Page 24 of Forever Never
He’d envied kids who went home to the same house every day. Kids whose parents came home every night.
The Ford girls had grown up with both of those things.
Darlene, still in her Mackinac PD sweatshirt, was bent over a saucepan on the stove. Gil, in corduroys and a sweater vest, was peering at a printout of what was probably his new drink recipe. Kimber was tucked back in the breakfast nook by the fireplace, arranging neatly sliced vegetables on a tray.
Remi was nowhere in sight. But he stillfelther.
He reached down and plucked Ian off his ankle, throwing the kid over his shoulder. “Delivery for a Kimber Olson,” he reported officially.
Kimber accepted her wriggling, giggling son with a series of noisy kisses on his face. “Just what I always wanted,” she said.
“Ew! Mom!”
She was an attractive woman by anyone’s standards. Thick russet hair shades darker than her sister’s framed a lean face with a full mouth and straight blade of a nose. She had her mother’s unflappable calm and leggy height. She loved fiercely, without fuss, and could always be counted on.
In Brick’s never voiced opinion, Kimber could have done a hell of a lot better than Kyle Olson. A man who appeared to be absent once again.
Hadley disengaged her leg lock and took Brick’s contribution to the meal—a bottle of decent bourbon—over to her grandfather.
Kimber turned her wriggling son loose and greeted Brick. “Nice to see you, Sergeant Callan.”
“Hanging in there this winter?” he asked. It was a natural question for anyone who lived on Mackinac through the winter. Isolation, loneliness, boredom, depression. Everyone was susceptible sooner or later, regardless of who they married.
“Like a champ,” she said. The smile she flashed was a tired one that didn’t quite climb to her eyes.
“Mom’s learning French this winter,” Ian piped up. “Say something French, Mom!”
Living this close to Canada for so many years, Brick had known enough Quebecers to loosely translate some of the sentence Kimber said into colorful four-letter words.
“What’s that mean?” Hadley asked, forehead furrowed.
“Can you tell me where the library is?” Kimber lied without a hint of dishonesty on her face. Maybe the sisters had more in common than he thought.
“What are we making tonight, Gil?” Brick asked.
While his oldest daughter spent her winters learning to swear in foreign languages, Gilbert Ford mastered cocktails.
As the man launched into the history of Manhattan recipes, Brick’s Remi radar sent out an alert. A buzz of energy nearby, a low-level threat. It made him sweat.
As much as he would have preferred not to be anywhere near her, it was better to keep an eye on the threat rather than have it sneak up on him.
“Brick? Can you grab the gravy boat in the dining room?” Darlene asked. “I asked Remi to find it, and she hasn’t been seen since.”
He headed toward the dining room with the enthusiasm of a death row inmate. The familiar recipe of dread, anticipation, and adrenaline mixed in his gut.
The dining room was tucked away in the back of the house, across the hall from the kitchen and past the laundry room. He ducked his head in the doorway and spotted the long maple table dressed up like it was Thanksgiving Day. The long interior wall held a small electric fireplace and sturdy built-ins. A petite redhead was swearing—in English—as she stood on tiptoe on the sliver of butcher block that served as a counter. Blindly feeling inside one of the cabinets with her bad arm, she used her good hand to anchor her in place.
The woman was a goddamn danger to herself.
He hadn’t even completed the thought when those fingers slipped from their hold.
“Oh, fuck.” She didn’t even have the decency to sound scared as she tipped backward.
He liked to think that he took a moment to consider letting her fall, letting her suffer the consequences. But he didn’t. He never would. Instead, she landed neatly in his arms as if he’d been created with the sole purpose of catching her.
Those green eyes, mesmerizing like sunlight shining through bottles on a window sill, looked up at him. Boring into his soul. Tunneling his focus until the only thing that existed was the woman in his arms.How could one sister make him feel nothing but brotherly concern and the other make him feel everything but?
He wanted to dump her on the floor.
