Between Love and Duty

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Odd, because she’d thought he was in good spirits when she picked him up at Lupe’s. Had Hector said something that upset him? Tito’s last glance over his shoulder before he joined his father on the field had been sullen, now that she thought about it.

  She and Duncan reached the next corner and she turned sharply left again, walking fast. It annoyed her to realize that, with his longer legs, he was barely strolling while she’d probably end up puffing and panting in no time.

  “No comment?” he prodded.

  “About?”

  “Why are you in such a pissy mood?”

  She determined to make an effort. “I’m sorry if I seem that way. I have things on my mind, that’s all.”

  Which was true. She’d been busy at work today; local dance schools were having recitals in the next month, and providing the costumes was lucrative for her. She loved watching giggling girls try on extravagant pink-and-purple leotards with stiff tutus, staring at themselves in wonder in the wall of mirrors. When she was that age, she’d dreamed of wearing something like that, of dancing on stage. She had known with all her being that she would be the epitomy of grace if only she could have ballet shoes. She would float like a downy seed head being lifted by a gentle breeze. Oh, how vividly she’d been able to see herself, knowing all the time that her dreams would never be real.

  But her disposition had more to do with the nasty message that had arrived in the mail today. It had been a folded piece of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven colored paper, stapled to keep it closed. She’d torn it open assuming it was a flyer advertising a special at a local business, or perhaps a fundraiser for some nonprofit. Grateful to have a quiet moment to eat her sandwich and open the mail, she wasn’t paying that much attention. And then she’d laid the paper flat and seen the message.

  Bitch you think you can do anything you want but youll be sorry

  It wasn’t so much the words that had momentarily raised goose bumps; it was the fact that, in the best tradition of threatening notes, the letters had been individually cut out of magazines and newspapers and glued down. No punctuation. As she shivered, she had imagined someone—she had to believe a man—bent over a kitchen table, cutting each letter out with angry slashes. He’d have worn latex gloves, wouldn’t he? Anyone who watched TV knew about fingerprints.

  Nonetheless, Jane had lifted the message by the edges and dropped it into a manila envelope, which she tucked into a drawer. In case more messages came, and the tone became uglier.

  “What kind of things?” Duncan asked, and she blinked, having to rewind her thoughts to remember what she’d last said.

  I have things on my mind.

  Oh, how tempting it was to tell him. She wished she hadn’t had to see him so soon. For all the antagonism Duncan aroused in her, he also exuded strength. It had been a long time since she’d even dreamed of someone sheltering her, but she had a feeling Duncan would if she asked.

  But…she still believed the message sender was only venting. “You’ll be sorry” could mean anything, including “God will get you for this someday, when you’re eighty-five years old and your time comes naturally.” Whoever this was hadn’t said “I’ll make you sorry,” which might have really scared her.

  That wasn’t really what was stopping her, however. It was the bad feeling she knew what Duncan’s immediate assumption would be.

  Hector.

  And even though Hector Ortez was obviously volatile, she couldn’t see him anonymously threatening a woman.

  Frowning, she admitted even that wasn’t what kept her quiet. What she didn’t like was the implication that she couldn’t take care of herself, that she needed a man—a dominant, dictatorial man, no less—to keep her safe. To meekly accept his authority in return for his protection.

  No. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Her heart pounded hard at the very thought. She would never place herself in that kind of subservient role again. It alarmed her that she’d ever felt the temptation. Was there actually a part of her that wanted to reclaim any part of her hideous childhood?

  “Oh… I’m finishing up my recommendation on another case. It’s not like Tito’s. Everybody hates everybody. They all have attorneys,” she said in a deliberately distracted tone. She shrugged.

  “Don’t tell me you’re suffering doubts.” The mockery in his voice was subtle, but it was there, confirming her decision not to confide in him—and ticking her off royally, too, even as she was shatteringly aware that it hurt to be reminded how little he thought of her.

  Would he sympathize with the message writer?

  Concentrating fiercely on the anger, Jane stopped dead, planted her knuckles on her hips and waited until he noticed and turned to face her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  He raised his eyebrows. “It was a question.”

  “Sure it was.” She was really steaming now. “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

  Those cool gray eyes studied her. He wasn’t sneering, she’d give him that. In fact, his expression was odd, as though he was disconcerted in some way. After a discernible pause, he said, “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Jane snorted and started walking again. A good case of mad covered the hurt she refused to acknowledge and sped her steps until she was almost jogging.

  She and Duncan were now circling behind the goal Tito was still guarding. At that moment, Tito threw his body in front of the ball, and Jane called, “Great stop!”

  He flashed her a grin, and she saw that he was starting to get into it. Despite her own mood, she was glad. Hector was trying, and this wasn’t easy for either of them.

  “You don’t have to keep walking with me, ” she said frigidly.

  “That’s okay.” He didn’t sound bothered by their sharp exchange. “I don’t mind stretching my legs.”

  They circled the field an entire time without speaking at all. Jane’s tension gradually seeped away. Exercise was doing her good. She hadn’t made it to a dance class in two weeks, which she hated. The half hour or less of stretching she was managing about every other day at home wasn’t enough.

  On the third circuit, Duncan asked out of the blue, “Did you grow up around here?”

  “Are we going to make conversation?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  Suspicious of his motives, Jane couldn’t think of any reason not to answer. “I’m from the Midwest. Iowa.”

  “Rural?”

  “Small town.”

  “No Little League? Girl’s soccer? Camp Fire girls?”

  “Did I say I wasn’t a Camp Fire girl?”

  “Only guessing,” he said mildly.

  “You’re right. I wasn’t.”

  The silence wasn’t at all relaxing now. She marched the length of the soccer field, Duncan effortlessly pacing her, before he nudged, “What did you do as a little girl?”

  “Why do you care?”

  His shoulders moved in a lazy shrug. “Curious.”

  She didn’t answer right away. Her childhood was no great secret. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked about it, though. It would make her feel naked, in a way.

  With Duncan MacLachlan, of all people.

  But he had told her about his father going to prison and his mother deserting the family, hadn’t he? He wasn’t asking for anything he hadn’t given. The sting she’d felt earlier told her the truth: she wanted him to know her better. Maybe even to like her.

  “I went to church. Bible study. I helped my mother clean and cook. I sewed my own clothing and eventually my sisters’.” She couldn’t help sounding flat. Which was fitting for the monochrome of her childhood. “My parents belonged to a weird little religious sect. No drinking, no dancing. Girls had to keep their bodies modestly attired. Their place was in the home.”

  “Surely you went to school.”

  She felt the softness of his voice like a touch. Apparently he recognized how emotionally perilous this territory was for her.

>   “Eventually, but only because of legal pressure. For a while, we were supposedly homeschooled, but we all failed the required tests, so the church elders surrendered and we were allowed to attend the public school. Never extracurriular activities, of course.” She gave herself a shake, as if she could shed memories. “It was very restrictive, oppressive and depressing. Not abusive, though, if that’s what you were thinking.” Which was not strictly true, from her current perspective. Her father was an angry, rigid man who enforced his will with blows when he saw it as necessary. To her shame, she still, sometimes, winced away from a man’s upraised hand. “I managed to hold out until I graduated from high school. One of my teachers helped me apply to colleges and even paid the application fees. I packed one suitcase, got on a Greyhound bus and was gone. End of story.”

  “Have you stayed in touch with your family?” Duncan asked, still in that relentlessly gentle voice.

  She shook her head. “I tried. Father was angry at the way I’d left. He decided I would be a wicked influence on my two younger sisters. He was probably right.”

  “So you don’t know if they escaped in turn?”

  Her fingernails bit into her palms and her hands ached from clenching them so tightly. “I do know. I’ve stayed friends with the teacher who helped me. She says both my sisters married within the church.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “Me, too.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Was a nonentity.” From some distance, she heard herself laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Me, I guess I was born wild. As long as I can remember, I hated being told no. Girls don’t run, or flop in the grass and feel the sun on their faces. They don’t swim, or sigh over boys, or think.” She said that with great ferocity. “They especially don’t dance.”

  Mostly, her father had won, until the moment she got onto that bus, pressed her nose to the glass and strained to see her small hometown receding. She had secretly done forbidden things, but so rarely. And she’d known, bitterly, that she had lost her chance to play—she wasn’t a child anymore—and most of all to dance professionally.

  Her mother’s face had faded in her memory, as if it wasn’t any stronger than her character. Her father, though, she could see as clearly as if he suddenly stood right up ahead, cold condemning stare as he waited for her to come to him. Tall—Jane had gotten her height from him. Thin, because he didn’t believe in overindulgence of any kind. The burning eyes of a fanatic. Unfortunately, those were the color of hers. She hated knowing how much she’d taken from him.

  For so much of her life, he had stood in for the God of the Old Testament, unforgiving and lacking any softness, even for his small daughters. Other parents might deviate from the harsh limitations laid down by the leader of the sect, but not Jane’s father. Never Jane’s father.

  She was vaguely aware that she and Duncan had made another entire circuit of the field. That Hector and Tito had broken off playing and were waiting for her and Duncan to reach them. But the larger part of her was gripped by the past, by what telling Duncan about it made her feel.

  “Was there a dance school in town?” he asked.

  “A small one.” She pictured the modest building, the mothers parking in front to drop off or pick up their daughters—had any boys in town dared to express a desire to dance? She couldn’t imagine. “Probably not even very good.” Although then she had believed it was the first step to the promised land. “But some of the girls I went to school with went. I saw them in their leotards. I started reading books in the library about dance. The pictures…” When she was allowed to research for school, she’d sidle between the stacks in the library until she was sure no one was looking. She knew where the books on dance were shelved. There had been one big, coffee-table type with glorious color photos of some of the great prima ballerinas performing. Such longing would grip her when she gazed at those pictures. It was a terrible, physical wrench to close the book and return it to the shelf.

  She sighed. “Of course, I wouldn’t have made it no matter what. Wanting isn’t enough. I’m too tall. So it was always unrealistic.”

  “But you dreamed,” he said, so softly. “Dance Dreams.”

  “Yep.” They were nearing Hector and Tito, and she was hugely relieved that this conversation was over. Not sorry they’d had it, exactly; Duncan had been considerably more understanding and kinder than she’d expected. Maybe telling him had even been cathartic—but that didn’t mean she hadn’t hated every minute of remembering.

  She raised her voice. “Have fun, guys?”

  “Sí,” Tito said, betraying the fact that he’d been speaking Spanish with his father. “I mean, sure.”

  “Well, I’m sweating as much as if I’d played, too,” Jane said lightly. “So what now, Dad? Please tell me we’re going somewhere I can get something cold to drink.”

  Hector laughed. He was a nice-looking man when his teeth flashed white and the crinkles beside his eyes deepened. The laughter fit him better than anger did.

  “Yes, I promised Tito a root beer float. There’s only one place for that, sí?”

  “Sí.” Stimson had its very own ice-cream parlor, a longtime institution decorated with an appropriate, 1950s theme. Poodle skirts, hula hoops, three-toned cars with tail fins.

  “Captain MacLachlan,” Jane said, “I trust you plan to treat your date right and buy her a root beer float all her own.”

  She liked his smile entirely too much. It transformed his face even more than Hector’s smile did his. Guarded to sexy.

  “Yes, Ms. Brooks.” He crooked an elbow for her. “I do believe I could buy you a root beer float.”

  She pretty much had to lay her hand on his arm, didn’t she? Skin to skin, since he wore a short-sleeved tee. Saying something meaningless and cheerful to Tito, she pretended not to notice the jump of muscles beneath her fingertips. As quickly as possible, she withdrew her hand, hoping that Duncan believed in her blithe good humor, but knowing after only one swift glance from his watchful gray eyes that he wasn’t fooled at all.

  Well, so what? Jane told herself. He couldn’t possibly guess how very vulnerable she had felt by the time she’d told him so fiercely that, most of all, girls didn’t dance.

  Although he had sounded awfully thoughtful when he murmured, “But you dreamed.”

  The fact that he might have seen more than she wanted him to did not mean that he was a sensitive guy. Heck, no. He was sharp, discerning. But she told herself with a sinking feeling that he wouldn’t hesitate to use any advantage he gained over her in their battle over Tito’s future.

  The lure of ice cream or no, tonight she could hardly wait to get away from him.

  INSTEAD OF SLEEPING, Duncan lay in bed trying to figure out a woman who puzzled him more the longer he knew her.

  At first, he’d dismissed her as a classic busybody. One with a body that turned him on, sure, but basically a do-gooder confident she knew best.

  Now he had a suspicion that she didn’t only dream about dance, she dreamed about perfect families, too. Maybe she hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to reshape her own to her satisfaction, but by God she’d fix other people’s families.

  She’d be insulted if he called her naive, but in a way she was. One of the things that made him edgy, though, that kept sleep at bay, was the delight he saw sometimes on her face when she looked at Hector and Tito. A sort of incandescent faith that Duncan couldn’t remember ever feeling.

  It was one of Jane Brooks’s many contradictions. Cynicism and faith. A very adult sensuality alongside the ability to let herself feel childlike wonder.

  What he couldn’t figure out was how well Jane understood herself and her own motives.

  He grunted a half laugh. How well did anyone, including him? Face it, he’d gone with instinct where Tito was concerned. Maybe, in his own way, he’d been trying to have a relationship with this kid that he hadn’t been able to with his brothers. So who was he to judge?

  Wh
at he couldn’t feel was any of her faith. Even during the best times with Tito, Duncan hadn’t kidded himself everything would turn up roses, that Tito would bond with him, take every word of advice he offered, end up valedictorian at the high school and starting point guard on the basketball team, and, hell, get into Harvard. Duncan had listened to his gut and been willing to try. What he couldn’t do was believe. Not the way Jane clearly did.

  She was the damndest woman, he thought in frustration, looking at the shifting shadows on the wall as a car passed outside. He’d lay money down that the attraction he felt wasn’t one-sided, but she gave no signals whatsoever that she would welcome him making a move. Because they were in an adversarial position? Because she was determined to be professional? Or because she didn’t like him?