Harper Allen - Protector With A Past

It had to be less than two years old, because two years ago their life together had come to an abrupt end. Two years ago she’d sent him away, knowing that it was the last acceptable option she had.

He still loved her. He still wanted her. But he’d made some kind of a life for himself that didn’t include her—the proof was right here, under her fingertips.

She still loved him. She would never love anyone the way she loved him. And the only thing of value she had left to give him—the last token of love she could place before him—was his freedom.

“I felt the same way, Cord.” She drew slightly away from him, bringing her hand up to his mouth and tracing the line of his bottom lip. His gaze darkened with desire. “We were fabulous in bed together and you were right—there’s no way I could kiss you without feeling anything. But…”

She hesitated, avoiding his eyes and imprinting every minuscule detail of his mouth on her memory. “I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that it wouldn’t be fair for me to let you believe we could rebuild a relationship, based only on a childhood hero worship that I outgrew long ago and the fact that we both like fu—”

“Don’t.” Cord’s hands fell from her to his sides. He took a step back, his eyes narrowed to black slits. “That was never what we did in bed together. We made love.”

He rubbed the side of his jaw wearily, still watching her intently. “Honey, I was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who taught you how to lie, remember? You got good at it, but not that good. It doesn’t take a detective’s badge to see that your life’s fallen apart just as badly as mine has, and for the same reason. We belong together. And this time I’m not leaving until I find out why that terrifies you so much.”

She only had to hold herself together for another minute or two, Julia told herself shakily. She met his gaze with her own, the sunlight turning the hazel in her eyes to a clear bronze, the rich chestnut glints in her hair contrasting with the lack of color in her face. “I’m not the stubborn one, Cord—you are. I’ll work with you on this case, but that’s all. We’re temporary partners, and nothing more.”

High in the sky above them a windblown cloud passed over the sun, and its shadow raced across the tops of the pines, the porch of the house, Cord’s features. Something flickered behind his eyes for the briefest of instants.

“Sometimes you almost convince me,” he said softly. “Maybe I’m not as stubborn as you think.”

Then he turned, striding along the overgrown path toward the house. Julia deliberately didn’t watch him go, but instead turned her face to the lake. She hugged her arms across her body, her hands so tightly clenched that her nails, short and blunt, pressed into her palms. The light cotton sweater was no protection against the breeze that came in off the lake, but the freshness soothed the hot, burning sensation behind her eyes.

She’d been wrong to feel even the slightest antagonism toward the woman she’d fantasized about over the last two years—that blue-eyed, blond, tennis-playing Californian that she’d feared would take her place in Cord’s heart. Whoever he eventually made a life with, and whatever she looked like, Julia thought painfully, the woman who would one day make Cord forget he wasn’t her enemy.

“I’ll never know you, but one day you’ll learn about me.” Tears blurring her vision, she forced the nearly inaudible words past numb lips, her gaze fixed on the whitecaps near the middle of the lake where the water was choppier. “You’ll wonder what kind of a woman could let him go. You’ll think I couldn’t have loved him—but you’ll be wrong. You’ll be so wrong….”

She’d missed her period, and she hadn’t been able to tell him. She’d told herself it was because she wanted to be sure before giving him the news, but when the home pregnancy test showed positive she’d been glad that she’d waited until he was out of the apartment before taking it. Hunched over like an old woman, she’d sat down on the edge of the bathtub and started to shake.

It was what they wanted, she’d told herself, staring at the pink-tinted stick in front of her as if it was a snake about to strike. Wasn’t it what they’d wanted—a family of their own someday? Two boys, two girls, and Cord had always joked that he’d teach the boys how to be as good a cook as their father if she’d show the girls how she caught five lake trout to everyone else’s one.

He would be the perfect father-to-be, worrying about her health, indulging her quirks and cravings, attending Lamaze classes with her. Finally the day would arrive when he bundled her into the car, drove like crazy to the hospital, and she gave birth to their baby—a tiny, perfect, fragile human being that they would be responsible for.

And she wouldn’t be up to the task, she’d thought with cold certainty. Of all people, she knew how swiftly tragedy could strike, how no amount of precaution could totally insure a child’s safety. The world was a dangerous place, and more often than not its victims were the innocent, the defenseless—

The children that she hadn’t been able to save.

She’d taken each failure personally—the instances of abuse that she had been informed of too late, the Have You Seen This Child? photos that eventually faded and curled on bulletin boards and telephone poles around the city, the confused bereavement of parents who berated themselves and each other with a barrage of if onlys—if only I hadn’t let go of her hand, if only we hadn’t let him sit in the front seat, if only we’d taken her with us, if only we’d kept him at home…if only we could have kept our child safe.

What it all came down to was if only they’d known, they would have done things differently, Julia had thought. But she did know. And, having that knowledge, what had she been thinking of by making a child with Cord—a child that would be born into such a capriciously violent world?

When she’d eventually learned that her pregnancy result had been an error, she’d felt as if she’d been given a second chance to avert a tragedy, and more than ever she’d been glad she hadn’t told Cord anything yet. She’d left the doctor’s office and had sat in a nearby park until afternoon grayed into dusk. When she’d finally risen from the park bench, her limbs stiff from the hours of frozen immobility, she’d known what she had to do. Her job was to save the children she could, and even at that there were dozens who slipped through the cracks. But she could ensure that no child of hers and Cord’s would ever be lost through her inadequacy.

She would send him away. She would tell him any lie it took to make him leave her, but the one thing she would never tell him was the truth. If he ever knew her fear he would try to make things right for her, and because losing him would break her heart Julia was afraid she might weaken enough to listen to the lies she knew he would tell her. He would tell her that a life without children wouldn’t devastate him, he would tell her that he wouldn’t ache for the feel of a baby’s fist holding his, he would tell her that he wouldn’t envy the friends of his who were fathers themselves.

And he might even believe it himself for a while. But as the years passed the sense of loss would grow in him, because more than any man she knew, Cord wanted children of his own. And no matter how much he loved her, he would always know that but for her he could have had them….

“You’ll never know me,” Julia whispered. Back at the house King barked playfully on the porch, and a flock of mourning doves flew fussily into the trees. “But one day you might learn that there was a woman before you in his life. Don’t let that worry you.”

Their children would look like Cord. They would grow up beside the Pacific. They would be tennis players like their mother.

“I let him go because I love him so. I always have.” Blinking the tears from her eyes, she started up the path toward the house. Then she turned and looked one last time at the blue lake, the far shore, the distant horizon. “I always will,” she whispered to herself.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

Her spine ramrod-straight, Julia stood beside Cord’s immobile bulk and stared unseeingly ahead. The job of a police officer was no picnic. The hours were grueling, the respect often nonexistent and the danger ever-present, but when an officer was killed there was always a good turnout at the funeral. It was one of the few benefits of being a cop, she thought, her black-gloved fist clenched tightly around the shoulder strap of her purse. She’d known how Paul and Sheila had scraped along on his salary when he’d been a rookie, how for years they’d celebrated Christmas the day after or the day before because Paul had always been working on December the twenty-fifth, and how Sheila had lain awake nights when Paul had been working a case, wondering if this would be the night when her cell phone rang.

But now that he was dead and especially since the job had claimed Sheila, as well, his fellow officers, many of them in dress uniform, had gathered to show the world that however scant the material rewards of their career were, the profession and those who chose it were worthy of the highest honor. It was all about solidarity, Julia told herself tightly. The grim-faced men and women around her were there to bid farewell to one of their own, knowing full well that the next funeral could be theirs.

It had been a touchingly beautiful service. But here at the graveside under a cloudlessly perfect blue sky nothing could blunt the terribly symbolic sight of the token shovelful of earth falling onto the two polished mahogany coffins that were even now being lowered into the ground. Sheila’s mother, Betty Wilson, was sobbing quietly a few feet away, her frail figure flanked by friends and relatives, and most of the other mourners’ faces were distorted by grief.

Who in this crowd had betrayed them? Which grieving face hid a lying heart?

“How are you holding up?” As people began to move away from the graveside, Cord took her arm and met her watery gaze. “If you think you can manage it, I’d like to stick around for a while and talk to a few people. But if you’d like to leave—”

“Someone here isn’t who they seem, Cord. Someone here was no friend to Paul or Sheila,” Julia cut in flatly. “I know that as well as you do, and of course we’ll stay and find out what we can. Stop treating me like I’m a basket case.”

“You remind me of a sweet little girl I once knew who told me she could recognize poison ivy without my help,” Cord said dryly. “Oh, yeah—that was you. Still as prickly as ever, aren’t you? I only thought you might feel out of place here now that you aren’t on the force anymore.”

“Oh.” Julia was nonplussed. “I thought you were worried that I might…” Her words trailed off, and a faint color mounted her too-pale cheeks.

“Worried you might what?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought you might wonder if I could handle an emotional situation like this without a—a crutch.” She looked at her hands, unconsciously twisting the strap of her purse. “Without needing a drink,” she said quietly.

“Do you?” His question held no condemnation. When she didn’t answer his hand gently cupped her chin and tipped her face back so that their eyes met. “Do you need a drink to face something like this?”

“Once, I would have,” she said simply, looking into his gravely sympathetic face. “And for the rest of my life I’ll be aware that it’s a trap I could fall into again if I let myself.”