up Burnett’s number.

“She got mad at me.” Grady sounded a bit like a lost puppy.

Tony waved the paper that had a shot of Timbrel kicking him into the bushes. “Ya think?”

“No, I mean before. When she realized it was meant to be a date. She was ticked.” Grady huffed a laugh. “I actually got scared for a second that she’d sic her dog on me. But then she just shifted. Asked about you.”

She did?

“I was so ticked when she did that. You throw her aside and she still wants you.”

Guilt harangued Tony even as he felt a strange warmth sliding in under his anger, but he turned his back and pressed T
ALK
. “General, you might have a situation.”

“Already talked to Hogan.”

“Oh.”

“Say, talked to your torture therapist this morning, too.”

Tony’s stomach churned, but he said nothing. Clicking on the tile alerted him to Rika closing in on him. Her head peeked up over the island, those gorgeous gold eyes locked on him.

“Says you are on track.”

What track would that be? He leaned back against the counter and welcomed Rika’s presence beside him.

“Five months since the amputation and you’re doing very well with that bionic leg.”

Tony snorted. Bionic. He rubbed Rika’s silky ear between his fingers, already noticing the comfort that came with simply touching her. No wonder Timbrel had a crush on her dog. “I just called to make sure Hogan was okay, taken care of.”

“I want you to consider coming back, VanAllen.” The rough edges that normally defined the general’s words bent and angled in, right toward Tony’s heart.

“General—”

“You wouldn’t be the first amputee to return to active duty, or the first to return to a special operations team.”

Silence. Expectation. Frustration. They all swarmed Tony. They’d lost Scrip and Tony lost a part of himself—not just his leg.

“All I ask is that you think about it.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Tony gave a nod the general couldn’t see. “I can do that.” He sat on the edge of the bar stool and scratched the spot below Rika’s ears that was one of her favorites. Despite his own words, Tony knew the general wasn’t asking, that the man could call him up at any minute, reactivate him, and throw him back into the fray. But it’d be stupid to put a man down on his luck into combat.

“Look, I’ll be straight. I think … I think I wasn’t at the top of my game. You were right—she distracted me.”

“Are you blaming her now?”

“No.” Tony drew up straight, cringing at the pinch of pain from the prosthetic sock. “No, sir. Just trying to explain what happened out there that morning.”

“I’ll tell you what happened, VanAllen—a terrorist ambushed your team. If you want to play pin the tail on the Taliban, stick it on his butt.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

“Why d’you think I want you back? You know what—here’s one better. Since you called concerned about Miss Hogan—”

“For her safety.”

“Exactly, son.” Burnett sounded very pleased with himself. “I want you down there at the ranch. Keep an eye on her.”

“Sir …” His gaze automatically dropped to his half leg.

“You have eyes, a mouth, and fingers to pull the trigger. Get down there.”

Tony knew this would come, knew the general would call his number. “Sir—”

“And you need to know we’ve had a lot of chatter lately. She was right. Bashir Karzai is trouble, and I’ve got an asset who verifies that. And thanks to your brother and that little publicity stunt, now the bad guys know Timbrel’s location. He tried to kill her and that dog once.”

“The fire.”

“He might just try a second time—and succeed. Is that something you could live with on your conscience, son?”

        Thirty-one        

A
t the ranch, things often smelled like wet dogs or … deposits made by said dogs.

But this moment was tender. His large hand touched her cheek. Sunlight, poised over her shoulder, sparkled against her white blond hair, as if accenting her beauty and goodness. She leaned into his touch. Their lips met.

“For the first time in my life,” she said, pressing her cheek against his hand, “I feel like things are right.”

“Puh-leez!”
Timbrel stomped past her mom and beau, who stood on the ranch-house patio, and headed out for a jog. “Good grief. Did you get that from a script?”

The two split apart like atoms.

“Audrey.” Her mom’s voice, filled with remonstration and hurt, chased her. “Wait.”

She shouldn’t stop. She really shouldn’t. But she did.

Her mom came to her. “Please.” Those big eyes, which had men swooning at her feet and women hitting their plastic surgeons, pleaded. As her mom took her hands, Timbrel noted Takkar slipping out of sight around the house, phone in hand. “Please, Audrey—”

“Timbrel.”

Her mom looked up, then seemed to gather herself and met her gaze. “Timbrel.” Conceding wasn’t something Nina Laurens did often. In fact, when Timbrel had made the demand about the name before, her mom had either scoffed or ignored her. “I know I’ve done wrong by you.”

Timbrel snorted.

“A lot.” Those eyes held her hostage again. “But I’m trying. Please try to see that. And … I know—” Her mom’s lips twisted as she tried to cut off the torrent of emotions that flooded her face. “I don’t have a good track record with men.”

The retort about not having a
good
track record but a very long one with many men lurked behind Timbrel’s teeth. And she held it there. Things had shifted. Whether it was quicksand beneath her feet or an honest-to-goodness change, she wasn’t sure.

“But I love Sajjan. I’m working very hard to do this right.” She squeezed Timbrel’s fingers. “Please give him a chance.”

“A chance to what? Break your heart? That’s what men do, Mom.”

Her mom’s expression shifted. “What about that guy you brought to the house? What was his name—Teddy? Tony?”

A spear through the heart would’ve hurt less than that question. “Nothing.” Timbrel tried to tug away, but her mom’s grip went lethal, stopping her short.

“What happened?”

“Just what I said—nothing. He got injured”—wow, understatement of the year—“and … well, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry. You won’t see him again.” Again, she pulled away.

Nina Laurens always had control. Always. Today was no different. “It does matter.”

Timbrel’s facade slipped.

“A lot, if I am reading my darling girl’s face right.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I see that face every day in the mirror.” She traced Timbrel’s cheek. “I’ve never seen you so affected. You loved him.”

Love
.

She’d just begun to believe she did. But he’d ripped the belief right out from under her. “It doesn’t matter. He ended it.”

“Did you fight for it?”

“Fight?”
Her voice hitched. “You can’t fight someone who tells you to get out of his life, someone who calls you names and accuses you of things that aren’t true.”

A smile Timbrel couldn’t comprehend spread across her mother’s pretty features. “That’s when you fight all the harder, baby.” Her words sounded raw, wounded. “That’s when you know the heart is screaming out in pain.”

Tony in pain? The man might as well be Hercules with his strength, inside and out. To think of him in pain, it just … Was it possible?

“He said I was just there because I felt sorry for him.”

“Were you?”

“No.” Timbrel felt the agony surging. “No! Yes, I hurt for him that he’d lost his leg, that he’d been injured—seeing him like that just shattered me. But only because I know the strength in him. I know what drew me and convinced me that maybe someone could love me, that I wasn’t bad.”

“Bad?” Her mother captured her face. “Baby, you’re not bad.”

“Then why do bad things keep happening to me? I tried, God knows I tried, when I was young to do the right thing, make you happy, make Don like me. But it just … it just got worse. And now? Now Tony believes these horrible things about me and won’t talk to me.” The tears were coming.

She pulled her mother’s hands from her face. “Forget it. I don’t know why …”

“I’m your mother.”

“And you’ve never been there for me unless it benefitted you.” Timbrel pushed out toward the trail and snapped her fingers twice for Beowulf to follow.