by Terese Ramin
That was why he’d become a cop. Why he’d always wanted to be a cop. Because as a cop he’d have a right to fix things. Get in the way of things. Bad things. Stop them.
But perhaps where Maddie was concerned, he really…shouldn’t anymore.
Maybe he should set her free and let her learn to finish rescuing herself while he tried to figure out how to do something of the same for himself.
He stared at her a long time, coming to terms with that one, playing it over in his head.
“It’s only a windmill, Russ,” Maddie said softly. “Not like you haven’t jousted ’em for me before.”
He blinked at her, trying to make it easier for him at the same time that she made it as difficult as possible for him to walk away. “You were always so good at tough. Damsel-in-Distress never did suit you, Mad
“But you’re always so good at Knight-in-Shining, even a girl like me can’t help herself in times of need. And I need, Russ, make no mistake. I’m terrified.”
It was hard, but he did it—or made a start toward it anyway.
“I know you are, but—” He sucked his teeth, dropped to her level and eyed her directly. “Until you’re ready to play it straight with me, I’m outta here.”
Flabbergasted, Maddie nearly tipped out of her chair. “What?”
Russ straightened, turned his back on her and crossed the room. “Get some paper from the front desk and write it down, Maddie.” He opened the door. “Make it clear, because I got work to do, but I can’t let Janie sit around and wait anymore on account of my history with you.”
Then he went to look for his wife.
Without noticing the wan but distinct smile Maddie sent after him. It was time, as she’d admitted, albeit somewhat diffidently, to Janina, to let him go, also.
And just as soon as he brought Jess back, she’d correct a longtime mistake and make sure her partner, her lover, her life’s mate and heart’s desire understood the truth of that, too.
If Jess ever forgave her for leaving her to Charlie this long in the first place, that is.
“Oops, excuse me.”
Janina fast-footed it out of the way of one rushing clerical officer only to be buffeted straight into the path of an oncoming patrolman, and then bounced smack-dab into another. “Sorry, sorry.”
She collected herself and sidestepped into the wall, flattened herself there and stood, breathing hard. Urgency filtered around her, filled the halls, spread fingers everywhere, including in thoughtless drifts through her nape hairs and the fine nerves along her spine. She hadn’t counted on finding this, feeling this when she left Russ to sort it out with Maddie. Hadn’t planned to touch what he experienced on the job: that sense of gotta do it now or else! That need to be here in it and nowhere else. That adrenaline push.
This was Winslow, for God’s sake, not Phoenix. They didn’t have high-speed car chases, serial killers, major gang wars or daily murders to solve. They had stuff, but not…this.
She swallowed and realized from the blur of activity around her that they did indeed have this here.
At least sometimes.
She understood suddenly that while the faces about her seemed familiar, many of these people probably didn’t recognize her—and wouldn’t—not out of her pink uniform and out of context. All her life in this town didn’t matter. In this milieu she didn’t belong and didn’t fit. Russ did. Which left her the stranger here.
Wife of the city’s favorite junior police lieutenant or not.
Ruthlessly she squinched her nails into her palms, letting the pain bite out the sensation of being of her comfort zone. She didn’t allow herself that road anymore as a rule. Wherever she was, she could be comfortable. She’d made that her plan, her mantra, years ago—the minute she told herself she didn’t have to apologize for where she came from.
The instant she’d stopped apologizing for where she came from.
The second she’d caught Buddy’s attention and encouraged it, and learned too late that he was the one who should have apologized for his origins even as he’d attempted to beat hers into her.
But she wasn’t at the police station this time because of Buddy—well, only indirectly—but because of Russ. Which was a whole lot of reason to find a way to make herself not only known but comfortable on the premises. No doubt she’d find herself here a lot.
Something big parted the tide of people flowing back and forth in front of her, then blocked all but the bit of light that haloed around him. “Janie.”
She sighed and squinted up at him. “You get what you needed from Maddie?”
He gave his lips a negative twist. “I’m done dancin’ with her. Told her to get paper, write it down and leave it for me at the desk if she wants my help.”
Janina licked suddenly dry lips, wondering exactly what that meant. “I see.”
Russ offered her a wry grin and shook his head. “I doubt it.” He reached for her hand, towed her toward clerical with him. “But you will. Jennifer,” he stopped at Secretarial and drew Janina forward, “you know Janie, yeah? From over at the Fat Cat?”
Jennifer’s frazzled look cleared and she smiled and held out her hand. “Oh yeah, right. How you doin’?”
Janina smiled back. “I’m doin’. Thanks.”
Jennifer grinned, let her gaze sink to the hand Russ still held, and transferred it up to his face with a blink of outright curiosity. The subheading “Station Gossip Columnist” seemed to appear as if by some divine hand, and print itself across her forehead in bold black, albeit invisible, letters where Janina couldn’t fail to read it. “So, anything I should know? You two an item?”
Down below the counter where Jennifer couldn’t see, Janina kicked Russ almost gently in the ankle.
It was the almost that made him pick up his foot and unobtrusively rub the sting out of the injured limb against his calf even as he grinned down at his wife and said, “Um, as a matter of fact, we are. Married. Two weeks ago. The uh…”
Janina gave him a look. A very incredulous, very wifely how could you have forgotten the date already, you idiot look. “Eighteenth of July,” she supplied.
“The eighteenth of July,” he repeated innocently, which made Janina want to kill him, because that’s when she realized that he hadn’t forgotten the date at all and probably never would. “Which means I need my personnel file updated ASAP. Especially the next of kin, the—”
“Address and phone,” Janina put in.
“We have those” Russ eyed her, surprised.
Janina looked all the way up at him, her back teeth ground together. After the talk they’d had at the diner he was apparently not housebroken yet.
Aware of Jennifer as her avid audience, she unclenched her fists with an effort. Undoubtedly it would be best to continue as she meant to go on. Even as she fiddled her wedding ring around on her finger, she offered up a loving smile and beckoned Russ down with her other hand.
He wasn’t that stupid.
Even as he bent, Russ anticipated the ring clip she intended to give him and caught her hand before she had a chance to raise it. “Fool me once,” he chided. “I take it you’ve been busy while I’ve been…” He considered language. Narrowed his eyes and settled somewhat carefully, even a little dangerously on, “Out.”
Somewhere, almost deep enough for her to ignore it, a chill sidled through the light hair on her arms. It was the almost that caused her to pause, left her breath fiddling cautiously in her lungs for a pair of heartbeats. Buddy didn’t take to this side of you.
“You want to find out real fast exactly how paper-trained I am, think of me as Carmichael just once more,” Russ suggested softly, reading her mind.
Startled, she took an involuntary step back. His eyes were guarded, but there was also a warmth that lurked in their midnight depths, a fury that was not directed at her but at Buddy—or Charlie or any man who’d treat a woman the way they had. The fingers of her right hand went unconsciously, instinctively to twist her wedding ring round and
round.
Pain scudded across Russ’s countenance when Janina continued to fiddle with her ring, unspeaking. He straightened slowly. “I see.”
“No, you don’t.” She grabbed his shirtfront, dragged him back. “You haven’t been around enough, with me enough, to see, so don’t even think about going there without a battle.”
“Tell me you didn’t just compare me to Buddy and spend at least two seconds afraid.”
She scuffled one foot behind the other and had the grace to look mildly chagrined. “Guilty.” She glanced up at him slyly from beneath her lashes. “On the other hand, you do tend to go all macho-alpha-guy on me sometimes, plus you disappeared without a trace last week when we should by rights still have been honeymooning, so really, maybe you could cut me some slack on the momentary brain damage?”
He stuck his tongue in his cheek and considered her. “Not lettin’ go of that any time soon, are you?”
She gave him cheeky coupled with determined mixed with give-me-five-minutes-alone-with-you-and-you-won’t-remember-who-I-almost-compared-you-to look. “Not as long as I can get mileage and your guilt out of it, no.”
“Hmm.” He appraised his wife slowly, thoroughly, hotly, and glanced sideways at Jennifer. “Better make sure we put her on my medical insurance and predate it to the eighteenth,” he said dryly. “Way she’s got me goin’, we’ll need the maternity benefits sooner rather’n later.”
Maternity benefits, pregnancy.
Babies.
Janina swallowed hard. Things that he could never give her no matter how much she wanted him to, how hard she loved him, how often they tried, or how badly he wanted them.
Something she could never give him, no matter how desperately she ached to, longed to, felt somehow deep inside, beyond the place where science and doctors told her she could not, that she had been born for exactly this purpose beyond all else: bearing Russ Levoie’s children, creating a new generation with him.
It might not be a modern thought, but inside her it existed, burned, seared.
Russ’s babies.
Her knuckles rubbed at the place high beneath her breastbone where everything suddenly hurt so hard she thought her chest might cave in. She couldn’t breathe.
“Janie.”
She must have made a sound, pulled a face, something—or maybe it was merely that damn supersensitive connection thing he did around her, because from some distance outside the strange hollow she’d suddenly disappeared into, Janina heard Russ say her name urgently, felt rather than saw him reach for her.
Without meaning to, she shrank back an infinitesimal step—not far, but far enough—a movement so small it should have been invisible.
The instant waver of his hand, the sudden uncertainty come and gone about his mouth, telegraphed the fact her withdrawal was blatant to him.
Panic set in. She had to tell him, now, before it was too late. Before they were too invested in each other—before he was too invested, because she was already gone, lock, stock and nothing saved for a rainy day.
Before she loved him more.
She had to tell him before Jennifer broadcast their marriage to his law enforcement brotherhood and the rest of the Winslow universe and he looked like a fool when he wanted to back out of this precipitous union because his wife couldn’t deliver the children and the life he’d assumed they would have together.
She scrunched courage into her fingers, tagged his. “Russ, don’t. Stop. You don’t understand—”
“Russ?” With her usual incomparably bad timing, Maddie rounded Jennifer’s station, head down, expression troubled, mind on other matters, pen, paper and a detailed map of the fire area drifting through her hands. “I think I’ve got where Charlie might have Jess. It’s got to be one of two places. Buddy’s father had one and Charlie had—”
Russ raised a finger at her, concentration on Janina. “Give it a minute, Mad.” He drew Janina toward an office. “Tell me.”
Around them the air seemed to buzz, electric and intense. It’s the overheads, Janina thought nonsensically. The fluorescents.
“Janie.” Russ’s voice was rough, soft, encouraging. He stepped close to her and cupped her waist between his hands to get her attention, and her mutinous body felt alive, flagrantly so, mandingly so.
She gulped and shoved at him.
He didn’t go anywhere.
She tried again, a little harder this time, but he merely anchored her more tightly to him and caught her chin, forced her to look at him.
“Tell me.”
She yanked her chin out of his hand. “I could maybe do it easier from the other side of the room.”
His grip slackened. “It’s that bad?”
She looked away. “Worse.”
“Aw, c’mon.” He stroked her arms, cajoling. Bent and placed his mouth beside her ear, murmured, “Thought you were the one supposed to be able to communicate.”
She sputtered and almost laughed at that. It was true, she was, and here he was, the one doing most of the talking. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out but a wisp of air trailed by a grimace.
“Hey,” Russ said gruffly, only half kidding, “when did you quit trusting me?”
Janina compressed her lips, her emotions. Truth was, they didn’t know each other well enough for her to trust him to react the way she needed him to: as though what she had to tell him, what she was or physically couldn’t be, didn’t matter and wouldn’t matter to him ever.
Especially in the long run.
“I—” she had time to say—to gulp—when once again into the fraught moment rushed Maddie.
Almost as though she’d been listening and heard her cue to crash in.
Fully fraught herself and near to panic.
“Russ, damn it, you’ve got to look at this.” Her voice pitched high, nerves clearly dangling from its edges. “We have to go.”
She was shaking, trembling, unable to still herself when she shoved the map at him. He started to say something, but she rushed on, terror for Jess overriding whatever he might have said to shut her off.
“Carson came in. I showed the map to him. He said the fire’s about reached the area where I remember Charlie having his shack and—”
“Lieu-ten-ant!”
The drawn-out yell accompanied by pounding feet and the sudden slam of a body into the office door frame shut Maddie up the way nothing else would have. As one, Russ, Janina and Maddie turned to Carson. The young officer swallowed, keeping his inexperienced countenance as blank as possible, his eyes on Russ, without looking at Maddie once.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Fire team out near one of the new homestead sites toward Show Low just called in. They found an abandoned bomb shelter. We got bodies.”
Chapter 12
She couldn’t breathe, but one look at Maddie, and Janina abandoned all thought of wobbly knees and her own seemingly worthless lungs to reach for the other woman.
Instinctively, Maddie reached back, looking for comfort not from her usual lifetime source but from this more recently discovered one: uniquely feminine, inherently more supple and resilient—and so, possibly, even more permanent than Russ had proven to be.
Russ glanced at neither. The nature that informed who he was had also caused him to step forward at the sound of thundering feet, plant himself unflinchingly between Janina and Maddie, and the doorway, then between them and Carson and the news he brought.
Made him herd the youngster out of the office almost more quickly than he’d entered.
He might not be able to contain the damage, but he would distill it as soon as possible. He could…
Janina was on him before the decision to leave her and Maddie behind took shape in his head. He swung about, managing to stay half a word ahead of her even so.
“Don’t even think about it,” he told her flatly.
“Don’t you,” she shot back, startling him with her ability to read him. “This is Maddie’s family and we’re coming.”
“No,”
he said. “This is my job, not yours. Fire victims…” He didn’t finish. “She doesn’t need to see this, and neither do you. Especially if it’s not them.”
“And if it is?”
“I can identify them.” His mouth worked. “If there’s enough to identify.”
“And what about her? What about…” She fiddled her tongue between her teeth. “What about us?”
His guard went up high. “Which us?”
She snorted. “Maddie and I. Clearly, you and I get tabled for later. Again.” She waved it off as of no consequence when he might have said something. “Anyway, what about her, what about us while you’re off gallivanting, identifying? Or not?”
He shrugged. “You stay here, out of the fire, where it’s safe. In case it’s not—” He stopped, turned what he’d been about to say around. “In case Charlie’s still out there hunting Maddie.” He stared long and hard at his wife. “And maybe out looking to get to me through you.”
“Really.” Soft, clearly enunciated, but understated enough that Russ relaxed and let down his guard.
He blew out a pent-up breath. “Yes.” He nodded. “Really.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Janina gave him a resounding flat-handed smack in the chest that surprised him enough to send him rocking back on his heels half a step. “What deity laid down and put you in charge of all that’s holy and everything that’s not? Because I’ve got to tell you, buster, not so much endearing right now, you want to know the truth.
“Frankly, you want to know what I think, you could go right ahead and protect me and Maddie a heck of a lot easmore personally if we were with you. I am sick to death of being shuffled off to Buffalo every time you think you’ve got a more important piece of business to deal with somewhere else. So you just put us in your damn bulletproof SUV or squad car or whatever, have Carson or Jonah ride shotgun and take us with you. Got it?”
Russ blinked at her.
Twice.
Then while Carson stared wide-eyed after him, he turned without a word and strode from the office.