Bulletproof Hearts

by Brenda Harlen

  “Maybe it should.”

  “Why? Neither one of us wanted anything more complicated than what we had—great sex, no strings attached.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” he told her.

  “Are you saying that you wanted strings?”

  “I wanted to believe we could have had something more than one night,” he admitted.

  “Yeah, well, the presence of a seven-year-old puts a damper on screaming sex, doesn’t it?”

  He knew her well enough to know that her sarcasm was a defense mechanism. And if she was still hurting, it meant she had some feelings for him.

  “Don’t do this, Natalie.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t pretend that what we shared didn’t mean anything.”

  “What do you think it meant?”

  So much more than he’d wanted it to, and still not enough to overcome his doubts and fears. But he couldn’t tell her that, so he remained silent.

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” She turned away.

  “Dammit, Natalie. Don’t get mad at me because I can’t answer that question.”

  “I’m not mad.” She practically shouted the words at him. Then, more softly, “I’m really not.

  “There’s no point in being angry or hurt. I made my choices years ago, and I’ve never regretted them. I don’t regret them now.”

  “Why do you think there’s a choice that needs to be made?”

  She just shook her head as she retrieved a large saucepan from the cupboard, then turned on the faucet and began filling it.

  “Because I walked out when I saw Jack,” he guessed.

  “I don’t blame you for that,” she said. “I know a child’s a bigger responsibility than a lot of people can handle.”

  “Is that what you think—that I couldn’t handle the responsibility?”

  All things considered, it was the only logical conclusion to draw. But Natalie wasn’t angry with him. Disappointed, maybe, but that was no one’s fault but her own.

  She should have told him about her child; she should have been prepared for his reaction. But she could hardly blame him for running out when even Jack’s father had done the same.

  “It doesn’t matter, Dylan.” She set the pot on the stove.

  “It does matter.” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her toward him. “This matters.”

  Then he covered her mouth with his own.

  Shocked disbelief momentarily immobilized Natalie.

  The shock quickly melted away, but she remained captive to the masterful seduction of his lips. Desire heated her blood, coursed through her veins. Her mind raged at him, her heart cursed him, while her body could do nothing but respond.

  His hands slid up her back, drawing her close, closer. Her thighs were trapped between his, her breasts crushed against his chest. She couldn’t move; she didn’t want to. She completely and willingly surrendered.

  Her heart pounded, her knees trembled, her body yearned.

  And when he slowly eased his mouth from hers, she nearly whimpered with the sense of loss, of longing.

  She kept her eyes closed. She couldn’t face him just yet. She was still feeling a little shocked, a little confused and very aroused.

  It wasn’t fair that he could make her want like this when he’d made it clear that he didn’t want her anymore. Or did he? Could he kiss her like that, hold her like that, if he didn’t want her? She didn’t know. She didn’t know what to believe.

  “You’re sending mixed signals, Lieutenant.”

  His gaze was dark, direct. “I didn’t think there was anything questionable about that kiss. But if you need clarification, I’ll spell it out. I want you, Natalie.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. That was certainly clear enough, but not very reassuring. She pulled out of his arms. “For how long this time?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’ve been down this road before. I can’t do it again.”

  “Do what?”

  “Open up my heart to you, only to have you throw it back at me in the morning.”

  “I made a mistake,” he told her. “I thought it would be easier to walk away than to admit the depth of my feelings. I was wrong. I can’t stop thinking about you. I haven’t stopped missing you.”

  Her heart gave a little sigh, but it was her heart that was always getting her into trouble. She needed to think with her head for a change. She needed to remember that there was more at risk than just her own feelings this time. If she gave Dylan another chance, if she let him back into her life now, Jack could be hurt, too.

  “There’s too much going on in my life right now to even think about getting involved with you.”

  “Things don’t always happen in life at the most convenient times,” he said reasonably.

  True, but she couldn’t think reasonably about this now. Not while her head was still spinning from his kiss.

  “I really need to, um, get supper going.”

  He sighed. “We’re not finished with this, Natalie.”

  “I know. I just can’t deal with it right now.” She opened a can of sauce and dumped it into a pan, then moved to the freezer to get the box of meatballs.

  He took the package from her hand, frowned at it. “You actually eat this stuff?”

  She was so relieved by his willingness to change the subject that she decided not be offended by the question. “What’s wrong with it?”

  He found the manufacturer’s listing of ingredients. “Soya protein, hydrolyzed corn protein.” He looked up. “Do you even know what those things are?”

  She took the box back from him, dumped a couple handfuls of meatballs into the canned sauce. “I never claimed to be a gourmet cook, and as a single working mother, expediency sometimes has to take precedence over nutrition.”

  “I’m not criticizing,” he said. “Just observing. For your information, I have the greatest respect for single parents. I know how difficult it is for one person to juggle a full-time job, housework and child care. Not to mention extracurricular activities, unexpected emergencies and prom-dress crises.”

  “Prom dresses?”

  He grinned and began to hunt through her cabinets. “Not mine—my sisters’.”

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Spices. Oregano, basil, that kind of thing.”

  Natalie frowned but pointed to the opposite wall. “Over there.” Then, “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

  He found her minimal selection of bottles and jars and began sorting through them. “Actually, I have three.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I realized that what you said to me Saturday afternoon was true. There’s a lot we don’t know about each other. I want to change that.”

  He added a pinch of this, a dash of that, a couple shakes of something else. He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t measure. “Do you have any fresh garlic?”

  “Sorry.”

  “The powder will do,” he said, although his tone indicated otherwise. “There really is no substitute for fresh, though.”

  She shook her head. “Were you the only son?”

  He nodded.

  Three girls and one boy. And she felt as though she had her hands full with just Jack. “How did your mom handle it?”

  “She didn’t,” he said simply. “She walked out when I was nine. My dad raised us.”

  “Oh.” She was stunned by his revelation, amazed that any man would accept such a responsibility. Her own father had never been a hands-on kind of dad, and Jack’s had shown less than zero interest in his child. “He must have been an incredible man.”

  “He was. He died five years ago.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Yeah. I never realized how much I counted on him until he wasn’t there anymore.”

  She stirred the sauce. “What about your mom—do you miss her?”

  Natalie had more than enough days when she was
ready to pull her hair out, but she couldn’t imagine ever walking out on her child. Although Dylan recited the facts of his mother’s abandonment dispassionately, she knew he couldn’t have endured the loss without a few scars.

  “I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” he said, as if following her thoughts. “My dad was great. He was always there for us.”

  “Do you think…” She faltered, reluctant to admit her doubts, unwilling for him to see her insecurities.

  “Do I think what?”

  She glanced out the window to where Jack was playing in the backyard. Her biggest fear was that the choices she’d made would negatively impact on her child. The last thing she ever wanted was for Jack to pay for her mistakes. “Do you think a single parent can do as good a job raising a child as two parents?”

  He shrugged. “I turned out okay, didn’t I?”

  Turning her attention back to the bubbling sauce, she smiled. “Yeah. I guess you did.”

  Dylan enjoyed the meal he shared with Natalie and her son. It wasn’t the food so much as the camaraderie. He was used to eating alone in the silence of his home or with only the television for company. He’d been on his own for so long he’d almost forgotten the simple pleasure of companionship.

  He still felt the sense of loss, of emptiness, when he looked at Natalie’s child, but he was starting to see beyond that now. Jack was no longer just a symbol of what was missing from his own life, but an individual with a captivating personality, a devilishly charming grin, and his mother completely wrapped around his smallest finger. It took less than five minutes in their company for him to realize this latter fact, and he couldn’t help but be impressed by her devotion to her child.

  “This is really good spaghetti, Mom.”

  He grinned at the obvious surprise in Jack’s voice.

  “Lieutenant Creighton made the sauce,” she admitted.

  Jack looked at him with something close to a sense of awe. “You know how to cook?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Wow. Can you come for supper every night?”

  His chuckle masked an internal struggle between fear and longing. There was still a part of him that desperately wanted a family—a wife and a child at home. A son like Jack. But he’d given up that dream when Beth died. It was too painful to think of all that he’d lost, to wish for what he couldn’t have.

  And when he’d finally started to date again, he’d purposely avoided any woman with children.

  Until Natalie.

  Then again, he’d never really dated Natalie. They’d fallen into bed together, then everything had fallen apart. And he hadn’t found out about her son until after the fact.

  Would it have made a difference, if he’d known about Jack?

  He wasn’t sure.

  Because he knew about Jack now, and he couldn’t stay away. It hurt unbearably to remember, and yet, buried somewhere deep beneath the pain and the sorrow was a tiny piece of his heart that dared hope he might be given a second chance.

  Could Natalie and Jack be his second chance?

  Was he strong enough to risk his heart again to find out?

  “Mom signed me up to play baseball this summer.”

  Jack’s announcement interrupted his wandering thoughts.

  “I’m playing for the Comets,” he continued. “I wanted to be a pitcher but Mom told me pitchers never get the credit when you win but they always get blamed when you lose. She got me a new glove this year and my first game is Thursday and coach is gonna start me at short cause he said I got quick reflexes and a good arm and I get to bat cleanup and Kevin Riley said that was ’cause I’m the only one who can hit the ball out of the infield. Do you wanna come?”

  Dylan was stunned, as much by the rapid-fire method by which the child spilled out details as by the invitation. A Little League Baseball game. How often had he imagined sitting in the stands to watch his own child play? How often had he dreamed of having a son with whom to toss a ball around in the backyard, as he’d done with his own father?

  “Mr. Lieutenant—do you wanna come?”

  Natalie smiled. “It’s Lieutenant Creighton,” she corrected. “And I’m sure he has other things to do Thursday night.”

  “It’s Dylan,” he said. “And yeah, I’d like to come.”

  “Cool.” Jack grinned and returned his attention to his pasta.

  Natalie didn’t look half as pleased as her son.

  “Is there a problem with me going to Jack’s baseball game?” Dylan asked later, as they were finishing up the dishes in the kitchen. She was washing, he was drying, and Jack—ecstatic to have been excused from his usual chore—had raced up to his bedroom to play video games.

  “Of course not,” she denied. “I’m just surprised you’d want to go.”

  “I like baseball,” he reminded her.

  “It’s Little League, not the World Series.”

  He shrugged. “Give the kid fifteen years—you never know.”

  She smiled as she drained the sudsy water from the sink. “Maybe.”

  “I played Little League when I was a kid.”

  “What position?”

  “Pitcher.”

  She laughed as she stole his towel to dry her hands.

  “And you’re right—the pitcher always gets flak when a team loses and never the glory for a win. I was an all-star selection four years running, but never MVP. The big trophies always go to the guys with the hot bats.” He grinned. “But the pitchers always get the hot chicks.”

  “Please.” She held up a hand. “I’m hoping I have fifteen years before I have to think about things like that, too.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t count on it.”

  “I’m just grateful that his biggest preoccupations right now are baseball, video games and Kevin’s new puppy.” She picked up the stack of dry plates and set them in the cupboard.

  “It’s amazing how much has changed in thirty years. And how much has stayed the same.” He folded the towel and hung it over the handle of the oven door. “I don’t even think they had video games when I was a kid. Electronic pinball was about as high tech as it got.”

  “Then you should let Jack show you his new system.”

  “The kid would probably humiliate me.”

  “Probably.” She slid the last of the cutlery into the drawer. “Which is why I refuse to even pick up a controller.”

  He chuckled again, surprised by how relaxed he felt with her. Had he ever shared this kind of easy banter with another woman? Had he ever felt so comfortable doing mundane chores?

  He didn’t think so, and he suddenly couldn’t remember any of the reasons he’d decided that he shouldn’t get involved with her. He took her hand, noted the wariness that came into her eyes in response to the casual gesture.

  “Let’s sit for a while,” he suggested.

  She hesitated. “I should check on Jack.”

  “Jack will be fine for a few more minutes,” he assured her, tugging on her hand.

  Natalie didn’t want to sit with Dylan. She didn’t want to remember the easy rapport they’d established a few weeks earlier. She didn’t want to miss the companionship she’d enjoyed for such a short time. She especially didn’t want to think about the magical night they’d spent together, or the way everything had come crashing down around her the morning after.

  But she followed him into the living room, and she sat down beside him on the sofa.

  “I told you about Beth—about how she died.”

  She nodded. She knew it hadn’t been easy for him to tell her about his wife, and she wondered why he was bringing it up again now.

  “What happened that night was really a culmination of events that had been set in motion much earlier. Probably when we got married. Maybe even before that.”

  “You don’t have to share your life history with me,” Natalie told him. Not that she wasn’t curious, but she didn’t want to hear him talk about his wife. She didn’t want to know how deliriously happy th
ey’d been together. She didn’t want to know all the hundred and one reasons she could never measure up to the woman he still loved.

  It was ironic. The first time she’d fallen in love, it had been with a man who couldn’t be faithful. The second—and absolute last time, she promised herself—had been with a man who couldn’t bear to be unfaithful to a wife he didn’t even have anymore. She wanted to resent Beth Creighton, but she couldn’t. Dylan’s wife had obviously been an incredible woman to have been loved so deeply by this man.

  “I won’t bore you with my whole life story,” he promised her. “But there are some things I think you should know.”

  Natalie nodded. If he was determined to talk, she had no choice but to listen—and pretend she wasn’t hurting inside.

  “Beth and I had known each other forever.” He smiled. “Well, since second grade, which is close enough to forever. We started out as friends, started dating in high school and got married as soon as I finished at the police academy.

  “Beth wanted to have a baby right away. She’d been an only child and wanted to fill our home with children. At the time, our home was a tiny one-bedroom apartment downtown and I didn’t think we could afford a child on my salary. So I talked her into waiting a couple years.

  “But I was working long hours and she was bored. So she decided to pursue a certificate in journalism. She loved school, loved the idea of having a career of her own. I was grateful that she’d found a distraction, that she’d stopped bugging me about having a baby.

  “When she graduated, she took a job with the Fairweather Gazette. At first she covered the society section, then she moved to the local crime beat. Soon, her schedule was as crazy as mine. She was gone at all hours, chasing stories, courting danger. I worried about her; she laughed off my concerns.

  “I got a promotion, which meant more money and more regular hours. We moved into a bigger apartment, and I suggested that we should start trying to have the family she’d always wanted.

  “This time it was Beth who balked at the idea. She wanted to wait until her career was more established. What could I say? How could I demand she give up a job that I’d encouraged her to pursue in the first place?”

  Natalie didn’t know what he wanted from her, so she just listened with an increasing feeling of dread. She knew how it was going to end, she knew how Beth had died, but she sensed there was something more to the story.