Father and Child Reunion Part 2

“So what do you think?” he asked. “Should we ask your mom if we can hang it?”

As gifts went, Molly was more accustomed to girl-stuff. Spiders and twigs were definitely in the boy category. Still, she must have been impressed either by Rio’s story, or with Rio himself. After another moment of consideration, she gave him a nod, remembered to say “Thank you,” and before Rio knew what was coming, she threw her arms around his neck.

He clearly wasn’t prepared for the impulsive response. The instant Molly’s wiry little body pressed to his chest, he went stock-still. Seconds later, looking as if he feared the child might break, he swallowed hard, closed his eyes—and hugged her back.

The breath Eve drew caught in her throat. Rio had never held his daughter before, and the moment left him totally exposed. Fear, wonder, apprehension and joy were all wound up in an expression that bordered on pain. The feelings were familiar. She had experienced them herself the very first time Molly had been placed in her arms. She still felt them sometimes just watching Molly sleep. But Rio was revealing far more of himself in this unguarded moment than he could possibly realize. No man who did not truly care for children could possibly be so moved by nothing more than an exuberant hug.

She realized something else, too. She was very probably going to lose a piece of her daughter’s heart.

Molly’s narrow little body had all but disappeared in his strong arms. But as quickly as she had flung herself at him, she just as quickly pulled back.

Seeing her mom, she turned her grin to her and held up the saucer-size hoop. Its gray feather swayed from a beaded leather thong.

“See what he brought me, Mommy.” She frowned at the man rising beside her. “What is it called? Oh, yeah!” Remembering, she turned back before he could answer. “It’s a dream catcher. It’s going to catch the monster under the bed and make it disappear.”

“So I heard,” Eve returned, her soft smile masking the quick surge of annoyance she felt with the bearer of the gift. “Do you want to play out here for a while longer, or come inside?”

“Stay out here.”

Eve’s glance slid to Rio.

Taking the hint, his air of control firmly in place, he stepped inside with her. Following her far enough into the foyer to escape inquisitive little ears, he matched her frown.

“What’s the matter?”

“You shouldn’t tell her things like that. If she has a bad dream now, she’s not going to believe anything else you say.”

“I didn’t promise she wouldn’t have bad dreams,” he said, defending himself. “You heard what I said. I said maybe it would work. And it will, if she believes it.”

“But it’s deceptive.”

“Deceptive? You’ve never told her about Santa Claus? Or the tooth fairy?” He eyed her evenly, his expression turning shrewd. “Does it bother you that I brought her something?”

What bothered her was that he might be able to calm a fear of Molly’s that Eve hadn’t been able to do anything about herself. Not sure if she was feeling jealous or inadequate, suspecting more of the former, she made herself back down.

“Maybe. A little,” she amended, wishing he couldn’t read her so easily.

“Would you prefer that I checked with you before I brought her anything?”

There was enough challenge in the question to make it clear that he was testing his ground where Molly was concerned. Or maybe he was testing her. The more she was around him, the more apparent it became that they couldn’t go longer than a few minutes without stepping on each other’s toes. Before, they’d never argued about anything.

“Only if it will ruin a meal, or needs to be fed.” They definitely had to set a few more rules. But now wasn’t the time. Not with Hal and Molly around. “As for what you just brought,” she had to add, because she truly was touched by what he’d done, “it was a very thoughtful gift.”

Her last words were underscored by the faint squeak of the back screen door. Hal must have heard their voices, she thought, and headed out for a cigarette. Considering that he didn’t want to be there to begin with, it was a sure bet he wasn’t up to meeting anyone dropping by.

“My brother’s here,” she said, since Rio had heard the door, too. “Did you come just to see Molly?”

A faint frown pinched Rio’s forehead as he glanced over her shoulder. Seeming a little distracted when he looked back at her, he pushed his hands into his pockets. “I just met a friend not too far from here, so I thought I’d drop the dream catcher off for her.”

“A friend?”

“Stone Richardson. You’ve met him.”

The skirmish of moments ago was all but forgotten as the image of a big, square-jawed cop formed in her mind. Detective Richardson was on the team investigating her mother’s death. “Several times,” she confirmed, thinking there was precious little Rio didn’t seem to know about her. “He’s the one who told me about the woman from the ski lodge. The one who had the visions about Mom.”

The strange visions plaguing Jessica Hanson in the days following Olivia’s death were what had turned the pain of losing her mother into an ongoing nightmare. Until the coroner had requested the autopsy based on what the soft-spoken and shy young woman had “seen,” everyone accepted that Olivia had died of natural causes.

“Has she offered any new information?” she asked, speaking of Jessica.

Rio pulled a breath, hating how susceptible he was to her when they talked about the investigation. Every time she asked a question, her eyes would fill with hope. And every time he saw that hope, it never failed to get to him.

“There’s no new information. Stone accepts that Jessica can see things that have happened in the past. But it seems she’s had a couple of premonitions about things that haven’t happened yet, and that’s got him a little nervous. He knows I believe in psychics.”

“You do?”

His glance never wavered. “Why not? There’s all kinds of energy out there.” The songs and chants he’d learned as a child taught that people and nature were all inexorably joined in the sacred circle of life. At its most basic level, Rio figured a cursory study of the food chain bore that claim out easily enough. The elders also taught that nature was energy. The movement of the wind. The beat of a bird wing. The firing of a neuron in a human brain. “Who’s to say it can’t be transmitted telepathically? Or that the energy patterns forming to make an event happen can’t be picked up by a receptive source? But Jessica hasn’t had any new visions concerning your mom,” he had to tell her, hating how the hope dimmed in her eyes. “I already asked.”

Hope might have been dimmed, but it hadn’t been defeated. “But she thinks a woman attacked Mom, right? When Detective Richardson explained what had led them to do the autopsy, what it was Jessica was seeing, I mean, he alluded to the attacker being female. Did anyone ever have her look at mug shots of women? Maybe if she did, that would trigger something.”

Caution made Rio hesitate. It wasn’t unusual in an investigation for the police to withhold information from the public. Most often, the press didn’t know what that information was. In this case, it did. Rio did, anyway. But he was no more interested in jeopardizing the case than he was in breaking his word to his friend about what he’d overheard. That was why the paper had never reported all of what Jessica Hanson claimed to have seen in her vision of the attack. That she’d had no sense of a whole person. What she remembered was an impression of the attacker being female, an image of that person’s hands, a hypodermic syringe—and the overpowering scent of gardenias.

The public didn’t have that particular information. But Rio knew that Hal Stuart, with his connections to the department, certainly would. He’d apparently refrained from sharing any of it with his sister, though. And Rio wasn’t in a position to say anything himself.

Unwilling to let her think some avenue wasn’t being explored, the best he could do was remind her of what had been reported. “Stone would agree with you. So would I. But Jessica never had an impression of a face.” Once more, Rio heard a door closing in the back of the house. “What she visualized could have just as easily been a man in a wig.”

The sound of footsteps drew his attention from the disappointment adding to the shadows in Eve’s eyes. The slim figure of a man was moving past the doorway leading to the kitchen.

Hal Stuart seemed to catch himself mid-stride. In the time it took for the reporter’s commanding presence to register, Hal’s eyebrows had slammed together.

“What are you doing here?”

At her brother’s surprisingly inhospitable demand, Eve whirled around, her hand flattening over the pearl at her throat.

“Hal? What’s the matter with you? This is Rio. Redtree,” she added, though she was sure her brother, being a public official, must have met the reporter on any number of occasions.

Hal kept coming, the sound of his polished Italian loafers going from impatient to muffled when he moved from hardwood to Aubusson carpet. He’d loosened his red silk “power” tie from the collar of his tailored white shirt. With his hands planted at the waist of his perfectly pleated slacks, and his meticulously cut, dark blond hair silvering prematurely at his temples, he looked like a poster boy for a high-fashion executive ad. Or he would have, had he been smiling.

The fact that he wasn’t puzzled Eve far more than she let on. Her brother usually treated everyone as if they were his best buddy.

“I know who he is,” Hal muttered.

Rio was no slouch when it came to being personable himself. Eve had seen his quiet charm at work on Millicent the day he’d shown up on her porch, his gentle patience with Molly only minutes ago. What Eve witnessed now was his absolute self-possession. With her brother staring at him as if he’d like to see him trussed and on a spit, Rio simply inclined his head in acknowledgment and, keeping his hands at his side since the other man had his hands planted on his hips, regarded him evenly.

“How are things going, Hal?”

“You never answered my question.”

Eve’s glance bounced from the dark and compelling man at her side to her fair-haired brother. At a loss to explain his behavior, she reached for his arm to draw his attention.