by Susan Wiggs
The place was divided into shooting stalls where people who didn’t need close supervision could practice. At the moment, only a couple of stalls were occupied. Other cops, Rourke told her, waving at them, and a few locals. She was surprised to see Zach Alger there with his father. Matthew was a big, barrel-chested man whose Nordic features made him look younger than he actually was. Father and son were in adjacent lanes, oblivious to anything but the shooting. Each shot went off with a popping sound that made Jenny wince. Rourke explained that the walls could stop any handgun round at point-blank range. “A .40-caliber bullet can penetrate a dozen layers of regular Sheetrock,” he said.
“Good to know. I won’t hide behind a wall if someone’s shooting at me.”
“The best defense in almost any situation is to fight. To fight, and never give up. But you need to know what you’re doing.” He gestured at the silhouette at the end of the range. He used something called a smart pad to cause it to move, and positioned it at the end of the alley. She prepared herself exactly as he’d shown her—arms extended, feet planted to align the arm with the target, grip, sight alignment, target alignment, breathing, then trigger squeeze. Don’t pull, he’d said. Squeeze.
She squeezed.
The gun recoiled violently in her hand, causing a reverberation down her arm.
“Follow through,” he reminded her, mouthing the words. “Don’t forget to follow through.”
After firing, you were supposed to align with the target again to improve the steadiness of your hand. She realigned, smelling the burnt cordite. But the target hung mockingly at the end of the range, unscathed.
“Hey,” she said, pushing aside one of her earmuffs. “That should have been a perfect shot.”
“Nah.” He waved his arm. “I knew you’d miss.”
“What?”
“You were excellent with your stance and grip. But you’ll never hit anything until you see it first.” He touched his temple.
“What?”
“See it. Then shoot it.”
Jenny didn’t quite get that, but she was determined. She took several more shots, each time amazed by the kick of the recoil. Finally she grazed the edge of the target. See it, then shoot it became her mantra.
After too many rounds to count, she improved somewhat. There was so much to remember—the mechanics of the weapon and the stance. The fine adjustment of breathing and trigger squeeze. And Rourke was absolutely right. She learned to visualize where to put the bullet, and then she put it there. See it, then shoot it.
Once the target was riddled with holes in all its vital areas, she lowered the Glock and turned to Rourke, smiling more than she had since losing her grandmother.
He mouthed “good job” and gave her a thumbs-up.
Afterward, he showed her how to clean the gun “—a clean gun is a safe gun—” and stow the protective gear. “I’m proud of you,” he said.
It was a simple statement, yet it drew an unexpectedly emotional response from her. She glanced away, fluffing her hair where it had been mashed by the earmuffs.
“That was meant as a compliment,” he pointed out.
“I know and I... I’m grateful.” She took in a deep breath. How could she explain it? “I was thinking I’d outgrown the need for approval.”
“Everybody’s born with that,” he said. “God knows, I spent my whole childhood looking for it.”
Interesting, she thought. These glimpses into his past were rare. “And then you gave up trying to get along with your father and walked away,” she recalled.
“What makes you think I walked away from anything?” he asked. “Maybe I was walking toward something.”
“Like what?”
“Like the kind of life I wanted, not the one my family wanted for me,” he said simply.
“And did you succeed?” she asked him. “Is this the life you wanted?”
“It’s the one I’ve got,” he said. “Same as anyone else.” He turned away then, closing the conversation. Jenny was just as glad to drop the subject. It was getting too personal. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go there.
They stowed their protective gear. Then she cleaned the gun, step by step the way he’d shown her while he looked on appreciatively. “So are you going to write about what happened today?” he asked as she finished up.
Caught off guard, all she could think about was the feel of his arms around her as he helped her with her stance. She wouldn’t be writing about that anytime soon. “It might be a stretch to fit a shooting lesson into a food column.”
“It might fit into your memoir.”
She slipped her muffler around her neck. “I wish I’d never said anything about a memoir.”
“Why not? I want to read it.”
Like he’d read all those books in his house with the unbroken spines? she wondered. “Why would you want to read a memoir about a family bakery?”
“Maybe I want to know the ending.”
“I don’t get to plan the ending.”
“But if you could, what would it be?” he asked.
“I can’t answer that.”
“Why not?”
“I’d need days to think about it. Maybe weeks or months.” That was the problem with too much freedom, she thought. Now that she had it, she wasn’t sure what to do.
“Bull. Everybody has a vision of how they want to end up.”
“They do? Do you?” She zipped up her parka.
“Yep.”
“And...?”
“And maybe I’ll tell you someday.”
At some point, without Jenny noticing it, they’d stopped walking and were standing very close, bathed in the yellowish glow of the sodium-vapor lights of the parking lot. She could feel his body heat. When she tilted her head back, she saw that he was studying her mouth with unmistakable interest. The thought that he was going to kiss her nearly caused her bones to melt. She wanted it. She dreaded it. She wanted it.
The indecision—and then the desire—must have shown on her face, because he took her arm and spoke in a rough whisper. “Jenny...”
She studied him in the pale, shadowy light and a terrible notion took hold of her. Falling. She was falling for him. She could almost hear the wind rushing through her hair as she fell, and this was bad. It was bad because it wouldn’t work out for them. She already knew that. They’d end up hurting each other and he’d withdraw and she’d get stuck here in this town forever.
She couldn’t think with him standing so close and looking at her like this. “I think, before we...” She didn’t want to put this into words. “We need to talk, Rourke.”
His smile held a hint of bitterness. “We’ve been talking plenty.”
He really thought so. He actually seemed to believe nothing more needed to be said.
“I’m not going to fall into your bed like one of your bimbos,” she said.
“I didn’t ask you to,” he pointed out. “And you did fall into my bed.”
“Alone,” she said.
“Your call.” With that, he turned, walked to his car and held the door for her.
Glaring at him, Jenny got in and fastened her seat belt before he could remind her. She shivered against the cold seat. The night was bitterly cold, and they’d reached the stage of winter when the days were so dark and the snow so deep, it was hard to imagine the season would ever change, or that the sun was shining somewhere in the world.
“I’m going to remember that promise,” she said as he slid into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition.
“What promise?”
She nearly laughed at the raw panic on his face. “Rourke McKnight” and “promise” were a bad combination. “You said you’d tell me how you want to end up one day,” she said. “Personally, I think it’s a bad idea to plan things.” She
paused, then went for it. The issue had been lying between them, unspoken, since he’d taken her home after the fire. She might as well put it out there. “Look at me and Joey—the best-laid plans can be derailed in a single instant.”
She waited for his reaction. Waited for him to point out that maybe what had happened was merely proof that lying and betrayal did destructive things to the innocent. She knew they’d both thought it.
Rourke’s only reaction was to crank up the heater, blasting her with warm air.
Chapter Ten
On Saturday morning, Jenny and Rourke went to the Sky River Bakery. She had some work to do in the office, and he was going to take a duty shift for an officer who was out sick. When they stepped inside, a bell jangled over the door, and the warm, fragrant embrace of the bakery surrounded them.
Mariel Elena Gale, the counter girl, greeted them with a smile. She was the bakery’s youngest employee, with a zany sense of humor and a decided streak of independence. She was responsible for such delightful innovations as moose-head sugar cookies and chocolate cupcakes sprouting sugar-dough crocuses. Beside the cake-of-the-day, she’d placed a sign that read, “You want a piece of me.”
“Hello, Jenny, Chief McKnight.” Mariel didn’t seem at all surprised to see them together. “The usual for you?”
“Sure.”
Jenny poured coffee into a pair of thick china mugs. “I’m a little suspicious,” she admitted, “now that I know about your coffee-making skills.”
“I never came here for the coffee,” he said. “I figured that was obvious.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she sidled away and concentrated on making sure everything on the condiment counter was precisely aligned. Being with Rourke so much was affecting her in unexpected ways. Things she hadn’t let herself think about in years came bubbling to the surface, and to her surprise, the memories had not lost their sharpness. And she was worried, too, that she was teetering on the edge of something that was, at best, foolhardy. At worst, dangerous. She needed to do something different, but she felt frozen by inertia and indecision.
As she stood at the counter, Jenny saw a woman drop a napkin beside Rourke’s table and then bend to pick it up. Which of course, was no big deal, except that the woman was zipped into a tight magenta ski bib and an even tighter white angora sweater, and she was making no secret of her interest. Jenny couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the woman clearly found him vastly amusing. Rourke had always had that effect on women, even as a kid. He didn’t even have to say anything. There was just something about him, and it wasn’t only the matinee-idol looks. Whether on purpose or not, he exuded a brooding sexiness that seemed to promise endless nights of pleasure. Or so it seemed to Jenny, as she reluctantly admitted that she and the ski bimbo shared the same taste.
Fortunately, the moment was broken by Mariel, who brought two plates to the table. The skier’s gaze lingered a moment longer and then she moved on to join her friends, who were getting ready to leave.
His “usual” was a sweet-cheese Danish with a honey-orange glaze, served warm, and he was already eating it when Jenny returned to the table.
“Sorry,” he said around a mouthful. “I couldn’t wait. This is almost as good as sex.”
She glanced in the direction of the magenta ski bunny. “I’d say that depends on the sex. And I’m changing the subject immediately. Nobody wants their chief of police talking like that.”
“Yeah, I’ve always been so concerned about my image.”
The place was hopping. Shoppers stopped in for loaves of rye or a special pie for Sunday dinner. A few intrepid tourists—downhill and Nordic skiers and snowmobilers—were having coffee and planning their day on the cross-country trails that wound through the area or at Saddle Mountain, the local ski hill. Three old men gathered at their regular corner table, their thick overcoats, mufflers and flat wool caps hanging on a nearby hat tree.
Despite the chaos her life was in, Jenny felt a strong sense of connection to the community at moments like this. The chatty customers, the smells, the smiling counter girl, the busy sounds from the kitchen, all combined to create an atmosphere that was safe, familiar and timeless. Although looking after the place had consumed her entire adult life, she was grateful for the old-fashioned, changeless building on the town square. When everything else had been taken from her, the bakery still stood, solid and real and secure.
At the same time, the weight of responsibility pressed on her. The emotional one-two punch of losing her grandmother and then her home had left her reeling, but she had a business and employees to look after. She told herself she should be grateful to have the family bakery, but the fact was, sometimes she wondered what her life would be like if she’d been allowed to choose. The bakery was her grandparents’ dream, not hers. She felt disloyal even thinking such a thing, but she couldn’t help herself.
Rourke leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “I would love to know what’s on your mind.”
“Maybe I don’t have anything on my mind.”
He chuckled. “Right.”
“Just feeling ambivalent about this place. The bakery, I mean.”
“Ambivalent? Come on, this is the happiest place on earth. Forget Disneyland. Look at these people.”
She scanned the faces of the customers, seeing easy smiles and unhurried pleasure in their faces. “I just took it for granted, I suppose. And I’m ambivalent because I watched my friends all leave after high school. That’s what people do in a town like this—they leave.”
“Some of us come here to stay,” he pointed out. “Me. Olivia Bellamy and now Greg. I always envied the way you grew up, here in this place.”
Oh, my, she thought. And didn’t that open a private door? “You did?” she asked. “You envied this?”
“Is that so strange?”
“My mom took off when I was small, and I never knew my dad. My grandparents worked all the time—”
“And you were always one of the happiest, most well-adjusted kids I’d ever met.”
She nodded, understanding that even though her upbringing had been unorthodox, she’d enjoyed a childhood full of love and safety, one rich in ways that had nothing to do with money. Rourke had grown up in luxury with servants, private schools, summer camp, trips to Europe. Yet she knew what he had endured. Joey had told her once, their second summer together. She had gone up to the camp to watch the annual boxing matches, and Rourke seemed to win every bout. Although the crowd cheered wildly, he seemed to take no joy in winning. In fact, when he was declared the champion, he got out of the ring, puked in a bucket and stalked away, unable to savor his victory.
Joey had touched her shoulder and leaned over to whisper in her ear, “His father beats him.”
Jenny had been stunned. “Are you sure?”
He nodded solemnly. “I’m the only one who knows. And now you.”
So now, when Rourke looked at her across the table and said he envied her childhood, she understood. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish things had been different for you.”
“They’re different now.”
Maybe, she thought. But he still held things in. A part of him was still a prisoner of the past, held hostage by his father’s cruelty and his mother’s indifference.
Matthew Alger came in for his usual morning coffee, and Jenny noticed that he left his usual stingy tip of leftover pennies. He wasn’t Jenny’s favorite person and he sure wasn’t Rourke’s. She knew that. In charge of the town’s purse strings, Alger tended to make it difficult for Rourke to do his job. Too often, Rourke had to go to Alger, hat in hand, when he needed any sort of special funding. Zach came through the doors from the back and went over to his father’s table. Although she couldn’t hear them talking, Jenny could see the tension in both father and son. She wondered what the dispute was about, b
ut Zach tended to keep things to himself.
Zach was a dedicated member of Rourke’s youth group. He’d formed it when he first became chief of police. There had been several incidents of violence at the high school, and Rourke was determined to do something about it. His first step had been to take down the barriers between the generations by visiting their schools, listening to them, finding out what was going on in their lives.
That was another reason he was such an anomaly. His personal life seemed to take a distant backseat to the community. He had kids in the youth group going to the old folks’ home at Indian Wells and making oral-history videos with the residents there. He’d formed a group charged with picking up day-old bread from the bakery and delivering it to the church pantry. Some of his work teams had done a mural on the side of a derelict building at the edge of town. This year, a team of them was going to create an ice sculpture for Valentine’s Day.
And the kids. They told him things. Maybe that was the reason Matthew Alger didn’t like Rourke—because he was worried about what Zach might say about him. Zach’s face was pale and grim as he left his father, shoving through the swinging doors as he went back to work. The older man picked a secondhand newspaper out of the discard pile, folded it back to the crossword puzzle and got to work at the window counter.
She shifted her attention back to Rourke and gazed across the table at him. “I wonder what that was all about,” she said.
“What?”
“Zach and Matthew.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t notice. Too busy with this pastry.” He took a bite and sent her a beatific smile.
Jenny’s heart sped up. This was starting to feel too good. Too comfortable. Too romantic.
“What?” he asked, noticing her stare.
“I need to find a place to live,” she said.
“You have a place to live.”
“Listen, you’ve been really nice to let me stay with you, but I’m wearing out my welcome.”
“Who says?”
“I say. At the very least, I’m cramping your social life.”