Cold Case Affair

“Jett—” she said quietly.

He swallowed, tension growing thicker. “Get something warm on, Muirinn,” he said abruptly. “I’m going to call this in. Then I’ll connect your power and wait with you until someone from the police department arrives.”

She blew out a shaky breath, nodded. “Thanks for doing this.”

He held her eyes a moment longer, then jogged down the stairs without a word.

Jett stood in the brick archway, quietly watching Muirinn busying herself in Gus’s rustic, open-plan kitchen. She’d pulled one of her grandfather’s voluminous sweaters over her white nightgown, and she’d caught her rampant copper curls back in a barrette. He felt relieved—the other look was driving him to total distraction … or destruction. Same difference with Muirinn O’Donnell.

Damn if he hadn’t gone red-hot at the sight of her on hands and knees in that cotton nightgown as she’d gathered up Gus’s papers, strewn all over the attic office. There was something about her pregnant body that drove him wild. And made him incredibly sad.

Hurt.

She’d always had such power over him, yet she’d never known the extent of her control. But now, in Gus’s oversized sweater, she looked small, vulnerable. Jett wasn’t so sure this look was any better for his health. It aroused protective instincts in him—things he didn’t want to feel for her. This was such a total shock, seeing her again, without warning. He needed to figure out what this might mean to his family. To his son.

To him.

“Hey,” she said with a soft smile, as she caught him watching. His blood quickened.

He stepped into the kitchen, making sure he remained on the opposite side of the rough wood table.

She poured him tea from a stubby copper kettle, which she set back on the gas stove, still steaming. He avoided eye contact as he took a seat at the table, and accepted the mug from her.

She’d made his tea just the way he liked it, black and sweet. The fact that she even remembered cut way too close to the bone. Why should it matter? Truth was, it did.

Everything about Muirinn mattered.

And right now he was struggling with his emotions, trying to avoid the elephant in the room that was her pregnancy, trying to be the gentleman and not ask, yet desperate to know who the father was, where he was. Why she was here alone.

The fact that she was expecting a baby at all sliced Jett like a knife. He forced out a heavy breath of air. Civility be damned—they were beyond that. There was no way to be polite about what had transpired between them, no way to bridge the divide with small talk. So he chose a direct approach. “You never came to visit Gus,” he said quietly. “You didn’t even come home for the funeral. So why are you here now?”

She studied him with those shrewd cat eyes for a moment. “I came to take over Safe Harbor Publishing, Jett. Gus left me the company in his will, along with this property.”

He literally felt himself blanch. “You’re going to stay?”

Pain flickered over her features. “Maybe.” She inhaled deeply, bracing her hands on the back of a chair. “The will stipulated that I could sell the business, but only after a year. That means running it myself for twelve months, or hiring someone else to do it.”

“So you’re here to hire someone?”

“No. I’m here to run it.”

“For one year?”

“Look, Jett, I’m not going to get in your way, okay? I’m not going to cramp your style.” She hesitated. “I … I saw you down at the ferry dock this morning, with your son—” She wavered again, as if not quite trusting herself to say the next words. “And your wife.”

Perspiration prickled across his lip. He’d made a mistake starting this conversation now. He set the mug down, getting up in the same movement, and he stalked into the hall. “I’ll just go wait outside for Officer Gage.”

“Jett?” she called after him.

He halted, hand on the doorknob.

“What’s his name? Your son?”

A strange emotion tore through him, raw and wild. Part of him didn’t want to give the name up to her, give any part of his boy to her. “Troy,” he said quietly, still facing the door. “Troy Rutledge.”

She was dead silent for a long moment. “Troy was my father’s name.”

“Your father was a good man, Muirinn. I was proud to name my son after him.”

“I … it just surprises me.”

He turned. “Why?”

“Half the town—the union hardliners—hated my dad for crossing that picket line, your own father included. They called my dad a scab, called me terrible names at school, humiliated my mother in the supermarket. They hated my father enough to blow him and eleven others up with a bomb.”

“It was a bad time for everyone, Muirinn.” Jett paused. “But no matter what people said, you know that I always cared for your father. If Troy O’Donnell hadn’t introduced me to model airplanes, to the idea of flying, I might have become a miner, not a pilot. He was the one who told me, when I was ten years old, that I could do something better with my life than go down that mine. He was a friend, Muirinn. I was twelve when he died, and I was also devastated by his murder. It ate my father up, too, regardless of what he might have said about your dad.”

Emotion seeped into her eyes, making her nose pink—making her so damn beautiful. “Thank you, Jett,” she whispered. “I … I needed to hear that.”

“It’s not for you,” he said quietly. “It’s for a man who knew honor, knew his home. Knew how not to deliberately hurt the people who cared for him.”

She stared at him. “Do you really still hate me that much?”

Wind rattled the panes. Rain smacked at the windows. “I hate what you did, Muirinn, to the people who loved you.”

He closed the heavy oak door behind him with a soft thud that seemed to resonate down through her bones.

Muirinn slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, and buried her face in her hands. If she’d known it was going to be quite so rough to see him again, she wouldn’t have come. If Jett only knew what she’d gone through since she’d left Safe Harbor. He didn’t have a clue just how much his ultimatum had cost her back then … how much it had cost them.

She should’ve told the lawyer to just go ahead and hire someone—anyone—to run Safe Harbor Publishing, and to put the word out that the company would be up for grabs within twelve months.

But at the same time, Muirinn felt in her heart that Gus had wanted her to come back. Why else would he have insisted she be given the small compass along with the terms of his will? She’d told Gus that she was pregnant, having a baby alone. He might have been trying to show her a way home, to remind her where her family roots lay.

Muirinn scrubbed her hands over her face quickly as she heard tires crunching up the driveway, telling herself it would be okay; she wasn’t trapped here anymore. She could go back to New York anytime before the twelve months were up if things weren’t working out. She could hire a publisher at any point she chose. She was the one in control here.

Smoothing errant tendrils of hair back from her face, Muirinn adjusted her sweater and went to meet the police.

“Could have been kids,” Officer Ted Gage said as he stared at the papers scattered under the desk, thumbs hooked into his gun belt. “Incidents of vandalism often flare up during the summer holidays.” His gaze tracked round the room. “Kids probably thought Gus’s place was still empty.”

“So you’re not sending crime scene techs or anything?” Muirinn asked from the doorway.

He shrugged. “That’s for the movies. We only dust for prints in major crimes. And nothing was stolen—”

“Not that I know of,” she interrupted.

“That footprint is pretty big for a kid, Gage,” said Jett. “I’d say about a size 12.”

“I can point you to several kids with feet that size,” he said around the gum between his teeth.