Run to Me

“Your…your granddad mentioned that. Would you like me to start supper?”

“Thanks, but I can do that.” He considered offering an apology, but he knew he’d never be able to pull it off. He wasn’t sorry. She’d tasted like every sweet thing he’d been missing in life, and his blood was still pumping in all the wrong directions. If she hadn’t pulled back— Shaking off that thought, he descended the steps. “Good night, Terri.”

“Good night.”

Mac heard the door close behind him as he climbed inside the truck, fired the engine and flicked on the windshield wipers. Backing away from the house, he drove onto the dirt and grass lane that joined Amos’s driveway to his.

Two nights ago, he’d vowed to keep his distance. Now, forty-eight hours later, he was on her like a rutting Neanderthal with bad teeth and a knobby club. Man need jump. Get in cave.

He bumped the truck through the ruts, grimly renewing his promise to stay away from her. Even if she wasn’t an employee, from the way she’d balked when his hands slid to her hips, she wasn’t the one-night-stand type. She was also an unknown commodity and liked the road too much for him to consider her anything but temporary. So logically, since there would be no sex with her without a commitment—and he wasn’t interested in one—keeping his distance should be easy.

Mac pulled up to his granddad’s house and stared bleakly at the low lamps burning in the windows while his pulse continued to beat to the tune of his need. Yep. Easy. Easy as walking on water.

Erin’s hand shook as she turned off the light in the foyer, then watched the cherry-red taillights in Mac’s truck wink out in front of Amos’s house. She heard the low thud of the truck’s door shutting.

Why hadn’t she stopped him when she saw that kiss coming? She knew it was a mistake. Instead, she’d stilled for it, breathlessly awaited it, almost willed his warm, talented mouth onto hers. She swallowed the lump in her throat. But hadn’t she deserved just one tiny moment of tenderness and touching? Just one brief moment of feeling like a woman again, not just Christie’s mom or someone’s employee or an habitual newcomer to a new town who was always in fear?

But instead of being tender, that very short kiss had been electric. Pulses still throbbed, from her head to her toes.

Pulling herself away, Erin walked to Mac’s room where Christie lay sleeping on his giant bed, the sheet kicked off, her smooth little legs jutting out from her ruffled baby doll pajamas. Her thumb was nowhere near her mouth, and Erin breathed a thankful prayer. It had taken time and talking and tenderness, but Christie had finally given up that needed comfort a few months ago.

Erin slid the sheet over her daughter’s legs and stroked her sweet face, then quietly left the room to put the kettle on for tea.

She could still feel a tingle on her lips, still feel her nerve endings vibrate beneath her skin. But Mac was forbidden fruit. An involvement of any kind was impossible—with him or with anyone else. Despite her promise to care for Amos for the next six to eight weeks, she knew life could change in the blink of an eye. She pulled a thick mug from a cupboard. What happened in Maine could happen again. It was pointless to start something she couldn’t afford to finish.

Bells pealed from the soaring spire of the tiny, nondenominational church in High Hawk on Sunday morning as Erin and Christie filed out, exchanging vague pleasantries with members of the congregation, then shaking hands and complimenting the aging minister on his service. Overhead, the sun shone brightly, and as they walked to the van with those church bells still clanging a welcome, Erin felt almost normal.

Suddenly she grinned down at Christie. “How would you like to have breakfast at a restaurant this morning, sweetheart?”

Christie’s eyes sparkled. “Wif Aunt Millie?”

“No,” she answered, wishing it were so. “Aunt Millie’s restaurant is far away.” In the five months they’d spent in Maine, Millie had become a wonderful friend and Christie’s aunt-of-the-heart. Erin missed her, too, sometimes terribly, but there was nothing she could do about that. She continued speaking to Christie. “How would you like to eat at the little place with the funny stools that spin? Remember? You had French fries there when we first came here.” Bending low, she added in a conspiratorial whisper, “We could have pancakes!”

That was all the temptation Christie needed.

But twenty minutes later as Christie dragged her silver-dollar pancakes through a river of syrup and Erin sipped from her coffee cup, a niggling fear crept in again and she found herself sliding veiled looks over the room, checking for men who glanced away or hid behind newspapers when she caught them looking. Maine was over two weeks behind them, and though she knew Charles would never stop searching for them, there was no good reason to think they’d been followed here. She’d lost the private investigator’s dark-blue sedan just outside of Boston, and she hadn’t used her credit card or done anything else that would create a paper trail. Just the same, the short hairs at the nape of her neck began to prickle, and suddenly Erin had the eerie feeling that someone was watching them.

Then she saw him. A man in a back booth, youngish, wearing a light navy windbreaker and tinted glasses. He sent her a slow smile and rose from his seat, carried his check to the front of the room.

Erin’s pulse skyrocketed. Pushing aside her half-eaten English muffin, she took Christie’s fork and fed her to hurry her along.

Then a waitress called him by name, asked how his sister’s wedding went, and Erin’s heart settled down. She had to relax. She was jumping at shadows. The man was simply one of the locals, probably curious at seeing a new face. Still, she needed to be careful. She hadn’t been careful enough in Maine.

The phone rang. Mac pushed away from the table where he’d been tallying the week’s receipts, then went to answer it before it woke Amos. Last time he’d checked, his granddad was snoring in his recliner, enjoying a post-supper nap, sections of the Sunday paper strewn in a half moat around his chair. Mac had gathered the papers and set them aside, irked that Amos hadn’t seen them as a danger to his slipping and falling.