by Dana Corbit
“Clara said Miss Collins’s niece is a cute kid. And a legal guardian is almost like a mom—”
Joe shook his head to interrupt him. “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but most single guys aren’t on a hunt for widowed mothers of three.”
“Well, that’s good because the most amazing one is off the market,” Brett said with a self-satisfied grin. “And now we’re the proud parents of five.”
Which was a whole other crazy matter in Joe’s opinion, but because he was the best man from their wedding, and he wanted to preserve that friendship, Joe kept that opinion to himself.
“Remember when you told me you couldn’t be dragged to the altar by anything less threatening than a howitzer?” Brett said with a chuckle.
“And don’t you hate supposed friends who use your old comments against you?” He shook his head. “Look, I think you and Tricia are great, but I’m telling you that a woman is not my problem.” At least not all of it.
Brett shook his index finger at him and squinted as if deep in thought, but then he opened his eyes as if he’d found his answer. “Then it has to be the sergeant test that’s bugging you. Don’t worry about it. You’re ready. You’ve been ready for a long time. You should have taken this step years ago.”
“You’re right about that.”
It didn’t surprise him that the lieutenant had hit on a part of his problem. He was only relieved that Brett hadn’t figured out the rest. He couldn’t afford to let anyone know, especially not Brett, that he’d lost his confidence out on patrol. They couldn’t know that he was a liability to the other men and women on the force.
Brett had already guessed that Lindsay was a part of his problem, too, and whether she was the problem or just a reminder of it, he should have been backing away from her instead of becoming friends. A rational man who wanted to keep his job and his family legacy would do what needed to be done, but when had he ever been rational? No matter what he should do, he knew what he would do, and that was to show up to meet her as planned.
That truth only frustrated him more. If he didn’t figure this out, his superiors would figure him out, or worse, something unthinkable could happen while he was out on patrol. A feeling deep in his gut told him it was only a matter of time.
“Why isn’t Trooper Joe here, Aunt Lindsay?”
Lindsay looked up to find Emma pouring another bucket of water into her castle’s moat. The child, who laughed and played in her daisy-covered tankini, didn’t appear to have any lasting effects from her nightmare the night before. She didn’t even seem to mind that the water she poured into her moat was only absorbed into the sand.
“I don’t know.” Lindsay smeared on another layer of sunscreen as she sat on a blanket just beyond the reach of the tide’s tiny ripples. “Maybe something came up.”
At least, that was the only way Lindsay could explain it. Joe had definitely said he was planning to come and hadn’t called to cancel, so she didn’t know what to think. She pulled her cell phone from where she’d tucked it beneath a beach towel and shielded the screen with her hand. No missed call. No text message.
“But he promised.” Emma’s lips were pursed in a pout. “He always keeps his promises.”
“I never said promise.” Lindsay didn’t know why she bothered trying to explain. If she’d learned anything in the past few weeks, it was that Emma took anything she said as a promise. If only she’d left Joe’s plan to meet them as a surprise, then Emma wouldn’t have to think that he’d stood her up. Just the way Lindsay felt.
“You could only be stood up if it was a real date,” she said under her breath and then shook her head.
It had never been a date. Was that what she’d really been looking for when she’d invited him? Of course not. They were friends, new ones, and that was all. She could admit to being lonely and even to being nervous when she’d invited him, but she was still convinced that she’d asked him for a better reason than to improve her nonexistent social life. This was for Emma.
It was a practical decision. Rather than to continue rejecting his offers of help, she’d chosen to welcome them. Joe would be a good resource, and she’d planned to glean as much information as she could about caring for Emma during their day at the beach. Unfortunately, Joe had demonstrated instead how unreliable people could be. Maybe she deserved his no-show for choosing to rely on someone else instead of being independent the way she should have been.
“I want him to come,” Emma whined.
“I know you do, sweetie.”
“He can take me to the sprinklers park.”
Lindsay looked over at the gated, mini water park, only about a thousand feet away from their spot on the beach. She shouldn’t have mentioned they could possibly go there, either. Now whatever they did would be a disappointment instead of an adventure.
“Live and learn,” she blew out on a frustrated sigh.
“Learn what?”
At the sound of Joe’s voice, Lindsay felt a tingle creep up her spine. Shifting her arm behind her, she turned to see him crossing the sand, wearing a pair of long red-and-blue swimming trunks, topped by a white Northern Michigan University T-shirt. That her mouth went dry just watching his approach brought her whole “just friends” premise into question. Serious question.
Only, something wasn’t right about the way he crossed the grass area with that long stride and sharp whip of his arms. She couldn’t help but notice the hard set of his jaw as he stopped at the edge of her blanket, but she didn’t miss, either, the way his gaze paused on her and that he swallowed visibly as he looked away.
“You’re here,” she managed to choke out.
Joe cleared his throat. “I said I would come today, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
Lindsay wasn’t sure what she would have said next, but she didn’t have the chance as Emma looked up from her castle masterpiece, dropped her shovel and threw herself at a certain state trooper, sandy feet and all.
“Trooper Joe, ya came,” Emma said with delight.
“Of course I did. I always keep my promises.”
The child turned back to her aunt. “See, I told you.”
That Joe didn’t even look back at Lindsay as Emma dragged him over to the sand castle made her uncomfortable. What was up with him?
“Look at my castle,” Emma said. “I built it myself.”
“Hmm. I’d better get a good look at this.” Joe crouched down and took his time examining the creation that bore more resemblance to a lopsided igloo on an iceberg than any palace with a drawbridge. “You did all of this stuff? It’s amazing.”
Emma nodded, beaming, and described her creation for him in great detail. Lindsay couldn’t help smiling as Joe paid close attention to the child, pointing, mostly in error, to the parts she described. When Joe looked back to Lindsay, and his jaw tightened, she decided that despite his efforts to hide it, something wasn’t right.
Finally, Joe stepped on the edge of the blanket to protect his feet from the hot sand.
She glanced up and caught him watching her again, his gaze narrowed.
“When are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Why would there be anything wrong?” But he didn’t look at her as he said it.
“I expected you a little earlier. Did something happen at work, or did we get our signals crossed?”
He shook his head. “Paperwork. That’s just part of police work. The boring part of the job.”
“If you get this worked up over the boring part, then I’d hate to see you after you deal with something serious.”
She’d just been joking to lighten his mood, but she regretted the words as soon as she’d spoken them. How could she have forgotten, even for a minute? She was one of the people he’d met during one of those serious moments, and whether she could recall the event or not, he’d carried her to safety. She swallowed.
Joe was watching her, as if he was waiting for her to make that connection. He nodded over her reaction.
“I always have to be ready for those times. Always have to be sharp. On my toes.”
With each comment, his jaw flexed tighter, and his gaze seemed to bore further through her. It was obvious that he was frustrated, but she wasn’t sure why. Could it involve whatever he wasn’t telling her about the accident? She swallowed. What exactly had she done, and why wouldn’t he tell her?
“Distractions are unacceptable,” he continued. “They can’t happen. My hesitating could get somebody killed.”
His gaze met hers again, and they locked in a solemn connection. Neither mentioned that lives could be and had been lost in his work, even when he didn’t hesitate. That truth was a like an elephant sitting right there on the beach with them—between them. But Lindsay couldn’t let the silence stretch any further, crawling under her skin and disturbing the bits of peace and acceptance she’d fought so hard for in the past six months, so she asked one of the questions clamoring for answers.
“Did you feel distracted this morning at work after…last night?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but she rushed on, suddenly afraid of what he might say.
“Because I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you. I should have either handled the situation myself or have bit the bullet and called my parents. My not wanting to lose face with them was no excuse for me to ask you for help.”
But he was shaking his head as he lowered himself to sit on the edge of the blanket, so Lindsay stopped, giving him a chance to answer.
“You should never have to be afraid of reaching out to a friend when you need help.”
“You said that’s what we are, but are you sure you meant it?”
“Why wouldn’t I have?” He shifted, and instead of meeting her gaze, he looked over to Emma, who was still hard at work on her castle.
“Then why did you suggest that Emma and I are distractions rather than friends?”
Squeezing his eyes shut, he shoved a hand through his short hair. “That’s not what I meant. I just—” He stopped himself, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I meant. I’m tired, I guess, and cranky.”
“I wasn’t going to mention that.”
His expression softened as he looked back at her again. “Thanks. I would expect you to be surly today as well, but you’re all sunshiny. And look at her.” He indicated Emma with a tilt of his head. “She’s no worse for the wear.”
“Well, Emma and I had the chance to sleep while you were out fighting crime on Michigan highways. I don’t know how you were able to pull it together at six a.m.”
“Obviously, I didn’t do such a good job of it.” He smiled. “I was just so off today that I worried I would make a mistake. I couldn’t afford—”
He broke off, but Lindsay couldn’t stop herself from filling in for him. “To make another one?”
His eyes widened, but he didn’t answer.
“You can’t blame yourself for what happened the day of the accident.”
“I don’t,” he said finally.
“Don’t you?”
His only answer was a shrug.
“You did everything you could.” Except to pull her sister from the car first, but she wouldn’t say that to him now. It was her issue, not his.
“Sometimes it’s just not enough.”
“Are we back to that again?” She’d said almost the same thing last night when they’d been talking about her caring for Emma.
“I guess we are.”
He was grinning when she met his gaze, and then, as if they’d planned it, they glanced at Emma at the same time.
“She’s a great kid.” Lindsay couldn’t help smiling as she watched her niece. “I’m going to give her the best life I can, no matter what I have to do.”
“Even if it means hanging out with a guy like me?”
“I keep saying that you offered.”
“And I keep admitting that I did, but sometimes…” He let his words trail away as he grinned at her.
“You wish you didn’t?” She put her hand to her mouth in mock horror. “And I was ready to admit that you just might be able to teach me a few things about kids.”
“Well, don’t go and admit something like that or I’ll get all overconfident. You don’t want to be responsible for that.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head slowly. “I’ll just keep that information to myself, then.”
“As long as that’s settled.” He paused and then added, “You know, I don’t really know that much about kids.”
“More than I do, but that doesn’t take much. Emma adores you, too, and it’s not completely horrifying having you around, so…”
“That’s good because I’m not horrified being here.”
Staring at the ground, Lindsay became serious. “It’s beyond the range of your duties to spend time with accident victims, so I’ll understand if you want to go now, or if you don’t want to accept any other invitations.”
He cleared his throat, so Lindsay figured whatever he said next would be something she didn’t want to hear. But then he grinned.
“You got me to come all the way here, and now you’re uninviting me?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I—”
But his suddenly serious expression stopped her.
“We’re new friends, so there are things you don’t know about me. But I’m going to tell you one right now.” He took a deep breath and continued. “I am never anywhere I don’t want to be.”
Chapter Seven
She shouldn’t stare. Lindsay knew that. But she couldn’t make herself look away from the man who’d just spoken the most significant words any man had ever said to her. She didn’t even mind that he was only doing it for Emma. She was relieved that someone else cared for Emma’s well-being as much as she did and was willing to invest time to ensure that her needs were met.
But then Joe looked back at her, and their gazes touched in a connection as warm as it was confusing. She felt as if she’d been sunburned from the inside out. His smile drew her in, helplessly yet willingly. Her breath caught, and she lost the ability to blink.
Okay, she didn’t have a huge frame of reference, just a select group of male friends, but she’d been able to look away from all of them. With Joe, she didn’t even want to, and since time seemed to have stopped, she didn’t have to force herself.
“Look, Aunt Lindsay. Look, Trooper Joe. I buried my feet.”
Lindsay blinked as a three-year-old interrupted that pause in space and time. Her castle forgotten, Emma sat just off the blanket, her feet covered under mounds of sand.
“Well…” Lindsay paused to clear her throat “…you sure did. I can’t even tell where they are.”
“They’re right here, silly.” She wiggled until ten little pink toes peeked up through the sand.
“Oh, I can see some feet now.” Joe popped up and scrambled over so he could tickle Emma’s feet.
Lindsay struggled to pull herself up from the blanket, her cane providing little leverage in the sand. Jumping up, Joe reached out to steady her, but she waved away his offer with a brush of her hand. The last thing she needed right now would be to feel his touch on her arm and be tempted to lean into the strength of it.
Taking a few steps closer to Emma, she settled between the castle and the child’s self-burial project. Lindsay moved her feet, the sand feeling like clay between her toes. That dank fish-and-seaweed smell, distinct to lake water, rose in her nose. She might have been tempted to think that something—or someone—had awakened all of her senses, but she chose to believe instead that she hadn’t been paying attention before.
“I think Emma could use some help, don’t you?” Joe winked at Lindsay and then plopped down next to them and started clumping damp sand over those protruding toes.
“You’re right. She needs a lot of help.”
Soon a giggling Emma was buried in the sand until her nose, eyes and mouth were her only visible parts.
“Should we let her out no
w?” Joe asked.
“I don’t know,” Lindsay said with a laugh. “I like her this way.”
But Emma made a monsterlike sound and sat up, with the drier sand falling away from her skin and the damper parts sticking like messy brown glue.
“Looks like somebody needs a rinse,” Joe said.
“Not me.”
But Joe scooped her up anyway and started out into the murky waters of Kent Lake. Little girl giggles and hearty male laughter followed, as they negotiated the rocky shoreline and rolled around in knee-deep water, replacing some of that sand with seaweed.
Moving back to her blanket, Lindsay leaned back on her elbows to watch them, occasionally brushing at the perspiration at her temples. There were other groups on the beach, as well—teenagers playing volleyball, young women in bikinis soaking up the rays and a couple with a baby who cried every time he got his feet wet.
Lindsay didn’t know how long she’d sat there watching, but suddenly her mind had changed the story behind the people out in the water. It wasn’t hard at all for her to picture Joe, Emma and herself as a warm and happy family of three. When Joe would come out of the water, Lindsay would hand him a fluffy towel so he could wrap Emma in it. Then he would shift the child to Lindsay and pull both woman and child into the safety and comfort of his arms.
Would he brush a kiss over Emma’s head and then turn to touch his lips to Lindsay’s? She swallowed, even as her lips tingled over the thought. What was she thinking? How had she allowed her thoughts to veer so far from reality? How had she gone from recognizing that Joe was a kind man, who was helping them because of guilt over the accident, or pity for her orphaned niece or some other reason she didn’t understand, to imagining a romance between them?
Lindsay must have messed up more than her hip socket joint in the accident if she was allowing herself to become attracted to Joe Rossetti. He was motivated by guilt. She’d accepted his offer of help, partially because she wanted answers and partially because she wasn’t in the position to turn down any offer, but she couldn’t allow herself to read more into their new friendship.
She was talking about Joe Rossetti, anyway. No matter how gorgeous and kind he was, and no matter how justified his reasons for making a split-second decision at an accident scene, the truth remained that he’d chosen between Lindsay and Delia. What kind of sister would even consider becoming involved with a man who’d made a choice like that? How could she betray Delia’s memory that way?