by Cindy Gerard
“Yeah. And then he made damn sure I wasn’t around to tell the tale.” He ran a hand along her back. She snuggled closer as he told her about how Grunewald and his pack had cornered him, leaving out the details of how bad the beating they’d given him was. Reluctantly he told her about his involvement with the woman who was now Grunewald’s wife and her attempt to pick up where they’d left off when he’d come back to the lake.
“Even back then, he had the power. He wanted me gone and made it clear that if I didn’t disappear, he’d convince Trisha to file rape charges against me. With the reputation I’d so carefully cultivated, there was no doubt in my mind that they’d make them stick.”
“It’s so unfair.”
“It’s life,” he stated flatly. “And it was my wake-up call. I’d always known money talked. I decided then and there that I wanted to have a voice. To make money, I needed skills. So I joined the Marines and surprised myself and the brass by being a good one. It was the first time in my life I’d felt like I was being judged for what I could do, instead of what I was or wasn’t or where I’d come from.”
He felt her smile form against his chest, close to where her small hand rested.
“What...?” he asked.
“I’m trying to picture you without your hair.”
He covered her hand with his and held it here, savored the warmth of it seeping through his skin. “The hair came later.”
He worked his jaw, remembering the catalyst that had spurred his decision to let it grow. “I opted out of the Marines after my four years and joined the D.C. Police Force. Yeah,” he said when she pulled away and with furrowed brows, looked up at him. “Me. A cop. Only I’d had enough of uniforms and regiments by then. When the opportunity came to go undercover, I took it.”
And that’s when his downward spiral had begun.
“Dangerous,” she murmured and raised her hand to his neck and hung on tight.
He closed his eyes. Let out a deep breath. “Yeah. Dangerous. In more ways than you can imagine. I became addicted to it. Not the drugs—the danger. The deeper the cover, the better I liked it, the more reckless I got. Before long it wasn’t enough. I wanted more action—more than even the D.C. Police Force could offer. So I joined the company.”
“The company?”
“CIA.”
He felt her body tense.
“It’s everything you’ve ever heard about it, comprising both the best and the worst elements imaginable. The ideal is that everyone plays by the rules. The reality is that no matter how diligently they try to police it, there will always be a segment of the agency that is morally corrupt—loose cannons who make their own rules and draw their own lines when the bureaucratic process impedes results. It doesn’t take long before some of the good guys become little better than the bad guys. And I became one of the best.”
He clenched his jaw, remembering. “The day I crossed over was the day I lost my partner because the powers-that-be had been too mired in their by-the-book game plan to act. When they finally decided to move, it was too late and Carson was dead.
“I killed.” The two words crashed into the tension like breaking glass. Abrupt. Brutal. Chilling. Her silence scared the hell out of him—just like his confession frightened her. He’d shocked her. But he wouldn’t let himself stop. He owed her the truth. If he gave her nothing else, he’d give her that.
“I killed and I called it self-defense. I used and called it justice. I witnessed brutality I could have stopped and told myself it was for the common good. When Carson died, I accepted that I was dispensable to a government that honored me to my face for my fight against the drug war, then sent me to the wolves without conscience or care.
“A year later I got out—and went into business on my own. If I was going to put my neck on the line, I decided it might just as well be for my own gain.
“The American government wasn’t the only one with an interest in curtailing the drug traffic. Many lesser powers were in need of my services, although their motives may not have been as humanitarian.
“I didn’t care about their motives. I only cared about mine. Money. I contracted with anyone who was willing to meet my price—and I delivered on every dollar they paid me, earned each one twice over.”
He drew a deep, unsteady breath, reliving a hundred ugly encounters, abhorring the mercenary he’d become.
“There’s a village in Colombia.” On this cold winter night he could still feel the suffocating heat, smell the putrid stench, see the squalor of that hell on earth thousands of miles and five years away. “It was seething with decay and ruled by the king pin of an international drug cartel. I tracked him there. Stalked him, cornered him—then made a near-fatal mistake.
“She was twelve years old.” He remembered her like it was yesterday. “Her eyes were a liquid, brimming brown that spoke of innocence and invited trust. A trust I accepted. She was my source.” He closed his eyes, disgusted. “A kid...and I used her to get information. Talk about justice. It turned out she was using me. She had a family to feed. So she led me into a trap. Straight into Gutierrez’s den.”
He was vaguely aware of the shudder rippling through him, distantly cognizant of Mackenzie’s heart thudding heavily against his own—but he was vividly mired in that part of his past.
“The only reason he didn’t kill me was because he was bored. I provided a diversion. When the beatings lost entertainment value for him, he experimented with electricity.”
Sweat broke out on his forehead and oozed like blood down his face, into his eyes. “Then the drugs became his favorite game, his greatest source of amusement. And my living hell.”
He shook himself back to the present, made himself focus on the fire and its pure, steady flame. He wrapped Mackenzie tighter in his arms, holding on to her like she was his link to the here and now.
“Every day he promised me he’d kill me. After a month of promises, I begged him to do it.”
“How did you get away from him?” Her voice was small and fearful.
A grim smile twisted one corner of his mouth. “I didn’t. He got away from me. The ruling political faction of the province was taking a lot of heat from the Drug Enforcement Agency. Their token gesture was to storm Gutierrez’s stronghold and run him out of the country. I was the prize they found in his wine cellar. They turned me over to the American Consulate figuring they’d score major points.” He laughed, a harsh, cynical sound that held a trace of the madness he’d felt when they’d dragged him out of that dark hole.
“The suits at the consulate were not happy to see me. They’d known I was down there somewhere, but didn’t want to know what I was doing. I was a renegade. An embarrassment—but I’d been one of them once, so they hustled me quietly back to the states and tucked me neatly away in a VA hospital in Virgina. I stayed until I was strong enough to walk out on my own steam. Then after holing up for a month in a seedy little motel on the outskirts of D.C., I came back here.”
The breath he let out felt symbolic of letting go of that part of his life.
“I bought a small camper, I parked it on the land. My body healed physically. I endured the withdrawal, I lived through the nightmares. Gradually I got my strength back. As therapy, more than anything, I started building the cabin. It took me two and a half years. It took another two before I quit sleeping with a loaded glock under my pillow and a steel bar wedged across each door.”
“And you still have the nightmares,” she said, the scratchiness of her half whisper a stark testimony to that fact.
“I still have the nightmares.”
She pulled away from him. Touched a hand to his face and met his eyes. He didn’t see revulsion. He didn’t see hatred. He saw only that she was hurting. Hurting for him. A tear slipped out, trickled down her cheek, as she pressed her face to his and whispered, “You don’t have to deal with them alone anymore.”
He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. He hadn’t realized his heart had stopped beatin
g and his mind was set to lock back into that place where the pain couldn’t reach him. He hadn’t realized he could still feel such stark, consuming fear.
Her softly spoken words both destroyed and resurrected him with their purity and power. His own eyes burned. His throat ached as he held her, rocked her and thanked the Fates for their generosity in sending her to him.
“Did you like the person you were back then?”
He hadn’t expected the question. It showed in his response. “Did I give you any indication that I did?”
She pulled back, her smile gentle. “No. None. I just wanted to make sure you realized it. You didn’t like him. You didn’t approve of what he did. Neither do I.” She framed his face in her hands. “But I understand him...I understand what drove him to do the things he did. And I forgive him.
“You—the man you’ve become—need to forgive him, too. You need to forgive the man you once were. He was a victim, Abel. And until you realize that, you’ll continue to be a victim, too.”
She kissed him then. A forgiving kiss. A healing kiss.
Humbled, he covered her hands with his own. “I’ve done nothing to deserve you,” he whispered, and had never felt anything so deeply in his life.
“What you deserve has nothing to do with me. What you deserve is a chance to see that you’ve made yourself into the kind of man circumstances were determined to keep you from becoming.”
He brought her hands to his mouth, pressed a deep kiss to her open palms. “And what you deserve is a damn sight better than me. How did you get this way? So totally accepting? So uncategorically selfless?”
Mackenzie gazed into the eyes of the man she loved. She understood the haunted looks now. She understood his pain. And she lived with a corresponding guilt.
“Not selfless,” she amended. “Selfish.”
His dark brows furrowed in denial.
“Yes,” she insisted, then confessed to a secret of her own. “Mark, and the danger he was in, wasn’t my only motive for coming here. And I’m not as strong as you give me credit for being.”
She rose and walked to the fire. Crossing her arms under her breasts, she stared into the crackling flames, aware of his puzzled gaze tracking her.
“I was tired,” she said in a weary voice. “Tired of being there for Mark. Of being the only one there for him. I wanted a life. I wanted to come and go as I pleased. I wanted to do all those things a woman my age was supposed to do but couldn’t because I was—in the most literal sense of the word—my brother’s keeper.”
She blinked back tears of shame. “I resented Mark because my life wasn’t what I’d been promised by the purveyors of the American Dream. It took every dime I made to keep a roof over our heads—such as it was. I gave up my dream of completing my education so I could make something of myself. So I could be somebody.”
She shook her head, self-disgust weighing down like lead. “The day I ran across your ad was the day I threw in the towel. I wasn’t just thinking about Mark when I answered it. I was thinking about me, too. I saw a chance for someone else to share the load. I saw a chance to be taken care of instead of always being the caretaker.”
She turned to him them, tears brimming. “Selfless? No. I came here because I wanted to dump the entire tired mess of my life on someone else. It was calculated. And it was self-serving. And it makes me ashamed.”
He rose and went to her. “What it makes you,” he said, touching a hand to her hair, “is human. With human weakness and human need. And what it makes me is damn lucky that I was the dump site.”
His gentle smile was coaxing. “You love your brother, Mackenzie. No one—especially you—should ever doubt that. You saved his life when you brought him here.” He curled a knuckle under her chin. “And don’t ever doubt you saved mine, too.”
Ten
The next morning Abel rode his snowmobile over to Crimson Falls and brought Mark home. It was time, Abel said to him, to become a family.
Mark was a little edgy at first. Mackenzie suspected it was because he was trying to get a feel for his new role in Mackenzie’s life. He seemed to relax later in the day as he sensed that his status hadn’t changed. She relaxed, too. He was still her little brother, and despite her feelings of guilt over her motives, she loved him and knew she would fight for his life again if it ever came to that.
As for Mackenzie, she felt safe and cared for and totally in love. She was completely enamored with her husband and the winter wonderland that was Legend Lake.
Two days after Mark’s return, it was Christmas Eve. The following day they would join Scarlett and Casey at the hotel for dinner, and later in the week they’d all get together with Maggie and J.D., who were returning to the lake after spending the holiday with J.D.’s family in the Cities.
But tonight, Christmas Eve, was theirs.
The three of them had made a pact. Since both Mark and Mackenzie were flat broke, Abel wasn’t allowed to spend any money on them. The gifts they ended up exchanging turned out to be far more special than anything money could have bought.
And the memories they made as they sat on the floor around the tree to open their presents were ones Mackenzie knew she’d treasure forever. She memorized every scent, every sound, every soft caress of her husband’s eyes. Every nuance of excitement and anticipation Mark worked so hard to hide and had such little success in accomplishing.
This was her family. And these were the memories she wanted to cherish.
Dozens of tiny lights glittered on the branches of the Christmas tree. Outside, the window ledges were heavy with two or three inches of fresh snowfall. She’d lit candles on the hearth, had even scared up a radio station on Mark’s boom box that, much to Mark’s pretended dismay, played nonstop Christmas music.
Abel had moved Nashata and the pups to the rug by the hearth for the evening. Soft, snuffling grunts could be heard coming from the whelping box as the puppies wiggled their way around each other then knotted into a pile of full tummies and velvet-soft fur.
“You first, Abel,” Mark said, extending an envelope.
On his own, Mark had come up with the idea of giving IOUs. For Abel there were IOUs for horse chores and help at the logging site. He gave Mackenzie a promise that he’d keep the rap music down to her definition of a tolerable level and give school his best shot when it resumed after the holidays.
Mackenzie—feeling like Betty Crocker and loving it— had made Mark his own batch of fudge and stuffed some tins she’d found in the back of Abel’s cupboards full of Christmas cookies.
“Just like ‘Little House on the Prairie,’” Mark said, trying for a sputter but working harder to hide a grin as he bit into a sugar cookie bell.
For Abel, Mackenzie laid an offer on the table to straighten up his office and catch up on the book work he avoided at all costs. Her other gifts to him were of a more intimate nature which she planned to deliver in the privacy of their bedroom.
Abel’s gifts, however, were the most special of them all.
To Mark, he gave one of Nashata’s puppies. Tears glittered in her little brother’s eyes as he croaked out a rusty thank you around the lump in his throat.
“You’ll have to work it out with Casey,” Abel added, as much to fill the silence and give Mark time to deal with his emotions. “I promised her the pick of the litter when we first found out about the pups. And I hear she’s working Scarlett over pretty good trying to convince her to let her have two.”
“Maggie’s working on J.D., too,” Mackenzie added. “And since he doesn’t seem capable of denying her anything, I’m sure she’ll get her way.”
“I don’t care which one—” Mark began, then stopped midsentence when Abel tugged a red ribbon from the tree and handed it to him. A key dangled from the ribbon’s trailing ends.
Mark’s face went white as his gaze darted from Abel’s to the key.
“She’s an older model,” Abel said casually. “I bought her the first winter I was up here—but I think she’ll
run with a little work. The engine needs a tune-up and we may have to put new belts on the skis but she’s yours if you want her.”
“A snowmobile?” Mark whispered, sounding as if he was afraid that if he said it too loud it wouldn’t be true.
Abel nodded.
When it became apparent that Mark was so overwhelmed he was either going to explode or blow his macho image to smithereens by crying, Abel came to the rescue. “She’s under a tarp in the stable. Why don’t you grab a flashlight and go check her out.”
With soft smiles, they watched him head for the door.
Mackenzie was the one who ended up crying. Hot, salty tears leaked down her cheeks as she gazed at her husband.
“You are a very special man.”
He shrugged. “It was just sitting there.”
“It was just yours,” she said and went to him where he sat cross-legged beside the tree. She straddled his lap, locked her legs around his waist, and looped her arms around his neck. “And you gave it to him. No one has ever done anything—”
He shushed her with a kiss. “You’re not going to cry when I give you your present are you?”
She sniffed and knuckled the tears from her eyes. “Probably.”
He gave her a hard hug then reached under the tree.
“Open it,” he said, wedging a carefully wrapped package between them.
Slowly she worked her fingers under the tape.
“It’s just paper,” he said, impatient with the meticulous care she took to avoid tearing it.
“But it’s paper that you used to wrap the first Christmas gift you’ve ever given me. I want to save it.”
“And who will save me from sentimental women?”
She gave him a half-hearted cuff with her elbow and took her own sweet time.
Beneath the gold foil paper was a book. It was old and leather bound, the edges curled with time and softened by the many hands that had held it. She ran her finger tips across the aged, scarred leather.
“It was my great-great-grandmother’s. Don’t. Don’t do that,” he pleaded as the tears began again.