Father Figure

by Rebecca Daniels

  “No, no, no,” Dylan insisted, walking to her desk and glowering down at her. “When one of my people says I’m in a…mood, I listen.” Leaning forward, he bent close, wondering if he’d ever noticed her blue eyes before. “Just what kind of mood do you think I’m in?”

  Kimberly stopped typing and swiveled her chair in his direction. She hated it when he got like this, and he’d been like this ever since Marissa Wakefield had come to see him. “Look, Sheriff, I don’t want to start anything. I just thought you came back from court a little…upset. That’s all.”

  “Upset?” Dylan cracked, laughing sarcastically. He toasted her with his coffee mug, taking another sip of his coffee and liking the brilliant bitterness. “Why should I be upset? I thought I was perfectly calm.”

  “Yeah, calm,” Kimberly muttered almost to herself. Like a calm before the storm.

  “Oh, I admit sitting in the courtroom and watching a gullible, unreasonable old judge toss away a kid’s only chance to straighten out his life did get me a little annoyed.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Kimberly moaned. “They let Josh Wakefield go again?”

  “You got it in one,” Dylan said cynically, shaking his head.

  “How could he do that?”

  Dylan leaned against her desk and set his coffee mug down. “I don’t know, but he did.”

  “You mean he just…let him go? Scot-free, just like that?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, remembering Marissa in the courtroom and the look that passed between her and her nephew when Judge Kent handed down his sentence. “He gave Josh and the other two picked up with him each ten months’ probation, made their attendance in summer school classes at Sutter High a condition of probation, and demanded restitution by ordering them to work with one of the industrial arts instructors to rebuild the shed they torched.”

  “And Ron Cox agreed to this?”

  Dylan cracked a little half smile, thinking about the heated exchanges that had gone on between Amador County’s hotshot district attorney and the normally sedate Evan Brown. “Are you kidding? He hit the roof. The reason he wanted me there in the first place was to recommend to Judge Kent these kids do some time in custody.” He laughed, loud and humorlessly. “For all the good it did. He never got the chance to call me to testify.”

  “Why not, what happened?”

  He turned and glared down at her. “What happened? Marissa Wakefield happened, that’s what.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The judge. She got to the judge,” he snorted, tossing his hands in the air. “She came here yesterday trying to get to me, and when that didn’t help, she went straight to him. I tell you, she had Kent wrapped right around her little finger. By the time he took the bench, he was ready to give her anything she asked for—no time, restitution and legal custody.”

  Kimberly shook her head. “Ron must have been fit to be tied.”

  Dylan laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. All he could get the judge to do was require us to keep a regular check on the three.”

  “And if they aren’t doing what they’re supposed to?”

  Dylan shrugged. “Then we lock them up.”

  Kimberly digested all this for a moment, then looked up at him. “You said something about legal custody?”

  “Yeah.” Dylan nodded and reached for the coffee again. “Marissa petitioned the court for custody. She’s his legal guardian now.”

  “Wow,” Kimberly murmured, taking it all in. “How come nothing this good ever happens when I have to be in court?”

  Dylan swallowed another slug of coffee. Caffeine raced through his system, wild and furious, and thoughts sped crazily through his mind. He thought of how Marissa had looked standing there before the judge—her long, luscious hair styled back into a sedate bun, delicate tortoiseshellframed glasses perched primly on her nose, and her figure hidden beneath a conservative suit. She’d looked like every man’s fantasy schoolmarm—prim and proper on the outside, but smoldering with sensuality beneath the surface. He hardly blamed Judge Kent for his decision. He’d probably would have given her everything she’d wanted, too.

  “It was pathetic,” he muttered, almost to himself. “She had him eating out of her hand.”

  “Well,” Kimberly said with a thoughtful sigh. “No matter what, she sure is gorgeous. But you know, when she showed up here the other morning, I wasn’t sure who she was—you know, which twin—Marissa or Mallory.”

  Pulled abruptly from his thoughts, Dylan looked down at her. “What do you know about them?”

  “What do you mean what do I know about them,” Kimberly retorted. “I know them—or used to, anyway.”

  Dylan felt a burning in his stomach. Did she know he’d fallen in love with her? Did she know they’d played him for a fool? “How?”

  “Sheriff,” she said deliberately, giving him a look. “Jackson is a small town. Everybody knew the Wakefield twins.”

  Dylan felt a surge through his system, a combination of emotion and the side effect of the near-lethal dose of caffeine he’d just ingested. “But they’re older than you.”

  “Not that much,” Kimberly reminded him. “A couple of years, maybe. Besides, they were Jill’s friends. You remember Jill, don’t you, my oldest sister? I called and told her Marissa had been in the other day. Marissa used to come over and help Jill take care of us when my mom got so sick. And believe me, with eight kids in the family, poor Jill needed all the help she could get.” Kimberly’s expression grew wistful. “And afterward, after Mom died, she would spell Jill from time to time, so Jill could go out and have some fun once in a while. She and Dom were dating then and wanted to spend time together. I remember loving it when Marissa would come. She was the only one who could handle Kevin. He was about six then and really turned into a handful after Mom died. But I swear, Marissa really had a way with him. We all missed her when she moved away.” Kimberly gave her head a little shake. “Anyway, that’s how I know the twins. Are they both back?”

  “No,” Dylan said tersely, trying to shake the image of Marissa comforting a frightened child, trying to rid himself of the image of her in his head. “Just Marissa.”

  “For good, you mean?”

  “She’s principal over at Sutter,” he said by way of explanation.

  “No fooling? My nephew goes there,” Kimberly said, surprised. “She still goes by Wakefield, and there wasn’t a ring on her finger. I take it she’s not married.”

  “No husband, no kids,” Dylan muttered, wondering what drove a woman like her to devote her life to other people’s kids instead of her own.

  “Interesting.” Kimberly turned back to her typing. “Well, she was always great with kids, so maybe she’s just what Josh needs.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Dylan mumbled, picking up his coffee cup and refilling it again. He’d just turned and started down the corridor for his office when Kimberly stopped him again.

  “Why’d she come to you for a favor?”

  Dylan stopped, having asked himself that same question. “We used to be…uh, friends?”

  Kimberly nodded, and watched as he made his way down the corridor. When he’d disappeared into his office, she stopped typing and reached for the telephone. “Jill?” she said after a moment. “You’ll never guess what I found out.”

  Dylan pulled the rugged four-wheel drive patrol vehicle to a stop, listening to the engine groan and creak as it cooled in the night air. It was well past midnight, but the streets still radiated warmth from the harsh heat of the day, and the gentle breeze through the open windows of the Jeep did little to cool his overheated skin. He knew he should be home trying to get some sleep instead of aimlessly driving the streets of Jackson, but Kimberly had been right. The coffee had been toxic. Despite the long day he’d put in, despite his scratchy eyes and sore muscles, despite his tired mind and languid spirit, he was wide-awake.

  He glanced across the street to the row of luxury condominiums that lined the quiet drive. But he didn’t see
the well-manicured lawns or neatly trimmed hedges. Instead, his eyes had homed in on one particular unit, one specific address that had grabbed his attention despite the fact that the row of homes all looked exactly the same. It was probably his imagination, but like the occupant who inhabited it, Marissa Wakefield’s condominium seemed to stand out.

  He leaned back in the seat, staring up at the darkened windows of her condo and wondering just what the hell he was doing there. He’d cruised down the street several times, telling himself he was just checking up, telling himself he was simply doing his duty, but he’d just been fooling himself.

  Dylan closed his eyes, rubbing at them, wishing he could just fall asleep and stop thinking about all of this—stop thinking about her. He’d almost wished a call would come through on his police radio to distract him, but it seemed that a rash of lawfulness had broken out on the streets of Jackson. It was a quiet night. He’d turned the sound low on his radio, just barely aware of its infrequent bursts, and his mind kept drifting…to Marissa, always to Marissa.

  Why couldn’t she have stayed away? Why did she have to come back and stir up all the old memories again? He’d told himself a million times in the last two days what had happened between them just wasn’t important, that time had long ago healed the wounds, and the hurt feelings simply didn’t matter anymore. He’d rationalized and analyzed, reasoned and justified—but he couldn’t get her out of his head.

  Sixteen years ago, he’d worked hard to convince everyone that what she’d done to him was just a joke, no big deal. He’d worked so hard, and been so convincing, that he’d begun to believe it himself. But the fact of the matter was, it hadn’t been a joke—not to him, anyway. He’d fallen in love that summer with the woman he’d spent time with, the woman he’d held, the woman he’d made love to. It hadn’t mattered who she was, or what her name had been; it was the woman he had loved, the woman he had wanted. What had hurt was that she’d lied to him.

  A car turned onto the dark street, its lights cutting through the darkness and illuminating the inside of the Jeep. Dylan sat up, squinting against the glare, and followed the car’s slow path as it passed him and headed toward a driveway down the block. He settled back into the seat again, gazing up into the night sky, swearing under his breath. Why was he torturing himself with all this now? Why didn’t he just forget once and for all?

  But he already knew why. Marissa Wakefield had walked into his office, and his life and emotions had been in an uproar ever since. He might have buried the past, he might have been able to hide the pain—pave it over, lock it away, cloak it behind a mask of indifference, but he’d never actually dealt with it.

  He turned and stared up at the windows of her apartment again, a rush of emotion spreading through his system like the caffeine had done earlier. He’d never really coped with the hurt; he’d just stuck it away and hoped it would just disappear.

  Only it didn’t disappear. It had come back the moment he saw her again, and he was going to have to find some way of coping with Marissa and the memories. He’d do his best to avoid her, but that wasn’t going to be easy with the judge expecting him to monitor Josh’s progress. But even without that, Kimberly had been right when she’d said Jackson was a small town. It was unreasonable to think he wouldn’t run into her. And it wasn’t exactly reasonable to camp out in front of her house for no apparent reason, either.

  Suddenly a light snapped on, filling one of the dark windows he’d been watching with a soft yellow glow. Startled, he bolted upright, knocking his knee harshly against a sharp edge of the rifle rack mounted to the dash. But Dylan was only vaguely aware of the pain radiating from his kneecap. He was too absorbed, in watching the shadowy figure that moved behind the curtains. Straining against the steering wheel, he leaned forward, the breath catching in his throat.

  It was her. Even with the muted background and the distortions caused by the folds of fabric, he would have recognized her delicately curved silhouette anywhere. He watched as her shadow drifted back and forth along the window, feeling the slow, steady rhythm of his heart begin to pulse wildly at his neck and throat. He’d been on countless stakeouts, had spent many a night keeping a suspect under surveillance. There was always that rush of excitement, that glorious burst of exhilaration, when something finally happened after long hours of waiting.

  But this was nothing like that. He wasn’t a cop on a stakeout. He was a man, watching a woman—a woman not only forbidden by the past, but by circumstance. A woman he had to forget.

  He watched her glide through the room—smooth, graceful motions. He found himself captivated, and for the first time in two days, he forgot about the past and the memories that hurt.

  He’d been so caught up in her image, so hypnotized by the movements, that when she suddenly reached out and pulled the curtain aside, it caught him by surprise. There she was, standing at the window, staring out into the night.

  He leaned back against the seat, his breath strangled in his throat. Given the darkness of the night and the shadows of the street, it was impossible to think that she could see him, but still he felt embarrassed—exposed like a voyeur caught in the act.

  In the quiet darkness of the night, she looked more like an illusion than a flesh-and-blood woman. He watched as she reached up and unhooked the latch, sliding the window wide to one side. As she stood behind the finely woven mesh screen, her long hair fell loose and unchecked down her shoulders—a stark contrast to the confining bun that had restrained it in court. Something glinted bright at her neck, catching the light from the moon or the street lamp, and he remembered the delicate necklace she wore— the fine gold chain with a pendant formed by a cluster of stars. Her satiny nightgown shone luminescent in the moonlight, reflecting off the soft curves of her body and causing his heart to thud loudly in his chest. The night breeze through the open window caught the delicate fabric, pressing it tight against her body.

  Dylan felt his own body come alive, felt heat flood his system and his mouth go as dry as sand. Desire engulfed him with such violence, such a vengeance, it had the air stalling in his lungs and the blood slowly draining from his limbs.

  The radio on the dashboard crackled to life, its muted burst causing him to jump violently. Even though it had been little more than a muffled crack, in the quiet of the Jeep it had sounded as loud as an air-raid siren.

  He quickly looked around, disoriented and confused. His breathing was labored, and his shirt and forehead were awash with sweat. What the hell had he been thinking? How could he have allowed himself to be caught so off guard? If this had been a stakeout, he would have been dead by now.

  He glanced back up at the window, which was black now. No sign of light, and no sign of her.

  Dylan straightened up in the seat, running an impatient arm across his brow. He was burning up, the night feeling still and sultry to him now. He took a deep breath, cursing to himself and trying without much success to bring his heart rate back to normal.

  He reached for the key, twisted it and brought the engine to life. Slipping the car into gear, he switched on his lights and pulled away from the curb. As he passed the condo, he glanced up at the window, picturing her as she’d looked just moments before, and another rustle of desire had him shifting uneasily in the seat. He never should have looked, then he wouldn’t have to know that her smooth skin glowed white in the moonlight, that her warm, honeysilk hair was tousled and loose.

  He steered the car around a corner, picking up speed as he went. Maybe his real problem wasn’t the past at all, maybe it wasn’t having to cope with what had happened, but rather it was what his mind was imagining right now. Maybe his problem was a woman who could make him want her even when he didn’t want to.

  Chapter 4

  “Karen, do you know where—” Marissa stepped out of her office and skittered to a dead stop. She stared up at Dylan and blinked, her eyes growing wide with surprise. “Sheriff. What are you doing here?”

  “I was on my way in to see
you,” he said, frowning that she hadn’t used his given name. She looked very straitlaced and proper with her hair gathered back in a bun again—neat, tidy and without so much as a strand out of place—and the cotton blouse with the little lace-trimmed stand-up collar looked very pristine and modest. But his mind flashed to the picture of her standing at the window—the flimsy nightgown clinging to her body and her hair loose and sleep-tossed. “Your secretary wasn’t at her desk.”

  “No, I guess she’s not,” Marissa mumbled, glancing down at the empty desk beside her and vaguely remembering Karen saying something about a doctor’s appointment. She turned back to Dylan, feeling the pulse at her neck begin to throb against the collar of her blouse.

  It had been almost two weeks since Josh’s hearing—two of the most hectic and most wonderful weeks of her life. Both she and Josh had started school. Josh had begun summer school classes, and she’d started in her position as principal. They were both putting in long hours and adjusting to new routines. Under the guidance of Sutter High’s computer and industrial arts teacher Rick Mathers, ground had been broken and construction on the new toolshed had begun. Their days had become long and exhausting, and Marissa couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d worked as hard, or had been so happy. Josh was with her. After so many years apart, she and her son were finally a family.

  “Did we have an appointment?” she asked pleasantly, knowing very well they did not. An appointment with him was hardly something she would forget.

  Dylan shook his head. “No, I just came by to check up.”

  “On Josh, or me?” she asked stiffly, her smile turning brittle.

  “Well, I guess that depends,” he said dryly, giving her a sly look. “Have you done something I should know about?”

  His humor only made her smile grow more rigid. Josh teased with the same slow smile, the same playful gleam in his eyes, and the reminder was surprisingly painful. They were so much alike—father and son—and the older Josh got, the more the resemblance seemed to grow. It was as though she lived with a time bomb, and each day she wondered just how much longer it would be before everything exploded and someone noticed.