Page 2 of To Hold and Protect

“I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.” She stood and held out her hand. “I’m Willow Landry.”

Landry? A relative of Bob’s then. Although he was irritated with her because she was a stranger and how could he know whether she’d let something happen to his daughter, he couldn’t bring himself to be rude and ignore her outstretched hand.

Free spiritwas his impression as he took in the straw hat, flowery dress, and cowboy boots. Long, curly, strawberry blond hair, green eyes, a splash of freckles across her nose, and...well, she was striking. Not that she was his type. He inwardly snorted. Like he even had a type anymore. He hadn’t since bringing his baby girl home from France.

He put his hand around Willow’s. His first thought was how small and soft hers was, his second washere she is, and a weird charge raced up his arm.What the hell?He snatched his hand away.

“Parker Church,” he managed to say. “Gotta go.”

“Nice meeting you,” she called after him.

He waved his hand over his shoulder, refusing to look at her again, and reminded himself that she drove a bright yellow VW Bug. He could not be interested in a woman who drove a bright yellow anything, no matter how cute those freckles dotting her nose were.

Since he had a few hours until his family was getting together for a cookout, Parker left Everly under the watchful eye of her manny and closed himself inside his studio to paint. The studio was the first thing he’d spent money on when he’d sold enough paintings. He’d built it behind the house of horrors he’d grown up in. Now it was a house filled with love that he and his brothers had made their own.

Only his family and a few Marsville citizens knew he was the artist known as Park C. His dream as a boy had been to make enough money from his art to take care of his two older brothers. Well, he’d accomplished that beyond his wildest dreams. Not that Tristan and Kade didn’t contribute their fair share, but yeah...his wildest dreams meant his bank account had surpassed anything he could have ever imagined.

The surprise was that he’d also ended up a fire chief, making him the firefighter who painted. That amused him. After returning home from Paris, he’d signed on as a volunteer firefighter. The volunteer position became a paid one, and when the previous fire chief had retired last year, no one else had wanted the job.

At the time, one of his brothers was the police chief and the other was a Delta Force operator, so he’d decided he, too, should do his part to make the world a safer place. There might have also been a competitive impulse involved in that decision.

It was an odd combination of jobs, but that suited him. He knew himself, and if he did nothing but paint all day and into the night, he’d lose himself in what he thought of as his painting fog. He’d forget to eat, bathe, forget he had a daughter, brothers, forget that a world existed outside his studio. Having to go to the firehouse each day saved him from that. Strangely enough, his firefighter job turned out to be good for his art, too. Time away from his studio gave his creative mind time to rest and reenergize.

But the last thing he needed was an arsonist on the loose. He had a show in New York in a little over two months, and he still had five more pieces to paint. Although he was a fast painter, able to finish a canvas in a week between his time at the fire station and his daddy duties, he couldn’t finish the final painting at the last minute since he needed to give it at least a week to dry and time to ship the canvases to New York.

Before he lost himself in a new piece, he went to Everly’s space in the studio to see what she was painting. Even at five, his daughter was proving to be quite the little artist. She had more talent than he’d had at her age. Her favorite subjects were animals, and they had plenty of those for her inspiration. Her cat, Jellybean, was her favorite, and his brother Kade’s dog came in second, probably because Duke was a clown. But Ember and Tristan’s police dog, Fuzz, had their fair share of canvases.

She had an eye for the absurd, and her paintings always brought a smile to his face. In her current work, Jellybean was in attack mode, his rear in the air, his ears pinned back, and his eyes slitted as he prepared to attack Duke. She’d painted Duke with hearts hovering above his head and cartoon hearts in his eyes as he stared back at his favorite cat. She’d perfectly captured the relationship between the dog and cat. Duke loved Jellybean, and Jellybean lived to torture Duke.

As he did with each of her paintings, he added a tiny ladybug that she’d have to find. Once that was done, he returned to his easel. He’d already stretched the canvas and primed it so it would be ready for him to paint tonight.

He never knew what he was going to paint before he started. Sometimes it might be something he’d recently seen, and other times he had no idea where a piece came from. He never painted from a photo. He’d tried to once, a sunset he’d taken a picture of, and when he finished, he likened his effort to paint by numbers. For whatever reason, his art had to come straight from his imagination, and he often didn’t realize exactly what he’d painted until he stepped back and looked at it.

After connecting his phone to the speakers, he selected one of his playlists, and with music blaring, he painted. When he came out of his creative fugue, he stepped back.

Standing in a field of cheerful sunflowers and wearing a flowery dress, cowboy boots, and a straw hat, a woman with strawberry blond hair, green eyes, and a splash of freckles across her nose smiled back at him.

“Well, hell.”

Chapter Two

“Rude,” Willow muttered as the black car backed out of her driveway, its powerful engine rumbling. The man’s little girl was adorable, though.

Too bad he was grumpy because he sure was easy on the eyes. Most men looked silly with a ponytail—in her opinion anyway—but those few who could pull it off...well, it was sexy. And Parker Church definitely pulled off a ponytail. If she was honest with herself, the man checked off most of her boxes.

Tall. Check. Broad shoulders but not too big. Check. Narrow waist and lean hips. Check. Muscled but not too muscly. Check. Chocolate brown eyes and just the right amount of scruff on his face. Check. He did not get a check for being pleasant to be around, so that was something to keep him from being perfect.

He’d really be grouchy if he knew how much she’d learned about him from his chatty daughter. Everly had been a font of information. He was a famous artist—well, according to his daughter, but children tended to embellish things, so he’d probably sold a few paintings to friends or at a local arts and crafts festival. He was also a fireman, which supported her theory that he wasn’t famous. Why would a famous artist be a fireman?

Everly had shared that she didn’t have a mommy but wanted one, so he wasn’t married. “My two uncles have girlfriends, and I’m going to be the flower girl when they get married,” she’d said. “If my daddy had a girlfriend and they got married, I’d have a mommy,” the sly girl had said, looking at her with innocence in her eyes that Willow didn’t believe for a minute.

Willow smiled, wondering what the grouchy man would have to say about his daughter playing matchmaker. He’d probably need his mouth washed out with soap. As much as her new little friend wanted a mommy and seemed to be considering Willow for the job, Willow was off men for a while.Thank you for that, Brady. She’d take the little girl but not the father.

It was too bad Everly wouldn’t be allowed to come over for visits. Not only had she enjoyed talking to the girl but spending time around children was beneficial to her job.

Speaking of said job, she needed to get to work if she was going to meet her deadline. She went inside to eat dinner before she lost herself in the story.

The house had been willed to her by an uncle she hadn’t seen in years—her father’s brother, and a man her father despised. The call from her uncle’s lawyer had been a surprise and had come a few days after she’d ended a two-year relationship. Since Brady—the rat bastard cheater—owned the Cincinnati condo they lived in, she’d suddenly found herself homeless.

---