Keeping Her Safe

by Sherry Lewis

  She had so many different sides to her, Adam realized he could spend a lifetime discovering her. And for a heartbeat, he wondered whether she found him even half as intriguing as he found her.

  Almost immediately, reality pushed the thought from his mind. No. Of course she didn’t. How could she? She didn’t even know the real Adam McAllister; in fact, she had no idea he even existed. She knew only the pretense.

  Adam cursed silently. He knew better than to let himself get personally involved in a case. He’d been wrong to let himself feel anything for DJ, and even more wrong to want her to feel anything for him.

  Marissa tugged on his hand again and forced him to refocus on her. “Hurry, before Mommy says I have to go to bed again.”

  He smiled down at her. “Are any of these books yours?”

  She scowled as if she suspected a trick. “Yes, but I don’t want a ’torybook.”

  Well, no one could blame a guy for trying. Adam sank into one of the chairs while Marissa jumped onto the love seat and dragged a blanket back down with her. She crossed the room and climbed onto his lap as if she’d been doing it all her life. “I’m ready.”

  Adam, didn’t know how to react. She snuggled against his shoulder and looked into his eyes with her huge brown ones.

  Without warning, his eyes began to sting and Marissa’s face blurred in his vision. Oh, hell. Now he was crying.

  Blinking rapidly, he cleared his throat and hoped his voice would sound normal. “Once upon a time,” he said around the lump in his throat, “there was a beautiful little princess named Marissa.”

  She sighed with contentment, twirled a lock of hair around one finger and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  He fixed the blanket around her feet and went on. “She was the most beautiful princess in the whole kingdom.”

  Tilting her face, Marissa looked into his eyes again and smiled. “I wuv you.”

  The next sentence of his story evaporated before he could even make it up. He tried to look away, but he couldn’t. He struggled to think about something else so he could prevent the damned tears from spilling down his cheeks.

  Marissa’s trust reached deep into his heart, and her love pulled an answer from his lips.

  “I love you, too,” he said. And he meant every word.

  He leaned his head back against the chair and tried to pull himself together. It would be so easy to get caught up in emotion and lose his heart to DJ and Marissa. Separately, each threatened his heart and soul. Together, they were as dangerous to him as a match tossed into a tank of gasoline.

  He couldn’t keep letting his guard down like this. He was on assignment. He was living a lie. If he let himself get involved with them, he’d only cause heartache for everyone; he’d be smart to remember that.

  He had to regain control over himself, and he’d have to find some way to ignore his heart the next time it tried to speak louder than his head.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DJ STOOD IN THE doorway, watching Adam and Marissa together. She’d been surprised to find Marissa sitting on his lap and touched by the joy and contentment on her daughter’s face. But the pain and tenderness on Adam’s shocked her.

  She backed into the hallway and pulled the door closed quietly behind her. But even then, she couldn’t put the image of his face completely from her mind.

  For the first time since his arrival, she saw Adam clearly. Not as someone to discuss her troubles with, or as a friend of her mother’s, or even as someone who attracted her—but as a man, with hopes and fears and disappointments of his own. She’d been so worried about Larry, so concerned for Marissa and so hurt by her mother’s lies, she hadn’t spared a thought for Adam as a person.

  Leaning her head against the wall, she closed her eyes. Exhaustion weakened her knees and made her long for a quiet moment alone so she could sort through all the conflicting emotions that warred within her. She’d never expected to feel this way about a man again, and she wasn’t at all certain she liked it.

  She hadn’t wanted any of this—not now. She’d worked hard to reach a stable place in her life, and she’d finally grown strong enough that she didn’t need someone to love her. And just when she’d grown content with the way things were, her entire world had started to tilt under her feet.

  She felt as if her soul had been through an earthquake that had left everything slightly off-balance; as if everything had shifted and she no longer knew her way around inside her own head or heart

  She needed time. Time to decide what she wanted to do about Larry and her mother. Time to decide what she felt for Adam.

  But before she could reflect any further, she heard Larry’s footsteps coming down the hallway toward her. She couldn’t even find time alone to breathe, much less make sense of her life. She thought about ducking into her room to avoid him—if only for five minutes—but Adam and Marissa looked so peaceful in the other room, she didn’t want Larry to disturb them.

  Sighing softly, she pushed away from the wall just as he rounded the corner.

  He stopped short when he saw her in the shadows, and a flicker of surprise crossed his face. “There you are. I wondered where you’d gone.”

  “I was just checking on Marissa,” she whispered, and started away from the family room.

  Glancing at the family-room door, Larry hesitated, as if he intended to push past her and interrupt the story. But after a second, he shrugged and followed DJ back into the kitchen.

  She studied him as they walked and tried again to find something familiar about him. She wanted desperately to feel something for him, to believe that this man was actually her father. But her mind stayed blank and her heart remained numb. She still couldn’t imagine Larry and her mother married. But they had been—DJ was living proof of that.

  Larry reached into his pocket and held out two wadded bills. “Since I’m going to be working again, let me chip in a few bucks toward the pizza.”

  She shook her head quickly. She didn’t need his money, and she didn’t want to take what little he had. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Take it,” he insisted. “You already have one extra mouth to feed.”

  DJ didn’t want to take it, but she didn’t know how to refuse. She didn’t know Larry well enough to even guess how he would react. “Adam helps out with the groceries,” she said with a smile. “In fact, he’s given me more money in the past week than I usually spend in a month.”

  Larry barked a rude laugh. “Really? What’s he trying to prove?”

  “I don’t think he’s trying to prove anything.”

  “Well, he wants something,” Larry said. “Or maybe he’s trying to buy something.”

  DJ could only stare. “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  Had her attraction for Adam blinded her to something she should have seen? “What do you think he’s trying to prove?”

  Larry shook his head slowly. “I wish I knew. How long have you known him?”

  “A short time.” She couldn’t admit aloud it had only been a week.

  “What do you know about him?”

  How could she answer that? Adam was a good man. Kind. He cared about Marissa, and about DJ, but DJ had to admit she knew very little else.

  “You don’t know anything about him, do you?” Larry asked.

  “Not much,” she said reluctantly.

  Larry nodded in satisfaction. “Let me tell you something, Devon. You can’t ever know enough about a person. You need to find out if he’s hiding something from you. If he is, get rid of him—fast.”

  She bit back the first words that rose to her lips, but she couldn’t force away the resentment that tensed her shoulders or the headache that throbbed low in the base of her skull.

  Larry seemed oblivious to her reaction. “Is he going to the zoo with you and Marissa tomorrow?”

  DJ nodded without speaking.

  “Then I’m coming, too. I don’t trust him.”

  “Nothing
’s going to happen at the zoo.”

  Larry stared at her for several long seconds, then gripped her shoulders. “Has he got you fooled or what? What are you going to do, let him come in here and take advantage of you?”

  “No.”

  Larry snorted. “No? Well, that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t make it your business to find out who he is and what he wants.”

  All at once, DJ’s patience snapped. She pulled away from his grasp and glared at him. “I don’t think any of this needs to concern you,” she said before she could stop herself.

  “Of course it does. I’m your father.”

  DJ shook her head and took a step away. “You’re a stranger. I know more about Adam than I do about you.”

  Larry recoiled as if she’d struck him. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’m trying to give us a chance to get to know each other.”

  She took another step away. “What chance? You appeared out of nowhere and turned my life upside down. You want me to start from here and move forward without even knowing how I got here. But I can’t do that. I need to know what happened between you and Mom. I need to know who you are and where you’ve been for the past thirty years. You’re the one who’s being evasive.”

  His face clouded and he started to turn away.

  But she wouldn’t let him shut her out again. “Tell me about yourself. When is your birthday? Where do you live? Who were my grandparents? Did you get married again after you and Mom split up? Do I have any other brothers and sisters? What do you like to do? Who are you?”

  He stared into her eyes. His gaze was cold. Icy. “What do you want me to say?”

  DJ’s throat burned, her head throbbed and anger boiled up inside her. He didn’t understand, but she didn’t know how else to say it. “Just talk to me. Tell me why you left me. Why you stayed away all these years. Tell me why I grew up without you and why my mother didn’t ever tell me about you. Just tell me the truth.”

  “The truth?” He laughed harshly and took several jerky steps away from her. “Whose truth? Mine or hers?”

  Tears of outrage filled her eyes, but she wouldn’t let herself ask again. Larry might want to treat this as a game, but she refused to play. Dashing tears away with the back of her hand, she waited silently for him to go on.

  His eyes blinked rapidly as he studied her face. Some emotion darkened them, frightening her for an instant, but it vanished so quickly she wondered whether she’d only imagined it

  “What’s past is past, Devon,” he said at last. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just worry about what’s going to happen next.”

  “I can’t I’m too confused. I can’t even think about the future until I know about the past.”

  “Then ask your mother. I can’t go back again.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and forced herself to say the only thing she could. “Then you’ll have to leave.”

  Larry’s expression twisted with shock and anger. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He drew in a deep breath and looked away. “You’ll send me away because I won’t talk about the past?”

  Her heart drummed in her chest, and the ache in her head matched its tempo. But she couldn’t back down. Not now. “I’m telling you to leave if you can’t be honest with me.”

  Larry scratched his chin and closed his eyes. “Maybe you’re right,” he conceded after a long moment. “Maybe you do need to know what happened. I’m not trying to be difficult I just don’t want to hurt you. I thought it would be better for everyone this way.”

  “What way?”

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets and shrugged, but he didn’t respond to the question for several seconds. “You have to understand that I loved your mother. Nobody’s ever loved a woman the way I loved her. I treated her like a queen and she had everything she needed or wanted.”

  DJ didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t want to do anything to stop him now that he’d finally started talking.

  “We didn’t start out expecting to split up,” Larry said. “I thought we’d be together forever. I didn’t expect Chrissy to end up hating me or to take my deepest secrets and turn them against me. I thought I could trust her.” Again he blinked rapidly and looked away. “I found out I couldn’t. She betrayed me, Devon. She screwed me over royally.”

  Her mother? DJ gulped air and tried to force away the sudden nausea that threatened to overwhelm her. In spite of everything, in spite of the lies her mother had told her, she wanted to believe that the past thirty years had been someone else’s fault. But that illusion fell beside all the others. “What did she do?”

  “She betrayed me. That’s all you need to know.”

  “No,” she insisted. “You’ve gone this far, tell me the rest. What did she do? Have an affair?”

  He met her gaze squarely. “An affair? No. I think I could have lived with that. What she did was much, much worse.” He rubbed his face and let out a deep breath. “All right. The truth is, she stole you and hid you from me.”

  DJ stared at him. “What do you mean, she stole me?”

  “You shouldn’t have spent the past thirty years with your mother. You should have been with me. She snatched you and ran. She stole you from me.”

  The words ran together, then slowly separated and replayed through her mind, and she felt the foundation of her world slip out from beneath her. “Are you saying she kidnapped me?”

  Larry’s eyes filled with tears. “The last time I saw you, you were in my living room. I kissed you goodbye. I lifted you up and flew you around the room. You liked that. Do you remember?”

  Some dim memory tweaked at her, but it vanished again. She didn’t want to believe him. She couldn’t believe him. Her mother couldn’t have done something like that.

  “She came home from work while I was gone and took you right out from under Mary’s nose. Do you remember Mary?”

  “I don’t remember anything or anyone. Who was she?”

  “A friend of ours,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Long gone now.”

  DJ looked away and tried to find some memory of her childhood that might go along with this story. But it seemed impossible. Unthinkable. “What did you do? Call the police?”

  Larry shook his head and made a face. “No. They wouldn’t have done anything, anyway.”

  “But if she—”

  He held up a hand. “Take my word for it. She’d just have twisted everything around to make herself look good. That’s the way she’s always been. Good with words.” He opened his arms and beckoned to her. “See? I told you the truth would upset you, and it does, doesn’t it?”

  DJ’s mind raced and her breath came in shallow gasps.

  Larry closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. “We’re together again now,” he whispered. “That’s all that matters, right?.”

  DJ tried to nod but her head wouldn’t work right She felt numb inside. Overwhelmed. She could only stare at his shoulder as he held her, at the walls of her house, at the trees in her backyard swaying in the wind. Larry’s tears spilled onto her shoulder, but she didn’t cry.

  She closed her eyes and tried to block everything out, but her heart was beating too fast, her mind racing. Horror and disbelief mingled together, clouding her judgment and confusing her totally. She couldn’t tell fact from fiction anymore. She didn’t know where to look for answers or even whom to trust.

  DJ STROLLED ALONG the walk at the zoo, lifting her face to the sun for a moment, then lowering it to watch Adam, Marissa and Larry as they hurried through the crowd toward the hippopotamus display. The crisp fragrance of autumn blended with the earthy odor of zoo animals and the sugary scent of cotton candy and popcorn to create a distinctive aroma. Eau de Zoo.

  She smiled as she watched Marissa clutch Adam’s fingers. The child nearly had to run in an effort to match even his slowest gait. But DJ’s smile faded when she looked at Larry.

  He kept time on Mariss
a’s other side and pointed out birds and small animals, desperately trying to get her to relax around him. But Marissa had little or no interest in Larry—she wanted Adam.

  DJ had to admit that Adam was wonderful with her. He gave Marissa exactly the kind of attention she needed. And what Larry offered didn’t satisfy the same needs. Maybe it was because he was older. Maybe it was because DJ had been so careful not to confuse Marissa with complicated relationships. Or maybe it was because Larry was as confused as DJ, although he didn’t show it.

  They stopped and waited for her to catch up. DJ walked a little faster and drew up beside them just as Marissa released Adam’s hand and raised her arms to him. “Can you lift me up?”

  Adam started to comply, but Larry stepped in front of him. “I’ll do it, Marissa. Come over here with me.”

  Marissa hesitated and took a step closer to Adam.

  Larry reached for her again. “Come on. I’ll show you the fat old hippos.”

  Marissa leaned against Adam’s legs and stuck one curled knuckle between her teeth.

  DJ rubbed her forehead. She didn’t want to force Marissa into anything, but Larry’s growing frustration had taken on an almost-tangible quality. If DJ could feel it, she knew Marissa could, too. Which meant Marissa would pull even further away, Larry would get even more upset and DJ would be torn between concern and confusion.

  Maybe she should encourage Marissa to go with Larry. Maybe Marissa was holding back because she didn’t know if her mother approved. Still, DJ couldn’t help wishing he’d calm down and give Marissa time to get used to having him around.

  She understood his anxiety. He had no way of knowing that Marissa reacted to most men slowly and that her response to Adam was unusual. He only saw Adam, a newcomer like himself—and one with no claim to Marissa’s love—getting the attention Larry wanted and believed he deserved.

  She smiled at Marissa and touched her arm gently. “Marissa, sweetheart, Larry wants to show you the hippos.”

  “No.”

  DJ flicked an embarrassed glance at Larry. A muscle in his jaw worked, and he flushed an angry red. “Please, sweetheart,” she begged. “Mommy and Adam will be right behind you.”