When Somebody Loves You

by Cindy Gerard

  She met his challenging stare with one of her own, then surprised them both with her answer. “Yeah, you’ve got the job.”

  He nodded as if she’d just agreed that it was a nice day, instead of the equivalent of jumping out of a plane without a parachute. “Cabin number one suits me fine,” he said, bending to pick up his gear.

  “Fine,” she echoed. As he walked toward the cabin, she realized she needed to regain control of the situation. “Hey, Dursky . . .”

  He stopped and turned. A straight, wet lock of hair fell recklessly over his forehead and into his eyes.

  She ignored the little ripple that eddied through her chest, and dug in her heels. “For the record. I’m on a deadline here or I wouldn’t even be considering this.”

  He slung his duffel over his shoulder and his weight onto his good leg. “Translated, I shouldn’t get to feeling indispensable.”

  For some reason she wanted to smile. She didn’t. “You got it.”

  He turned to go again.

  “Oh, and Dursky . . .”

  He faced her with an impatient sigh. “Yeah?”

  She lifted her chin and stared him straight in the eye. “You call me ‘kid’ one more time and I’m going to find that shovel you were talking about and pound you into the ground with it. Are we clear?”

  His grin was as disarming as it was unexpected. “Yeah, boss lady, we’re clear.”

  She was still trying to deal with the tickling sensation in her stomach and the watery feeling in her knees that his smile had triggered when Cooper came trotting out of the forest. The Lab skidded to a stop when he spotted Dursky. He sniffed the air, let out a welcoming bark, then bounded toward him, all wagging tail and wiggling hips, as happy to see him as if he were a piece of prime steak.

  “Miserable, unfaithful mutt,” she muttered.

  Shivering, she walked to the main lodge to shower and change into dry clothes. It wasn’t until she was warm and dry again that what she’d done sank in. She’d just saddled herself with another stray. He was a rebel and a loner and the last thing she needed to complicate her life.

  Adam. She rolled his name around in her mind, thought of the way his hard, muscled body had felt molded against hers in the water, of the way his eyes had darkened when he looked at her.

  Damning herself for the direction her thoughts had taken, she quickly braided her hair and headed out the door. His name might be Adam, but she wasn’t Eve, and this sure as the devil wasn’t paradise.

  Three

  Adam had done many things in his life that were subject to question. Few, however, had left him as baffled as his decision to stay on at Shady Point Lodge. Bent over the deck floor of cabin number eight the morning after he’d fished one Joanna “Should Have Been a Drill Sergeant” Taylor out of the drink, he was still trying to sort it all out.

  Pounding a nail home, he told himself he’d stayed because he needed the solitude, not because of the bossy, brassy redhead who was his temporary straw boss.

  He wasn’t there because he was running either. He’d never run from anything in his life. Not from Iraq, not from a hundred filthy assignments, not from Annie. She’d been the one to run—from him and from their marriage. She’d had good cause on both counts.

  This morning, with the air still nippy and sharp and with a clean scent he’d never known before, their disastrous marriage and his life in Detroit seemed a lifetime away.

  He lined up another board and flashed on a memory that was not so distant: Frank lying dead on the cold liquor-store floor. He forced the picture away only to find it replaced with another: the boy, his eyes wild with surprise and pain, his hand clutched over his own chest as if trying to stanch the flow of blood from Adam’s bullet.

  Despite the morning chill, a bead of sweat trickled down his temple. He wiped it away with an unsteady hand and told himself again that he was not running.

  He was just running down, he admitted wearily. Claypool had been right. He sat back and stared out over the lake, remembering the conversation he’d had with his sergeant the day he’d left Detroit . . .

  . . . The rattle of loose glass in Sergeant Claypool’s Fifth Precinct office door had announced his arrival.

  “You’re late,” Jack Claypool said without looking up from the report on his desk.

  Sensing his boss’s tension, Adam limped to the chair opposite the desk and dropped into it. “Those damn things are going to kill you,” he warned, referring to the unlit cigarette that perpetually dangled from the corner of Jack’s mouth.

  As soon as he left the building, he’d light up. “Occupational hazard. But then I guess I don’t need to talk to you about hazards, do I? How is the leg anyway?”

  “Fine. The leg’s fine.”

  Silence settled over them like a haze of drifting smoke as Adam waited for Jack to get past the small talk and on to the reason he’d called him in.

  Outside the tiny cubicle the Detroit PD laughingly referred to as Claypool’s office, the phones rang incessantly, victims cried, and suspects protested at being booked. On the city streets five stories below, the serrated howl of a response car siren faded to a low, hollow moan.

  Impatient with the wait, Adam leaned forward in his chair. “We going to sit here and play patty-cake all morning, or did you call me in here for a reason?”

  “You’re one of the best vice cops under my command, Adam . . . but you’re also my friend. And as your friend, I’ve got to know. When are you going to let it go?”

  So that was the way the wind blew, Adam thought wearily as Jack went on.

  “In all my years on the force, I’ve had luck on my side. I’ve never lost a partner, but I can relate to what you’re going through. You and Frank were together ten years. That’s no short reel.”

  “You’ve sung this hymn before, Jack,” he said, closing his eyes and slumping back in the chair.

  “Well, stick around, buddy, you’ve only heard the first verse. Man, I’m desperate to reach you. One way or another this hair shirt of yours has got to come off. Frank was a good man. A good cop. Mourn him. Miss him. But for God’s sake, don’t allow his death to be your own undoing. It was not your fault. And think about it, Adam. It could have been you. If you’d taken that bullet somewhere other than in your thigh, we would have buried you along with Frank. His number was up and there was nothing you could have done about it. As for the boy, he was destined to come to that kind of end. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been some other cop or some hood that got him.”

  Adam worked his jaw and stared at the cracked tile on the floor.

  “Deaf ears,” Jack muttered as he fished around in his hip pocket for a roll of antacids. He popped one into his mouth, then went on. “Everything I say to you falls on deaf ears. Dammit, Adam! It’s been almost two months. You’ve got to let the guilt go. It’s not yours to bear.”

  Adam pushed himself upright. “Look—I’m fine. Save your hellfire and brimstone for some rookie who needs a pep talk. Just give me an assignment. I’m ready to go back on the street.”

  “Like hell. Look at you. You don’t sleep. You obviously don’t eat. Your hands are shaking so bad, you’d blow a hole through your own gut before you ever unholstered your gun. You weren’t responsible for Frank’s death, but I’d sure as hell be responsible for what happened to your new partner if I saddled him with you in this condition.”

  “Send me out alone, then. I need to work.”

  “You are working.”

  “Pushing paper and filling in on dispatch is not what I do.”

  “You won’t even be doing that much longer if you don’t get your act together. I can’t protect you forever. The big boys are watching. Soon they’ll quit asking for my opinion. They’re talking about disability leave, Adam. A permanent leave.”

  “My leg is fine,” he said succinctly.

  “You
r leg is not fine, but even if it were, your leg is not the problem. They want to know if I think Dursky, the supercop, has been pushed beyond the breaking point. If I’ve got a loose cannon on my hands.”

  For the first time since entering the office, he met Jack’s gaze and held it.

  “You’re balancing on a very thin edge here, Adam. I can’t let you on the street this way and you know it. Level with me,” he commanded after a ringing silence. “Are you on the booze again?”

  It was a fair question. He couldn’t even be angry that Jack had asked it. “No. No booze.”

  Jack reached into his pocket for another antacid. “How long you been dry? Has it been ten years yet?”

  “Eleven, give or take a month.” Give or take exactly one month and twenty-two days, he added silently.

  “Booze was my answer for a time there too,” Jack said quietly.

  “You can save the Pollyanna rhetoric, Jack. We’re both big boys and we both know how to handle our own problems.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, because right now you’re my biggest problem, and I’ve decided on a way to solve it.” He popped the antacid in his mouth. “I’m extending your leave. Starting today, you’ve got another month off, Adam—I’ve got no choice and in my opinion, neither do you.”

  He could feel what color was left in his face drain like blood from a reopened wound. The tension, bowstring tight in its intensity, was manageable only because of the feelings he and Jack held for each other.

  “If you take my job, you take everything.”

  “I’m trying to save your job. If you were thinking rationally, you’d realize that fact.” Jack hesitated, then leveled the final blow. “I’ll need the badge, Adam. And the gun . . .”

  That had been four days ago and even now, Adam broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. He’d been numb as he’d dug into his hip pocket, drawn out his wallet, and flipped it open.

  He remembered staring at his badge, polishing the worn insignia with a long, thoughtful stroke of his thumb. Fifteen years he’d carried the Detroit PD badge. It should have been harder to give up. In the end, it hadn’t been hard enough. He’d suddenly realized Jack was right, and that he was tired of fighting.

  Without another word, he’d unfastened his shoulder holster and laid both it and the badge on Jack’s desk. Then he’d left the precinct, retreating to his empty apartment. Not for the first time since Frank’s death, he’d considered drinking himself into blissful, mind-numbing oblivion.

  Instead, he’d packed a duffel and checked in on John. Assured that his condition was stable, he’d caught a bus out of town. Almost twenty-four hours later, he’d walked down a rocky path toward a run-down resort, the most beautiful lake he had ever seen, and a redheaded woman/child with defiant green eyes.

  Bottom line: Jack was right. He did need the rest. The lake and the north country had struck a chord in him. Here he could fill up on clean and quiet and simple. He needed this break from the stench and the noise of the city, and from the adrenaline rushes that came with his job.

  His job. It unsettled him that he didn’t miss it.

  John Taylor’s kid, however, unsettled him even more.

  He looked up as she walked by and noticed again what he’d been trying not to notice since he’d decided to stay. There was less child and more woman to her than he was able to ignore.

  She was wearing her standard uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and a carpenter’s apron slung around her ridiculously boyish hips. She’d tied a faded blue bandanna around her forehead to hold back that riotous tangle of hair, and for the life of him, all he wanted to do at that moment was touch it. He wanted to see if it was as silky as it looked, if it would lay heavy in his callused hands.

  She played the part of a prickly cactus with an amazing amount of panache, yet he sensed that hidden beneath the needles was a caring, giving woman. A woman a man could get lost in, then found in, emerging strong and whole again in the process.

  Lord, where had that come from? He tore his gaze from her and slammed another nail home. He’d like to believe he reacted to her only because she was John’s kid, or because he hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that she was struggling.

  Since when have you ever wanted to play the role of father/protector? he asked himself as he set the final nail. Maybe since he’d found her drowning with that damn duck in her arms. The thought of what could have happened to her if he hadn’t been there prompted a wrenching in his gut reminiscent of the hit he’d taken in a bad bust years ago.

  He shook it off. He’d never been anyone’s father, and wet-nursing a brat in red braids didn’t meet his definition of fun.

  So he just kept coming back to the only other motive, and it was much too dangerous to entertain. He was damned near old enough to be her father. If he was so hot to get laid, he should have taken care of it before he left the city.

  He renewed the promise he’d made when he’d decided to stay. She was off-limits. Period. He had nothing to offer her but short-term. Though she’d fight the notion to the bitter end, the little spitfire had commitment written all over her. He had no intention of committing to anything. She might be a brat, but she deserved a damn sight better than a one-night stand with the likes of him.

  Even if it killed him, he wasn’t going to lay a hand on her. Not even, he vowed, stealing a last lingering look at her trim little butt as she walked away, a finger.

  It was one of those days that, if she could have found a way, Jo would have bottled and saved so she could retrieve it later to savor and enjoy. The lake was pastel blue and portrait still, a mirror of the sky that held court to a brilliantly burning sun. The air was warm and fragrant with scents of the approaching fall. The man at her side was, for a change, quite mellow, his usual scowl replaced by a thoughtful, if disconcerting, stare.

  She’d set out a noon lunch of sandwiches, peanut butter cookies, and chips at one of the picnic tables overlooking the lake. Cooper lounged in the grass at the head of the table, conspicuously alert for handouts.

  If anyone had come upon the scene they would have thought they’d stumbled on the epitome of serene domestic bliss. A woman, her man, and a dog. She’d have laughed at the notion if it hadn’t suddenly seemed so appealing.

  Her man. Propping her elbows on the picnic table, she dug in to her sandwich and told herself to snap to. Since when had she started painting herself into pictures that reeked of romance and happily ever after? Since Adam Dursky had limped onto the scene, that’s when.

  Losing her appetite, she set her sandwich back on the table. Maybe once, long ago, she’d wanted that scenario. Forcing herself to remember what had happened the last time she’d thought she had a man pegged, she put on the skids. She’d believed she’d seen something in that other man that hadn’t been there. Integrity, for one thing; love, for another. All she’d gotten for her efforts was heartache.

  She was wise enough now to know she could do just fine without a man . . . especially a man like Adam.

  He’d leave here the way he came—a stranger.

  She would miss him, though, she admitted as she indulged in a long, assessing look at his profile. She’d miss the mystery and the man.

  His face was a study in symmetry. His nose was Spartanly straight and perfectly positioned beneath that surly, brooding brow. The sunlight shining on his angular features did nothing to diminish his rugged appeal. Instead, it added depth and character, and emphasized that undeniable vulnerability held in check by inner strength. And it drove home the fact that although the shaded hollows below his cheekbones could have been etched from bronze, and his jaw chiseled from granite, he was cast from anything but stone. He was flesh and blood and substance.

  She tried not to think of him in those terms, as a man who felt pain and regret. Yet it was becoming increasingly harder to convince herself that he was the hard, cynical rebel he’d li
ke her to believe he was.

  The way the light played across his face made him look younger than she’d originally guessed. Late thirties, maybe early forties. As she’d already discovered, he had the body of a young man. He was hard and lean, and his skin, stretched taut over all that sinew and muscle, had drunk color from the sun the past few days, giving him a natural, honeyed tan. Her gaze dropped to his leg and she wondered again how he’d come by that limp.

  When she looked up again, it was to see he’d caught her watching him. The unrest in his eyes set her pulse skittering. After several thick, damning seconds, he turned away. Several more seconds passed before she realized he’d asked her a question.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I asked you if you really think you’ve got a prayer of making this place pay.”

  So, she thought, working hard to contain a grin. The cynic speaks. Leave it to him to draw up whatever barrier had been in danger of being breached between them.

  He was really very predictable. In some small way, she found that assuring, even mildly amusing. He didn’t want to deal with whatever was happening between them any more than she did. For that she thanked him silently and answered his question as a reward.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” she began conversationally. “Just as soon as word gets out that Shady Point is back in business and better than ever, old customers and new ones will be calling in with bookings. What?” she asked, unable to suppress a smile at his doubtful look. “You don’t see the possibilities?”

  He grunted, swallowing a mouthful of sandwich. “I see possibilities, all right. They all start and end with bankruptcy.”

  “Exactly.” She nibbled on a chip. Shady Point was her favorite subject, and she was glad to share her strategy with him. “That’s how I got the lodge back.”

  His scowl deepened. “Bankruptcy?”

  “Yup.” Relaxing a little, she dangled her soda can between her fingers and caught his eye.

  He looked quickly away, frowning at a new blister forming on his palm. She could see that he was interested, and decided, just for the fun of it, to wait until he made the next move.