CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RORY WAS DELIGHTED to be living with Cash and Tippy. He quickly made friends with a boy his own age, who lived three doors down from Cash, the son of one of Cash’s police officers. The boys had a lot in common, especially video games. Cash outfitted Rory with the latest ones, which the boy shared with his new friend.
Tippy, meantime, was falling more deeply in love with Cash by the day. But since Rory’s arrival, he’d been reticent. She wondered why. He told her that some thing was pending that she might not approve of, but he wouldn’t tell her what it was.
She made popcorn and they watched a movie about mercenaries that Rory was crazy to see. Cash sat through it tight-lipped, and excused himself early, pleading fatigue.
“Did the movie upset him, do you think?” Rory asked his sister.
She hugged him gingerly. “I’m not sure,” she confessed. “Maybe. He never talks about the job, or his past. He keeps so many secrets.”
“One day he’ll tell you,” he said confidently.
“Think so?” She smiled, but she had her doubts. He hadn’t opened up to her, not really, since the day he’d blurted out the things his ex-wife had done. He was teasing, affectionate, kind. But he was as distant as the moon. Tonight was worrying. Something was really up setting him. Tippy wished he’d tell her what it was.
LATER THAT NIGHT, in the wee hours, Tippy awoke to an unfamiliar sound. Cash was yelling. Tippy heard his deep voice echo down the hall. It was tormented, husky, groaning. It took a minute for her to get her bearings and make sure she was awake. She sat up in bed, listening. Perhaps she’d been dreaming. But, no—there it was again, that horrible, hoarse shouting.
She got up in her long blue silk gown and walked barefoot down the hall, her hair in a glorious tangle around her face still flushed with sleep. She pushed open the door to Cash’s bedroom and walked up to the side of the bed. After a minute, she realized that she wasn’t alone. Rory was standing on the other side of the bed, hesitating.
They exchanged worried glances. Before they could speak, Cash writhed on the covers. “I can’t do it,” Cash was panting heavily. “I can’t…shoot him! For God’s sake, he’s a little boy…! No! No, son, don’t do it…don’t make me…don’t!”
“Sis, I don’t know if we should wake him up,” Rory said when she bent instinctively over the thrashing man. “It might be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” she parroted, hesitating.
“A lot of soldiers and policemen sleep with a pistol,” he pointed out.
She thought what a tragedy this could turn out to be, if she woke him and he thought she was an enemy soldier and shot her.
“No!” Cash groaned harshly, throwing off the covers. He was wearing black silk boxer shorts and nothing else. His hairy chest was damp with sweat, like his dark, faintly wavy hair. He was thrashing about feverously. “I killed him. Damn you, for making me take that shot, damn you all! Get me out of here…make them stop…God in Heaven, make…them…stop!”
Tippy sat down beside him on the bed and placed a soft hand flat in the center of his muscular chest. “Cash,” she whispered urgently. “Cash, wake up!”
“I…can’t…do this…anymore.” He was panting.
“Cash!” She pushed down hard on his chest.
A split second later, she was on her back with a steely fore arm pinning her throat.
“Cash!” Rory yelled. “It’s Tippy. It’s Tippy!”
He came awake at once. His eyes, glazed and wild, suddenly focused on his hostage. He let her go and sat up. His breath caught in his throat as he realized what he could have done to her…
“You had…a nightmare,” she whispered, sounding choked. Her hands went to her red neck.
“I told her not to,” Rory defended her.
Cash caught his breath slowly. “Did I hurt you?” he asked Tippy in a strained tone.
“No. I was only frightened,” she said, sitting up, too. She rubbed her throat. “You were having a nightmare,” she added huskily.
He sighed heavily, looking from her to Rory. “This was stupid,” he told both of them flatly, and without apology. “Look at this.” He gestured toward the .45 automatic that hung in its holster from his bedpost. “It’s loaded. I’ve slept like this for most of my adult life. I could have shot you!”
“It isn’t wise to sleep with a loaded gun when there are children in the house,” Tippy pointed out.
“I am not a child,” Rory said indignantly.
“He has a point,” Cash replied.
“So do I,” Tippy muttered.
Cash let out a long breath, flipped the clip out and expelled the single bullet in the chamber. He put the whole works in his bedside drawer. “There,” he muttered. “I’ll get a case and a trigger lock for it tomorrow. And what a fine mess we’ll be in if armed men come in through the windows one dark night!”
“Are you expecting any?” Tippy wanted to know.
“I’m always expecting them,” he said curtly. “I have enemies.”
“Listen, we have this terrific police force in Jacobsville,” she began.
“I’m not laughing, Tippy.” He ran his big hands through his damp hair and leaned forward with his el bows on his propped up knees. He was sick with fear. He was used to guns, to having them around. But tonight brought home exactly how dangerous it was to keep a loaded gun in the bedroom. It was a mistake he’d never make again.
“Do you want anything to drink?” Rory asked. “I feel like a Coke.”
“No. I don’t want anything,” Cash said.
Tippy just shook her head.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Rory said, and went out of the room.
“He should be in bed,” Cash said heavily.
“He was in bed, until we heard you shouting at the top of your lungs,” Tippy replied. She moved farther onto the bed and drew her legs up under her. “Talk to me, Grier,” she said gently. “Get it off your chest. You’ll feel better.”
He leaned back against the pillows and glared at her in the faint light from the night-light in the wall plug.
“Come on,” she coaxed. “You know all my secrets.”
She had a point. But he hesitated. He’d never forgotten what his wife had done to him.
She reached out and touched his bare muscular arm hesitantly. His chest was thick with dark hair and very muscular. He was delightful to her eyes, although she tried not to let it show too much. “I don’t sit in judgment on anybody. Not with my past. And I’m not going to meet you at the door with my suitcase, no matter what you tell me,” she added firmly.
“That’s what I thought once before,” he bit off.
“I’m not here because you’re rich,” she said bluntly. His jaw tautened. “If you’re insinuating…”
“I’m stating a fact,” she interrupted. “No woman who loved you would do what she did. You don’t walk out on people in pain, or turn away from them because of something they once did. True love is unconditional.”
“You’d know?” he drawled sarcastically.
Her eyes touched his hard, lean face with its faint scars and she smiled. “As a matter of fact, I would,” she said softly. Her soft hand splayed over the hair-roughened muscles of his chest.
He misunderstood the words. He thought she meant Cullen, the man she’d lived with. He averted his eyes and fought to keep his breath steady. The nightmare, the old familiar one, had unnerved him briefly. “You don’t know what I have to live with.”
“You shot a boy.”
His eyes darted up to hers, incredulous. “How the hell would you know?”
“You were shouting it,” she said simply. “I watch the evening news along with the rest of the world. I’m to tally aware that in third world countries, paramilitary units have plenty of little boys who can use an AK-47 or even a K-bar if they have to.”
He scowled. She wasn’t horrified. She wasn’t even shocked.
“Cullen fought in Vietnam, Cash,” she said softly. “He told me all about it, things you’d never think he’d seen. He was so cultured, so worldly, but he watched children die, too. I know things about war that even Rory couldn’t guess.”
He began to relax, just a little. “I fought in the Middle East. In South America. In the jungles of Africa. I did it to make big money. But I learned that there’s a price you pay for that sort of quick profit. I’m still paying it.”
She reached down to touch his mouth gently with just her fingertips. “You have nightmares. So do I. In fact,” she added, as a pale face peered in around the door, “so does Rory. Right?” she asked her little brother.
He came into the room and closed the door. “Sam beat me up so bad that I almost died,” he agreed, tumbling into the bed on the other side of Cash. “I wake up screaming in the middle of the night sometimes. So does she,” he added, nodding toward his sister.
Cash let out the breath he’d been holding back. “So do I,” he confessed quietly.
“But you won’t anymore tonight,” Rory said, climbing under the covers. “Goodnight, sis.”
It wasn’t the time to force answers out of a reluctant Cash. She liked Rory’s impish idea better. After all, he could kick them out of bed if he didn’t like it, she mused.
Tippy lifted the sheet and bedspread and crawled in on the other side of Cash, moving to pillow her cheek on his bare shoulder. She smiled and sighed softly, closing her eyes. She felt as if she’d come home. “Good night, Rory.”
“Good night, Cash,” Rory added drowsily.
“Good night, Cash,” Tippy seconded, and yawned. It was still very early in the morning. Wind was howling outside and it was starting to rain. She thought absently what a great blessing it was just to have a warm, dry, safe place to sleep at night. People took it too much for granted. In her youth, she’d spent many a lonely, frightened night on the streets before Cullen had found her.
Cash hesitated as he felt the soft warmth of two bodies beside him in the darkness. He felt safe. He felt warm. It was raining cats and dogs, and the wind sounded cold. He lay back with a confused sigh. He wanted to protest. He didn’t need company or comfort. He was a tough guy. He could take care of himself and his own nightmares.
But after a minute, the soft, warm weight of Tippy’s body on one side and Rory’s on the other knocked the fight out of him. What the hell. He closed his eyes. And he slept.
CASH DIDN’T MENTION ANYTHING about having two bed mates when he got up to go to work the next day. For several days, he kept to himself, taking time to show Rory how to make a worm bed and even taking him fishing. Tippy wasn’t invited. But she didn’t really mind. She liked seeing Rory so happy.
Early one morning while Rory was still asleep and Cash had gone out with a nod, Tippy smiled as she heard the slight noise outside the kitchen door. Mrs. Jewell was out shopping, but Cash must have forgotten something, she thought as she put the iron skillet on the stove to make herself some eggs.
She heard the screen door open, but no key was inserted in the lock. Instead, the doorknob was rattled, hard.
With her heart racing, and thoughts of the would-be kidnappers coming after her, she almost panicked. She’d almost forgotten about being in danger in the routine of the past few weeks. But now, all her instincts were bristling. There was a hard kick at the door now, as if some one outside was trying to break in.
She grabbed up the phone, fumbling a little, and dialed 911 with shaking hands, all the time watching the wooden door.
“Chief Grier?” came the 911 operator’s surprised voice on the line.
“It’s Tippy Moore,” she replied. “Someone’s trying to break in. Please send someone over as quickly as you can.”
“I’ll dispatch a unit right now, Miss Moore. Please stay on the line…Miss Moore?”
Tippy had laid the phone down and grabbed up the large iron skillet in both hands, because the door was starting to part company from the jamb. She’d been a victim all her life, one way and another. First Sam Stan ton’s victim, then every pushy male’s, then the kidnappers who’d threatened her life. She was tired of being a victim.
She moved to the side of the door, so that it wouldn’t hit her when the determined intruder broke in. Her heart was racing, and she was frightened, but she wasn’t going to back down. Not now. This man was going to pay for the sins of every man who’d ever attacked her. She tightened her hand on the cold handle of the skillet. Its very weight was reassuring.
The noise was louder now, as the determined person outside began to throw his weight against the door. It was splintering. It was old and flimsy now, and some how fragile. Another two hard blows, and it was knocked back on its hinges. A tall, thin man in denim and a knit shirt burst into the kitchen with a gun in one hand.
At last, a target! Tippy swung the frying pan with all her might. The gun went flying and the man shrieked.
Ironically, his pain gave her strength. “Break into my house, will you?” she raged. She swung the iron skillet at his shoulder and he yelled again in pain. She lowered it and swung it at his kneecap. “Attack me with a gun, will you? I’ll cripple you!”
He was screaming now, hopping on one leg, holding his hand and favoring his shoulder as he tried to back toward the shattered doorjamb.
Tippy kept coming. She was furious. This man had invaded her home, threatened her person. She didn’t care if she went to jail for assault, he was going to pay for trying to kill her!
“You can tell Sam Stanton that he’s dog meat!” she yelled at him, swinging the heavy pan again at his shoulder, the one she’d already hit once. He screamed again and tripped as he tried to back away from her. “I’m not going to hide in a closet while he sends pond scum like you to shut me up before his trial!”
“Help!” the intruder cried, stumbling to his knees as he scampered out the door.
Tippy had the frying pan lifted for another blow when sirens screamed down the small street and three police cars—one of them containing Cash—screeched to a halt at the driveway. Seconds later, uniformed officers with sidearms drawn and at the ready position stormed up to the house.
“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head. Now!” Cash yelled at the man, with his pistol leveled at the man. He hoped he sounded calm. His heart was about to beat him to death. He’d been so afraid that he’d be too late to save Tippy.
“I can’t…lift my arms,” the man sobbed. “She hit me! She tried to kill me! I want protection!”
Rory came into the kitchen and out on the back stoop, rubbing his eyes, still dressed in pajama bottoms. He started when he saw all the police cars. “What’s going on?” he asked Tippy, drawing attention to her.
The police officers, including Cash, suddenly noticed Tippy, too. She was holding a huge iron skillet in both slender hands. Her flaming hair was rayed around her flushed face like a halo. She was still wearing her green satin pajamas and the loose robe, and she looked so beautiful that for an instant, the policemen were simply starstruck.
“Cuff him!” Cash yelled at two of his officers, who managed to pull out of their trance and get to work on the suspect.
Tippy was breathing hard. Her green eyes were still flaming. She came down the steps toward the intruder.
He screamed. “Save me! I’ll tell you everything! Just get me away from her!”
By now, neighbors on both sides of the street were standing on their lawns, gaping at the unexpected bit of theater that broke the monotony of a routine Monday morning. One of the elderly women was openly chuckling.
“Tippy?” Cash asked softly as he moved toward her. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
She nodded, breathless at the endearment and the concern.
She lowered the frying pan. “I thought it was you, until he rattled…the doorknob and started breaking in.” She took a deep breath, her eyes on the suspect, who was being led away to a police car.
Cash was still getting his own breath back. He holstered his service revolver blindly, his dark eyes rapt on her face. “Are you sure he didn’t hurt you?”
She smiled weakly. “It was sort of the other way around. I got really mad when I saw the gun in his hand,” she confessed.
Cash’s eyes flashed. “Gun?”
She nodded. “It’s on the floor in the kitchen. I knocked it out of his hands.” She swayed a little. “I feel sick.”
“Don’t let them see it,” he said quickly, catching her under the elbow. “You’ll spoil the image.”
She sucked in a breath. “I’m okay,” she whispered. “Just don’t let me fall.”
“Not a chance,” he promised.
She turned to the officers gathered around. “Thanks, guys,” she said in her pretty, breathless voice. She smiled and they just stared raptly. “His pistol is on the floor in the kitchen. I think he meant to shoot me.”
“He was armed?” one of the young officers asked, aghast.
She nodded. “It looked like a .45 to me,” she added.
“I’ll retrieve it. Get me an evidence bag, Harry, and call in our investigator. I know it’s his day off,” Cash added, when the young officer seemed hesitant. “He won’t mind. Trust me.”
“Sure,” the officer said at once. “Glad you’re okay, Miss Moore,” he added with a smile.
She smiled back. The other officers were still staring.
“You hit him with a frying pan?” Rory was trying to get a handle on the situation. “Gosh, that was brave!” he added. “I’m going to call Jake and tell him!” He took off toward the living room.
“Come on,” Cash told Tippy, with an arm around her waist. “I’ll carry the skillet for you, darling,” he whispered mischievously and with a wicked grin. “We wouldn’t want you to strain yourself or anything.”
She burst out laughing as she handed it over. “Going to arrest me for assault?” she whispered.
“That depends. Are you planning to assault me?”
“First chance I get,” she replied, teasing.
He went inside with her, his eyes angry on the busted door and doorjamb, and more angry when he saw the .45 automatic on the floor. He imagined all sorts of horrible scenarios. He and his men would never have made it in time to save her, despite their haste. If she hadn’t had that skillet…!
He pulled her against him and kissed her with feverish desperation. She clung to him, giving back the hard kiss. He was passionately aroused. She felt it down to her bones. Her legs began to shake, with mingled excitement and delayed fear.
“He could have killed you,” he ground out as his mouth slid down to her silky warm throat. A shudder went through his powerful body. “Damn him!”
She slid her arms around his hard waist and laid her cheek on his uniform shirt. “I wasn’t even afraid when it was happening,” she said wearily. “I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
“That’s what it looks like to me, too,” came an amused drawl from the door.
She peered across Cash’s chest to see Judd Dunn walking into the room.
Cash glanced at him and smiled. “She took him on by herself with this,” he lifted the iron skillet in his free hand. “When we got here, he was crawling away from her at top speed screaming for help.”
Judd’s eyes twinkled and he burst out laughing. “I’ll be damned.”
“The neighbors will live on this for weeks,” Cash sighed, looking down into Tippy’s soft eyes. “Rory’s in the living room calling his friends to brag on his sister. Elegant, famous Miss Moore, foiling an assassin with a cast-iron skillet.”
“I didn’t get my eggs,” she muttered. “I was just put ting the pan on the stove when he came along. Do you think he’s part of Sam Stanton’s outfit?” she added. “The one who got away in New York?”
“Likely,” Cash replied. “But he seemed willing to confess to anything a minute ago, if we’d save him from you,” he added with a chuckle.
“If I don’t get my breakfast soon, he’s going to need saving,” she said. She moved away from Cash and reclaimed her skillet. “Eggs, anyone?” she asked, moving nonchalantly back to the stove, while the two men looked on with pure delight.
TIPPY HAD COOKED SUPPER for the three of them despite Cash’s objections. He felt that she needed rest after the ordeal earlier, and offered to take them out to a restaurant. She wouldn’t let him. She needed to keep busy, she told him. It wouldn’t do to brood about something that was already over.
“She’s like that,” Rory told Cash with a grin, giving his sister a teasing glance. “She never complains, no matter how bad things get.”
“I noticed,” Cash replied. He finished his piece of steak and washed it down with coffee. He was still steaming over the ease with which the third kidnapper had made his way into town and into his house without arousing suspicion. He scowled at the coffee as if it were responsible for all his problems.
“Is it too weak?” Tippy asked immediately.
He glanced at her. “What? The coffee?” He lifted it to his lips. “No. It’s just right.”
“You’re upset because the man got into the house…” she began.
Cash’s scowl grew thunderous.
“You’ll just have to get used to it,” Rory told him conversationally. “She reads minds.”
“I noticed,” Cash said, his lips making a thin line. Then he realized that he was being difficult, when she was the one who needed comfort and understanding. “Sorry,” he added.
She only smiled. “It’s okay,” she replied. “I should be apologizing. I don’t mean to be obnoxious.”
“You just read minds,” he finished for her.
“Only mine and yours,” Rory told him. “She can’t do it with other people.”
Cash stilled. “She can’t?”
Rory shook his head, finishing his mashed potatoes. “She tries, but it never works.”
That made a huge difference. It was as if he and Rory were part of her. He’d never felt that way before, not even during his brief marriage.
What was really bothering him was the fear he’d felt when he knew that an intruder was in his house, that Tippy was in danger, and he hadn’t anticipated it. During the scant minutes it took him to get to the scene, he’d had hell imagining what might be happening to her. He’d been impotent, and he didn’t like it. Worse, the fear he’d felt for her safety was different from any fear he’d ever felt in his life. She was already part of him, part of his life. If he lost her…!
“Want some ice cream?” Tippy asked to divert him. “We’ve got chocolate.”
“I’m not really hungry for dessert.”
“Me, neither,” Rory confessed. “It’s been a long day.” He got up, excusing himself from the table formally, and went around to hug his sister close. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said in a husky tone. His eyes closed. “You’re all I’ve got.”
“Not true,” Cash said quietly. “You’ve got me, too.”
Rory lifted his head and looked with faint surprise at the older man. He’d been thinking of himself as a nuisance for weeks now. But Cash was smiling.
Rory smiled shyly. “Thanks. It works both ways, you know,” he added. “I’d save you, if I could.”
Cash’s expression was curious, mingling affection with quiet pride. He smiled back. “I’ll remember that.”
“I’m going to watch that new adventure movie you brought home, if it’s okay,” Rory told Cash.
“Sure. Go ahead. There’s nothing much on television tonight anyway.”
“Thanks!”
He was gone in a flash, leaving Tippy and Cash alone together at the table. He toyed with his empty cup.
“Want a refill?” she asked, noting the restless movement.
“I wouldn’t mind a second cup,” he agreed.
She got up to pour it. But as she put it down in front of him, he caught her hand and pulled her gently onto his lap.
“When I joined the army, I didn’t really have a career in mind,” he told her quietly while he settled her comfortably with her head on his shoulder and one of her slender hands in his own. “I finished college there. But in the meantime, my sergeant noticed that I never missed on the rifle range. He recommended me for a special, top-secret unit. I was given an assignment, which I fulfilled.” His hand tightened on hers. “I can’t go into particulars. Most of what I did was classified. Suffice it to say that the job required me to kill.”
She didn’t move, or speak. She was afraid he’d stop talking. It was the first time he’d trusted her enough to discuss this secret, which she sensed he’d told only one other person in his life. His ex-wife had walked out on him. Tippy knew that she never would, no matter what he told her. She loved him too much.
He looked down at her face. “No comment?” he asked tautly.
“You’re talking. I’m listening,” she said softly. “I know this must be hard for you. I’m not judging or criticizing. But I think it would do you good to talk about it.”
He laughed shortly. “That was what I thought once before.”
She reached her hand up to his lean face and stroked his cheek tenderly. “This isn’t the past. And I’m no coward.”
He seemed to relax a little. “Certainly you dismissed any discussion about that this afternoon,” he murmured. “You’ll be a local legend for the rest of your life.”
She grinned. “You think so?”
“I do.” He shifted her into a more comfortable position, but he was less tense. “I did two black ops jobs be fore it started getting to me. I got out of the army, but my reputation went with me. In no time, I was on everybody’s list for special assignments, freelance. I let them convince me that my hang-ups would vanish in time, that I was doing a necessary job to make the world safe. I bought the explanation. I worked for various agencies in our country and others, often cooperating with crack commando units as a sniper. I was fluent in several languages as well, which didn’t hurt, and I could repair anything electronic. I was never out of work.”
He drew in a long breath, and his dark eyes became haunted. “Then, one night, I started having nightmares. Real, vivid, screaming nightmares. I saw dead faces. First it was once a week, then every other day.” His face was taut with memory. “I thought if I gave up the job, they might go away. I had all the money I would ever need from the freelance jobs, safe in a Swiss bank. I was living on luck, and it was only a matter of time until it ran out. So I quit and came back to the States. I worked in law enforcement, here in Texas, for years until I ended up with the Rangers. I met a woman at lunch one day—pretty little brunette who was always giving me the eye. She flirted outrageously with me until I gave in and asked her out. After the first date, she moved in with me. Two weeks later we were married.”
Tippy was trying not to feel jealous, and failing miserably.
“That was quick.”
“Yes. Too quick. What I didn’t know was that she was a cousin of an old army buddy of mine. He didn’t know what sort of work I did for the army, but he did know that I lived high. He told her I had money. She loved diamonds and high fashion. I was too smitten to notice that she only tolerated my touch, and the tolerance got better as the presents got a little more expensive.”
She grimaced. “It must have been painful to learn that.”
“It was.” His face hardened. “I was crazy about her. She seemed to be in love with me, at the time. She got pregnant and I was over the moon. I’d never considered kids until then, but the first flush of impending father hood made a fool of me,” he added, trying to downplay his feelings because of the baby he and Tippy had lost. “So in a fit of honesty, I sat down and told her the story of my life. The rest, you know. She walked out. Later, I heard that she’d planned to get rid of the baby anyway, but she enjoyed putting the blame on me. She thought it would get her more alimony.”
She searched his face. “Did it?”
“I had a good attorney. He was a former merc with great stealth skills. He had her watched, and he had her phone tapped. We had evidence that wasn’t admissible in court, but it was enough to frighten her into taking a lump-sum payment. She agreed, I cut the check, and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Do you still…think about her?” Tippy asked, having avoided the question she wanted most to ask him—if he still loved the woman.
“Sometimes,” he confessed, and he smiled at her. “But not with pleasure or any lingering desire. I feel as if I had a lucky escape.”
She smiled back at him, relieved. “How did you end up in Jacobsville?”
“I couldn’t settle down as a Ranger, so I applied for the only job going at the Houston D.A.’s office, as a cybercrime expert. I’d had a lot of experience as a hacker while I was doing those odd jobs for military entities.” He shook his head. “But it didn’t work out. I was even more of an outsider there. I didn’t seem to be able to fit in anywhere. My reputation followed me around.”
He looked down at her with a faint smile before he continued. “I was forever running into men who knew me. They exaggerated some of the things I’d done, and the fact that I kept to myself made it all the more believable.” His thumb stroked her long fingernails absently. “Just when I thought I might reenlist in the army, my cousin Chet came to see me in Houston and asked if I’d be interested in a job as assistant police chief here in Jacobsville. That was before Ben Brady became acting mayor, or I’d never have been hired. But the then-mayor and the city council voted me in unanimously, with Chet’s approval. I’ve been here ever since.”
“No hankering to leave and go back to the wild life?” she queried softly.
“Some,” he had to admit. He looked down at her in his arms, so beautiful, so warm and soft-skinned. He felt a lump in his throat. “Until just recently,” he added in a deep, husky tone.
Her eyes glistened. “Why?”
He shrugged, glancing at her slender hand pressing into his shirtfront while he caressed her hand. “I don’t know. My life has changed since you and Rory came into it, especially since you both came to Jacobsville. I feel as if I’m part of a family, for the first time in my life.”
She didn’t usually cry. But she was still feeling fragile from the afternoon’s ordeal, and the words knocked the breath out of her. Did he mean what she thought he did?
He saw the tears overflowing her eyes, making wet paths down her cheeks. He scowled. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s how I feel,” she confessed. “And Rory, too.”
He felt light-headed and smiled absently. “Do you?”
She nodded.
He hugged her close and bent to kiss her. It was the most tender caress she’d had in her life. She returned it, with the same tenderness.
He closed his eyes. He felt as if he’d come home. She rested her cheek on his chest and listened to his heart beat.
Rory peeked in the door. “Oops! Sorry…!”
Cash laughed. “Come back here,” he said. Tippy sat up, her eyes a little red, but still smiling. “What is it?” Cash asked.
Rory wiggled both eyebrows. “There’s an old Bela Lugosi vampire movie on…”
“Vampire movie,” Cash exclaimed, almost dumping poor Tippy as he got to his feet. “Sorry, baby,” he said gently, “but I’m a Bela Lugosi fanatic…”
Tippy’s lips fell open. “You are?” she exclaimed. “Really?”
“They’re her favorites,” Rory interjected.
They exchanged quick glances. “Popcorn?” Cash asked hopefully.
“Microwave,” she agreed and ran to put it on. The day, so stressful, had become magic. Tippy knew some where deep down that she and Cash had a future. She’d never been so certain of anything. She looked at him as he went into the living room with Rory, one arm around the boy’s shoulder. He paused just long enough to look back at her and wink. The walls were coming down, she thought.
TIPPY HAD THOUGHT that her unsought fame as a frying-pan wielder would be a one-day wonder. But the furor didn’t die down, and two days later, a tabloid broke the story of Tippy’s hand-to-frying-pan fight with the third kidnapper, who’d been arrested and carried back to New York City by two federal marshals who were still laughing when they drove away.
But the story was a great deal more intimate than Tippy had expected. A local physician, Dr. Lou Coltrain, had stated for the record that Miss Moore had lost her child through the cruel actions of a nameless assistant director on the film she was currently working on. Col train had asserted that Tippy’s agony at the loss was punctuated. Joel Harper had been called as well to contribute to the story. Harper told the tabloid that Miss Moore was so important to the film that they refused to resume shooting until she was completely well. Further more, Mr. Harper added, he was already having the script altered to reflect her innovative frying-pan defense against a fictional intruder in the movie. Even the wire services picked up the story, because it was in the Jacobsville paper as well as the Houston and San Antonio papers.
There was one last comment, from Jacobsville’s police chief Cash Grier, that he and Miss Moore were to be married within the month.