A Vow to Love

The role of undercover cop-turned-babysitter didn’t appeal to him, but a debt was a debt. He was beginning to see why Brandon had thought the brat needed someone to watch out for her. Apparently she thought she was invincible. She’d scrapped with him as if she considered it an even match. She didn’t need a babysitter. She needed an armed guard.

Not that Sam entirely trusted Brandon’s motives. The old man had a habit of meddling in the lives of everyone he cared about. He’d even been making noises about it being about time that Sam found himself a woman to smooth out his remaining rough edges. What twenty-eight-year-old Sam had told him was succinct and hopefully threatening enough to snuff out any matchmaking ideas the old man might have had.

But this thing with Penny had surfaced a little too conveniently for his liking. He would do it, though, because he’d learned one important lesson from the Hallorans: families always stuck together—and the Hallorans had made him one of their own from the instant Jason Halloran had married his sister. Today was the first time in a long while that he’d regretted the family ties.

Unfortunately, at the moment he had an even bigger regret. He hadn’t noticed the precise instance when Penny’s supreme self-confidence had slipped away. He’d never meant to scare her to death. In fact, he had actually thought she’d recognized him. That smile of hers had certainly been friendly enough. Not until she’d attacked him had he gotten the message that she’d panicked, thinking that a stranger was about to harm her.

Dammit all, as a cop who dealt with crime victims all the time he should have had better sense. He could have calmed her with a word or two, just by the mention of his name, in fact. Although, given the way their last encounter so many years ago had turned out, she might have attacked him, anyway. Instead, though, he’d reacted as he would have in the old days, instinctively fighting back rather than being ruled by his head. His lack of sensitivity grated. Apparently he was doomed to getting it wrong whenever Penny was involved.

Just as he figured that the day had gotten just about as bad as it could get, he heard the sound of sirens and realized it was about to get worse. The guys at the station weren’t going to let him live this down anytime soon.

Muttering another oath under his breath as they pounded up the steps, he strode over to let them in. He wished belatedly that he’d taken the time to clear up this misunderstanding before their arrival. Unfortunately he’d been afraid to open his mouth, fearful of what would come out.

He had to admit, though, that he took a sort of grim satisfaction in the prospect of watching Penny Hayden stumble all over herself to explain why she’d called the cops on her own relative, albeit one only distantly related by marriage,

The first cop up the stairs, taking them two at a time, gun drawn, was Ryan O’Casey. He was followed by his burly, African-American partner, Jefferson Kennedy Washington, who was called that only by someone who had a death wish. He was J.K. or Jake to his colleagues on the force.

Both men froze at the sight of Sam. “You just get here?” Ryan asked. “What’s happening inside?”

“What’s happening inside is that this cretin manhandled me, broke into my apartment and probably intended to kill me,” an indignant voice said quite calmly from a point slightly above Sam’s elbow.

Sam had forgotten exactly how tiny Penny Hayden was, or maybe it was his own belated spurt of growth and years of weight training that made her suddenly seem small. The way she’d taken him on in that hallway told him size wasn’t something she worried about. He swore again and tried to ignore the amusement that immediately crowded the worry straight off both men’s faces.

“You picking on the little people again, Sam?” Jake demanded, looking Penny up and down approvingly. “You know Ryan hates it when you do that.”

“Very funny,” Sam retorted, scowling at the whole lot of them.

Penny glanced from one policeman to the other and apparently didn’t like what she saw. “Aren’t you going to arrest him? Put some handcuffs on him?”

“I doubt that’ll be necessary, miss,” Ryan said politely. He glanced pointedly at the gathering of neighbors in the hall. Every single door had been flung open. “Maybe we should take this inside, see if we can’t straighten it out.”

“Good idea,” Jake said.

“I do not want this man in my apartment,” Penny informed them, trying to block the way. “I want him locked up in a cell so that he can’t harm other innocent citizens.”

“Oh, give it a rest,” Sam snapped as he lifted her aside, then marched over to the unopened bottle of whiskey he’d spotted on the kitchen counter and poured himself a stiff drink. He held up the bottle. “Anybody else want one?”

“We’re on duty,” Jake reminded him. His gaze narrowed. “Thought you were, too.”

“Nope. I’m taking the rest of the day off. I consider it a hazardous-duty benefit.”

Penny was regarding them all suspiciously. “What’s going on here?”

“Well, ma’am, that’s what we’d like you to tell us,” Ryan said.

He said it in his most courteous tone, Sam noted. He and Jake made a good team. Ryan soothed, while Jake tended to make suspects quake in their boots without ever opening his mouth. He just loomed over them.

“Sam here is a police officer,” Ryan explained softly. “I’m guessing he must have been here on a stakeout. Is that right, Sam?”

“Something like that,” he agreed.

Penny’s mouth gaped. “A policeman? Sam?” Something that might have been comprehension flickered in her eyes. An interesting shade of red crept up her neck and into her cheeks.

“Sam Roberts?” she said weakly, sinking onto the sofa.

He lifted the glass in her direction. “Nice to see you again.”

“Oh, hell,” she murmured.

He took considerable satisfaction in seeing her day disintegrate right before his eyes. He figured that made them just about even. Granddad Brandon, on the other hand, still had to pay up big-time.

Chapter 2

Penny surveyed the man standing in her minuscule kitchen from head to toe. Now that he was in the light and fear wasn’t clouding her vision, she could see it was Sam Roberts all right. Taller, broader through the shoulders and sexier, if that was possible.

Now she knew why her pulse had skipped at the sound of his voice. She’d heard it often enough in her dreams. That’s what came of adolescent fantasies. On rare occasions, they stretched clear into reality to zap common sense.

One thing for sure, his outrageous behavior hadn’t changed a bit. He was living up to everything Penny remembered about him from their brief but memorable encounter at the christening of his niece, Elizabeth Lacey Halloran, firstborn in the fourth generation of Hallorans. For an entire weekend he had blatantly regarded Penny as a pesky adolescent, hardly worthy of his attention.

Back then she had chafed at being so summarily dismissed, especially by the first true love of her entire life. The one kiss they shared still burned in her memory. The whole thing had been humiliating and ridiculous. Forever after, she had told anyone who asked that she couldn’t stand the smart-mouthed jerk. She’d finally started to believe it herself in the past couple of years. There were times when she couldn’t even remember what he looked like.

Well, that much was obviously true, she thought, thinking of the terrible mistake she’d made in that hallway.

Of course, she had also told herself that Sam Roberts’s being in Boston had nothing to do with her decision to come to Harvard after years of self-imposed exile from the East. Judging from the way her heart was thudding at the moment, she’d been lying through her teeth about that, too. Apparently some things never changed.

Today, despite his obvious and acute embarrassment in front of his colleagues, he’d managed to maintain that same insolent, arrogant attitude. His entire demeanor suggested that she was totally at fault for the mix-up. Even now he was lounging against the kitchen counter, a drink in hand, while she stumbled all over herself trying to explain how she’d confused one of Boston’s finest cops with a common criminal.

Penny drew in a deep breath and tried to reclaim some sense of dignity. “It was dark. Besides, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, over nine years in fact. He was dressed in a suit and tie at the time and looked considerably more respectable than he does at the moment,” she said.

Now she allowed her gaze to linger on his disreputable attire to emphasize the point. There was the very last time she’d seen him, of course, when he’d been dressed more casually, but he hadn’t looked as muscular back then. It was amazing what a little weight training could do to an already sexy body. She blinked and looked away. It wouldn’t do to spend too much time thinking about that.

“On top of that,” she said finally, “he never called me by name, never introduced himself. What the hell was I supposed to think when this jerk tosses me over his shoulder and hauls me into my apartment? It’s not a technique used by any welcoming committee I’ve ever heard of.”

Jake and Ryan listened sympathetically. All the while their eyes sparkled with merriment. They were clutching their sides, probably to keep from laughing out loud. No doubt it was Sam’s sour expression alone that kept them from howling.

“Look, I’m not the one who ought to be on trial here. Cop or not, he broke in,” she accused irritably.

“Do you want to file charges?” Jake inquired.

Judging from the expression of expectancy on his face, he really wanted her to do it just for the fun of it. Penny could just imagine how Sam, much less the rest of the family, would react. Still, she had to admit to being tempted. She could get even for a lot just by saying yes.

“I suppose not,” Penny finally said with some reluctance.

“Thanks, brat,” Sam said with that increasingly familiar edge of sarcasm. “Don’t do me any favors.”

“Actually, I believe I owe you one,” she said with syrupy sweetness.

He started to reply, but bit off whatever he’d been about to say.