A Need to Protect

by Diane Benefiel

  He gazed out over the lake, perhaps seeking calm before turning back to her. “That doesn’t make you any less desirable and it certainly doesn’t make you a fraud. You—” Whatever he meant to say was cut off by the shrill ring of the phone from inside the house.

  “Hang on, I’ve got to get that in case it’s the station.” Obviously unhappy with the interruption, he stalked into the house.

  Emma finally sat on the porch swing, her body rigid with tension. He returned moments later.

  “I’ve been called in. There’s trouble at the Hangman’s Brew Pub.” Emma rose to follow him back into the house where he opened a closet and withdrew his police belt. There was nothing else he could have done that would have more decidedly symbolized his identity as a cop. He looked up at Emma as he strapped it on. She could tell from the steady, focused look in his eyes his mind was already on the job.

  “We’ll finish this conversation soon. I’ll drop you off at your place on my way.”

  “No need. I can follow the trail back.” She felt hollowed out and needed time alone to sort out her feelings and he certainly didn’t need her slowing him down.

  “I don’t have time to argue; I’m taking you. Let’s go.” He turned around, obviously expecting her to follow him down the hall.

  There was no point in further protest so she went out back with him and waited while he backed the SUV out of the garage before climbing in. He whipped the vehicle around and headed to the highway.

  “Do you always get called in? Don’t your officers take care of dustups at the bar?” Emma watched his profile in the twilight.

  “Usually. There’s been a shooting, so I have to be there.”

  “A shooting? Was anyone hurt?”

  “No one was hurt.”

  “A shooting in Hangman’s Loss. That’s hard to believe.” Emma’s voice was incredulous.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty uncommon. Sounds like a couple of our local idiots got into a fight and one of them had a gun in his vehicle. That kind of stupidity can happen anywhere.” The headlights flashed on the resort sign and Brad took the turn into the driveway. He pulled up in front of her cabin.

  Emma unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door but then paused. No matter that her feelings were scattered and confused, he was going into a dangerous situation. “When you have a chance, would you call me and let me know you’re okay?”

  His eyes glittered under the dome light. “You worried about me, sweetheart?”

  “Maybe. A little. Just let me know you’re not hurt, okay?” Emma lifted her chin, stubbornly insistent.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about, but I’ll check in with you.”

  She gave him a nod and slipped out of his jacket to leave it on the seat before climbing down from the vehicle. She watched until the taillights disappeared from view.

  Hours later Emma sat in her flannel pants and thermal top, sipping tea at her tiny kitchen table. A quiet knock sounded at her door. She approached the door cautiously, then heard the low voice.

  “Emmaline, it’s me.”

  She turned on the porch light and unlocked the door to pull it open. The night had turned cold, the earlier breeze having brought in cooler temperatures. She stood back to admit Brad as he blew on his fingers for warmth. “You’re okay.” Emma hadn’t realized how worried she’d been until he stood before her, vital and strong.

  “Yeah. The stupid bastards were feuding over a girl. They’ve been after one another for years and today one of them took it up a level, and he’ll have to do time for it.” Disgust laced his tone.

  “Was anyone hurt?” she asked.

  “No. It never should have come to this but they hate each other’s guts and there’s no talking sense into them.” He sighed, then raked fingers through his hair. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned at her sleeping attire. “You look cute.”

  Emma snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding. Cotton pants and a men’s shirt. Hardly cute.” She sobered when she caught the hungry look beneath the humor.

  He moved toward her, lifting a hand to lightly trail a forefinger along her jaw. “I guess I like cotton pants and a men’s shirt, then. On you.” His gaze focused on her lips before returning to meet her eyes. “One kiss, and then I’ll go.”

  “Brad.” Her breath caught. “I was trying to explain why we can’t do this. I’m not the kind of woman you need,” she said the words even as she leaned toward him.

  “You’re exactly what I need,” he muttered. He tipped up her chin to catch her lower lip between his teeth. She couldn’t stop the low moan coming from deep in her throat. Long fingers delved into her hair, and warm lips feathered across hers until she opened her mouth to his. He slid smoothly into the kiss, tongue tangling with hers.

  The seductiveness of feeling utterly cherished was more than she could withstand. She pressed her body to his, and tugging his shirt from his belt, slipped her hands underneath to feel the warm skin and taut muscles of his back.

  He broke the kiss to nuzzle along her jaw to her ear. “I lied,” he whispered. “One isn’t enough.” He took her mouth again, and she all but fused herself to him, savoring his warmth and need.

  Her mind simply shut down, all of her arguments and fears melting into nothing as her heart took a scrambling plunge. All of her carefully crafted arguments were laid waste by his assault and Emma could only hold on tight.

  When Brad finally lifted his head, she stared into his eyes until he sighed and rested his forehead against hers. “Sweetheart, I’m leaving now while I still can.” He stepped back and reached for the door. “Lock up behind me.” With one last burning look, he was out the door and into the dark.

  ***

  Emma rose before daylight the next morning and sat at her computer, poring over the website design. When she’d spent probably more time than was necessary on that, she began an analysis of cost projections, running expenses and potential income for the resort through the remainder of the year. On her third cup of coffee, she glanced out the window to see Dory heading down the dirt driveway with Adrian in the backseat of the car. The computer monitor said it was almost eight o’clock so Adrian was on his way to school.

  She shut down her laptop, grabbed her caddy of cleaning supplies, and headed to Badger Cabin. With the volume on her iPod speakers way up maybe she could drown out her thoughts. If she sang along with the old Jim Croce songs, she could almost keep herself from thinking about Brad and the night before.

  She was nearly done scrubbing the bathroom when Dory walked in, immediately dialing down the volume on “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” Dory leaned against the doorway, arms crossed in front of her chest as she studied Emma. “Your light was on pretty early this morning. I think you’ve already put in a full day’s work and it isn’t even nine. What’s going on?”

  She shrugged. “There’s work to do and I’m doing it. Not that hard to figure out.” She couldn’t seem to keep the surliness out of her voice.

  When Dory just looked at her with those steady, dark eyes, she could feel the defensiveness creep into her voice. “What’s wrong with being busy? I happen to like busy.”

  “Nothing, if you’re not using the busy to avoid some issue. And if you’re not cranky on top of it.”

  Emma almost growled. “Five-year-old children get cranky. I don’t get cranky. I might get legitimately irritated if my coworker wants to spend the morning giving me the third degree, but I’m not cranky.”

  “I think this has something to do with our totally hot police chief who just happened to be at your cabin late last night,” Dory responded with a grin. “Not that I’m checking up on you, but it’s not hard to see someone driving up to your cabin from my kitchen window.”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Dory, he just dropped by. He checks up on everyone around here. It’s not like we had a quickie in the five minutes he was here.”

  “Well, your loss on that one. And I guess if you’re cranky and there’s nothing between the two of y
ou, then you don’t want to hear what our heroic chief did last night.”

  “Heroic? What do you mean?”

  “Are you really interested?” She could tell Dory was enjoying having the scoop.

  “Of course I’m interested! Spill it.” It took all of Emma’s restraint to prevent herself from reaching out and shaking Dory.

  Dory dropped all pretense of holding back. She sat down on the toilet lid while Emma sat on the edge of the tub. “I heard it from one of the other moms when I dropped off Adrian. Get this. Brad goes out to the pub because Ralphie La Rue and Britt Davies are at it again. Ralphie was more stupid than usual and he had a gun under the seat of his truck. When he and Britt got into their usual pissing contest he got the gun, then shot out a tire on Britt’s pickup. He’d threatened to shoot through the gas tank about the time Brad showed up.”

  “He’s crazy,” Emma said in a hushed voice.

  “Who? Brad?”

  “No! Ralphie, of course. Tell me the rest!”

  “Okay, okay. So the police had been trying to calm Ralphie down and keep Britt from going home for his own gun when Brad got into the action.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I’ll tell you. Totally unfazed like he does this every day, he walks up to within about ten feet of Ralphie, who still has his gun, and says, ‘Ralphie, what’s going on?’ And Ralph starts in about how Britt’s done it one time too many and he wasn’t going to take it anymore.” Dory paused to look around. “Why are we talking in the bathroom?”

  “Don’t make me hurt you, Dory,” Emma muttered. “What happened then?”

  “Well, Brad lets him tell his story, which has something to do with a girlfriend, Britt’s sister, and somehow a dog. All the while, and this is from Joey’s mom whose sister works at the pub, Britt is swearing up a blue streak, calling Brad and Ralphie all sorts of nasty names.”

  “I can just see Brad. Cool and calm in the midst of chaos.”

  “Yeah, that’s our boy,” Dory agreed. “Well, he tells his officer to put Britt in the back of a patrol car and shut the door so they wouldn’t have to hear him. Then he starts with Ralphie about when they played baseball for Loss High and wasn’t the championship game a good one and before you know it, Ralphie hands over the gun and agrees to be arrested.”

  “Wow. I guess that comes from knowing your people.”

  “Yep. And once Ralphie is on his way to the station, Brad gets Britt out of the cruiser and talks him down from his threat to go and torch Ralphie’s cabin.”

  “So Brad ended the crisis without any bloodshed. He didn’t say a word about it last night.”

  Dory looked at Emma, a gleam in her eye. “Maybe you kept him too, um, occupied for him to tell you what happened.”

  Emma decided she could deal with a little teasing. “I have to admit, when a man’s kisses are as superior as Bradley Gallagher’s, you don’t spend much time talking.”

  Emma sailed out of the bathroom, followed by Dory’s loud, “Woo-hoo!”

  Working like a fiend for the next few days, Emma poked and prodded at what she thought of as big problem number one and big problem number two. Big problem number one was Brad. He’d gone and made her have feelings for him she wasn’t sure what to do about. She wasn’t ready to define those feelings as love but was uncomfortably aware that’s the direction they were heading.

  He’d somehow gotten her past where his being a cop was a problem. He’d muscled his way around that one simply by being the type of man he was. Honesty and integrity shone from him like bright, shiny armor. But because of that he should have someone small-town, girl-next-door wholesome. Not someone like her, raised on the mean streets of LA, riddled with self-esteem issues and saddled with a drive to prove herself at all costs.

  On top of that, if Police Chief Bradley Gallagher wasn’t a big enough problem, there was big problem number two to deal with. She’d received a certified letter from Great Mountain Development with a threat to use eminent domain to seize her property if she didn’t play ball. A visit to city hall had resulted in an interesting conversation with her city councilwoman, Ruthie Gordon. The upshot was that Ms. Gordon needed community support to oppose the developer and Emma had promised to do whatever she could to help.

  She’d attended the city council session Thursday evening with a large number of town citizens. Opinion leaned toward keeping Hangman’s Loss a low-key, quiet mountain town. One speaker, a local history buff, had explained the significance of some of the older buildings in town. She’d learned the town name came from an event in the late eighteen eighties when a man accused of murder had been pursued by a posse with vigilante justice in mind. He had eluded the posse until he was finally tracked to a camp beside the lake. With the help of some local settlers, he’d escaped the noose they had hung for him and in the end had been able to establish his innocence.

  The tone of the meeting changed, however, when the mayor brought a motion to change city zoning that limited buildings in the downtown to two stories. Brad had certainly called that one, Emma thought. One city councilman, a hefty man in his mid-thirties whose nameplate identified him as George Van Horn, took up the issue once Marla had spoken. Emma thought he sounded pompous when he suggested the townspeople trust those with experience in these matters to make the best decision for the city.

  Debate lasted quite some time, especially when members of the public took their turns at the mic. Most spoke in favor of keeping the ordinance to limit building height. In the end, the decision was made to put off the final vote to allow for more study of the issue.

  One surprise of the evening was Brad. Handsome in dress blues, it was the first time she’d seen him in uniform. He gave a presentation on police issues and asked the council to consider the need to fund a larger police force if the city expanded as developers intended. She found it interesting how the mayor gushed in her praise of the police department and its leader. She wondered if anyone else realized the mayor’s possessiveness toward Brad wasn’t strictly professional.

  At the break midway through the meeting, Brad started down the aisle, eyes on Emma’s, his intent clearly to speak with her. The mayor made a beeline to intercept him. Emma watched with mild amusement when Marla gripped those red-tipped fingers on his arm, tilting her head toward his as she spoke earnestly. Brad caught Emma’s gaze, shrugged his apology, and followed the mayor to a hall behind the dais. She ended up leaving after the session without the chance to speak to him.

  The next day, Emma and Dory cleaned the last of the cabins. Staying occupied helped to keep her from wondering when she’d see Brad again. She took a few hours before bedtime to fiddle once again with her website. She’d taken some photos of the cabins, the boats, and the lake and loaded them onto the site. Earlier that day, she’d placed the order for T-shirts, ball caps and fisherman’s hats, all with the Hangman’s Loss Resort logo. Her order for brochures was currently at a print shop she’d found in Bishop. Everything was coming along nicely. Emma yawned, then tiredly shut down her computer.

  Heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth, she frowned when she heard a buzzing. It was so unusual for her to get a call that it took Emma a few seconds to realize the sound came from her cell phone set on vibrate. She’d silenced it for the meeting the night before. Finally locating it on her nightstand, she smiled when she saw the display. “Brad?”

  “Sweetheart.” His voice was a bit rough, as if he was battling fatigue.

  “I didn’t expect to hear from you tonight.”

  “Emmaline, you should expect to hear from me. Sometime you could even call me to say good night.”

  “Is that why you called? To say good night?” Emma smiled, feeling her heart do a lazy flip.

  “Yeah, I wish I could say good night in person like I did Wednesday, but I’m stuck here at the station.”

  Emma’s mind flashed to his manner of saying good night that evening and she could feel warmth spread low in her belly.

  “Sooo, what are you we
aring?” He dropped his voice in an exaggeratedly seductive tone.

  She giggled. “Cotton again, so I think your prurient phone sex fantasies are doomed.”

  Humor laced his tone. “Darlin’, that’s the beauty of phone sex. You could be wearing sackcloth and my imagination would take care of the rest.”

  “I think I’m going to have to report that the police chief is a pervert.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice when he asked, “Are you still going to the picnic tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I told your sister I would help her set up. Actually, I think she told me I would help set up. She has a way of getting what she wants.” Emma heard the creak of a chair and she imagined Brad leaned back at a big desk covered with papers.

  “Yes, she does. But in this case I’m glad because it means I’ll get to see you. I’ll be busy with some official duties in the morning but I’ll catch up to you when I can.”

  “Okay. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Me, too.” There was a long silence, then he said, “Good night, Emmaline.”

  “Good night, Brad.” Emma stared at her phone until the display light went out. She was in deep water with Bradley Gallagher, and she wasn’t even looking for a life preserver.

  Chapter Eight

  Emma hefted one end of an oversized cooler heavy with ice, and waited for Maddy to get the other end. Together they muscled it to a shady location at the end of a picnic table. A beautiful old tree cast a wide circle of shade over the spot chosen by the Gallagher family.

  “Here’s fine,” Maddy huffed. She nodded to a couple of cases filled with beer and soda. “Emma, if you’ll put those into the ice, I’ll get the last load out of my car.”

  Emma looked around the park as she buried bottles and cans. Families had already staked out the prime picnic sites with blankets spread on the grass. The lake lapped at a pebbled shore on the far end of a grassy slope and she could see floats in the water that delineated the swimming area. The entire picture was so perfect it looked like an advertisement for the ideal family vacation spot.