Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle Pauline Jones (the red fox clan txt) 📖

a motor while he unfolded the mysteries of internal combustion for her. Felt the pain bite deep for the peculiarly male dad hugs she hadn’t gotten. More than anything she wanted to cross the carpet and get her first hug from her very own dad. If only—

With a shock, Luci realized she was afraid. Dying didn’t frighten her, but being turned away by this man did. It terrified her.

He looked as uneasy as she felt, and—their images in the full-length mirror to one side caught her attention for an instant—were similar in how they showed it. She fought back an urge to laugh at how they looked with their hands clasped behind their backs, rocking from toes to heels, then back again.

His gaze, more hazel than her green one, met hers in the mirror, humor softening the eyes and the straight mouth that matched hers, only with whiskers.

She found she could breathe again. The fear was there, simmering beneath the surface, but a smile spread across her mouth. Almost in sync, they loosened the death grip they had on their own hands and shook the feeling back into the fingers. Then grinned, bigger this time.

“This is getting scary,” Luci said, her voice coming out huskier than she was used to as it squeezed past the fear.

“Yeah.” He hesitated, then took the first step toward her, his hand out.

Luci met him halfway, watching with a feeling of awe as her father’s strong, brown hand closed over hers and squeezed it. Like a father.

The lump rose so fast in her throat it also came out as a sob, but she managed to squeeze it back down, though not without some wetness around the eyes. She blinked until she could see his hand again, then looked up at him. It wasn’t a hug, but it was a place to start.

With only a slight tremor to her voice, Luci asked, “So, you’re a cop?”

“Yeah.” Was his voice husky, too? She didn’t know him well enough to tell. “Do you...have time to sit down and...talk?”

Luci felt that pesky lump trying to make a comeback, but that didn’t stop her from saying, “Yeah. I have time.”

It was a relief to be alone for a few moments. Mickey looked around the parlor and felt a sudden yearning for a male place. One with swearing and spitting, with men drinking beer and watching football. A place where he could scratch, no matter where he itched, and tell sexist jokes. A place that gloried in male chauvinism and didn’t allow women in ever. No way, no how.

He went out into the hall, hoping for some coffee since he beer wasn’t an option, and found Luci in the hall an odd look on her face and wearing her grubbing-in-the-garden shorts and tank top. Even dirty, her legs were an inspiration that made him yearn for a male-meets-female place.

She smiled at him, but there was strain in the smile. Mickey wasn’t Oprah, but he knew an Oprah moment when he saw one. He hesitated, then decided, what the hell? “Captain find you?”

For the first time since he met her she failed to look at him, instead tracing the pattern carved into the stair railing with her index finger.

“Yeah.” She pushed her hair back from her face, leaving a brown streak across her cheek. He caught her hand and made her look at him.

“He scares the hell out of me, too.”

Her smile was almost as good a reward as a kiss. It lit up her face, lit up her soul. He’d swear it even lit up her heart. Or maybe it was his? Mickey felt himself tumbling in and didn’t care. It was more like flying than falling. He’d always liked flying. It was the landing that he didn’t like. This one, he reminded himself, had all the markers of a crash and burn.

“Did he...” He had to clear husky out of his throat before he could continue, “…say what happened?”

“He’s a cop,” Luci said, sliding to a seat on the stairs, “so what he didn’t know, he could deduce.”

She propped her elbows on her knees and then rested her chin on her hands. The muggy cool of the hallway put a sheen on her skin and filled the air with her earthy scent, did bad things to his blood supply.

He grabbed a stool and sat down just outside her zone, and brought up a mental picture of his captain in a rage. It helped some.

“After they jumped each other’s bones, she did a freeze play on him when he followed up with a marriage proposal. He thought it was because he was shipping out to Nam. She never told him I was in the oven.” She sighed. “Don’t think mama expected him to come back. When he did, she took me and went west.”

She leaned back, resting her elbows on the stairs. The movement stretched her tee shirt across her breasts. Mickey looked up, studying the carvings that circled the hallway.

“I remember the day we left. We all cried.” She ran her hand down the banister. “I hung on to this until she pulled me away. She said we’d visit, but we never did. Now I know why.”

“You must have known you had a father,” Mickey said. “Why didn’t you look him up sooner?”

Luci looked at Mickey, who wasn’t looking at her. Dang, he was cute. And when he was kind, he was downright dangerous. He and her father were so far outside her experience she didn’t know how to deal with them or the feelings they stirred.

“I mean,” he continued, “I understand the men in your life haven’t been wonderful, but—”

Luci smiled. Not wonderful? Try a constant, raging embarrassment. But all she said was, “Quite honestly, it just never occurred to me to go looking for him. I know it sounds odd—”

“A little more than that,” Mickey put in.

He looked at her then. She felt the jolt of it clear to her grubby toes, which curled.

“Well, we’re a little