The man gained his feet and tugged on his dog"s leash. The animal had fallen asleep.
""Bout time," Matthews mumbled as he went to the first examination room.
It was quiet again. Funny how eerie she found that now.
She hadn"t told Shirley anything about what was going on, even though the young woman had questioned her almost every hour on the hour about why Brady had walked off with her flowers.
"Did you two have an argument? Boy, I"d never stick with a guy who took back flowers." Her tone took a 180-degree turnabout. "Although he is kinda cute. Now, if he was sending me flowers..."
For the most part, she let Shirley ramble on. The younger woman obviously had no great need for the truth. The more she talked, the more enamored she became with the scenario she was fabricating out of thin air. Very carefully, Shirley was edging her out as the recipient of Brady"s affections.
The minute the last patient for the day had been seen and accounted for, Shirley had disappeared from the clinic like smoke. Tossing a hurried, "See you tomorrow" in her wake, the receptionist was gone.
Patience was quick to follow and lock the door behind her. Normally she left the front door open until she was ready to go up into her own house, but not today. Today she made sure that the lock was in place. She didn"t want to leave herself more vulnerable than she was already feeling.
The phone rang and she nearly jumped out of her skin. The sound echoed and bounced within the empty clinic, mocking her. When she yanked the receiver up and exclaimed, "h.e.l.lo?" she only heard a dial tone.
"Wrong number," she told herself as she dropped the receiver back into the cradle. "It"s just a wrong number. d.a.m.n it, Paysh, lighten up before you become a s.p.a.ce cadet."
As if to offer her comfort, Tacoma rubbed against her leg. She stroked the animal"s head.
"Right, you"re here to protect me," she murmured fondly, taking some comfort in the sound of her own voice. "What could go wrong?"
It was dark outside and the dark always made her feel less than safe. Shadows harbored a mult.i.tude of tiny, pointy demons bent on torturing her mind. Her fear was a holdover from when she was very, very young.
Patience sighed as she flipped off a row of lights. What she needed was some hot tea. No, she decided more firmly, what she needed was not to let her imagination run off with her.
If this sudden rush of unwanted attention was coming from Walter, well, she"d been through this before. The man just needed a refresher course in leaving her alone.
And yet the tension refused to leave.
She didn"t like being nervous. It reminded her too much of her childhood. Patrick and the others had always thought of her as the cheerful one, the one who had come through the experience of their less-than-storybook childhood unscathed.
But they were wrong. She hadn"t.
She"d just maintain that outward, chipper facade to help bolster her mother and to help Patrick, as if being sunny and upbeat could somehow enable him to lighten the load he carried for all of them. She kept hoping her cheerfulness, however forced and unfounded, would rub off on him. Eventually her brother had found his answers and his haven in Maggi. Still, she felt that in her own small way, she"d done her d.a.m.nedest to make life bearable for him and her mother.
She"d pretended to be carefree and unaffected for so long, she didn"t know how else to behave. There were even times when she managed to fool herself into believing that she was the person she pretended to be. Happy, outgoing, secure.
But underneath it all was that frightened little girl who cowered inside. The one who"d hidden in her room with her hands over her ears so as not to hear the sound of raised, ugly voices. And this resurgence of the stalker just brought it to the fore again.
Patience stifled a scream that swelled in her throat in response to the unexpected knock on the door. Trying to calm her nerves, she immediately reached for Tacoma"s collar and slipped her fingers around it, as if tethering herself to the animal.
"We"re closed," she called out.
"I know, that"s why I"m here."
Patience felt her heart slam against her rib cage as the words registered half a beat before the voice did. Was she imagining it?
"Brady?"
This time, the voice from the other side of the door sounded more human. "Open the door, Doc. It"s starting to rain and King smells like h.e.l.l when he"s wet."
A smile threatened to crack her face in two as she ran to the door and undid the locks.
Throwing the door open, Patience stepped back as the welcome sight of officer, dog and even rain came across the threshold as one.
A myriad of emotions swirled within her. More rain swept in and she came to, quickly shutting the door.
"Where did the rain come from?" she asked.
"The sky," he deadpanned. King shook himself off, sending a spray of raindrops in Tacoma"s and Patience"s direction. "King, no!" he ordered, then looked at Patience. The bottom of her lab coat was covered with droplets. "Sorry about that."
"Don"t be. Don"t be sorry at all." She was fairly beaming as she said it.
Chapter 7.
Tacoma sneezed and took a step back after attempting to inhale King"s essence. Man and dog were leaving a trail of small puddles as they came into the center of the barren reception area.
Patience tried to remember the last time anyone had looked this good to her and couldn"t. "What are you doing here?"
"Dripping." Brady rubbed his hand over his face in an effort to wipe off water. The downpour had been unexpected and sudden.
Patience laughed. "Besides that." Circ.u.mventing the counter, she crossed to the cabinets just off the operating salon. After taking out two towels from the lower cabinet, she offered one to Brady before sinking to her knees and using the other to towel off King. "Did you get anything back from the lab yet?"
"Nothing definitive." She looked at him as he ran the towel over his head. He looked boyish with his hair going in all directions. Somehow, she knew he wouldn"t appreciate her making the observation. "Like we already thought, there are several sets of prints on the box-and two on the card. Yours and an unknown party." As dry as he could make himself, he draped the towel over the back of the sofa. "This Walter Payne, he"s not a civil servant or anything, is he?"
She shook her head. "No, he runs his own business. Works out of his house."
He sighed. That meant, unless the man had been arrested for something, his prints were not in the system. "Didn"t think it would be easy."
Finished toweling off King, she rose to her feet. King nosed her pocket. Patience took out a treat and tossed it to the dog. But her eyes were on Brady. "I really appreciate this."
"There is no "this" yet," he pointed out. "But there will be."
She smiled, taking their damp towels and tossing them in the hamper. "I had no idea you were an optimist."
He didn"t like having labels applied to him. "It"s not optimism, it"s fact. Most stalkers tip their hand early. They want to be near the object of their obsession." He saw her running her hands over her arms. "Sorry. Didn"t mean to scare you."
She was going to have to get a better grip, Patience upbraided herself. It was just that the word "obsession" conjured up a host of awful feelings.
"You didn"t," she told him cheerfully. "I know all that." She paused and he didn"t say anything. "So, is that what you came by to tell me? That the lab evidence is inconclusive?"
He shrugged, not entirely comfortable with his decision, but less comfortable with leaving her by herself for the entire evening. He couldn"t bring himself to dismiss the unguarded look of fear he"d seen on her face this afternoon. "That and I thought I"d hang around for a while. In case."
The phrase covered a vast myriad of scenarios. "In case..." she echoed. Now that he was here, she realized just how skittish she felt alone. Even with Tacoma. Having him here made her feel infinitely better. "Why don"t I send out for some dinner? If you"re putting yourself out like this, the least I can do is feed you."
Brady was about to argue, to say that he wasn"t putting himself out, that this was all part of being a policeman, but he was already getting the feeling that arguing with Patience usually resulted in defeat. So he shrugged. "Fine."
"C"mon up into the house." Switching off the light, she led the way to the back stairs that took her from the clinic into the main house. Once he and the dogs had crossed the threshold, she locked the connecting door and tried it once to make sure the lock had taken. "Any preferences?"
He looked at her. For a moment, a different answer threatened to materialize. He"d discovered a new preference last night. A preference for soft lips that tasted faintly of berries.
Brady roused himself before answering. "King likes egg rolls. Chicken," he added.
She laughed. "King and I have something in common, then." She ruffled the dog"s fur, her eyes dancing. "Chinese it is."
How did she do that? he wondered, watching her as she walked to the telephone in the kitchen to place the order. How did she make her eyes dance like that? How did she manage to light up a room just by entering it?
He told himself that answers to those questions didn"t concern him. Only the ident.i.ty of her stalker did.
Dinner arrived in three large bags that managed to remain together only long enough for the wet delivery boy to transfer them into her hands. Since it was all casual, they ate in the living room, spreading out the seven containers on the coffee table.
Once they were seated on the floor and eating, Patience tried to draw him out a little, determined to get to know this man who seemed so bent on remaining a closed book.
"Where are you from?" Emptying out the fried rice container, she divided what was left between their two plates.
The question, coming out of the blue and not following any given logical order, caught him off guard. "Here and there."
She proceeded to make short work of what was left on her plate. "Did either "here" or "there" involve the deep South?"
Suspicion entered his eyes as he raised them to hers. "Why?"
"Because you"ve got a slight accent. Not usually, but when you say some of your words, I can hear a drawl." He volunteered nothing and she shook her head. "You know, if we"re supposed to be friends like you said, then friends know things about each other."
He considered her words for a minute, then resumed eating. "Maybe we should downgrade that to acquaintances."
Having traveled out on the limb, she wasn"t ready to scoot back yet. "Hiding some deep, dark secret?" The look he gave her took her breath away. And fueled thoughts in her head. She had no idea why, but instantly thoughts of her own past-and Patrick"s-rose in her mind.
"Sorry," she murmured, turning her attention back to her plate. She cut her egg roll in two, saving part of it for the dog that was eyeing her fork"s every movement intently. "I didn"t mean to pry."
"Yeah, you did."
She thought of the way Patrick had reacted, how hard it had been for him to finally come around, even years after their father"s death. "You know, whatever happened, you"re not defined by it."
Brady watched her for a long moment. Did she know? The incident and the trial had been written up in the local paper as well as several of the bigger ones, but he"d always a.s.sumed that the story hadn"t gone outside the state. And what was in his file when he signed up with the police force was supposed to be strictly confidential. Had Patience found her way into his file because of her connections?
"What would you know about that?" he asked.
"A lot." Her voice became serious. "My dad was the Cavanaugh who didn"t quite measure up." Brady looked at her sharply. "Uncle Andrew and Uncle Brian were d.a.m.n near perfect. Great cops, wonderful fathers, even if the job kept them away from their families at times. My dad always felt inferior to them, like everything he did was always second or third best." If he"d only been satisfied with the love of his wife and children, rather than trying to outdo his brothers, things might have been different. For all of them. But there was no changing the past. "That didn"t sit well with him."
Thinking of his own life, Brady read between the lines. "And he took it out on you?"
She had been the least singled out. For a second family loyalty warred with the feeling that she needed to reach Brady, to keep him from retreating further into himself, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. "On everyone at home. He cheated on my mother, drank, lashed out a lot at Patrick."
"And you?"
She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. "Sometimes. Mostly he ignored me because he was too busy venting against Patrick or my mother." If there"d been any love between her parents, it had been long gone by the time she"d been old enough to become aware of things. In its place there"d been fear and anger. "He thought of her as second best, too."
Brady didn"t quite follow. "Second best?"
She nodded, deliberately trying to keep the words at bay. She still ached for what her mother had gone through. "I found out after he died that he had a thing for Aunt Rose-Uncle Andrew"s wife."
"Must have been hard on your mother."
The simple comment, indicating that he was sensitive to what her mother had gone through, surprised Patience. "Yes, it was."
Brady thought of his sister, of how Laura had reacted to their father"s mistreatment of their mother. She"d felt humiliated. "And you."
It hadn"t been hard to see herself in her mother"s place, to envision herself loving a man too much, letting him reign over her soul. That as much as anything had kept her from becoming serious about anything but her work. She shrugged.
"But it"s over now."
He glanced at her knowingly. "Is it?"
She looked at him for a long moment. They were talking about him, not her, or at least they were supposed to be, she thought. "You tell me."
The silence slipped back around them, augmented by the sound of the dogs eating. And then he finally said, "Georgia."
"What?"
"I"m from Georgia," he said. There was almost a defiance in his voice. "Or was. I left ten years ago."
His words struck a familiar chord. Kindred spirits had a way of finding one another. She knew the signs. Had seen them in Patrick"s eyes more than once. "Couldn"t take it anymore," she said. It wasn"t really a question. There was a time when she"d been afraid that Patrick would leave, but then their father had been shot and everything had changed.
Brady cracked open a fortune cookie. The fortune told him to lower his guard and let love in. Who the h.e.l.l wrote these things? he wondered. He rolled the fortune up between his thumb and forefinger before discarding it on his plate. "Nothing left to take. My father was dead, so was my mother. Some marine married my sister. She left town when he got shipped out."
Brady probably thought he masked it well, but she detected just a hint of loneliness in his voice. She stifled the urge to reach out and touch his hand in mute comfort. He"d probably just jerk it away.
"No other family?" He shook his head. "So you came out here?"
The path had been far from straight. "Eventually."
"Right, first came "here and there."" She kept her curiosity about the locations to herself. "What made you want to become a cop?"