Page 10 of Mountain Target

“I was perfectly safe. I could have brought the entire neighborhood down with a scream.”

“What were you doing out there, Ren?”

“I just … I wanted to breathe some fresh air. That’s not a crime, is it?” The girl sat down at the dining table, opening up her enormous book bag and dumping the contents—books, notebooks, her lunch bag, multiple pens—on the table. Val forced herself not to let her irritation show, even though they’d have to clean that up in just a few minutes to have dinner. “Anyway, he’s our neighbor.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know that when you started speaking with him. And anyway, being a neighbor is no guarantee. You need to be careful, alright?”

“Are you going to be thinking badly of everyone you meet? My mother isn’t … wasn’t … like that.”

The girl stopped. Her words—the past tense, the fact that her mother wasn’t here any longer—resonated thickly in the small apartment.

Ren’s eyes crinkled at the corners. Val watched, unsurprised, as the girl picked herself up off the chair and half-walked half-ran to her room, closing the door behind her.

Val stayed where she was for a long time. There were things she had to do. There was dinner to be made, and things to prepare for the next day. She was the adult here. She had to behave as such, even if all she wanted was to do exactly as Ren had done, lock herself up in her room to cry.

Eventually, she opened the fridge. She’d always been a disorganized cook, happy to be inspired by the contents of the fridge or, in absence of such inspiration, eat fruit and yogurt for dinner instead. But things were different now that she was responsible for Ren’s well-being.

There was a head of broccoli whose tips had started to go yellow. Val racked her brain for a recipe that used broccoli. She couldn’t even remember why she’d bought it. Eventually, she decided to steam the broccoli and serve it on the side, bringing out two frozen salmon fillets to make en papillote, along with some fresh baguette bread she’d bought in the bakery next to the hospital.

Although Val’s parents had been French, she and her sister had grown up in London, only moving back to France in Val’s early teens, when her father had retired. And though not everything about the move had been easy—and Val still remembered what it felt like to be uprooted from everything she’d known—Val had soon fallen in love with many things about her adoptive country, starting with the bread. Even now, a dozen years later, French baguettes—crusty on the outside but always tender and airy inside—still seemed like the biggest luxury to her.

As she cooked, Val felt herself start to relax. She might be completely inadequate as a guardian, particularly when compared to Camille, who’d been devoted to Ren from the minute she learned she was pregnant, even when her boyfriend had disappeared from the picture, but Val was damn well going to do her best, and it was going to start with a nice, warm meal.

While the salmon cooked, Val piled all of Ren’s textbooks and notebooks on one corner of the dining table. They were going to need a bigger table, eventually.

“Ren?” she said, rapping gently on the teenager’s door, which used to be Val’s home office. “Dinner’s ready.”

Silence met her words, and Val wondered what she should do. She didn’t want to go in without permission, but she couldn’t very well not do anything. Ren had to at least eat some dinner.

Finally, the door opened. Ren’s eyes were red and swollen, but dry. Val’s heart broke into little pieces. She looked less like the teenager she was, and more like a little girl who’d only stopped crying because she’d run out of tears.

“Come here, sweetheart,” Val said, taking a step forward to wrap Ren in her arms. Even though they were nearly the same height, Val hoped she could still make the girl feel safe.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Val,” Ren whispered. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m not careless. I just felt I could trust him, okay?”

It was hard to argue with Ren when Val herself had felt the exact same thing, when her initial concern at finding a huge man standing there with Ren had slowly melted away and she’d felt, with that sixth sense that women build up over time, that her new neighbor didn’t pose a risk to them.

Val recalled also how he held himself—the way he’d kept his hands in plain sight at all time, taking several steps back to make sure they didn’t feel threatened. And that was before she’d seen his eyes, the color of light granite and shining with concern.

Beau.

She turned the name around in her mind for an instant, matching it to his face, too rugged to be handsome, but still hinting at something warm behind the cold facade, that she wouldn’t mind seeing more of.

Or maybe it was just his body she wouldn’t mind seeing more of—that thick, broad chest, those powerful arms, all that raw power bundled together.

She sighed, determined to put him out of her mind once and for all. Her new neighbor might not pose a threat to her or Ren, but she couldn’t afford to have her heart go pitter-patter over a man now, not when she had so many other things to worry about.

She held on tight to the girl for an instant longer—centering herself. This—right here—was where she needed to be.

“Come, Ren. Let’s go have some dinner.”

5

Beau

"What did I say to you the last time we spoke, Beau?”

Beau barked out a laugh. He and Marie had known each other for a long time. Only she could make him laugh while he lay here, waiting for the blood they’d extracted from his arm to be centrifuged so that the platelet-rich plasma could be injected into his knee. It was an experimental technique being used to treat osteoarthritis, a condition Beau had developed through impact sports, joint injuries, and just damn poor luck.