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  Her eyes snapped open as she stared at Sam, hardly able to believe her ears. A reprieve?

  “Like that’s not gonna happen,” Alonso said under his breath.

  “You didn’t just wreck the truck,” Sam continued. “You hit the side of her business. You couldn’t have been more stupid if you’d tried.”

  Alonso bristled. Delaney wrapped her fingers around his arm. She felt his muscle flex, but he didn’t shake her off. “We’ll go back,” she said quickly. “And we’ll talk to Annie and Logan. You’ll apologize. You’ll offer to pay off the damage.”

  “You mean you’ll pay off the damage.”

  Delaney looked to Sam. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You bought his way into Castillo House in the first place, didn’t you?”

  Secrets have a way of coming out. “If I did or didn’t, it hardly concerns you.”

  Beside her, Alonso swore, and then he did shake off her hand. “Man, I don’t need your money.”

  Sam snorted. “Kid, all you’ve got going for you is Delaney’s money.”

  She stomped her foot. Hard. Dust puffed up from the street. “Stop it. Right now.”

  They both looked at her, Alonso showing his surprise only slightly more obviously than Sam did.

  “This is just a setback,” she told Alonso. “And it’s not an unforgivable one, as long as you’re actually sorry that it happened.” She looked up into his face. “Well? Come on, Alonso. If you’re sorry, you’ve got to say the words!”

  His lips twisted. “I didn’t mean to hurt Mary.”

  She steeled herself against softening. “I know you didn’t. But now you’re going to face up to what you did do. Agreed?”

  His gaze slid to the side. He lifted one shoulder. She knew from experience that it was as much of an assent as she was going to get.

  Then she looked at Sam. “Okay?”

  He lifted his shoulder, too. Eerily similar to Alonso’s movement. But all he said was, “For now.”

  In other words, the reprieve was probably temporary.

  But she would take what she could get.

  Chapter 12

  Mary’s leg was not broken. Dr. Hugo’s X-ray had confirmed the injury was only a sprain.

  When Delaney went to Castillo House the next day to visit, Mary was hobbling around on a pair of miniature crutches, soaking up the extra attention she was receiving like a thirsty little sponge.

  Alonso, however, was refusing to interact with everyone, including Dr. Weathers, Logan and even Mary. He’d apologized to all of them the night before, and promised to work off what it cost to make repairs to the truck and the building. Logan and Annie had agreed with more alacrity than Delaney might have expected.

  “He’s out by the basketball hoop,” Annie told her. “He worked in the fields this morning from dawn on,” she added, recognizing the worried sound Delaney made. She smiled a little. “When Logan was a teenager, he ran a truck into the side of Maisy’s Place. These things can happen to anyone.”

  “Thanks, Annie.”

  Alonso was right where Annie had said he would be. Bouncing the ball, occasionally shooting it straight through the basketball hoop. Mostly just looking very much alone.

  “School will be starting in about a month,” she greeted as she walked closer. “The school has a basketball team. They make trips across to San Diego to compete with the schools there.”

  “Ain’t gonna be here, anyway.” He didn’t look at her as he shot another basket and jogged forward to rebound his own ball. His movements were loose-limbed and easy. The gym teacher at his last school had bemoaned losing Alonso’s natural athleticism. “Your cop’ll make sure of that.”

  “Sam isn’t my cop.”

  “Your husband, then,” he countered.

  “Come on, Alonso. You’ve already given Sam a reason, and he didn’t take the opportunity.” She darted forward and stole the ball—successful only because he hadn’t expected it. “You like it at Castillo House, don’t you? You were having fun with the children last night until Mary fell. And she’s going to be okay.” She bounced the ball a few times. Shot it at the basket. It bounced off the backboard, and Alonso caught it.

  “Man, you can’t shoot for sh— squat.” He dribbled the ball around her. Sank a basket. Showing off.

  “So I’ll try again.” She held up her hand, waiting for him to toss the ball to her. He did, with a bounce. The ball hit her in the stomach before she managed to catch it. There hadn’t been any phys-ed teacher who’d moaned her loss back in school.

  She’d been brainy and shy. Not fitting in well with either the rich kids or the poor.

  She bounced the ball a few times, enjoying the hollow thwack as it hit the cement. She eyed the basket, but was far more focused on Alonso.

  “The cop’s never gonna let me live here for good.”

  She lifted the ball in a bad imitation of the way he’d thrown it. She missed the basket. “And you want to?”

  “What do I care? Used to getting passed around.” He passed her the ball again.

  “I think you do care. Is the food here bad?”

  He eyed her. Shook his head.

  “Mattress lumpy?” At the halfway house, he’d had to sleep on a thin cot. “The children too loud that you can’t read at night?” She kept him in a steady supply of fantasy novels though he denied enjoying them. She took another shot. A little more determined. The ball completely missed the backboard.

  “No. But it doesn’t matter,” Alonso said. “He doesn’t want me here.”

  He retrieved the ball and jogged over to her. The ball rolled off his palm into hers.

  “Lift it like this.”

  She copied his gesture. He stepped behind her, adjusted her hands. “Aim for the corner of the box.”

  She did. The ball bounced off the backboard. It circled the rim. Once. Twice. Teetered. Dropped through the net.

  Delaney was surprised at the glee that danced through her. She grinned up at Alonso and caught his hands, squeezing. “Things will work out.”

  “And you’re still gonna leave. Only reason you haven’t already is ’cause of him.” He tugged his hands free, scooped up the ball and sank another basket.

  Delaney pushed her hands in the side pockets of the skirt she wore. “Surprisingly enough, I’ll miss you, too, kiddo. But you can call me whenever you want, Alonso. We’ll still talk. I’ve told you that.”

  He cast her a long look. “Yeah. Whatever.” He tucked the ball under his arm. “I’m going inside.”

  Delaney sighed. After a long while she followed. He’d closed himself in his room. He didn’t respond when she knocked.

  She refused Annie’s invitation to lunch and drove to town in the golf cart. Principles forced her to stop off at Maisy’s Place to see if there was an available room or cottage yet.

  There wasn’t.

  She left the inn, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed, and drove up the hill. At the sight of The Store, she stopped. Thirty minutes later, she came back out with a bag of groceries, another new sundress and a package of undershirts.

  Sam’s truck was parked in front of his office when she drove past. The urge to stop and see him hit with considerable force. She even lifted her foot off the gas pedal of the little cart, coasting to a stop.

  And what would she say to him if she went inside?

  Then the closed blinds on the door swung, and a moment later the door opened. She caught her breath, then expelled it in a weak stream at the sight of Henrietta Vega coming out.

  The elderly woman noticed Delaney loitering in the golf cart and waved, thumping her way across the sidewalk. “Talk some sense into him,” she greeted unceremoniously.

  “About what?” Delaney asked cautiously. She wasn’t sure what intimidated her more. Approaching Sam after the way things had ended the night before, or talking with his iron-haired grandmother. The corona of gray hair twined around her head reminded Delaney of a crown, and goodness knows the wom
an demanded attention in a royal way.

  “Ignoring his family, of course,” Etta snapped. “And I won’t have it. Now that we’re all here again, I just—” thump “—won’t have it.” Thump, thump.

  Still, Delaney hesitated. “Mrs. Vega, Etta,” she corrected hurriedly at the look she received, “I think you should be working this out with Sam.”

  “You think I haven’t tried that?” Etta’s eyes snapped. “A more stubborn man doesn’t exist than my grandson. He wants something, he doesn’t stop until he gets it. And the opposite is just as true. You ought to know that better than anyone.”

  Delaney’s cheeks warmed. “What is it that you want Sam to do?” She far preferred Etta’s focus to be on Sam than on her.

  “Come to dinner next Sunday. He’s missed once, and that’s too much.” Exaggerated patience filled the woman’s voice. “Tell him you want to be there. He’ll bring you.”

  “But I…Etta, Sam and I aren’t, well—”

  “What?” Etta waved her cane. “Speak up, girl. Can’t abide hemming and hawing about. You gave me the impression the other day that you had some spine.”

  “Etta.” Sam came out of his office. He didn’t look at Delaney. Nothing new. He hadn’t really looked at her since he’d left her and Alonso to deal with Logan and Annie over Mary and the truck. “Leave it alone.”

  Etta’s voice abruptly went fragile. “Samson, I’m an old woman. You don’t know how many more Sundays I have left in me.”

  Delaney chewed her tongue, squelching the urge to smile.

  “Cut it out,” Sam said. “You’re going to be putting out Sunday dinners until Satan himself is wearing snowshoes.” But there was a tender tone beneath the irritation that tugged at Delaney.

  Etta’s frown deepened. “Ah. Stubborn as your father,” she snapped, her voice not in the least weak, and clumped the rest of the way to the golf cart. “Watch yourself, Samson, or I’ll start making you do your own laundry like a grown man ought. Drive me home,” she ordered Delaney.

  “I’ll drive you, Etta.”

  She lifted her cane and planted it in the center of his chest, warding him off. “Your wife can drive me.” Without waiting for comment from either Sam or Delaney, she climbed in the cart and situated her cane and purse. “Well? Are you going to sit here long enough to get a suntan or are you going to drive this thing?”

  “Etta,” Sam’s voice held a warning.

  “I’m not talking to you, Samson. Not until you come to see me under my roof.”

  “So be it,” he agreed. “Don’t be pushing on Delaney’s gas pedal with that cane,” he warned as he headed back inside his office. The door closed behind him, the blinds swinging in the window.

  “Stubborn cuss,” Etta grumbled.

  “Might be a family trait,” Delaney observed mildly as she set the cart in motion. It was embarrassing to realize how relieved she felt that Etta was the one doing his wash. She kept an eye on Etta’s cane sitting across the woman’s lap…just in case. The woman’s wizened hand was gripped around it.

  Etta harrumphed. But she didn’t disagree. “Well, now, you can just tell me what kind of game you and Sam are playing at.”

  She ought to have been prepared for the direct attack. “There’s no game,” she said after a moment. The woman was Sam’s grandmother; she deserved some sort of explanation, no matter what Sam had said about staying out of his family’s business. “We’re trying to rectify some mistakes we’ve made.” That was diplomatic enough, wasn’t it?

  “Sam’s unforgiving of mistakes. More in himself than others.”

  She steered the cart to the side of the road to avoid an enormous pothole. “I know.”

  Etta fell silent for a moment. Delaney was rather nervously aware of the way the woman’s fingers toyed with her cane. She sped up a little, just in case.

  “Do you love him?”

  Her family never probed so blatantly. Of course, her family never had conversations that really mattered, either. It was one of the things that had propelled her into her profession. “I—”

  “That’s why you married him, isn’t it? Stop!”

  Delaney hit the brakes, startled right out of her wits. The cart shimmied and skidded sideways a foot. So did her heartbeat. “What’s wrong?”

  Etta set her gaze on Delaney. “Hemming and hawing. Do you love him or not?”

  Etta would have done better to ask that question of Sam. His answer would have explained quite a lot. “Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

  “You’re a shrink, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist, yes.”

  “Then you ought to know that sometimes love is all there is.” Etta shook her head, clearly disgusted. She climbed from the cart and settled her handbag over her arm. “You get Sam here on Sunday.”

  She was a psychiatrist. She was supposed to be good at dealing with people and conflict and feelings and all the reasons, physiological or not, that drove them. So why couldn’t she summon a coherent response to Etta’s order?

  She just sat there, her fingers strangling the steering wheel, and watched Etta pick her way across the grass toward her rambling house.

  She didn’t drive away until Etta was safely inside, and even when Delaney arrived at Sam’s house, she hadn’t thought of a suitable response.

  She unloaded the bag of groceries and found the minimum utensils to put together one of the few meals she actually knew how to make—oven-baked chicken, green salad and an apple crisp.

  Then she sat at the bar and picked up the phone. She called her father first at the care center, but he didn’t answer, and she left a message on his voice mail that she’d called to say hello. She called her mother second, but she didn’t answer, either. One of the nameless maids that paraded through Jessica Townsend’s home picked up. She left a message there, too, even though she knew her mother was unlikely to return the call. She never did.

  Then, knowing that she’d been putting it off, she called Chad’s private line. He answered almost immediately. They talked about patients, and they talked about the weather. They did not talk about the fact that she was staying under Sam’s roof. And when she heard the front door open, something inside her jumped. A something that had never jumped with any other man.

  She quickly ended the call, promising to check in later in the week.

  “Do-Wright, I presume.” Sam entered the kitchen, his dark gaze going from the phone to her. “It’s a wonder he hasn’t trooped down here to rescue you from my evil clutches.”

  “I called Chad to check on my patients,” she said truthfully. “I am neglecting them to stay down here, you know.”

  The dimple slashing down his cheek deepened, but he made no comment. He went over to the oven and opened the door. “You’re cooking.”

  “Apparently.” She felt defensive.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Hungry, perhaps? Maybe I wanted to see how it felt cooking in a kitchen that’s a chef’s dream.”

  “Can’t believe you’d even contemplate marrying him. He’ll bore you to death.”

  “Whereas you were never boring,” Delaney murmured. “I’m not marrying him.”

  Sam nudged the ring box on the counter. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “What’s the problem between you and your father?”

  “Etta didn’t tell you?”

  “I didn’t ask her.”

  “Now there’s a switch. Dr. Townsend not asking questions.”

  “It’s Dr. Vega, actually.” She realized she was eyeing the head of lettuce still sitting on the counter, wondering if it would provide a nice heft should she heave it at his head. “It has been for two years now.” She pushed her lips into a smile. “I used Townsend when I began communications with Annie and Logan Drake because I didn’t want the name to become an issue where Alonso was concerned.” The buzzer on the oven went off, an oddly appropriate coda to her statement.

  She moved past him to turn it off. Then she pulled the chick
en from the oven and set it on top of the range. “Enjoy the chicken, Sam. I find I’ve lost my appetite.”

  She set down the oven mitt and walked from the kitchen.

  “By the way,” she said before she turned down the hallway. “Happy anniversary.”

  Chapter 13

  She’d remembered.

  Sam swirled the amber liquid in his short squat glass before tossing it back. It held a satisfying burn as he swallowed.

  But—unlike Delaney seemed to believe—he hadn’t forgotten what day it was, either.

  Their second anniversary. In a marriage that had been spent more apart than together.

  He held up his hand. The wedding ring he’d given her glinted on the tip of his little finger.

  He thumped the glass on his nightstand and pushed off his bed. It was nearly midnight. Nearly the end of the day, the end of their second anniversary. The only anniversary they’d ever spent under the same roof.

  On their first anniversary, Sam had gone to San Diego, gotten drunk and slept it off in a five-hundred dollar a night hotel room.

  The door to her bedroom was closed. He pushed it open.

  The light on the nightstand cast a soft glow across the bed. Delaney was in bed, her back propped up on the two pillows. Her open briefcase sat on the bed beside her. Case files—once neatly stacked on her lap—had slid sideways onto the mattress. She had a pen in her slack fingers, gold-framed reading glasses on her nose and wore a thin, sleeveless white T-shirt that hugged her curves more closely than a lover.

  She was asleep.

  He rubbed his hand down his mouth, then around the back of his neck. How many nights had she come to bed with work just this way?

  Hell, for that matter, how many times had he been called out on a case when they’d had dinner plans, or any other plans?

  He crossed the room and carefully lifted the files from her lap and the bed. He stacked them together and set them inside the briefcase. He slid the gold pen from her hand and tucked it next to the matching pencil in the slot. Being careful not to jostle the bed, he lifted the open case and set it on the dresser.