Page 12 of Vanishing Point (Bent County Protectors #1)

“What romantic life?” Copeland demanded. “She’s saddled with four kids, and you’re hog-tied and babysitting.”

“Trust me, Beckett. My husband could make a life with ten kids romantic. You should be so lucky.” She gave him a little nudge so she could move around him. “I’m clocked out. See you tomorrow, boys.”

“You clocking out too?” Copeland asked Thomas, too used to Laurel giving him a hard time to get worked up about it.

Thomas stared at the computer, scowling. He wanted to get home to Vi, but he just didn’t like the idea of the postal inspector poking around at all, plus he had two hours to make up for. “She said she’s going to have to take the evidence for her case. I don’t like it.”

“Well, she gave us time to do our tests, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Relax then.”

He knew he should.

But he couldn’t.

V I WAS HUMMING when Thomas got home. She’d made a perhaps more elaborate than necessary dinner. It was the least she could do. Just like out at the ranch. If she could cook and clean up some, she didn’t feel so bad for essentially sponging off people.

“Tata!” Mags squealed, getting up off the floor where she’d been happily playing with some magazines Vi had found in Thomas’s office. They’d been in a recycling bin, so Vi didn’t feel bad about letting Mags rip them apart.

She toddled over to Thomas, who picked her up on a big, dramatic swoop that made Magnolia squeal.

“I saw Franny outside. She told me to let you know she’s heading home. At least I think that’s what all those grunts meant.”

Vi laughed. “Snooping around your house really got her creative juices flowing, and I don’t think Mags’s impressive concert of squeals was conducive for getting any of it written down.”

He didn’t look especially frustrated or tense, but he wasn’t particularly happy either. Still, he came over, gave her a kiss, peered down at what she was making. “You didn’t have to, but this looks amazing.”

“I like to cook.”

“Good, because I do not.” He stood there, his arm around her while she stood over the stove. Mags sat on his hip, plucking at the chain around his neck that held his badge.

She waited for that to settle in her like a jolt. Fear. Worry. PTSD. Call it what you will. But he was holding her daughter, holding her. Everything he’d done for her, everything he’d been to her. It trumped that symbol of her old life. Her old mistakes.

She leaned into him, giving the pasta another stir. “What are you procrastinating telling me?”

He sighed, then kissed her hair. “That obvious, huh?”

“I’m learning to read the signs.”

“A postal inspector came in today and had some questions about the envelope I received with the pictures. Something to do with mail fraud. She can’t tell me how it connects quite yet, but I’m hoping to get more out of her tomorrow.

She’s probably going to give you a call.

I imagine if she’s staying here a few days, she’ll want a face to face and to ask you questions. ”

“Can you be there?”

“She’s very by the book, so I’m not sure she’s going to go for that. That okay?”

She wanted to balk at that. At all of this. But she’d promised him. That she was ready. Ready to fight for herself and for Magnolia and a future with Thomas.

“Of course,” she said firmly. “Whatever gets us to the end of this.”

He settled Mags into her highchair, then said he wanted to take a quick shower. So she set the table and got Magnolia her dinner and let it cool a bit before Thomas came out and joined them.

They ate dinner and talked about different things. She knew he was carefully avoiding the topic of those pictures, and she let him. He patiently picked up Magnolia’s sippy cup every time she gleefully tossed it to the ground.

“Where did you learn to be so good with kids?”

“I don’t think I have any childless friends left. Except my Hart cousins, but that won’t last forever and there’s still kids running all over the place out at the ranch anyway. It’s just…go to parties, see people, end up holding a baby or entertaining a toddler or feeding somebody, or be alone.”

“You never did like to be alone.”

“Not my forte. Though with as much work and social engagements I have these days, I don’t mind a night home alone every once in a while. Well, as long as you’re there.” He grinned at her across the table.

And this domestic moment, that grin, his patience with her daughter maybe finally gave her the courage to ask a question that had been in the back of her mind since she’d seen him again.

“So, why didn’t you ever get married?”

He shrugged. “Nothing stuck.”

“Why? And don’t say me. You haven’t been pining after me for fifteen years.”

“I guess not pining. You were always in the back of my mind, but you’re right, it wasn’t like I was expecting you to come back.”

He didn’t offer anything else. And maybe she should have let it go, but she…couldn’t. “So?”

“I don’t know. Nothing ever got serious.”

“You are getting all the terrible nitty-gritty about my terrible relationship. The least you can do is tell me about your failures.”

His mouth quirked at that. “I’ve got a demanding job, which isn’t conducive to dating.

If I ever got past the first few last-minute date cancellations, it is not my experience that women are particularly comfortable with me having a female partner, particularly one I think so highly of.

That’s mellowed out the past few years, what with Laurel’s heap of kids and all and being out on maternity leave half the time. But it’s been a sticking point.”

Vi thought of the woman she’d met in his office yesterday. Pretty. Confident. In the same profession, so lots to talk about and lots of time spent together. “Was it ever fair to be a sticking point?”

His gaze went down to his plate. Then he took a very large bite of pasta. “This is delicious.”

“Thomas.”

“What? It is delicious.” When she gave him a look , he sighed again. “Nothing ever happened with Laurel. Even before she got married what seems like a million years ago. And it never will. She’s like a sister to me now.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“What did you ask?” he asked innocently. Too innocently.

“Thomas.”

“It was nothing.”

“Oh. My. God.” But she found herself laughing in spite of it, and that in itself was kind of amazing. Because she just…knew he loved her. In the here and now. He never made her question it, never used it like a weapon or an excuse. How could she sit here and pick that apart?

“It was a very brief crush when I first started at county,” he said.

Of course, believing he loved her didn’t mean she wasn’t curious. “How brief?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago. She met Grady not long after that, and then they just became…like my family. The whole lot of Carsons and Delaneys. Well, after Jen and I stopped dating anyway. Kinda swore off any Delaneys after that.”

“Who’s Jen?”

He reached down to pick up Magnolia’s sippy cup. “Laurel’s sister.”

“You had a crush on Laurel and then dated her sister ?”

“Very, very briefly. A long, long time ago.” He got up, took his empty plate to the sink. Then grabbed a washcloth and used it to clean up Magnolia while Vi watched him and finished her dinner.

Once Mags was clean, he took her now empty plate to the sink. Vi got up to put the leftovers away, trying to picture the Thomas she’d known. Skinny and baby-faced, becoming a cop, dating other women. Living a life, just like she had done.

And somehow they’d both ended up back here in Bent, in each other’s lives. She didn’t believe in fate anymore—no matter what he’d said at that party months ago about picking a dime up off the floor because of her.

Fate would have meant she’d been in an abusive marriage for years because it was meant to be.

No, there was no fate . There was only the choices you made.

She’d made some bad ones. Now she was making good ones.

“Are we done investigating my romantic history?” he asked, handing her a Tupperware so she could pack up the leftover pasta.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She took it but faced him and trailed her fingers through his hair. “I snooped in your underwear drawer. Did you keep it the whole time? The picture.”

“Not exactly, no. When my parents moved, they gave me a bunch of my high school stuff. I got rid of a lot of it. But I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of that. I figured… No matter how it ended, it’d been a good four years. I learned a lot. Why not keep a memento?”

“Got any other mementos from other women who haven’t stuck?”

He wrapped an arm around her, drew her close. “Not a one.” Then they both looked at Mags who’d pulled herself up on his pant leg and was tugging on his pants.

“She really loves you.”

“Good, because I really love the both of you.” He dropped a kiss on her mouth, then picked up Mags and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

They cleaned up the kitchen together. Put Mags to bed together. They fooled around on the couch, and for the first time in a very long time Vi really let herself relax. Enjoy.

Believe. That she was on the other side of awful .

So when the postal inspector called in the morning, she made an appointment to answer her questions at Thomas’s house. Thomas insisted, since he had a doorbell camera and other security measures. They didn’t have to tell the inspector Vi was living there just because they were meeting there.

Since Thomas had court, and so did Laurel, he’d offered Copeland to come over and sit with her, but Vi decided she’d rather do it alone.

She wanted to stand on her own two feet. For herself, as much as for Thomas.

When Thomas suggested he run Magnolia out to Audra at the ranch before work, so she could have full concentration to answer the inspector’s questions and then have her tele-therapy appointment this afternoon without having to worry about Mags, she agreed.