She stared at him.
He smiled charmingly.
She didn’t return it, but he could tell she wanted to. “Okay,” she said, caving. “But only because I could use some help carrying the fifty-pound bag of dog food in the trunk.”
Lucas didn’t ask questions, just got out of the car and went to the trunk, hoisting the huge bag of food onto a shoulder.
She stared at him again.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. Except it’s annoying how easy that was for you to lift.”
“Annoying aaaaannnnnd . . .” he asked in a teasing voice.
“And irritating.”
“I think you mean sexy, right?”
She rolled her eyes and made him laugh. At least she wasn’t looking hollow and haunted anymore. They headed up the walkway to the right side of the duplex.
The front door had a sign that read:
WARNING: No Soliciting, No Trespassing
I don’t like you
I’m not voting for you
I’m not buying from you
I don’t need a vacuum
I’m armed and not tired of hiding the bodies
Lucas smiled.
Molly sighed and turned to him, pulling him aside, gesturing for him to set the big bag of dog food down. “Listen,” she said. “There’re a few things you really should know—”
She was interrupted by the sound of a shotgun ratcheting.
In one move, Lucas pushed her behind him and pulled his gun.
“No,” Molly gasped, tugging loose and slipping between him and the front door to face him. “Stop. You’ll only make it worse. It’s just my dad. It’s sort of . . . his greeting. Dad,” she yelled, turning to the front door. “It’s me.”
“You’re late,” came a cranky male voice.
“I know.”
“It’s dark.”
“I know that too,” she said. “But work took a lot longer today than I thought it would. You should’ve turned on the holiday lights that Joe strung for you out here. You’d be able to see better.”
“What’s the code?”
Molly knocked four times on the door, paused, then added a fifth.
Suddenly the outside of the house lit up with icicle lights in white, red, and green.
“See?” Molly said through the door. “Festive, right?”
“Stupid waste of electricity.”
Molly sighed. “Let us in, Dad.”
“Who’s the guy with the gun?”
Molly craned her neck and glanced back at Lucas, her eyes going wide when she saw he was still holding his gun. She waved her hand at him, gesturing that he should put it away. It went against every fiber of his being, what with there being a gun trained on him, but he holstered it.
“I brought . . . a coworker,” Molly told her dad.
“Why?”
Molly sighed. “Because he’s helping me work on something. He’s Joe’s partner, Lucas Knight. Dad, it’s cold. Let us in.”
There came the sound of four locks being unlocked. And then a pause. And then one more bolt shifting.
Molly waited until that last bolt clicked before opening the door and poking her head into the house. She looked around and then looked back at Lucas with an expression he couldn’t quite place. Not fear, but . . . unease.
He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and then she led him inside. The duplex was small but neat. The only holiday decorations in here were some garland on the mantel, and a two-foot tall live potted Christmas tree on the coffee table. Wood floors, no throw rugs, wide open spaces between the sparsely furnished living room.
He got the reason for that when he caught sight of the man in a wheelchair in the doorway to the kitchen wearing an army T-shirt, black boxers, and a rifle across his thighs.
“Dad,” Molly said, walking to him, then leaning in and kissing his jaw. “We talked about this. You’re supposed to wear pants during the day.”
“It’s not day, it’s night,” he said, his gaze never leaving Lucas.
A huge yellow Labrador retriever rose from his bed in the corner. He stretched and yawned.
“Nice job on the watchdog thing, Buddy,” the man said.
“Dad, Buddy’s your emotional support dog, not a watchdog.” Molly dropped to her knees and held out her arms, and the dog walked right into them, snuggling in close for a hug and a few kisses. “How’s my good boy?” she asked softly, ruffling his fur. “How’s my very good boy?”
Buddy burrowed in closer, a smile on his face.
Lucas loved dogs and dogs loved him, but he’d never actually been jealous of one before.
“Dad, this is Lucas,” Molly said. “Lucas, this is my dad, Alan. And this big guy here is Buddy. He also goes by No-no-no, Stop-It, Don’t-You-Dare-Do-It, or Get-Down.”
Lucas nodded at Molly’s dad in greeting and held out his hand.
The man looked at Lucas’s outstretched hand, then turned his wheelchair, giving him his back as he looked at Molly. “What’s for dinner?”
Okay, then. Lucas crouched down before Buddy, who had a much more enthusiastic greeting for him. A big drooly kiss. When Lucas started petting him, the dog belly flopped at his feet for a belly rub. Yep, a real killer, this one.
“Nothing’s for dinner unless you’re nice,” Molly told her dad.
Her dad snorted, but he did turn back to face Lucas and thrust his hand out in a way that wasn’t overly friendly, but, hey, at least he hadn’t picked up the shotgun.
Lucas shook the proffered hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said, which garnered another snort.
“Dad,” Molly said.
“Fine. And I suppose he gets points for not running scared like the last one.”
“Not fair,” Molly said. “When I brought Tim over, you were on the porch cleaning your shotgun. You kept lifting it up to check the site and posturing. I’d have run too.”
“Tim was a pansy-ass.”
Lucas wanted to know who the hell Tim was, but Molly moved to the kitchen and started to pull out the food she’d brought. “You take your meds today?” she called out.
Her dad shrugged and she stopped what she was doing to go hands on hips for a beat before turning to a drawer and opening it. “Where’s your weekly pill box?”
“Bathroom.”
“Go get it.”
Her dad rolled out of the room.
Molly looked at Lucas. “Thanks for not freaking out.”
“Who’s Tim?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “No one.”
“He was her pansy-ass boyfriend,” her dad said, wheeling back into the room. Lucas was happy to see he’d put his gun away. “She eventually got smart and dumped him.”
“Not true,” Molly said, her back to the both of them as she set the table. “He got smart and dumped me.”
Lucas slid his gaze to Alan, who had the good grace to look abashed, but he recovered quickly. “Any man who isn’t man enough to look his woman’s father in the eyes isn’t man enough to miss.”
“Well, much as I’d like to blame it on your childish behavior,” Molly said, still not facing them. “He dumped me because of me, not you.”
There was remembered pain in her voice and her body language was off, as if maybe she was ashamed. Lucas started toward her, but her dad put out a hand to stop him. “That just makes him a fucker on top of being a pansy-ass,” he said to Molly’s back. “Want me to end him for you?”