This went beyond scary shivers. Her stomach pitched, but she couldn't frighten Kirstie by throwing up. She swallowed back bile.
"And then I saw him again at church."
Think. Think, damn it. She needed answers from Kirstie now while the conversation was flowing. "What did you talk about?"
"Just stuff, like what he and Daddy did when they were kids. He asked me if my daddy made up fairy tales like they used to do as kids, but I didn't want to talk about that. It made me too sad." Her brow furrowed with concentration. "Oh, and he usually asked about everybody here to make sure we're doing okay."
Alarms went off in Paige's head on a number of counts. Could this man have broken into the clinic, using Kirstie to track everyone's whereabouts? She wanted to believe it was still nothing more than a drug-related incident, but she couldn't ignore the possibility that they were being targeted because of Kurt. And how strange was it that somebody wanted to know about the very fairy tales Kurt had mentioned in his letters? This was too weird.
So many questions without answers.
However, one thing was certain. She wouldn't be leaving her daughter again, which meant an end to fantasies about sneaking away with Bo. Her daughter needed to be her first priority.
Leaning, Paige pressed a kiss against the baby-soft skin of her daughter's cheek. "You did a great job remembering everything. I'm proud of you for being honest."
Tiny arms wrapped around her neck while the sweet scent of strawberry shampoo and healthy little girl swelled her heart. She would die to protect this child, and make sure anyone who hurt her baby suffered the agonies of the damned along the way.
"Time for you to get some sleep, punkin." Pulling away, Paige clicked off the bedside lamp, night-light plug-in glowing from across the room.
"What did it look like back there?"
Kirstie's question stopped Paige halfway off the bed. "Back where?"
"At home."
A year in North Dakota and Kirstie still didn't call it home. Had it been wrong to leave her daughter behind for the trip? She'd just wanted her child safe and protected, yet somehow things went to hell no matter what decision she chose. "It looked almost exactly the same as when we were there. A new family lives in our old house, and they planted the same kind of flowers we did."
"Merry-golds?"
"Yes, and others, too."
"Daddy and me planted a bush once."
She'd forgotten that. Putting the pain in the past had cost her happy memories, as well.
"For Mother's Day, in the side yard, you two planted an azalea as a surprise for me."
"Yep, and Daddy made up one of his stories while we planted it." Her wistful voice mixed with Bo's music echoing up in the dark. "We had lots of fun doing that."
"I bet you did, punkin." She'd been so afraid of upsetting her daughter she hadn't allowed Kirstie to grieve and eventually find happy memories. Another wrong decision she'd made, but one she could rectify. "Would you like to go see that bush and the marigolds sometime?"
"Could we?"
She'd figure out a way to afford it if she had to cure all the cows in North Dakota.
"Everyone should have a summer vacation."
"Thanks, Mom." Springing up onto her knees, Kirstie hugged Paige's waist so tight, she struggled not to burst into tears. Kirstie flopped back and under the covers.
"We'll visit the house and all your old friends." And she could see Bo again.
The possibility stirred a flurry of butterflies in her stomach. Other than that brief fantasy about him getting out of the service, she hadn't allowed herself to think beyond sleeping with him, but they'd gone to see Sister Nic. And he hadn't hesitated about returning with her. That didn't sound like a man who was scouting for the door after a one-night stand.
However, even if they had a second night in their future, it wouldn't be now. Call her old-fashioned, but she couldn't see sleeping with him under her brother's roof, with her daughter in the next room. Even if it was half her roof, too, since technically fifty-percent of their parents' home and land belonged to her, as well. But her brother had been footing the bill for the upkeep for so long, she considered it his.
And it wasn't as if she could count on a secret encounter, since she and Bo were so darn noisy.
No sex tonight, and honestly, fear had sapped her. More than anything, she needed to be held, and lucky for her a strong set of arms waited outside on the porch.
Bo worked his hands across the familiar feel and strings of his guitar, music offering little comfort tonight. As if he wasn't already confused as hell about Paige, now that little girl upstairs had somehow crawled under his skin, too. The flight back to Minot had been the longest of his life. Even knowing Kirstie had been found didn't fully ease the kicked-in-the-gut feeling stronger than any enemy boot.
He kept thinking what could have happened to her. What may have happened to her.
Thank God there didn't seem to be any signs of abuse. Still he wanted to wrap her up in his protection.
Except she wasn't his, and if he let himself mull it over too long, he might envision himself as a part of a family. This family. Paige, Kirstie, him—another kid on the way and a dog to greet him at the front door.
A puppy—Honey—curled up alongside his foot, over six weeks old now, soon to go to a new home. Everyone here would move on after he left. Paige would find somebody to settle down with. Kirstie would have a secure life, just as he'd hoped to discover when he'd landed in Minot two weeks ago.
Except, he didn't want them to find someone else. He wanted a chance to explore the possibility that maybe he was that someone in their lives. No more bimbos and pretending to look for a real relationship.
Pretending?
Hell, yeah, pretending, going through the motions of searching for a wife, all the while picking women he would have never fallen for. Sister Nic had been right when she'd said he was close to understanding.
Which left him with a crapload more decisions to make.The screen door creaked behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder to find...a weary Paige. Her hair had long ago given up on staying inside the rubber band. Her khaki skirt and all-white T-shirt carried travel-wrinkles, along with a coffee stain dribbled right between her br**sts from when her hand shook on the plane. And still he wanted her.
Way to go being a sensitive guy. The last thing she needed was him telling her...what?
That he wasn't sure how he felt, but he knew he felt more than he ever had before?
Better to keep the conversation safe and light. If ever a woman looked like she needed a laugh...
He set aside his guitar, propping it against the porch railing. "Is Kirstie okay?"
"I hope so. She told me more about those missing minutes and who she was with. She said she's been speaking with this person she calls Eddie for a couple of weeks now and that he claims he knew Kurt." Paige clicked on the intercom beside the door, Kirstie's light snoring snuffle coming through. "This Eddie character was even at the air show."
Bo wished he'd tracked that bastard right then and pummeled answers from him. "The cops will be able to hunt him down."
She settled beside him on the swing. "At least she's sleeping, and how crazy am I, turning on listening monitors like she's a baby again?"
"'Not crazy at all. The incident scared a year off my life and she's not even my kid." And Sister Nic wasn't his blood relative, either, but he still thought of her as his mother.
A little less understanding tonight would be nice for his sanity.
"Vic's a mess." Paige slumped back on the wooden swing, her legs extended, her toe tracing through the ever-present Dakota dust. "He's up in his room with a bottle of booze.
I reminded him this could happen to anyone. The same thing even happened when both you and I were watching her at the air show."
"What did he say to that?"
"Just nodded and said he'd be fine in the morning."
Bo wasn't so sure. He hooked an arm around Paige's shoulder and drew her to his side.
She tipped her face up to his with an easy intimacy and familiarity to her kiss that left him longing to race her over to the barn. Something he knew couldn't happen here tonight.
Crooking a finger in the neck of his T-shirt, she stroked along his chest. "I hope you don't mind too much, but we're not going to be able to go off alone. I want to, but…"
"You can't leave Kirstie. Of course I'm sorry we can't be together tonight—" his knuckles grazed along the side of her breast before cradling her face "—but I understand."
"Thank you." She arched up to kiss him again, nothing hot or out of control but so damn sweet and perfect he wanted more just like it.
Although even an idiot would see she needed comfort. "How are you?"
"Scared. Mad at myself for being too preoccupied to realize what was going on in her mind." Her head lolled back against his arm while bugs droned in the distance. "I thought she was past the worst of losing her father, but now she's talking to strangers just to feel closer to her dad."
This woman needed so much more from him than a few Kleenex followed by a laugh.
"Some things take longer to get over than others."
"You lost both your parents when you were as young as Kirstie. How did you manage?"
Decision time. If he truly wanted to give this thing between them a chance, time to submit to the root-canal telling of a few ugly truths about his past. "Actually, they didn't die at the same time."
A frown pinched her brows together. "They didn't?"
"My mother died when I was five. My folks had already split, but my dad didn't fight for custody then or after she, uh, passed away. He couldn't take care of me on his own—" too expensive, too much trouble, too bratty "—so he turned me over to the good sisters. He had a heart attack when I was fifteen."
While serving twenty-five to life for popping the used-car dealer who'd been taking him for a spin in a three-year-old Mercedes that Jackass Dirtbag had decided he wanted—
without the car payments.
Paige's hand fell to rest on his thigh with a soft comfort easier to accept than an emotional display. "How did your mother die?"
"She cut her wrists." He cleared his throat. "Because my father wanted a divorce."
Paige's hand gripped tighter on his knee. In shock? Or reassurance? She stayed quiet, though, thank God.
"A violent death like that—like with Kirstie's father—it's tough for a kid to get over."
He still woke up sometimes smelling the blood. The shrink they'd made him see after the shoot down and capture had told him the dreams were normal, and offered extra insights that had sounded like BS at the time. But what the hell? They might help with Kirstie.
"For a while after losing a parent that way, there's a fear that people are going to leave you, which makes a kid do things like run off. She might think she's leaving before being left or testing the grown-ups who are still around."
"By pouring bubbles in a baptismal font and spelling out hellfire with fertilizer on the lawn?"
Or choosing women he couldn't fall for so the pain of rejection would be less if they left.
Understanding sure was a bite in the butt tonight. "Something like that."
"And will she get over that feeling?"
"She has you like I had Sister Nic, so yeah, I think she's going to be fine." He hoped.
"I'll take that as an incredible compliment. Thank you."
"It was meant as one, and you're welcome." He let himself play with a lock of her hair, a reward for spilling his bleeding guts at her feet.