When Somebody Loves You (31 page)

Unable to help himself, he leaned over her. With the tip of his tongue, he caught a runnel of water trickling down her breast, then lingered and licked and sipped.

Her sound of longing brought his head up.

“Well,” he said, sitting back, “I guess that’s enough of that.”

She brushed her fingertips across his cheek. “I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of that.” Embarrassment flooded her face. Averting her eyes, she sank deeper beneath the water.

She looked so small and vulnerable; he was again reminded of her childhood. “How did you lose your mother?”

She hesitated a moment, drew a deep breath that created a gentle ripple, and bent her leg so that the rounded curve of her knee peeked out of the water.

“She died in a car accident.”

Adam watched her carefully for signs of withdrawal. When none came, he urged her with his silence to continue.

“Mama was much younger than Dad. She was twenty-five and he was forty when he married her. Before he met her, he’d never had time for a wife, he’d told everyone. He was married to Shady Point. The resort demanded all of his energy. But then one summer Mama came to the lodge. She was an artist from New York. She’d fallen in love with the lake from some articles she’d read and decided she wanted to spend time painting here. And when she arrived—”

Her faraway smile led Adam to conclude, “She fell in love with your father too.”

She nodded. “She’d only intended to stay a month. Somehow, she never got around to leaving. They married right away and as Daddy used to joke, ‘Nine months and fifteen minutes after the ceremony’ I was born.”

“They didn’t waste any time.”

She smiled again. “Not a minute.”

They were both silent for a while, both thoughtful. “The day Mama died she was on her way home from International Falls. She’d gone to town to do some shopping. On the trip home a semi went out of control and hit her head-on.”

Adam caressed the milky-white knee that rose above the water.

“I was in bed when Daddy came to tell me. It was very dark and very quiet when he woke me up. Even now, I can remember how the room looked shaded in late-night shadows, the light spilling across my bed from the doorway. It’s amazing how sleep can insulate. He was crying, and I remember thinking, Daddy’s playing a joke on me. You know, like parents do sometimes to little kids when they pretend to be sad because you wouldn’t share your sucker, or some silly thing. And I remember thinking, I’m thirteen years old, not a little kid to play this silly game with. . . . Anyway.” The catch in her voice brought an unaccountable tightness to his chest. “He was crying and it didn’t seem real. He lay down beside me and gathered me in his arms and told me Mama was dead. That she wouldn’t ever be coming home again. ‘Baby,’ he said against my hair, ‘I don’t think I can live without her.’ ”

Adam drew in a shaky breath. “He loved her very much.”

“Yes,” she whispered, and skimmed her hand idly across the water. “Very much. He never recovered from losing her.”

“And then he left you too.”

Adam closed his eyes for a long moment. John had loved his wife too much to go on. He’d turned to the bottle and left Joanna to handle the loss all alone. It was no wonder she was so tough. She’d learned early to take it on the chin.

Poor little Jo, he thought, and without a word, helped her out of the tub. He wrapped her carefully in a flannel blanket and carried her to the chair in front of the fire. His lips pressed to her hair, he held her close against his body and rocked her like a child.

Eight

Adam gave Jo pieces of himself a little at a time after that. At first the revelations came in unguarded moments, often as a response to something she’d said or done. The words slipped out with an ease he didn’t stop to question. He merely let go. For the first time in his life, he let escape what he’d fought to keep locked inside. Sharing himself with her seemed as natural as breathing.

After breakfast, he helped her dress and loaned her his sweatshirt, and they headed outside.

In any season, Lake Kabetogama possessed a beauty that was a celebration of the magnificence of nature and a joy to all five senses. This particular day, the sun heralded the glory of autumn. It rimmed the treetops with gold and silvered the lake with its shimmering reflection. The aroma of evergreen and the pungent, musky scent of decaying leaves perfumed the crisp air.

The lake breeze was gentle. It wove a rustling, musical sound as it filtered through the forest, persuading the birch leaves to ride to the island floor in its wake. Feathering lazily to the ground, the golden disks decorated the rocky path and crackled beneath their feet as they walked to the shore.

It was a day bathed in the same kind of magic that had blanketed their night. The illusion continued. Cocooned in the knowledge that until someone found them, they were lost to the rest of the world, they made the most of the brief suspension of time. They ignored the impending return of reality and found a sweet healing in each other.

Determined to make the best of the sunshine and the still water, Jo, with Adam’s help, scavenged around in the toolshed and came up with some fishing gear. Although the pole had seen better days, she declared it to be serviceable. After a little more digging she found enough tackle to rig the line.

With more persuasion than she thought necessary, she playfully goaded Adam into trying his luck at fishing for their supper.

“Just think,” she said brightly, “tonight we won’t have to be subjected to another meal of dehydrated something-or-other that passes as real food.”

After they’d settled down on a prominent rock ledge overlooking the bay, Adam reluctantly confessed he didn’t have the slightest inkling of what to do.

“What do you expect from a street kid from Detroit?” he grumbled good-naturedly. “Why don’t
you
do it?”

She waved her bandaged hand. “It’s a two-handed sport, sport. Besides, I think I’m going to enjoy playing the part of teacher for a change.”

The reminder of the kind of tutoring Adam had given her the previous night and then again that morning flooded her cheeks with crimson.

He pulled her up against him and kissed her hard. “Lord, you look pretty in pink.”

“Quit trying to distract me.” She laughed, squirming out of his arms, then patiently instructed him on the proper way to cast the line.

His huge hands, usually artful and articulate, became clumsy and unsure as he battled the intricacies of the rod and reel.

“I’m suddenly seeing the term ‘all thumbs’ in a new light,” she said, teasing him about his botched attempt to cast into deeper water.

“You know,” he drawled, arching a brow in warning, “I could throw
you
out there with a lot less difficulty than this line. I might enjoy it more, too, so don’t push.”

Taking pity on his frustration, she encouraged him gently. “It just takes practice. It’s all wrist action and finesse.”

“So ask me to finesse a wallet out of some mark’s pocket, or the hubcaps from a car parked under a streetlight. I’ve had plenty of practice at both.”

“I knew you had a shady past.”

He laughed. “The shadiest. But just so your little heart doesn’t go all atwitter, you couldn’t be in safer hands than mine.”

“I’ve always known that too,” she said, then added hesitantly, “but you do have my curiosity piqued. What is it you do in Detroit?”

He sobered as reality crept in. “I’m a cop.”

She looked out over the bay. “A cop,” she repeated, as if everything had just fallen into place.

“You sound surprised.”

“No. Intrigued would be a better word. And it definitely explains a few things.”

“Like?”

“Like that angry scar on your thigh. You were shot, weren’t you? And you’ve got, in your words, ‘time on your hands’ because you’re still healing.” Concern darkened her eyes.

He looked away, knowing she deserved to hear the whole story but unable to find it in himself to relive it. She must have sensed the difficulty he was having, because she quickly steered clear of the subject.

“So you went from picking pockets and stealing hubcaps to one of Detroit’s finest. What kind of a police force has a petty thief on its payroll?”

He gave her a slow, crooked grin. “A desperate one.”

“You haven’t really done those things, have you?”

“Those and a helluva lot worse. What you see before you is a product of a less-than-sterling upbringing. I was hustling for a buck before I was old enough to know that what I was doing was wrong. And I was damn good at it,” he added, smiling ruefully. “I reached the ripe old age of twelve before I ever got caught.”

“And that was the end of it?”

He grunted. “Just the beginning. I wore my little stint with juvenile probation like a medal and went right back out on the streets. By that time I was enjoying what I did, the thrill and all, the bucking of a society that didn’t give a damn about me and my kind. And by then I’d sort of gotten used to eating.”

“Where were your parents?” She asked so hesitantly he suspected she’d already guessed the answer.

His jaw hardened for a moment, then he shrugged. “I never knew who my father was. My mother found herself pregnant at fifteen. She never tired of reminding me she’d given up her youth to raise me. We lived from one welfare check and allotment of commodities to the next. And whatever else I could scare up for rent money. Evidently, it finally got to be too much for her, because I came home one night and she was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Split. She’d brought some drifter to the housing project about a week before. He must have promised greener pastures because . . . Hey, what’s this?” Reaching out, he brushed away a single tear that tracked down her cheek. “Ah, Jo . . .”

Drawing her onto his lap, he held her close. No one had ever cried for Adam Dursky.
Because
of him, maybe, but never for him. Yet this tough little woman who refused to cry for herself was crying for him. “Don’t cry for me. I was one of the lucky ones.”

She nestled closer to his chest. “How so?”

“I found Jack Claypool. Or rather, he found me. Jack was a beat cop the summer I turned eighteen. One steamy July night he caught me trying to hot-wire a car.”

She felt his chuckle against her cheek. “That’s funny?”

“Jack
angry
is funny. He’s like an old bull seeing red. Anyway, he could have really nailed me, booked me as an adult. But he let me off with some fast talk and some honest caring. The man turned my life around. He got me into the marines, and as the saying goes, ‘it made a man out of me.’ ”

“You were in the Gulf War.” She reached shyly inside his shirt and ran her fingers along the long, shiny scar that hugged his rib cage. “Is that where you got this?” By now she knew the scar intimately, it and the one low on his groin, dangerously close to that part of him that responded to her slightest touch.

He gave her another kind of response now, a subtle tensing of his body. When his answer didn’t immediately come, she pulled back, smiling an “it’s okay” smile. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Adam was stunned by her gesture. Before he could tell her it was all right, that he was ready to talk about it, a whirring sound sliced into the silence.

“Ohmygosh!” She jumped up off his lap and lunged for the fishing pole, barely catching it before it disappeared into the lake. “Adam, you’ve got one!” she cried, shoving the pole into his hand. “Don’t just sit there. Catch it!”

Watching her lose her cool had a calming effect on him. And she was something to watch, shouting heated instructions, her hair flying with frenzied activity around her face. Her excitement was infectious, though, and finally, despite her harried orders and his ineptness, he landed the fish.

It was only by sheer luck that the aged monofilament line didn’t snap against the weight of a nice-sized walleye.

“Oh, Adam,” she cried, bubbling over with delight. “It’s a beauty! And wait until you taste it.”

Trying hard to hide his pride and wondering why a stupid thing like catching her a fish for her supper made him feel so full inside, he swung her, fish and all, into his arms.

“You’d by God better not burn it,” he said as he stalked toward the cabin.

“Me? Oh, no.” She laughed, wrapping her arms around his neck. “You catch ’em. You clean ’em.
You
cook ’em. It’s the law of the wilderness.”

He grunted and hefted her higher against his chest. “I think you’ve forgotten who the law really is in these parts, Red. Let’s hope you get your attitude adjusted by the time we get back to the cabin.”

Many hours later, with his stomach and his arms full, Adam looked down in utter contentment at the woman lying by his side. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. It’s freezing out here.”

“But look at the sky . . . and wait. The show should start anytime now.”

They were lying in a clearing under the stars, nestled together inside the sleeping bag like two squirming puppies. After they’d eaten their fill of fish, she’d done a little mental calculating and realized this was a night she’d been waiting for since the beginning of the summer. With some gentle coaxing, she’d convinced him he didn’t want to miss what the night had in store.

Wrapping her tighter against him, he smoothed back the riot of red-gold curls and tucked her head beneath his chin. He felt her smile as she settled against him.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” she asked after a while, looking up at the star-speckled sky. “The black is so black, the starlight so pure.”

Her whispered sigh seemed not an intrusion on the quiet, but an integral part of the peaceful night. Without stopping to measure his thoughts for censure, he stared into the heavens and spoke. “I remember a night a lifetime ago when I lay under a midnight-black sky like this one. We were dug in at the edge of a village waiting for morning and the Republican Guard’s next assault.

“And I remember wondering then, how could anything that beautiful be a part of a war so ugly?”

For a moment he was back there in the foxhole. The fear he’d felt as a nineteen-year-old soldier thousands of miles away from anything that was familiar colored his voice. “Hell, I was a city kid. I’d never seen a night sky without a layer of smog and manufactured light to dim its shine. I’d never seen a night so black. And I’d never been so scared. I was twenty-one days away from going stateside and I hadn’t received so much as a scratch. And deep inside, I knew they’d never let me go home that way. . . .”

He felt her heartbeat accelerate against his chest and drew her closer. “We’d held repeated fronts. Our casualties had been heavy. The constant barrage from snipers and the remoteness of our location had whittled us down to a small, scraggly platoon of scared kids and crazy men. Rations and ammunition were low. Morale was nonexistent.

“Just before morning light, they came. Hundreds of them. Screaming like banshees, swarming like flies.”

In spite of the cool night air, beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. “I’m still not sure why I’m alive. Probably because they thought they’d killed me. I’d emptied my rifle on the first wave and was trying to reload when the magazine jammed. The first Guard over the rim of the foxhole made a wild jab with his bayonet, then clubbed me with the butt of his rifle.

“The next thing I remember, I was on a gurney in an EVAC unit near Tikrit with a hell of a headache and a hole the size of Michigan in my gut. And I was one of the lucky ones. . . .”

He drew a shuddering breath, remembering the sounds and stench of the dying and the dead. He’d never spoken to anyone about his memories of the killing and the atrocities of war. Not even Annie. Reliving them was as painful as bleeding. The hurt would go on for as long as he lived. Yet as he closed his eyes against the horror, he found that with the telling, something had changed. Somehow, the memories were less vivid, a bit more distant. He relaxed and let the images roll through his mind and out of his subconscious like a vintage newsreel.

Jo’s silence was more supportive than words, her presence more potent than drink. And drinking was all he’d wanted to do after he’d come back to the States. He’d done a lot of things he’d been sorry for. Yet as he lay in the arms of this small, giving woman, a peace settled over him, a feeling of freedom from that part of his past. He felt a strong sense of communion with her and, surprisingly, more in touch with himself than he’d been in too many years.

When she wrapped her arms tighter around him, he realized how long he’d been silent. She ran her hand back and forth along the scar on his side, then lower. “Do they still hurt you?” she asked with ingenuousness only someone as pure as Joanna could have.