Harper Allen - Protector With A Past

“She’s nowhere around the house and I checked the woods as far back as the fence line.” Cord melted out of the grayness, King—the present King, not the long-gone one from her childhood, Julia thought with a moment of shaky confusion—at his heels. There was just enough light now to make out the tortured expression on his features and the straight, grim line of his mouth, and she put her hand lightly on his arm. Her fingers were still trembling, and her voice was unsteady.

“She’s in the old boathouse.”

The hope that flared in his eyes was instantly tempered with apprehension, and she forestalled his reply. “I know. She couldn’t have picked a more dangerous place—I’ve been meaning to have it pulled down since I came back here. You’re going to have to let me go in alone, Cord. I’m lighter than you are and those rotten floorboards might take my weight long enough for me to get her out of there.”

“No. I’ll go.” His tone brooked no argument, and her hand tightened on his arm.

“She was running from me, Cord! If you bring her back she’ll only try again. Don’t you see—she has to know that I came for her. She has to know that I want her enough so that I’ll never stop looking for her until I find her, and that just won’t happen if you deliver her to me like a package. She already trusts you—now I have to prove to her that she can trust me.” She hesitated, and then added in an undertone, “Besides, I’m her guardian. She’s my responsibility, too.”

She was using his own words against him, but she felt no compunction. She couldn’t wipe out the mistake that had ended her career—the mistake that no one knew about but herself and a dead man—but she could try to bridge the chasm she’d so unthinkingly created between herself and the child she’d vowed to protect.

She owed it to the best friends she’d ever had. Sheila and Paul had put their trust in her, and she’d let them down. She wanted the chance to make things right again, and her desperation must have shown in her eyes.

“I should know better than to try to talk you out of something you really want.” Cord glanced at the dark shape of the old boathouse with resignation. “It didn’t work when you were Lizbet’s age, it didn’t work when you were sixteen and wanted to ride my motorcycle, and it’s not going to work now, is it? But be careful. I’ll be standing right outside, so if you think the damned thing’s going to go, call out to me.”

He turned to the path that led to the boathouse and then paused. Swiftly he pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth. Just as swiftly he released her, his expression unreadable. “Twenty-three months, four days and two hours,” he said tersely. “You were my addiction.”

He held her shocked gaze for the space of a heartbeat and then gave her an ironic half smile. “Walking out of your life was the one thing I never should have let you talk me into. I’m not going to let you do it a second time.”

He lightly traced the corner of her mouth, still soft from his kiss. Then he turned and set off quickly down the path. After a startled moment she ran after him, her thoughts a chaotic whirl.

He hadn’t changed at all, she thought in frustrated confusion as they hastened to the water’s edge and the rickety building that ran alongside the dock. He’d always had more confidence in her than she’d had in herself, always seen her as strong and capable and supremely in control of any situation. Tonight had been the first time a crack had appeared in his golden-girl image of her, but already he seemed to have forgotten the messy vulnerability she’d displayed in front of him.

After she’d sent him away it had taken long enough for her to reach some kind of equilibrium in her emotional existence, as sterile and empty as that existence had been. How was she supposed to cope if he came back into her life again?

The door of the boathouse was slightly ajar, and Cord carefully pulled it open wide, wincing as it creaked on its rusted hinges. Shutting her mind to what had just happened between them with an effort, Julia narrowed her gaze and looked past him into the darkness, but it was almost impossible to see anything inside. She knew that the floor ran around the perimeter of the building and in the middle was the long-disused boat slip—in actual fact, a large square opening in the floor to the lake below. She could just make out the oily ripple of water where the floor abruptly ended, but there hadn’t been boats kept there for years.

Lizbet was in there somewhere, behind the clutter of boxes and old tarpaulins and rusty motor parts. Despite any other doubts she might have, Julia knew she hadn’t been wrong about that. The child was here and she was still in danger. As if to underline her apprehension, the wind from the lake outside freshened as it always did just before dawn, and the timbers creaked ominously. The structure was in worse repair than she’d realized, she thought in alarm.

As Cord held the whining King back and followed her with a worried gaze, Julia stepped nervously into the darkness and started edging her way toward the back of the boathouse.

With her first step she felt the sponginess of rot underfoot, the unexpected give where there should have been solidity. Through the flimsy soles of her scuffs she felt the pebble-like pressure of a nailhead that had risen higher than the floorboard it originally had been meant to secure. She gingerly put her full weight onto her leg and held her breath. The floor sagged, but didn’t break.

There was a rustling sound by the far wall, on the other side of the dully gleaming rectangle in the middle of the boathouse, and then a muffled splash as something slipped into the water. Julia tried to control her shudder, but she couldn’t prevent the unpleasant prickling sensation that lifted the skin at the back of her neck. Water rats. It was bad enough knowing that they were scurrying around her in the dark, but feeling something bump against her underwater would send her right over the edge of panic. She only hoped that Lizbet didn’t know what those scuffling noises meant.

She was halfway to the pile of boxes now, and she paused. Keeping her voice low, she spoke into the darkness, praying that her presence wouldn’t frighten the little girl into any sudden movement.

“It’s me, Lizbet—your Aunt Julia. Uncle Cord’s waiting outside for us.”

She slid her foot carefully a few inches forward and felt the sickening emptiness of a missing section of floor. Sweat beaded like ice water on her forehead as she realized that Lizbet must have come this way herself only a short time before. That the child had made it safely to her dangerous refuge had been nothing short of a miracle, Julia thought shakily. She felt for a more secure footing and edged closer.

“I don’t blame you for running away, and no one’s going to make you come back if you’re not ready to. But I’ve got something important to tell you. I want you to know I’m really, really sorry for making you feel sad back at the house.”

She’d reached the pile of crates. Listening intently, she thought she could hear the soft sound of an indrawn breath behind one of them. The floor where she was standing felt more solid than the surrounding area, and she cautiously lowered herself to her knees. It was frightening enough here in the unfamiliar dark. The child whose trust she was trying to win didn’t need a disembodied voice floating down at her from on high.

“Do you know what a good luck charm is, Lizbet? It’s like a rabbit’s foot or maybe a shiny penny that you keep in your pocket for luck.” She saw a gleam of white sneaker edging from behind the crate, but she went on with careful casualness. “But there are bad luck charms, too—and that’s what I thought I was for you. I thought if you stayed with me I would bring you bad luck, Lizbet. Thinking that that made me so afraid that I thought you’d be safer somewhere else.”

Slowly a tiny, heart-shaped face peered out from the pile of boxes. In the gloom, Lizbet’s eyes were wide and solemn. She looked ready to dart back into her makeshift sanctuary at any sudden movement.

“Except then I remembered something that I had when I was your age—a good luck charm so strong that I figure it can cancel out any bad luck that I might bring.”

Slowly she reached into the pocket of the chenille robe and felt the smooth, perfect roundness of the stone that Cord had given her so long ago. Once it had been a talisman for a scared, confused little girl. It was time its protective magic was put back to use. Julia drew the stone out of her pocket and held it in her open palm.

“Take it. It’s yours now.”

A small hand reached out toward hers and touched the cool stone with minute fingertips. The next moment Lizbet’s fingers closed around the rock and whisked it to the safety of her own jeans’ pocket. Julia let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“I’m kind of hungry—how about you? If you want, we can go up to the house and I bet I can get Uncle Cord to make us both some of his famous buttermilk pancakes. He’s a way better cook than I am.”

It was going to be a long time before she’d be able to coax a giggle out of that serious little mouth, Julia told herself. Right now it was enough to see the pinched, white look replaced for a split second by the tentative flicker of a smile. She held out her hand, feeling somehow as if she was facing the biggest and most important test of her whole life.

“It’s pretty dark in here. I’m going to need you to hold on tight to keep me from falling into the lake.”

Through the cracks in the boathouse walls came a thin shaft of dawn light, enough so that she could see the heart-shaped face looking at her doubtfully. Then the two silky wings of red hair swung forward as Lizbet nodded silently. The little hand was cold as it slipped into hers and gripped tightly.

“Your mom was my best friend, honey.”

Julia’s whisper was uneven. Somewhere deep inside her she felt a painfully sweet sensation, as if a patch of ground that had been parched for too long had suddenly been split by the slender green shoot of a seedling. Despite the tears that prickled behind her lashes, she kept her eyes on Lizbet’s hesitant blue gaze, but when she spoke again her words were so soft she almost could have been talking to herself.

“I think she’d like it that we’re finally getting to know each other.”

He’d gotten about as much sleep as she had, Julia thought distractedly the next morning—a couple of hours, maybe less—but at least she’d done her tossing and turning in her own bed. The obviously weary man in front of her had wrapped himself up in an old quilt, pulled one of the ancient overstuffed armchairs from the living room into the hall and had catnapped outside of Davey’s room.

Despite the sun it was early in the season, and although by mid-June the earth itself would have absorbed enough warmth to dispel the last cold dampness of spring, right now the breeze blowing off the lake still held more than a hint of its northern origins, and the distinct green scent of the nearby pines sharpened the atmosphere like tiny slivers of ice. The trees on the property—the hickories, maples and the massive old oak that shaded the house in the summer—had leafed out, but their foliage hadn’t thickened to the dense canopy that it would create in a few more weeks. Through the tangle of branches above, the sky looked like well-bleached denim. Julia stopped by a grove of tamaracks that had once provided an almost Oriental background to a long-vanished rock garden.