As it turned out, a few members of the family were missing, but from what Renee could see, enough law-enforcement professionals came through the door in the next few minutes to man an entire criminal justice system.
Aunt Louisa was in the kitchen finalizing the meal and Sandy was setting the table when John’s brother Dave arrived. The resemblance between John and his brother was striking. They were both tall and ruggedly handsome, with the same dark, watchful eyes. But the intensity that John emanated with every breath was nowhere to be found in Dave. He had a methodical coolness about him, a laid-back demeanor that said life was simply no big deal. Of course, Renee had to admit that the baby girl he was carrying, the diaper bag slung over his shoulder, and his T-shirt that read Bad Cop! No Donut! contributed to that image. But he was still a cop. She couldn’t forget that, no matter how friendly he seemed.
“It’s nice to meet you, Alice,” Dave said after John introduced her. Then he turned to the baby. “And this is Ashley.”
At the sound of her name, the little girl turned in his arms and gave him a huge, dimpled smile. She was about a year and a half old, with a riot of dark, unruly hair and the biggest brown eyes Renee had ever seen.
“Hi, there, Ashley,” Renee said, tickling her arm at the same time. The baby giggled. Dave grinned at Ashley, then gave her a big, smacking kiss on the cheek, which made her giggle even more.
From the light in Dave’s eyes when he looked at his daughter, she was going to grow up being the center of his existence. As she watched them, Renee felt something stir deep inside her that she thought she’d buried a long time ago—the unbearable ache of loneliness and worthlessness that had shrouded her own childhood. She’d grown up with the feeling that not a solitary soul in the world truly cared whether she lived or died, including her own mother. It had been a long time since she’d dwelled on that, because the road that led her from insufferable teenager to mature, responsible woman was one she couldn’t have traveled if she’d allowed the accident of her birth to continue to control her life. Still, as she looked at Dave and Ashley right now, for just a moment the random unfairness of it made the pain feel as sharp as if it had all happened yesterday.
“Come on, Ashley,” Dave said, smiling at the baby. “Let’s go see what Aunt Louisa’s got cooking.”
They disappeared into the kitchen at the same time more people came through the front door, this time Brenda and Eddie.
Eddie was a blond, bookish man who looked as if he’d be right at home in the musty back stacks of a nineteenth-century library, poring over English literature texts. The criminologist. Typecasting at its best. But how good was he at his job? Could those sharp, intense, lie-detector-like eyes of his see right through her? For a disquieting moment, she expected him to fling the casserole dish he held to the floor, point an accusing finger at her, and declare her a fugitive from justice. Instead, he merely smiled and introduced his wife, Brenda.
Central casting had hit the nail on the head again.
Brenda, sharpshooter extraordinaire, was a short, compact woman of about thirty with dominance oozing out of every pore. Her black hair was cut styleless short, her unsmiling lips thin and bland, and when she slid her dark sunglasses off her face with a stealthy sweep of her hand, her narrow brown eyes pierced Renee like a pair of bayonets. She looked as if she’d be more at home shoveling in K rations on a marine drill somewhere in the Middle East than eating Aunt Louisa’s pot roast. Fortunately, it didn’t look as if she was armed, and she seemed no warier of Renee’s presence than her husband had been.
Then Eddie introduced their daughter, Melanie, who held Brenda’s hand and blinked shyly up at Renee. She was a girl of about five with sea-green eyes and dainty blonde hair, who seemed as fragile as dandelion fuzz. Renee glanced at Brenda, then back to the child. She’d never seen such a clear-cut case of a stork screwing up a delivery in her entire life.
After introductions all around, Brenda put a hand on her hip, sizing up Renee. “So you’re John’s girlfriend, huh?”
“Uh…yeah.”
She turned to John. “You’re getting closer. This one actually admits it.”
John gave her a deadpan stare. “There’s beer in the kitchen, Brenda. No bottle opener, though. Just gnaw through the cap with your teeth.”
Brenda’s mouth quirked in an almost-smile. “Like that’d be a challenge?”
Brenda strode into the kitchen, taking the angel child with her, and Eddie followed close behind. Renee turned to gauge John’s reaction to Brenda’s smart-mouthed retort to his sarcastic remark, but he’d already turned his gaze out his front door again, where Grandma was toddling up the sidewalk clutching a pie plate. John stepped out onto the porch, took the pie from her, then offered his other hand to help her up the steps.
Rosy-cheeked and bespectacled, Grandma wore a dainty rose-print dress and radiated the sweet-faced look of a television grandmother from the 1950s. Renee felt instant relief. She could probably spend her time listening to stories about growing up in the 1950s and how they just didn’t make presidents like Dwight Eisenhower anymore, and in doing so she could avoid talking to the rest of the family.
Then Grandma saw Renee and stopped short, that sweet-faced expression falling into a wary frown.
“I don’t know you.”
“No, Grandma, you don’t,” John said. “This is Alice.”
“Alice? I had a cat once named Alice. Got a skin disease and all her hair fell out.”
“That’s terrible!” Renee said.
“Nah. Kept her from gagging up hairballs.”
Grandma took the pie from John, then toddled through the living room and into the kitchen. Well. So much for hiding behind a sweet old lady and her reminiscences.
“I think that’s our lineup for today,” John whispered to Renee. “Grandpa and Alex are on a fishing trip. We lucked out.” In other words, he was relieved that round one was over and they were both still standing.
Under John’s watchful eye, Renee ducked into the utility room and finally managed to zip up her jeans, cussing John the entire time. Now she knew what it was like to wear a girdle. A girdle so tight it numbed her crotch. When she sat down, she’d have to have faith in Levi Strauss that the whole back seam wouldn’t explode.
The family had gathered in the kitchen, presided over by Aunt Louisa, a woman as tall and upright as the Washington Monument. She wore slacks and a high-necked blouse with a cameo at the collar, her salt-and-pepper hair wound in a tight perm that clung to her head for dear life. She gave firm orders shrouded in sweetness to everyone present, instructing them to mix this or heat up that. Everyone, that is, except Renee, whom she told to sit at the breakfast room table and look pretty because she was a guest. But next time, Aunt Louisa said, she’d have to pull her weight like the rest of the family.
Renee quickly discovered that being in the midst of John’s family was like sitting on the tarmac at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport—an incredible amount of activity, and a noise level that approached the supersonic range. It was hard to think of them as cops and all that other stuff. They just seemed like people. Nice people. But every time she’d start to relax a little as she listened to their conversation, John would shoot her one of his furtive hard-core cop looks and she’d remember the real reason she was there.
A few minutes later they went into the dining room to eat. John pulled out her chair for her in a most courteous manner, though courtesy had little to do with it. Renee knew he was merely directing her to sit right next to him, where he could keep an eye on her.
“So, Alice,” Aunt Louisa said, passing the mashed potatoes. “Tell us what you do for a living.”
She’d already told Sandy the truth, or at least what the truth had been before she’d gotten accused of armed robbery, so she had to go with that. “I’m an assistant restaurant manager.”
“Oh! How nice! Which restaurant?”
“Renaissance.”
Everyone stared at her blankly.
“It’s down in the Rosewood Village area.”
“Oooh!” Sandy said. “That little Italian place! I hear that’s a really nice restaurant. Expensive, too. I saw four little dollar signs beside its review in the paper.”
“Hey, John,” Brenda said. “You lucked out. You can take Alice someplace nice and get an employee discount at the same time. It’s almost like having a coupon.”
“Gee, I hadn’t thought of that,” John said. “Would you like to come along? No, wait—it’s not your kind of place. They don’t let you shoot your own dinner.”
Brenda turned to Sandy. “And you said it was a high-class establishment.”
“I hear they recycle the food at restaurants,” Grandma mumbled. “If you don’t eat it, they take it back into the kitchen and make stew out of it.”
“Mother!” Aunt Louisa said. “Of course they don’t do things like that! Do they, Alice?”
Well, at a place she’d once worked, she’d seen a waiter drop a steak in the kitchen, then scoop it off the floor, wipe it on his pants, and return it to the plate without missing a beat, but she didn’t think that was what Grandma wanted to hear.
“No,” Renee said. “Of course not.”
“And if you piss off the waiters,” Grandma said, “they spit in your food.”
“Mother! Please! We’re eating.”
Grandma shrugged indifferently, then poked around at her mashed potatoes as if she expected to see rat droppings.
“So tell us how you two met,” Aunt Louisa said.
Renee looked at John. He cleared his throat. “We met at a diner. She came up to me and…introduced herself.”
“I like that,” Brenda said, whacking her knife through a piece of pot roast. “A woman with balls.”
Aunt Louisa patted Renee’s hand. “She means that as a compliment, dear.”
“Well, he’s lucky Alice approached him,” Sandy said, “because she’d have probably grown old and gray and died before he’d have bothered to approach her.”
Everyone at the table nodded in assent, as if this were a generally known fact, as if John weren’t even present. And John was clearly trying to ignore all of it.
Aunt Louisa turned to Brenda. “So how is Melanie doing in school this year?”
“She’s brilliant, of course,” Brenda said.
“And her ballet classes?”
“You mean her tae kwon do classes,” Eddie muttered.
Aunt Louisa raised her eyebrows. “Tae kwon do?”
“It’s one of those kung fu things,” Grandma said.
“We decided martial arts would be better for her,” Brenda explained. “Girls need to learn how to defend themselves.”
“We decided that?” Eddie said.
Brenda rolled her eyes. “Learning to dance on your tiptoes is hardly one of life’s greatest accomplishments.”
“You know, you could try to compromise once in a while.”
“Hey! I compromised! I got her a Barbie!”
“Yeah. Military Barbie.”
“I said it was a compromise, didn’t I?”
“You could think about having a tea party with her once in a while instead of playing Hostage and Negotiator.”
“And maybe get her a kitten instead of a Rottweiler,” Sandy added.
“And take her to the zoo instead of the shooting range,” Aunt Louisa chimed in.
Grandma sniffed. “Kid’s gonna turn lesbian, if you ask me.”
“Oh, all right!” Brenda fumed silently for a moment, then turned to Renee. “What do you think, Alice? This is a new century, right? Isn’t it time we redefined women’s roles once and for all?”
Renee froze. This was definitely one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that Melanie is a very lucky little girl to have so many people who care so much about her.”
Silence fell over the table.
“Wow,” Sandy said. “Good answer.”
In unison, everybody, including Brenda, nodded and resumed eating.
Renee couldn’t quite believe what was happening there. Where she grew up, this kind of dinner-table dissension would have plunged her and her mother into the depths of animosity for a solid week. Silence. That was what she’d usually experienced during those rare times when her mother actually made dinner. It got to where Renee preferred the silence, though, because any conversation usually wound up centering on whatever she’d done that day to displease her mother, and if her mother couldn’t come up with anything new, she’d reach back a week or two and haul out something old. Then she’d have another drink and the screaming would start, and Renee would end up leaving the house, slamming the door behind her, and not coming home for days.
But something was different here. These people tossed insults at each other right and left, but the words seemed to be forgotten as quickly as they were said, almost as if they weren’t designed to hurt in the first place. Renee wasn’t sure exactly what all that meant, except that nobody seemed to hold on to anger, and everyone was eating as if their appetites weren’t the least bit diminished. Even Melanie seemed totally unaffected by the conversation, her attention turned instead to the task of getting approximately half a stick of butter to adhere to her dinner roll.
And nobody was leaving, slamming doors behind them.
“Well, Alice,” Brenda said, “I gotta say you’re a cut above the last woman John brought to Sunday lunch. What was her name? Debbie? Gawd, what a brainless little twit she was.”
Everyone nodded again. John closed his eyes with a weary sigh.
“She didn’t hang around long, did she?” Dave said.
Sandy made a scoffing noise. “She didn’t even last through dessert.”
“Of course she didn’t!” John said, suddenly coming alive. “Not with Brenda telling her that if she wore just a little more mascara, she could be a televangelist!”
“Her skirt was too tight,” Grandma said. “I could see her butt cheeks.”
Sandy smiled. “The best part was when Dave started messing with her mind.”
“I don’t recall her having much of a mind to mess with,” Dave said.
Sandy turned to Renee. “Dave asked her if she had any idea why ‘abbreviation’ was such a long word. Poor woman stopped to think about it and never started again.”
“So tell me, Alice,” Dave said nonchalantly. “What do you suppose would happen if you got scared half to death twice?”
Renee shrugged. “Got me. I’m still trying to figure out why we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway.”
Dave stabbed a green bean. “Okay. She’s got my vote.”
“Mine, too,” Brenda said.
“She already had mine,” Sandy added.
John flung his fork down with a clatter. “Well, then. Why don’t we just go ahead and make it unanimous?”
“Nope,” Grandma said. “I’m still not too sure about the spittin’-in-the-food thing.”
“Will all of you cut it out? Whatever relationship Alice and I have is between her and me. Period!”
“Of course, dear,” Aunt Louisa told John, then leaned toward Renee and whispered, “He’s usually not this cranky. I think he’s still upset about the reprimand.”
“Reprimand?” Renee said.
Dave grinned. “You didn’t tell her?”
John dropped his head to his hands.
“He got all pissed off because some guy he arrested got a not-guilty verdict, so he went into the john at the courthouse and beat the crap out of a paper towel dispenser.”
“Dave?” John said. “You want to shut the hell up?”
“Then he got exiled to Lieutenant Daniels’s cabin in east Texas. That’s where the lieutenant sends all the bad boys who don’t behave themselves.”
So that was what John had been doing out in that cabin. It was clearly not the vacation he’d made it out to be. And it was doubly clear that he didn’t like anyone talking about it.
“Come to think of it,” Dave said, “you’re back a little early, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” John said. “I’m back a little early.”
“The lieutenant won’t like that.”
“The lieutenant doesn’t need to know about it, does he?”
“Hey, my lips are sealed, Bro.”
John looked at Brenda.
“What are you staring at me for? What do you think I’m going to do? Rat on you?” She huffed with disgust. “Personally, I don’t think you should have beaten up the paper towel dispenser. You should have saved your energy to beat up the little bastard who walked.”
“Of course, there’s that little issue of police brutality,” Eddie said.
“You bet,” Brenda said. “And I’m all for it.”
Eddie let out a long-suffering sigh and kept on eating.
“Just lighten up a little,” Dave told John. “You win some, you lose some. You’ve got no control over it, so why let it get to you?”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve second-guessed the system. You gotta learn to roll with the punches.”
“You’re going to have to learn to roll with a few punches if you don’t shut up.”
Dave shrugged. “Sure. We can go a few rounds if you want to. Or you can think about what I’m telling you. You’ve got to quit getting so personally involved. Sooner or later it’s going to eat you alive.” He eyed John carefully. “Don’t give Daniels a reason to slap your hand again. You’re too good for that.”
John stared down at his plate. Finally he gave his brother an almost imperceptible nod, and Dave immediately turned the conversation to the Cowboys’ chances for a victory today.
Renee couldn’t believe everything she’d just heard. Now she knew why John had gotten so angry when they were out in the woods. She’d accused him of not caring enough whether justice was done, never realizing that he’d just lost a battle with his supervisor because he cared too much.
All at once she regretted the insults she’d hurled at him, suggesting that he was just going through the motions without a thought as to whether she was guilty or not. Now that she knew better, the strangest feeling came over her, a tingly flush of warmth she hadn’t expected. Every moment they spent with John’s family knocked one more brick out of the wall that surrounded him, allowing her an occasional glimpse of who he really was. He couldn’t stand the thought of a guilty man going free. Would it hurt him just as much to see an innocent person go to jail? How far would he go to make sure that didn’t happen?
Aunt Louisa checked her watch. “Everybody about finished? It’s almost kickoff time. You boys go into the living room and turn on the game. We girls will do the dishes.”
Brenda huffed with disgust. “Louisa. You know how I feel about all that girls-do-this, guys-do-that crap.”
“Of course I do. Now be a dear and grab that gravy boat, will you?”
Brenda rolled her eyes. She yanked the gravy boat off the table and headed for the kitchen. Renee reached for a pair of dinner plates, but John pulled her aside. “You come with me,” he whispered.
“No,” Renee whispered back. “It’ll look bad if I don’t help.”
“I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t want you out of my sight.”
“Come on, John. I can’t even walk in these jeans, much less run in them.”
Brenda and Sandy popped back out of the kitchen.
“Now, Alice,” John said for their benefit. “You’re a guest. The others can handle the dishes.”
“What are you trying to do?” Brenda said. “Deprive your girlfriend of the right to play out her role as a second-class citizen?”
John was forced to comply or look very suspicious. “Alice isn’t much of a football fan,” he said as he walked away, with a smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “Let me know if she tries to slip out the back door, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” Sandy said with a smile. “We’re not letting this one get away.”
After they took the dishes to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher, Sandy washed the casseroles while Renee dried them.
“Don’t take it seriously when John blows up like he did at lunch,” Sandy told her. “We’ve been going on at each other like that since we were old enough to talk. John just happens to be one of today’s targets. He’s not really as mad as he acts. He’ll be over it by halftime.”
Renee just smiled, knowing halftime wouldn’t do a thing toward improving John’s mood. “John and Dave are a little different from each other, aren’t they?”
Sandy laughed. “Like night and day. And Alex is different from the two of them. Dave’s so laid-back he’s practically in a coma. But he puts that to good use on the job. He can defuse a lot of situations because nobody sees him as an adversary, even people he’s dragging to jail. Alex, on the other hand, has the perp in one hand and a copy of the criminal code in the other. He’s nobody’s pal if he thinks they’ve broken the law. Alex was Dad’s favorite. Oldest son, you know.”
“And John?”
“To Dave, being a cop is a job,” Sandy said. “To Alex, it’s a mission. But to John, it’s a passion. He’s got this startling notion that justice will always be done. His brothers can walk away at the end of the day, no matter how things turn out. He can’t.”
Brenda snapped the lid on a plastic container she’d filled with leftover potatoes. “I don’t know what’s so tough about it. You don’t think about the job. You just do it. Can you imagine me zeroing in on a hostage taker and then stopping to wonder whether there are extenuating circumstances before I blow his brains out?”
“No, Brenda,” Aunt Louisa said, wiping the counter top with a dishrag. “None of us can imagine that.”
“I’m told what my target is, and I take it out. Mission accomplished.”
“But there’s a big difference between you and John,” Sandy said. “See, John actually has a heart.”
“True. But he could get over that if he really set his mind to it.”
Sandy gave Brenda a look of disgust.
“Oh, all right!” Brenda turned to Renee. “John’s a good guy. Really. I’m just saying he makes it hard on himself by thinking he can change the world when the rest of us know that it can’t be done. Guilty people are gonna walk, and innocent people are gonna fry. And there’s not a damned thing anybody can do about it.”
The world according to Brenda. A very scary place, Renee thought, particularly since she might be one of those poor, unfortunate people who were destined to fry.
A few minutes later they came back into the living room. The guys had fired up the game, and by the time the seating shuffle was complete, Brenda, Eddie, and Dave had commandeered the sofa while Ashley toddled around the living room. Sandy was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Melanie, Aunt Louisa had taken the chair next to the lamp so she could do her crocheting, and Grandma sat on a dining room chair by the sofa because of her recent back surgery.
John was left alone on his love seat. His very small love seat. On which Renee was required to join him.
She sat down gingerly, and immediately she felt a slight dip between the cushions that tilted her in John’s direction. She folded her arms and tried to make herself as small as she could. John seemed to be just as uptight as she was, and if everyone’s attention hadn’t been focused on the game, she was sure not a soul in the room would have believed they were actually a couple.
There wasn’t anything awkward about the rest of the family, though. They shouted, cussed, cheered, made side bets on every other play, cussed, collected the bets, then cheered some more. The whole room seemed to be in motion at once, with smiles and laughter and good-natured insults.
Renee knew her being here was all a sham, but for a long, heavenly moment, she closed her eyes and basked in the feeling of a family surrounding her whether it was hers or not, and suddenly she was so jealous of John she couldn’t stand it. He had this wonderful family that she was pretty sure he took for granted, while she’d had nothing but an alcoholic mother who had treated her like crap, and whom she hadn’t spoken to in years. The feeling of longing she had was so powerful she felt as if she was going to pass out.
She’d worried about the wrong threat there today. The problem wasn’t that they were all into law enforcement. The problem was that she liked them all just a little too much. What if she ended up in jail? She barely knew these people, but she couldn’t bear the thought of their thinking she was a criminal.
But most important of all—what did John think?
He sat stiffly next to her, not acknowledging her at all. In fact, he didn’t acknowledge much of anything. He merely sat with his arms folded, staring at the television, even though Renee could tell he wasn’t really following the game. He clearly hated having to pretend she was his girlfriend. And on the few occasions he glanced her way, his expression was laced with suspicion, as if he expected her to go nuts and take hostages at any moment.
As if she’d even consider such a thing with Brenda on duty.
“Alice?”
Renee looked around to see Melanie standing beside her, holding a deck of cards.
“Yes?”
“Wanna play Go Fish?”
“Melanie,” Brenda said. “Don’t bother Alice when she’s watching the game.”
“It’s okay,” Renee told Brenda, then smiled at Melanie. “I’d love to play. But maybe we’d better go over to the table so we don’t bother anybody.”
As she stood up, John came to attention, giving her one of the subtle warning looks she’d grown so accustomed to. She nodded toward the dining room table. He settled back on the love seat with an expression that said he didn’t much like it but he wasn’t going to stop her. Still, as she walked across the room with Melanie she was sure she could feel his gaze boring into her back. She wanted to whip around and shout at him, It’s just a card game, not a prison break!
But she didn’t. Instead she sat down at the table with Melanie and tried to pretend John wasn’t even in the room. She had the opportunity to play a dumb card game and delude herself into thinking her life was absolutely normal, and she decided that was exactly what she was going to do.
John sat on the love seat, drumming his fingertips against the arm, staring straight ahead as if he were focusing on the game. Right now, though, he could barely tell one team from the other, and if his life depended on stating the score, he’d be a dead man. He just wished everyone would get out of his house so he could have time to think, to find a way to fix this mess he’d created. Fortunately, nobody seemed to suspect that Renee was anything other than his girlfriend, which was a good thing.
But did they have to like her so much?
He didn’t get it. They found fault with every other woman he’d ever introduced them to, even though they supposedly wanted him to get married. Why did they have to choose now to decide Renee was the woman for him?
He was actually relieved when Renee got up to play a game with Melanie, thinking maybe he could turn most of his attention to the football game and the time would pass more quickly. He kicked off his boots and put his feet up on the coffee table, staring at the television, but no matter how much he tried to concentrate on the game, his gaze continuously shifted back to Renee like some kind of high-tech tracking device.
They’d been playing Go Fish for the past half hour. Ten minutes in, Grandma had joined them. He heard snippets of their conversation, Melanie squealing when she got four of something, and Grandma griping that the numbers on the cards were just too damned small to read.
Once, before Renee dealt the cards, she pointed to one of the clubs and told Melanie all those little black spots were puppy dog feet. Melanie giggled as if that were the most hysterical thing she’d ever heard. Even Grandma smiled at that one. Renee played the game with the energy of a blackjack dealer and the good nature of a favorite aunt who indulges her niece at every opportunity.
And John couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He absorbed every nuance of movement and color and light she emanated, from her golden hair that shimmered with every toss of her head, to her long, slender fingers deftly fanning out her cards, to the radiant smiles she showered on Melanie. But on the few occasions when she glanced at him and their eyes happened to meet, her smile would fade. Just for a moment, he wondered what it would be like to be the reason she started smiling rather than the reason she stopped.
What if she weren’t a fugitive? What if she really were his girlfriend? Was this how it would feel? As though he never wanted to take his eyes off her?
Stop it. You’re forgetting who she is and why she’s here.
But as the afternoon wore on, the image of Renee as a gun-toting convenience-store robber slipped further and further from his mind, and he started to see her as his family undoubtedly saw her—as a beautiful woman who was smart, friendly, and engaging. His brain automatically added sexy to that list, which he mentally erased, only to have it pop back onto the list again, this time in bold capital letters.
Then Sandy got up from where she was sitting on the rug and headed toward him. He braced himself. No telling what she had on her mind.
She plopped down beside him. “I guess the Cowboys can’t count on you for a lot of fan support today, huh?” She grinned. “Alice, on the other hand, can count on you just fine.”
“Knock it off, Sandy.”
“Look at her,” Sandy said, as if he hadn’t been doing just that. “She’s really good with Melanie, isn’t she?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Even Grandma seems to be having a good time.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re still pissed at me, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why don’t you just get over it and tell me that it’s been a nice afternoon? Alice got to meet the family. Everybody likes her. That’s a good thing.”
“I suppose you and Aunt Louisa are going to pick out our china pattern tomorrow.”
“No. Silver tomorrow. China on Tuesday.” She patted him on the knee. “Now I’m talking seriously, John. She’s a good one. Do everything you can to hold on to her, will you?”
An hour later the Cowboys barely squeaked to victory, and John was never so happy to see a game end in his entire life. After the usual standing and stretching and gathering of casserole dishes, his family finally headed for the door. Renee joined him there to say good-bye.
Melanie tugged on John’s jeans. He knelt down beside her. “Alice is fun.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“Well, Mellie, we haven’t talked about that yet.”
“I like her. But she’s not very smart.”
“Oh?”
“I beat her at Go Fish. I never beat Mama.”
John had no doubt of that. That would be like pitting Tinker Bell against Rambo.
Melanie skipped out the door. Grandma approached Renee, her expression guarded. “If I come to your restaurant sometime, will you watch them make my food? Make sure there’s no funny business?”
Renee smiled. “I’d be happy to.”
Grandma turned to John. “Okay, then. I guess she’s got my vote.”
She hobbled out the door. Aunt Louisa was next. “It was such a delight to meet you, Alice. Hopefully Alex and Grandpa will join us next time and you can meet the whole family. How would that be?”
Renee smiled again. “I’d like that.”
Dave came next, holding Ashley. “Please don’t judge all of us by John. He might not be worth a damn, but his family’s really something.” He gave her a quick hug. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said, then followed Aunt Louisa out the door. Even Brenda offered a perfunctory but genuine good-bye before whipping out her dark glasses and making her eyes disappear.
As Renee stood at the door and waved good-bye, John remembered Sandy’s words: Do everything you can to hold on to her. Now that was all he could think about. Holding on to Renee. For hours on end. Maybe all night long…
How had this happened? How, in the span of a few hours, had his perception shifted so dramatically that he saw not a woman accused of a crime, but a woman he wanted in so many ways—to talk to, to touch, to hold, to make love to…
He blinked away that thought and watched out the window as the last car disappeared around the block. After the pandemonium that had taken place all afternoon, the house was suddenly so quiet he swore he could hear his own heartbeat.
“Well, it looks like we pulled it off,” Renee said. “They never knew, did they?”
“No,” he said, still looking out the window. “They never knew.”
“I was afraid they’d ask me something and I’d screw up and say the wrong thing. I didn’t, did I?”
John closed his eyes. “No. You didn’t.”
“Did I say too much? Not enough?”
“It was fine, Renee. They liked you.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
He turned around slowly. Thanks to her, his family had never suspected she was anything but his girlfriend. And that made it even harder to do what he had to do. But he had no choice. None at all.
He glanced toward the bedroom, where the handcuffs still dangled from the headboard. That small shift of his gaze was all it took for Renee to understand. Her words came out in a hoarse whisper.
“You have to lock me back up.”
He paused. “Yes. I don’t want to, but—”
“Duty calls?”
He expelled a harsh breath. “What am I supposed to do, Renee? Tell me. What am I supposed to do?”
“Let me go, maybe?”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“John—”
“Don’t make this hard for me.”
Her hand crept to her throat, as if she were suddenly having a hard time breathing. “I guess I should have known, but I guess I thought…after everything…” She looked at him plaintively. “I-I just can’t believe you’re going to do this.” They stared at each other a long, shaky moment. God, he hated this. But there was absolutely nothing else he could do. He was hovering in a terrible limbo—in good conscience he couldn’t take her in, and in good conscience he couldn’t let her go.
“I won’t try to get away, John. I promise. Please. Just for a few more hours at least…”
Her voice trailed off, and the plaintive look in her eyes made John realize just how much he wanted that, too. He wanted this situation to become normal, where she wasn’t an armed robbery suspect and he wasn’t a cop, and words like responsibility and duty and obligation never even had to enter his mind.
“For just a few more hours,” she whispered.
Damn it. Why was she doing this to him? He was in a hell of a position here. Why couldn’t she see that?
“We can do this one of two ways,” he told her. “Either you can walk in there, or I can drag you in there.”
Tears sprang immediately to her eyes. “Damn you! I did what you asked me to, and this is how you treat me?”
“You’re still a fugitive. You seem to have forgotten that.”
“How could I forget? You won’t let one minute pass without reminding me!”
“I’m just doing my job!”
“No, you’re not. Your job would have been to take me to the police station. Instead, I’m here. And now you don’t know what to do with me. You could take me to jail, but you know what will happen if you do, and you can’t live with that!”
In a fit of frustration, John clamped his hand onto Renee’s arm. He dragged her down the hall and into his bedroom, then sat her down on the bed.
“No you don’t, John. No!”
She started to stand again, but he shoved her back down. She tried to yank her wrist away, but he was too quick. He snapped the dangling handcuff around it.
Renee glared at him. “Why did you bring me here in the first place? If all I’m going to do is sit here in handcuffs, I might as well be in jail!”
“Don’t push me, Renee!”
“You can’t do it, can you? You can’t take me to jail. Because you know I’m not guilty. You know I didn’t rob that store. You know I didn’t shoot that clerk. But still—” She held her cuffed wrist up defiantly, then dropped it back to the bed, the chain rattling against the headboard. “Still you’re acting as if I did it!”
The tension crackled between them with an intensity that practically lit the drapes on fire.
“I’m asking you one more time, John. Do you think I’m guilty? Or am I an innocent woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“There’s no evidence—”
“Damn it! Would you forget the evidence for five seconds? I don’t want the cop version. I want your version.”
He turned away, desperately needing to walk out of this room, to stay out of this room, until he felt more in control. But then she spoke again, her voice soft, with a tenderness to it that caught him off guard.
“I realized something today,” she said. “I was wrong out there in the woods. Your problem isn’t that you don’t care. In fact, sometimes you care so much that it tears you up inside.”
He needed to get out of there. Right now.
“You know the truth, don’t you?” she said. “You know!”
He turned to face her, which was his first mistake, and his second one was thinking he could maintain any objectivity at all where she was concerned. She eyed him with such intensity that he felt as if she were looking right inside him. He turned away again, knowing he was on the verge of stepping over a line he’d never intended to cross, and once he was on the other side of it, there would be no going back.
But she was right. He knew the truth. How could he deny it any longer?
“The cop side of me says you’re guilty,” he told her. “And that part of me wants to take you straight to jail and be done with it. But still there’s something…”
He paused, then slowly turned back and met her eyes, those clear blue eyes that had captivated him since the moment he met her.
“Even though I haven’t got a shred of evidence to base it on, for some reason I still believe you’re telling me the truth.”