Caught in the Current (Pacific Shores Book 2) (2 page)

His eyes rounded. “Marie!” He stood slowly, reflexively picking up Alyssa and settling her on one very sinewy forearm. He pushed his hat back on his head and swept a glance from her head to ankles and back again. Then he looked from her to Alyssa, a light of understanding dawning on his face. His focus dropped to where Marie’s ringless left hand rested on the handle of the shopping cart.

Marie’s face flamed so hot it likely could have sizzled bacon. Yeah, he probably wouldn’t be surprised to note she still wasn’t married. “Hi, Reece. I’m really sorry about all this.” She swiped a gesture to the three jars of pickles broken open by his feet. “Just tear off the bar codes, and I’ll pay for them when I get to the front.”

Oh boy… She resisted the urge to cringe, and really hoped that hadn’t sounded like she’d done this before half a dozen times…or so. She chanced a glance at his face.

But Reece’s attention had zoned in on her daughter, his head pulled back to make focusing on Alyssa’s face easier. “You’re an old pro at this, huh?”

Alyssa shrugged. “Mommy says my feet move faster than my brain sometimes.”

To his credit, Reece withheld the bark of laughter Marie could tell wanted to burst forth. He only nodded sagely. “You know, I think my feet did a lot of going faster than my brain when I was your age too.”

“Really?” Alyssa swung a look her way. “Mommy, he broke pickles too!”

Marie smiled, but all she really wanted to do was escape from the presence of the only man she’d ever had any real feelings for. From the only man who’d ever broken her heart. She stretched a hand out to her daughter. “Come on, Superwoman, we need to go find someone to clean this up. Then we need to grab your yogurt and get back home.”

Reece complied with her unspoken request and put Alyssa on the floor. Marie took her little convict’s hand in a firm grip.

“Welcome home. Nice to see you again,” she offered in parting and hurried to make her getaway.

But as she started away, Alyssa stiffened and hung back. “Mommy, we have to get the scanny things so we can pay.”

“Right.”

Drat. No chance for escape yet.

“And I don’t want to do dishes this time. That was no fun.”

Marie pressed her lips together and didn’t meet Reece’s gaze. He had remained stock still, his hands resting on slim hips. He probably thought she and Alyssa had come here straight from the loony bin. “Well…you have to do something to work off your debt. We’ve talked about running in the store lots of times. This”—she held a hand out to the spreading puddle of pickle juice—“is what happens when you do.” She was trying to tamp down her irritation and keep her words loving, but as if it wasn’t bad enough that Alyssa had done something like this again, it had to have been Reece!

She squatted next to the mess of pickles and glass.

Where had he been for all these years, anyway? She hadn’t seen him since…when? Four years at least. She’d still been pregnant with Alyssa when she’d heard he’d left town, and no one seemed to know where he’d gone off to.

As she found the shards of the jars with the bar codes and worked to pull one of them free, she noticed he’d been buying some sort of organic, all-natural pickles. Of course he had. Because Alyssa couldn’t have run into someone buying just one jar of the el cheapo store brand. Why was he buying three jars of pickles, anyhow? This was probably going to cost her at least fifteen bucks after tax. She mentally recalculated the items already in her cart that she could return to the shelf.

Reece was suddenly squatting by her side. “Listen, this really wasn’t all her fault. I was carrying three jars of these things, and if I hadn’t left my cart over there by the cold foods section, the jars never would have fallen. Why don’t you let me cover it just this once?”

Simply his nearness and the sound of his voice were doing things to her pulse that could set off all sorts of alarms if she were hooked up to a monitor. She kept her focus on the floor, not daring to meet his eyes. “No. No. I couldn’t let you pay. If she hadn’t been running, your pickles would have made it to your cart just fine.”

Why was this sticker being so stubborn about coming off the glass? The thing was soaked in pickle juice; if anything, the liquid should help it come loose easier.

“Your daughter is beautiful.” His words were low and raspy.

That did it. She stood and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you. Nice seeing you again. Alyssa, come on, honey.” She would just take the whole broken piece to the register and tell them to ring up three of them.

Reece rose with her. “Marie…” His tone said she was being stubborn.

Well, that may be, but she wasn’t about to let him pay for Alyssa’s rambunctiousness. She chose to ignore his chiding. And the fact that he hadn’t taken his gaze off her face for the past several minutes.

Alyssa had ignored her call and squatted next to a seep of pickle juice. Chubby hands resting against little knees, she scooted along with it, following the trickling green river as it expanded across the tiles.

As Marie reached to set the broken jar into the child seat on the cart, her peripheral vision caught one chubby hand reaching toward a shard of glass. “Alyssa! Don’t touch that! I don’t want you getting cut.” She glanced over to ensure her daughter was going to listen, but doing so made her hand miss the seat. Her grip slipped on the juice-greased glass. With a jolt she tried to catch it. A sharp slice of pain angled across the pad of her finger and over one knuckle. She hissed and reflexively dropped the piece of the jar, which shattered it into several more shards.

Reece was immediately by her side.

She had instinctively clamped the fingers of her other hand around the injury.

He reached for it. “Let me see.” He stepped so close his hat brim brushed her cheek when he leaned forward to look at the cut. His touch was gentle and probably meant to be soothing.

But her heart had apparently received some sort of errant signal, because it was beating fast enough to count as aerobic exercise.

A low sound of distress rumbled in his throat. “This is pretty deep. I think you are going to need stitches.”

Sure, that was just what she needed. A doctor bill.

She snatched her hand from his grasp. “I’ll be fine, I’m sure. Nothing a Band-Aid won’t fix.”

She examined her finger. A flap of skin gaped open, and blood was already dripping on the floor. The glass had somehow managed to slice down the side of her finger also. Oh boy. That cut was a doozy. Old, familiar words that used to be part of her everyday vocabulary sprang to mind, and she clamped her teeth shut before any of them could pop out. But she had to do something. “Ah. Okay.” She couldn’t seem to think. Do not panic. Do not panic.

She’d never been too good around the sight of blood, though she’d gotten a little better at handling it now that she was a single mother of an accident-prone toddler.

They really could not go to the hospital. Her insurance only covered 70 percent of emergency room visits, and she couldn’t even afford an extra dollar in her budget right now, much less who knew how much.

Plus she had things she needed to get done. Tomorrow was her day to bring the weekly treat for their Sunday school class, so she needed to get her cinnamon rolls baked. And she had a second coat of paint to put on the last wall of the unit next door for Mr. Meyer, her apartment complex manager, before she earned the extra hundred bucks she needed to pay all her bills this month.

She needed…Band-Aids. She glanced at the injury again. Okay, butterfly Band-Aids. A wave of light-headedness drained through her.

Marie turned a sickly pale greenish color. “Whoa.” Reece’s stomach clenched, and he lurched toward her and gripped both of her shoulders. He bent down and peered into her face. “Take a breath, Marie.” He smoothed his hands from her shoulders to her elbows and back again.

Even though she complied, she still didn’t look quite right, and she was trembling.

“Good. And another.” Heaven help him, even in paint-splattered work clothes, she was more beautiful than he’d remembered. She had eyes so blue a man felt like he could dive right into the cool depths of them. But right now they were wide and terrified as she studied the cut on her finger.

He let go of her shoulders and took hold of her cut hand, clamping his own fist around the now severely bleeding digit. “Alyssa.” He snapped his fingers at the little girl, who was apparently engrossed in the moving green liquid. “How would you like to take a ride with me and your mom in my big blue truck?”

Alyssa leapt to her feet. “Yes!”

Good. Looked like he’d pegged her right. Always up for a new adventure, just like her mother was. His gaze skittered back to Marie. Or at least used to be.

She still looked like she was about to hurl. Maybe she didn’t like doctors? “A few stitches and you’ll be as good as new.”

“Reece, I really can’t—”

But just then the box boy stepped into view. “Excuse me?” Reece cut her off.

The kid, who had to be about sixteen, stepped over, his eyes widening as he took in the chaos surrounding them.

Reece gestured from the drips of blood around their feet to the splat of pickles and glass in the aisle. “Could you clean this up for us, please? And put that grocery cart there”—he pointed to his groceries down by the cold stuffs—“and this cart here”—he pointed to hers—“off to the side somewhere? I’ll be back to get it all in about an hour.”

The kid scratched his head and examined the mess, his eyes darting from the pickles to the blood and back again, as though wondering which disaster to clean up first.

Marie cringed. “I’m really sorry, Alex.”

Reece’s eyebrows went up. She obviously knew the kid. How many times had the poor guy had to clean up after them? He fleetingly wondered how many other mothers in the world were on a first-name basis with the cleanup crew at their grocery stores.

But Alex didn’t seem fazed. “Oh, don’t worry, Miss Sinclair. We employees sort of had a bet—” His eyes shot wide and he spun on one heel, making a hasty retreat as he called over one shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up, and yeah, I’ll have the carts waiting for you, sir.”

Reece grinned down at her. “I think Alyssa might have just made that boy some money.”

“How nice that my daughter’s accident proneness can be fodder for an excellent gaming economy at Thrift and Save.” Marie’s face turned the prettiest shade of pink he’d seen in a long time. Her hand felt fragile under his. She was still as small and delicate as he remembered.

He swallowed. Four years of running from his feelings for her, and his first full day back in town, he met her at the grocery store. What were the odds? She wasn’t wearing a ring—he gave himself a mental shake. A woman like her would certainly have a man in her life. And it was best he remember that—and the reason he’d broken things off with her in the first place. There was no evidence anything had changed.

Get back to the business at hand. He almost rolled his eyes at the inadvertent pun. “We should go.”

“Listen. I don’t need a doctor. Just a Band-Aid.” She looked a trifle terrified at the thought of going to the hospital.

Reece’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t want to scare her further, but he’d definitely seen the white of bone where the cut had crossed over her knuckle.

Her chin lifted in an oh-so-familiar stubborn tilt.

Then again, maybe giving her a good dose of reality was the only way to get her to do what was needed. He shook his head. “Band-Aid’s not going to be enough. You need a doctor. The cut is really deep. And do you know how many germs could be on the glass? It was on the floor before it cut you. Besides, the way the cut looked, you could have sliced a tendon. You need to have it looked at.”

Marie ran her free hand back through her hair. Her finger, still firmly in Reece’s grasp, was throbbing to beat the band, and despite his death hold on it, blood still seemed to be leaking out. She probably did need a doctor. She dropped her free hand to her side in frustration. She would just have to try and find a couple more odd jobs this month. “Fine.”

“That’s my girl.”

Marie darted him a look as her heart did a double flip. Of course he hadn’t meant the words to be anything more than encouragement. But the feel of his warm fingers around hers was much too enjoyable even if he was only trying to keep her from bleeding to death. She didn’t want her heart falling into that undertow again. It was nothing but a riptide that could tear her apart.

“Here, just…” She grabbed up the hem of her T-shirt and indicated he should let go of her finger. The second he let go, blood seeped into the space and started to drip on the floor again. She clamped a wad of her T-shirt around it. She offered him a flick of a glance. “We better take my car. I don’t want to get blood all over your truck.”

Reece pushed out his lower lip, wiped his bloody palm on his jeans, and snagged a set of keys from his front pocket. “No worries.”

She darted a glance at her purse where it sat in her cart. “Could you…” Before she could figure out exactly what she wanted him to do with it, he’d picked it up and looped the strap around her neck, angling it across her body so it settled against one hip.

“Good?” He was so close she could see the flecks of amber in his irises.

Mouth dry, she nodded.

“Let’s just take my truck. It will be easier for me to drive you. Besides, I already promised Alyssa here a ride, didn’t I, kid? You ready to go?” He squatted down to floor level. “Hop onto my back, and we’ll take your mom to get her finger looked at.”

“I love piggyback rides!” Alyssa gave a little squeal and clambered aboard.

Leaping to his feet, Reece gave a distinct whinny. He snagged his Stetson from his head and plopped it back onto Alyssa’s curls, then leapt a couple of trots ahead. “No pigs around here. Only horses.”

Marie shook her head and followed them down the aisle at a much more sedate pace.

Alyssa giggled and used one hand to push back the much-too-large hat. “You’re funny. Do you want to be my daddy?”

Marie gasped and tripped over her own feet.

Chapter 2