The Once and Future Father

by Marie Ferrarella

  What did all this have to do with Ritchie? she wondered. “What happened?”

  He gave her the shortened version. He didn’t want her completely in the dark, but the less details she knew, the better off she was. “The meeting that was set up never came off. The accountant disappeared without a trace. He wasn’t the kind of man to just pull a vanishing act. He left behind a sizable bank account, not to mention a family. They haven’t heard from him since he failed to show up at the meeting.”

  Lucy shivered in the warm room. “And you think he’s dead?”

  Dylan didn’t want to frighten her, but he wouldn’t insult her with a lie, either. “I’d say it was a pretty safe bet.”

  She tried to take in what he was saying to her. “And you think Ritchie might have somehow been involved in all this? Ritchie would have never—”

  He spared her having to say it. They both knew Ritchie would have never had anything to do with murder. “I know.”

  But Ritchie had been somehow involved. Looking back, she supposed that would explain a lot. Ritchie’s evasiveness, his being so sure that things were going to turn around for them soon. Oh, damn, Ritchie, how could you have gotten yourself mixed up in this? Why didn’t you just walk away?

  Dylan saw the pain in her eyes and wished there was something he could do or say to erase it instead of increasing it. But then, he’d never been very good for her. He’d always known that. “At this point, I’d say there was a definite possibility that he was somehow involved in all this. I just don’t know how.” He paused, thinking. He didn’t like the idea of her being alone. “Do you have anyone you can stay with?”

  There was Alma, but there was hardly enough room for Alma and her things within her tiny studio apartment, much less for another woman with a baby.

  She shook her head. And then the impact of his question hit. Her eyes widened. “You think they’ll be back?”

  There was no way to sugarcoat this. For her safety, he didn’t even try. “If they didn’t find what they were after, yes.”

  She looked down at the sleeping infant in her arms. “I’ll get a large dog.” She’d been meaning to get one for protection for a while now. This just made it necessary.

  Dylan frowned. She was going to need more than just a dog. A dog could easily be disposed of. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you some police protection.”

  She wanted more than protection, she wanted revenge. Lucy raised her eyes to his. “If you think that Palmero is somehow responsible for Ritchie’s death, can’t you do something about it?”

  The breath he blew out was one of frustration. “We need evidence, and evidence takes time.”

  Much as he wanted to reassure her that something would be done, he wasn’t at liberty to explain just what they were doing or his part in it. This was an on-going investigation, and Lucy’s knowing any more about it would endanger all of them, not just him.

  Dylan glanced at his watch. It was getting late. He had to be going. She needed her rest and he needed not to be standing here, looking at her. Old memories had a way of permeating no matter what sort of a defensive he was mounting against them.

  He indicated her suitcase. “In the meantime. I thought you might want some of your own things.” He noticed the way the hospital gown slid off her shoulder. He remembered how soft her skin had felt beneath his hand. “Not that the hospital gown isn’t without merit.”

  Lucy pushed the gown back up, feeling herself growing warm. He’d always had that effect on her, creating intimacy in the middle of chaos.

  And distance in the middle of intimacy, she reminded herself.

  She looked at the jumble in the suitcase. There was no reason for Dylan to have gone out of his way like this for her. Especially after the way she’d thrown him out of her room earlier.

  “That was very nice of you.” She raised her eyes to his, wishing with all her heart that things were different. But they weren’t, she silently reminded herself. “Dylan, I didn’t mean to snap at you when you came in.”

  “Who better than you?” There was a bare hint of a smile as he shrugged philosophically. “Way I see it, you’ve earned the right.” He rose to his feet, then paused, held fast by things that weren’t visible. Things that could only be felt. “I’m very sorry about Ritchie. He was a good guy.”

  “Yes,” she agreed softly. “He was.” She stroked Elena’s jet-black hair, struggling with the lump in her throat. “You know, he was really looking forward to this baby. Maybe even more than I was. Kept telling me not to worry, that it was going to be all right.” A bittersweet smile played on her lips. “He liked to talk about all the things he was going to do with the baby once it was born.” Tears welled up in her eyes, spilling out. “And now she’ll never get to know him.” Lucy pressed her lips together, unable to continue.

  The tears undid him. He remembered other tears, and the same helpless feeling eating away at him. Dylan forgot about the distance he was trying to maintain.

  His hand beneath her chin, he raised her head until her eyes met his. “Hey, now, don’t do that. It won’t help anything,” Dylan told her softly.

  Embarrassed at the loss of control, Lucy wiped her damp cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “You’re right, Ritchie wouldn’t have wanted to be remembered this way. He would have wanted me to toast his newest venture.” Lucy raised her eyes toward the ceiling. “Though I don’t think heaven’s going to really be ready for him.”

  “You’re probably right.” The Ritchie he remembered had been too full of life and too full of energy to be fitted for a set of angel’s wings. “But since we’re talking about Ritchie…” Dylan began quietly. “Unless something unexpected turns up in the autopsy, his body’s going to be released early tomorrow morning.” With Lucy still in the hospital, that complicated things. “I could see about making his funeral arrangements for you.”

  Her immediate reaction was to say no, that she could take care of her own, thank you. But both of them knew that for the moment, she obviously couldn’t. To refuse him because of her stubborn pride would be stupid. And, after all, he had been Ritchie’s friend. If she set aside her own differences with Dylan, she could see that her brother’s death had affected him.

  In hindsight, Dylan had probably been the best friend Ritchie had ever had. It was their breakup, hers and Dylan’s, that had caused Ritchie to back away from him.

  Maybe if he hadn’t, he would have still been alive now.

  Lucy sighed. There was no sense in torturing herself this way. It wouldn’t change anything. If nothing else, what had happened between her and Dylan had taught her that.

  “Thank you, I would appreciate that,” she told him quietly.

  He doubted if she actually meant the words she used, but he knew Lucy was far too practical in her own way to refuse an offer that made sense, no matter what her feelings about him might be. It was his guess that they were probably as strong now as they had once been, only now they were of a different venue.

  She’d loved him once and he had turned his back on her. It had been for her own good, even if he’d never told her that. She wouldn’t have understood if he had, would have probably tried to talk him out of it if she’d known everything.

  Now those strong feelings were probably given over to another emotion, equally as passionate. He only had to think of his father to know that love and hate could coexist. And only think of his mother to know that one could destroy the other.

  It was best not to go there. There was nothing to be gained from it.

  He heard the nurse entering the room behind him. He’d overstayed his visit.

  “All right, then, I’ll take care of it,” he promised. In light of everything, it was the least he could do.

  “More personal time?” Watley said, looking up from the book he was only half reading. He set his book down on the edge of the card table and looked at Dylan. “Wow, twice in three days. You keep this up and people are going to start saying you actuall
y have a life.”

  Lucy was being discharged this afternoon, despite her doctor siding with Dylan and advising her to remain an extra day. She needed someone to bring her home. He’d decided that that someone was him. Dylan had done it all by the book, informing his captain and now Watley that he was taking several hours of personal time.

  He didn’t need to be razzed. “I never cared much about what people have to say, one way or another.”

  “It’s the sister, isn’t it?” Watley asked.

  The look Dylan slanted his way would have made a lesser man cower in uncertainty. He’d filled Watley in on what he’d told the captain and the others on the task force, as well as Alexander and Hathaway. That the homicide victim who had been discovered three days earlier was most likely connected to the Palmero investigation. Dylan had been brief in his summation, skipping the part that Ritchie Alvarez wouldn’t have been above a little blackmail when it involved the bad guys. In Dylan’s estimation they would have had to have known Ritchie in order to understand and not condemn.

  He figured Ritchie had already paid the ultimate price. There was no need to drag his name through the mud.

  Or Lucy’s, either.

  Dylan had also been brief describing his connection to the man and to his family, namely his sister, Lucy. He definitely had omitted that they’d once been involved. It had no bearing on anything. He should have figured that Watley, a terminally incurable romantic trapped in the body of a lumbering bear, would have picked up on that somehow.

  “Yes, it’s the sister,” he said evenly. “She needs police protection. I already told you that. I’m bringing her and her baby home from the hospital, nothing more.”

  Watley appeared to be taking it all in, nodding thoughtfully. “What about the father?”

  It was a question Dylan kept coming back to himself. He shrugged. “She says he’s out of the picture.”

  Watley didn’t look convinced. “Make sure he’s not the jealous type.”

  The offhanded advice struck a chord deep within Dylan. It would have been cruelly ironic if Lucy had become involved with someone given to fits of jealousy. Heading toward the door, he glanced over his shoulder as he dismissed Watley’s warning.

  “Don’t worry about that.” Dylan stopped. There was an odd expression on Watley’s face, as if his partner was choking back on a grin he was trying to swallow. “What’s with you?”

  “It’s nothing.” Watley pretended to try to compose himself. “It just always chokes me up, watching a fledgling leaving the nest for the first time.”

  Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “If you don’t watch your step, I’ll burn the nest down around you.”

  Giving up the effort, Watley laughed out loud. “Does she know about that temper of yours?”

  The hint of a smile faded. Dylan opened the door. “She knows all she needs to know.”

  “Somehow,” Watley said under his breath as the apartment door closed, “I tend to doubt that. Good luck, lady. You’re going to need it.” Pushing his book aside, he got up to monitor the camera.

  There was no denying that Dylan had gone far out of his way. He’d brought her her clothes, seen to Ritchie’s funeral arrangements and provided not only a ride home, but even an infant seat for the baby. She wouldn’t have believed him to be this thoughtful, even while she’d been in love with him.

  But there was also no denying the fact that she felt uneasy here sitting next to him in the car. Uneasy because all the available space in the small enclosure was filled with memories and feelings that had once been left out in the cold when he had walked away from her and the life she thought they could have together.

  Uneasy because she knew how susceptible she was to another onslaught of those same feelings. And being engulfed by those feelings would make her nothing short of stupid, because this time wouldn’t play any differently than the last.

  It was a given. She knew that. Nothing about Dylan had changed.

  She supposed that was part of the problem. Dylan hadn’t changed. He was still the same man she’d fallen in love with.

  But she had changed, she reminded herself. Pain had made her grow, made her abandon the Pollyanna outlook she had once embraced and brought her face-to-face with reality. It had changed her. And knowing she was to be a mother had changed her. It had made her stronger, more independent. More determined to stand on her own two feet no matter what. Because there wasn’t just herself to think of anymore.

  This time, she wasn’t going to be a fool.

  Silence had never bothered him before. Given his choice, he had always preferred silence to sound. His own council to the noise of others. But it was different this time. This time, the silence only underscored the lack of something.

  The lack of the sound of her voice.

  “You’re usually more talkative than this.” He caught the careless rise of her shoulder out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t explain why that bothered him as much as it did. He felt as if he’d lost something. “Thinking about Ritchie?”

  Lucy kept her eyes straight ahead, venturing only to look in the rearview mirror to check on Elena. The baby was asleep, lulled by the movement of the vehicle.

  “No, trying not to think about Ritchie. Trying to wrap my mind around the future.”

  Because it was by thinking of the future, by removing herself from the present, that she was going to be able to get through all this without crumbling. She couldn’t allow herself to think about her brother’s funeral. Or about sitting here beside Dylan and not reaching out to touch him. Not baring her soul to him the way she once had so naturally.

  But all that, she reminded herself, had only been one-sided. She’d bared her soul to Dylan, but he had hardly allowed her a toehold into his own world, giving her only vague answers whenever she asked about his past or his family. All he’d told her was that his parents were dead. It had made her think that he needed her all the more.

  Just went to show how naive someone in love could be, she thought.

  “You’ll get through it,” he assured her. “If anyone can, you can.”

  “Yeah, that’s me, the strong one.” So why did she feel so damn vulnerable now?

  He heard the sarcasm in her voice. It surprised him. He wouldn’t have thought her capable of it. It made him wonder if the father of her child had done something to crush her spirit. He had to work at curbing the sudden flash of anger.

  “Ritchie used to say he wished he was as strong as his little sister.”

  The casual reference coaxed a smile from her, fondness curving her mouth. “Ritchie just liked to talk.” Lucy closed her eyes, remembering far better days. “He could have been anything he wanted to be, but he liked being what he was.” She opened her eyes again and looked at Dylan. “Rootless.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She had no idea what rootless was, he thought. He was the rootless one, not Ritchie. “He felt pretty attached to you.”

  She began to protest, then stopped. There was really no denying that, she realized. She and Ritchie had had a bond, no matter how much they had argued. “And to his friends.”

  Like the one who had gotten him his job with Den of Thieves, Dylan thought grimly. His laugh was short, humorless. “Ritchie’s problem was that he wasn’t always careful about his choice of friends.”

  That much was true, but she felt compelled to defend her brother now that he could no longer do it himself. “He liked people. Liked to see the good in them.”

  Dylan heard her daring him to dispute that. He wasn’t about to try. “He once told me that he picked that up from you.”

  She couldn’t help the smile that came to her. “Funny, I thought I got it from him.” The sadness she was trying so desperately to ignore threatened to overwhelm her again. “I’m going to miss him a lot.”

  Because they were stopped at a light and emotion was running high within the limited space of the car, Dylan allowed himself one unguarded moment. He slipped his hand over hers, squeezing it slightly. I
t was all he could allow himself to do.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  The surprised look in her eyes when she turned her head toward him faded after a beat, replaced with a smile that seemed to filter slowly down to her lips.

  There were times, she knew, when he could seem very kind. It helped to know that they shared at least this much. “Thank you.”

  And then she went with the moment. Lucy wasn’t sure exactly what prompted her, but she leaned over the lowered hand brake and kissed his cheek.

  Caught unprepared, a familiar sweetness poured all through Dylan. Everything within him gravitated toward it like victims of a shipwreck to the only raft bobbing in the water. Belatedly, he tried to block the feeling, but it was too late. So he let himself enjoy it.

  Just this once.

  The driver behind them leaned on his horn, tearing the moment apart.

  Just as well, Dylan thought. Personal time or not, he still felt as if he was on duty. Being on duty didn’t include indulging himself or giving in to a sudden onslaught of needs, no matter how unexpected or demanding.

  He kept repeating that to himself as he drove the rest of the way to her house.

  It helped.

  But not much.

  Chapter 6

  Lucy stood to the side as Dylan put down her suitcase and the infant seat and unlocked the front door for her. Holding Elena tightly in her arms, she braced herself for the shambles that she was about to see, the harsh evidence of strange hands rifling through her things, through her life.

  She tried very hard not to dwell on how violated, how vulnerable that made her feel. It seemed to her that everything was conspiring to make her feel that way, but she just wasn’t going to allow it. Not for her sake, not for Elena’s. She refused to be vulnerable.

  Like someone about to dive into the deep end of the pool, she took a deep breath and entered. If he hadn’t been paying attention, Dylan would have walked right into her when she stopped dead in the doorway.