She leaned her head back and rolled the window up. The deputy was wasting her time, and she thought of her son and dinner. All he ever seemed to want these days was pizza, but that was Pip. He got something into his head, and had hard time getting it back out.
So far Pippen was a good kid. True, he was only ten, but with her and Ronnie Darlington for parents, hell-raising had to be in his DNA. The only time she saw any sort of aggression was when Pip played sports. He loved sports, all kinds—even bowling. And he was very competitive, which normally wouldn’t be a bad thing, but Pip was
hyper
competitive. He thought that if he was really good at sports, his daddy would come to his games. There were two problems with his scheme. Pip hadn’t grown into himself, could hardly walk without tripping. He was awkward and, so far, a serial bench warmer. But even if he had been the best at everything, Ronny was too selfish to think about his son’s football or basketball games.
A knock on the window drew her attention to the left and she hit the power button. “Find any outstanding warrants?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“Not today.” He handed her information back through the window. “I pulled you over for inattentive driving, but I’m not going to ticket you.”
She supposed she should say something. “Thanks”—she guessed—“Officer . . . ?”
“Matthews. Stay on your side of the road, Lily. You want to be around to raise that son.” He turned on his heels and walked back to his cruiser, the crunch of gravel beneath his heels.
He knew she had a son? She put the Jeep into drive and eased back onto the highway. How? Was that sort of info available when he pulled up her driver’s license number? Had he checked her weight? She glanced in her rearview mirror. He was still parked on the side of the road but had turned off his flashing lights. Like most women, she listed her weight five pounds less. She didn’t actually weigh 125, but wanted to. It seemed to her that once she hit thirty-five, she gained an extra five pounds that she just couldn’t lose. Of course, having a ten-year-old boy who needed snacks in the house didn’t help.
Within a few moments Lily had forgotten about Officer Matthews. She had other things to worry about, and ten minutes later, she hit the opener clipped to her visor, drove past the basketball hoop planted next to the driveway, and continued into her garage. She was sure Pippen was next door, peering out the front window, and would be home before she set down her tote and purse.
As predicted—“Mom,” he called out as he burst through the back door. “Grandma said she’s coming over with her extra spaghetti.” He tossed his backpack onto the kitchen table. “Hide.”
Crap. She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. “Hi, Ma,” she said as soon as her mother picked up. “Pippen said you were bringing over spaghetti. I wish I’d known because I got some takeout from Chicken Lickin’.”
“Oh, darn it. I know how much you love my spaghetti.” Lily didn’t know where she got that idea. “Did I tell you about your new neighbor?”
Lily rolled her eyes and unbuttoned her coat. The house on her left had been for sale for over a year. It had just sold a few weeks ago, and she wondered what had taken Louella so long to introduce herself and get the lowdown.
“It’s a single fella with a cat named Pinky.”
A man with a cat? Named Pinky? “Is he gay?”
“Didn’t appear to be, but you remember Milton Farley.”
“No.” She didn’t care either, but there was no stopping Louella when she had a story to tell.
“He lived over on Ponderosa and was married to Brenda Jean. They had those skinny little kids with runny noses. A few—”
Lily put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered to her son, who’d wrapped his arms around her waist, “I’m going to hell for lying to your grandma for you.”
Pippen lifted his face from the front of her shirt. He grinned and showed a mouthful of braces with blue bands. Sometimes he looked so much like his daddy it broke her heart. Golden hair, brown eyes, and long sweeping lashes. “I love you, Mama,” he said, warming her heart. She would gladly go to hell for Pip. Walk through fire, kill, steal, and lie to her mother for her son. He was going to grow up strong and healthy and go to Texas A&M.
Phillip “Pippen” Darlington was going to be somebody. Somebody better than his parents.
While her mother prattled on about Milton Farley and his hidden boyfriends in Odessa, Lily bent and kissed the top of her son’s head. She scratched his back through his Texas A&M sweatshirt and felt him shiver. Ronnie Darlington was a rat bastard for sure, but he’d given her a wonderful little boy. She hadn’t always been the best mother, but she thanked God she’d never messed up so bad that she’d messed up her son’s life.
“ . . . and you just know he was tricking everyone with his . . .”
Lily closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of Pippen’s hair. She’d made sure that her son didn’t go to school and have to hear stories about his weird mama. She knew what that was like. And she’d worked hard to make damn sure she never embarrassed him, and that he never had to hear other kids calling his mama Crazy Lily Darlington.
F
ingers of gray crept across Lovett, Texas, as Officer Tucker Matthews pulled his Toyota Tundra into the garage and cut the engine. Full dawn was still half an hour to the east and the temperature hovered just above freezing.
He grabbed his small duffle and the service Glock from the seat next to him. He’d just started his third week with the Potter County Sheriff’s Office and was pulling his second twelve-hour night shift. He moved into the kitchen and set the duffle and pistol on the counter. Pinky meowed from the vicinity of the cat condo in the living room, then ran into the kitchen to greet him.
“Hang on, Pinkster,” he said and shrugged out of his brown service coat. He hung it on a hook beside the back door, then moved to the refrigerator. The veterinarian had told him milk wasn’t good for Pinky, but she loved it. He poured some two-percent into a little dish on the floor as the pure black cat with the pink nose rubbed against his leg. She purred and he scratched the top of her head. A little over a year ago, he hadn’t even liked cats. He’d been living on base at Fort Bliss, ready to be discharged from the Army after ten years of service and preparing to move in with his girlfriend, Tiffany, and her cat, Pinky. Two weeks after he moved in with her, she moved out—taking his Gibson custom Les Paul guitar and leaving behind her cat.
Tucker rose and moved back across the kitchen. At that point, he’d had two choices: reenlist or do something else with his life. He loved the Army. The guys were his brothers. The commanding officers, the only real father figures he’d ever known. He’d enlisted at the age of eighteen, and the Army had been his only family. But it was time to move on. To do something besides blow shit up and take bullets. And there was nothing like a bullet to the head to make a guy realize that he actually did care if he lived or died. Until he’d felt the blood run down his face, he hadn’t thought he cared. It wasn’t like there was anyone but his Army buddies who gave a shit anyway.
Then he met Tiffany, and thought she cared. Some of the guys had warned him that she was an Army groupie, but he didn’t listen. He’d met groupies, swam a few times in the groupie pool, but with Tiffany he’d been fooled into believing she cared about him, that she wanted more than a soldier deployed months at a time. Maybe he wanted to be fooled. In the end, he guessed she’d cared more about his guitar. At first, he was pissed. What kind of person abandoned a little cat? Leaving it with
him
? A guy who’d never had any sort of pet and didn’t have a clue what to do with one? Now, he figured, Tiffany had done him a favor.
So what did a former Army gunner do once he was discharged? Enroll in the El Paso County Sheriff’s Academy, of course. The six-month training program had been a piece of cake for him, and he graduated at the top of his class. Once his probationary period was over, he applied for a position in Potter County, and, a few months ago, moved to Lovett.
Sunlight spread across his backyard and into the neighbors’. He’d bought his first house a few weeks ago. His home. He was thirty, and except for the first five years of his life, when he’d lived with his grandmother, this was the first home to which he truly belonged. He wasn’t an outsider. A squatter. This wasn’t temporary shelter until he was shuffled off to another foster home.
He was home. He felt it in his bones and he didn’t know why. He’d lived in different parts of the country—of the world—but Lovett, Texas, had felt right the moment he arrived. He recognized Lily Darlington’s red Jeep even before he ran her plates. For the past week, since he moved in, he’d be getting ready to hit the sack as she backed out of her driveway with her kid in the car.
Before he shined his light into her car, the impression of his neighbor was . . . single mother with big blond curls and a long, lean body. After the traffic stop, he knew she was thirty-eight, older than she looked and prettier than he’d imagined from his quick glimpses of her. And she’d clearly been annoyed that he had the audacity to pull her over. He was used to that, though. Generally people weren’t happy to see the rolling lights in their rearview.
Across his yard and Lily’s, separated by a short white fence, his kitchen window faced into hers. Today was Saturday. There weren’t any lights on yet, but he knew that by ten that boy of hers would be outside bouncing a basketball in the driveway and keeping him awake.
He’d been out of the Army for two years but was still a very light sleeper. One small sound and he was wide awake, pinpointing the position, origin, and exact nature of the sound.
He replaced Pinky’s milk, then she followed him out of the kitchen and into the living room. A remote control sat on the coffee table he’d made from a salvaged old door. He’d sanded and varnished it until it was smooth as satin.
Tucker loved working with his hands. He loved taking a piece of old wood and making it into something beautiful. He reached for the remote and turned the big screen TV to a national news channel. Pinky jumped up onto the couch beside him as he leaned over and untied his tactical boots. A deep purr rattled her chest as she squeezed her little black body between his arm and chest. With his attention on the screen across the room and the latest news out of Afghanistan, he finished with one boot and started on the other. The picture of tanks and troops in camouflage brought back memories of restlessness, violence, and boredom. Of knocking down doors, shooting anything that moved, and watching his buddies die. Adrenaline, fear closing his throat, and blood.
Pinky bumped the top of her head against his chin and he moved his head from side to side to avoid her. The things he’d seen and done in the military had certainly affected him. Had changed him, but not like some of the guys he knew. Probably because he had his share of trauma and stress before signing up. By eighteen, he’d been a pro at handling whatever life threw his way. He knew how to shut it down and let it all roll right off.
He hadn’t come out of the military with PTSD like some of the guys. Oh, sure he’d been jumpy and on edge, but after a few months, he’d adjusted to civilian life. Perhaps because his whole life had been one adjustment after another.
Not anymore, though. “Jesus, Pink.” The cat’s purring and bumping got so annoying he picked her up and set her on the couch beside him. Of course she didn’t stay and crawled right back onto his lap. He sighed and scratched her back. Somehow he’d let an eight-pound black cat with a pink nose totally run his life. He wasn’t sure how that had even happened. He used to think cats were for old ladies or ugly chicks or gay men. The fact that he had a five-foot-square cat condo that he’d built himself, and a pantry stocked with cat treats, pretty much shot his old prejudice all to hell. He wasn’t an old lady or ugly or gay. He did draw the line at cat outfits, though.
He stripped down to his work pants and the cold-weather base layer he wore beneath his work shirt. He made himself a large breakfast of bacon and eggs and juice. As he rinsed the dishes, he heard the first thud of the neighbor’s basketball. It was eight thirty. The kid was at it earlier than usual. Tucker glanced out the window that faced the neighbor’s driveway. The kid’s blond hair stuck up in the back. He wore a silver Dallas Cowboys parka and a pair of red sweatpants.
When Tucker worked the night shift, he liked to be in bed before ten and up by four. He could wear earplugs, but he’d rather not. He didn’t like the idea of one of his senses being dulled while he slept. He pulled on his jogging shoes and a gray hooded sweatshirt. If he talked to the kid, maybe they could work something out.
He hit the garage door opener on his way out and moved into the driveway. The cold morning chilled his hands, and his breath hung in front of his face. He moved toward the boy, across a strip of frozen grass, as the steady bounce-bounce-bounce of the ball and the sound of it hitting the backboard filled his ears.
“Hey, buddy,” he said as he stopped in his neighbor’s drive. “It’s kind of cold to be playing so early.”
“I got to be the best,” he said, his breath streaming behind him as he tried for a layup and missed. The ball hit the rim and the kid caught it before it hit the ground. “I’m going to be the best at school.”
Tucker stuck his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt. “You’re going to freeze your nuts off, kid.”
The boy stopped and looked up at him. His clear brown eyes widened as he stuck the ball under one arm of his puffy coat. “Really?”
No. Not really. Tucker shrugged. “I wouldn’t risk it. I’d wait until around three or four when it warms up.”
The kid tried a jump shot that slid around the rim. “Can’t. It’s the weekend. I gotta practice as much as I can.”
Crap.
Tucker bent down and grabbed the ball as it rolled by his foot. He supposed he could threaten to give the kid some sort of citation or scare him with the threat of arrest. But Tucker didn’t believe in empty threats or abusing his power over the powerless. He knew what that felt like. And telling the kid he was going to freeze his nuts off, didn’t count. That could really happen here in the Texas panhandle. Especially when the wind started blowing. “What’s your name?”
“Phillip Darlington, but everyone calls me Pippen.”
Tucker stuck out his free hand. “Tucker Matthews. How old are you Pippen?”
“Ten.”
Tucker was no expert, but the kid seemed tall for his age.
“My grandma says you named your cat Pinky. That’s a weird name.”
This from a kid named Pippen? Tucker bounced the ball a few times. “Whose your grandma?”
“Louella Brooks. She lives on the other side of me and my mom.” He pointed behind him with his thumb.
Ah. The older lady who talked nonstop and had given him a pecan pie. “We have a problem.”
“We do?” He sniffed and wiped the back of his hand across his red nose.
“Yeah. I’ve got to sleep and you bouncing this ball is keeping me awake.”
“Put a pillow over your head.” He tilted his chin to one side. “Or you could turn on the TV. My mom has to sleep with the TV on sometimes.”
Neither was an option. “I’ve got a better idea. We play a game of H-O-R-S-E
.
If I win, you wait until three to play. If you win, I’ll put a pillow over my head.”
Phillip shook his head. “You’re a grown-up. That’s not fair.”
Damn. “I’ll spot you the first three letters.”
The kid looked at his fingers and counted. “I only have to make two baskets?”
“Yep.” Tucker wasn’t worried. He’d been watching the kid for a couple of days and he sucked. He tossed the kid the ball. “I’ll even let you go first.”
“Okay.” Pippen caught the ball and moved to an invisible free-throw line. His breath hung in front of his face, his eyes narrowed, and he bounced the ball in front of him. He got into an awkward free-throw stance, shot, and totally wafted it. The ball missed the backboard and Tucker tried not to smile as he ran into his own driveway to retrieve it. He dribbled back and did a left-handed layup. “That’s an H,” he said and tossed the ball to Pippen. The boy tried his luck at a layup and missed.
Tucker hit a jump shot at the center key. “O.”
“Wow.” Pippen shook his head. “You’re good.”
He’d played a lot of b-ball on his downtime in the military, and it didn’t hurt that the kid’s hoop was lowered to about eight feet and there was no one playing defense.
The kid moved to the spot where Tucker had stood. Once again his eyes narrowed and he bounced the ball in front of him. He lined up the shot and Tucker sighed.
“Keep your elbows pointed straight,” he heard himself coach. God, he couldn’t believe he was giving the kid pointers. He wasn’t even sure he liked kids. He’d never really been around any since he’d been one himself, and most of those had been like him. Throwaways.
Pippen held the ball right in front of his face and pointed his elbows at the net.
“No.” Tucker moved behind the kid, lowered the ball a few inches, and moved his cold hands to the correct position. “Keep the ball lined up, bend your knees, and shoot.”
“Pippen!”
Both Tucker and the boy spun around at the same time. Lily Darlington stood behind them, wrapped up in a red wool coat and wearing white bunny slippers. Crisp morning light caught in her blond hair curled up in big Texas-size rollers. The chilled air caught in his lungs and turned her cheeks pink. She was pretty, even if her ice blue gaze cut Tucker to shreds. She stared at him as she spoke to her child. “I called your name twice.”
“Sorry.” The kid dribbled the ball. “I was practicing my shots.”
“Go eat your breakfast. Your waffles are getting cold.”
“I have to practice.”
“Basketball season is over until next year.”
“That’s why I have to practice. To get better.”
“You have to go eat. Right now.”
Pippen gave a long suffering sigh and tossed the ball to Tucker. “You can play if you want.”
He didn’t, but he caught the ball. “Thanks. See ya around, Pippen.”
As the kid stormed past his mother, she reached out and grabbed him. She hugged him close and kissed the top of his head. “You don’t have to be the best at everything, Pip.” She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “I love you bigger than the sun and stars.”