She Can Run (5 page)

When silence didn’t provoke a comment, Jack prodded her for a response. “I thought you’d want to know that you still have a job. If you want it, that is.”

“Really?” Beth stopped and turned to face him.

Daylight brought out the pallor of her skin and emphasized the dark circles under those fascinating green eyes. Had she looked this exhausted last night? Maybe if he hadn’t been totally shit-faced, he’d be able to remember. He must have made a great first impression. Regret nagged at him.

Way to go, O’Malley.

She lowered her voice. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t even know me.”

“Uncle Danny hired you. That’s good enough for me.” He gestured to the beast standing behind her. “Obviously you can handle the horses. What sort of responsibilities did you and my uncle discuss?” The employment letter Danny had given her was ridiculously vague.

“I have some bookkeeping experience. He wanted me to get estimates for a new roof and some landscaping.”

As if unhappy with her lapse in attention, the horse bumped her with its nose. The nudge nearly knocked her off her feet. Without turning, she reached back and patted its neck.

“All of those things still need to be done,” Jack pointed out. “I’ve never even owned a house.”

“I don’t know.” She turned back to the horse, leaning into a bucket of supplies to exchange the brush for a small metal pick.

Was she going to turn him down? And what was the deal with this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach?

“How about a trial period? Say two weeks? We’ll see how it works out for all of us. Then if you’re not happy here, I’ll have time to find someone else for the job.” Jack held his breath as she bent down to lift the horse’s hoof. The waistband of her jeans sagged, revealing the top band of a black satin thong. Jack’s brain short-circuited and redirected his blood flow south.

Shit. How was he supposed to talk to her now?

As she cleaned all four hooves, Jack averted his eyes and tried to remember the score of last week’s Phillies’ game. The image had little effect on the pornographic slide show running through his head. With the horse in the background, Jack’s mind added a cowboy hat and boots to the stripper ensemble his brain had superimposed on Beth. What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn’t gotten laid in months, since before the accident, but his response to Beth was way out of whack.

He was spending way too much time with Sean.

“All right.” She straightened and tossed the pick back into the bucket. “We’ll try a couple of weeks, but no promises.”

And to think he’d come down here under the assumption he was doing her a favor. “Thank you. If you like, you can stay in the rooms you’re in now, and we can discuss your responsibilities over the next couple of days. Let’s just go with what Danny agreed to pay you. Sound OK?”

“Yes. That’s fine.” Beth untied the rope and tugged the horse toward the pasture gate a few yards away. The horse followed her docilely as Jack tried not to stare at her ass.

“You’ll need to call your neighbor and let him know,” she called over her shoulder.

“My neighbor?” He concentrated on an image of his grandmother in his head, picturing her in church, praying the rosary, lighting a candle. Not working. His brain had developed picture-in-picture capability, running his personal porn flick right alongside the saintly image.

He was so going to hell for this one.

Beth gave him a quizzical glance. “Jeff Stevens? He was in the barn when we got down here this morning.”

The vision of his weird neighbor was a definite boner-shrinker.

“Oh. Yeah. Him. I’ll call Jeff this afternoon. I’m sorry. I haven’t lived here very long either.” Jack nodded toward at the children. “You know, the kids don’t need to work. I don’t expect them to do anything. They’re just kids.”

“Thank you, but they wanted to help. They like animals.”

“As long as they know they don’t have to do it, it’s OK with me. Speaking of animals, did Henry give you any trouble?”

“None. He keeps his distance from the horses, though. I think he’s afraid of them.” Beth laughed.

“I can’t say I blame him, but Henry is the most cowardly ex-police dog I have ever known.” Jack paused for a minute, watching her face soften with a smile for the first time. Humor danced in her eyes for only a few seconds, but the image imprinted in his head. He wanted to see it again.

Beth unlatched the gate and released the horse into the pasture. As she fastened the gate, she jumped. “Ow.”

Blood dripped down her forearm. Jack swung forward on his crutch. “What happened?”

“I caught my hand on something.” She twisted her arm trying to look at the outside of her palm.

“Let me see.” Jack reached out and closed his hand around her slender wrist. He’d barely felt the throb of her pulse against his thumb when she started and snatched her hand away. The blood drained from her face.

“Whoa.” He released her and took a step back.

Wild-eyed and pale, she trembled in front of him. “It’s nothing. Just a scratch.” Even her voice shook. A shove from a half-ton animal had no effect on her, but the touch of his hand sent her off the deep end.

“OK. But come on up to the house and clean it out.” Jack smoothed any recognition of her fear from his voice as he watched her shove her shaking hands into the front pockets of her jeans. She raised her chin and squared her shoulders, almost defying her body’s visceral reaction. Something inside his chest shifted as she struggled to regain control. It wasn’t just her body that he admired. Her courage was damned attractive. “It’s past lunchtime anyway. There are plenty of leftovers from brunch. I think the heat is getting to you.”

She nodded and cleared her throat. “We’ll be along in a few minutes.”

As Beth walked toward her children, Jack turned and headed for the golf cart parked next to the barn.

Why were they all so afraid of him? They hadn’t backed away from Mrs. Harris this morning. Guilt? Nah. If she’d been conning Danny, she probably would have taken off last night. Unless she was considering playing him. Somehow that didn’t feel right. Not the way she’d reacted when he’d touched her.

That hadn’t been guilt he’d seen in her eyes.

Beth had been terrified.

On the patio, Beth and the children removed their muddy shoes before entering the house. The air-conditioning that enveloped Beth’s body as she walked inside was pure bliss.

“There you are,” Mrs. Harris greeted them. “I was about to come looking for you. It’s past lunchtime.”

“Wash your hands,” Beth instructed the kids as she herded them toward the sink. “Lots of soap.”

Soap stung the inch-long gash on her palm as she scrubbed her hands, making sure to get all the dirt out from under her nails. Stepping back from the sink, she looked down at her legs, then glanced at the children. All three of them were streaked with mud, cobwebs, and straw.

“Maybe we should eat outside. I didn’t realize how filthy we all were.” Beth turned to herd the children back outside.

“Relax. This isn’t a museum. You look like you could use some cool air. Iced tea, Beth?” Mrs. Harris opened the refrigerator and poured two glasses of milk. “Those children need to eat. Not an ounce of fat on either one of them. Do you like ham?” She directed the last question toward Ben and Katie.

“Yes, ma’am.” Ben slid into a chair at the table. Katie sat next to him.

“I can get it. You don’t have to wait on us.” Beth hurried to help. “I don’t want to add to your workload.”

“Nonsense. I’m glad you’re all going to be moving in with us. But you can set the table if you like.”

Beth retrieved silverware from the drawer.

“This place is too quiet.” Mrs. Harris set a platter of sliced ham on the table. “I’m used to it, because Danny was practically a hermit the last few years. But Jack needs the company. He was a policeman for a long time, and he’s not used to having a lot of free time.”

Beth dropped the handful of utensils on the table with a clatter. Mental head smack. Jack
had
said that Henry had been a police dog. Her taxed brain just hadn’t connected the dots.

Great
. She’d given a false identity to a cop. Was that a felony or a misdemeanor?

“Are you all right, dear?” Mrs. Harris inquired. “You look ill. You have to be careful working outside in this kind of heat. I’ll bet you didn’t even take water with you. Sit down and drink this.” She gently pushed Beth into a chair and handed her a cold glass of iced tea.

Rolls, potato salad, deviled eggs, and a plate of cookies joined the ham. The kids dug in. Clearly no one would go hungry as long as Mrs. Harris was in charge of the kitchen. And she was definitely in charge.

Unfortunately Beth’s appetite had gone out the window when Mrs. Harris made her revelation about Jack—who might easily have seen a missing person’s report with her face on it sometime in the last year. Acid rose in Beth’s throat at the thought of Jack contacting Richard. One phone call. That’s all it would take. Her gaze shifted to her children. Would he kill them, too? They were loose ends, and nothing was beyond Richard’s cruelty. Or maybe he had other plans for them. Her chest constricted as she contemplated her options, their fate.

Wait. Jack had shown no sign he’d recognized her. He could have been a cop anywhere. She’d dyed her hair black and let it grow out. Thanks to the Stress Diet, she’d lost weight, so her face was thinner. Then there was the corpse-like thing she had going on with her complexion. She reconsidered.

“Aren’t you going to eat, dear?”

“I’ll get something as soon as I cool off a bit.” Beth forced a smile and kept her voice light. “You said Jack was a cop?”

“Yes. Until his accident a few months ago.”

She sipped her tea. “Did he see his uncle often?”

“No. He worked about two hours from here, in South Bend. That’s a suburb of Philadelphia. When he was younger, Jack spent a lot of time up here, but after he made detective, not so much.” Mrs. Harris frowned as she refilled Beth’s glass with iced tea.

“Thank you.”

Jack hadn’t worked in the same jurisdiction where Richard lived. But cripes, it was close.

Mrs. Harris pulled out a chair and sat down. She picked up a cookie and took a bite. “You’re still pale. You need to get some food into you after working hard all morning.”

Although her belly cramped at the mere idea of eating, Beth forked some ham and potato salad onto her plate. Mrs. Harris was right. Beth needed to eat to sustain her energy. Missing a meal wasn’t advisable when she might have to run at any time. If only she had somewhere to go.

Jack hobbled into the kitchen and pulled out a chair across from Beth and the kids. Ben held his ground, but even with the table as a barrier between them, Katie cringed as Jack sat. Beth looked like she was about to throw up.

Under the table, Jack’s knee throbbed with every beat of his pulse. Either someone had stuffed shards of glass under his kneecap or he’d spent way too much time on his feet this morning. He must’ve looked as bad as he felt, because Mrs. Harris went immediately to the freezer and pulled out a large bag of crushed ice.

“That leg needs to be put up.” She gave him her fiercest do-not-mess-with-me face.

Jack didn’t argue as he lifted his leg onto the chair she pushed under it. His knee was roughly the size of a basketball. If he didn’t get that swelling down overnight, his physical therapist was going to have a shit fit tomorrow.

He sat back, swallowing the ibuprofen Mrs. Harris set in his palm with the iced tea she put on the table in front of him. “Thank you.”

To draw his attention away from the pain, he focused on the other people in the room. The kids were chowing down. Beth, however, only picked at her ham. She needed a good ten pounds on her if she wasn’t going to blow away in a stiff breeze. Had she eaten anything at all today?

Henry sat at Katie’s feet, giving the child his starving dog routine. Brown eyes tracked the movement of her fork from plate to mouth like a spectator at a tennis match. A string of drool dripped from his black muzzle to the floor. Jack pretended not to see Katie slip him a piece of ham under the table.