Free Guardian by Catherine Mann Page A

other in front of a fireplace. Towering shelves held books, only a few knickknacks. Immaculate white walls surrounded furniture of muted blues, dark woods, and brass.
    Not too different from his childhood home. A world apart from the cluttered condo where he and Haley Rose had lived before he’d moved into his sister’s posh guesthouse.
    “Really,” she said, standing, “I’m feeling silly forcalling you. The police are on their way. You can go home.”
    Leave? Not a chance.
    He stood. Only a few inches separated him from Sophie, not even close to his thirty-six-inch rule. She smelled like Carolina jasmine mixed in with a clean breeze rolling off the water.
    Were her eyes red-rimmed?
Ah, man.
They were. He wasn’t sure how much more of the vulnerable Sophie he could resist in one night.
    She massaged the fleshy part of her palm where brown flecks dotted her skin, her thumb prodding at the tiny splinters.
    “What happened here?” His hand slid under hers, her skin soft against his calluses.
    “I must have snagged them on the stair rail when I ran inside to check on Brice and Nanny.” Sophie scraped her fingernail against a longer sliver protruding through the skin.
    David’s frustration multiplied. “What were you thinking running in after a prowler on your own? You could have been hurt. What good would you have been to them then?”
    She ignored him, picking at the splinters in her hand until David grabbed her wrists. The perp could have turned that letter opener against her, maiming her, killing her. “Why didn’t you go to a neighbor’s and call for help instead of charging inside half-cocked?”
    “Would you have left your child inside without checking first?”
    He should have known better than to argue with a lawyer.
    Sophie tugged her arms free. “That’s what I thought. I appreciate your looking around outside. Please, go home now.”
    He set his jaw and readied his next argument.
    “Mom?” Brice called from the hall. “Why are you awake? Is something wrong?”
    Sophie heard her son’s voice and breathed a mental sigh of relief. Her nerves already on edge from the break-in scare, she needed to think before making any decisions. She wanted to leap all over his offer of help, leap all over the comfort he offered as well.
    As frustrating as it was to sit here with David, it really was a good thing she had called Madison after phoning the cops—since the police still hadn’t arrived.
    She pulled away from David and crossed to her son. “Hi, sweetie. Sorry if we woke you.”
    “What’s Haley Rose’s dad doing here?” Frowning, Brice stopped beside his mother. “Is something the matter?”
    “Everything’s fine. Try to go back to sleep before we wake Nanny, too.”
    She missed the days when her little boy would ask for hugs and gift her with sloppy baby kisses. She needed to hold her son close, to reassure herself he hadn’t been hurt while she’d been taking a moonlight stroll, mooning over David Berg instead of staying inside watching out for her child. Her throat went tight.
    Brice shifted from one foot to the other. Eyes wide, he looked from Sophie to David. “Are you sure?”
    His concern seemed so manly coming from a kid wearing nothing but an overlong adult-size T-shirt. Like every night since Lowell’s death, Brice slept in one ofhis father’s old shirts. Some days she longed to shred those T-shirts, constant reminders of a man she had once loved, but who hadn’t loved her enough to live.
    Brice’s T-shirt sported the logo of a regatta Lowell had entered three years ago. The entry fee could have paid last month’s mortgage.
    Her son couldn’t give up the security of his father’s clothes. What would he do if they lost their home? She searched for reassuring words to calm a child with too many adult worries. “I’m positive, kiddo.”
Liar.
“Everything’s fine.”
    Brice scratched his knobby knee just below the T-shirt. “If nothing’s wrong, then what’s he doing