Beholden

by Pat Warren

  How could he want her? she asked herself, blinking back the tears. She’d lost weight and was too thin. Her face was scarred, possibly permanently. Her once-lovely hair was little more than peach fuzz. What’s more, she was angry or weepy by turns. What man would want a woman like that?

  Not that she wanted Luke to be attracted to her. God knew her life right now was complicated enough without tackling a relationship. Still, it hurt her feminine pride to watch him walk away from her so casually after he’d set her churning.

  Wasn’t it enough that she had turned into a frightful mess, that she had to be separated from everyone she loved, that she was being hunted down like an animal by men who would shoot on sight? Did she also have to feel a sensual pull that she was too vulnerable to cope with just now?

  Left to his own devices, Luke probably would have broiled a steak for dinner. More truthfully, if he were spending Thanksgiving at his house in Sedona, he probably wouldn’t have even taken note of the holiday, for all it usually meant to him. But he’d seen the melancholy look in Terry’s eyes when they’d stepped inside the supermarket with all the seasonal decorations and come-ons. So he’d suggested that she pile the basket full of whatever her family usually ate for dinner.

  You’d have thought he’d handed her the winning lottery ticket. It was the first time he’d seen her look truly happy in the weeks they’d been together. She’d picked out a turkey with as much care as any White House chef, then proceeded to gather yams and bread cubes for dressing and cranberries, plus the makings for a pumpkin pie. He’d smiled indulgently, surprised at how easily pleased she was. And even more surprised at how good it made him feel to please her.

  Now, after finishing two helpings of the marvelous dinner she’d put together while turning down all offers of help, Luke pushed back from the table, sure he couldn’t eat another forkful. “Lady, you’re one hell of a cook,” he told her.

  Terry accepted the compliment graciously with a nod of her head. “And just wait until you taste dessert.” The only way she’d been able to keep her mind from straying to her loved ones on this family day was to keep herself busy with the meal preparation. But she’d about run out of steam now that they’d eaten.

  “I think that’ll have to wait awhile.” He patted his stomach. “You’re going to make me fat. Jones is going to kick me off the Marshals staff, the first one to leave due to obesity.”

  She’d seen his rock-hard waistline up close last night and knew he was kidding. “I hardly think so.” She finished the last of her wine, then leaned forward. “Do you ever think about retiring? This line of work must get to you, on the go so much, always having to live with strangers.”

  He frowned, wondering how she’d guessed the very thing he’d been pondering lately. “Yeah, it does. I think about quitting, from time to time. This job is better suited to a young man. At thirty-eight, I worry about my reflexes slowing down.”

  She thought about last night, how he’d appeared in her doorway, his eyes scanning the room in the space of a heartbeat. “I don’t think you need worry about that just yet. Have you thought about what you might do when you do quit?”

  He toyed with the teaspoon on the tablecloth as his mind focused on his ranch. “I’ve got a little spread in Sedona. Some acreage, a house I’ve fixed up, a good-sized barn.”

  “My family has a cabin up that way, near Oak Creek Canyon. It’s a nice area.”

  “Yeah. Horse country. I’ve already bought one. I like working with horses.”

  “You mean Arabians? The market’s kind of dried up, or so I’ve heard.”

  “No, quarter horses. They’re not so high-strung. There’s a lot more call for them, too. I thought I might look into breeding.” He shrugged self-consciously. “Maybe one day. Who knows?” Odd how she managed to get him to talk about himself without realizing he was doing it. “What about you? Do you miss not working?”

  “I sure do.” She’d picked up an art pad and some pens and pencils last week, and spent some time sketching. It helped pass the time, but it wasn’t the same. “I’m sure I’ve been replaced.”

  “Are you good?” He moved around too much to read just one newspaper and hadn’t seen her work.

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “I’m wonderful.”

  She was wearing a kelly green silk blouse with cream-colored slacks, an outfit she’d picked up at the boutique. Her face had some color today, probably from the heat of the kitchen. He thought she looked particularly good, but after the unexpected way she’d made him feel last night, he decided to keep his thoughts to himself. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find another job, once this is all over.”

  Once this was all over. If only she knew the date. With a sigh, Terry rose. “I’ve got some scraps for Prince if you want to take them out while I clean up.”

  “Oh, no. You cooked, I clean up.” He stood and began clearing the table. “Go on in by the fire. You’ve earned a rest.”

  “You’re sure? I don’t mind helping.”

  He gave her a mock scowl. “Go on. Go sketch something.”

  Luke found her an hour later curled up in a corner of the couch, her sketch pad propped against her bent knees, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she concentrated. After placing a fresh glass of wine for each of them on the coffee table, he threw another log on the fire and stirred things up, then joined her. The TV in the corner beckoned with football games on all day, but he felt oddly content sitting and watching Terry correct an error with her soft eraser, brush away the pieces, then select another pencil. “Do I get to see?” he asked.

  “Maybe.” Something wasn’t quite right. She pulled back, studying the sketch. The lines at the corners of his eyes. Yes, that was it. She worked in silence for several minutes, then lowered her legs and handed the pad to Luke. “Okay, what do you think?”

  He had been expecting a caricature of some sort, along the lines of political cartoons. She’d had him picking up papers whenever they left the house so she could read the news and get new ideas. But this drawing was different.

  The man was older, with a round face and a nearly bald head, remnants of thin hair barely visible. The nose was broad, the eyes deep-set, the chin square with a stubborn tilt to it. There were laugh lines around his eyes and, though he wasn’t smiling, there was a look about the mouth that hinted of a sense of humor, as if he were about to tell a joke. It was obvious that the drawing was done by someone who cared a great deal for this man.

  “Your father,” Luke said, taking a guess.

  “Yes,” she answered softly. She took back the pad, touching the face, wishing it were real. “He calls me Theresa Anne, my real name, most of the time. No one else calls me that.”

  Such fatherly devotion was foreign to Luke, but she sure sounded as if she meant it. “You ought to save it and give it to him for Christmas. I don’t know the man, but he’s got to like this.”

  Terry blinked away a sudden rush of emotion. “Do you think I’ll be home by Christmas?”

  “I wish I knew, Terry.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” She closed the pad and placed it on the end table, along with the pencils. “What was your father like?” she asked, simply to start a conversation so she wouldn’t think about home. He’d said he wasn’t close to his family and she’d wondered about what kind of people they were ever since.

  Luke stretched his legs out toward the fire. “The last time I saw him I was about six and he was a sonofabitch.”

  Whoa. That strong a reaction she hadn’t been expecting, cold words said so dispassionately. “I take it he walked out on the family.”

  “Oh, yeah. He left me and my mother and moved to Hollywood to become a movie star.” All these years later and there was still so much bitterness, so much resentment.

  “You’re kidding… a movie star? Did he make it? What’s his name?”

  “Same as mine and no, he didn’t make it. I learned later that he was a fairly handsome guy and had everyone telling him he ought t
o be in pictures. He bought the dream, but didn’t have the drive, I imagine. I heard he appeared in some crowd scenes and even had a few bit parts, but nothing more.”

  “Where is he now?” She doubted that his father had returned since Luke had had to go to the boys’ ranch.

  “I was in my teens when I read in the paper that he’d been arrested for drunk driving. He was a stunt man by then and couldn’t keep that job, either. I have no idea what happened to him after that.” Why had he even answered the first question? The wine, Luke thought, reaching for his glass. Too late now. He took a long swallow. “So you see, if I could draw, I wouldn’t paint nearly as kind a picture of my father as you did of yours just now.”

  She wanted to keep him talking, the need to know his background oddly important to her. “What about your mother?”

  “Ah, yes. My mother.” Luke set the wineglass down. “After dear old Dad left, Mom hung around about six months before dropping me at my grandmother’s, then taking off for God only knows where.”

  “Was your grandmother good to you?”

  His hand moved to the medal he always wore, the one thing she’d given him. “She was, for a while. Then she got sick. I probably caused her poor health. I wasn’t an easy kid. She finally gave me up when I was nine, made me a ward of the court.”

  His voice was shockingly unemotional, but Terry felt certain he’d schooled himself to block out his feelings for his family. She could hardly blame him after the story she’d just heard. “And that’s when you wound up at the ranch?” At nine. Dear God, he’d been just a boy.

  “No. They don’t take boys under twelve at the ranch. I bounced around from one foster home to another. Ran away a lot. They found me, dragged me back. Incorrigible, they labeled me.” He angled his body until he faced her. “Now, don’t you think you had a fairy-tale upbringing compared to mine?”

  “I suppose, although no one lives the TV version, you know. My older sister got in with a fast crowd and started drinking in her teens. She was killed while driving under the influence at seventeen. My brother, Sean, had a bad first marriage, but his second seems to be solid. They have two great sons. My other brother, Michael, has diabetes and has nearly died twice. He just got married last year. And my father’s had a heart attack. We’ve had our struggles.” She searched his eyes and saw the pain remembering had put there. “But we were raised with a lot of love, and I’m sorry you missed out on that as a child.”

  Luke made a derisive sound deep in his throat before turning to toss back the rest of his wine. He thought of having another glass, then realized that there wasn’t enough wine in the world to make his childhood memories warm and fuzzy. “Don’t tell me you still believe in love and happily-ever-after?”

  She studied him from under lowered lids. “You know, I had you pegged as a cynic the day we met.”

  He leaned back, his head resting on the couch, his eyes on her face. “And you’re not? You who work for a newspaper, a woman who looks into the lives of our governing body and finds many of them wanting, I would imagine. How can you be a cockeyed optimist after all that?”

  “Actually, I think I’m a realist. I believe bad things happen to good people sometimes, my own case a perfect example. But I don’t think we need to let those things sour us on the entire world. My parents buried a child and managed to go on. You had a rough upbringing. No doubt about it. But you’ve become a good person, a caring man, one who helps others. That’s the upside. Why dwell on the downside?”

  Luke shifted to stare into the flames for so long that she was sure he wasn’t going to answer her. Finally, he did, in a voice low and empty of hope. “Why would anyone believe in love when it disappoints you at every turn? People have their own agendas, go about their business and don’t much care who gets hurt in the cross fire. Caring for someone just opens you up for another round of pain. Who needs it?”

  You do, Terry thought. In all her twenty-six years, she’d never met a man who needed love more.

  The captain was fuming. If he hadn’t been hurting like hell from an infection he developed after surgery, he’d be pacing. If his doctor’s warning about his high blood pressure wasn’t still ringing in his ears, he’d have reached for one of his cigars. Sucking in what he hoped was a calming breath, he stared again at the newspaper cartoon that had pissed him off royally.

  Naturally, the Gazette had hired a political cartoonist to replace John Ryan’s daughter after her death. Terry had had a caustic pen, but she’d stopped short of throwing barbs at the Phoenix Police, perhaps in deference to her father. But this new kid, Tremayne Boyle, had no such lingering loyalties. What the hell kind of name was Tremayne anyway?

  Marino’s scowl deepened as he studied the drawing. A large room filled with desks was depicted with various mice wearing police uniforms, all involved in activities that would have gotten them booted off any police force. One officer had a buxom babe on his lap, supposedly interrogating her while feeling her up. Another was placing offtrack bets on the phone. Two were reading porno magazines while still another was upending a bottle of booze.

  In the background was the mouse-cop in charge, obviously Lieutenant Remington complete with snazzy suit and his trademark wing tips propped on the desk, oblivious to everything going on around him while he napped. And in the opposite corner was a square showing a wizened old cat wearing a police hat with a captain’s badge, all stretched out in a hospital bed eating from a box of candy held by a bosomy nurse. The caption beneath the cartoon read: While the cat’s away, the mice will play.

  Damn that little shit Tremayne and damn the Gazette for ridiculing his department.

  Trying desperately to hold on to his temper, Captain Marino snatched up his bedside phone and dialed Remington.

  At Central, the lieutenant let his immediate superior vent his ill humor over the Gazette cartoon. Of course he’d seen it. The bull pen had been abuzz since he’d walked in and a copy still lay on his desktop. Phil could do little or nothing about Marino’s complaints. But he could listen.

  Finally, when Marino paused for a breath, he spoke calmly. “It’s called freedom of the press, Captain. I could complain to his editor, but that would encourage questions we can’t answer.”

  Marino finished counting to ten. “They lost two of their own. I don’t blame them for being upset. Is there any truth to this cartoon? Has the whole damn department fallen apart while I’ve been out?”

  “Of course not. It’s business as usual here. If anything, everyone’s working twice as hard. We want this cleared up as badly as they do. Maybe more so.”

  Then why in hell weren’t they finding the killer? “Why hasn’t that Swain fellow been picked up? Maybe he could shed some light on all this. I can’t believe that Russo hasn’t talked. He strikes me as the sort who’d make a deal with the devil for a lighter sentence. Go see him. Get something cooking, for Christ’s sake.” Marino felt the heat rise into his face. How could he stay cool with all that was going on?

  Remington didn’t think this was the time to remind the captain that Sam Russo had been questioned repeatedly and simply refused to talk. His lawyer had already threatened to charge the police with harassment. “I’ll get right on it,” he lied. Remington had talked with the captain’s doctor just yesterday. It would be awhile before Marino would be returning. Maybe by then something would break.

  “You know how I feel about all this, Phil,” Marino said, his voice sounding old and weary. “I’m not going to let this ruin my record. I’m not going to retire with my precinct under a cloud.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.” Phil understood that there wasn’t a hell of a lot either of them could do at the moment to change things.

  “What about that cop who was killed in the alley? Foster. Anything new on that?”

  Phil picked up a phone message he’d received earlier. He needed to get the heat off himself, to protect his future. A smoke screen might just work. “I’m not sure if this is anything, Captain, but Foster’s ex-
partner, Officer Neil Manning, called me this morning. He’s coming in tomorrow to discuss something important, something he needs to talk about in person. It could relate to Foster’s death. The two shared an apartment.”

  “I hope to hell it does. Call me after you talk with him.” “Right. Anything else?”

  Marino checked the clock. Thank God it was time for another pain pill. “That’s it. Keep in touch.” He hung up the phone and reached for his pill bottle.

  Remington glanced thoughtfully at the newspaper cartoon on the corner of his desk and then studied the message from Officer Manning. He picked up the phone and dialed a private number. Turning his back to the room, he listened to the ringing until a man answered.

  “That matter I talked to you about… I’m going to need some help.”

  “Right,” the voice answered, then hung up.

  She needed some personal things from the drugstore, things she felt uncomfortable having Luke pick up for her. Tampons, moisturizing cream, deodorant, and a prescription for birth control pills the visiting doctor had written for her. It was time to get her system back on track. Maybe going shopping was just an excuse to get out of the house after being indoors for two days, Terry thought. Of course, he had to drive her. The only time she was ever alone was in her bedroom, door still ajar, and in the bath. It was wearing.

  Still, as Luke pulled the van into a curbside space, she had to admit that the thought of driving into town without his protection frightened her. She watched his hooded gaze check out each passing car, each strolling pedestrian, as he helped her down. Walking into the corner pharmacy, he stayed close behind her.

  The small store was in the midst of renovation, apparently expanding to include the adjacent space recently vacated. No workers were on the scene on this Saturday afternoon, a floor-to-ceiling tarpaulin hanging along the left section to partition off the area. The place wasn’t crowded, only a toddler and his mother examining the Christmas wrappings and an elderly man picking up a prescription at the back counter. Terry moved down the deserted aisles, quickly gathering her few purchases. Would she ever get over this uneasy feeling of pending danger?