Not Without Risk

by Sarah Grimm

  Why did she keep doing this? What was the point of constantly setting herself up to fail? He loved his mother, would do anything for her. Which is why he felt the need to protect her from herself.

  All his life he’d watched her go through men. She chased love, hunted after it like her life just wasn’t complete without it. When she found it, at least what she believed to be true love, things were good. But it never lasted, and in the end, she always wound up hurt.

  It was after her second failed marriage, when he was but twelve-years-old, that he vowed never to love, never to risk his heart. Thelma Kincaid might believe in love everlasting and commitment, but he’d witnessed firsthand just what that brought her—heartache and pain. As a result, Justin kept his encounters with women light and carefree. Never remaining with any woman long enough for her to get any ideas about the future.

  “Mom, when are you going to learn?”

  “What would you have me learn, Justin?”

  “It’s okay to be alone,” he assured her. He refused to admit that he might also be assuring himself. “There’s no shame in it.”

  “There’s no shame in wanting more, either. I don’t know about you, but I do not wish to die alone, with only my own arms about me.”

  His throat tightened painfully. A few months ago, he would have brushed aside her concerns, never believing such a thing possible. “I’ll hold you, Mom.”

  “I’m more concerned with who will hold on to you,” she replied passionately. “Your aversion to love is not normal. Random affairs are not healthy.”

  “I don’t have affairs—”

  “Of course not. Affairs require some modicum of intimacy. You won’t even give a woman that much.”

  Her words hit with unerring accuracy. Had the subject been different, less personal, he might have smiled at their identical temperaments. Instead, he could only listen as she continued, her tone and attack becoming that which only a mother could deliver.

  “Listen to us, snapping at each other like children. We’ve always been close, Justin. Haven’t we always been close?”

  “Yeah, Mom, we’ve always been close.”

  “Yes. Maybe too close, but I feel I can tell you this.”

  “Mom, I—”

  “I was wrong to turn to you after your father left us. Wrong to make it your sole responsibility to keep me happy. I’m sorry for doing that. You were too young. You were struggling with your own pain.”

  “You did your best.”

  “I’m not so sure. What I did, taught you nothing but the pain of loving someone. It’s not all pain, Justin. It’s joy, excitement, and the most wonderful thing anyone can experience. To love someone, to have someone return that love is…it’s…”

  “Temporary,” he supplied, then immediately regretted his comment.

  “It’s a risk, certainly, but what is life if not a risk?”

  “I’m a cop, Mom. In my line of work, risk can get me killed.”

  “You’re also a man, Justin.”

  He didn’t know what to say to her. She didn’t give him the opportunity.

  “Just tell me, are you happy?”

  Was he?

  “I’m happy,” he assured her. He wondered whether either of them truly believed it.

  “Fine. Good.” She offered no further argument. “Dinner. Thursday night, eight o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Justin pushed his thumb and forefinger against his closed lids as he hung up the phone. He reached out blindly and closed the case file. Trying to get anything done after that conversation would be a waste of time. He couldn’t think past the hurt he’d just caused his mother, by not showing proper enthusiasm over her engagement. If he hadn’t been in pain, already angry about his own limitations, perhaps he could have managed to feign happiness for her benefit. But with fatigue pressing down on him, he just couldn’t get overly enthused about something history told him was a washout.

  Thelma Kincaid married. Again. He could hardly believe it.

  Pushing out of the chair, Justin headed for his bedroom. He changed into a pair of sweatpants and dropped atop the bed. He stared at the ceiling as his mother’s words played in his head.

  “It’s not all pain.”

  You could have fooled him. He’d been there, holding her as she cried, comforting her as best he could. He’d witnessed firsthand the effect her ‘true love’ had on a heart. No way he’d risk his own.

  “I don’t want to die alone…”

  Stretching his left arm above his head, he moved his right hand to his side as his thoughts shifted to how close he’d come to doing just that. Through the thin material of his shirt he fingered his scars—the round, puckered mark near his shoulder and the larger, jagged line at his side. His lids drooped, his body relaxing as the medication began to take effect. As his pain eased, his mind drifted back to how he’d gotten them.

  He’d been unstoppable, mixing long hours on the job with late nights with the ladies. He’d been impulsive, insatiable and invincible.

  At least he’d thought so.

  Veterans of war say you hear every bullet that passes you, but not the one that hits you. Justin could verify that statement. It had been the worst day of his life, both professionally and personally. And it had only gotten worse. He’d been strung out, wrung dry and feeling far more than his thirty-five years. To this day, he wondered had he been at the top of his game, would he have made such a perfect target? He would never know.

  The worst part of it was that it hadn’t even been one of his cases that put him in the line of fire. He’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and faced with a man with too little money to support a growing drug habit.

  His memory, whenever he allowed himself to recall that fateful day, played the events out before him as if they’d happened to someone else. He watched, like viewing a film in slow motion, as he pulled his police issue beater into the strip mall in search of a pack of smokes. In his mind’s eye he saw himself exit the vehicle and start across the lot toward the convenience store. He’d been reaching for his wallet when the front door of the store swung open and a disheveled man in a hooded sweatshirt stepped out.

  The next few minutes were a mixed blur of images and impressions. He saw the man’s face, his shifting eyes and hardened expression as he spotted the shield clearly visible on Justin’s belt. As a trained observer, the best at what he did, Justin should have spotted the .38 aimed at his chest before he felt the burning pain in his side. He should have gotten the drop on the guy, or at least gotten out of the line of fire. Instead, he’d gone down hard and fast.

  Although difficult to believe, luck had been on his side that day. He lay there, unconscious and vulnerable, a perfect target, yet the shooter had cared more for his next fix than for finishing him off. Cash in his pocket, the man simply ran off. The store clerk, left unharmed, called for an ambulance, and then worked to slow Justin’s bleeding until its arrival.

  He came to in the hospital, surrounded by the unsettling silence of the intensive care unit, agonizing pain in his lung and an empty room. The bullet had torn into his shoulder, just below his clavicle, causing muscle and nerve damage. It hadn’t stopped there. From the amount of damage, the doctors concluded it then ricocheted, puncturing his lung and fracturing two ribs before coming to rest. The combination of blood loss, exhaustion and a two-pack-a-day nicotine habit resulted in pneumonia. Blind luck was credited for keeping him alive.

  The fight back was long and hard, the endless nights alone the most difficult to face. What he wouldn’t have given for someone to have been there for him, just once during those long agonizing nights of recovery when pain and doubt would assault his already weakened senses and cause him to question. Would he recover enough to return to active duty, to the job he loved? Would he suffer any lasting consequences? Would he ever find the peace he used to in his solitary lifestyle, or would he forever hear only the silence of the night?

  As that very si
lence settled around him, Justin answered the questions that had plagued him so those six months before. Hours of therapy repaired his mobility enough to return to active duty. Occasionally, he still experienced weakness in his left arm, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t work through. As for his solitary lifestyle, more than once during those first few weeks of recovery, he’d almost died. Alone. Lonely.

  Again, Thelma’s words played through his mind. He didn’t want to die alone any more than his mother did. But marriage, commitment, these things went against every lesson life had taught him. He didn’t want marriage or commitment. He just wanted companionship.

  He wanted Paige Conroy.

  When had she done it? When had she stolen past his defenses? He didn’t get involved. Sure as hell never became hung up on one woman, the way he seemed to be hung up on Paige. What was it about her that he couldn’t seem to shake her image from his mind? And why her and not any of the other women he’d known?

  Sleep pulled at him, but his mind refused to shut down. He fisted his hands as her image came to him, beaten and bruised for sure, but still able to rattle him like no other. Her smile, her scent—not perfume, but something far more subtle that he had yet to place. The way she said his name, her voice like a caress against his flesh, just before cutting him off at the knees with four little words.

  “I don’t date cops.”

  Frustration burned like acid in his gut. His shoulder throbbed. He pushed the heel of his palm into his chest and rubbed. Stopped suddenly when he realized his focus centered above his heart, instead of his side.

  Disgusted, he set his jaw and told himself to stop acting like a fool. He didn’t know the woman well enough to feel anything stronger than frustration, perhaps resentment. His reaction to her sudden dismissal was ludicrous, what should he care that she didn’t want to see him again?

  But he had to admit he did care. He cared a great deal. And in his melancholy mood he couldn’t shake the unfairness of the situation he found himself entrenched in. Paige Conroy didn’t date cops. With her past, her firsthand experience of the worst side of law enforcement, he couldn’t blame her. But hell, it wouldn’t surprise him to learn he bled blue. He was all cop.

  He didn’t know how to be anything else.

  Chapter Six

  She dreamt of echoing gunfire and the stench of death. Of sunny days, quiet evenings, and pain far greater than that of the flesh. Paige leaped into wakefulness with a jolt that caused her stomach to lurch. She stared at the darkened ceiling above her, heart skittering in her chest, nerves snapping and popping as her temple pounded.

  It had been two days since her concussion diagnosis. Two days of nausea and lightheadedness and, contrary to popular medical belief, two days of insomnia. She slept in fits and surges, dozing off only to awaken abruptly when the demons of her mind chased her into alertness. She kept waiting for it to end, for her life to move forward, for her body to heal. Yet her pain persisted.

  She nearly accepted it, this new ripple in what once had been a very stagnant life. She turned a blind eye to her bruises, her discomfort and, in a vain attempt to feign normalcy, she worked. But work took concentration and concentration became impossible with her boarded-up front window casting the room in darkness, even at the brightest hour of the afternoon.

  Mindful of the stitches at her brow, Paige pushed her fingers into her hair and away from her face. She pulled her knees to her chest and allowed herself a moment of dejection. She yearned for someone to confide in, to talk to about her nightmares, her worry and her fear. She might be an independent, self-reliant woman, but she wished she had someone to lean on.

  Her eyes searched through the darkness to the sofa upholstered in pale, muted tones and tossed with pillows in varying shades of green. The urge to curl into the corner of it, to dial the telephone and reach out for reassurance was strong. In the past, whenever she needed someone, whenever her world fell apart and she needed a shoulder to cry on, she’d gone to her father. Closest to her in temperament and personality, he understood her in a way that her mother never would. He was her rock, the one person she could count on to always be there for her. He would be there for her now. All she had to do was pick up the phone.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t risk exposing her father to any of this. There was no guarantee that by his standing at her side, she would be any safer. Stronger, perhaps, but the risk to him far outweighed the promise of temporary stability. She would have to face this—alone.

  Knowledge brought an ache, deep down in the center of her being. When had she done this? When exactly had her search for independence, her escape from the pain her complete reliance on Rick and his subsequent death brought her, managed to alienate her from the rest of the world? In the past three years, she’d not just become self-reliant, she’d become lonely.

  And so, in the darkness of the midnight hour, when she could no longer deny what during the light of day she possessed the strength to ignore, Paige had nowhere to turn. She blinked against her pounding headache and accepted the truth. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work, couldn’t even eat—not from the return of lost memories or the discomfort of her injuries, but from fear. Fear that coursed through her like a living, breathing entity. Fear that grew stronger with each passing day until even her security system provided little reassurance. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she admitted she had never been more afraid.

  Until the sudden, unmistakable burst of breaking glass from her studio pushed her terror to a new level.

  Paige realized she was on her feet only when the movement brought about a surge of nausea. She fisted her hand against her abdomen and listened, waiting for the din of her alarm, for any further hint as to the basis of the sound. It couldn’t be an intruder. There was no way past her security system, no way in without triggering the alarm.

  “Get a grip,” she whispered. But the silence that hung throughout her building failed to calm. Her discomfort shot up another notch. Skin prickling, she glanced over her shoulder and located her telephone. Two days before, she’d placed Justin’s business card alongside it. Absently she wondered if he’d had late night phone calls in mind when he’d given her the card.

  Seconds later, the ominous creak of dry hinges as her darkroom door swung open had her whirling back toward the stairs. Her heart stopped. When it started again, it was skipping beats. Breath heaving, Paige slowly backed up and picked her keys off the bedside table. She depressed the alarm button on her security remote once, twice, biting back panic when her system failed to respond. With a last searching glance through the darkness, she snatched her phone up and tiptoed toward the bathroom, the only room in her house with a door that locked.

  Her sudden indrawn breath and gasp of pain sounded unbearably loud in the silent room. She fought against the urge to crumple to the floor as her weight came down upon something unidentifiable in the dark and her injured knee twisted painfully. The relative safety of a locked door overshadowing any concerns about noise, she quickened her pace, limping noisily toward the door a few feet away.

  Finally, she was there, twisting the lock and backing against the cool tile wall. She punched in the number.

  “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

  “Someone’s in my house.”

  * * * * *

  The dark atmosphere of the dimly lit bar fit Justin’s mood. At this late hour, occupancy was sparse and continued to dwindle as couples paired up and made their way to the door. That suited him. He didn’t want laughter and camaraderie. He wanted to be left alone to unwind, to think. And this was just the place to do it, complete with frosted mugs and enough nicotine in the air to let him know that they didn’t always follow the smoking ban.

  Justin drew the secondhand smoke into his lungs, welcoming the burn as he lifted his mug toward his lips. He fought a sigh when the burn took on an edge sharp enough to bring tears to his eyes. A fitting end to a day that had started out bad and gone downhill from there.