Freefall

Maura’s sympathy didn’t seem to require a response. He glanced in the rearview mirror again and noticed his father playing with the power windows, rolling them up and down, up and down.

Maura competently distracted him with a pat on the hand and a small hand mirror she pulled from her bag, and William laughed and pulled a face at himself, his eyes scrunched up and his jaw sagging.

“Have you thought anymore about what you’ll do now?” Maura asked.

Tom could feel tension grip his shoulders again with bony claws. Just thinking about all the choices he would have to make in the coming days made his chest ache.

“No,” he answered tersely.

“I don’t mean to push you. I would just like to know if I’ll be needing to look for another position.”

He frowned at the nurse. “Another position? Why on earth would you look for a new position?”

Maura cast a sidelong glance at his father, who was oblivious to their conversation as usual, then she met Thomas’s gaze in the mirror. “You’re going to have a big burden on your shoulders in the coming months, caring for the children and all and taking over your family’s business concerns,” she answered quietly. “I thought you might want to reconsider Mr. Canfield’s living arrangements.”

He didn’t even want to think about this. Not today. “I’m not putting him in a nursing home, Maura. He’ll stay at Seal Point as long as he can. That’s his home, the place where he’s most comfortable. You won’t need to look for another position.”

“It won’t be easy for you, Lieutenant Canfield.”

That grim fact had been crystal clear the minute his team had responded to that rescue call and he had recognized Peter’s half-submerged Mercedes and Shelly’s lifeless body still inside.

“I’ll just have to try to do what’s best for everyone.” The trick was going to be figuring out what the hell that was.

The rest of the drive passed in silence and a few moments later they reached the curved iron gates of Seal Point, the home of his childhood and the place Peter and Shelly had lived with their children. With a press of the remote control, the gates slid soundlessly open.

Inside the house, he helped his father change out of his suit, unknotting his tie and unbuttoning his shirt as if William were a child.

“You’re a good boy, Peter,” his father said at one point, patting him awkwardly on the head as if he were ten years old again hitting a winning home run. Tom didn’t bother to correct him. What was the use? Despite the funeral service, his father probably wouldn’t even realize Peter—his golden son, the favorite—was gone.

Sometimes the injustice of it devastated him. His father, the brash and arrogant financier, was gone. In his place was this helpless, feeble man who couldn’t remember how to dress himself but who had rare, heartbreaking moments of lucidity.

While Maura settled William with a bowl of soup and a sandwich from the self-contained kitchen attached to his rooms, Tom changed from his uniform into the Dockers and polo shirt he’d brought along, then went in search of the children.

He found them all in the main kitchen Shelly had modernized a few years ago for entertaining, with its marble countertops, six-burner stove and subzero refrigerator. They had changed clothes, too, the children into shorts and Sophie into a T-shirt that was a bit too small and a pair of worn jeans with fraying hems.

With her feet bare and all that glorious hair tied back into a ponytail, she should have looked young and innocent. Instead, she made him think of rainy afternoons and tangled sheets and slow, languid kisses.

How could part of him still be foolish enough to want her? Disgusted at his weakness, he clamped down on the unwilling desire and walked into the kitchen.

The children greeted him with none of their usual exuberance. Zoe and Zach sat at the breakfast bar watching cartoons on the kitchen television and Ali was pouring milk from the refrigerator into four glasses. Usually they dropped whatever they were doing and jumped all over him like a trio of howler monkeys but now all three just gave him subdued smiles that just about shattered his heart into tiny pieces.

Sophie’s smile was just as subdued but several degrees cooler. It drooped at the corners, with exhaustion, he figured, since she had been traveling for days to make it in time for the funeral.

“Would you care for a sandwich?” she asked. “Mrs. Cope left cold cuts in the refrigerator but the kids were more in a PB&J mood. Nothing better than peanut butter and jelly when you’ve had a rough day like today.”

He shook his head, absurdly touched that she was fixing comfort food for the children. “Maybe I’ll fix one later.”

“It’s hard to work up much of an appetite, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said grimly.

“How’s William?”

He thought about giving his usual glib answer. He’s fine. Just fine. Thanks for asking. But something in Sophie’s green-eyed gaze—a bright glimmer of genuine concern—compelled him to honesty. “He doesn’t really know what’s going on, although Maura and I have both tried to explain about Peter and Shelly. In this case I suppose Alzheimer’s can be a blessing.”

She was quiet for a moment, then sent a look toward the children to see if they were paying attention to their conversation. “Shelly wrote me about his condition,” she finally said. “I hadn’t realized he had regressed so quickly. I’m sorry, Thomas.”

He didn’t know how to deal with the compassion in her eyes so he focused on something else, the circles under those eyes and the hollows under her high cheekbones. “Why don’t you sleep? I’m here now.”

She shook her head. “I doubt if I could. Maybe in a few more hours.”

“You’re going to fall over by then. Go on and rest.”

Before she could voice that argument he could see her gearing up for, the telephone rang in the kitchen. Thomas reached for it and heard her mother on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Sharon.” In light of the loss they had all suffered, Thomas managed to conceal his dislike for the woman and handed the phone to Sophie.

If possible, Sophie’s voice dropped several more degrees as she greeted her mother. Tom took over the sandwich-making while eavesdropping without shame.

Her expressive features had been one of the first things to captivate him all those years ago. She seemed a little more composed, a little more controlled ten years later, but he could still clearly see the tension rippling through her, the frustration simmering below the surface.

“No, I understand,” Sophie said quietly. “Earl has a load to deliver and you’ve decided to cut your stay short and go with him. I didn’t expect you to stick around long. No, that wasn’t a dig, Sharon. Just an observation. Sure. Yes, I’ll tell them. Goodbye.”

Her mouth tightened for an instant as she hung up the phone but then her features smoothed out and she turned to the children. “Grandma Sharon is leaving this afternoon, kids. I’m sorry. But she says she’ll be back through in a few months.”

Ali and Zach barely looked up from the cartoon but Zoe gazed at her aunt, her eyes anxious. “Are you going, too, Aunt Sophie?”

Sophie must have caught that thin thread of fear in the little girl’s voice. She paused in the process of opening a bag of chips, then set it down and swept Zoe into her arms. “Oh, no, honey. No! I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

Chapter 2

Thomas stared at her. How the hell could she look a child in the eye like that and utter such a bald-faced lie? Panacea or not, the children deserved the truth.

He waited just a few beats, until Zoe turned back to the TV then grabbed her arm. “Sophie, can you help me with something in the pantry?”

Those green eyes widened at the request and went even bigger when he yanked her into the six-foot by six-foot butler’s pantry then slammed the door shut behind them. In such close quarters, he was instantly overwhelmed by the scent of her, exotic and sensual, like a rainy afternoon in the jungle, so he went on the offensive.

“Where the hell do you get off saying something like that?”

She frowned and jerked her arm away from him. “What did I say?”

“That you’re not leaving.”

“I’m not leaving.”

His laughter was harsh. “That will be a first.”

“The children need me, Tom, and I intend to be here for them.”