Deep Cover
Page 14
And he said, “I’ll give it up, you know.”
She wasn’t quite sure what he meant, and her confusion must have shown on her face.
“The job,” he said. “If it means losing you, I’ll give it up. I can go back to practicing law.”
“You’d do that?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Tara could feel her own heart swell. That Matt was willing to give up everything he’d worked for to be with her was more than she could ever ask.
“I don’t ever want you to feel neglected,” he said. “I don’t ever want you to be alone. Our kids, either.”
Kids, Tara thought.
She liked the sound of that.
Cousins to Kelly and Kimberly.
She put her arms around him and Matt kissed her. “But there’s something I think you need to see,” he said. “It’ll help you finally put the past to rest.”
Tara was surprised. And curious. “What?”
Matt pulled away from her and flicked on a lamp, then rose from the bed and moved across the room to a backpack he’d left in a chair. He dug around inside, then took out a small, battered notebook.
“Your cop friend gave this to me today. Lila Sinclair. She didn’t think you’d want to talk to her, so she asked me to pass it along. Said she’s been wanting to give it to you ever since the funeral.”
The mention of Lila brought Tara’s guard up. Some habits were hard to shake. “I don’t understand. What is it?”
“Your father’s journal.”
“His…what?”
“She said you’d be surprised to know that he’d been keeping one for years. She said the entries are sparse, but there’s no mistaking that they came from his heart.”
Tara didn’t know what to do with this news. Keeping a journal seemed so out of character for her father that she had a hard time believing it was true.
But when Matt handed the notebook to her, she immediately recognized the handwriting. The neat, no-nonsense lines.
As she leafed through it, she couldn’t quite believe what she was reading. He’d begun writing it shortly after the divorce. It was both a confession and, in a way, a love song—a love song to her and Susan—words of regret, of missed opportunities, that reached up and wrapped themselves around her.
Her father had loved them. Had cared about them.
Had hated himself for his failure to express it.
Had hoped that she and Susan would one day forgive him and take him back into their lives.
As Tara closed the notebook and set it aside, she began to cry, her own feelings of regret taking hold.
“I should have gone to him,” she said softly. “I should have given him a second chance.”
Matt sat next to her then, pulled her into his arms, and as she cried against his shoulder, she knew with sudden clarity that it didn’t matter what Matt did for a living. It was ridiculous to judge a person based on that.
She would learn to live with it.
He was a good man and she could no more expect him to change than she could her father.
She didn’t want him to.
She loved him.
Because he was, and always would be, her Henry.
BOOKS BY ALANA MATTHEWS
The Parker & Coe Series
Identity Unknown
Present Tense
Standalones
Deep Cover
Body Armor (coming soon)
Waterford Point (coming soon)
Copyright © 2010 by Alana Matthews / Robert Gregory Browne
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published by Braun Haus Media, LLC
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
This book was previously published by Harlequin Enterprises under the title Man Undercover.
Cover Photo:
© konradbak / Adobe Stock