Lana's Lawman (21 page)

Sloan tried the door. It was locked. He unholstered his gun, then waited, holding his breath, hoping the robber was so intent on the cash that he wouldn't look up. Sloan couldn't move in until his backup arrived, unless it was a matter of life and … That's when he saw another movement. A hand was visible at floor level, sticking out from behind the counter. It quivered.

Hell, someone was hurt in there. Sloan couldn't afford to wait. He picked up a can of motor oil from a rack, and bashed through the door's glass. The perpetrator's head jerked up in surprise, and he went for his weapon. Sloan's gun was already in his hand. He fired.

Lana heard about it on the ten o'clock news—a police officer injured in a gas station holdup. The alleged gunman, shot by the officer, in critical condition. The gas station owner, Ernie Harrison, also hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the shoulder.

Her gut tightened as she immediately thought of Sloan. But it couldn't be him, of course. He was working a split shift this month, he'd told her, with Saturdays and Tuesdays off. Today was Saturday. She'd been trying to call him all evening after she'd had her car towed to the mechanic's, and hadn't gotten an answer, but what did that mean? He could be anywhere.

Still, early the next morning she didn't even put the
coffee on before heading for the front porch and the newspaper. The front page headline, in the typical sensational style used since Callie's departure as editor of the
Daily Record
, blared IVY WOOD SHOOT-OUT: 15-YEAR-OLD ROBBERY SUSPECT CRITICALLY WOUNDED/OFFICER AND MERCHANT INJURED.

Lana stood in the open doorway, oblivious of the cold morning air, and read. When she reached Sloan's name, she was barely surprised. She'd known. Somehow, against all logic, she'd known he was the injured officer.

She slammed the door shut and headed back to her bedroom, reading as she walked. Sloan hadn't been shot, but cut by flying glass, and he'd been treated and released, the article said. Lana whispered a prayer of thanks that his injuries weren't more serious. But her heart ached for him nonetheless. Sloan had shot a fifteen-year-old. The police department bigwigs had taken away his gun and his badge and put him on administrative leave, pending an investigation. He must be devastated.

She didn't question her next actions. She knew exactly what to do. She dressed quickly, then woke Rob and asked him to throw on some clothes and run over to Noah's house across the street and stay there until further notice. He protested, until Lana explained that Officer Bennett was in trouble.

“You mean
you
can help
him
for a change?” Rob asked perceptively as he climbed into a sweatshirt.

“I don't know if I can or not,” she said. Sloan
might not want to see her after the way she'd shunned his help the day before. “But I'm damn sure going to try.”

Rob's eyes widened in surprise. “Mom. You cussed.”

She put her hand over her mouth. “I'm sorry, honey. It slipped out.” Just went to show how rattled she really was.

After making sure Rob was welcome at Noah's, Lana called a cab to drive her the mile or so to Sloan's house. “Do you want me to wait?” the driver asked as she paid him with shaking hands.

“No.” That way, Sloan would have to let her in, even if it was just to call another cab. “Thanks very much.”

She pulled her jacket up around her neck as she approached Sloan's front porch. The house looked quiet. She rang the bell, waited. No answer.

She knocked. “Sloan, are you in there? It's me, Lana.” He had to be there. Where would he go at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning? Unless he'd spent the night somewhere else … No. She refused to believe he would find solace in some other woman's arms less than twenty-four hours after he'd left her at the police station.

Her knuckles ached from the cold, but she knocked again. At last she could hear a shuffling noise, the scrape of a dead bolt. The door opened a crack.

“Lana.” Her name came out as a croak.

“Are you all right?” Stupid question. Of course he
wasn't. There was a long pause. The door opened a bit wider. Lana focused on a pair of brown eyes so full of torture that the pain radiated out to her.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” he said, “except for a killer hangover. So go home, please. I don't need your pity.”

 ELEVEN

Nothing Sloan could have said would have made Lana angrier. Pity? Did he think that was all she was capable of? Did he think that was what he deserved?

He tried to close the door, but her reflexes were faster. She jammed her foot in the crack like a vacuum cleaner salesman and received a painful pinch for her trouble, but the door remained open.

“Damn, Lana, I almost broke your foot! You okay?”

Taking advantage of his momentary concern for her welfare, she shouldered her way inside. It was dark, and the smell of stale beer and cigarettes permeated the overheated air. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could see that the living room was a wreck, spread with dirty dishes, empty beer cans, full ashtrays, and a newspaper with every section dropped in a different place. How he'd been able to create this much chaos in such a few short hours was beyond her, but she was
sure he didn't live like this under normal circumstances.

“Since when do you smoke?” was the first idiotic question out of her mouth.

“Not since high school—until last night. Seemed the thing to do.”

Sloan himself was disaster area number two. He wore faded jeans and nothing else except a heavy white bandage around his upper-left arm. His hair was uncombed, his face unshaven. He was still so handsome, her heart ached for him.

“I didn't want you to see me like this,” he said, refusing to look at her.

“Like what? Hurting? In trouble?”

“Out of control.”

“Oh, I see. It's all right for me to be a blubbering, hysterical mess with my life falling down around my ears, but God forbid you should be anything but strong and perfect and macho.”

He appeared so surprised by her outburst that he couldn't come up with a retort.

“If I'd had that attitude, where would we be, huh? If I'd refused to let you come around when I was anything but in perfect control, we never would have seen each other.”

“It seems to me you
did
refuse my help.” He managed to twist his lips into the semblance of a smile. “But I persevered.”

“Yeah, well, I'm returning the favor. Dammit, Sloan, you promised.” She realized she'd just cursed again, the second time that day.

“Promised what?”

“That if you ever needed help of any kind, you would call me first.” Suddenly all the fight drained out of her. What was she doing, yelling at Sloan? He needed unconditional understanding … and love.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, she acknowledged that she was flat out in love with Sloan Bennett. Again the realization hit her like a sledgehammer. Although this was hardly an occasion for elation, she grinned anyway.

Sloan gazed at her, undoubtedly bewildered by her sudden change of mood. “What?”

“I love you, Sloan.” He tried to back away as she reached out for him, but again she was faster. She threw her arms around him and held him close.

“Uh, are you sure you want to get that close?” he said, still stiff in her embrace.

“The appropriate response, I think, is ‘I love you too, Lana.' ”

“The appropriate response is, why are you hugging me when I haven't had a shower this morning?” He did wrap his arms around her though, squeezing hard. “Oh, Lana. Oh, baby, you feel good.”

“I love you,” she said again. “It's okay if you can't say it back. I've probably jumped the gun and moved a lot faster than you ever planned. But I had to tell you. I want you to know that I'm behind you a hundred percent. I can't possibly know what you're feeling right now—”

“Lana.” The sharp utterance of her name halted her monologue. Sloan pulled back so he could look
into her eyes. He seemed to struggle for a few heart-stopping moments for the right words. “I appreciate your support. I really do. But I can't—” He set her away from him, then raked his fingers through his already mussed hair, as if he'd made the same gesture a hundred times that morning.

“It's all right if you can't say you love me,” she said, though the realization that he didn't have feelings as strong as hers nearly dropped her to her knees.

“It's not that. The words. I could say them, and mean them too.”

Her heart fluttered with hopeful anticipation.

“But words like that imply a certain commitment—”

“I understand.” She didn't.

“No, I don't think you do. I have no idea what my future holds right now.”

“Do any of us? When we met again, when I decided to let you give me a ride home, did I have any idea that within three weeks I would be sued for custody, lose my job, and see my baby taken to the hospital and then thrown in jail? Did I know that my savings account would be drained by furnace repairs and medical bills? Or that the stinking Mercedes would get a crack in the engine block that would cost me twelve hundred dollars? No, but—”

“Wait a minute, what crack in the engine block? What are you talking about?”

Darn. She really hadn't meant to let that slip. Sloan had enough to worry about. She shrugged. “It doesn't matter. The point is, you can't hold back today because
you fear what tomorrow will bring. Love means through thick and thin, doesn't it? If the worst happens—”

“If the worst happens, I'll be guilty of killing a fifteen-year-old kid.”

“A kid who was trying to kill you. A kid who shot that poor old man for fifty-eight dollars in the cash register. That's what the paper said anyway. Did they get it wrong?”

Sloan shook his head. “The kid went for his weapon. He fired it on his way down. I did just what I was trained to do. But what the newspaper doesn't know—what no one knows—is that I talked to him just a few hours before, in a parking lot. Maybe I riled him up or something. He was angry that I'd once been like him and then I became a cop. And I just walked away.”

“A very sensible thing to do.”

“I should have talked to him. He was probably planning that robbery even then. I could have changed his mind if I'd just talked instead of walking away.”

“And if you'd insisted on talking, he might have pulled his gun right there in the parking lot and shot you. You can't second-guess anything, Sloan. It's like me and the falling-down roof. I took what I thought were reasonable precautions. You did what you thought was right at the time. That's all you can do. That's all anybody can expect you to do.”

“I expect more of myself.”

“Then you're too hard on yourself. Give yourself a break, huh? You turned your life around and you've
become an exceptional human being, so good that I'm not sure I deserve you. But you can't save everybody.”

He looked at her for a long time. There was a yearning in his eyes that told Lana he wanted to believe her. But he couldn't. Not quite.

“What if they take me off the force?” he said in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. “What if they take my gun away and give me a desk job?”

“In the first place, that isn't going to happen. You said yourself, you did what you were trained to do. You probably saved that old man's life by acting quickly, and you might have saved the lives of other officers arriving at the scene.”

“But if it does happen? It's not just a matter of whether I did the right thing. I have to talk to the department shrink, and she has to okay me for active duty. Do I look to you like I'm ready for active duty?”

“Not today.” She'd give him that. “And maybe not tomorrow, or the next day. But you'll get through this. And if the worst happens, if for some stupid reason you can't be a street cop anymore, you'll find a way to cope. Because you're still the same man you were yesterday, and the day before. You're the one who looked my son in the eye and told him to face the consequences of his actions, and whatever happens, you get through it, and you're stronger because of it.”

“I said that?”

“Something like that, and he paid attention. He's pretty much off the hook now because he told the truth, not because of Bart's stupid lawyer tricks.”

Sloan actually smiled, a real smile this time. “That's terrific.”

“You also said that it's okay to need. If ever you've needed somebody, this is the time. I want to be that somebody.”

His smile faded. “You've got problems of your own.”

“Which I'm working through, mostly thanks to you. Please don't shut me out.” She shook her head at the irony. “Now I know exactly how exasperated you must have been with me when I kept resisting you and everything you offered.”

Sloan pursed his lips, looking sheepish. Then, an eternity later, he held out his hand to her. She took it, and he pulled her to him. “God, Lana, just hold me. I really need that right now.”