“Excellent.” Lillian gave a nod of approval. “I believe we’ll do quite well together.”
In the garden, Gabe motioned with the pitchfork. “Are you planting in this row first?”
“That is the plan,” Lillian called. She smiled at Audrey. “That’s where our short salad greens will go.”
Audrey eyed Gabe, wondering how he knew a certain row would be planted first. And she couldn’t pull her gaze away as he rolled up his sleeves and started turning the soil. The way his steely muscles bunched under the uniform shirt dried her mouth.
“He’s done that a time or two, hasn’t he?” Lillian noted. “Mako was an excellent teacher.”
Audrey caught the sadness in Lillian’s tone. “You knew his father?”
Lillian smiled. “He and my husband were friends, and after my husband passed, the sergeant and I grew to be close.”
Audrey saw the slight curve of Lillian’s mouth and understood exactly what she meant by “close.” “But you hadn’t met Gabe before?”
“No. When his boys visited, they stayed home with Mako. And Mako, well, he preferred to deal with people in small numbers.” Sadness filled the woman’s face. “I’m sure that was why he chose to exit the world the way he did. Being in a hospital would have… He wouldn’t have done well.”
Exit the world? Did she mean the man had killed himself? The thought was like getting hit in the chest. “But Mako had Gabe…and his other sons.”
“And he loved them dearly. He knew they’d come running to help out, but Mako wasn’t a man to tolerate weakness in himself.” Lillian shook her head. “Such a narrow vision is its own kind of failing.”
“His poor sons.”
“Yes.” Lillian’s brow creased. “I must say, Mako led me to believe Gabriel was a friendlier sort. This chief is quite reserved. I do wonder how difficult Mako’s death was for him.”
“I think…very difficult.” Audrey had heard the sorrow in his voice when he’d talked about Mako. Gabe’s body had so many terrifying scars. Would the suicide of his father-substitute add scars on his soul, as well? No wonder his face was etched with hard lines.
As Audrey watched, Gabe reached the end of the row.
After stowing the pitchfork, he returned, and his gait held a slight limp. “Ready for planting, ladies.”
“Thank you, Gabriel.”
He smiled at Lillian and rolled down his sleeves over pumped-up forearms.
During the night, as she’d kissed her way down his body, her lips had brushed over those powerful muscles. As she looked at them in the daylight, heat ran through her. The air seemed to turn thick and sultry.
When her gaze lifted, he was watching her, his expression unreadable.
She wanted him to hold her again. And…she wanted to run away.
Audrey averted her gaze. Because she was a smart woman, she’d choose option B.
And stay far, far away.
Chapter Ten
A couple of days later, the patrol car was starting to feel…almost homelike, Gabe thought as he drove down Sweetgale. He slowed.
With Julie beside her, Lillian stood on her porch, arms waving angrily.
Now, that looked like trouble. Gabe parked the car and jumped out. “Is there a problem here?”
Lillian didn’t even look at him. “You vile, scum-filled dunghill of metal.”
Gabe blinked. Whatever she’d just said, it was an insult; however, she seemed to be addressing the door. He gave Julie a puzzled look.
Julie’s hands covered her mouth. Her eyes were crinkled with laughter.
He did have to say that laughter looked damn fine on her. “What’s going on?”
“She locked herself out.”
“Thou art unfit for any place but hell.” Lillian kicked the door and turned. “Why hello, Chief MacNair. How are you this day?”
Here was an actress who’d spent too much time performing Elizabethan plays. “Good. I’m good. You’re locked out, I hear?”
The look she gave her door was scathing. “Vile, treacherous creation. If I had an axe…” Lillian turned to Gabe. “Can you break a window for me, please, Chief?”
That seemed a bit extreme. But, wait… The town had no locksmith. “No need for violence. How about I unlock the door for you instead?”
Lillian tilted her head regally. “That would be most convenient. Why do you have a key to my door, I wonder?”
“No key, ma’am. Hold on a minute.” Trying not to laugh, Gabe returned to the patrol car. As he opened the cargo door, he noticed the dust caked on the vehicle. Most of the roads in Alaska were gravel—or dirt—and he’d been driving everywhere, getting a feel for the town.
For his town. For someone who’d come just to clean the place up for his brothers, the sense of possession was fucking disconcerting but very real. If he were a dog, he’d’ve been lifting his leg and marking his territory.
After a quick rummage in his personal pack, he pulled out his old locksmith tools.
As he knelt in front of the door and opened the kit, Lillian’s eyebrows rose. “Did you indulge in burglary as a child?”
Actually, after Gramps died, he had. “I’ll take the fifth on that, thanks.”
When Julie made a smothered sound of laugher, Gabe grinned and set to work.
A couple of minutes later, the rumble of a bad muffler made him glance over his shoulder. A battered red pickup pulled up to the curb, and two men in their late twenties climbed out of the truck.
With bushy red hair and a drooping mustache, the lanky driver stared at Gabe’s black & white. “Chevy, that ain’t no state trooper rig.”
“Says Rescue Police. Since when do we have cop cars in town?” Chevy scowled. The short man was so bulky with muscles his neck almost disappeared into his shoulders.
“Gabriel, meet Knox and Chevy. They’re doing the garden work that Julie and I can’t manage. Men, this is our new Chief of Police, Chief MacNair.” Lillian motioned toward Gabe.
Gabe turned far enough to nod at the two. “Afternoon.”
No answer. Just irritated stares.
Oh well. As the lock released, Gabe pushed the door open and rose.
Julie smiled. “Where did you learn to pick locks? I wouldn’t have thought they’d teach that in a police academy.”
Depending on the specialty, they did. However, he’d already known how. “No, my grandfather was a locksmith in LA. As a kid, I’d go with him on calls.”
“City boy, born and bred,” Chevy said to Knox. His voice was lowered…not far enough. “What’s a damn LA cop doing here?”
Gabe blinked and almost laughed. Apparently, Chevy had heard Gabe was a cop in Los Angeles. Now, he knew Gabe’d been a boy in LA. Two and two added up to a wrong conclusion because Gabe’d spent all the intervening years in Alaska. Same mistake Baumer had made. He considered telling them the truth.
Nah.
“We don’t need some city pig poking into our business.” Chevy’s aggressive attitude made Gabe think of the sarge’s maxim that a short man could be as proddy as a moose in rut.
Probably not a saying to share right now. And giving Chevy a lesson in manners… Well, Mako hadn’t approved of violence in front of women. Although Lillian probably wouldn’t bat an eye, Gabe had a feeling Julie had seen far too much violence already.
Ignoring the two men, Gabe stowed his lock kit away.
“Chief, do you know when the health clinic is due to open?” Lillian asked.
Pulling gardening tools from the pickup, Knox turned his head to catch Gabe’s answer.
“A couple of weeks. The building needs to hire a receptionist. The clinic didn’t want to open without one.”
“Makin’ all sorts of changes, aren’t you,” Knox butted in.
“Actually,” Gabe kept his voice polite, “a shared receptionist isn’t a change. It’s the way things worked prior to the closing of the services. Before your time.” As the ginger’s face turned dark red, Gabe knew the last part hadn’t bee
n the most diplomatic.
Jesus, sometimes he missed being a merc where he could shoot first and talk later.
“He’s correct, Knox,” Lillian said. “I do believe I’ll enjoy having a medical facility available closer than Soldotna.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t need all those asshole Outsiders cluttering up our streets,” Knox snapped.
Gabe shrugged. “Not everyone in town is into subsistence living. Some of them want a good school for their kids and—” He stopped. Why waste time on bozos who weren’t about to listen?
“What should we work on first, ma’am?” Chevy asked, shouldering a hoe.
“Come with me, and I’ll show you.” Lillian motioned to the side gate, pausing to say, “Thank you so much for unlocking the door, Gabriel.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.” He’d always enjoyed the challenge of opening locks.
After giving Gabe dirty looks, Chevy and Knox followed Lillian toward the backyard.
“They were awfully grumpy,” Julie said with a frown. “And for no reason.”
Gabe shrugged. “Some people see the police uniform and nothing else.” He’d dealt with the same problem in Los Angeles…and had hoped a small town would be different. Guess not.
Turning, he tried to throw off the gloomy thoughts. He probably wouldn’t stay long enough to change anyone’s mind anyway. “Just the way it is.”
“It shouldn’t be.” She eyed him, dug in her purse, and walked over.
“Here, Chief.” As she tucked something in his shirt pocket, she was close enough he could smell her spicy lemon-and-orange fragrance.
“Is that a bribe, Goldilocks?”
“No.” She had the cutest snorty laugh. “Of course not.”
“Well, all right then.” Unable to resist, he ran his hands up and down her arms.
She startled, all big eyed as she looked up at him. Took a step back. “Um, right. Enjoy.”
He let her go and watched her flee—and flight, it was. Bad Chief—shouldn’t have touched. But, Jesus, how he wanted to touch.
He settled for checking his shirt pocket. Damned if she hadn’t given him an oversized Snickers bar. His favorite, in fact.
His mood lifted as he grinned.
Chapter Eleven
Cities were fucking annoying. Especially when having to be in one for hours.
On Tuesday, back in the station, Gabe dropped down at his desk and let out a long sigh. Like a shorted-out circuit board, his nerves were still misfiring. From being in Anchorage. From the drive there and back.
Tourists had clogged Seward Highway, turning it into bumper-to-bumper traffic. He’d been stuck at twenty-five miles per hour because an RV driver refused to pull over and let the faster traffic by. Despite the law that stated he had to. Asshole.
A man’s irritated voice came from the bullpen. “Anybody in here? Doesn’t anyone staff this damn place?”
Yep, he and Caz definitely needed that receptionist. Gabe rose, hauling in a breath to smooth his frazzled nerves. Don’t break the unhappy citizen, MacNair.
He walked out of his office into the squad room to find a middle-aged man in a golf shirt and Dockers. “I’m Chief MacNair. How can I help you?”
“You can take care of this.” The man waved a ticket in the air before shoving it into Gabe’s hands.
Gabe took a look. “A state trooper wrote you a speeding ticket.”
“And I wasn’t speeding.” The man crossed his arms over his chest. “You morons have bad radar. For pity’s sake, he could have just opened his eyes and seen that I—”
Gabe noted the location on the ticket. Twenty miles away. “I’m sorry, sir, but the Rescue Police Department doesn’t have any authority beyond the city boundary. You need to—”
“I don’t care what authority you have; I just care that this ticket be killed. Do you know what this will do to my insurance?”
Patience, MacNair. Part of police work was public relations. “You’re going to have to discuss the problem with the Alaska State Troopers. I can’t assist you with a ticket they wrote.”
“Jesus, it’s pass the buck time, is it?” The man’s chest puffed up. “Listen, mister, I pay taxes, and that means you work for me.”
Riiiight. Gabe tried, he really did. Made the proper sympathetic noises, tried to tell the good citizen what to do, that he was in the wrong place. Didn’t even ask if those so-called paid taxes were in Alaska.
The rant continued and escalated to making threats to the blue shirt who’d written the ticket. At the fifteen-minute point, Gabe was done.
“Sir, the trooper was simply following the law. If you don’t like the law, you and your fellow voters can change it.” Gabe realized his voice had lowered to a growl. “Once the law says that asshole speeders who endanger the public can go unticketed, your law enforcement agencies will be pleased to comply.”
Gabe walked around him and stopped next to the station door. “Until then, I’m afraid I have work to do. Have a nice day.”
When the man’s face darkened, Gabe opened the door.
The good citizen walked through.
Shaking his head, Gabe closed the door.
What an asshole.
No, he shouldn’t be thinking like that, even if it was the appropriate term.
Closing up shop, Gabe headed out.
At home, hearing noise from outside, he walked onto the back deck. Bull was working in the garden, humming to himself. Caz stood at the grill.
Gabe’s brothers were home. As peace wrapped around him and his muscles unknotted one by one, he leaned against the deck railing.
Caz had a fire going in the patio grill. They’d all had a hand in making up the big patio area that sat in the semicircle of their houses. Hawk’d designed and done the brickwork for the pad. Gabe’d built the thick, solid table, benches, and chairs. Caz and Bull had constructed the stone grill and fire pit.
Stepping back from the blazing fire, Caz noticed Gabe. “Once this dies down, I’m making bacon-moose burgers. You in?”
Gabe hesitated. “Ah…” He’d hate to take his mood out on his brothers.
Caz headed back to his house, calling over his shoulder, “Two burgers coming up.”
With a half-grin, Gabe shook his head.
Yeah, he could have stayed inside. But no, he’d headed right out here where they all tended to spend their time.
Because…he wanted to be with his brothers.
Slowly, he drew in a breath. The air was rich with the scent of the lake, the smell of fresh spring plants and newly turned soil.
Over the years, Mako’s old cabin had become a safe place, one the world couldn’t touch. The haven where he’d found a new family and a home in nature.
Yet, after the sarge moved here and they’d built their houses, the Hermitage had become just as special. Like homing pigeons, they’d all return to be with Mako and to renew their brotherhood ties.
That’s what he’d needed today. His brothers. And the peace of home.
In the semicircle of cabins, chickens clucked contentedly in their yard. The lake water lapped quietly along the shore and the dock. Humming quietly, Bull worked his way down the garden rows.
Smiling, Gabe cast off the day’s annoyances and started carrying boxes from the Jeep out onto the deck.
By the time he’d gotten the first camera assembled, Bull had finished in the garden. He and Caz walked up the steps.
“Looks like a bunch of tech.” Bull dropped into a chair at the table.
“Security cameras.” Gabe smiled slightly. “We’re going to install them around town, including at your bar. Tonight after sundown.”
“We are, are we?” Bull picked one up and nodded. “Good plan.”
“Someone is in for a surprise.” Caz grinned. “I like it.”
“Like that’s a shock. You’re as sneaky as Hawk,” Bull said.
Gabe chuckled. Bull and sneaky didn’t belong in the same sentence.
After the devices had been put toge
ther and rigged up to communicate with Gabe’s phone and computer, they chowed down on burgers and chips, along with Bull’s baked beans. Gabe contributed the Oreos and ice cream he’d bought in Anchorage.
The sun set late these days, around eleven at night. To kill time until dark, Bull pulled out some beer—ones from his brewery.
Two beers later, Caz disappeared into his cabin and returned with a hand drum and harmonica.
“Oh, yeah. Let me get my guitar.” As Bull went to fetch his acoustic guitar, Caz turned an expectant look on Gabe.
Brother pressure was peer pressure on steroids. Gabe grinned. Yeah, he’d missed them.
All last winter, his guitar had sounded…lonely…without the familiar accompaniment of the men who’d always been there.
With a token grunt of annoyance, he went to get his guitar.
Returned and settled into his chair, Gabe started tuning. “Been a long time since we played together.”
With no electricity to Mako’s old cabin, the entertainment choices growing up were what they could do themselves. The sergeant had started the boys off on boot camp cadences. But, being a history buff, Mako’d also known songs enjoyed by the earliest British sailors to ones sung by soldiers in World War II.
Hawk, who loved the old west, had demanded country-western music. Gabe liked folk rock. Caz had a fondness for harmony, and Bull liked it all, including jazz.
Music could lighten the longest, darkest night.
Mako’d insisted he taught the boys to sing in sheer self-defense. With four kids in a small cabin, if they weren’t singing, they were fighting. Sometimes they managed both—like singing Queen’s “We Will Rock You” while having a knockdown bloody brawl. Mako’d been laughing so hard that they’d gotten to fight far longer than normal. Right up until Gabe caught Bull with a roundhouse and knocked him into the river.
Gabe smiled. Good times.
After playing a quick intro riff on the harmonica, Caz sang the first verse of one of Mako’s favorites—the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Bull was right there with him. Gabe strummed along and tried to clear the thickness from his throat. Eventually, he joined in, plugging the gap between Caz’s tenor and Bull’s bass with his baritone.
Not a Hero Page 12