Chapter 32
Colby turned his head away from the clock on the nightstand, but it didn’t change anything. It was still time.
“I know,” Ali said quietly as she sat up in his bed. “We need to go.”
The memories of the hour and a half they’d just spent exploring, discovering and, in his case, learning his body was capable of things he’d never realized, flooded him. The last thing he wanted to do was leave this unexpected bit of heaven.
To leave her.
He didn’t dare watch her get up and start to dress. Just looking at her, at those curves, the soft, sleek skin, that glorious fall of red hair that he now knew was completely natural, made him ache all over again.
“I wish…” It was all he could say.
“Me, too. But Grace will be home from school soon, and Cutter and I need to be there.”
“I know.”
With an obvious effort at cheer, Ali said, “I think I’ll ask Liz if she can go with me to pick up Ziggy at Laney’s shop.”
“Grace would like that.”
He tried to put some enthusiasm in his voice but failed. Right now he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the day and all of tonight right here in his bed with her. And a whole lot of the nights after that.
But instead he was facing a yawning, empty hole.
“You sound…” Her words trailed off, but he knew what she meant.
“Yeah. Can’t wait to get back to where you have to do everything, or Foxworth does. While I sit around and do nothing.”
“Nothing but stay out of the mother’s way, for Grace’s sake.”
He let out an exasperated breath. “I know.”
“And I know it’s totally unlike you to be a bystander when something critical is happening, and probably close to impossible when Grace is involved. But you’ve got one of the biggest forces around backing you up now, precisely so that you don’t have to fight this battle alone.”
He stared at her for a long, silent moment. Then, softly, as softly as he had whispered her name when he had been buried to the hilt inside her, he said, “With you on my side, I can fight anything. Even her.”
She gave him a smile that made him want to pull her right back down on these sheets and start over. But he knew she was right, they had to get moving. His girl would be home soon.
They hastened through a process that went surprisingly well, as if they’d already learned how to coordinate.
He gathered up what he’d actually wanted to stop here for—he’d never expected it to end up like this, never even hoped—and looked over at her.
She glanced at the book in his hand, the one he’d been in the middle of when all this started, and the copies of legal papers Quinn had advised him to bring so they could turn them over to Gavin.
“Do me a favor?” she asked, her gaze locking on his now.
He wanted to say “Anything,” and would have meant it, but he couldn’t seem to get even the single word out. So he just waited.
“Grab that box of condoms, too.”
She was out the door and headed back to her car, leaving him standing there barely able to breathe.
He was still processing as they headed back to Foxworth.
His brain seemed to be careening in a dozen directions at once.
Trying to analyze the implications of her wanting those condoms available.
That there would be hours while Grace was in school when they could be together.
That she would have to come to him, which made him nervous and oddly revved up at the same time.
And which would also require explaining to the Foxworths, should they happen to walk in on them in his generously loaned living quarters.
He was still working on that last one when they arrived.
The Foxworths’ SUV was parked in its usual spot, making Colby remember the note Ali had left for them.
Somebody’s brain was working, at least. Cutter raced out the door to meet them—he still boggled a bit at the trust they gave that dog—before they were even fully parked.
Oddly, the dog skidded to a halt about a yard away from them instead of romping up demanding the usual pets and scratching behind his right ear. He stood looking at them, with his head tilted as if questioningly. As if he somehow knew or sensed something had…changed.
Okay, now you’re buying into that alien-in-a-dog-suit thing Liam talked about, Kendrick.
And then Cutter covered those last few feet at a trot, head and ears up, tail wagging. As if whatever had made him stop in the first place had now met with his approval.
“That dog,” Colby muttered.
Hayley wasn’t far behind her dog. When she reached them Cutter had turned to face her, but sat down between him and Ali. His tail was wagging again, vigorously, and he had what Colby had to call a grin on his face.
Hayley stopped almost where Cutter had, and studied them for a moment almost as the clever animal had.
“Well, well,” she said quietly. She shifted her gaze to her dog. “Another win, huh?”
Cutter let out a soft woof that sounded almost self-satisfied.
And Colby was thrown back to that day when Hayley had explained about Cutter’s most unexpected gift, that of simply knowing when two people belonged together.
And when his gaze met Hayley’s steady one, he knew she’d had the same thought.
He rarely blushed, but he could feel his ears getting warm, and was very glad he’d stuffed that box of condoms deep inside his jacket pocket.
“Told ya,” she said with a grin. Thankfully, before he had to try and explain that to Ali, Hayley went on. “Nice selection,” she said, looking at the plants and the small tree in the back of Ali’s car. “I gather the greenhouse install went well?”
“Perfectly,” Ali answered before he could shrug and say his usual “Okay.”
“Excellent,” Hayley said, then glanced at her watch. Before she could speak, Ali responded to the action.
“I know. I need to get moving if we’re going to be there by the time Grace gets home.”
Colby felt a jab of disquiet. He knew she had to go, but he didn’t want to let her leave without kissing her one more time. It felt awkward, here in front of Hayley. But then Cutter’s mom laughed.
“Would it help if I said it would be no surprise to any of us that you want to kiss her goodbye?”
“Goodbye…for now,” he amended, his voice more than a little rough.
Then he did kiss her, and thought that if the Foxworths hadn’t been here, he would have wanted to carry her inside to resume their earlier joyous activity.
And as he watched her drive away, with Cutter now secured into the front passenger seat, the only one not full of plant life, he marveled at how things had changed.
He’d assumed he would forever have to fight alone for Grace. He’d assumed someday he might lose that fight, and thus lose his precious girl. He’d assumed he would never again risk getting close to a woman, certainly never let her in to batter his heart.
But now he had the thought that life seemed determined to turn everything he’d always assumed on its head.
Ali had just slid the tree off the dolly in its selected spot when Cutter, who had been sitting and watching all the plant arranging with apparent interest—more than she would have expected from a dog, anyway—suddenly leaped to his feet, spun and headed for the door.
That she had almost expected. Because when Grace and the mother had arrived home about twenty minutes ago, she’d heard the girl’s wailing “I hate you!” even from inside the greenhouse.
It made her stomach knot, because her first instinct was to run to the girl and comfort her, but she knew she couldn’t.
She had to play this as if she didn’t know a thing.
And she had to let Cutter do his job. Which included responding to the whistle she couldn’t hear.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t watch. And she did as the dog ran over to the back of the big house next door. Normally Grace would appear on the back porch, ready with a note to place in the tiny canister on the dog’s collar. But this time there was no trace of the girl.
Cutter sat, waiting, for a minute or two.
His head tilted, as if he were trying to figure out why she wasn’t there.
Then he moved back along the side of the house, stopping, to her surprise, at the window to Grace’s bedroom.
The same window Colby had broken that day, which seemed so much longer ago than just three weeks.
The window where Grace now appeared, although she was looking back over her shoulder.
They’d warned her that the new cameras would show if she tried to open or climb out that window, warned her that everything on that side of the house was being watched, yet she seemed to be trying to slide the sash-style window up.
But she stopped, turned and vanished back into the room, and Ali let out a breath of relief.
Then Ali saw something else. Something small and white falling to the ground.
Something Grace had slid through the tiny gap she’d made at the window sill.
Cutter was on it immediately, picking it up with his teeth.
Then he spun on his hindquarters and raced back toward her.
She stepped outside the greenhouse and shut the door behind her, thinking rapidly.
She tried to picture what that would look like on those cameras.
She hoped it would seem the dog had come over to play, but when he got no response had given up and left.
Would the thing the dog had seized be recognizable?
Would it even occur to Liz or anyone else who saw the video that the dog could be this clever?
She had no more time to dwell on those questions because Cutter was there, offering the carefully folded note delicately.
She won’t let me be with Daddy on Saturday and I can’t come see you anymore at all. She thinks you’re telling me bad things. I can’t even play with Cutter or Ziggy. Tell Daddy I’m going to run away, I can’t be with her anymore.
The knot in Ali’s stomach tightened even more, making her faintly nauseous. Did the woman really think Colby would just take this lying down? Did she know so little of how much he loved his daughter? Of how far he would go for her?
Well, you’re about to learn, mommy dearest.
She made herself walk back into her house at a normal pace although she badly wanted to run. Once inside and out of sight from next door she did run, to the counter where the Foxworth phone was. And this time she hit the red button.