“I don’t want to break you,” she told him, holding a scream of frustration at the back of her throat as she moved close to him once more, this time refusing to be brushed aside. “I just want to change your mind about what kind of man I need. And I know I can, if you’ll stop pulling away.”
“I know you can, too,” he conceded, closing his eyes as if the touch of her hands on his chest was hard to bear. “All too easily. That’s why I spent last night down here, as far away from you and temptation as I could get. It’s why I won’t back down.”
Gaby felt him withdrawing and looped her arms around his waist. “Want to bet? I dare you, you big jerk.”
“Not this time,” he said, removing her hands, kissing the palms lightly, lingeringly before finally letting her go.
“Connor, this is crazy. To turn your back on something that might be so good, because you’re afraid it might not work out...it’s worse than crazy, it’s...unAmerican.”
He shot her a puzzled look over his shoulder as he turned to go.
“All right, that’s a stretch,” she admitted, “but at least it got your attention. All I’m trying to say is that I understand the risks involved here and I’m willing to take them.”
The puzzled look on his lean, whiskered face was edged out by one of regret.
“I’m not,” he said softly.
Night fell in increments around the lake. First the sun dropped behind the tallest peaks of the pine trees ringing the water, changing the color of day from bright yellow to orange, as if there were a fire burning in the distant sky. It faded more as it moved lower, glowing through the crisscrossing branches with the look of burned orange lace. Gradually the orange mellowed and gave way to the purples and indigos of evening, the shades deepening, layer upon layer, until everything was black, the sky, the water, the trees, a vast expanse of shadows, waiting for the silver touch of the rising moon.
Connor didn’t need to wait that long. At the first chirp of a cricket he was ready to call it a day, giving himself credit for making it through one more block of hours without weakening and doing what Gaby had dared him to do...what she continued to dare him to do a hundred times a day in a hundred different, wordless, soul-searing ways...what he wanted to do as much as he’d ever wanted anything. But going after what he wanted was to go back on his word that he would stay out of her life, something he was sworn to do because it was the best thing for her. And he was the worst thing for her.
Three days. It had been three days since they had stopped by her house and he had come to his senses. Three days of circling each other like bees around a honey pot too hot to touch. Three endless days.
The nights were worse. At least during the day Toby was around to act as a buffer. Even Connor knew enough to keep his hands off her in front of a five-year-old, a kid still too innocent to even wonder how this man who had once been a friend of his father’s fit into his and his mother’s lives now. It was a good thing he didn’t wonder enough to ask, because Connor would have been hard-pressed to give him an answer.
The days he could manage. The nights were what got to him. Trying to sleep scrunched into that damn chair in the living room. He could have used the bed in his room, but since he was sleeping fitfully, up and down all night, he didn’t want to disturb Gaby or give her an excuse to come checking on him, wearing that pale nightgown that clung and shimmered and made him want to slide his hands down her and feel her go all warm and fluid beneath the silk. That’s how it would be. He knew it. He could close his eyes and feel it, feel her, smell her. Which is why he couldn’t let her come looking for him in the night.
At first he figured that eventually he’d get tired enough to sleep through without waking. Instead, his restlessness was growing stronger. It was only partly due to the fact that he couldn’t get his mind and body in synch where Gaby was concerned. The other part of it was something he was more comfortable with. He recognized it from his years on the force, a sort of sixth sense that was unlearned and unteachable, a hunch, a tightening at the back of his neck, an awareness that things were coming to a head.
These “things” changed from case to case. The feeling was always the same. And never wrong. This was a challenge he understood. He knew where this path led, all the bends and turns in the road, all the dark places where danger could be waiting. He was ready for it, even eager. He wished Lew Marino’s hotshot computer whiz would get his act together so they would know exactly where they stood.
“Tomorrow,” Lew told him every morning when he checked in by cellular phone. “He says he thinks he’ll have something for us by tomorrow.”
It turned out the files had been eradicated from the hard drive on the computer in Joel’s office at home. Eradicated, as opposed to merely erased. According to Lew, who was in turn quoting the whiz, someone had gone in with a program designed for the express purpose of methodically and totally overwriting existing material so that it was rendered permanently irretrievable.
There was not, Lew explained, even the remotest chance that such a thing could be done accidentally. Which meant that either Joel or someone else had purposely wiped out the information so that no one would ever see it. There was still no proof who that might be, of course, but Connor knew whom he was betting on.
Fortunately the situation was slightly more encouraging at the accounting firm where Joel had worked. It turned out that the firm had updated its computer system within the past eighteen months. The computer from Joel’s office had been one of those retained as a backup and had been rarely used, giving them a good shot at recovering anything Joel may have stored on it. The whiz found that files had been erased from it, as well, but not eradicated. Which meant they could be retrieved. The bad news was that it had to be done piece by piece, the file segments identified and strung together to form—hopefully—an understandable whole. The whiz, according to Lew, was doing his best. He’d told Lew that the job would be a lot simpler if Joel was around to help. Connor couldn’t suppress a sardonic smile of agreement when he heard that. It seemed to him that everything would be a lot easier on everyone if Joel were still around.
Ironically one of the things that bothered him most during the long, hot days was also one that scared him the most. It was watching Gaby and Toby together, playing a game of checkers on the deck, or their heads bent over a growing pile of sand as they dug a tunnel to China, or simply sitting together in the evening, Toby’s hair damp from his bath and his head tucked under his mother’s arm as she read to him—all these affected him deeply.
Marvin K. Mooney. That was Toby’s favorite story, requested several times a day, and already Connor knew entire passages of it by heart. He also knew that Toby’s favorite dinosaur was Tyrannosaurus rex and that he liked worms and wasn’t afraid of the dark unless it thundered.
He knew too much, more than was safe. Seeing the two of them together, it was impossible not to be moved by the bond between them, by the tight, perfectly meshed unit they had formed in spite of or maybe because of all that they had suffered.
It was so different from what had occurred in his own family after his mother’s death, when each of them had seemed to drift in a separate direction, as if the others only reinforced the memory of what they had each lost. He had blamed his father for letting that happen until the day the old man died.
Now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe his father hadn’t known how to forge that kind of bond any more than Connor did. It pained Connor to think that maybe his father had felt as lonely and disconnected as he did now, watching Gaby and Toby together, longing for something he didn’t understand.
Gaby tried to include him. So did Toby, for that matter. They invariably called him to eat with them, which he did, and invited him to join them for a walk or whatever else they had planned, which he politely declined with the excuse that he had something he had to do, usually work on the boat.
He had now taken apart practically the entire engine, cleaned it and put it back together—not an easy task for a man
with only one good hand—and the damn thing was still sucking water under the cowling and stalling out after only a few minutes on the open water. It was frustrating, since ordinarily he was pretty good with engines and with his hands in general. The last thing he needed was a reminder of the bitter fact that some things were just beyond his expertise. In fact, he would have gladly thrown in the towel on the job days ago if his tinkering down at the dock didn’t provide him with a ready excuse not to pick wildflowers or catch minnows in the shallow water by the shore.
Just yesterday Gaby had detoured by where he was working to ask if he wanted to take a break for a while.
“We’re going swimming,” she explained as he grunted and kept his eyes on the shift lever he was realigning. He pretended not to notice that a bathing suit, a sleek black one cut almost up to her waist on the sides, was among the essentials she had seen fit to bring back with her. “Why don’t you come with us?”
He lifted his head and squinted, as if it was the sun blinding him and not the lure of her sweet, firm flesh. “Thanks, but I really ought to finish up here first.”
“Maybe later?” Toby chirped hopefully from his spot by his mother’s side.
Connor made a noncommittal gesture. “Maybe.”
He bent over the engine again, waiting until they were well along the path before lifting his head and watching them walk away. He continued watching as Gaby took Toby by the hand and together they inched into the water, staying close to the shore as she patiently taught him to float on his stomach and kick his feet. She ought to get him accustomed to putting his face under, Connor thought as he stood watching. And his hands. He ought to be using his hands more along with his feet.
As the afternoon passed, he did more watching them than be did working, his concentration broken each time Toby laughed or shrieked with excitement. He might as well have taken the afternoon off for all he accomplished.
Not that fixing the engine was any longer the goal, he mused as he found himself back realigning the shift the next morning. At some point, born of his need to keep busy, the process had become the goal, the means to an end the end in and of itself. And why not? Everything else in his life had been turned upside down and inside out. Why should the way in which he whiled away his time be any different?
“Want some help?”
Connor straightened abruptly, peering over his shoulder to find Toby standing behind him wearing his mother’s sunglasses, too big for his face, and holding a wrench he had no doubt found in the toolbox nearby.
“No. Thanks anyway.” He wiped his forehead with the rolled-up sleeve of his faded denim shirt. “Does your mother know you have her glasses?”
“Nope.”
“Do you think maybe you ought to bring them back to her before she finds out?”
“Nope.”
“What if they get broken?”
“I won’t break them.”
“Not on purpose. What if you fall by accident, and they break?”
He thought that over and pulled off the glasses, holding them out to Connor. “You hold them.”
“Why don’t you just bring them back to the house?” And stay there, he refrained from adding.
“What if I fall by accident?”
Connor held out his hand. “All right, give them to me.” He dropped them in his shirt pocket.
“Now can I help?” Toby asked for the second time.
It would not, Connor knew, be the last. That was something else he had learned about the kid. He was persistent. Make that downright stubborn. Only Gaby seemed to have the knack of short-circuiting his determination.
“I appreciate the offer, but this is sort of a one-man job.”
“What’s a one-man job?”
Evidently he had a lot more to learn about kids. “A job it takes only one man to do,” he explained. Heading off what was certain to come next, he added, “And that man is me.”
“Oh.” Silence. A couple of days ago he would have assumed that put an end to the matter. Now he knew better. He was braced for Toby to regroup and try again.
“Are you really a wolf?” he asked instead.
Connor reached for a rag and wiped away a streak of grease from the boat’s fiberglass hull. “A wolf? Who told you that?”
“My mommy. She said that’s your nickname.”
“She’s right, it is.”
“I don’t have a nickname.”
“No?”
“Nope. Just Toby. Can I call you Wolf?”
Connor smiled as he adjusted a wire leading to the starter. “Sure. Why not?”
A minute passed. “Wolf?”
“What is it?”
“Do you have a hero’s chest?”
Connor froze, thinking he couldn’t have heard that right, at the same time certain he had, and with no idea at all what the hell “a hero’s chest” might be.
“Do I have a what?” he asked, turning so he could see Toby as he replied so he would be sure he got it straight this time.
“A hero’s chest.”
“What’s a hero’s chest?” he asked cautiously and against the urging of what passed for his better judgment.
“It’s like this.” Before Connor knew what he intended, Toby had lifted the Boston Celtics T-shirt he wore over his bathing suit and exposed his chest from waist to neck.
His skin was pale, his ribs tiny ripples beneath the surface, a pretty ordinary five-year-old’s chest except for the three-by-seven-inch patch of wrinkled and raised, bright pink flesh bisecting it.
As scars went, Connor bad seen much worse. Hell, he had much worse. It was the kid’s courage that got to him. It was etched on his face as he stood there, exhibiting the single most massive imperfection on his young body to a virtual stranger named Wolf, of all things, a man who had been only curt, if not downright unfriendly to him since they got there. It was that stoic display of courage that sucked the air from Connor’s lungs.
“See it?” Toby asked him finally, as if he might have somehow missed the scar that dominated the small chest.
“I see it, Toby.”
He let his T-shirt drop. “That’s a hero’s chest,” he said proudly.
“Who told you that?”
“My mommy.”
“I see. Did she also tell you that I have a...” The words stuck in his throat. “A hero’s chest?”
Toby shook his head. “Nope. I just knew all by myself.”
Connor’s gaze narrowed. “How?”
“‘Cause you don’t like to take your shirt off, not even if it gets wet or it’s hot and ’cause you don’t want to go swimming.” His expression was so earnest Connor found it hard not to flinch from it as he added, “Sometimes I don’t want to go swimming, too. Like when there’s kids around who make fun of me and laugh.”
“Does that happen a lot? Kids making fun of you because of the scar on your chest?”
“Sometimes,” Toby replied, very matter-of-fact. “Sometimes they just look. Robby Peters wanted to touch it once.”
“Did you let him?”
“For a quarter.”
A smile flickered across Connor’s lips. “I guess that makes you feel pretty bad when kids laugh.”
“Sometimes. Not too much anymore, though. Not since Mommy told me about the hero’s chest.”
Connor put aside the pliers he was holding and moved to lean against the boat, close to where Toby was standing. “Do you think you could tell me about it?”
“Yes. A hero’s chest makes you special, ‘cause it means you did the job that had to get done and you didn’t care who was going to laugh or make fun of you for it. I’m special because I let them fix my heart and didn’t even cry. Not a lot, anyway. And Mommy said anyone brave enough to do that is a hero, and I shouldn’t listen to anybody who laughs or makes fun of me. ’Cause I have a hero’s chest.”
“Your mother is a real smart lady.”
“I know.” Toby moved to lean on the boat beside him, stretching to prop his feet on the s
ame rock as Connor’s, folding his arms the way Connor’s were folded. “So, do you? Have a hero’s chest, I mean?”
“I wouldn’t call it...” Connor paused. “That is, I never thought of it quite that way.” Toby studied him in silence, as if still waiting for a straight answer. Connor sighed. “Yeah, I guess you could say I do.”
“Did they have to fix your heart, too?”
“No. My heart was okay. I was burned.”
“In a fire?”
“Sort of. There was an explosion and then there was a fire, and that’s how my chest got burned.”
“How did you get away from the fire?”
Connor could feel his muscles tensing, his spine becoming like a bowstring, pulling everything inside him too tight. “I crawled.”
Toby waited.
“You see, the ceiling came crashing down,” he said, not quite believing he was talking about it or why. “It landed so that I was on one side of the mess, near the door, and my friend was on the other side of it, trapped. I tried to get to him, to help him, but every time I moved, it just kept coming and coming, right down on top of us, until finally I couldn’t see him anymore.”
It was something he’d never told anyone about that day, the truth. Not the special federal investigators or the state cops or the reporters who badgered him for exclusive accounts of what had happened. Especially not the reporters. He’d known how they would crank it up to sell papers, calling him a hero for trying to save Joel when all that mattered was that he had failed.
“My daddy was in a ’splosion, too,” Toby said and Connor’s heart stopped beating for a second. “He died.”
“I know he did, Toby.”
“Was my daddy your friend? The one you tried to help?”
There was a long silence while Connor struggled to make the muscles in his throat work the way he wanted them to. Fortunately silence didn’t seem to make Toby uneasy the way it did some folks.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Your daddy was my friend, Toby.”
Connor kept his eyes on the water and didn’t see it coming, so he was startled at the unfamiliar feel of a child’s soft, small hand slipping inside of his.
Borrowed Bride Page 21