Chapter Four

      If he followed her home, Tara wasn’t sure what she would do. But she didn’t see any sight of Axel’s truck in her rearview mirror as she drove straight home from the high school.

      That didn’t seem to keep her foot from hitting the gas harder than necessary, though.

      She parked in the garage and when she realized she’d locked the car door, she exhaled, annoyed, and unlocked it again. This was Weaver, for heaven’s sake.

      Nothing bad ever happened here, no matter what Axel said.

      She went inside the house, dumped her coat over the back of a kitchen table chair and filled the teapot with water before setting it on the stove.

      Which wouldn’t light.

      Kicking the old stove would do nothing but scuff her pumps, so she refrained, but it took a deep exhale to stop herself. She lit the pilot light again and tried the burner. The small flame jumped to life beneath the teapot and leaving it to heat, she kicked off her shoes and carried them with her to her bedroom.

      The shutters at the windows beckoned, but she resolutely avoided looking out and exchanged her party clothes for her long chenille robe. Back in the kitchen, she dropped an herbal tea bag in a mug and took the shrilly whistling teapot off the stove again.

      Only when the whistling dwindled did she hear the doorbell ringing.

      Since nobody ever came to her door, she didn’t have to guess hard who might be on her front porch.

      There was no law that said she had to answer the door, she reasoned.

      Only to go to the door and yank it open, anyway.

      Axel stood there with his finger pressed steadily against the doorbell.

      “Leave me alone.”

      He lowered his finger and stuck a cell phone out at her. “Say hello,” he said evenly.

      She eyed the phone. “Excuse me?”

      He put the phone to his ear. “Your sister will be on in a second,” he said.

      For a moment, her brain seemed to stop working. But then her senses returned and she glared at Axel. “I don’t know what sort of game you’re—”

      “Seconds are precious here, Tara,” he interrupted.

      She snatched the phone out of his hand. Held it to her ear. “Hello.”

      “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it on our birthday,” her brother’s voice greeted her.

      She nearly dropped the phone. “Who is this?”

      “Goober, just do what Clay tells you, and I’ll explain things later.”

      Her eyes closed. Goober. Her brother’s nickname for her when they were kids. Who else but he would know that? The McCrays had never stayed put anywhere long enough for other people to take note of them. “Sloan—”

      But the connection was already dead.

      She still held the phone to her ear, though, as if by some miracle she could reestablish that much-too-brief contact.

      Finally, Axel slid the phone out of her numb fingers and pushed her gently inside the door.

      She couldn’t even muster a protest when he nudged her down onto the couch in the living room, or when he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the tea that she’d forgotten all about.

      “Thought you liked coffee, not tea,” he said, taking her hands and wrapping them around the ceramic mug as he sat on the wrought-iron coffee table, facing her. “But you’ve obviously just fixed this.”

      He’d removed the tea bag, she realized dimly, staring into the pale liquid. “I stopped drinking coffee,” she said faintly. “You’re really serious about all this.” She lifted her gaze to his.

      His expression was solemn. “Yeah.”

      Her brother’s words echoed in her head. “That’s the only time Sloan’s spoken directly to me in three years.” She lifted the mug, but lowered it again without drinking. “We used to live together, you know. We shared a brownstone.” The first place she’d really called home. But even that hadn’t lasted. “I didn’t think there was anything about each other that we didn’t know. Then he decided to go undercover, and…” She shook her head. “Everything changed. Everything.” Her life. Her brother.

      “Not forever. Temporarily. That’s what you said.” Axel leaned forward, his looped fingers hanging loosely between his wide-planted legs. His deep gold hair sprang back from his tanned forehead and his gaze was steady. “This situation—me, here—will be temporary, too.”

      Of course it would be.

      Because his interest in her had nothing to do with their time in Braden and everything to do with his job.

      She cleared her throat, but the knot there seemed destined to remain forever. “So…say I do go along with all of this—” which she wasn’t saying yet, no matter how shocking it had been to hear Sloan’s voice “—what can I expect? I mean, what do you plan to, um, to do? Follow me when I go to the grocery store? Stand guard outside the shop when