Lana's Lawman (9 page)

Lana was already serving up the chops from a pan she'd pulled out of the oven.

“Um, Lana—”

“Don't you dare refuse. If you won't let me pay you for the roof, at least accept my hospitality. I'm a great cook.”

Sloan acknowledged that this was one battle he would lose. That was okay, he supposed. It appeared she wasn't going to write him a check, which meant he'd won the more important battle. He pulled Lana's chair out for her. She sat down self-consciously. Sloan's arm brushed against her hair as he scooted her chair in, and he shivered involuntarily. He remembered her hair, golden as a sunrise and soft, so soft, as it brushed against his chest.

“Sit …” She cleared her throat. “Sit down, please.”

He realized he'd been frozen there, his hands on the back of Lana's chair, lost in memory. It didn't take much to throw him back ten years. The images were still so vivid, even after all this time—Lana with her head bent over a book of poetry, Lana on the back of his bike, her arms around his middle, her hair streaming in golden waves behind her. Lana beneath him, her face transformed by passion.

“Everything looks really good,” he said as he sat down. It felt funny, all this polite conversation. They'd talked years ago, but their conversations had been far-flung, lofty. They'd spoken of dreams, fears, high points and low points in their lives. They hadn't spoken of love, but Sloan had believed that what he felt
was
love. Nothing that intense could be anything less. But he'd been scared to death to say anything, scared
that she would laugh at his audacity, that he'd mistaken her passion for some more genuine emotion.

He supposed it was a good thing he'd kept his mouth shut. At least he'd held on to his pride. She hadn't left him with much else. Of course, they'd been hardly more than children, he reminded himself. Children made mistakes. He'd certainly made his share. Maybe Lana had trivialized their relationship, but he shouldn't be blaming her for it now, not ten years later.

“Mmm, delicious,” he said after his first bite of tender pork. “Where'd you learn to cook like this?”

“My mother, of course.” Lana took a sip of milk. “She thought it extremely important that a young woman learn domestic skills, although she hoped I'd never have to use them.”

Sloan looked at Lana, puzzled.

“She hoped I would have hired help to do the cooking and cleaning, but the idea was that if I had those skills myself, I'd be better able to run a household.”

“Ah, I see. I think. Your mother was … a little old-fashioned?” That was putting it kindly, he supposed.

“A little,” Lana agreed with a fond smile. “You think I'm a Southern belle, you should have met Mama.”

“So you came by it honestly?” This time there was more teasing and less rancor in his accusation.

“There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned manners,” she answered in kind. But then she paused, appearing
thoughtful. “She was a grand lady. Oh, you've finished your green beans. I'll get more.”

“No, really …” But before he could even formulate a polite refusal, she was dumping another pile of vegetables onto his plate.

Oh, well. He liked green beans.

“You … lived away from the area for quite a while, right?” she asked.

He didn't really want to talk about himself. Lana was a much more interesting subject. Still, he had to say something. “I moved to Dallas after Captain Johnson's house was done.” He tried to make the remark sound casual. He'd die of embarrassment if Lana knew that
she
was the reason he'd moved. He'd been determined to go somewhere where his reputation didn't precede him and make something of himself. Then he'd show her just what she'd thrown away. But such childish ambitions soon gave way to more meaningful goals. He'd found he'd wanted to turn his life around for
him
, for Sloan Bennett, and not anyone else, and damned if he hadn't. A beat cop wasn't exactly the cream of society, but he was good at his job and proud of it too. He couldn't imagine anything he'd rather be doing.

“And what did you do in Dallas?”

“Worked construction. Went to college and got an associate's degree so I could join the police force.”

“But don't they—” She stopped herself. “More milk?”

He grabbed her by the wrist before she could flee
to the refrigerator. “Stop feeding me, okay? You were about to say something. ‘But don't they—' What?”

Her face pinkened. She pulled her arm away from his light grasp, but she didn't run. “I was just thinking that you couldn't become a police officer if you had a, um, a record.”

“Oh. I had a juvey record. See, they wipe that clean when you turn seventeen. I had only one other arrest after that, and I wasn't convicted. So the Dallas Police Department knew nothing about my sordid past.”

“Oh, Sloan, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up any unpleasant memories—”

“Honey, you didn't have to say a word to bring up memories. Good ones and bad ones, they just came the minute I saw your face.”

She looked stricken. Well, hell, he hadn't meant to bring up the subject of
them
in quite such a jarring fashion. He hadn't meant to bring it up at all. What had possessed him?

“Strike that,” he said quickly. “That wasn't really fair.”

“But it was honest,” she said.

He couldn't argue with her there. The words had barely registered in his brain before they'd come pouring out of his mouth, uncensored. “Forget I said it anyway. Please.”

“I don't think so. Maybe it's time we brought a few things out in the open.”

Now he was really regretting his candor. He didn't want this. He wasn't prepared to discuss anything about that time. Years earlier he'd shut off his feelings
where Lana was concerned. A few had escaped, but he sure as hell wasn't ready to open the whole can of worms.

“I'd much prefer to start fresh,” he said, “pretend we didn't know each other back then. I'm not real proud of the person I was in high school.”

“Why not?”

He thought that answer was obvious. “I was a hood.”

“You didn't seem that way to me. I heard things about you. You even told me a few things yourself. And I couldn't reconcile them with the person you were around me.”

“What you heard was probably all true.”

“I knew the part about stealing a car was true. You admitted that.”

“Yeah, well, there was a lot of other stuff. Audiovisual equipment from school. And hubcaps. Breaking into vending machines. Shoplifting. Man, I was good at that. For every time I got caught, I got away with it ten times.”

Lana stared at him, looking more than a little surprised. “You were a regular little career criminal!”

“I was exactly that.”

“What's the worst thing you ever did?” she asked, sounding leery and fascinated at the same time.

“Mmm, that's a matter of opinion. I stabbed a guy once.”

Lana gasped.

“Hey, it was purely self-defense. He came at me first with a broken bottle. But I was the one with the
juvey record and an illegal switchblade, so the rap fell on me. Don't look so stricken. I barely scratched him.”

“I just can't imagine what it was like for you back then. I thought I knew you because of the time we spent together. I thought I had an insider's view of your soul. But I guess I was wrong.”

“You saw a part of me that no one else did.” He reached out unthinkingly to caress her arm. “But there was a lot I kept hidden from you too.”

“It's a wonder you turned out as good as you did.”

“You can thank Chief Johnson for that. He saw something in me, something besides Ollie Bennett's bad seed. I think he would have ridden my butt the rest of my life if I hadn't taken some steps to improve my lot.”

Lana shook her head. “I still have a hard time believing this. The Sloan I knew was gentle, and sensitive, and intelligent.”

“But I still wasn't good enough for you, was I?” he challenged.

That silenced her for a few moments. She lifted her glass to take a sip, then abruptly set it down. “I was a confused young woman back then.”

Her comment invited deeper probing, but he resisted the temptation. She was the one who wanted to talk. He wasn't going to try to pull the information out of her. She could either volunteer whatever was weighing on her mind, or they could talk about something else.

Silence reigned for a long time. Sloan was deeply aware of every bite he chewed, every rustle of Lana's
napkin in her lap, the incredibly loud ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall.

Finally he said softly, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“I … I just wanted you to know that things weren't what I led you to believe. And that I know I didn't handle things very well. I was pretty stupid back then.”

“Weren't we all.” What, exactly, was she saying? It didn't matter, he kept telling himself. All that stuff happened so long ago. It had no relevance to the here and now. But Lana seemed to think it did. Like maybe he held a grudge or something?

Okay, perhaps she was right. Getting everything said, so they could move on, would be better. And he did want to move forward with Lana. The realization surprised him. But, yes, he wanted to see more of her without any clouds from the past.

“Look, Lana, we were just kids. We were playing at being grown-up, testing our boundaries. You saw me as a challenge, a way to defy authority, but then you realized what I could do to your reputation and you pulled back—”

“No,” she said sharply.

He shrugged uneasily. He'd been trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, the least offensive motivation for her dumping him.

“That wasn't it at all, despite what I said.” Lana lowered her eyes so that her lashes cast long shadows on her cheeks.

Sloan frowned. “Is that why you wouldn't tell anyone we were seeing each other?”

“I'm not saying that appearances didn't worry me. Mama raised me to be very cognizant of public opinion, reputation, all that stuff. But that wasn't the reason I broke up with you.”

Sloan's mind drifted back to that time. He remembered the scene clearly—maybe because he'd relived it hundreds of times, torturing himself. It was a hot spring afternoon, and he'd taken Lana fishing because he couldn't believe she'd never done it before. They'd stopped at the bait shop, and she'd squealed predictably and refused to touch the worms. Then they'd ridden down to a swimming hole he knew, dropped the line in, and waited.

After thirty minutes and not so much as a nibble, Lana had gotten bored. Boredom had led to kissing, and kissing plus the heat rising off the sun-drenched limestone rocks had led to skinny-dipping, and what naturally followed was the best lovemaking Sloan had ever known.

He'd thought it was good for Lana too. In fact, he'd been on the verge of telling her he loved her right there, that even though they were young, he knew he wanted to spend forever with her.

That's when things got weird. One minute Lana was right there with him, sharing this incredible moment, staring into his eyes, communicating without words. Then a curtain dropped over her face. She'd turned stone cold in the bat of an eye, and Sloan always
imagined that was the moment she'd remembered just who he was and who she was.

With water still dripping from her skin she'd begun pulling on her clothes, mumbling about how late it was and she had to get home. He asked her what was wrong, and she said nothing. He pushed for an explanation, and she denied that any explanation was needed.

Then his temper had gotten the better of him. He'd accused her of thinking she was too good for him. And with her own temper heating up, she'd agreed with him, said that they weren't right for each other, that she couldn't see him anymore. She'd said those words without emotion, without tears.

The moment had rung false, Sloan had realized much later, but his roiling emotions hadn't let him see it at the time. She'd run into the woods with her clothes still unbuttoned, and Lord only knew how she'd gotten home.

He'd never felt pain that intense. Lana Walsh had been the only person in the world who saw who he really was. The only person who'd shown him true, heartfelt affection. The only person he'd ever felt love for. And she'd dumped him flat, as though those three weeks they'd spent together meant nothing.

The ten-year-old memory still had power over him. His throat felt tight, his chest achy.

“So,” he said, “are you going to tell me the reason? Or should I wait another ten years?”

Instead of blushing, Lana's face turned paper
white. He suspected she was reliving the memory too. “I was scared to death.”

“Scared? Of me?”

“Of myself. Of my feelings for you. Everything was so intense. Do you realize that when we made love at the swimming hole, we didn't use any protection?”

“I thought about it later,” Sloan mumbled. “Typical teenage male.”

“It wasn't typical for me. I was such a
careful
girl before I met you. And then suddenly I was riding motorcycles and skinny-dipping and having sex. And I kept telling myself to slow down, take it easy, but I couldn't. I was completely out of control.

“It hit me that day we went fishing, when I realized what we'd just done. I could have gotten pregnant, and then things really would have been out of my control. I had to stop while I still could. If I'd spent another hour, even another minute with you, I knew there would be no turning back. If you had asked, I would have run off with you, or lived with you, or married you, or had a dozen kids with you. You had so much power over me.”

“I never knew that,” he said, unsure he could believe what she'd just told him. It seemed so improbable … yet it made a certain amount of sense.