All I Want Read online

  Henry, much gentler than she, simply pulled her in for a cold, icy hug that had Amory laughing out loud and tackling them both to the snow.

  “Make snow angels!” Amory yelled, commanding everyone around her. “Henry, make one for your nana who’s sitting on a cloud watching us!”

  “Henry’s aunt died a few months back,” Parker explained to Zoe. “She was his caregiver.”

  “Who watches after him now?” Zoe asked.

  “He has no other family.”

  “No one? He’s got no one?” Zoe asked, clearly dismayed by this. “Who helps him if he needs it?”

  “He’s hanging in there,” Parker said. “He got his GED and is thinking about taking some night classes at the local community college.”

  Zoe turned from the sight of Henry and Amory making snow angels and laughing like children and stared up at Parker. “It’s you,” she said softly. “He has you. You’ve been looking after him, haven’t you?”

  Parker lifted a shoulder. So he had a soft spot for the kid and helped out monetarily, making sure he was okay in the home he shared with other disabled adults and that he had food and everything he needed. “He’s a good guy. And he’s good to Amory. He makes sure she’s got what she needs and I do the same for him. It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s a very big deal,” Zoe said softly. “You love someone, you take care of them. You don’t walk away and move on. You keep in touch. You let them know that even though maybe you can’t be with them, they’re on your mind. It’s called caring, Parker, and whether you want to admit it or not, you know how to do it, and in fact you do it better than most.”

  He inhaled a deep breath. “Zoe—”

  “No,” she said. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t need to hear it again.” She looked at him for a long time, her eyes shining with emotion that wasn’t all that hard to read and made his heart squeeze painfully.

  She had no idea what he was going to say; she couldn’t. Because he didn’t know, either. Still, intending to try, he opened his mouth—

  And a snowball hit him right in the face.

  Amory grinned wide. “Parker and Zoe standing in the snow,” she said in a singsong voice. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G . . .”

  Parker crouched down to make his own arsenal while above him he heard Zoe say, “I’m not his girlfriend.”

  For the third time.

  Not that he was keeping track or anything. Hoisting two huge snowballs, he threw one at Amory as she squealed and tried to outrun it—she couldn’t—and then used his second snowball to nail Zoe.

  It was the last thing he did before being jumped by both of them and tackled down to the ground, where he got snow in places that no one should get snow.

  They landed in Sunshine fairly late. The plan was to keep Amory and Henry until the morning, when Parker would drive them to the Coeur d’Alene airport and put them on a plane home.

  When they all walked into the reception hangar, Parker saw Kel standing at the front desk looking tense. He had another officer with him. Both locked eyes on Parker.

  Parker slowed and pulled Amory aside. “Remember when you told me you called Mom and Dad?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Amory was a lot of things, and guileless was one of them. She didn’t have a poker face and she couldn’t lie worth shit. She just didn’t have the conscience for it.

  Which was why he knew he’d been had; it was all over her face. “You didn’t call them, did you?”

  “I did,” she said, and then her face crumpled with guilt. “Just not today.”

  “What’s wrong?” Zoe asked quietly, eyes on Kel.

  “I don’t know.” Parker ruffled his sister’s hair. “Stay here, Am, with Zoe and Henry.” And then he walked toward Kel.

  Kel came forward to meet him. “Hey, turns out you were right about Carver going back to the scene of the crime. Only it wasn’t Carver himself. He’d sent back two of his militia to see if the coast was clear and we nabbed them. They squealed like good little pigs and gave up the rest of the militia’s scattered whereabouts and we found Carver with two of them holed up.”

  Parker let out a relieved breath. “Damn. They got him.”

  “You got him,” Kel said.

  Parker knew his agency wouldn’t see it that way, but he was still more relieved than anything else because with Carver locked up, Zoe would truly be safe.

  “I’ve got something you might be interested in,” Kel said.

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “A job. The way you handled yourself with Carver got around, your under-the-radar investigative skills, how you dealt with him here, which could’ve ended so badly. My buddy at the ATF says if your agency’s stupid enough to let you go over what happened, they want you. They have a supervisory position open in the county office about forty-five minutes from here.” He glanced over Parker’s shoulder at Zoe and then met Parker’s gaze again. “Something to think about if you were feeling the urge to stick around,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake Parker’s.

  “No!” Amory yelled, and suddenly she was standing in front of Parker, arms spread wide, blocking him off from Kel. “You can’t take my brother, I won’t let you!”

  Kel was tall, so tall he had to bend down to look into Amory’s panicked eyes. “You’re his sister, right? I’m a friend of your brother’s. Where do you think I’m taking him?”

  “Jail!” she wailed.

  “I’m not taking him to jail,” Kel said. “I’m not taking him anywhere.”

  Amory blinked. “You’re not?”

  “Nope.”

  “Pinkie-promise?” she asked.

  Kel solemnly held out his pinky finger.

  Just as solemnly Amory shook it with hers.

  Then Kel’s gaze met Parker’s over her head. “Think about it,” he said. He looked at Zoe then and smiled, and then he walked away.

  Parker looked at Zoe and realized she’d either heard what had happened or figured it out because her eyes were warm and relieved and . . . shit. Full of pride. For him, which he wasn’t sure he deserved. He gave her a smile and then turned Amory around to face him.

  Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry I lied,” she said. “But Mom and Dad would’ve made me come right home and I wanted to see the snow, Parker! They don’t understand that you want me to have adventures.”

  “Amory,” he said softly. “The adventures are for you, not me. You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to, especially with me.”

  “But I love it when you’re happy,” she whispered.

  Chest tight, he found a smile. “Same goes.”

  “I know they think you’re an influence on me, but they’re wrong, Parker. You’re not an influence at all, and even if you were, you’re my favorite influence.”

  And then she flung herself into his arms and sobbed.

  He sighed. “Amory, do you know what influence means?”

  “No, and I don’t care,” she sobbed into his shirt.

  He stroked her back. “It’s when someone has a special advantage over you and has the ability to change your mind on something.”

  She stopped crying and stared up at him. “Oh,” she breathed, swallowing hard. “Then they’re right. You are an influence on me, Parker!”

  “And you’re one on me,” he said. “And because you are, I know you. I know you pretty well.” He tweaked her hair. “I called Mom and Dad, Amory.”

  She blinked slow as an owl as she absorbed this. “So you’re not in trouble?”

  “Not any more than usual,” he said.

  She winced with guilt all over her face. “I didn’t mean to mess anything up. I just wanted—”

  “What?” he asked.

  “To make you see me as . . . normal.”

  “Normal is overrated,” he said. “You’re perfect just the way you are. I just don’t want you to be limited, or accept the path that others put you on. I want you to live the life you deserve.”

  “I know.