Faith, Hope and Family

“Okay.” Isabelle stood obligingly. “You want to come watch TV with me?”

“No, thanks. I have some things to do. Just, uh, don’t watch anything inappropriate.”

When Isabelle gave her a puzzled look, Deborah added, “Watch kid shows, okay? Cartoons or ‘Sesame Street’ or something like that.”

As if she knew what kid shows were on TV these days, she thought as Isabelle left the room. None of her friends had children. Isabelle was the only child Deborah actually knew personally and theirs could hardly be described as a close relationship.

She stood to set her coffee cup in the dishwasher and throw away the peel from Isabelle’s orange. She hoped her mother would be home soon.

Fate had not been very kind lately about granting Deborah’s wishes. Lenore was detained by a crisis in her club that kept her busy for hours, leaving Deborah responsible for Isabelle for the entire afternoon.

Faced with trying to entertain the child herself for several hours or to let someone else do the entertaining, Deborah opted for the latter. “Why don’t we eat a quick sandwich for lunch and then catch the Saturday matinee at the movie theater?” she suggested.

She wouldn’t have to try to carry on a conversation with a four-year-old in a movie theater. Even if the film was completely inane, it seemed preferable to an entire afternoon of being studied by Isabelle’s curious blue eyes. A couple of hours in a quiet, dark theater seemed very appealing to her just then; she could use the time to consider her options for her future.

It had been a very long time since she had attended a children’s movie matinee.

A handful of popcorn hit her in the side of the head before the film even started. What seemed to be a full battalion of ear-splittingly noisy preadolescents dashed up and down the aisles, squealing and spilling sodas and snacks. Someone’s cell phone played the “William Tell Overture” in lieu of a ring, and a couple of babies wailed. Deborah shook her head in disbelief, wondering who’d bring either to a movie theater.

Seemingly accustomed to the chaos, Isabelle sat quietly in her seat beside Deborah, sipping orange soda and delicately munching her popcorn. Okay, Deborah thought, so the child was as well-behaved as Lenore boasted. That didn’t mean Deborah wanted to spend any more afternoons baby-sitting.

The audience settled down—though only slightly—when the lights dimmed and the feature began. Just as Deborah resigned herself to watching animated animals singing and dancing for the next couple of hours, a few stragglers entered the theater, taking the empty seats in front of Deborah and Isabelle. The woman directly in front of Deborah was of average size, but the one who planted herself in front of Isabelle was very large and wore her hair in a high-teased bouffant that would have been stylish several decades earlier. Isabelle might as well have been staring at a blank wall.

“I can’t see,” she complained to Deborah, straining upward in her seat.

The rest of the theater was full; apparently, this was the premier of a highly anticipated family feature. “Switch seats with me,” Deborah suggested in a stage whisper. “Maybe you can see better here.”

The swap was accomplished easily enough, but it didn’t make a difference. “I still can’t see,” Isabelle informed her, and this time her tone edged close to a whine. “Can I sit on your lap? Please? Nate lets me when I can’t see.”

The large woman with the big hair threw them a stern look over her shoulder, accompanied by a hiss that let them know she wanted them to be quiet. Deborah bit her lip to hold in a remark that would have accomplished nothing but ill will.

“Stand up,” she instructed Isabelle quietly. “We’ll sit in that chair, since the view is less obstructed there.”

She didn’t bother to whisper the latter words. She was forced to find her small satisfactions where she could, she told herself as she returned to her former seat and helped Isabelle climb onto her knees.

“That’s better,” Isabelle whispered. “Thank you.”

“Glad to oblige,” Deborah muttered. And prepared herself for an uncomfortable couple of hours rather than the peaceful interlude she had envisioned at the start of this outing.

Dylan figured that everyone deserved a small vice or two. His was ice cream. His favorite flavor was butter pecan, but he occasionally indulged a craving for rocky road or strawberry. Most folks who knew him well were aware that he could often be found at the popular ice-cream parlor next to the mall Cineplex when he was on a break from duty.

The mall was predictably crowded on this nice Saturday afternoon in late May. Dylan was lucky to claim a small table in one corner of the ice-cream parlor just as a group of giggly teenagers abandoned it.

He had lived in this area for most of his life and had a highly visible job, so he knew quite a few of the other patrons. He greeted them with nods and waves before diving into his treat—a double scoop of butter pecan.

As he spooned a second bite of ice cream into his mouth, he thought of the only lawbreaker he had apprehended the night before. Deborah McCloud. He hadn’t been prepared for that late-night encounter or for the flood of memories of other, more intimate midnight meetings between them.

Those memories had been haunting him ever since. It had been seven years, damn it. They’d been little more than kids when they broke up; he’d been barely twenty-three and Deborah had just turned twenty. You’d think he’d have put it behind him by now. God knew he had tried.

Yet all it took was one brief encounter with her to have him wanting her again.

He might have come a long way in the past seven years in a lot of respects, but when it came to Deborah McCloud, he was still an idiot.

A girlish shriek somewhere behind him drew his attention away from his ice cream. He turned just in time to catch the little blond rocket who launched herself into his arms.

“Hi, Officer Smith,” she said, hugging him fiercely. “Where have you been?”

He chuckled as he returned the hug, then set the little girl on her feet in front of him. “Princess Isabelle. Aren’t you looking pretty today in your royal purple?”

She patted her hair and preened a bit, showing off the purple knit T-shirt dress she wore with white socks and sneakers. “It’s new,” she confided.

“Very nice. But where’s your tiara?”

She giggled. “I left it at home today.”

“Ah. Traveling incognito this afternoon?”

“In…cog…?” She frowned in confusion. She was very bright for four, but that was a new word for her.

“Incognito,” he repeated clearly. “Sort of means that you aren’t calling attention to yourself.”

“Oh.” She smiled again. “I’m in-cob-neat-o.”

“Close enough.” He’d assumed she was there with Lenore McCloud, since he knew her guardians were out of town. Looking away from the child’s beaming face, he was caught by surprise to find Deborah scowling at him over her little half sister’s golden curls. “Oh. Hello.”

Deborah looked a bit frazzled, he decided, trying to study her objectively. Her dark-blond shoulder-length hair was tousled, and there was a popcorn kernel stuck in a strand at the back. What might have been the beginnings of a tension headache had carved little V-shaped lines between her intriguingly winged dark brows.

It looked as though some dark liquid had splattered one leg of the jeans she wore with a thin, dark, scoop-necked sweater. When she moved to one side of Isabelle, he thought she dragged one foot a little, as though her leg had gone to sleep and was just tingling painfully back to life.

She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

Isabelle gazed upward. “Deborah, do you know Officer Smith?”

“Yes. I wasn’t aware that you knew him so well.”

“He’s one of my best grown-up friends,” Isabelle replied happily. “Adrienne likes him, too, and so does Caitlin. And Gideon and Nate are being nice to him now because I told them to.”

“I see.”

It was obvious to Dylan that Deborah didn’t at all see how he had suddenly become so friendly with her brothers, with whom he had a long history of animosity. Actually, friendly was a bit too warm a word to describe his new truce with her brothers, but he liked both her sisters-in-law. As a matter of fact, he and Gideon’s literary-agent bride, Adrienne, had recently signed a business contract together, something he had no intention of mentioning just then.

As far as Dylan knew, Deborah hadn’t been told that Dylan and her newest sister-in-law were now professional associates. Deborah didn’t even know he had any aspirations other than being a small-town cop, working for his uncle, the police chief. He’d just as soon leave it that way for now.

“Deborah took me to the movie,” Isabelle said, clinging to Dylan’s knee. “A lady with big hair sat in front of me and I couldn’t see, so I had to sit in Deborah’s lap the whole time, and there was a baby who kept crying, and the boy beside us jumped up to cheer when the good guys won and he spilled his soda on Deborah’s leg. It was fun.”

Dylan knew better than to laugh, but it was a close call as he eyed Deborah’s expression. He sincerely doubted that she would have described the experience as fun. “It was very nice of your sister to bring you to the theater,” he said to Isabelle.

“Yes. And she’s going to buy ice-cream cones because I told her Nate always buys ice cream when we come to the movies.”