“Good.”
That was a pretty darned decent apology. More importantly, Delaney believed that he knew what he’d done wrong. That it had been, indeed, dangerous. Her duty as a marshal had been dispatched.
As a girlfriend? She was still pouting. Maybe Emily would Skype a coffee-fudge-swirl ice cream eating session with her tonight. That’d turn her mood around.
“I’m not making an excuse.” Kellan bent to pick up a rock, then winged it over into the creek. “But can I give you an explanation?”
“Alright.” She’d listen. Even though it wouldn’t fix anything.
“I was off-balance when Flynn told me about O’Connor. It took the two of them a day to fill me in, even after they’d sworn to never keep secrets again. Only this time, it was my fault. They didn’t know where I was on Thursday, when this all started. Because I was with you, on our overnight at the B&B. Flynn pounced on me, accused me of never being around anymore.”
Uh-oh. Self-righteous anger didn’t fly when she’d brought some of the hurt on herself. “I didn’t think they’d notice. Not with Rafe so wrapped up with Mollie and Flynn with Sierra.”
“Me, neither. Rafe’s so lovestruck that he hasn’t noticed that I’ve skipped out on doing the laundry for two weeks. But they did notice I’ve been scarce. So I was playing defense, from the get-go. Trying to distract Flynn from nailing down where I’ve been disappearing to.”
“You didn’t spill the beans, did you?”
“Of course not. Flynn was pretty anxious. More about telling me, even, than tailing O’Connor. It didn’t take much to throw him off the scent. I did ask if they’d reported O’Connor to you. But they wanted to hold off, see what he was up to first.”
Delaney yanked—viciously—at a pine branch. Then she crushed the needles in her palm and took a long sniff of the fresh scent. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why? Why risk themselves, when I could’ve had a team there to do it?”
“Because they’re in love with Mollie and Sierra. Because they didn’t want you to yank us out of Bandon before knowing if O’Connor was there for us, or for shits and giggles. When they laid it out like that, I had to agree. Can’t ask them to leave their women behind.” Kellan took her hand. Brushed the needles from it and laid a soft kiss on top of each knuckle while gazing into her eyes with a look so heated it melted her knees to jelly. “Not when I know what it feels like to care so much. Not when I’d do anything to stay with you, to protect you.”
“Oh.” This wasn’t just an explanation. It was a declaration. One that Delaney wasn’t at all prepared to hear. One that made her want to freeze the moment and memorize the way the wind lifted the shock of dark hair off his forehead. How the shadows from the thick foliage made the lightness of his eyes pop. How her heart felt like it was about to triple-time it right out of the two sports bras she’d layered for their hike.
Kellan winced. “I listened to my heart instead of my head. Something they tried to drum out of me in law school. The facts are supposed to be all-mighty. Emotions can’t ever overbalance the facts. I never believed that, though.”
“Really, Counselor?” They’d stopped walking. When had that happened?
“Nope. Emotions are facts all unto themselves. Ignoring them wipes out a powerful tool.”
It pained her, just a bit, to hear Kellan’s insightfulness. It highlighted the promising career that Rafe had denied him. “You would’ve been a great lawyer.”
“Maybe.” He shook his whole body, like a dog after getting out of the water, clearly sloughing off the what-ifs. “Doesn’t matter. I’m going to work my ass off to be a great deputy sheriff. Later. Right now, I’m going to work my ass off apologizing. For not trusting you. For not being honest with you. And, I’m pretty sure I should also apologize for hurting you. I made Marshal Evans angry. But I hurt my girlfriend, Delaney, and that’s inexcusable.” Kellan put her hand on top of his heart and covered it with his own. “I’m sorry.”
Let’s see . . . an A for effort, and an A for execution. Not because of the hand-holding or the staring-into-her-soul gaze. No, it was the naked honesty that coated every single word that did her in. “Was there a whole semester in law school in how to always say the right thing?”
Quick as a flash, Kellan’s signature rakish charm straightened his neck and popped out his pecs as he grinned. “Nah. That’s pure, natural talent.” He gathered her into his arms and hugged her tightly. “I’m truly sorry, Laney.”
“Thank you.” Her phone vibrated in her front pocket. Normally, she’d ignore it. A big, dramatic apology was sure to end with some truly fantastic kisses. Delaney wanted the whole package. But between the impending tail on O’Connor and the new case she’d started on Sierra, this was not the day to let it roll to voicemail. “Sorry. I have to check my phone.”
“No big deal. As long as you’re not signing up to look for a new boyfriend on some dating site. Are we okay?”
“Getting there. Or maybe it’s just Norah’s calming tea kicking in . . .” Delaney winked and smiled as she unlocked her phone’s screen.
For all the time they’d spent fighting since they met, the fight today had felt weird and horrible. Probably because things had been relatively idyllic since they’d come to a truce and started dating. A little more grovel would be appreciated, but darn it, Delaney completely understood why he’d made those choices.
“Would a back rub help get me the rest of the way?” he offered.
Laughing, Delaney looked down again. And the email address that flashed across her phone was the last thing she expected to see.
No. That was wrong. The message beneath it was the last thing Delaney expected to see. It was a sucker punch to her gut. And it stopped everything. Her walking. Her finger hovering above the phone. Very possibly her breath. The moment froze around her, squeezing her, tightening unbearably—
“Laney. Laney!” The sharp crack of Kellan’s voice brought her head up with a snap. “What is it?”
“I can’t . . . I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want this to be happening.”
And yet, she reached out for him. For the comfort, for the safety of Kellan’s embrace. Maybe the need for his touch was a weakness. But Delaney didn’t care. Didn’t care about leaving herself open to be hurt again.
If anyone could make her life being upended better, it was him.
But she still only gave it about a ten percent chance of actually happening.
Chapter Twelve
Kellan more or less pushed an unresisting Delaney over to a fallen log and sat her down. She was scaring him. Normally, the marshal was . . . well, calm, but vibrating with suppressed energy. Now she was flat. Deflated. Her muscles limp, her face a sheet-white shuttered mask.
“Can I see?” He pried the phone out of her hand. Normally, Kellan wouldn’t risk even a side-eye glimpse of her phone. He got the sanctity of the utter privacy that had to be maintained with all of her cases, but Delaney looked a blink away from fainting. Whatever was on that phone had caused it and he couldn’t help unless he knew the facts.
The short email displayed gave Kellan more questions than answers.
From: Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
Subject: Parole Hearing for Inmate 76582
It is our duty to inform you that inmate Roger Brinker is eligible for parole. His hearing will be on Monday, September 27, at 10:00 a.m. You are invited to speak to his character in person, or you may send in a statement.
“Who is this? Someone you tried to protect?”
“Hardly.” The ghost of a smile twisted at her mouth. “Someone I tried to forget, is more like it.”
“Delaney, I’m not asking you to break protocol.” He dropped to one knee in front of her. “But you’ve got to find some way to let me know what this is about. You’re scaring the hell out of me.”
“There’s no protocol to break. This isn’t about a case. Roger Brinker is my father.” Her voice dropped to a whisp
er, barely audible over the rushing creek below. “And I thought he’d rot to death in prison.”
So the marshal had a criminal in her family tree, too. Kellan never would’ve guessed they had that in common.
He sure as hell wouldn’t have wished it on her.
“How long’s he been in there?”
“Since I was seventeen. Since he’s the reason my mom was killed when I was sixteen.” Delaney looked at him, her pretty blue eyes as dull as old jeans. “He got a life sentence, Kellan. I was promised he’d never be free. That I’d never have to worry about seeing him again.”
Sadly, he could offer a basic explanation. “The prisons are overcrowded way beyond capacity. Older inmates, with good behavior and the right records, are getting sentences reduced. Even lifers.”
“It’s not right. I put him, all of it, behind me. This complicates everything.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s a short story. An old one that repeats over and over again. Woman falls for a man. The man’s handsome, a smooth talker. Full of empty promises. Ones he tries to fulfill by committing crimes, both petty and major. She stays with him even as he bounces in and out of jail. Until finally she’s killed as a result of his stupid, reckless, thuggish actions. He gets life, she gets a headstone that reads Loving Mother, and their daughter gets left to pick up the pieces.”
“That’s a shitty story.” His succinct review was enough to cut through her shock and finally pull his darling Laney back to life.
She snorted, chortled, and then grimaced. “It is, isn’t it?
“Barely worthy of straight-to-video release.” They both laughed, and the worst of the tension seeped from her stiff muscles.
“Nobody would sit through ninety minutes of a heroine that stupid.”
If nothing else, their barely ended fight proved that anyone and everyone would do, ah, less than smart things because they cared. Rubbing her knee, Kellan said quietly, “She must have loved him a lot.”
“Too much. Too much for her own good, anyway.” Delaney steepled her hands around her nose and just breathed for a few moments. “Kellan, my mother wasn’t blind to what he did. She didn’t deny he was guilty of all the crimes he got caught for, along with dozens more that he got away with. She just believed that her life would be nothing without him.”
Ouch. “Nothing? What about you?” What kind of a mother left her own kid out of the equation?
This time her smile was bitter, and so brittle it looked like a single pine needle floating by on the breeze would shatter her entire face. “See, that’s the same thing I asked myself all those nights she cried herself to sleep, alone, while he was in jail. The same thing I screamed at her every time I begged her to leave him, to forget him, to focus on our life.”
Kellan had thought that growing up without his mom was the worst. But . . . growing up with a mom who didn’t see you, who didn’t make you feel like the best damn kid in the world . . . maybe that was the worst. Even though he’d had her for only seven years, the strength and comfort of his mother’s love lasted to this day and beyond.
“You got a raw deal. You deserve about a thousand percent better. You know that, don’t you?”
She swallowed hard, bobbed a couple of nods. “I do. That’s why I made my life on my own terms. I went into law enforcement to atone for all the criminal things my father did. And I swore I’d never be one of those weak women who throws everything away for a man. Swore that I’d always stand on my own two feet. Not lean on anyone else.”
Delaney was strong, all right. But that strength was compressed so tightly that little stress fractures were bound to develop. Kellan didn’t want her to topple over one day from relying solely on herself. “You know how they earthquake-proof skyscrapers?”
The corners of her mouth quirked. “Ah, no. I can honestly say I have no idea.”
“At first, they just tried reinforcing the shit out of them. It didn’t hold up. So they went the other way. Added ball bearings and springs at the base to act like shock absorbers. Now buildings sway instead of toppling over.”
“Is this your way of telling me that if we have to relocate you again, you want to be an architect?”
In the dirt, Kellan sketched a square with a roof and an X inside of it, all without lifting his finger once. “In undergrad, we called them squareheads.”
“You can’t malign an entire profession like that.” Her lips twitched.
Which he counted as a win. He had to jostle her out of that scared, shattered version of Delaney any way possible. “Oh, yeah? Like there aren’t a thousand and one dead lawyer jokes?”
“Touché. I suppose you’ve heard them all?”
He cleared his throat loudly. “Graveyard tombstone reads: Here lies a lawyer and an honest man. A passer-by remarks ‘It doesn’t look big enough for two people.’”
After snickering, Delaney covered her mouth with her hand. “That’s so bad.”
“Guess I need to start learning sheriff jokes.”
“There aren’t many. They’re mostly about the uniform hats.”
Kellan eased the backpack down her arms, and stuffed the phone inside, right on top of her gun. A little weird to think that he’d be carrying his every day, officially, soon enough. He set it to the side. Then he pulled her off the log to sit next to him, leaning back against it. “Do you want to make a statement at his parole hearing?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up a single leaf and methodically ripped it in half, then half again, until the pieces were too tiny to continue. “I’ve literally never even thought about it, because there wasn’t supposed to be any chance of this happening.”
That might be true, on the surface. But there were still a lot of emotions roiling down deep for her to be so stricken by that email.
Kellan decided to keep pushing, for her own good. He had a feeling that Delaney rarely opened up to anyone, and that she never let herself be pushed. And if he could help her with this, maybe it’d go toward working off what an idiotic jackass he’d been to not immediately go to her about O’Connor.
Very gently, he placed her on his mental witness stand and began the interrogation. The key was always asking not every possible question. Just the pertinent ones. He’d have to button up his curiosity to get through this the right way. “Do you have any contact with him?”
“None.”
“Did you say everything you wanted to before he was sentenced?”
“No. I cut him off. Completely. I didn’t want to let him cast a shadow on the life I was building for myself.” She picked up another leaf.
He didn’t need a second pile of green confetti on his thigh, so Kellan took her hand and began to trace idle patterns across her palm, up and down each thin finger. “Did he try to reach out to you?”
“Yes. Repeatedly. But what he wanted no longer mattered to me. Doing what he wanted, whenever he wanted, led to my mother’s murder.”
About a dozen questions instantly barraged his brain. But those would have to wait. “Do you maybe want to let it all out? Give him a piece of your mind?”
Or, you know, hire some jailhouse rat to jump him on the way to the cafeteria one day. Nothing lethal. But a really sharp shiv to the biceps with a few whispered words might make the scumbag realize at least a portion of the pain he’d caused this beautiful woman.
Wow. He’d never had fantasies of hurting someone before he found out that violent mobsters ran in the Maguire family. Was it catching, like the flu?
Or was it just that he’d never felt such an intense need to protect someone before?
Had Delaney brought out all of his base, animal instincts? If so . . . Kellan didn’t so much mind.
White teeth sank into the pink perfection of her bottom lip, worrying it while Kellan’s self-judgment grew stronger. Finally, Delaney said slowly, “I’m not sure. It took me a while to put all this behind me. I don’t want to give him any power by letting it all flood back and keep me up nights again.”
That all sounded reasonable. Too reasonable. But it wouldn’t purge the bloodless fear that had taken over Delaney’s body at the first glimpse of her father’s name. If it took all afternoon, he’d keep poking at her until she got it out of her system. “Do you want to actively assist on his not getting parole?”
Delaney gave a slow nod. “If Mom doesn’t get to have a life anymore, because of him, his actions, his choices, then he shouldn’t be allowed that freedom, either.”
Maybe he could get through to the law enforcement part of her to make the decision. “Even though you haven’t interacted, what do you think of his recidivism chances?”
This answer came swiftly. “He’s dangerous, Kellan. Older now, without his network of criminals. But he proved time and again that he was incapable of changing his ways. I truly believe that he’d seek out criminal opportunities. Not only to make a living, but because he enjoys it.” Tugging on the end of her ponytail, as if the question were as simple as asking Kellan if he was ready for a snack, she asked, “What do you think I should do?”
He laughed so loudly that a trio of brown birds lofted out of the trees above them, squawking like crazy. “Hell, no. It’d be safer for me to strap on one of those dynamite vests from the Bugs Bunny cartoons and then strike a match.”
“No, really. I want to know.” Delaney turned, curling her legs underneath her. “You’re ridiculously smart. You have a uniquely pertinent vantage point on the whole family criminal angle. What’s your advice?”
Oh, he had some all teed up and ready to go. But it’d come back and bite him in the ass, no doubt about it.
There were still about a billion things he wanted to discover about Delaney, but her self-sufficiency and iron will had been easy to see from day one. It was a big part of who she was and Kellan wouldn’t ever infringe on that.
“Remember my shock absorber analogy? I’m here to absorb whatever you need to work through. You can vent and yell and cry and scream at me. I’ll take it all. Today, tomorrow, as often as the need hits. When you’re done, I’ll bet you’ll have your answer. And I’ll support that decision, whatever it is.”
Got it Bad Page 16