Finding Her Dad

“He couldn’t have been very old.”

His look became quizzical. “Worrying about what kind of genetics Sierra carries?”

Flustered, Lucy began, “No, I—"

He grinned, the effect both wicked and astonishingly sensual considering how unrevealing and almost grim his face usually was. “It’s all right. Dad’s parents lived to be eighty-nine and ninety-one respectively. My father spent most of his life angry. I figure he worked himself up to the stroke.” He transferred the smile to Sierra, although it was softer for her benefit. “You wouldn’t have liked him. My mother is a nice lady, though.”

She smiled shyly back. “How old are my cousins?”

“Younger than you. Reese is ten and Patrick twelve. You’ll be the only girl.”

Still shyly, she asked, “You don’t have any other kids?”

His mouth quirked, and Lucy knew what he was thinking. He almost certainly did have other kids, ones he’d never know. She wondered if he felt regret now.

“I’ve never been married,” he said. “I was engaged years ago, but she was killed. It hasn’t happened since, despite my mother’s nagging.”

Killed. That made Lucy wonder, but she didn’t ask. They didn’t have that kind of relationship.

He made I-need-to-be-leaving noises, and Lucy stayed where she was so that Sierra could walk him out. They talked for a few more minutes on the porch, his quiet bass in counterpoint to Sierra’s soprano bursts. She heard the sound of his car starting, the slam of the screen door and then Sierra burst into the house.

“Lucy! Isn’t he amazing?” She went sur la pointe and spun. She was astonishingly graceful, although she’d given up dance lessons at age twelve when she grew so tall. “He wants to be my dad! I can’t believe it. Oh, Lucy.” Eyes drenched with tears, she flung herself onto the couch and into Lucy’s arms, where she wept quietly and happily against her shoulder.

Lucy said the right things, and she wanted to believe in Captain Jonathan Brenner, that he was as decent and kind as he seemed, but she knew that people rarely were. She loved Sierra too much to lower her guard.

What scared her most was knowing how little she could do to protect her foster daughter’s too-vulnerable heart.

EDIE COOK WAS NOT PLEASED. She paced the confines of his campaign office after staff and volunteers had gone home, her indignation making her steps choppy.

“We couldn’t have discussed this before you walked out on a limb?”

“No.” He half sat on a desk, his legs stretched out and his arms crossed. “This is personal. I had to do what was right. To hell with politics.”

She glowered at him. Edie was small and stocky, her graying hair cut severely short. She had the energy of a hyperactive kindergartner. She could be running campaigns of far more significance than his, but she had a daughter with multiple sclerosis, and she needed to stay close. He knew he was lucky to have her. Even so, he wasn’t going to let her shape him with her nudges and prods the way she’d like to. He wasn’t clay that could be molded into a pretty face. He was a cop. A man on a crusade begun to avenge Cassia.

Jon was honest about his own motivations. Along the way, it had all become more complex, but he’d gone into law enforcement out of anger. He had fallen in love with Cassia Winterbourne the minute he met her during his first year of grad school. They had been engaged and living together six months later when one night she closed the coffee shop where she worked part-time as barista, started for the bus stop and never made it. She was raped and murdered by a man released from prison the day before.

Rage and grief had consumed Jon, to the point where he’d scared himself. He’d almost dropped out of college. He’d taken incompletes on several courses and had to finish the work later, after the rage froze into a solid chunk of ice that lodged in his chest where his heart had once beaten. He had vowed never to let himself feel so intensely again. He’d never come close to falling in love since.

And when his mother came to Cassia’s funeral but his father, who’d never liked her, didn’t, Jon had severed the last bitter ties with him. He never spoke to his father again, and went to his funeral for his mother’s sake, not his.

Edie knew about the estrangement, in case it became an issue in the campaign. She knew about Cassia, too. She’d wanted him to use the tragedy as the lodestar of his campaign. He’d refused. His heart beat again, and the ice had receded, but the rage remained. He could tap into it too easily. That didn’t mean he would use the horror of her death or his feelings for her as something cheap to sway voters.

“I’d rather keep Sierra out of the public eye,” he said, his head turning as Edie stomped by.

She snorted. “Fat chance.”

“If we don’t make any announcement, how will Rinnert find out about her?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if he already knows. Hell, he’s probably got a P.I. trailing you.”

His jaw firmed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t kid yourself. He’s behind in the polls. But really, he doesn’t have to go to those lengths. Are you telling me no one saw you walk into the sperm bank? Wait in the lobby? Your race is a hot one. Your face is on the local news often enough—you’re all too recognizable.”

“You want my face to be recognizable,” he said sardonically.

“That was before you did something stupid like visit a sperm bank.”

“Most people would assume I had questions relating to an investigation.”

She stalked by again. He felt like a spectator at a tennis match, his head swiveling.

“You don’t do investigations. You supervise other people who do them.”

That was true, but he doubted that the common voter realized he was pretty well trapped behind a desk these days. When he pointed that out, Edie snorted again.

She eventually wound down, conceded they might get lucky and no, it probably wasn’t the end of the world if Sierra’s existence became public knowledge.

“Will she be living with you?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. Not right away. We need to get to know each other.”

“You found your daughter, and have left her living in a foster home? That may not play well.”

“You know how seldom I’m actually home these days.” He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he said that. But he was. The exhaustion wasn’t physical, but it was real, and went bone deep. “I can’t be an adequate single parent right now, even if that was the right thing to do for other reasons.”

Edie, grudgingly, supposed he was right. She made noises about Sierra going to live with his mother or sister. He still hadn’t told either that he had a daughter. Even if they’d been eager and willing to have Sierra with them, he wouldn’t insult Lucy that way. Remembering their clasped hands, he knew it wouldn’t be right anyway to separate them.

He and Edie made the decision to keep quiet about Sierra for now, but Jon warned her that he’d answer questions honestly if they came to be asked.

“This woman she’s living with? Is she an asset or a detriment?”

In a flash that startled him with its vividness, he saw Lucy Malone sitting on that couch watching him with the spark of suspicion in her chocolate-brown eyes. He saw the lush curves of her petite body, her pretty face, the thick, glossy, wavy black hair that to his disappointment she’d worn in a fat braid last night. And he hated himself for, however briefly, actually giving some consideration to Edie’s question.

“Asset,” he said finally, shortly.

Edie gave him a startled glance, opened her mouth as if to say more, then visibly thought better of it. “All right,” she said. “Keep me informed.”

She left, but he lingered in the deserted campaign headquarters. Usually he focused on his goal—becoming sheriff. Finally being in a position to make the decisions that counted. But he was unsettled tonight, and he found himself looking around at the half-dozen desks where volunteers would sit making phone calls on his behalf, at the stacks of campaign posters and the placards stacked in corners waiting for supporters to jam them into their lawns or beside well-trafficked roads. Jonathan Brenner for Sheriff. Hard Decisions Made with Integrity.

That was him, so defined by integrity that he could weigh a woman’s worth only as it related to him. How would it look that he was spending time with her?

A phone rang at one of the desks, the sound shrill in the otherwise quiet storefront.

Jon muttered a profanity, scrubbed a hand over his face and let himself out, locking the door behind him. He wasn’t often ashamed of himself, but there were moments, and this was one.

CHAPTER FOUR