Harper Allen - Protector With A Past

She’d known who they were and what they wanted. They wanted her to remember, but remembering would be fatal. Keeping her gaze fixed on the bottle in the exact middle of her kitchen table, she had fought two battles that night—one against a false ally and one against enemies who had never meant her any harm.

When morning had come, a thin gray light edging the far side of the lake, she’d still been sitting there but the bottle was unopened.

And all the ghosts except one had faded away.

He was with her now. He’d always be with her, she thought wearily. It had been his name that she’d screamed out in her nightmare, him that she’d been calling for, and it was his ghost that she’d never been strong enough to push away completely. Sometimes she thought that if she whirled around as fast as she could, she’d catch him standing behind her, that straight black hair falling into one dark eye the way it used to, that wryly devastating smile hitching up the corner of his mouth. Sometimes just before she fell asleep she was sure she could almost hear his voice—husky and incongruously soft for such a big man, as if he’d never found a need to raise it—calling her name.

Those nights were the worst.

The percolator began to rattle and looking over at the stove, Julia saw coffee splashing up like a miniature fountain inside the glass knob of the lid. She slid the pot off the element. He was gone. She had made sure of that herself, had left him no reason to stay with her. It had been deliberate on her part, and it had worked. He was gone, and she knew that after their last confrontation he would never come back. He was probably married by now, she thought, pouring coffee into an ironware mug. She closed her eyes and took a sip. He’d been the marrying kind. He’d wanted a family of his own.

The coffee that had been boiling only seconds ago flooded her mouth with scalding heat, and she put the mug down hastily, feeling the prickle of tears behind her eyelids in reaction. He’d be married, and his wife would be strong and uncomplicated, able to take whatever life threw at her without flinching. Julia wondered what she would look like. He’d moved to California the last she’d heard, and she imagined his wife to be tall and blond and lightly tanned, with smooth tennis player’s muscles in her arms and the clear blue eyes of someone who’d grown up beside the Pacific. He wouldn’t have chosen anyone who bore the slightest resemblance to the woman who’d ripped his world apart, so she definitely wouldn’t be fragile-looking and brown-haired, with shadowed hazel eyes. Her mouth wouldn’t look a little too wide for her face, and she’d probably be able to wear a low-cut dress without feeling like her collarbones were the most prominent feature exposed.

By the door King got slowly to his feet, his ears pricked forward alertly, but Julia was lost in thought.

They’d have children. It felt as if she’d taken a dull knife and twisted it in her heart, but she forced herself to go on. They’d have the children she’d vowed she’d never have herself, and whatever their mother looked like, the children would be smaller versions of him. Somewhere on the other side of the continent the Seneca heritage that had manifested itself so strongly in him would give his offspring high cheekbones and eyes so brown they almost looked black. His children would be beautiful.

They could have been hers.

She could hear the wind sifting through the topmost branches of the maples that surrounded the house, and somewhere in the woods an owl must have fallen from the blackness onto its prey, because the silence of the night was split with a faraway, high-pitched cry that was choked off abruptly. She flinched. Then she set her shoulders with fatigued determination. It was still well before dawn, but suddenly she knew she couldn’t stay inside a moment longer. Tonight had been one of the bad ones. She was edging perilously close to the abyss, and it had taken her too long to climb out the last time to risk falling in again.

She picked up the bottle briskly and started to put it back in the cupboard. Behind her, King whined strangely, and his nails scrabbled at the screen door in excitement.

“In a minute, boy.” She glanced over her shoulder and saw the figure standing on the other side of the screen.

It was just as she’d always thought—if she turned around fast enough he’d be there, watching her. But in her imagination he’d always been alone.

He was holding a small child to his chest. Tiny arms were twined around his neck in a desperate grip. He wasn’t smiling and he looked as if he hadn’t slept for days, and Julia knew with icy certainty that he wasn’t a hallucination.

He was real. He’d come back. He’d brought a child with him.

The bottle fell from her nerveless fingers and smashed into pieces on the kitchen floor.

“What are you doing here?”

Her whisper was cracked and harsh. The sharp fumes of the whiskey overpowered the smell of coffee in the kitchen, but she hardly noticed. King pressed his nose against the screen and wagged his tail furiously.

“He remembers me. Let me in, Julia.”

His words were spoken softly, and he made no move to un-latch the screen door and walk in uninvited. She didn’t have to do it, she thought swiftly, meeting his gaze. If she told him to leave, he would. She knew that, because the two of them had lived through a scene similar to this before, and when Cord had realized that she’d meant what she said, he’d turned around and walked out of her life.

But this time he had a child with him. And even though he couldn’t have known that was the worst thing he could do to her, after that first quick glance she couldn’t bring herself to look at the tiny figure in his arms.

“I know you never wanted to see me again. But what either of us wants doesn’t matter a damn right now.”

Against all her expectations, he shifted the child gently and used his free hand to open the screen door. He stepped inside, and those strong brown fingers that she remembered so well dropped briefly to the top of King’s head. The dog grinned up at him, his tail wagging with pleasure.

“Whose—whose child is she?”

She forced the question out from between lips that felt as if they’d been frozen. Without waiting for his answer she reached under the sink for the small dustpan and whisk broom she kept there for emergencies, and avoiding his eyes, she started sweeping the shards of glass up. The whiskey was an amber pool that spread halfway across the kitchen floor, and the smell was so pungent that she felt as if she was going to throw up.

“Get her out of here, Cord. There’s nothing I can do for her, so just turn around and take her away. You never should have brought her here.”

Her head bent over her task, her words came out in a wrenching undertone and her vision blurred suddenly. The next moment she felt a slicing pain and through the sheen of tears she saw the blood already welling up from the ball of her thumb.

“I can’t do that. She’s mine.”

Above her, his low voice delivered the information that she hadn’t wanted to hear, had never wanted to know, and suddenly the pain in her hand was nothing. Julia felt as though the ground underneath her was slipping away, letting her slide back into the void that she’d so recently escaped, but this time she knew she’d never be able to climb out again.

It was true, then. He’d made a child with someone else, started a family that belonged to him and some unknown woman. She’d wanted him to do that. She’d wanted to be part of his past, to be left alone by him, but his confirmation of what she’d previously only guessed at was too much to bear.

Oblivious to the slow crimson drops that were falling from her hand and turning to bright umber as they hit the spilled liquor, she raised her head and looked at him.

“Where’s her mother?”

One corner of Cord’s mouth hitched up in that wry half smile that she had never quite forgotten, but the obsidian eyes held no hint of humor. “I said she was my child, Julia.” He tightened his grasp on the silent little body. “I should have said she was ours.”

“You’re bleeding.” His glance moved past her white, stricken face to the gash on her thumb, and his instant concern overrode whatever he’d been about to say. “Let me get her to a bed and I’ll help you. Is Davey’s—is the spare room made up?”

He took her silence for affirmation and strode down the hall, the child still motionless, her head tucked into the curve of his neck, a silky-fine swath of red hair mingling against the midnight-black of his. The heart-shaped little face was pale with what could have been exhaustion, but the blue eyes peering over Cord’s shoulder were open wide and staring at nothing. It wasn’t exhaustion, Julia thought suddenly. She’d seen that fixed, unfocused gaze often enough to recognize it, even after all this time. Something had happened to this child—something that had caused her to retreat temporarily to a secret place deep inside herself where no one could reach her.

She pushed the thought aside almost fearfully as she saw them disappear into Davey’s bedroom. She was already letting herself get involved, and that could be disastrous. For the child’s sake, she had to keep her distance.

Getting stiffly to her feet and moving to the sink, she heard him talking quietly in the bedroom, but if he was getting any answer from his small companion the child’s voice was too soft to carry as far as the kitchen. King’s ears pricked up with interest, and he trotted down the hall to the bedroom at the snicking sound that meant Cord had unlatched the window to get some air into the stuffy room. He knew this house as well as she did, she thought. He’d been in and out of here since they’d both been children themselves.

What the hell had he meant?

They’d never had children together—never would, now. She turned the cold tap on, holding her hand beneath the icy water and watching the crimson sluice away down the drain. When the bleeding slowed, she one-handedly reached for a clean dish towel and wrapped it around her thumb before bending again to pick up the dustpan.

“Let me finish that.” He came into the kitchen, King at his heels. His movements were deft and economical, and within a minute all traces of the glass had been disposed of and the floor was almost dry. He stood at the sink, wringing out the rag he’d mopped the liquor up with, and Julia stood by silently, feeling the tension build inside her.

Whatever his reasons for coming here and whoever the little girl was, they couldn’t stay. She had to make him see that. She had no idea why he’d said what he had about the child belonging to the two of them and she didn’t even want to know. That part of her life was over.

Everything she’d once been had burned away in a single searing moment two years ago. Only through the grace of God had her self-destruction narrowly missed destroying an innocent victim.

She couldn’t let him know that, but she wouldn’t let them stay.

For a split second Julia saw again the heart-shaped little face with the blue, doll-like gaze. She thrust the image away from her.

“Whatever you want from me, the answer is no. I’m not responsible for that child, Cord, no matter what cryptic comments you choose to make. You’ll have to go when she’s had some rest.”

She felt the shaking start and she turned away from him, willing her body not to betray her. The muscles in her arms tensed as she hugged herself tightly, the dish towel still wrapped around her hand. Slowly the tremors subsided.