When Somebody Loves You (21 page)

Dodging the first question and denying the truth about the second, she hurried up the steps to the boathouse. The sound of his labored footsteps climbing the steps a minute later had her heart jumping again.

“There’re beach towels just inside the door.” She motioned with a jerk of her head toward a cabinet on the wall. “I’d suggest you grab one and make use of it.”

“Your concern overwhelms me,” he said, that same understated sarcasm oozing from each word.

“My only concern is for this duck,” she lied, “and for the fact that I don’t have enough liability insurance to cover a hospital bill if you get pneumonia.”

Even as she found space on the cluttered workbench to set the duck down, she watched from the corner of her eye as Adam limped inside. His leg had to be killing him, she thought, not only from the exertion, but from her. She clearly remembered kicking and connecting under the water. Well, it was his own fault for surprising her, she reasoned. She hadn’t asked for his help. And she hadn’t needed it.

Shaking off the twinge of guilt, she listened to him shuffle around looking for the towels. When he found them, he draped one over her shoulders.

She didn’t want to be affected by his gesture, or by the feel of his large hands, which had gently squeezed then lingered a moment on her shoulders before he reached for a towel for himself.

She riveted her attention on the duck. “There’s cracked corn in that plastic bin. If you would scatter it on the ground by the steps, it might lure the hen in. When the drake sees she feels safe here, he might eat a bit before he takes off. He’ll need all the strength he can muster.”

She had her hands too full of ruffled duck and her stomach too full of butterflies to worry about whether he took offense at her orders. It wasn’t until he came back through the door, an empty corn scoop in hand, she realized he hadn’t.

Then she did something else she didn’t want to do: she looked at him. She was unable to stop herself from noticing the way his dark T-shirt and wet jeans molded to lean, hard muscle and a tall, rangy frame. And the way the lake water had darkened his hair to a dusty honey and combed it back from a face that consisted of angles so dramatic they could have been carved from stone. Sinfully thick lashes clung wetly together over pewter eyes . . . eyes that still reeked of attitude and tried to reinforce the suggestion that there was no softness inside.

Yet there was softness. He obviously had a soft spot for her father, and he’d just shown one for her. It had been no small effort to swim out into the lake and drag her in. And what manner of man would come all this way to bring her bad news?

To further confuse her, as he stood there in his bare feet and goose bumps, she caught another fleeting glimpse of that vulnerability he worked so hard to hide. She wondered, as she had for the better part of the previous night, at the cause of it.

Straighten up, Taylor
, she ordered herself as she studied his whipcord-lean torso. He was about as vulnerable as a grizzly, and probably just as dangerous.

So she’d found his rebel-without-a-cause look attractive yesterday. Today it was annoying. At least she tried telling herself it was. Dismally aware that she had failed, she forced her mind to business. “I could use your help here.”

“Ouch,” he said, measuring her request with those hard eyes of his. “I’ll bet
that
hurt.”

“Cool your jets, Dursky. I’m not asking for myself. It’s for him. The less time it takes to free him, the better his chances for recovery.”

He limped over to the workbench and picked up the wire cutters. With a deep scowl and surprising care, he snipped at the yards of knotted line. “How’d this happen to him anyway?”

As they worked together, she filled him in, telling herself that the sound of a soothing voice was for the duck’s benefit, not hers. She also told herself that every time their fingers brushed together she didn’t feel a tingling awareness of him as a man, and that the gaze that too often strayed to hers wasn’t filled with the same kind of awareness.

“Fortunately,” she finished, forcing lightness into her tone, “this doesn’t happen too often. But when it does, most aren’t as lucky as this guy. You usually find them after it’s too late.”

He gave a derisive snort. “I’d say it’s a safe bet that most people wouldn’t risk drowning for the sake of a duck.”

“I did
not
risk drowning,” she ground out, bristling at his lecturing tone. “I couldn’t just ignore what was happening. This lake belongs to him. He shouldn’t die due to a hazard created by man. It goes against all the laws of nature.”

She made another mistake then, and looked at him once more. The questions she saw in his eyes were articulate and accusing. Without uttering a word, he changed the subject to that of her father.

And what law of nature
, his eyes asked,
makes it right for you to turn your back on John when he needs you? How can you care so much about one lost mallard and ignore your own father?

Stung by a guilt she didn’t want to feel, she turned away. She didn’t want him to guess that the puffiness around her eyes had less to do with her near-disastrous swim than with the tears she’d shed for her father the night before. For all he’d once been. For all she’d needed from him that he hadn’t given because he hadn’t been around. For all he needed from her now that she couldn’t make herself give.

Avoiding Dursky’s piercing gaze, she shook off the guilt and concentrated on the drake. “I think that does it. Come on, big guy, let’s see if your lady is waiting.”

It was tough, trying to steady the frightened mallard with unsteady hands, but somehow she managed. She carried him outside, let him see his hen pecking at the shelled corn, and set him carefully at her feet.

Squawking at his first taste of freedom in several hours, the drake tested his wings, then waddled regally to his mate and joined her, feeding hungrily.

Jo leaned against the door frame and watched them. Dursky, it seemed, was content to watch her. When she couldn’t ignore his brooding stare any longer, she grabbed hold of the towel around her shoulders and faced him.

He was studying her as if he was trying to figure out what made her tick. Or he was wondering whether it would be a good idea to throw her back in the lake, like some fish that was too small to keep. But as his gaze roamed her face and connected with her eyes, his expression changed. A look that was dark and dangerous and as charged as summer lightning sent her pulse racing.

No man had ever looked at her like that. The woman in her recognized it just the same. It was hunger, raw and real. It was need, naked and new.

Her heart slammed against her rib cage as she watched a startling combination of anger and desire transform the gunmetal gray of his eyes to a deep, smoky silver.

Stunned, telling herself she was only imagining it, she quickly averted her eyes. Her gaze fell on his duffel and leather jacket by the boathouse steps. She wasn’t imagining them—or the fact that he was still there.

Fighting the sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, she turned back to him and confronted the issue head-on.

“I thought you’d left,” she said.

Once again, his face was hard and unreadable. “I thought I had too.”

Whatever she thought she’d seen in his expression a moment ago was long gone. Chilled by the look that replaced it, she hugged the towel closer. “So why didn’t you?”

He gave her a throwaway shrug. “Beats the hell out of me.”

A tense few seconds passed before he tore his gaze from hers. He looked out over the lake, then took in the run-down cabins in a slow, critical sweep. “You said something about an ad for help. It’s obvious that you need it.”

Uncertain if she understood his meaning, her heart did a quick rolling tumble. “Don’t tell me you’re applying for the job?”

He cocked a brow, flashing his damnable attitude. “I might be. Don’t worry about it,” he added, reading her mind when her gaze strayed to his leg. “I can handle it.”

Recognizing his indisputably dominant nature, she doubted there was much he couldn’t handle. Except her. He wasn’t going to get the chance. She’d make that clear right now.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, regaining some of her composure. “You’re telling me you want to work for me?”

He gave her another one of those long, slow looks that set her senses tingling. “Much as I’ll probably regret it, I guess that about sums it up. It’s a cinch you can’t handle things by yourself.”

The man had an uncanny ability to test the range of her emotions to its outer limits. Snapped from sensual awareness to anger in one fell swoop, she dragged the towel through her hair and considered slugging him. A strategically placed fist in that washboard-lean belly might not do much damage, but it would give her a great deal of satisfaction.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever had anyone try to convince me to hire them by insulting me first. It’s a unique approach, I’ll give you that.”

Again he shrugged. “I call ’em like I see ’em. A spade by any other name is still a shovel and this place is one hell of a mess. You need help, kid. I can provide it.”

She stiffened at his insistent use of the term “kid,” then counted to ten. Was it accident or insight that prompted him to push the right button to send her into a steaming rage? Wishing some of the fire she felt inside would radiate to her frozen limbs, she wiped her face on the towel and wondered if her lips had turned blue.

“I can’t pay much more than room and board,” she said, deciding to do some testing of her own.

He didn’t bat an eye. “Money’s not a problem.”

Realizing that he was serious about the job, she tested him further. “Well, it’s a problem for me, and if you don’t need it, there really isn’t much incentive for you to stick around when the novelty wears off.”

His eyes could have quick-frozen fire. “One thing you need to know about me, Red. I always finish what I start.”

Do you?
she wondered.
And do you know what you might be starting by staying here?
Shivering and knowing it wasn’t just because she was cold, she tried again. “You don’t strike me as the handyman type.”

“Let’s just say the work suits my purposes for the time being.”

“Then let’s also say I’d like to know what your purposes are. If you’re running from some kind of trouble, I don’t need it following you here. I’ve got enough of my own.”

A muscle in his jaw worked. “No trouble,” he said tightly.

No trouble? Oh, he was trouble, all right. Yet she believed him. Some intangible, gut-level instinct told her she had nothing to fear from him. At the moment, however, doubting him was her only defense. Defense against what, she wasn’t quite sure . . . unless it was the fact that she suddenly found herself more afraid that he’d leave than stay.

She’d wondered more than once what kind of a man he was, what had brought him there in the first place when a phone call would have accomplished the same thing. And why now, just as inexplicably, was he proposing to stay and help her?

Her hesitancy seemed to make him impatient. “Look, you need help. I need something to do to pass some time for a month or so, and I don’t want to do it in the city. It’s as simple as that. Now do I have the job or don’t I?”

She met his challenging stare with one of her own, then surprised them both with her answer. “Yeah, you’ve got the job.”

He nodded as if she’d just agreed that it was a nice day, instead of the equivalent of jumping out of a plane without a parachute. “Cabin number one suits me fine,” he said, bending to pick up his gear.

“Fine,” she echoed. As he walked toward the cabin, she realized she needed to regain control of the situation. “Hey, Dursky . . .”

He stopped and turned. A straight, wet lock of hair fell recklessly over his forehead and into his eyes.

She ignored the little ripple that eddied through her chest, and dug in her heels. “For the record. I’m on a deadline here or I wouldn’t even be considering this.”

He slung his duffel over his shoulder and his weight onto his good leg. “Translated, I shouldn’t get to feeling indispensable.”

For some reason she wanted to smile. She didn’t. “You got it.”

He turned to go again.

“Oh, and Dursky . . .”

He faced her with an impatient sigh. “Yeah?”

She lifted her chin and stared him straight in the eye. “You call me ‘kid’ one more time and I’m going to find that shovel you were talking about and pound you into the ground with it. Are we clear?”

His grin was as disarming as it was unexpected. “Yeah, boss lady, we’re clear.”

She was still trying to deal with the tickling sensation in her stomach and the watery feeling in her knees that his smile had triggered when Cooper came trotting out of the forest. The Lab skidded to a stop when he spotted Dursky. He sniffed the air, let out a welcoming bark, then bounded toward him, all wagging tail and wiggling hips, as happy to see him as if he were a piece of prime steak.

“Miserable, unfaithful mutt,” she muttered.

Shivering, she walked to the main lodge to shower and change into dry clothes. It wasn’t until she was warm and dry again that what she’d done sank in. She’d just saddled herself with another stray. He was a rebel and a loner and the last thing she needed to complicate her life.

Adam. She rolled his name around in her mind, thought of the way his hard, muscled body had felt molded against hers in the water, of the way his eyes had darkened when he looked at her.

Damning herself for the direction her thoughts had taken, she quickly braided her hair and headed out the door. His name might be Adam, but she wasn’t Eve, and this sure as the devil wasn’t paradise.

Three

Adam had done many things in his life that were subject to question. Few, however, had left him as baffled as his decision to stay on at Shady Point Lodge. Bent over the deck floor of cabin number eight the morning after he’d fished one Joanna “Should Have Been a Drill Sergeant” Taylor out of the drink, he was still trying to sort it all out.

Pounding a nail home, he told himself he’d stayed because he needed the solitude,
not
because of the bossy, brassy redhead who was his temporary straw boss.

He wasn’t there because he was running either. He’d never run from anything in his life. Not from Iraq, not from a hundred filthy assignments, not from Annie. She’d been the one to run—from him and from their marriage. She’d had good cause on both counts.

This morning, with the air still nippy and sharp and with a clean scent he’d never known before, their disastrous marriage and his life in Detroit seemed a lifetime away.

He lined up another board and flashed on a memory that was not so distant: Frank lying dead on the cold liquor-store floor. He forced the picture away only to find it replaced with another: the boy, his eyes wild with surprise and pain, his hand clutched over his own chest as if trying to stanch the flow of blood from Adam’s bullet.

Despite the morning chill, a bead of sweat trickled down his temple. He wiped it away with an unsteady hand and told himself again that he was
not
running.

He was just running down, he admitted wearily. Claypool had been right. He sat back and stared out over the lake, remembering the conversation he’d had with his sergeant the day he’d left Detroit . . .

. . . The rattle of loose glass in Sergeant Claypool’s Fifth Precinct office door had announced his arrival.

“You’re late,” Jack Claypool said without looking up from the report on his desk.

Sensing his boss’s tension, Adam limped to the chair opposite the desk and dropped into it. “Those damn things are going to kill you,” he warned, referring to the unlit cigarette that perpetually dangled from the corner of Jack’s mouth.

As soon as he left the building, he’d light up. “Occupational hazard. But then I guess I don’t need to talk to you about hazards, do I? How is the leg anyway?”

“Fine. The leg’s fine.”

Silence settled over them like a haze of drifting smoke as Adam waited for Jack to get past the small talk and on to the reason he’d called him in.

Outside the tiny cubicle the Detroit PD laughingly referred to as Claypool’s office, the phones rang incessantly, victims cried, and suspects protested at being booked. On the city streets five stories below, the serrated howl of a response car siren faded to a low, hollow moan.

Impatient with the wait, Adam leaned forward in his chair. “We going to sit here and play patty-cake all morning, or did you call me in here for a reason?”

“You’re one of the best vice cops under my command, Adam . . . but you’re also my friend. And as your friend, I’ve got to know. When are you going to let it go?”

So that was the way the wind blew, Adam thought wearily as Jack went on.

“In all my years on the force, I’ve had luck on my side. I’ve never lost a partner, but I can relate to what you’re going through. You and Frank were together ten years. That’s no short reel.”

“You’ve sung this hymn before, Jack,” he said, closing his eyes and slumping back in the chair.

“Well, stick around, buddy, you’ve only heard the first verse. Man, I’m desperate to reach you. One way or another this hair shirt of yours has got to come off. Frank was a good man. A good cop. Mourn him. Miss him. But for God’s sake, don’t allow his death to be your own undoing. It was not your fault. And think about it, Adam. It could have been you. If you’d taken that bullet somewhere other than in your thigh, we would have buried you along with Frank. His number was up and there was nothing you could have done about it. As for the boy, he was destined to come to that kind of end. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been some other cop or some hood that got him.”

Adam worked his jaw and stared at the cracked tile on the floor.

“Deaf ears,” Jack muttered as he fished around in his hip pocket for a roll of antacids. He popped one into his mouth, then went on. “Everything I say to you falls on deaf ears. Dammit, Adam! It’s been almost two months. You’ve got to let the guilt go. It’s not yours to bear.”

Adam pushed himself upright. “Look—I’m fine. Save your hellfire and brimstone for some rookie who needs a pep talk. Just give me an assignment. I’m ready to go back on the street.”

“Like hell. Look at you. You don’t sleep. You obviously don’t eat. Your hands are shaking so bad, you’d blow a hole through your own gut before you ever unholstered your gun. You weren’t responsible for Frank’s death, but I’d sure as hell be responsible for what happened to your new partner if I saddled him with you in this condition.”

“Send me out alone, then. I need to work.”

“You are working.”

“Pushing paper and filling in on dispatch is not what I do.”

“You won’t even be doing that much longer if you don’t get your act together. I can’t protect you forever. The big boys are watching. Soon they’ll quit asking for my opinion. They’re talking about disability leave, Adam. A permanent leave.”

“My leg is fine,” he said succinctly.

“Your leg is not fine, but even if it were, your leg is not the problem. They want to know if I think Dursky, the supercop, has been pushed beyond the breaking point. If I’ve got a loose cannon on my hands.”

For the first time since entering the office, he met Jack’s gaze and held it.

“You’re balancing on a very thin edge here, Adam. I can’t let you on the street this way and you know it. Level with me,” he commanded after a ringing silence. “Are you on the booze again?”

It was a fair question. He couldn’t even be angry that Jack had asked it. “No. No booze.”

Jack reached into his pocket for another antacid. “How long you been dry? Has it been ten years yet?”

“Eleven, give or take a month.” Give or take exactly one month and twenty-two days, he added silently.

“Booze was my answer for a time there too,” Jack said quietly.

“You can save the Pollyanna rhetoric, Jack. We’re both big boys and we both know how to handle our own problems.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, because right now you’re my biggest problem, and I’ve decided on a way to solve it.” He popped the antacid in his mouth. “I’m extending your leave. Starting today, you’ve got another month off, Adam—I’ve got no choice and in my opinion, neither do you.”

He could feel what color was left in his face drain like blood from a reopened wound. The tension, bowstring tight in its intensity, was manageable only because of the feelings he and Jack held for each other.

“If you take my job, you take everything.”

“I’m trying to save your job. If you were thinking rationally, you’d realize that fact.” Jack hesitated, then leveled the final blow. “I’ll need the badge, Adam. And the gun . . .”

That had been four days ago and even now, Adam broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. He’d been numb as he’d dug into his hip pocket, drawn out his wallet, and flipped it open.

He remembered staring at his badge, polishing the worn insignia with a long, thoughtful stroke of his thumb. Fifteen years he’d carried the Detroit PD badge. It should have been harder to give up. In the end, it hadn’t been hard enough. He’d suddenly realized Jack was right, and that he was tired of fighting.

Without another word, he’d unfastened his shoulder holster and laid both it and the badge on Jack’s desk. Then he’d left the precinct, retreating to his empty apartment. Not for the first time since Frank’s death, he’d considered drinking himself into blissful, mind-numbing oblivion.

Instead, he’d packed a duffel and checked in on John. Assured that his condition was stable, he’d caught a bus out of town. Almost twenty-four hours later, he’d walked down a rocky path toward a run-down resort, the most beautiful lake he had ever seen, and a redheaded woman/child with defiant green eyes.

Bottom line: Jack was right. He
did
need the rest. The lake and the north country had struck a chord in him. Here he could fill up on clean and quiet and simple. He needed this break from the stench and the noise of the city, and from the adrenaline rushes that came with his job.

His job. It unsettled him that he didn’t miss it.

John Taylor’s kid, however, unsettled him even more.

He looked up as she walked by and noticed again what he’d been trying not to notice since he’d decided to stay. There was less child and more woman to her than he was able to ignore.

She was wearing her standard uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and a carpenter’s apron slung around her ridiculously boyish hips. She’d tied a faded blue bandanna around her forehead to hold back that riotous tangle of hair, and for the life of him, all he wanted to do at that moment was touch it. He wanted to see if it was as silky as it looked, if it would lay heavy in his callused hands.

She played the part of a prickly cactus with an amazing amount of panache, yet he sensed that hidden beneath the needles was a caring, giving woman. A woman a man could get lost in, then found in, emerging strong and whole again in the process.

Lord, where had that come from? He tore his gaze from her and slammed another nail home. He’d like to believe he reacted to her only because she was John’s kid, or because he hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that she was struggling.

Since when have you ever wanted to play the role of father/protector?
he asked himself as he set the final nail. Maybe since he’d found her drowning with that damn duck in her arms. The thought of what could have happened to her if he hadn’t been there prompted a wrenching in his gut reminiscent of the hit he’d taken in a bad bust years ago.

He shook it off. He’d never been anyone’s father, and wet-nursing a brat in red braids didn’t meet his definition of fun.

So he just kept coming back to the only other motive, and it was much too dangerous to entertain. He was damned near old enough to be her father. If he was so hot to get laid, he should have taken care of it before he left the city.

He renewed the promise he’d made when he’d decided to stay. She was off-limits. Period. He had nothing to offer her but short-term. Though she’d fight the notion to the bitter end, the little spitfire had commitment written all over her. He had no intention of committing to anything. She might be a brat, but she deserved a damn sight better than a one-night stand with the likes of him.

Even if it killed him, he wasn’t going to lay a hand on her. Not even, he vowed, stealing a last lingering look at her trim little butt as she walked away, a finger.