The Perfect Match

“Right back at you, Mr. Google,” he said, casting a bleary glance over his shoulder. The girls had christened Vinny with that nickname soon after the man had started babysitting them. Cash still wasn’t exactly sure if they’d just massacred the guy’s last name or if the soubriquet came from the fact that Vinny spent every spare moment on the Internet.

Vinny shoved half-glasses up his nose, abandoning his morning crossword puzzle. “I should look like hell. I’m practically dead. Considering all the Jim Beam I drank and the cigars I smoked I expected to be six feet under thirty years ago. What’s your excuse, junior?”

Cash Lawless took a long swallow of coffee, waiting for the bitter brew to do its stuff. “Haven’t been getting much sleep lately.” Lately? More like the past week and a half. Ever since Rowena Brown had walked out the door.

Vinny eyed him like a mother hen with one chick. “Been having those nightmares again?”

Cash’s jaw tightened. He hated the damn things—flashbacks, the counselor the force had sent him to had told him. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances, the woman had soothed. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Except they made him feel like he was caught in a crossfire with his pistol jammed.

“Been a while since one of those sons of bitches laid into you,” Vinny observed, squinting up at him. “Usually happens when your stress ratchets up. Something going on around here that you haven’t told me about? That ex-wife of yours isn’t causing you trouble?”

The very mention of Lisa usually sent a jolt of bitterness and anger through Cash. And yet, it wasn’t his ex-wife’s coolly elegant image that rippled across the surface of his mind today. It was a gypsy of a woman with sunshine hair and blind faith in her eyes, a woman who’d barreled into Cash’s thoughts the way she’d charged into his house, with no thought at all to her personal safety.

Yes, Rowena Brown was trouble, all right. And she’d changed Cash’s understanding of the word forever. Where had she gotten that fire of conviction, the courage that drove her? That fierce belief that she could make things better if she tried?

I don’t believe in impossible…

Cash had to agree it was true. Anyone with half a brain would have known her trip to Cash’s house could only end badly. If she’d actually knocked on the door instead of charging in, he would have verbally lambasted her so harshly for coming near his children again that her ears would still be ringing.

She had to have known the kind of reception she’d get. And yet the reckless woman had come to Briarwood Lane anyway, that menace of a dog of hers packed in the back of her van as if she actually thought she might have a chance to convince Cash to take Destroyer in.

If that wasn’t evidence Rowena Brown believed in the impossible, then nothing was.

“Hey, there, buddy. I asked you what’s wrong,” Vinny grumbled. “And don’t tell me nothing. I may be old, but I’m not dead yet. I can see something’s eating at you.”

Not a bad description, Cash admitted, though he’d never tell Vinny that. Rowena had been nibbling away at his concentration for days now. He’d remember the heat of her skin beneath his fingertips, the silk of her hair against the backs of his knuckles. The way her pulse had pounded when he’d touched her throat and how she’d gasped when he’d accidentally brushed her breast with his arm. Her gold-tipped lashes had flown wide and in spite of everything—in spite of himself—he’d felt himself hardening beneath the worn cotton of his running shorts.

She’d hardened, too. The tip of her nipple had teased his arm, and she’d looked at him as if he’d burned her. And for a moment, just a moment it was a fire they both wanted to dive into.

He’d almost forgotten how tempting a woman’s skin could be, how tantalizingly different from his own. And for the first time in two years he had ached to sink himself deep into a woman’s wet heat…

Vinny jabbed him with the SpongeBob pencil he was using for his morning crossword, and Cash jumped as if his friend had caught him in the act. Thank God Vinny couldn’t read his mind. “Well? What’s bothering you?”

“It’s a woman.” The confession slipped out before Cash could stop it. Weirdly, just saying it aloud was a relief.

“Thank you, Jesus!” Vinny flung SpongeBob to the table, the big Italian’s face gleaming. “What’d she do? Club you over the head with a baseball bat to get your attention?”

“Actually, she tried to get me in a choke hold. I gave her a black eye.”

Vinny scowled in confusion. “You what?”

“It was an accident,” Cash said, suddenly enjoying his friend’s discomfiture. “But I suppose my reaction was understandable under the circumstances. She was breaking and entering.”

Vinny glanced into his own cup, looking more worried than ever. “My coffee too weak to clear your head this morning, boy? You’re not making any sense.”

“She heard Mac crying through the screen door.” Cash’s amusement vanished in the wake of the memory. “We were working on that new set of exercises her therapist gave us last time.”

“Oh.”

There was no need to say more. Vinny was the only other person besides Cash and Mac’s therapist, Janice Wilson, who knew what torture the sessions could be. It was grim work, strengthening little legs that had been broken, torn and patched back together. Scar tissue clenched the muscle fibers so tight that it was agony to stretch them.

“So what happened then?” Vinny prodded.

“Rowena blindsided me, charging through the door, grabbing me around the neck. A sneak attack on a cop is never a good idea.”

“Not to mention a combat vet. And you’re both.”

There were times Cash would have sold his soul to be in a firefight back in Kuwait instead of on that exercise mat in his own living room. War was hell, but at least he hadn’t been waging it on his own child.

“What the hell was this woman thinking? Breaking into your house that way?”

“Rowena thought I was abusing Mac.”

“Hell, whoever this Rowena is, she was lucky to get off with that black eye! If I’d been here, I’d have wrung her neck for suggesting such a thing. No wonder you’re still seething.”

“That’s the funny thing, Vinny. Once I got the picture, I wasn’t mad. I…liked her.”

“Liked her? This…hey, Rowena-now I remember that name! Isn’t that the same dame you were wanting to ride out of town on a rail a few weeks ago?”

“That’s the one.”

“Vern Hendersen down at the gas station went in her shop—his old lady made him, just to get the scoop after that smash and bash at the tea shop everybody was talking about.”

Just as Cash had figured, the tale of the tea shop had leaked to the public and then some. A story like that was just too damned funny to most cops to keep to themselves.

“Vern says this Rowena person won’t last long around here. In Whitewater, a dog’s a dog. You can get everything you need for one at the Fleet and Farm. Folks around here are too smart to waste their money on those fancy big city gewgaws she’s got in her windows.”

“You’re probably right,” Cash agreed. And yet, now some part of him would be sorry to see her go.

Vinny swore under his breath in frustration. “Hell, when you said you weren’t sleeping because of a woman, I thought maybe some female had stirred you up. Ain’t been using your dick for much besides holding up your underpants for the past two years.”

“For Cripe’s sake, Vinny. I hope you don’t talk like that around my kids!”

“Like what?” Vinny said, looking injured. “Working around here, my mouth’s cleaner than the insides of most people’s washing machines! So this woman—she didn’t flip up your light switch?” The ex-cop looked nosy as an old maid, eager to get some tasty tidbit of gossip.

Cash pretended ignorance. “My what?”

“Never mind.” Vinny heaved a sigh. “If I have to explain, it didn’t happen. No chance you might actually get laid.”

The image that sprang into his mind made a body part far lower than his head throb—Rowena Brown spread out across his bed while he set out to discover exactly what feminine curves lay underneath that loose yellow jacket she’d been wearing. Somehow the fantasy only made stark reality worse.

“Exactly when am I supposed to get laid?” Cash demanded. “In between Dora the Explorer and putting dinner on the table? Or maybe I could squeeze it in between Mac’s therapy and her time in the swimming pool? I could just lock the kids in the bathroom and go at it right here on the kitchen table. Hell, Vinny, even if I did feel like having sex, no woman in her right mind would have me. One look around here and any sane person would run the other way.”

“You can’t be sure about that.” Vinny crossed his arms over his barrel chest and shot Cash an appraising look. “There’s no denying you’re pit bull mean and you’ve got an ugly mug on you, but you never can tell what’ll get a woman’s motor running.”

Cash chuckled, trying not to wince as a pain jabbed behind his left eyeball. He resolutely ignored it. He didn’t have time for a migraine. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom.”