Once a Hero. Lisa Childs

school in the morning.” She pulled the covers up to the boy’s chin and kissed his forehead. With his dark hair and those eyes and delicate features, he looked very much like Erin.

      A pressure shifted in Kent’s chest, releasing some of his resentment toward her. He’d been right—there was much more to Erin Powell than she was willing to reveal.

      She rose from her knees and reached out, grasping Kent’s arm to pull him from the room. He could have resisted her effort to give him the bum’s rush, but he followed, admiring the swing of her narrow hips beneath her cotton pajama bottoms. Instead of a matching top, she wore an old gray sweatshirt.

      She didn’t speak until they’d left the hall and returned to the living room. “You need to leave,” she told him. Although she kept it low, her voice vibrated with anger. “You shouldn’t have come here. You have no right to barge into my home.”

      “You just called me a friend,” he reminded her with a grin.

      Her eyes narrowed with irritation. “I lied.”

      “To your son?” Kent had to know—was the boy hers? With the similarity between them, he had to be.

      “You have no right to interfere in my life,” she protested as she headed straight to the door and opened it. “Where I live, who I live with is none of your business.”

      “You made it mine with every venomous word you wrote about me.” He closed his hand over hers and pressed the door closed. “You’re my business now, Erin, so I’m going to find out everything there is to know about you.”

      She turned toward him, her eyes wide. “You can’t—”

      “I can,” he assured her. “Despite what you think, I’m still a real cop.”

      “Have you forgotten a little thing called freedom of the press?” she asked. “I won’t stop writing about you. You can’t intimidate me.”

      “No, I can’t,” he agreed. “Unless you have something to hide, something you don’t want me to find out.”

      Chapter Four

      “I have nothing to hide,” she lied, her breath catching. She didn’t want him to know anything about her, most especially not about her brother. If Kent knew what she was after, he would cover his tracks even better than he already had. She’d gone over and over all his arrest records and had found nothing to help Mitchell. Yet.

      She tugged her hand free of Kent’s and stepped back, trying to put some distance between them.

      But he moved closer, his shoulders casting a wide shadow in the foyer. “Nothing?” he asked. “The fact that you have a son is nothing?”

      She glanced back at the hall leading to Jason’s bedroom. “I never said he’s my son.”

      “He’s not?”

      She lifted her shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. “I could just be babysitting.” Which she was, until she found proof that Terlecki had framed Mitchell.

      “He looks so much like you that he must be a relative,” Kent said, with such certainty that she lifted a brow.

      “My nephew,” she admitted, although she had grown to think of him as more than that over the past year.

      “And you’re not just babysitting him.”

      She swallowed, her mouth watering from nerves. “You think you know everything,” she scoffed, but she was afraid that he soon would.

      “Not everything,” he said, shaking his head. His hair had completely dried, the strands a pale gold color again. “I know the boy lives with you. He has his own room, and there are toys all over.”

      “Maybe I’m just a really loving aunt.”

      “I don’t doubt that,” he admitted. “I can tell the two of you are very close. Too close for you to be just babysitting. You’re obviously his principal caregiver, or even his guardian. How did that come about?”

      She decided to tell him what she told anyone else nosy enough to push for an answer. “His parents weren’t able to care for him anymore.”

      “What happened?” Kent pressed. “Did they die?”

      “They’re not dead.” Not yet. Although Mitchell had been in prison for four years already, she worried about him being able to survive there much longer. Certainly he wouldn’t last the rest of his ten-year sentence.

      “Then why can’t they care for him anymore?”

      Her heart thumped hard. For a year, with no success, she’d been trying to learn Kent’s secrets. After less than an hour in her home he was entirely too close to learning hers. “That’s none of your business.”

      He shook his head. “We’ve been through this already. You’ve made yourself my business, Erin—” he stepped nearer, his chest bumping her shoulder “—with every article you’ve written attacking me. And now this column of yours—Powell on Patrol…” He snorted in derision.

      “You just can’t take the truth,” she snapped, refusing to allow him to intimidate her. She planted her feet on the hardwood floor so she wouldn’t move back, even though her pulse raced with his nearness.

      His gunmetal-gray eyes narrowed. “No, I think you’re the one who can’t take it.”

      Did he already know the truth? Was it possible that he had talked to her mother?

      “Just because someone wants you to believe something doesn’t make it true,” she insisted, tilting up her chin with defiance and pride.

      “I hope everyone who reads your articles and your new column realizes that.” He lifted his hand and slid his thumb along her jaw. “I’m not the bad guy you want everyone to think I am.”

      Not everyone. Just herself. She wanted to believe he was the bad guy, but his touch, so gentle against her skin, distracted her.

      “You’re flirting with me again,” she said, reminding herself that turning on the charm was probably just another of his tactics.

      “That’s not flirting,” Kent said as he lowered his head, his face nearing hers. “This is flirting….” His mouth touched hers, lips brushing across lips.

      Erin’s heart shifted, then beat hard and fast. She reached out, intending to push him away, but her palms pressed against the hard wall of his chest. His heart was racing as frantically as hers.

      He closed his arms around her, pulling her tight against him, and deepened the kiss.

      Erin’s lips clung to his, returning his passion with a surge of her own. She opened her mouth, and the tip of his tongue slid across her bottom lip. Heat flashed through her body, yet she shivered.

      “Erin…” he murmured, as if uncertain that she was really in his arms.

      What the hell am I doing? Disbelief doused her desire. She shoved her hands forcefully against his chest, pushing him back. “No!”

      “Erin—”

      Remembering her nephew, she lowered her voice and said, “Please, get out….”

      She closed her eyes, shame washing over her. How had she forgotten about Jason? How had she forgotten about Mitchell and what Kent had done to him? Taking him away from his son, from her?

      Kent’s hand, shaking slightly, closed around the doorknob. “Erin—”

      “Just leave….”

      She didn’t open her eyes again until she heard the door close behind him. Tears of guilt blurred her vision, the mahogany door wavering in and out of focus. She lifted a hand to her mouth, intending to wipe away every last trace of his kiss, but her lips still tingled with the sensation of his mouth against hers. She licked her