“I thought you said he isn’t dangerous.”
“He isn’t right now, but he’s agitated because Dudley’s crying and you pulled him a little roughly. Jack has established a bond with Dudley.”
“Believe me, Dudley can test a saint when he puts himself to it. Goodbye.”
“Can we pick some raspberries, Mommie?”
“No, Dudley. We are going home. I have a lot of work to do.”
Later she put Dudley on a stool in her kitchen and looked him in the eye. “You did a very bad and very dangerous thing when you sneaked out and wandered into those woods. You heard what Mr. Lightner said about the wild animals. They can hurt you very badly. If you ever do that again, I am going to lock you in your room. Do you understand?”
The boy reached up and pinched her chin. “You ate some ginger snaps, Mommie. There’s a little piece right there.”
She stared at him for a second. He giggled, having learned how to charm his way out of trouble and, even though she knew he was trying to snow her, she laughed and hugged him. She couldn’t help it. He was the delight of her life. The ringing of the telephone saved her from further disciplining him.
“Hello.” She never identified herself when answering the telephone.
“Allison? This is Layla. How’s that rewrite coming?”
“Kicking and screaming. It’s like pulling hens’ teeth and they don’t have any teeth. There isn’t a whole lot you can say about white icing, Layla. But with so many people allergic to chocolate, cooks are going to have to learn how to make creamy white icing.”
“That’s why you’re doing this cookbook. The sales force is on my back, Allison,” Layla continued.
“It’s not due until next week.”
“I know, but you said you could have it in early. Oh, well. How’s Dudley?”
“Holding up my work, as usual. Otherwise, I’m happy to say he’s fine.”
“Good. I’m looking forward to receiving your precious manuscript in my hands next Wednesday.”
“Don’t worry. It will be there.” She hung up and hurried back to the kitchen where Dudley remained on the stool.
“Mommie, why can’t I play with Jack? If I can’t play with Jack, can I have a dog?”
“I don’t know anything about taking care of dogs. Now if you’ll let me work for a couple of hours, I promise to find you a guitar teacher. You did really well in your math and reading this morning. Why don’t you work on that map?”
“I’m going to start on a new map.” He jumped down and went to his room.
Maybe moving to such an isolated place had been a bad decision. Dudley needed playmates and he didn’t have access to libraries, museums or other activities. But what could she do? If Lawrence kidnapped Dudley and whisked him out of the country, as he’d threatened to do, she’d never see her child again. She made a pot of coffee and forced herself to focus on her work. Looking at the computer screen, her mind’s eye conjured up Brock Lightner’s sleepy, light brown eyes and the dimple in his left cheek that had seduced her into believing he was harmless.
Maybe the man wasn’t all that interesting and the problem wasn’t him but her loneliness. Maybe she should pack up and head west. She rubbed her hands as if in despair and closed her eyes. Snap out of it, Allison. You have to finish this book!
Brock decided to go back home and get to work. He couldn’t understand Allison Sawyer’s skittishness around him, although he could understand why an intelligent woman would not allow her child to go off with a stranger. As soon as he managed to find out where she’d lived before, he’d have all the information he needed to know. He hadn’t spent ten years as a successful private investigator for no reason. She was on the lam, either from the law or someone, and nothing would make him believe otherwise.
He remembered that he hadn’t talked with his mother for a couple of days and phoned her. “It’s great to be back up here,” he told her. “First chance I get, I’m going over to the big Indian Lake and try to catch some striped bass. At this small lake over here, people fish for pike and sunfish.”
“Don’t try talking around me, Brock. I want to know if you’ve definitely given up being a private investigator. I worry every minute. It’s so dangerous.”
“Good grief! Well, you can put that behind you. I’m writing an account of my experiences and that’s a good way to get it out of my system.”
“I don’t suppose there’re any nice girls up there.”
The chuckle that began deep in his throat exploded into a laugh. “Mom, the village probably doesn’t have more than two hundred and fifty people, if that many. The post office and the bank are three miles up the road. One supermarket nearby serves everyone in a ten-mile radius. How’s Dad?”
“Reginald’s playing golf. One day last week, he shot a seventy-two and there’s no living with him.”
It sounded like a complaint, but he heard the pride in her voice. “Good for him. I’ll be in touch.”
Now, if I can get one page written, I can say I’ve started. But do I write it as fiction or nonfiction? He’d thought about that question for weeks and hadn’t come to a conclusion. He called his brother, Justin.
“You want to sound clever or you want to make some money?” Justin said—always the practical one—when Brock put the question to him.
“I want to make some money and I want to get investigating out of my system.”
“Then you can figure out the answer,” Justin said. “I know what I’d do.”
“Write a fictionalized first-person account. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He opened his laptop and started typing, attacking the story as if it were an enemy. After two hours, he printed out eight double-spaced pages, got a cup of coffee, went out on his deck and sat down to read what he’d written and decide whether he liked it or not. Jack settled beside his chair. He’d read for only a few minutes when Jack jumped up and growled. He’d never seen a wild boar up there, but there was no mistaking the tusks protruding from its mouth. He didn’t like shooting animals, but if he saw it again, he’d have to eat a lot of roast pig. He didn’t want Jack near the animal because it posed a danger even for bears. He walked out to the gate, threw a few sticks and drove the boar away.
The following morning, shortly after seven, he put Jack on a leash and jogged down a trail toward the Adirondack Lake, exercising himself and his dog. He saw Dudley at about the same time as Jack barked and stopped.
“Dudley, where is your mother?”
“She’s asleep, I think.”
He hunkered beside the boy. “How many times have you wandered out of the house without letting your mother know about it?”
Dudley looked him straight in the face, then he patted Jack on the back. “Lots of times.”
“Why do you disobey your mother?”
Dudley looked down at his feet and then gazed up at him with the saddest eyes that he’d seen in a child’s face. “The house is so small and I like it outside. I already did my lessons this morning.”
“Where is your father, Dudley?”
“He doesn’t live with us.”
“Then you have to learn to obey your mother. Come on.” He took the boy’s hand and started for Allison Sawyer’s house. To his amazement, Dudley didn’t resist going home. Indeed he seemed happy to hold Brock’s hand. He knocked on Allison’s front door.
“She’s asleep, Mr. Lightner, and I think she’s going to send me to my room.”
After a few minutes, the door opened and Allison stared up at him with a questioning expression on her face. For an answer, he looked down at Dudley.
“Oh, my Lord. Don’t tell me he was out there again,” she said in a voice laced with fear.
“You didn’t repair that lock, did you?”
She seemed defeated. “I have a deadline to meet and when he promised not to sneak out again, I decided to wait to change the locks.”
Better to shock her now than to cry with her later. He didn’t spare her. “Yesterday afternoon, I chased a wild boar from my gate. Those animals will attack a bear. If Dudley encountered one, I doubt you’d see him alive again.”
Her almost-plaintive expression opened a hole inside of him and he grasped her shoulder. “You don’t have to replace the locks. I’ll do it for you. Now. Today. You can’t watch him every minute. If it’s the money…”
She shook her head. “No, it isn’t that and I thank you for bringing him home. I’d die if anything happened to my child.”
“I know you would. I’ll be glad to run up to the store and get the locks and a chain for that fence, but I suspect you’d feel safer knowing you were the only one with the keys. I take it your windows lock. Right?”
“Yes, they do. Thank you,” she said. “I’ll drive to the store and get the locks, and I should have them around noon. Thanks. I…I appreciate your help, Mr. Lightner.”
She had a way of looking at him that made him feel as if he could twist iron with his bare hands. His breath shortened and he forced himself to look away from her. “It seems as if Jack is taken with Dudley. I suppose even dogs need playmates. I’ll see you later.”
“Can I go stay with Jack and Mr. Lightner, Mommie?”
“No, darling. We shouldn’t impose on our neighbor.” She wanted to move, but Brock wouldn’t let her. His gaze was like fingers stroking and caressing her body, warm and seductively.
He took a small notepad from his pocket, made a step toward her and said, “Call me when you get home. This is my cell-phone number.” He wrote the number on the pad, tore it off and handed it to her. A smile played around his mouth, making his full, bottom lip even more inviting. “The sooner we do this, the better.”
He said it softly, but there was no mistaking his meaning. She knew he was talking about the locks, but his words sent jolts of excitement through her, upping the sexual tension between them as well.
When Dudley began to pout, Brock patted the boy’s shoulder. “Good boys always obey their mothers. See you soon.”
Dudley reached toward Allison and took her hand. “Come on, Mommie. Let’s go get the locks now so he can fix the door.” She stared at him. In all his five years, that was the first time he’d given in without creating a scene. She realized it was also the first time he had received a gentle reprimand from a man. When Allison had left his father, Dudley had only known abuse. Lawrence had responded to Dudley’s stubbornness by slapping him, which was particularly abusive punishment for a toddler less than three.
Maybe she was doing the wrong thing. But she knew she’d been fooling herself if she thought that Dudley wouldn’t sneak out again and she couldn’t risk that. She strapped him in the backseat of her car, got in and drove up Route 28. At the general store she bought locks and a length of heavy chain to secure the wire fence.
“Buy some hot dogs, Mommie, and let’s have a picnic.”
She didn’t have time for a picnic, but Dudley needed a diversion, so she went next door to the supermarket and bought what she needed for an outdoor picnic. She’d told Brock that she’d be back home in an hour, but when he neither called nor came, her temper began to rise.
“He gave you his cell-phone number, Mommie,” Dudley said when she grumbled about it.
She hadn’t intended to use that number, but what choice did she have now if she didn’t want to risk Dudley sneaking out the next morning before she got up. She dialed his number.
“Mr. Lightner, this is Allison Sawyer,” she said when he answered. “I’m back home with the locks and the chain.”
“Good. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
When his voice seemed to trail off, she realized that he didn’t know how to terminate the conversation, at least not to his satisfaction. This is terrible, she thought. I do not like where we seem to be headed and I am not going there.
“Mommie, I’m hungry. Can we have the picnic now?”
“Mr. Lightner is coming to change the locks, so we’ll have to wait.”
He agreed without protest and she thought nothing of it. However, when Brock arrived with Jack, Dudley ran to embrace the big German shepherd and said to the dog, “We’re going to have a picnic, Jack. Do you like hot dogs?” Jack wagged his tail.
Stunned by the child’s deviousness, she threw up her hands and looked at Brock. “He’s five years old. How am I going to manage when he’s fifteen?”
“It’ll probably be a lot easier then,” Brock said. She gave him the locks and chain and walked toward the kitchen, intent upon leaving Brock alone with the job.
“This’ll go much faster and smoother if you hold this lock in place while I get this screw started,” he said. “These Segal dead-bolt locks are almost tamper-proof. I’m glad you got one for the front door as well. Here, hold this for me.”
She stood inches from him, watching his biceps flex as he forced the screws into the door’s hard wood. She looked at his fingers, long, lean and tapered, capable of giving a woman pleasure after pleasure, and her attention strayed from the task at hand as her gaze traveled over his long, lean frame. She sucked in her breath and his head whipped around. With one hand on the screwdriver and the other on the screw, he stood motionless, gazing into her eyes. She swallowed hard and tried without success to shift her gaze, for he held her spellbound.
“Are you going to invite me to your picnic?” he asked in words so soft that she barely heard him. “Are you?”
She managed to break contact with his eyes, but her gaze caught the chest hairs exposed by the open placket of his T-shirt and traveled to his bare arms, so muscular and strong.
“Well?” he said.
“Uh. Yes, of course,” she replied, shaking herself out of the trance. “As soon as…Can you fix the back gate today, too?”
“I’ll do that and anything else you need done,” he said in a tone that told her to take it any way she wanted to.
Chapter 2
Brock tested the locks. Satisfied that to enter the house, an intruder either had to use a key or take the door off its hinges, he headed out to the seven-foot-high fence that protected the back deck. If Allison Sawyer was living in a state of denial, he definitely was not. It took him only a couple of minutes to loop the chain through the welded-wire fence and hook it with a heavy-duty padlock. He brushed something from his shorts and went back into the house without knocking.
Allison looked up at him. “Mind if I clean my hands somewhere?” he asked, barely able to control his urge to laugh. “Oh, yeah, and if we’re going to have a picnic, please fix a couple of extra hot dogs. I’m starving,” he said over his shoulder, aware that he’d unsettled her.
“Thanks for replacing the locks and fixing that fence,” she said, when he came out of the bathroom. “I feel a lot safer.”
“My pleasure. If I were you, I wouldn’t leave food scraps in that trash can back there. It’s a good idea to put it on the road around nine in the morning. The garbage collector passes here at ten. You’ll attract fewer wild animals, although that’s hardly avoidable in the cold months.”
“How long have you been coming up here?” she asked Brock.
“This will be my sixth summer, but it’s the first time I planned to spend the winter here as well.”
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Why?”
Brock explained that he was trying to finish a book, but didn’t tell Allison what it was about.
“If you need peace and quiet while you write, this is definitely the place for it,” she said.
He hated small talk and he could see that she was comfortable with it. “Want me to help you prepare the food? I’m handy in the kitchen.”
“It’s about ready. I suspect you’re handy with a lot of things,” she said and winced, apparently realizing the embarrassing double entendre.
He rewarded her with a grin and a wicked wink. “Like I said. I’m real handy around the house.” He would stop meddling with her if she’d come down off her high horse, but he had a feeling she didn’t plan to do that, so he said, “Are you going to make me call you Mrs. Sawyer forever? I’d be a lot more comfortable eating your hot dogs if you’d call me Brock.” He looked around. “Where’s Dudley?”
“Out back on the deck with Jack. I’d better check. I don’t want Dudley near that fire.”
“If he went too close to it, Jack would bark. My dog knows the danger of fire.” And he could feel a different kind of fire circling around them, hemming them behind an emotional barrier from which they might never escape.
“Are you married?” he blurted out, even though he knew it wasn’t the time for that question.
“Not any longer.” She looked up at him, open and vulnerable. “Are you?”
“I’ve never been married.”
“But you must be—”
He interrupted her. “I’m thirty-four, and we’d better get to that picnic before things change here.”
“Yeah.” She handed him a plastic tablecloth and napkins. “There’s a table on the deck,” she said, and headed for the kitchen. At least she hadn’t denied the heat between them.
As he set the table, he marveled at Dudley’s affection for Jack and the gentleness with which the dog played with the child. “Don’t ever get rough with him, Dudley. Treat him the way you want him to treat you.”
“Oh, I won’t hurt him, Mr. Lightner. He’s my friend.”
Allison put strips of carrots, sliced tomatoes, warm hot dog rolls, potato salad and sliced hard-boiled eggs on the table, and removed the hot dogs and toasted marshmallows from the grill and put them on the table. She looked at him. “I don’t have any beer. Would you like some white wine?”
“Thanks, but I don’t drink anything alcoholic midday. Lemonade or something like that will do the trick.” He didn’t say that he rarely drank anything, other than wine at dinner; for the time being, she’d learned enough about him. She brought iced tea for them and ginger ale for Dudley.
“What can I give Jack?” Dudley asked them.
He didn’t allow anyone to feed his dog, because he didn’t want Jack to obey anyone but him. “He’s not hungry. I fed him a short while before we left home.” He beckoned to Jack. “Sit here.” Jack settled on the floor beside Brock and closed his eyes.
“We have raspberries for dessert,” she said and served them with a dollop of whipped cream. “I bought them yesterday morning, so they’re still fresh.”
As he ate the berries, he looked at her, hoping for a hint as to the direction she wanted their relationship to take, but she looked everywhere except at him. He wished she wouldn’t be so nervous, that she’d feel comfortable with him. He figured that because she’d been married, at least long enough to produce a child, she should know how to hold her own with a man. He’d get to the bottom of that, but he sensed that she was not a worldly woman and he’d better tread with care. He took his plate to the kitchen, rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher. As he turned to leave the kitchen, he saw that Dudley had followed him.
“Can I clean my plate, too, Mr. Lightner?”
“Absolutely. Little boys should do everything they can to help their mother, and that includes obeying her.”
“Yes, sir.” He stood on tiptoe to rinse the plate and then put it in the dishwasher. “Will you come to see us again, Mr. Lightner?”
“If it pleases your mother, I will.” At that moment, he saw from his peripheral vision that she stood just behind him and made a snap decision to go home. He didn’t crowd women, especially if they weren’t on equal footing with him. He was in her house and he wanted her to know that he knew he didn’t belong there.
“Thanks for your hospitality, Allison. If you need me for anything at all, you have my cell-phone number.” To Dudley, he said, “Be a good boy and obey your mother. Don’t go out of this house unless she’s with you. Got that?”
“Yes, sir. I got that.” The boy hugged Jack and then looked up at him. He hunkered in front of the child and put his arms around him. “Thanks for inviting me to your picnic. I enjoyed it. Bye for now.” He stood, looked down at Allison, winked at her and left.
Brock left Allison in a dilemma. If he’d moved to Indian Lake at the behest of her ex-husband, would he make it impossible for him to get into her house without her permission, and would he have to remain in that tiny hamlet for eight or ten months in order to accomplish his mission? It didn’t seem likely, but she had learned that Lawrence Sawyer would go to great lengths to get what he wanted. Brock Lightner had a worldly, almost jaded, demeanor that fascinated and excited her. Young, strong, muscular and sensitive, too. What was it like to have that kind of man make love to you?
She’d married a man twenty-two years her senior. In her youthful innocence, their long and romantic walks in Washington, D.C’s Rock Creek Park had seemed idyllic. And his delight in reading to her beside her parents’ fireplace on cold evenings had seemed to her like domestic bliss. It had not occurred to her that his willingness to postpone sexual intimacy until after their marriage wasn’t necessarily a good thing; her married girlfriends didn’t discuss their sexual experiences with her. But once married, she learned that Lawrence considered sex his right no matter how she felt about it, and that in their bed, he took selfishness to the extreme. She bought some books on the subject and confirmed her belief that she wasn’t getting her due. He didn’t want children, and after she had Dudley, he showed no interest in her, other than to parade her at his social and business affairs. He had no patience with their son, and when Dudley should have been reprimanded or corrected, Lawrence abused him with physical punishment. Although she had long since stopped loving Lawrence and realized after little more than a year that their marriage could not last, it was for his treatment of Dudley that she divorced him.
“Mommie, can Mr. Lightner come to see us again?” Dudley asked her, interrupting her reverie of the past. “I like Mr. Lightner.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Right now, I want you to take a nap. After you wake up, you must read for an hour and then we’ll go to the post office.”
“All right, Mommie. Can you get me a book about dogs and puppies?”
She told him she would and watched in awe as he pulled off his shoes and clothes and started to his room. “Can I have a kiss?” she asked him. He turned back, kissed her quickly and said, “I have to hurry and finish my nap, so I can read.”
Was this her Dudley? Normally, he had a fit when she told him to take a nap. “Is Providence playing a joke on me?” she asked aloud. “Brock told him to obey me and look at him.” She threw up her hands and went back to her computer. Revising that book had become a chore, one that she wanted to finish as quickly as possible. The telephone rang. She saw her editor’s phone number on the caller ID screen and lifted the receiver.
“Hi, Layla.”
“Hi. You’re not going to like what I have to say, but it will make your book a top seller.”
Allison blew out a long breath and pounded her right fist on her desk. “What is it?”
“Best Bet Publishers just released a dessert cookbook almost identical to yours. We won’t be able to sell yours unless you include pictures of the finished products.”
“What? You’re suggesting that I make all the desserts again just to photograph them? I’m not even using the same oven and that means—”
“I know. I know. And it isn’t in the contract, but if you want the book to sell, this is what you have to do. Go along with us on this and we’ll advertise it and support it to the hilt.”
What choice did she have? “All right, but you’ll have to push back the publication date.”
“We’ll give you three more months.”
She hung up and would have screamed in frustration if screaming would have helped. She put the manuscript aside. Who was going to eat the desserts she had to make? Previously she sent them to the church for their Sunday morning coffee hour, but she hadn’t been to church in Indian Lake. She made a list of her immediate needs and when Dudley awoke, she told him that their afternoon plans had changed and took him to the supermarket.
“This is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” the deep masculine voice said. She turned around knowing she’d see Brock. “Say, why so glum?” he asked before she could greet him.
