The Cop Next Door (Silhouette Intimate Moments Series #1181) by Jenna Mills

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The Cop Next Door

Harlequin Enterprises Limited

Chapter One

The slurred words stabbed through Victoria LaFleur like a cold knife. She quit shuffling through the file in her lap and looked at her father seated next to her on the old sofa. Agitation flashed in his glassy eyes, a distorted urgency that warned his mind was wandering again.

A chill cut through her, much like the Arctic wind whipping through the trees surrounding the hospice. Not even the heat from the furnace warmed her. Claude LaFleur looked as he always had, tall and broad, the kind of father little girls knew could slay dragons. But Tori knew looks could be deceiving. That big body of her father's concealed a heartbreaking secret, an illness that chipped away at the core of the man he'd been.

"I asked about a house, Papa. A house in Louisiana, a town called Bon Terre." Hoping to jog his memory, she handed him the faded black-and-white photo she'd found in his safety deposit box. With his health failing, she'd taken over his power of attorney, expecting routine paperwork. Instead, she found remnants of a life about which she knew nothing.

"That's you, isn't it?" In the picture, a smiling man and woman held a child in front of a rambling old house. "And Mama?" Which meant the little girl with the blond pigtails and dancing eyeshad to be Tori.

Her father dropped the picture as though the paper had burned his fingers.

"Papa?"

He lifted his gaze to hers, revealing tired blue eyes awash in pain and memories. Tears. "... bad place ... killed her."

"Who, Papa?" she asked, reaching for his cool hands. They were still big and strong, despite the dementia that muddled his mind. Life could be so cruel. "Who killed whom?"

"Corinne."

Tori stiffened. "Mama?" she asked. "Is this where the fire happened?"

"So beautiful ..." Her gaze cut to the tattered picture in her lap. Corinne LaFleur smiled up at her, light and energy frozen forever in that one moment in time. Losing her had devastated Tori's father. He'd never remarried, rarely dated. He had said his heart only had room for Corinne, even if an accident had stolen her from his life a quarter of a century before.

Even now the loss brought an ache to Tori's chest. She had no concrete memories of her mother, only hazy impressions. Love and comfort, security and warmth. Laughter. But that was all. Her father rarely spoke of his wife - all pictures had been destroyed in the fire that shattered their family, leaving a grief-stricken Claude to be both mother and father to his four-year-old little girl.

Now, seeing this glimpse of her parents together, Tori thought she understood why her father kept the one surviving photo locked away. From the tilted eyes to the pale hair, the wide mouth, Tori was a dead ringer for her mother.

"Stubborn," her father muttered. "Like you. Wouldn't listen."

Tori looked up and caught his gaze. She understood why he'd hidden the picture, but the other contents of the box confused her. The deed. The marriage certificate. The unfamiliar name scrawled boldly across both.

A chill seeped deep into her bones. "Who's Russell Bishop?"

"Dead and buried," he muttered. "Can't be resurrected."

"Papa, please," she implored. "Why is Russell Bishop's name with Mama's on the deed to the house? Why is his name next to hers on the marriage certificate?"

For the first time in six months her father's eyes sharpened. "Leave it alone, Victoria."

She sat back on the old floral sofa, startled by the strength of his words. She didn't want to agitate him, but she couldn't do as he asked. She couldn't leave it alone, not when every instinct screamed that she'd stumbled across something important.

What was her father keeping from her? Why had he never mentioned a home in south Louisiana? Who was Russell Bishop, and what was his relationship to Claude LaFleur? Were they one and the same? Had her father changed his name? Assumed a new identity? And most important, why?

Fighting a chill, Tori glanced toward the window. Outside the hospice, snow drifted through the naked branches of the trees, as white as her father's once-dark hair. She looked back and found him rocking, and her throat tightened. She wouldn't cry. Not in front of him. That's not how he'd raised her.

"Papa," she said, trying again. "Tell me about the house in Louisiana. Was that where you and Mama lived?"

He kept rocking. "Killed her. Her and Montague."

Montague? "Are you talking about the fire, Papa?"

"Couldn't stay. Couldn't let them take you from me."

"Who, Papa? Who was going to take me?"

But the moment of lucidity passed as quickly as it came. "... never go back," he said over and over. "Never go back."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Cop Next Door by Jenna Mills Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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