Father Figure

by Rebecca Daniels

  Normally Marissa Wakefield never did anything “just like that.” She was too structured, too down-to-earth and too rooted in practicality and realism to make rash or impulsive decisions. She’d been rash and impulsive only once—sixteen years ago, as a matter of fact—and her life had never been the same since. And from that point on, she’d played it safe. Except this time it wasn’t about her, it was about Josh, and when it came to him, she had a hard time playing it safe.

  Marissa allowed Dylan to usher her down the narrow hall toward a large set of doors at the end. Nerves had her feeling clumsy and self-conscious. The simple act of putting one foot in front of the other took considerable concentration, and she found his polite hand at her elbow distracting. It was an innocent gesture, automatic and meaningless, really, but it made her terribly uncomfortable, and she didn’t want him to feel her trembling.

  “This way,” Dylan said, reaching around her to pull open one of the heavy wooden doors.

  Dropping his hold on her elbow, he gallantly stepped to one side to allow her to pass. But Marissa had taken only a few steps forward when her ankle buckled suddenly beneath her, throwing her off-balance and sending a painful cramp up her leg. She landed against Dylan’s solid frame with a thud.

  “Are you all right?” he asked quickly, his arms snapping up to steady her. “Have you hurt yourself?”

  “No, I’m fine,” she groaned, as much from humiliation as the pain. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks, and she dared not look up at him. “I’m sorry. It’s my ankle.”

  “Is it okay?” he asked, but then didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s get you inside and off your feet.”

  “I’m fine, really,” she insisted, protesting his efforts, but it was too late. His arm was already around her waist, and he was guiding her through the open doorway and across the hard gray carpet to one of the chairs in front of his desk.

  “Maybe we should get someone down here, have a look at it,” he said, kneeling down and gently slipping a hand around her ankle. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “No, it’s fine. Really,” she insisted again, fighting off a feeling of desperation. Her face was flaming now, and she found his hand around her ankle unnerving. Only the thin nylon of her stocking separated his skin from hers, and as far as she was concerned that wasn’t nearly enough. She reached down, tactfully waving his hand and his concern aside. “It’s nothing, really. I broke it a while back. The cast’s only been off a few days—it’s just still a little weak.”

  Dylan leaned back, releasing his hold and looking up at her. He’d felt a tremble when he’d touched her, a momentary stirring beneath the skin. It had surprised him, but what surprised him more was that he hadn’t been able to tell if it had come from her—or him.

  “You should probably take it easy,” he advised, slowly rising to his feet and making his way around the desk. “Another fall could easily reinjure it.”

  “I know,” she said with a sigh, making a play of twisting her ankle about as though working out a kink. With him farther away and his hands no longer touching her, she began to relax again. The heat in her cheeks had cooled, and she felt her composure return. “I’ve been doing some strengthening exercises, but obviously there’s a ways to go. It’s been very frustrating.”

  “You must have taken quite a spill.”

  Marissa straightened up, rolling her eyes and making light of the fall she’d taken that had left her ankle fractured in two places. “Well, let’s just say it was enough so that if I don’t see another set of crutches again for a while, I won’t be upset.”

  She glanced around the office, spotting a small framed picture of Dylan in a battered Jackson High School football uniform, holding a muddied football triumphantly over his head.

  Second string. She still remembered him calling her that. Those words had created a wound in her psyche that had taken years to heal. She’d given him her love, but all he’d really wanted was the most popular girl in school.

  “This is nice,” she said, gesturing with her hand around the office and pushing that unpleasant thought from her mind. “Looks like things have gone well for you.”

  “It’s been okay,” he mumbled with a nod as he gathered up the loose papers on his desk and stuffed them back into a file folder. He was suddenly self-conscious of the pictures and plaques that lined the walls, and the memorabilia that littered his desk and shelves. They revealed everything about him—his education, his friends, his interests, even his sense of humor. It was as though his whole life surrounded her, and he wasn’t sure he was comfortable showing her so much. “Uh, could I get you something? A cup of coffee, maybe, some iced tea?”

  “No, nothing, thanks,” she said, thinking a dose of caffeine was just about the last thing her jumpy nerves needed.

  “So, is Mallory back with you?” he asked, the slight tension at his jaw the only outward sign of discomfort. The subject of her identical twin wasn’t exactly one he broached with enthusiasm.

  “No. No, I just flew in yesterday myself,” Marissa said, shaking her head and smiling just a little too broadly. “Actually, Mallory’s been on her honeymoon. She got married a few weeks ago.”

  “No kidding? I hadn’t heard,” he said, settling back in his chair and resting his elbows on the arms.

  “It all happened pretty fast,” Marissa admitted.

  “That’s great. You’ll have to congratulate her for me. Someone she met in D.C.?”

  “Uh, no,” she answered, wondering how it was he knew she’d lived there. “Actually, it was someone she met when she was visiting me in Arizona. Benjamin Graywolf. He’s a lawyer—a tribal lawyer, actually. They live on the Navaho reservation.”

  “Really?” His dark brow rose sightly. “Sounds interesting. I hope they’ll be very happy.”

  “Oh, I think they will,” Marissa said wistfully. She thought of Mallory and how beautiful her sister had looked on her wedding day. “Graywolf is a wonderful man, and he loves my sister very much.”

  “What about you?”

  She looked up, surprised. “What about me?”

  “Is there a husband somewhere?” Dylan was satisfied that the bland, unemotional tone of his voice betrayed none of the emotion churning around inside him. He’d made it a point not to think about her over the years, but sometimes that hadn’t always been possible. Every once in a while something would happen and he would find himself remembering her—locked in time as a perpetual teenager—young, beautiful…and forever belonging to him. But it was a real woman who sat across from him now, a real woman who had left him behind and gone on with her life. Still, there was something inside of him that refused to let go and revolted at the thought of her with another man.

  “No,” Marissa said with a little laugh, shaking her head. “I’m not married.”

  “Kids?”

  Kids. Marissa felt the knot in her stomach double twice in size. If he only knew. But then, she’d taken careful pains so that he never would.

  Chapter 2

  “No,” she said quietly, feeling every muscle in her face betray her. “No children.” She nervously twisted the strap of her purse and forced herself to smile. “But I remember hearing you’d gotten married. Stephanie Jacobs, wasn’t it?” She also remembered crying for two days straight after Mallory had called to tell her the news.

  “Yeah, Steph,” he nodded, thinking how easily he’d put those four turbulent years with Stephanie behind him. “But that’s been over a long time.”

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. She’d known that, too.

  He shrugged carelessly. “We’re both better off, and thankfully there weren’t any children involved.”

  He watched as she toyed with the handle of her purse, thinking the gesture seemed oddly out of place for someone so cool and collected. It was the kind of nervous fidgeting he expected from a suspect with something to hide. Did she have something to hide, or was she just remembering the trick she and her sister had played on him, the gag
that had cut like a knife and turned his heart to stone?

  Like every guy on the Jackson High football team, he’d wanted Mallory Wakefield. She’d been the most popular girl in school—rich, pretty—the one all his buddies pursued for a date. He could hardly believe it when she’d agreed to go out with him. But the Wakefield twins had faked a pass, they’d sent in a ringer, and he’d been left looking like a clown.

  Of course, when his buddies on the team found out, they’d all thought it was hilarious. The brainy captain of the debate team had really managed to put the dumb jock in his place. And of course he’d done what he always did when things hurt him—he’d laughed, joked and covered up. He laughed right along with his friends—taking the ribbing with good nature, never showing his real feelings. But the truth was, he’d been devastated.

  Dylan closed his eyes, feeling the embers of that old hurt sputter briefly into flame. It was history. He had more important things to worry about now and was too old to let things that had happened a lifetime ago bother him now.

  He came forward slowly in his chair, careful to keep all trace of bitterness out of his voice. “I was sorry to hear about your brother, and Penny, too. That had to be rough for your family.”

  Marissa drew in a weary breath. Caleb’s death two years ago from a car accident had left them all in shock—especially her nephew, Josh. He began skipping school, getting into trouble. Penny never really recovered from the loss either, and Josh’s problems were more than she could handle. Three months ago, when she slammed her car into the side of a mountain, they all knew the accident wasn’t really what killed her. She’d really died of grief.

  But while the accident had ended Penny’s pain, it had also left Josh alone—and in serious trouble. He was arrested for arson one short month after his mother’s funeral.

  “Yes, it’s been difficult on everyone,” she agreed in a quite voice. “Especially Josh.”

  “And that’s why you’re here,” he said, linking his fingers together. “To talk about Josh.”

  She lifted her gaze, looking up at him. This was going to be more difficult than she’d thought. The slant of his brow, the angle of his cheekbone, the set of his chin, were all so endearingly familiar she felt a thick lump of emotion build in her throat. “Yes, to talk about Josh.”

  He reached down and picked up a pencil from his desk. “What can I do to help?”

  She straightened up in her chair. “I’m petitioning the court for custody tomorrow.”

  Dylan’s eyes widened. “Oh?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  He sat back in the chair again. “I guess I am, a little. I’d just assumed…I don’t know, I guess I thought he’d just live here with your folks—after all this is over, I mean.”

  “They aren’t up to raising a teenager,” she said, repeating the well-rehearsed speech she’d prepared for Dylan or anyone else who might ask about her motivation. “My dad will be eighty in a few months, my mom is seventy-three. This whole thing has taken its toll on them.”

  “But with you in Arizona, won’t that be a problem with the courts?”

  “I…I’m not living in Arizona any longer,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’m back in Jackson. For good.”

  Dylan felt the chair beneath him shift. “You’re going to live here?”

  “I’ve taken a job at Sutter High, the continuation school.”

  The muscle in Dylan’s jaw worked furiously. He knew the district’s school for troubled teens all too well—having hauled in a number of the students at one time or another. “I didn’t know you were a teacher. What grade?”

  “I won’t actually be teaching there,” she explained. Those dark, probing eyes made her uneasy, as though he was able to see more than she wanted him to, more than she’d intended. “I’ve been hired as principal.”

  “I see,” he said in that noncommittal way cops get so good at.

  “We…the family, I mean, talked about it when I was here for Penny’s funeral,” she continued, doing her best to ignore his intense gaze. She glanced down at her lap but could still feel his eyes on her. “I would have filed the papers then, but there didn’t seem to be any rush, and Evan— our lawyer—thought it would be better for the courts if I’d had some clear plans first—for relocating, and a job, things like that. Unfortunately I got waylaid by this stupid ankle injury, and things got held up.” She paused then, and shook her head. “And then Josh got arrested.”

  His eyes narrowed again as he watched her. Raising a juvenile delinquent hardly seemed to fit into the Wakefield style, but then serving as principal to a school full of misits and outcasts didn’t, either. “And now you have second thoughts?”

  Her head jerked up. “No, nothing like that. I want Josh with me, I want to do what I can to help him, give him some direction.”

  “And what does Josh want?”

  She clasped her hands together, taking a deep breath. “The same thing—at least he did. Since the arrest, I haven’t been able to talk to him. The jail wouldn’t allow any long-distance telephone calls, and by the time my flight got in last night, I’d missed visiting hours. I’m headed out there next.”

  “Is that what you’d like me to do? Make arrangements at the jail for you?” he asked, feeling just a little deflated. Was her reason in coming that simple?

  “Uh…no,” she said, stopping him as he picked up the phone with a hand on his. “Actually, I was hoping to talk to you about the hearing tomorrow.”

  He looked at her pale, beautiful hand on his, and his mind flashed to another time, another place. “I’m not sure what I can do to help you with that. It’s the D.A. you should be talking to, not me.”

  She moved her hand back to her lap, embarrassed by the impulsive move. “But that’s the problem. The district attorney wants to put Josh in the juvenile authority. Evan said he’s insisting on at least six months, maybe even a year.” She leaned forward, forgetting everything at the moment except her concern for Josh. “Dylan, that’s the last thing Josh needs right now. He needs someone in his corner, to watch out for him. He needs to be with me. I’ll take the responsibility. I’ll make sure he stays out of trouble.” She paused, moistening her dry lips. “I was hoping you would help me convince the judge of that.”

  Dylan leaned back in his chair. “But you’re forgetting he’s committed a very serious crime.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t deny what he did was wrong. He’s a kid with problems—serious problems—and I intend to see he gets counseling.” She paused again, not wanting emotion to scatter her thoughts. “He needs love and understanding, not to be stuck in a cell somewhere and forgotten.”

  Dylan had to smile at her bleak description of the juvenile facility in nearby Ione. “Prescott is hardly a dungeon. It just looks like one. It’s more like a military school. And it’s close. You could visit him whenever you wanted.”

  Marissa reared her head up, not wanting to think of Josh behind bars. “It would be a mistake to send him there.”

  Something in her clipped, authoritarian tone had his hackles going up. He’d treated Josh Wakefield like any other kid who’d been brought in, and he owed her no explanations. He was the sheriff, and he’d been doing the job, enforcing the laws he’d been sworn to uphold. So how could those cool blue eyes of hers make him feel defensive? Why did he feel he wanted her to understand?

  “It’s discipline, and that’s exactly what he needs,” Dylan said in a tight, controlled voice. “Look, I know it might seem harsh to you, but you have to understand, this isn’t the first time Josh has been in trouble. It’s not up to me to decide if he stays in jail or not—only the judge can make that decision. But I have to tell you, with Josh’s background of trouble, it’s a pretty sure bet the court is going to want Josh to spend some time in custody on this.”

  Her head snapped up. “He’s already been in custody. You’ve kept him in that holding facility for the last six weeks.”

  Dylan sa
w the fire in her eyes, the passion, and felt an old emotion stir. “It was Judge Kent’s decision to deny bail.” He paused a moment, tapping the pencil lightly against the edge of the desk. The casual gesture helped divert some of the emotion simmering just below the surface. “And like I said, this isn’t the first time he—”

  “I know this isn’t the first time,” Marissa snapped impatiently, cutting him off. “I don’t need to be reminded of Josh’s history. I know he’s been in trouble before. But surely you understand that a lot has happened in his life in the last two years. For God’s sake, doesn’t he deserve some compassion? He’s lost both his parents, his whole life has been turned upside down.”

  Dylan tossed the pencil back down onto the desk. “I’m aware of that, and I’m sure Evan Brown is going to make the court aware of it, too.” He stopped, forcing himself to take slow, regular breaths. “But the fact remains that this isn’t the first time Josh has been arrested. I’ve had that kid in here more times than I care to remember in the last two years.” He stopped again, leaning forward in his chair. “Let’s be honest, Josh has been given chance after chance to straighten out, to get his act together, and he’s ignored every one of them. The thing that’s different this time is that he’s being charged with a serious crime. He upped the ante this time, and I don’t think the judge will be so willing to sweep it under the rug. He and his two buddies knowingly destroyed public property—on the very campus of the school you’ll be working at, I might add. There was a lot of damage done, and it’s just lucky no one was hurt.”

  “But no one was hurt,” she insisted, knowing everything he said was the truth, but hating the fact that it was he who was saying it.

  “But what about next time? Do we have to wait until someone is?”