The Once and Future Father

by Marie Ferrarella

  Caught by surprise, Palmero yelped, his hold on her waist loosening. Lucy twisted around and tried to grab the gun out of his hand. It discharged.

  The next moment, Dylan was holding the gun he’d just laid down in his hand, aiming it at Palmero. The air turned blue around him as the other man cursed at both of them in frustration.

  “Daniels, get up,” Palmero shrieked at his man, but the latter had lost too much blood to rise to his feet on his own.

  Dylan stretched his free arm out to Lucy. Stifling a sob, Lucy fell into it.

  It was then that she saw the blood on the front of his shirt.

  She stared at it in horror, then looked up at him. “You’re hurt.”

  He was having trouble breathing and it was hard to keep his head from spinning. The distant sound of sirens was breaking apart the morning air. He had to hang on until they arrived.

  “Just a scratch,” he murmured. Palmero looked to the rear of the house. Dylan read his intent. “Here.” He shoved the gun handle toward Lucy. “Hold it on him. Shoot him if he tries anything. They’re almost here.”

  Her hand tightened around the weapon. It felt so unfamiliar to her. She’d only been on the firing range once in her life. Ritchie had made her go. She couldn’t hit anything or even come close.

  Dylan sank to his knees beside her, terrifying her. She knew he was struggling to remain conscious. It took all she could do not to take him in her arms and hold him, but she couldn’t afford to. Lucy saw the look on Palmero’s face. He was going to make a break for it. It was his only chance.

  She steadied the weapon with her other hand and smiled, thinking of the old line she’d always liked. She pulled back the trigger, her eyes on Palmero. “Go ahead, just give me an excuse. Make my day.”

  She heard Dylan laugh softly, the sound almost faint. “That’s my girl.”

  Chapter 16

  Lucy felt like her head was spinning. Everything had happened so quickly in the last half hour, and now she was standing out here in the hospital corridor, watching the lights play off the pastel-colored walls, while Elena slept in her infant seat on the floor right beside her leg.

  She didn’t know how much more of this waiting she could take. Why didn’t someone come out and talk to her, tell her how Dylan was doing?

  Waiting was making her crazy.

  There were things she wanted to say to Dylan, things that had occurred to her only after she had ridden in the ambulance with him and after the paramedics had taken him from her. Even after she’d stood, watching the surgery room doors close, leaving him on the inside and her on the outside.

  So many things. Private things, like she loved him and she was determined to remain in his life on whatever terms they could work out together. Public things, like the call she’d just gotten from Alma on the cell phone she’d almost forgotten to take with her. She’d grabbed it at the last minute, just before they had all rushed out of the house. Dylan went in an ambulance to one hospital while Daniels, the other wounded man, was taken to another.

  Lucy had taken all of three minutes to throw on some clothes and grab a couple of things for Elena. Dylan had lost consciousness and there was a bullet lodged in the vicinity of his heart. Scared, she had no idea how close she was to losing everything. There was absolutely no way she was going to remain behind while they took him to the hospital.

  Restless, she was about to pick Elena up and begin pacing when she saw a broad-chested man hurrying toward her. Their eyes met. There was a question in his.

  “Lucy?” She nodded and he put out his hand. “I’m Dave Watley, Dylan’s partner.” The captain had called him, filling him in on the details and telling him to close up shop. It looked like they had their man after all.

  From everything Dylan had told him and everything he hadn’t, Watley had a feeling he would find Lucy Alvarez here. He nodded toward the double doors. “How’s he doing?”

  It was the same question that had been ricocheting through Lucy’s brain now for the last hour. Feeling helpless, she shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t get anyone to tell me. He’s been in surgery since they brought him in.”

  Watley saw the anguish in her eyes. Everything about her body language declared Lucy to be a woman tottering on the edge of exasperation and despair. Looked like, stumbling blindly in the dark, Dylan had gotten himself a keeper, he thought.

  He slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “McMorrow’s a tough son of a gun. This isn’t the first bullet he’s caught. He’ll pull through.”

  “I know,” she murmured, but she knew nothing of the sort. Her eyes were bright with tears when she looked at Watley. “He has to. So I can tell him his case is solved.”

  Watley looked at her in surprise. “You know Palmero’s man rolled on him?”

  “What?”

  Obviously, she didn’t, so Watley told her. “Daniels thought he was going to die. Turns out he’s the religious sort and was afraid of meeting his Maker with a bad conscience. They took him to Mercy General. The guy talked all the way. Nonstop confession. Luckily the cop was there to read him his rights,” Watley said, laughing dryly. “We should have leaned on Daniels to begin with.” He could see by her expression that they were not talking about the same thing, at least not completely. “Why did you think the case was solved?”

  Elena was beginning to stir. Bending down, Lucy picked the baby up. “A package came to the shop in this morning’s mail marked Return to Sender. It was undeliverable because there was postage due. The handwriting on it was Ritchie’s.”

  “Was it the tape?” Watley asked. They had found out from Daniels that Ritchie had stolen one of the restaurant’s surveillance tapes, the one that showed Michelson being murdered. Daniels said he’d tried to blackmail Palmero with it.

  She nodded. “I had Alma open the package.” Even now, it was hard for her to believe that this had all happened because of something on a videotape. As soon as he was better, she was going to make Dylan tell her everything.

  “She have it now?”

  Lucy nodded, rubbing Elena’s back to soothe the baby back to sleep. “I just called your captain. He sent someone to get it.”

  “Good thinking. Who was your brother mailing the tape to?”

  “Me, at the house.” One way or another, Ritchie had intended to wind up with the tape.

  “Lucky thing he didn’t put enough postage on it. That kept it out of circulation for several weeks,” Watley remarked.

  “Yes, lucky,” she echoed.

  But she knew that luck didn’t have anything to do with it. They had a postage machine in the storeroom. Ritchie had used it countless times. He’d mailed the package out with insufficient postage on purpose. Just in case Palmero’s men came looking for the tape at the house and the shop. He knew from experience that the tape would be out of circulation for up to a month, if not more.

  She was too drained to explain anything to the man beside her.

  The door opened behind her and she sprang to attention, cornering the doctor who came out. “How is he?”

  The man undid the surgical mask he was wearing, letting it hang at half-mast around his neck. “Hard to hold down,” the physician commented with a wry smile. “Are you Lucy?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, trying to read his expression, praying that the news wasn’t bad.

  The doctor gestured to his right. Dylan had been transferred from the operating room to another area via a back route. “He’s asking for you. Room 112.”

  Eager to see him, Lucy still hesitated, looking at Elena. Her dilemma was clear.

  Watley stepped in. “Don’t give her another thought. I can watch your daughter until you come out.” His smile was reassuring. “It’ll be good practice for me. We’re having our first pretty soon now.”

  Rather than saying anything, she kissed his cheek and hurried down the hall to the room the doctor pointed out to her. Suddenly nervous, she took a deep breath before slipping inside.

  Dylan looked
as if he was asleep. She could feel her nerves twisting around her heart and squeezing. There were bandages crisscrossed over his chest, looping over his left shoulder. His left arm was bandaged all the way down to his elbow.

  When she thought of how close he had come to being killed…

  She saw his eyes flutter and then open, looking at her. Relief flooded her, threatening to steal her breath. It took a second for her to find her voice. “I hear you’re giving everyone a hard time.”

  Dylan tried to sit up. She crossed to the bed quickly, wanting to push him back, afraid to touch him and cause him any more pain than he already had.

  Concern had etched deep lines into his face. “Are you all right?”

  No, she wasn’t all right. She’d been to hell and back in the space of an hour. But she lifted a careless shoulder, letting it drop. “I wasn’t the one who was shot,” she reminded him. She wasn’t going to make a fool of herself and cry, she warned herself. But she felt her eyes smarting. “The question is, how are you?”

  A sound escaped his lips that sounded suspiciously like a deprecating laugh. “I’ll live.”

  “Nice to know.” She tried her best to sound flippant, thinking she wasn’t pulling it off too well. He had scared the hell out of her when he had passed out at her feet. She’d been so afraid that the wound was fatal. “According to your partner, so will Palmero’s lackey. Long enough to roll over on him.”

  She could see his mind working as it focused on what she was saying. That was when he was most alive, she thought, when he was concentrating on his work. Not on his personal life. Not on her. It was something she was going to have to come to terms with if she wanted to make a place for herself in his life.

  She was more than willing to try. The last hour had shown her that.

  “So he talked?” Dylan finally managed to say. Did she know how relieved he was to open his eyes and see her here? Did she have any idea what he had gone through, driving back to her house, terrified that something had happened to her?

  She nodded. “Nonstop, Watley says. And the tape turned up.”

  With his good arm, he pushed himself up on the bed. “Where?”

  “At the shop,” she answered glibly. “Ritchie mailed it from there to me—at the house. With just enough postage to keep it from being delivered. It was lying in the post office the whole time Palmero’s people were ransacking my place.”

  Dylan shook his head in admiration. “Ritchie always was sharp.”

  That was his take on it, she thought. She pressed her lips together grimly. “Maybe if he’d been a little less sharp, he’d still be around.”

  He agreed with her but was at a loss what to say in response. “Where’s Elena?”

  Lucy indicated the door and the corridor beyond. “Your partner’s watching her. Said it would be good practice for him.” Dylan’s face looked drawn, tired and so pale. How much blood had he lost? “Looks like you won’t have to be guarding me any longer.”

  Dylan looked at her, trying to gauge her tone. Was she happy about that? Relieved that she was out of danger, or relieved that he was going to be out of her life? He couldn’t tell. “Looks like.”

  When he made no effort to add anything further to that, she stared at him. Schooling herself for a break still didn’t help her when she was faced with it. Dammit, she’d nearly died out there, waiting to hear whether or not he was going to pull through, and now he was just shrugging her off like this?

  “So that’s it?” she demanded hotly. “You play the big heroic scene and then you move on out of my life again?”

  He didn’t understand what she was getting so angry about. He thought she wanted him to go. “Is that what you want?”

  Hands on her hips, she faced him squarely, fire in her eyes. “Is that what you want?”

  He thought that he had never seen anyone so magnificent in his life. “I asked first.”

  She could have choked him then. “Don’t play etiquette games with me, McMorrow. I want an answer, dammit. Are you planning on drifting through my life every ten months or so, making love with me and then disappearing off the face of the earth? Is that the kind of life you want?”

  More than anything in the world, he wanted to kiss her. But even more than that, he wanted to spare her. “No, but it might be better for you in the long run.”

  Where the hell did he get off, telling her what was better for her? “Don’t you think I should be the one to make that decision instead of having it made for me?”

  It took everything he had not to beg her to stay. Beg her to remain despite everything. But it wouldn’t be fair to her. “You can’t make a decision unless you have all the facts.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, only that there were still secrets between them and she hated that, hated that he kept things from her. “So tell me, tell me all the facts, Dylan.” Tell me you love me, Dylan.

  Where did he start? And how? How did he tell her about his life? This had been so much a part of him for so long, it seemed to have no beginning. It had just always been.

  But he knew he had to try. If there was ever going to be a tomorrow, he had to try. And even if she turned her back on him and walked away after she heard, he owed Lucy an explanation because of the child they had created together.

  “Did you know that kids who are abused tend to grow up and become abusers? And that boys who grow up in homes seeing their mother beaten by their father tend to perpetuate the same behavior when they get married? They beat their own wives.”

  Slowly, the shroud was beginning to lift for her. “Are you telling me that you were abused as a child? That your mother was abused?” Was that what he was afraid of? That he would treat her the way his father had treated his mother? Didn’t he know any better than that?

  “Abused,” Dylan echoed. “Such a clean, sanitary word for what went on in that house.” He hated remembering, had done everything he could to block the memories. But for her sake, he dug them out one more time and brought them into the light of day. “My father was like a walking time bomb, except you never knew what his settings were. He could go off at the slightest thing, anytime. Christmas, birthdays, riding in the car, it didn’t matter where, didn’t matter when. Somebody said something and suddenly he was this raging maniac, punching, beating, cursing. It was almost always aimed at my mother.” It only included him when he got in the way. When he tried to save his mother. Or when his father was trying to teach his mother a lesson.

  He looked at Lucy, an ironic, sad smile on his lips. “And she took it. For twenty-six years, my mother took it. Until she couldn’t take it anymore and died.”

  “He killed her?” she asked in horror.

  He shook his head. “Not directly. But he’s responsible all the same. She died because she couldn’t bring herself to walk away and hurt him. That’s what she told me, she didn’t want to hurt him. Never mind how many times he actually physically hurt her.”

  “What does this have to do with us?”

  “Weren’t you listening?” he demanded heatedly. “The children of wife beaters beat their own wives. Abused kids grow up to abuse their own kids.”

  He was throwing statistics at her. She was looking at a man, not a statistic. A man she loved. A man she knew. “Not every time.”

  She was too good, too pure, too optimistic. She didn’t know anything of the world he knew. “Enough to make it count. Enough to make it a threat.”

  He couldn’t just turn his back on what they had because he was afraid of what could happen. She wouldn’t let him. Beside him now, she placed her hand on his, willing him to look at her. To believe her.

  “You said I wasn’t listening. Maybe I wasn’t. But I was seeing. And remembering. Remembering what you were like, holding Elena. How angry you were when you realized I had intended to keep you out of her life.” Her eyes softened. “And remembering how you were with me.” She brought her face in close to his. “The only way you could hurt me is by walking out again, the way y
ou did last time.”

  He wanted to believe what she believed. But he remembered the promises his father made to his mother. Tears streaming down his face, begging her forgiveness and swearing he would never raise a hand to her again. Until the next time. “You don’t know what you’re saying. This is for your own good.”

  “Let me be the judge of what’s for my own good.” Her eyes held his. “And I pick you. You’re for my own good, Dylan. My own good and Elena’s.”

  He had never known what love really was. That it could feel like this. Like sunshine struggling to fill him, to take over every part of him. She was his love, and his sunshine.

  “You might live to regret this.”

  “Not a chance.” She took a step back. Watley was still outside with Elena. Maybe she should get back to him. “Get some rest, I’ll be back to see you in the morning.”

  But he held out his hand to her, drawing her back with the look in his eyes.

  “Lucy, don’t leave yet.” Funny, he’d faced down the bore of Palmero’s gun with far less nervousness than he felt traveling through him now. “I want to say something to you.”

  “I think you’ve already said more to me just now than you have the entire time we’ve known each other,” she teased. But she moved back to the bed despite her words. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  He wanted to phrase this just right, but words were beginning to scatter through his mind like so many pinballs after the plunger had struck them.

  “When I suddenly realized that I’d walked off and left you without checking on O’Hara—”

  He was going to apologize for putting her in harm’s way. There was no need to go over all that. “You were angry.”

  He waved away her words, wishing she’d let him get this out before he lost his nerve. Damn, she deserved candlelight and soft music, not the glaring whiteness of a hospital room. “That’s no excuse. My being angry could have cost you your life.”

  “But it didn’t, and that’s what counts. You can’t go through life speculating about what might have happened, thinking about the worst possibilities. That’s—”