The Tough Guy and the Toddler

by Diane Pershing

  The child was safe, Jordan thought, offering thanks and letting down the tight knot of inner tension she’d been sustaining. Sometimes it worked out.

  Dom felt real stupid, and he hated feeling stupid. Jaw tight, he glared at Mrs. Carlisle’s back, his gaze unconsciously raking over the slim, tall shape of her. She was about five-eight, he figured. Skinny, too, model skinny. Which meant she probably either starved herself or threw it up, the way they all did.

  She had sleek, short, stylishly cut auburn hair and wore a cream-colored blouse tucked into matching pants. Silk and expensive, for sure. Earlier, when she’d sat in the car, he’d observed the thin face, the hollowed cheekbones, the designer sunglasses. Her hands on the steering wheel had been perfectly manicured, a huge rock and matching wedding ring on the third finger of her left hand, a hand that had never known a day’s work. A new Rover, a state-of-the-art car phone, a cream-colored leather bag on the seat. Money. Rich bitch type, he thought, haughty and condescending.

  Man, he knew the kind. Working out of West Hollywood, he was right next to Beverly Hills, and he’d had it about up to here with spoiled women whose chief complaint was that the gardener’s truck was parked two inches too close to her driveway or that a homeless person had dared to actually walk down her street. In Beverly Hills he bad to rein in his temper and assume the poker face he’d used today with Mrs. Carlisle. But his feeling of disgust didn’t change, whatever shape his facial muscles took.

  The woman turned, glanced at him dismissively, then turned to Steve Fenoy, his partner. “Please tell your surly friend to take his bad temper out on someone else,” she said in a low-pitched, husky voice. “I ought to report him.”

  “Go on,” Dom retorted. “It won’t be the first time.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Dom,” Steve said under his breath. “Cool it.”

  Dom kept glaring at Mrs. Carlisle, and she glared right back. She stood tall, her small, high breasts outlined by the silk of her blouse, her hands on her narrow hips. Some of the gold strands in her hair glinted in the late afternoon sun.

  “Dom, my man,” Steve warned again, and this time Dom heard him and knew his partner was right. He’d been more than rude. Hell, he’d dumped on the woman.

  His excuse was he and Steve had been cruising nearby, at the tail end of an overtime shift, and Dom had been way past tired, getting onto downright exhausted, when they’d heard the APB. So they’d responded. Between the chase, the tension about the kid and the fear that a civilian would get caught in a crossfire, he’d unloaded on the handiest thing around him—Mrs. Carlisle—before he knew he should be awarding her Good Samaritan of the Month.

  Now he’d have to apologize. Damn.

  He’d always hated saying he was sorry. When he was a kid and the priest or his mother would make him apologize, he usually had to punch a wall or something afterward to relieve the sense of frustration.

  Okay, he told himself, he wasn’t a kid anymore. He’d apologize for barking at her. But still, why had she hung around after calling in the sighting? She been told not to, damn it; that was SOP on 911 calls. Was she some sort of thrill seeker? Publicity hound? Most of the helicopters were from the local news teams. Even now, vans filled with reporters and cameramen were on their way, about to come screeching to a halt behind the police vehicles, which were still behind the hunter green Rover. Maybe Mrs. Carlisle got off being in the spotlight.

  If she wanted the spotlight, she was about to get it.

  But he still had to apologize. Get it over with quickly, he told himself. As the saying went, Just do it.

  He walked up the small incline, all the while muttering a curse under his breath. When he faced her and saw her tightened mouth, he knew his volume hadn’t been low enough.

  He held his hands up, palms out, in a placating gesture. “Okay, listen, Mrs. Carlisle,” he said gruffly. “I, uh, shouldn’t have been rude like that. It was all the tension from the car chase, and I let off steam.”

  The woman removed her sunglasses and stared at him assessingly. A fringe of dark lashes surrounded eyes of an unusual color, a translucent light green. They struck him, somehow, as being sad eyes, old eyes. There were shadows beneath the lids that all the expensive cosmetics in the world couldn’t hide. She had flawless skin and a great mouth, with a bow in the center of the full upper lip. Dom felt his stomach knot up as the realization kicked in—Mrs. Carlisle might have been a pain in the ass, but man, was she something. Not just groomed and pampered and carefully made up to look her best, but naturally, heart-stoppingly beautiful.

  “Anyhow,” he went on, his voice suddenly hoarse, “I’m sorry.”

  “Well... I was tense, too,” she said.

  “Yeah, it gets like that.”

  He shuffled his feet, not sure what to say next, but was saved from having to decide by the sound of shouts coming from below. The news media had arrived in full force. Van doors slammed. Orders were barked, cameras and microphones positioned.

  Dom cursed under his breath again. “Here they come. The vultures.”

  Mrs. Carlisle’s eyes followed his gaze, then they widened in horror. “Reporters? Oh, no!” As she shook her head, he sensed panic emanating from her in waves.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Instead of answering him, she ran down the hill toward her vehicle. He followed, heard her say, “I have to get out of here.” She turned and gazed at him, her hands clasped together tightly against her chest. “I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. Please. I need to get out of here, but I’m blocked in.”

  Dom studied her for a moment, but there was no reason to doubt her. There was real anxiety there, like the fear of a cornered animal. Why? he wondered, but there was no time to dwell on his question. He made a quick decision. Hell, he owed it to her.

  “Steve,” he said briskly, ushering the lady to the passenger side, “tell the guys to keep Mrs. Carlisle’s name out of it as long as possible. Do what you can. I’m taking the lady home.” He opened the door and said, “Get in. I’m driving.”

  “But—” She seemed confused.

  “You want to get out of here? I’ll make it happen. Got it?” With no further hesitation, she got in. He slammed her door and hurried to the driver’s side. “I’ll call in later for a ride,” he told Steve as he slid into the seat.

  “But how will you—” the woman asked.

  “Seat belts,” he said, buckling his. “Leave it to me.”

  He gunned the exquisite machine, expertly maneuvered it between two police vehicles, then headed up and over the hill toward the ocean. “If you don’t want to be seen,” he told his passenger, “duck your head.” Dom yanked the wheel to the right, roared past the parked Chevy, then proceeded to careen along the beach parallel to the water, taking the high-priced machine over rocks and ruts and weeds, letting the four-wheel drive do what it did best.

  Several helicopters circled overhead. They followed the Rover’s trail for a few minutes, then seemed to lose interest and returned to the more exciting scene of the child’s rescue. Dom swung the Rover into what appeared to be a grove of trees, which masked a small, winding, private beach road. They bumped along this path for a while, finally emerging onto the highway a mile away from where they began their dash to escape.

  Neither he nor Mrs. Carlisle spoke the whole time, but when they were headed north on the smoothly paved tarmac, she put her hand over her heart and gasped, “Oh! I’ve never been on a ride like that before.”

  “That’s what this baby was built for.”

  Jordan gave herself a moment to catch her breath. Relieved to have escaped the press—in her experience, they were vultures who fed on the carrion of people’s pain—she felt as though she’d just been driven through an obstacle course in a tacky amusement park, which didn’t seem that farfetched an image.

  What a time she’d had! While on her way to see a potential client, she had gotten involved in a car chase with an armed kidnapper, been verbally a
ssaulted by a policeman, nearly been ambushed by the media and held on for a wild car ride. The past hour or so had been like something out of a fevered dream. If it wasn’t so serious, she might feel like laughing.

  Instead, she glanced at her driver. He seemed more relaxed now that they were away from the action. Although she had the feeling the word relax wasn’t quite appropriate. The man had a tightly coiled presence about him, as though he were ready to pounce at the slightest provocation.

  “How did you know about that mad?” she asked him, deciding to keep their conversation to a neutral ground.

  “I used to drive a patrol car around here. Where to?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Where am I taking you?”

  “Oh, Beverly Hills.”

  “Figures,” he said under his breath.

  There it was, another little barb. The man was impossibly sullen and rude, she thought, even if he had just saved her from a horror show. The fingers of her right hand reached for her rings, and she played nervously with them. She slanted him a narrow look. “So, you’re not only tactless, you’re judgmental.”

  He shrugged but said nothing. She should leave it alone, she told herself. After all, why should she care what this man thought about her?

  But, for some reason, she did.

  “Tell me,” she asked archly, “your attitude—is it all women? Just women who live in Beverly Hills? Or is it just me?”

  “I’ve never met you before,” he replied.

  Another nonanswer. Was he trying to bait her or brush her off? Forget it, she told herself. Don’t waste your energy.

  For a while, she stared out the window at shopping malls and gas stations, at huge trucks and sports cars racing past them on the freeway. They hit some rush-hour traffic near the airport, but it thinned out as they headed toward Santa Monica. Eventually, however, Jordan found her attention wandering again to her driver. She studied him—the stubborn set of the jaw, the broken nose, which could have been disfiguring but on him was somehow...interesting. Sexy, even. She still hadn’t seen his eyes, but in profile, he reminded her of someone, an old movie star.

  Oh, yes, she thought. John Garfield. Body and Soul. Street fighter turned boxing pro. She’d always liked him in that one. Oh, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, from the forties. With Lana Turner. The two of them had had a lot of chemistry in that one. Quite a turn-on, as she recalled.

  What? Jordan was taken aback by the direction of her thoughts. A sexy broken nose? Chemistry? Quite a turn-on? Words and phrases that weren’t part of her vocabulary, not any more. Nothing and no one had turned her on for so long, Jordan thought wryly, she’d often wondered if she’d ever experience that particular sensation again, or if she’d remember what to do if it happened. That part of her, the sensual-woman part, had shut down. Forever, it seemed. She was a widow, yes, but she’d felt like Reynolds Carlisle’s widow long before he’d made her one in reality.

  She glanced once again at the man driving the car, then purposefully focused her gaze front. She might compare this Dom person to John Garfield, but there was no way she would ever find this rude, opinionated policeman attractive. Thug types weren’t for her. No, what she was probably feeling was gratitude. He might be surly, but he’d put himself out for her.

  “Will the little girl be all right?” she asked him.

  “Depends on who she’s going home to.” He shrugged noncommittally. “A crack-addicted mother, maybe, or a hooker. A teenager who had a kid at fourteen so she’d have someone who loved her. Who knows?”

  “Oh, no.” Jordan felt as though cold water had just been thrown in her face. “Are those the only scenarios you can come up with?”

  “Sorry, lady, but that’s what I see every day on the job.”

  “Please don’t call me lady,” she snapped.

  “Fine.”

  “Are you as hard and uncaring as you seem?” It was out before she could stop it, and she regretted it immediately. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he annoyed her.

  But her question seemed to stop him momentarily. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he scraped the other over his face and stubble, then rubbed under his dark eyeglasses as though he was tired.

  “No, I’m not uncaring.” His tone was less aggressive. “There’s just so much I can do, so much any one cop can do. We don’t deal a lot with fine, upstanding folks, Mrs. Carlisle, like you probably are. We deal with victims or scum—they’re the ones who get in trouble. Most of ‘em are doomed, some of ’em have a chance, and I hope to hell they get it and take it and run with it. But I have to shut down. If I don’t, I’ll go under. That answer your question?”

  It was more of a speech than she’d expected and, she suspected, more of a speech than he’d intended to give. She nodded. “I see.”

  They drove along in silence, past the office towers of Century City and toward the Santa Monica mountains, the wide ridge that separated the valley from the rest of Los Angeles. The silence was much easier now, Jordan noted and was grateful. As they exited the freeway at Sunset Boulevard, she said, “Thank you for taking me home, Sheriff, or whatever they call you.”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Sorry. Sergeant what?”

  “D‘Annunzio. Detective Sergeant Dominic D’Annunzio.”

  Dominic D’Annunzio. The two words and the way he said them filled her head. Visions of stocky Italian men with thick eyebrows and thicker accents, large women stirring huge pots of steaming pasta...

  Hold it, Jordan told herself. If Dominic D’Annunzio had pigeonholed her as the Beverly Hills type, she’d just pigeonholed him right back, hadn’t she?

  “Left here,” she directed, “and look for the fourth house on the right.”

  Fourth house, indeed, Dom thought as he turned into the driveway. More like a small castle. Tall trees rose on either side of the private road, which continued for about fifty yards to end at imposing wrought-iron gates. Beyond them lay a vista of green, gracefully sloping lawn fronting a tree-shaded, three-story stone building, complete with turrets and broad balconies. Ah, he thought mockingly, the good life.

  After turning the motor off, he handed the keys to Mrs. Carlisle. She took them, removed her sunglasses, met his gaze and said, “Thanks.”

  His breath hitched in his throat. Those eyes, he couldn’t help thinking again, they were incredible. Like pale green marbles. But the dark shadows underneath—why were they there?

  He had more questions. The whole drive he’d wanted to ask her why she’d run from the press when most people coveted their fifteen minutes of fame. He’d wanted to ask her what the fear was about.

  But he was a civil servant, and she was a married lady from Beverly Hills, and he didn’t need to know any more about her than he already did. “Mind if I use your car phone to get a ride?” he asked.

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh. I should have offered to drop you off.”

  “Nah. I’ll get a patrol car to swing by. No problem.”

  He made his call and was in luck. There was a car from his West Hollywood precinct at Beverly Hills City Hall at the moment. They would be right by to get him.

  Dom got out of the car. But the woman continued to sit in the passenger seat as though she had no desire to move. She must be beat, he thought. She’d been through a hell of a lot, for a civilian. Come to think of it, he was pretty damned tired, too. He stifled a yawn at the thought. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and these all-nighters could be killers. A bottle of beer and a bed sounded real good right about now.

  “Look,” he said, propping one hand on the Rover’s roof and leaning in, “you go on in. My ride’ll be here in a moment.”

  She nodded distractedly but stayed where she was, staring at the mansion. There was something haunted in her expression.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I hate it there,” she said quietly.

  Her reply surprised him, and his natural cop’s curiosity made him want to kn
ow more. He slid into the driver’s seat, keeping the door ajar, and looked at her. “Why?”

  She didn’t answer for a few moments. Then she angled her head and gazed at him, the expression in her eyes so filled with suffering, he wondered how she managed to remain upright. “Have you ever lost someone you loved more than life itself?”

  That one threw him, but good. So did all the images that suddenly assaulted him—Theresa, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. The funeral, the rain hitting the coffin like tiny daggers, the sound tearing away at what was left of his heart.

  “Yeah,” he muttered before shutting off the pictures. “My wife.”

  Mrs. Carlisle nodded, then let out a deep sigh. “Then you understand. My little boy, I lost him last year.” There were no tears in her eyes, but the tragic loss was stamped on every inch of her face. Her fingers played nervously with her rings. “That’s why I hate the press—back then, they wouldn’t leave me alone. I wasn’t allowed to mourn in peace. Coming back here reminds me of what I no longer have and will never have again.”

  Their gazes remained locked, but Dom had no words. What could he say? What could anyone say to a loss like that? All the money and possessions in the world couldn’t replace her little boy. And it was wrong, against the natural order, to lose a child. Parents, even spouses, you lost them—that was the way life worked. Someone got left behind, sure, but you got on with your life. But a child? Some people never recovered from that one.

  “That’s tough,” he said.

  He wanted to touch her hand, to tell her that he knew—God, how he knew—just what she was feeling. But two quick honks interrupted the moment. Dom turned to see a patrol car behind them in the driveway. His ride was here. Good, he thought. The less time spent in the presence of so much pain, the better—for him anyway.

  But a part of him didn’t want to leave Mrs. Carlisle. Hell, he didn’t even know her first name, but he still found himself reluctant to say goodbye. Stupid notion, he thought, but reached into his wallet for one of his cards.