by Gina Wilkins
“Not if it’s a girl,” he agreed. “I was thinking of Bobbie for a girl.”
She groaned and rolled her eyes.
Chuckling, he released her, and motioned her to have a seat at the table. “We’d better get work out of the way, I suppose. Marty’s going to be wanting a report from me.”
Dallas took a seat, drew her soda and the plate of cookies in front of her, and told him everything Polly had said in their revealing conversation the day before.
“I told you she was selling it,” Sam said when Dallas finished.
She sighed. “Yes, I know you did. So you get a gold star on your report card. That still doesn’t lead us to her contact.”
“I think Blivens is involved.”
“So do I,” Dallas affirmed, remembering the landlady’s nosy questions about the state of her health. “But I doubt very much that she’s the brains behind the operation.”
“I wouldn’t say Blivens was the brains behind any operation.”
Dallas smiled at his dry remark, but let it pass. “I told Polly I’d consider her advice. I’m going to ask to meet her contacts, as though I’m trying to reassure myself about them, but I don’t want to push for too much at once.”
“You’ll let me know when you set up the meeting,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “I don’t want you meeting them without some sort of backup. Never know when something like this will turn ugly.”
They had already agreed upon several ways for Dallas to contact Sam when needed. Remembering them, Dallas nodded. “I’ll keep in touch.”
Sam suddenly smiled. “So Polly thinks you’re crazy to want me back, hmm?”
“Yeah. Totally nuts.”
His gaze held hers across the table, and though he was still smiling, his voice suddenly grew more serious. “She’s probably right.”
Dallas shrugged, without looking away from him. “Maybe. But there it is.”
“It’s a long way from being over, isn’t it, Sanders?” he asked lightly, and she knew he wasn’t talking about the assignment now.
She smiled in response to the touch of fear in his expression. She knew the feeling all too well. “No, it isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t expect this,” he admitted.
“Neither did I.”
“I didn’t even want it,” he confessed, after clearing his throat.
“Neither did I,” she repeated.
“So what are we going to do about it?”
“Finish this assignment first,” she said firmly.
He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful, then nodded. “Yeah. You’re right, of course.”
She spread her hands, as though acknowledging something everyone would know. “Of course.”
He made a face and tossed a paper napkin at her.
She laughed and fended it off.
They talked business another fifteen minutes or so, and then Dallas glanced at her watch. “I’d better get back. Polly might start wondering where I am.”
“Yeah. Damn, I hate to think about you going back to that pit.”
“I’m not exactly looking forward to it, myself,” she assured him, grimacing at the contrast between his clean, cozy kitchen and the dump where she would eat her dinner later. “Mind if I see the rest of your apartment first?” she asked impulsively. “I’m curious.”
He shrugged. “Sure. C’mon, I’ll give you a tour.”
Dallas quickly discovered that Sam was quite neat in his home. Remembering how he’d complained about cleaning the apartment, she quizzed him about it. “I didn’t see any need for wasting time on that slum,” he explained. “It’s only a temporary place to stay, and no amount of cleaning is going to improve it much. Why wear yourself out on a useless effort?”
“I told you,” she replied. “If I’m going to have to live there, even temporarily, I want it to be as clean as I can make it. I don’t like living in filth.”
“So we have something in common. We like our homes to be neat.”
“We have quite a bit in common, actually,” she said seriously, crossing the living room at his side. “We like rock music and action movies, good food and good books. We’re both damned good at our job.”
“Is this the same woman who recently listed all the reasons we were too different to get involved? You mentioned something about me being a grouch and you an optimist....”
“And I pointed out that you considered me a pain in the butt,” Dallas added with a grin. “You agreed, as I remember.”
“Yeah,” he said, looping an arm around her shoulders. “I still think you’re a pain in the butt. But I still like you, anyway.”
Like? Dallas wasn’t entirely satisfied with the word, but decided it would do for a start. She looked around Sam’s bedroom, furnished in English style, with glossy mahogany furniture, hunting prints on the walls, a green-and-burgundy plaid comforter with green pillow shams. It was masculine, yet still warm and inviting. Had Paula decorated it for him?
Dallas swallowed a sigh and chided herself impatiently for dwelling on Sam’s former girlfriend. She hadn’t come to him a virgin, had fancied herself in love a couple of times before him, but he didn’t seem to be obsessing about her past, the way she was his.
She thought the real problem might be that there was still some part of Sam she didn’t know; some dark, hidden pain she needed to understand before their relationship progressed much further. She wasn’t convinced that it had anything to do with Paula, but she hadn’t ruled it out, either. She only knew that the need to understand him was growing stronger, more urgent with each passing moment.
It was no longer possible for her to deny that she loved him. And that knowledge terrified her. If there was any hope that this affair wouldn’t end in heartbreak, she needed to know everything there was to learn about the enigmatic Sam Perry.
10
SAM LED HER OUT of the bedroom after they reluctantly agreed that there wasn’t time for her to test his bed—with him, of course. Dallas motioned to a closed door across the short hallway. “What’s in there?”
“A second bedroom. I use it for storage.”
She was already headed that way.
“There’s nothing in there but junk,” Sam protested, though he didn’t try to detain her.
“One can learn a lot about someone by looking at their junk,” Dallas informed him, opening the door. “What secrets are you hiding in here, hmm?”
Sam smiled and shook his head. “No secrets. Just junk,” he repeated.
Dallas paused before turning on the light. “If you mind, say so. I won’t be offended,” she assured him.
He reached around her and turned the light on. “Knock yourself out,” he invited her, standing aside.
She chuckled and walked in.
The room was full. No furniture other than a couple of big, stuffed-full bookcases and a desk that overflowed with more books, tax forms, and bills. Sam wasn’t nearly as neat in his paperwork as he was in his living habits. She assumed it was because he despised paperwork.
Large pasteboard boxes were stacked in one corner of the small room. “My mom cleaned out her house when she and Dad moved up north a few years back,” Sam explained. “She made me take all my old school and college mementos. Sports trophies and ribbons, photographs, yearbooks, textbooks. I think even my old Boy Scout uniform is in there, somewhere.”
“Should’ve known you were a Boy Scout, Perry.”
He only smiled.
Three framed photographs rested on top of one of the bookcases full of battered paperbacks. Dallas studied them. One was of Sam in uniform, probably his graduation photo from the academy. Dallas had a similar photo of herself. The difference was, she looked happy in hers. Sam had worn little expression at all.
A second photograph showed a little boy of about six standing between two adults—a slender, blond woman and a dark-haired man in a police officer’s uniform. Sam and his parents, Dallas realized, smil
ing at the face of a much younger and more innocent Sam. He’d been laughing in the photo. He looked happy. When had he started to change into the more serious, often-troubled man she had somehow managed to fall in love with?
The final photograph, obviously taken several years later, was also of Sam’s parents. His mother had aged well, was still slender and blond, though her face was more lined in this picture. His father had grayed and added a few pounds. He was sitting in a wheelchair, his wife standing just behind him with one hand resting on his shoulder. Sam hadn’t mentioned that his father was disabled, Dallas mused, wondering how it had happened and whether now was the right time to ask questions.
Still curious, she turned to study the titles in the huge pile of textbooks stacked in one corner next to the bookshelf. They must have been from his college days, she decided, noting that most of them were science courses. And then she realized that the largest number of them had to do with medicine. “What was your major in college?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him.
He looked rather uncomfortable when he answered, “Premed.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. She’d assumed he’d majored in criminal justice or political science—something having a relation to police work. She certainly hadn’t expected this. “You were studying to be a doctor?”
“Yeah.” Just one offhanded syllable—yet the deep, old longing in his voice made her heart break.
She turned to face him, realizing that she had just stumbled onto the secret she’d been digging for. “How far did you get with your studies?”
“I’d just been accepted to medical school when I quit to join the police force.”
He had been accepted to medical school. He’d been so very close. “What made you change your mind?”
“I didn’t exactly change my mind,” he answered, avoiding her eyes by halfheartedly straightening some of the papers on his desk. “I had it changed for me. My dad was shot in the line of duty. He walked into a liquor store and was hit by three slugs from a guy who’d just cleaned out the register. He almost died.”
Dallas winced. The worst nightmare of every cop and his family. “I’m sorry. It must have been very hard for you and your mother.”
“It was hell,” he said simply. “Dad was in the hospital for months, and in therapy for several years. The insurance ran out long before the treatments did. His disability payments paid for their necessities, but their savings were gone. We even had to sell their home. I went to work to help out as much as I could.”
“You became a cop.”
“I had connections,” he said with a shrug. “I knew it wouldn’t take me long to move into a decent-paying position.”
“You couldn’t afford medical school?” she asked sympathetically.
“Not if I was going to help my parents. Even before Dad was shot it would have been tight. Medical training costs a fortune. My parents had planned to help as much as they could, but...well.”
He shrugged, knowing there was nothing left to say.
Sam had dreamed of becoming a doctor. He had never wanted to be a police officer. Dallas was stunned. “I had no idea,” she murmured.
“How could you? It’s not something I talk about. Plans change. Life goes on. It happens to everyone.”
She hated his cool, flippant tone. It didn’t disguise the old pain, the still-bitter disappointment. It bothered her that he even tried to hide those feelings from her. “Didn’t your parents try to talk you out of quitting school?” she asked.
“They didn’t ask me to do it,” he answered carefully. “Mom was sort of upset about it, but Dad had always wanted me to follow in his footsteps.”
“I would have thought they’d have been very proud if you’d become a doctor.”
“I’m sure they would have. But they were very proud when I graduated from the police academy.”
“Did you talk about this with Paula?” she heard herself asking, and then mentally kicked herself for not trying harder to resist the impulse. She couldn’t help wondering, though, if Paula had approved the decision Sam had made—or resented it.
Sam’s eyes narrowed, as though he wondered why she’d asked. “It never came up.”
He had lived with the woman—but he’d never shared his old dreams with her? Dallas shook her head. “You really have been alone, haven’t you?” she said.
He shrugged and half turned away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why didn’t you go back to school? After your parents were taken care of. Why aren’t you going now, if that’s what you want so badly?”
He exhaled through his nose, sounding impatient. “By the time my parents were on their feet financially, I was in my late twenties and already established in my job. I’ve been a cop for nine years, Dallas—since I was twenty-one. I couldn’t just quit my job and go back to school. I certainly can’t do so now.”
“Why not?” she insisted.
“Money, for one thing. It still costs a fortune. I still don’t have a fortune.”
“There are loans, scholarships, part-time jobs.”
“Yeah, right. And by the time I finally worked my way through medical training, I would be forty. Or older. With a mountain of debts to repay.”
“Maybe. So?”
He looked at her in disbelief. “Forty, Dallas. Don’t you think that’s a little old to begin a new career?”
“No. It happens all the time. You’re going to be forty, anyway, unless some sleazoid puts a slug in you sometime,” she said, deliberately blunt. “You might as well be doing something you enjoy. Even if you start at forty, you’d still have a good twenty years of practice ahead of you—heck, even if for some reason you were only able to practice for a year or two, it would still be worth it if that’s what you really want to do. Life is short, Perry. I believe in making every day count.”
“Nice little fairy tale, Sanders. Real life doesn’t work that way.”
“No?” Annoyed now, she moved in front of him, standing so close that he had no choice but to look at her. How dare he speak so condescendingly to her? She knew all too well how life worked—and maybe it was time Sam realized that.
“Look at me, Sam. I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do, from the time I was old enough to watch ‘Miami Vice’ on TV. Everyone told me it would never happen. I was an abandoned kid who grew up in orphanages and generally lousy foster homes. I was sexually molested by a foster-care worker when I was ten, busted for shoplifting with a group of rebel friends when I was twelve, and had experimented with several illegal substances and alcoholic beverages by the time I was sixteen.”
Chin held high, she continued without giving him a chance to verbally react to any of her revelations, though she watched the expressions flashing across his face. “I was angry and stubborn and defiant and fiercely independent. More than one social worker predicted that I’d end up dead or working the streets like Polly. But when the time came for me to get out on my own, to decide what I wanted to be, I knew they were wrong. No one was going to tell me I couldn’t be whatever I wanted—and I wanted to be a cop. It took a lot of work, more than a few confrontations with those who would have held me back, but I made it, Sam. And I love it.”
He’d gone rather pale during her impassioned speech, especially when she’d admitted that she’d been abused as a child. His hand wasn’t quite steady when it touched her cheek. “I know you love your work, Dallas. I’ve always envied you that.”
“So what are you going to do, sit around being jealous of me for the rest of your career? Spend another thirty-five years in a job you’ve never liked?” she challenged, holding his eyes with her own. “Or are you going to do something about getting what you want?”
“Dallas, this is ridiculous. I can’t go back to medical school at this point in my life. I haven’t even considered it.”
“That’s a lie,” she said evenly.
He flushed. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. But I’ve never seriously considered it
.”
“Then you’re a coward.”
He scowled. “Now wait a minute—”
Still peeved at the way he’d brushed her off—or tried to—she was torn between reaching out to take him in her arms, and taking him by the shoulders and shaking him. Hard.
“I want you to be happy, Sam. Don’t you see that? You’re probably the finest man I’ve ever known. You gave up your dreams to help your parents, you’ve performed a job you never really wanted with competence and distinction, you care about the people around you, the people you work with and the ones you’ve sworn to protect. You deserve to be happy.”
He reached out suddenly and pulled her close. “Don’t make me out to be some sort of hero, Dallas. It isn’t true.”
“To me it is,” she whispered, clinging to him. She could have told him then that she loved him. She didn’t, because she knew he wasn’t ready. He had too much to think about already. And she didn’t want his decisions for his future influenced by any demands he might imagine her feelings made upon him.
She realized that she was even willing to give him up if it meant that the deep-seated unhappiness in him, which she now understood, could be replaced with contentment. So this was love. It seemed she’d never really known the emotion before, after all. Compared to this, the others had been little more than infatuation.
It hurt, she realized. But she could no more stop loving Sam than she could stop breathing.
“Think about what I said,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to his hard cheek. “It’s not too late, Sam. It’s never too late to go after what you want.”
“You’re all I want right now,” he said gruffly and crushed her mouth beneath his.
Dallas kissed him back with all her heart, but she knew it wasn’t enough. As much as she cared for him, it would take more than her love to truly make him happy. How could he ever be content when he was trapped in a career he had never wanted, that he’d found so little joy in? And if Sam wasn’t fully happy, could they ever really be happy together?