Renegade Father

They worked in silence for a few moments. He was painfully aware of the way she smelled sweetly, innocently, of apples. No matter how hard he tried to block it out it reached him even over the lemony scent of the dish soap.

He scrubbed hard at a dish, annoyed with himself.

“So are you going to tell me what’s got you so jumpy?” he asked to distract himself.

She focused on the plate in her hand. “Just the wind, I guess,” she mumbled. “Sometimes it gets to me.”

Since when? he wanted to ask, but held his tongue, knowing damn well she wouldn’t answer.

The old Annie had always loved wild weather. When they were kids, she never wanted to be cooped up indoors during summer storms. With the same kind of giddy delight other girls her age reserved for the latest heartthrob, she would sit out on the wide porch at the big house while the sky flashed and growled around her.

One time when she was about twelve, she was tagging along after Colt and him while they went looking for strays up near Lone Eagle Peak. Halfway up the mountain, they had been surprised by an afternoon thunder bumper and like any sensible teenagers, he and Colt had rushed to find cover under an overhanging rock formation.

He could still remember turning around to find Annie, her wild red curls already plastered to her head, standing out in the rain. With her arms wide and her face lifted to the sky in supplication, she looked like some kind of mystical creature from a storybook.

He remembered gazing at her, entranced, until lightning scorched an old pine no more than a hundred yards away. Then Joe had finally braved the pelting rain to yank her to safety.

The old Annie had thrived on the power and majesty of mountain storms. Had his brother taken that from her, too?

That ball of fury hissed and seethed to life in his gut again as he thought of how that laughing, crazy, courageous girl had changed. He allowed the anger to writhe around for only a few seconds but before it could slither out, he inhaled a sharp breath and caged it again. Venting his anger only upset her more and left him feeling hollow and achy.

With effort, he turned his thoughts away from the grim ghosts of the past and focused on something more benign. “When I was up on the roof of the hay shed, I thought I saw Colt’s pickup coming down the road.”

She nodded. “He and Maggie dropped by on the way home from a doctor’s appointment.”

“Everything okay with the baby?”

“I think so. The doctor moved up her due date, to mid-April. She looked wonderful.”

He had thought so too the last time he’d seen Colt and Maggie, and had been filled with a sense of loss so profound it had stunned him. He would never share that kind of magic, never watch a woman he loved grow huge with his child, and the realization had hit him in the chest like a hard fist.

He had decided a long time ago that he would never marry, had resigned himself to going it alone for the rest of his life. What choice did he have? He didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to offer a woman, not considering the kind of family he came from.

What woman would want a convicted murderer, especially one who came from a legacy of violence and abuse?

He thought he had accepted the way things had to be. But seeing Colt and Maggie so excited about bringing a new life into the world had made his own life seem hollow in comparison.

Yet another of the many reasons driving him toward making a fresh start away from here.

“So why did they stop in?” he asked abruptly. “Just for coffee?”

She took the last pan out of the rinse water without looking at him. “Colt heard about your new job. He came over all worked up, ready to horsewhip you for deserting me.”

He shouldn’t feel this guilt seeping through him like spring runoff, dammit. He had to learn to let go. How was he going to carve out a new life for himself when he feared he would never be completely free of the old one? “So why didn’t he?”

Before she could figure out how to answer, a dog’s angry barking cut through the low, distant moan of the wind. The pan she was drying slipped from her hand, landing harmlessly in the sink. She paid it no attention as she strained to search the menacing shadows out the window.

“What is it?” Joe asked.

“I…I’m not sure. Dolly’s barking at something.”

“Probably just a couple of deer looking for food.”

She barely heard him as her gaze swept the fence line, the spruce windbreak, the drifts of snow covering her garden. Whoever snapped that picture of her was out there somewhere. She could feel it deep in her bones. He was out there watching her, taunting her….

All evening she had struggled to contain her reaction to seeing that photograph of herself taken by some unknown person watching her through the window. Now, though, it finally broke through her fragile barriers and crashed over her in wave after wave of paralyzing panic.

Someone had been watching her. While she had worked at her paperwork completely unaware, someone had been just a thin sheet of glass away. Watching her.

How long had he stood outside the window?

And why?

As soon as she felt the fear begin to take over, felt the return of that helplessness she hated so much, she stiffened.

Not again. Dammit, not again.

“Come on, Annie. Tell me what’s going on. You’re white as a ghost.”

She wrenched her gaze from the inky, ominous blackness to the man who stood beside her looking ruggedly masculine even with a dishrag in his hand.