“Sure.” He hadn’t thought of that either, but hell, it might be fun. “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Owen turned the truck around, started toward the road. “I’m going to get a dog.”
“Dogs are good.” Liam nodded wisely. “You can play with them, and you have to feed them and teach them to sit. They keep bad guys away. A bad guy came in our house, but the dogs were just puppies.”
Owen debated a response. He wasn’t sure how much the boys knew about Sam Freemont. “You have good dogs.”
“They’re bigger now, but they’re still puppies. But they’ll keep bad guys away when they grow up. The bad guy came in and scared my mom.”
“I know. But she’s okay, and the bad guy’s in jail.”
“Beckett came and stopped him. And you and Ryder came, too.”
“That’s right.” If Liam needed to talk about it, Owen concluded, it worried at the kid. “You don’t have to worry, Liam. We’ve got your back.”
“’Cause Beckett and Mom are getting married.”
“Because of that, yeah, and just because.”
“If the bad guy tries to come back, and Beckett’s not there, Harry and I will fight him, and Murphy’ll call nine-one-one, then Beckett. We talked about it. We practiced.”
“That’s smart.”
“And when the dogs get big, if he tries to come back, they’ll bite him.” Liam slid his gaze toward Owen. “In the dumb ass.”
With a laugh, Owen gave Liam a light slap on the head. “Damn right.”
After dinner, while Clare hauled the boys up for a bath, Owen relayed the conversation to Beckett.
“Bite him in the dumb ass. Kid’s got a way. Clare and I talked to them after it happened. Played it down, but played it straight. Still, they heard stuff at school. So Harry called a powwow, and they came to me about it.”
“Keep the women out of it?”
Beckett glanced toward the stairs. “Maybe that’s not politically correct, or even correct, but it feels right in this case. They need to know we’re covered, and that I trust them to help take care of their mom.”
“We’d’ve done the same.”
“Yeah, we would. Speaking of, I was able to tell Clare about that situation on the way home. You pitch the radio to a certain level, your voices to another, you can actually have a conversation that doesn’t carry to the backseats. Plus we used a lot of code.”
“What did she say?”
“What you’d expect. Mom’s entitled to a life. She’s a vital woman, Willy B’s a good man. Blah blah. I mean she’s right, but still.”
“It wasn’t her mother and Willy B mostly naked in the kitchen.”
On a sigh, Beckett closed his eyes. “And thank you for that fresh image to add to my growing collection.”
“We could start trading them, like baseball cards.”
That triggered a laughing shake of the head. “The other thing? When I talked to Clare about it, she didn’t really seem surprised.”
“What do you mean?” Owen lowered his after-dinner beer. “Like she already knew?”
“That or one of those woman’s radar deals. With stuff like this? They’re kind of like bats. Anyway, I started to ask her, but then Harry and Murphy started on each other, and that was the end of adult conversation.”
The thought slapped hard into his brain. “If Clare already knew, then Avery . . . Son of a bitch.”
“Coulda been that radar.”
“Avery’s a woman. She has radar. She’s as much of a bat as any of them. Plus, it’s
“Stop. Stop.” Beckett covered his ears.
“If she knew, she should’ve told me.” Now the thought rooted in his brain, sprouted like a weed. “I’d’ve told her.”
“We know now. And I guess we’re going to have to get used to it.”
Owen started to respond, but Harry ran in, shiny from his bath in his X-Men pajamas, and announced a Wii tournament.
Roped in, Owen gave it an hour. He liked the kids, he liked Wii, but he just couldn’t get the idea of Avery keeping the situation from him out of his head.
He chewed at it all the way home, sat in the truck chewing over it some more. Then he turned around, drove back to town. He went into Vesta from the back.
“Hey, Owen!” Franny stood behind the counter slicing up a large pizza. “What can we get for you?”
“Is Avery around?”
“You just missed her. She’s running some deliveries. More people calling in than coming in tonight. I’m closing, so she’s going to go right on up when she gets back. I can give her a call if it’s important.”
“No. Nothing important. I’ll catch her later. How are you feeling?”
“Back to normal. Are you really opening the inn next month?”
“Yeah, we are.”
“I’m spreading the word.”
“Keep spreading. I’ll see you later, Franny.”
He went out the back and, after a quick debate, went up the stairs rather than down.
She had to come back sometime.
He considered the fact that he had keys; he was the landlord after all. But that crossed the line.
Instead, he sat on the floor outside her apartment door, took out his phone. He passed the time reading and answering emails, texts.
He checked the time, wondered where the hell her deliveries were? Portugal?
He wished he’d hit Franny up for coffee, tried to entertain himself with some Angry Birds.
He closed his eyes—just to rest them for a minute—and the restless night caught up with him. He fell asleep on the floor, his trusty phone still in his hand.
Chapter Six
Hauling grocery bags, Avery shoved open the stairwell door, adjusted her load. Out of habit she paused on the landing, checked the lock on Vesta’s rear door, then climbed up to her apartment level.
And stopped, frowning at the picture of Owen propped against her door, eyes closed, phone in hand.
“What’s the deal?” she demanded, and when he didn’t respond realized he was dead asleep.
“For God’s sake.” Muttering, she stepped closer, kicked him.
“Ow! What? Damn it.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Waiting for you.” Annoyed, he rubbed his hip where her shoe—canary yellow tonight—had hit. “Where the hell were you?”
“I had deliveries, then I swung into the grocery store. I ran into a friend, and we . . .” She stopped, glared. “Why am I explaining to you? Why are you sleeping on the floor in front of my apartment?”
“Because you weren’t home. I wasn’t sleeping. I was just . . . thinking.” He pushed to his feet, blinked at her. “Your hair’s wet.”
“It’s spitting some sleet. Move, will you? These are getting heavy.”
He blinked again, then reached out and took the bags. She unlocked the door, walked in ahead of him.
He crossed the living room, went straight to the kitchen, dumped the bags on the counter. Watching him, she peeled off her coat, unwound her scarf. “How long were you out there?”
“What time is it?”
Even as he checked his watch, she arched her eyebrows. “It’s what-the-hell’s-going-on o’clock.” She tossed
