Dare to Love (18 page)

“You wanna take a blanket and make love out there?”

“Yeah.”

He shot away from the door frame, penetrating her with his intense brown gaze. “You do?”

“Yeah. But I can't.”

He leaned back against the door. “You wanna tell me why not?”

“You know why. I drove my last lover away. I can't go through that again.”

“Can't or won't?”

Andrea shrugged. “It amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?”

“Nope. If you can't, you can't. If you won't, you can. I just have to convince you to.”

Andrea laughed. It was so good to be with him. “I'll let you know which it is when I figure it out.”

“So we going to the creek?”

“You still want to?”

“I always want to,” he said with a suggestive grin.

He was back. And though she knew it was wrong, Andrea wanted him to stay.

* * *

A
NDREA WAITED
for Doug after school on Monday. Thanksgiving was just over a week away and she had gone around and around with herself deciding whether or not she should ask Doug to spend the day with her. She wouldn't be going to her parents' house. She wasn't going to force her little brother out of his own home on a holiday.

And as far as she knew, Doug would be alone, too. She was afraid to spend the day with him, afraid of her traitorous heart, but she hated even more the thought of Doug all alone at a time when everybody had someone.

She looked around the deserted school-yard, wondering where he was. She'd thought he was right behind her. She was about to go back inside, to see what was keeping him, when she saw him out on the playground. He was watching Jeremy Schwartz shoot baskets. And right beside him stood Coach Peterson.

Andrea was a mass of conflicting emotions as she watched the scene unfolding before her. There was a thrill of elation so acute it almost hurt as she realized that Doug had opened his heart enough to continue trying to help the skinny blond boy. But there was also fear.

Andrea had seen Jeremy's kind before. The boy was as hard as they came. He was sullen and disrespectful. Andrea would bet her life that he was already a regular user. She knew the signs, and Jeremy had all of them. He lied, his grades had dropped, he had no straight friends, he took no part in school activities, his attention span was sporadic, he had fits of anger and his eyes alternated between being glassy and bloodshot.

Andrea was frightened beyond belief that Doug had set himself up for disillusionment the very first time he opened his heart. But she was also filled with anger. She'd told him about the other kids that could suffer if he did this very thing. Any of the other boys could have come outside and seen Doug standing out there with Jeremy. Why hadn't he listened to her? Why was he jeopardizing everything?

She drove home, changed out of her uniform, left it lying across her bed and pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a black thermal sweatshirt. She slipped into a pair of tennis shoes and headed back out, not bothering even to run a comb through her hair.

She met Doug just as he was pulling into his apartment complex. She had to take several deep breaths before she got out of her car, reminding herself that he was only going to get defensive if she blasted him.

“This is a nice surprise,” Doug said as she caught up with him at his parking slot. He ran his liquid gaze from her head to her toes, saying more with his eyes than he did with his words. His scar was barely visible.

Andrea fought against the heat that flowed through her, the weakness just being near him caused in her. She had to concentrate on the job at hand. She had to keep things in perspective. She fell into step beside him as he headed toward his apartment.

“I needed to talk to you for a sec.”

“Shoot.”

“It can wait until we get inside. How come you're so late getting home?”

“I had to stop by the cleaner's.”

Andrea knew he was lying. She knew it not just because she'd seen what he'd been doing, but because he looked away from her when he spoke.

“So where are your clothes?” she asked, glancing down at his briefcase, the only thing he was carrying.

“I was dropping them off, not picking them up.”

He was so smooth it scared her. This was a side of Doug she'd never met before—a man who could lie through his teeth without missing a beat. How much more was there that she didn't know about? How much more had he concealed with all his vague answers and closemouthed conversations?

He went into the bathroom to change. Andrea looked around the room, noticing once again that it was the most impersonal apartment she'd ever been in. There wasn't even a pair of shoes by the door or a book on the coffee table.

She sat down on the brown tweed couch that pulled out into his bed at night, wondering again where Doug had come from. There were no pictures hanging on his walls, no snapshots sitting on his tables. She didn't even know if the furniture belonged to him.

The bathroom door opened. Andrea's breath caught in her throat when she looked over and saw him standing in the doorway.

He was wearing a pair of faded black jeans—and that was all, except for the wristband that he never seemed to take off. His hair was mussed and his chin was dark with the day's worth of stubble. He looked more like one of the rough characters she would expect to meet in a redneck bar than the respected policeman she knew him to be. And still she wanted him.

“What's up?” he asked, lowering himself to the couch beside her.

She tore her hungry gaze away from the dark hairs curling over his chest, from the firmly defined muscles his uniform usually hid, from the scar on his shoulder, and met his hooded eyes. He knew something was up. He was retreating from her.

“I saw you,” she blurted out. It was nothing like the calm words she'd rehearsed.

He raised one eyebrow in question, saying nothing.

“With Jeremy. And Peterson.”

She waited for him to defend himself, to tell her to mind her own business, to go to hell. But he continued to watch her with his piercing brown eyes until she felt like she was the one who was in trouble.

“I warned you to stay away from him, Doug.”

“I remember.”

“But you didn't.”

“Nope.”

“He's a user, Doug. All the signs are there.” She forced herself to speak evenly when she badly needed to yell, to force some sense into him.

“Isn't that why we're there—to steer kids straight?”

“It's more like to keep them straight. And yes, maybe, to steer the occasional user toward other choices. But Jeremy's not an occasional user. I've seen his kind before. You're setting yourself up for a fall and risking the faith of the rest of the class in the process.”

Doug stayed calm as long as he could. He listened to Andrea. He tried to hear fairly. He already knew he'd made a mistake that afternoon by sticking around with Jeremy and Peterson. Andrea had been right there. He'd risked hurting the other boys, making them jealous, losing their trust. But when Jeremy had agreed to shoot for Peterson only if Doug came along, he hadn't been able to refuse. Jeremy's best hope was basketball. It could set him up for life. It offered not only a time-consuming outlet for his energy, but the potential for scholarships, and a future.

“We have only so much time in each class, Doug,” Andrea continued. “Sometimes it's just too late.”

He couldn't take any more.

Doug shot up off the couch, walked angrily toward the door and then wheeled around. He stopped in front of Andrea, leaning over with one hand on the back of the couch behind her shoulder, the other on the arm of the couch beside her, trapping her.

“It's—never—too—late.” He said each word separately, leaving her no doubt that he meant each one.

He pushed away from the couch with such force that it scooted backward a couple of inches. He walked over to the window, forcing himself to calm down.

He was so filled with frustration he was ready to explode, but he knew it wasn't all her fault. Part of it was from wanting her for so long, being around her every day, having nothing but cold showers for company. But another part was a frustration that was all his own making. It was born of his past, and it lived with him each moment that he dared consider a life with Andrea.

He turned around, finding her in the same position he'd left her in. She wasn't crying, but she looked as if it wouldn't take much to make her start. His time was up.

“If there were a ‘too late,' I wouldn't be here right now,” he said, knowing that he was killing any chance he'd ever had to be this woman's lover.

“What do you mean?” Her lips barely moved as she spoke. She sat stiffly on the couch, as if trying to ward off any blows, physical or emotional, that he might throw at her. But she didn't look frightened. Doug was thankful for that, at least.

“I took my first hit of acid when I was seven. I'd been alone with my dad for a couple of years by then. I didn't think I'd make it for another two. I was addicted by the time I was eight.

“And you know that skit Steve and I did? Most of it wasn't fiction. Only his name wasn't Steve, it was Chuck, and there were no little kids or an older brother. And it wasn't my first time with drugs, only with the magic white stuff. I was eleven. Jeremy's age. By the time I was twelve I'd done it all. Needles, pills, pipes—you name it, I knew it. And I didn't care who I had to hurt to get it. And you know why?”

Andrea looked up at him, her eyes filled with pain. She shook her head.

“Because it hurt me more not to have it.”

Doug slumped down on the couch, as far from Andrea as the old piece of furniture would allow. He wasn't going to give her the chance to scoot away from him.

“How badly did you hurt them?”

Doug knew what she was really asking. He supposed he couldn't blame her. “No one ever spent the night in the hospital as a result of my handiwork, or the morgue, either.”

He saw the relief in her eyes, and for once was thankful for the truth. But there was more. He had to tell her or she'd never understand.

“For my twentieth birthday I threw a party. It was on the roof of an old warehouse, and the invitations were few, but mandatory. After fifteen years on ghetto streets, I'd earned myself a reputation. I had power. Everybody brought presents, just like I'd told them to—blue ones and yellow ones, capsules, pills and vials. I provided the syringe.”

Andrea cringed, but she didn't look away from him. She held his gaze as boldly as everything else she did. Doug had never wanted her more than he did while he sat there watching his chances slip away.

“The party turned out to be even more than I had envisioned. Sometime after midnight, I hallucinated that I was on a flying trapeze. I'd had dreams of running away with a circus when I was a kid. I suddenly thought I could fly across the street to a telephone pole. It was breathing, you see, and I wanted to check it out. I flew, all right—right off the rooftop. It was four floors up.”

Tears were sliding down Andrea's cheeks. Doug didn't even know when she'd started to cry. He'd been lost in memories, reliving that night, wondering at just what point it had been too late for him.

He crossed his arms across his chest, staring at the blank TV set. Andrea watched him, her tears falling down her face unchecked.

“What happened?” Her gentle words were almost his undoing.

“I landed in a dumpster, but I still broke more bones than I knew I had. The only good thing was I was so high I didn't feel any pain. Not until the next day, when I came to in the hospital. I hallucinated for six more days after that.”

“How did you get into the academy with a record like that?” Andrea asked. He'd wondered when she'd get around to the question.

“No charges were ever filed.”

“Didn't they notify the police when you were brought it?”

“They notified Stan Ingersoll.”

“Sergeant Ingersoll?” Andrea asked.

Doug nodded. “He was on call that night. And I'll never know what he saw in a punk like me, but he gave me a chance, Andrea. Me. A loser. A druggie. He visited me in detox, got me a room in a boardinghouse across town from where I'd grown up and enrolled me in high school. You have no idea how difficult that was, being twenty years old and a junior in high school. Studying didn't come too easy, either, after the way I'd been frying my brain for years, but eventually my thinking got clearer. I graduated when I was twenty-three.”

“And entered the academy?” Her voice sounded small.

“I'm going back out there, Andrea. I'm going to get on the Drug Task Force and get every dealer, every pusher, every gang member who preys on kids like I was, like Jeremy is—kids who think they have no other choices in life, who need the escape to get through the hell of living.”

“Is that what happened to you? Did the gangs pressure you into using?”

Doug shook his head. If only it were that simple. His heart was numb as he removed his wristband. He turned his arm over, holding it out toward Andrea, exposing the lethal-looking little snake burned into the skin of his wrist.

“Oh my God,” Andrea said, sucking in her breath. She stared at his wrist, horrified, and then looked back at him.

“You're a Rattler?” she whispered, as if she couldn't believe the evidence in front of her eyes.

“Was.” Doug knew the distinction didn't really matter. It didn't change what he'd been. Nothing could, which was why he'd never had the tattoo removed. “I founded the Rattlers when I was fourteen. My personal membership was current until my twentieth birthday.”

Andrea fell back against the couch, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Doug knew he'd shocked her. He'd probably killed any affection she might have had for him. But it really hadn't been for him, anyway. It had been for the man she'd thought he was.