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Only when he felt her body go lax did he leave her long enough to check the locks on the front and back doors, as well as the windows, and to use the bathroom. Then he stripped, leaving neatly folded clothes on a rocking chair in her room and laying his gun and phone on the bedside stand. It looked like she usually slept on that side, but he needed to be within arm’s reach of his weapon. He turned off the lamp and slid beneath the covers, half lifting her a few feet over.
When he eased his arm beneath her neck, she made a small sound and turned to nestle her head on his shoulder as if she’d done it a thousand times. As if this was where she belonged. The casted arm she rested across his belly and chest, the plaster cold to his bare skin.
He smiled in the darkness, foreseeing the thing getting badly in the way when he made love with her.
Better think of it as having sex. Love…wasn’t yet on the table.
Tenderness he couldn’t deny he felt. And, damn, he’d been scared when he’d understood that Beth had been attacked, that her life had been saved by a cheap rubber sandal.
Thank God for flip-flops.
He breathed in the citrus scent of her hair and closed his own eyes. He was here to keep her safe, which was what counted.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LEANING BACK AGAINST Beth’s kitchen counter, Tony cocked his head when he thought he heard her stirring. Nope, only quiet. Beth had had a restless period in the middle of the night when the pain meds wore off, but once the second pill she swallowed kicked in, she’d been sleeping like—
Not the dead, damn it. Soundly.
Enough coffee had brewed for him to fill his mug. He’d no sooner done so than his phone vibrated. He sighed and, taking the phone, moved toward the back of the townhouse. As he opened the back door and stepped out, he answered his phone.
“Mamá.”
He’d tried Mom when he was in his defiant teenage stage. It hadn’t gone over well. His mother was entirely American, a modern woman when it suited her and not when it didn’t.
Without so much as saying hello, she launched in, voice sharp. “You didn’t call me. You couldn’t find the time, even when you knew I was worried?”
“Eloisa is fine.”
“I know that now because she called a few minutes ago. I hardly slept a wink,” she scolded, “imagining her unconscious on the floor, Jaime crying and trying to wake up his mamá. Would it have been so hard for you to take one minute—”
When he’d first returned to Frenchman Lake after his father’s death, Tony had been patient with his family. Everyone sticking their noses in each other’s business, the lack of privacy or time alone, those were familiar enough to him, and he’d become accustomed to that again. These past few months his patience had eroded, and he didn’t even know why.
Now he snapped, “Eloisa told you why I left, didn’t she? Why can’t you understand that my job has to come ahead of calling my mother to soothe her nerves?”
“How can you talk to me this way? Didn’t your papá and I teach you to respect your parents?”
He tipped his head back to rest against the doorframe. “I don’t mean to be insulting, Mamá. A woman who is a witness in a murder investigation I’m conducting was attacked last night, almost killed. I would have let you know if I couldn’t get to Eloisa’s to check on her. Is it unreasonable to expect you to trust that I did go?”
“A call would have taken you so little time.”
He was in no mood for this. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He squeezed his eyes closed and held the phone a couple inches from his ear. Still, he heard her.
“Where have you been all week? None of us has seen you. With Carlos away, didn’t you promise to mow Eloisa’s yard? She’s counting on you.”
Actually, Mamá had promised he would. And his sister’s dry lawn, at the height of summer, could wait until Carlos returned.
“My lieutenant counts on me, too,” he said. “I’m expected to work as many hours as I need to on an investigation. The woman who came close to having her head bashed in is counting on me, too.” He wanted to say And I deserve a life of my own, with time for a girlfriend, but he didn’t. The slightest hint and Mamá would insist he bring Beth to a big family dinner so they could all meet her. The idea made him cringe. “Sometimes, unimportant things like mowing a lawn need to wait.”
