She walked to the couch, her eyes never leaving his and tossed her jacket on the back.

“Finley Holliday’s Aunt Dusty is movin’ in. His Mom isn’t doin’ too good and they’ll be plantin’ soon. So she’s moved back from Texas or, uh…wherever and she’s gonna be around a while to help out.”

Mike stared at his daughter.

Fuck. Shit.

Fuck.

“Anyway,” she went on and with effort he focused on her, “I didn’t see the horses. I did see Fin and Kirb leavin’ with their Mom. Didn’t catch a glimpse at their aunt though. Maybe that drive from wherever with her horses wore her out or something.”

Dusty was home.

Dusty was home and was going to be home a while.

Dusty was fucking next door, home for a while and right then home alone.

Mike knifed off the couch muttering, “I gotta go somewhere. I won’t be back for a while.”

He was walking down the hall when Reesee called, “Okay Dad, see you later.”

Mike lifted a hand and flicked out two fingers but didn’t look back.

He just grabbed his jacket, his keys and walked out the door.

* * *

Grinning, Clarisse bent her neck, lifted the phone in both hands and her thumbs flew over the keyboard.

Worked like a charm. He’s already gone, she typed then hit send.

Five seconds later, her phone binged and at the top of the text it said, “Fin”.

The text said, Awesome.

Her grin got bigger and she skipped down the hall and jogged up the stairs to her room, Layla following.

* * *

“You forget something?” I called when the front door opened.

Fin, Kirb and Rhonda just left. A movie. Rhonda was against it and even I wasn’t so sure since it was a romantic comedy. But for some reason Fin was adamant they “get out of the house, let Aunt Dusty relax and settle”.

Fin was a good kid, thoughtful, attentive, he noticed things but even for Fin, that was weird.

And I was not sure Rhonda needed to go to a romantic comedy. A reminder of romance I did not think would be a good thing. It had been over a month and my sister-in-law was still skating the edge of grief gone bad. Her eyes were sunken in her head. She’d lost weight. And she was even more flighty than normal to the point she was nearly hazy.

Not good.

Maybe they were home because Rhonda had called a halt to them going out on a school night after dinner all the way to the mall to watch a movie that wouldn’t get her and the boys home until after ten.

Then again, Rhonda didn’t have much of a backbone so I couldn’t imagine, even though it was clear she didn’t want to go, she’d be able to pull that off.

I was in the living room flat out on the couch. It had been a long three-day haul, me and my babies. Fin was right about one thing, I was tuckered right the hell out. I needed to relax and settle. And I was doing that with a beer and really shitty TV.

“No, you did. You forgot to lock the door.”

That answer came not from Fin, not from Kirb and not from Rhonda but from a deep, familiar voice.

I froze then shot to my feet, whirling to the door to see Mike standing there.

What the fuck?

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Then I watched with astonished eyes as he shrugged off his leather jacket and threw it on an armchair like he was going to stay a while.

My eyes went from his jacket to his face and I felt them narrow.

“We need to talk,” he announced.

“No we don’t,” I replied immediately.

“Yes we do,” he shot back.

“Get out,” I ordered then I was moving back and doing this quickly and instinctively. And I was doing this because he was moving forward faster and with purpose.

Toward me.

I scuttled backward across the room, hit a cabinet, adjusted then my back hit the wall about half a second before Mike hit me. His body to mine, his hand at the side of my neck sliding back and up into my hair and his other arm curling low at my waist.

My heart was beating like a jackhammer as I looked up at him, shocked.

“What are you doing?” It came out breathy which pissed me right off.

“Like I said, we’re going to talk.” That came out firm but soft and warm with his eyes staring straight into mine also being warm but visibly determined.

“Step back,” I demanded.

“No.”

“Step back!” I snapped.

He pressed me into the wall and repeated a low, “No.”

“Are you crazy?” I asked, forcing my hands between us to push him off but this was a mistake. A big one. Because his arm slid up my back then grew tighter and it trapped my hands and arms between us.

“I fucked up,” he whispered.

I stopped trying to pull my hands from between us and glared at him.

“Yeah, you did.”

“I know I did.” He was still whispering.

“Will you step back?” I clipped.

“No. We’re talking.”

“Mike –”

His lips hit mine and I stilled.

“We’re…talking,” he murmured against my lips and I stayed still. Completely still. Except my heart which was racing.

God, that was hot. He was an asshole dick of the worst variety and still, that was unbelievably hot.

“So talk,” I encouraged bitingly in an effort to hold onto my temper at the same time hide my reaction to the hotness of his maneuver.

He lifted his head half an inch which was not far enough by a long shot but at least it was something and I wasn’t in the position to quibble, unfortunately.

“My headspace was fucked up,” he began.

“I think I got that,” I retorted sarcastically.

“I know you did, honey, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I served up that crap to you. I’m sorry I did it at all but I’m unbelievably fuckin’ sorry I did it after Darrin died and you were vulnerable.”

“I wasn’t vulnerable.”

“I’m glad to know that now before I gave my heart to you because I had one day with you and I was all set to wrap it up in a tidy bow and hand it right over,” he stated and I blinked.

Mike was repeating what I said. I’d said that. In fact, I think I said that verbatim.

And he remembered every word.

I felt my skin start tingling.

Mike kept talking.

“I was so fired up to protect myself from you playin’ games with my heart, I played yours.”

Holding onto my anger, I shared acidly, “I got that too.”

“I know you did,” he whispered and I wished he’d quit whispering like that because it was sweet, it sounded nice, it made it sound like he meant his words in a way that came straight from the soul and it was messing with my head. I also wished he’d quit holding me. And I also wished I could tear my eyes from the intensity of his.

“Okay, so we’re talking. Can we do it with you not touching me?” I sort of gave in.

“No,” he denied and I glared at him.

“Mike, seriously, this is not cool.”

“What wasn’t cool was me bein’ an ass, treatin’ you like shit and then lettin’ you walk away from me after I did it instead of doin’ everything I could to keep you with me and making you understand. That isn’t happening again.”

“I know the answer to this already because clearly you’re fired up to right wrongs and don’t really give a shit what I want. But does it matter that perhaps I’d prefer you not to be in my space while we have this little chat?”

“You’re pissed at me,” he declared.

“Uh, wrong,” I snapped. “I’m more than pissed at you.”

“Right, so, you get more than pissed at someone who means something to you, you can be driven to do stupid shit. I’m not takin’ that chance either. So, you’re right. I don’t give a shit about what you want so it doesn’t matter that you want space because you aren’t getting it.”

I felt my eyebrows raise and I asked, “Are you serious?”

“Deadly,” he answered immediately making the unmistakable statement that he was, indeed, deadly serious.

I clamped my mouth shut.

Mike looked to my mouth, something else I wished he didn’t do, then back to my eyes.

“Suffice it to say my marriage was not a good one,” he declared.

“Uh…I think I got that too,” I replied.

“I own a six thousand dollar bed.”

I blinked for a variety of reasons. One being in the current circumstances this was a weird thing to share. Two being that I didn’t even know beds cost that much. Three being the fact that Mike dressed nice, he had a decent car and from what I would allow myself to take in it seemed he had a pretty nice house but he was still a cop.

“That’s about ten percent of my yearly salary if I don’t do overtime,” Mike continued.

For a bed, way too much just generally. Way too much for a man who made his salary. And way, way too much for a man who made his salary who had two kids.

“My ex-wife bought that bed without discussing it with me. It was non-returnable, non-refundable. Store policy which they had another policy to explain verbally upon purchase so she knew this when she bought it. She knew we couldn’t take it back. I did five months of overtime to cover that bed, my guys at the Station knowin’ that shit was my life lettin’ me pull it and sacrificing gettin’ it themselves.”

He stopped talking and I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. That was whacked. Five months of overtime was a long time and six thousand dollars was a lot of money to cover.

He must have worked his ass off.

When I didn’t speak, Mike kept going.

“When we divorced, she had two hundred and twenty-eight pairs of shoes. Fifty of them cost more than seven hundred dollars.”

That was thirty-five thousand dollars worth of shoes.

Thirty-five thousand dollars.

I stared up at him, speechless, entirely unable to wrap my mind around this fact.

He continued, “You wear ‘em, you can’t return ‘em. By the time I knew she had ‘em, she’d worn ‘em.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“Yeah, though that doesn’t come close to covering it. Fucking shit is more like it seein’ as I’m not even scratchin’ the surface with this crap. She bought, she lied, she taught our kids to cover her ass so in other words she taught them to lie. And after she quit her job when we got married, she didn’t work a day in her life until we got divorced.”

I stared and I did it with my lips parted, utterly stunned.

She spent that kind of cake and didn’t work?

Mike wasn’t done.

“Me, on the other hand, in the beginning worked two jobs. Eighty hours a week. Then I made detective and still, I had to pull as much overtime as I could. And even with all that shit, when we got divorced, we had twenty thousand dollars worth of credit card debt. I’d cancel one, she’d apply for a new one and not tell me. By the time I found out, it would be maxed.”

“That’s crazy,” I whispered.

“That’s Audrey. That was my life. Addiction and what comes with it. Deceit and betrayal. I lived that shit for fifteen years, Dusty. So, honey, I hope you get that my ex trained me well not to trust easy.”

Oh I got that all right. I couldn’t miss it.

And that sucked for him. Huge. And worse, I wanted to be pissed at him but I felt bad he went through that. That was how much it sucked.

He kept going.

“We had a big house, four bedrooms, huge yard, lots of trees. Audrey pushed me to that too, way too early, before we could afford it but I loved that fucking house. I worked my ass off for that house. The kids had great rooms. The dog had room to roam. Then I’m forty and downsizing. We made money on the sale and the judge took one look at the accounting and her work history and he took that twenty K out of her half of the house. But still, my half wouldn’t set me up like that again and let me set my kids up like that. And I knew what life I wanted to lead. I knew it for a long time. I worked hard and even with her bullshit, I got it and I gave it to my kids. Nice house in the established part of The ‘Burg where the houses are graceful and the yards are huge and the trees are old. Kids. Dog. Barbeques in the summer. A big Christmas tree in the front window at Christmas. And all that was gone. My ass was in a cookie-cutter townhome with absolutely no personality and I was starting over at forty.”

“That sucks, Mike,” I whispered my understatement unable to come up with words to do it justice.

“Yeah, it did,” he replied instantly. “And it marked me. With her, I knew I was not living the dream, at least the part of it that slept in my bed with me. But the rest of it, what I earned, what I provided for my kids, I was. And that all went away and by the time I’m set to give it to them again, they’ll be gone so that dream is gone too.”