Between Love and Duty

by Janice Kay Johnson

  You love Tito.

  He still shook off Jane’s accusation. Of course he didn’t. But…hell. He’d maybe wanted to go back. Have a redo.

  Impossible.

  “I’m taking off,” Niall said, heading for the door. “I’ve got a date.”

  “Did you actually want something?”

  Niall grinned. “Nope. Checking out the rumors, that’s all.”

  Duncan shook his head in disgust, but walked his brother to the door. Night was settling. He stood on the porch and watched as Niall kicked his Harley to life and rode it away down the street. Duncan was already thinking about Jane.

  Probably because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a date.

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  CHAPTER FIVE

  YOU BITCH.

  Keys clutched tightly in her hand, Jane stared at the two words spray-painted on the back door of her store. The garish red paint was fresh enough to still be dripping. She had no doubt whatsoever that the nasty accusation was aimed at her. She had one full-time employee and a couple part-time clerks, but she opened the store herself almost every day.

  Her mind leaped to her newest Guardian ad Litem case. The father and the grandmother were being particularly hostile. Jane wasn’t done with her interviews, but she was already leaning toward recommending the mother have custody. She at least occasionally seemed to remember that the welfare of the two kids should be paramount.

  After a moment Jane’s mouth firmed and she unlocked the door. Thank goodness nobody else was here yet. Unless she was willing to share present and past cases—which she couldn’t—calling the police wouldn’t do any good.

  Sticks and stones, she told herself. She’d been called worse, most of the time face-to-face. A couple of times, she’d received really ugly, anonymous phone calls. She’d shrugged them off, and spray paint on the door wasn’t any worse than hearing the words, was it?

  She let herself into Dance Dreams, dropped her purse into a drawer in her office, then filled a bucket with hot, sudsy water and went outside to scrub away the ugly words. She tossed the water into a weedy strip behind a garbage Dumpster, inspected the now-clean door with satisfaction then went inside to open the cash register.

  A moment later she popped back out. What if the vandal had been dumb enough to toss the paint can in the Dumpster, complete with fingerprints? But when she clanged the lid open she saw that it was empty. The garbage had been picked up yesterday, and nothing had been dropped in there in the meantime.

  Hector called midday and asked to spend much of the day with his son tomorrow, Saturday. Jane, wondering when she’d next have time to do any serious housecleaning, agreed that she could be available. Since she had no customers in the store at that moment, she called Duncan’s cell phone and left a message telling him the time and place.

  He returned her call in the late afternoon, asking without preamble, “Was he a jackass again?”

  “Huh?”

  “There was something in your voice.”

  That made her blink. It was possible that when she’d left him the message she’d still been feeling stressed because of the nasty message spray-painted on the door. But how was it possible that Duncan had read her tone that accurately?

  Knowing that he had, and that there had been a kind of gruff concern in his original question, momentarily weakened her. And that unnerved her. She had to do quick battle with the temptation to tell him what had actually upset her. Fortunately, she was strong enough to win. Of course she wasn’t going to make a looming mountain out of a molehill, and that’s exactly what would happen if she involved the police in something so essentially meaningless. Duncan was not the man to listen sympathetically. Nope, he’d launch a full-scale investigation.

  “You’re imagining things,” she told him. Lied. “Hector and I had a civil conversation.”

  He apparently accepted her answer, which made her feel a little bit guilty. “He wants to take Tito to Camano Island State Park? What’s he doing, packing a picnic?”

  “Apparently. And they plan to go to the beach. He says there’s supposed to be an especially low tide. He thought Tito would enjoy the tide pools.”

  There was silence.

  She felt compelled to say, “I actually thought it was a really nice idea.”

  Duncan sighed. “Yeah. It’s just…Camano Island?”

  It would be at least an hour’s drive each way. She didn’t suppose his life was any less stressful than hers.

  “You don’t have to go,” she said without any real hope. Hope of what? Jane asked herself in the next second. That he wouldn’t come? Or that he would?

  Without hesitation, he asked, “Do you want to bring the picnic, or shall I?”

  “I will. You’d probably try to poison me.”

  “It’s really my turn. You bought the pizza.”

  She almost laughed at his lack of enthusiasm for the idea of bringing their picnic lunch. “I don’t mind. Do you have any major likes or dislikes?”

  They discussed food tastes briefly, agreeing that they both hated coleslaw and would agree to disagree on pickles. Considering she hadn’t had time to do a grocery shop all week, Jane decided to go to a favorite deli in the morning before she picked up Tito.

  “Why don’t I drive?” Duncan suggested. “Does Tito go with you or Hector?”

  “Me, this time. I need to make a point.”

  “Good,” he said. “Where do I pick you up?”

  “Home,” she said and gave him the address. They agreed on eleven o’clock.

  She hung up feeling slightly giddy. As if she had a date with Duncan MacLachlan. A real date.

  JANE LAID OUT THE LUNCH she’d brought on a rough-hewn table in the picnic area set among old-growth cedars and Douglas firs, preserved when the land was set aside to be a state park.

  As Duncan sat across from her, he said, “I knew an old lady whose mother told her that the whole island was once forested like this. She said the trees were so big, you could drive a buggy from one end of the island to the other beneath the canopy. There wasn’t any of the scrubby undergrowth in those days.”

  “Really?” She looked around, her face showing pleasure and less tension than usual. Despite the presence of Hector and Tito, a short distance away at their own picnic table, Jane had relaxed a little.

  He was a little surprised to realize how relaxed he’d begun to feel, too. Maybe this outing hadn’t been such a bad idea. Tito had chattered excitedly the whole way. He remembered going to the beach when he was a little kid, he said, but it had been a long time ago. Duncan felt bad that he hadn’t thought of something like this. No kid should live in a county that, while landlocked, was only a short drive from Puget Sound, and never make it to the beach. The trouble was, they didn’t have a good public one much closer than this.

  Camano Island was long and narrow, linked to the mainland by a bridge. The state park occupied land on the west side, looking across Saratoga Passage to Whidbey Island and, beyond that, the Olympic Mountains. Duncan knew that gray whales and occasionally orcas were seen in Saratoga Passage. He imagined what a thrill seeing a whale would be for Tito.

  “Great potato salad,” he said, and Jane smiled.

  “I’d take credit, but, uh…”

  “Snow Goose Deli?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thought I recognized it.” Apparently he and Jane had something in common besides detesting coleslaw. “I’m surprised Hector thought of this,” he said after a minute.

  “Me, too.” She sneaked a glance at the pair at the adjoining table. “He’s made some effort to be pleasant today, too.”

  “You must have scared him.”

  “Gee, thanks. Maybe it was my gentle ways that persuaded him cooperation beat butting heads.”

  Duncan was in a good enough mood to say, “Could be.”

  She finished her sandwich and took a drink of her diet cola. “Hec
tor says hello when he calls. Goodbye, too,” she said in a thoughtful voice.

  Duncan grinned. “Huh.”

  Imagining what Niall would say to see his brother smiling—again!—was almost enough to wipe the grin from his mouth, but not quite.

  “He doesn’t assume I know who’s calling, either. He’s been known to say, Ms. Brooks, this is Hector Ortez.”

  “A considerate man.”

  “Occasionally even a gentleman,” she agreed, a dimple in one cheek betraying her effort not to smile.

  The teasing light in her eyes did something to Duncan that he was quite sure she didn’t intend. She might irritate him now and again, but he wanted her in a way he hadn’t wanted any woman in a long time. Maybe, he thought, disconcerted, ever. All that fire and stubbornness wouldn’t be easy to live with, but taking it to bed was another story.

  He moved uncomfortably now that his jeans had a tighter fit. “Should I be reading something into this?” he asked blandly.

  The smile was definitely appearing now, but she managed to add a hint of doubt to her voice. “I feel sure you know how to be a gentleman, too.”

  Did he? He’d grown up determined to survive. To escape. Maybe his mother had tried to teach her sons manners. If so, he didn’t remember.

  “Why are you frowning?” Jane asked. “Did I hit too close to home?”

  Was he frowning? Yeah, damn it.

  “Sorry. You got me thinking about something.”

  “Something?” Her head was tilted to one side.

  “My mother.” Strange, because he so rarely let himself think about her. “I was trying to remember whether she tried very hard to teach us manners, or whether she gave up early on.”

  “Us? Oh. You said something about a brother.”

  “I have two.”

  “You sound like your mother is dead,” Jane said tentatively.

  Usually he shut people down who asked about his family. For some reason he didn’t want to do that with her. Their relationship had so far been abrasive but also honest. Maybe opening up some was a way of testing her.

  He didn’t let himself think about what the test results would mean.

  “No. She walked out on us when I was eighteen. I haven’t seen her since.”

  Her mouth opened in shock. “That’s awful!”

  “Yeah, it pretty well sucked,” he heard himself admitting.

  Eyes big and drenched with color, she studied him. “At least you were, well, an adult.”

  “I was,” he agreed.

  Had she heard the subtle emphasis on I? He saw immediately that she had.

  “Your brothers?”

  “Were twelve and fifteen.”

  “Surely you had a father.”

  Nope, he was in the slammer.

  Time to cut off this line of questioning. He’d said enough already.

  “No,” he said briefly, wadding the paper that had wrapped his sandwich. “I was an adult. We managed.”

  “Dear Lord,” she murmured.

  He couldn’t help the sardonic twist to his mouth. The dear Lord hadn’t been around to help, that he could see.

  “You raised them.”

  “Yes.”

  This time his answer was curt enough to send a signal. She stiffened slightly. After a moment, she carefully rewrapped the half of her sandwich that she hadn’t eaten.

  She took a bag of scones out of the basket she’d used to carry their lunches. “Cranberry orange.”

  “Damn. I’m glad I let you bring the food.”

  Watching surreptitiously, he was glad to see her mouth soften.

  “You’re welcome.” Her eyes were cool when they met his, however. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring some kind of listening device so we could hear every word Hector and Tito exchange.”

  Ah. That sounded more like the Jane he knew and… Didn’t love.

  “Maybe I’m recording them,” Duncan suggested blandly.

  Her laugh was low and, like everything else about her, too damn sexy for his own good.

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” she said.

  From the other table, Hector called, “Are you ready to go to the beach?”

  Jane swiveled on the bench. “Yep. Give me a second to put our lunch stuff away.”

  She repacked the basket and Duncan stowed it in the cargo area of his SUV. After a side trip to the restroom, they all headed down the path to the beach.

  Split rails kept visitors from tumbling down the bank. Undergrown with glossy green salal, madrona trees with their distinctive, peeling red bark leaned precariously over the bluff. The saltwater scent was strong, probably because of the low tide. Duncan couldn’t help breathing it in with pleasure. The sun sparkled on the water, and beyond the low, green sprawl of Whidbey Island the Olympic Mountains were sharp and still snow-covered. A late-spring haze made them appear to float unconnected to earth.

  The sun was warm on Duncan’s face. He wanted to tilt his head back and soak it in. When was the last time he’d gone to the beach? Probably not any more recently than Tito.

  Could be it was talking about his mother that brought her to mind now, but he had an oddly vivid memory of her taking all three boys to the beach. Not this one—the one in his memory was sandy. The sun was warm, though, even warmer than today. Conall had been a toddler, which meant Duncan was…no more than eight, he supposed. His mother had been laughing and pretty, nothing like the tense, pinched, controlled woman he better remembered. She’d drawn more and more inward as time went on, he understood for the first time. Hiding. From Dad? From all her failures, including her children? In recent years he’d thought of her as cold, but that wasn’t quite right.

  Ahead, Tito let out a hoot and bounded the last little way, skidding onto the gravel beach. Duncan smiled at the boy’s eagerness.

  I was as eager, that long-ago day.

  When had he lost the ability to have fun?

  “Look at that driftwood! Can I climb on it, Papa?”

  “Of course you can,” his father said. “But be careful. It’s easy to slip.”

  Hector stopped and watched Tito scramble over whole trees, silvered by the salt water and cast by winter waves like so many pickup sticks against the island bluff. Duncan and Jane paused, too, but it seemed to him that Hector was pretending they weren’t here.

  After a minute Jane turned away from the others. She chose her own pile of driftwood and, to Duncan’s amusement, straddled a fat log and then swung herself to her feet atop it like a gymnast on a balance beam. She walked its length then stepped onto a narrower log that lay at a slant. Duncan paralleled her, keeping his feet on the gravelly beach. Once she slipped and stretched her arms out to help herself balance. When she reached the top of the slope, she grinned at him in triumph.

  “I’m queen of the mountain.”

  “Is that a challenge?”

  She made a laughing face at him. “No, I don’t want an elbow to the nose, thank you, anyway.”

  An elbow…? Then he remembered telling her about giving Judge Lehman a bloody nose. He grinned up at her. “Would I do that? I’m a gentleman, remember?”

  She started to answer, but looked past him and called out in alarm, “Tito! What are you doing?”

  Duncan turned, too. Hector was laughing and calling something up at his son. The boy had clambered high atop the heap of driftwood and was now swinging from the branch of a madrona that had grown from the bank at an angle. Bright red bark was crumbling onto his head and shoulders. Even before his mind consciously noticed that pebbles and dirt from the bank were showering onto the beach below, Duncan was already moving.

  He brushed past Hector, who had turned to glower at Jane. Within seconds Duncan had leaped up the driftwood and reached Tito. He grabbed him around the waist and ordered, “Let go. Now.”

  “Why?” Tito protested, kicking at him.

  “The tree’s not strong enough to hold you.” Once Duncan had the boy’s feet planted beside him on a solid stretch of log, he
pointed at the fresh tears in the bank. “See?”

  “Oh.”

  The anger knotted in Duncan’s gut wasn’t for Tito, who was only a kid. Kids did dumb things. It was their fathers who were supposed to stop them.

  Jane had reached Hector before Duncan did, though.

  “If he’d fallen, he would have been badly hurt,” she was saying.