Protector With A Past

He spoke as quietly as he always did and he made no move to touch her. He stood there, solid and big and about as flighty as the damned oak tree arching protectively over the house behind him, and she stared at him, unable to think of a single thing to say in reply.

“I met a man one night in a bar.” His low voice overrode her thoughts. “He said his people could shape shift and that he himself had flown like an eagle across mountain peaks. He’d had too much to drink, and maybe I had, too. But while he was talking I believed him, and all I could think was that I wanted to shape shift, too, to take on the wings of some bird strong enough to fly day and night until I was back with you again. I thought I would land on your window ledge and look into your room and make sure you were sleeping and safe, and then I would rise into the moonlight again and fly away before you awoke.”

One corner of his mouth lifted unexpectedly in a smile. Reaching out, he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and then let his palm linger gently on the shape of her skull. “Like I said, I was a little drunk. I remember waking up stiff and cold on a hill hours later and feeling sure that I really had become that eagle and had seen you, but I never could make it happen again. So I dreamed about you instead. I had you in my arms every night.”

She didn’t want to hear any more. “I don’t believe in magic, Cord. And if you held anyone in your arms at night, she was a fantasy woman.” Her eyes met his steadily. “Whatever there once was between us is over. I tried to tell you that two years ago. If you won’t accept it I don’t see how we can work together on finding out who killed Paul and Sheila.”

“I could accept it if it was the truth. But you’re lying to me. I still can’t look at you without needing you so bad I’d crawl over ten miles of rough road on my hands and knees to get to you, and whether you admit it or not, you want me, too, Julia.” His fingers slid under her hair to the nape of her neck. “But go ahead and prove me wrong if you think you can. Kiss me.”

Her breath caught in her throat with a noise that sounded more like a startled gasp than the laugh she’d attempted. “Kiss you? What’s that supposed to—”

“Kiss me like it means nothing.” He drew her slightly closer to him, his fingertips warm against the fine bones at the back of her neck.

With heightened awareness, she could feel the coarser texture of the last few grains of soil still remaining on his hand. He was leaving his fingerprints on her, she thought foolishly, and as soon as the ridiculous notion entered her mind it was followed by a rush of desire so raw and unexpected that it felt as if the air around her had turned to warm water, immediately drenching the cotton sweater and the jeans she was wearing and soaking through to her skin. Cord’s mouth was only inches from hers.

“All we’ve got is history, Cord,” she said tightly. “Let’s leave it at that.” Her body was tense against his touch.

He exhaled softly, still holding her gaze. Shifting position slightly so that he was blocking the sun from her eyes, he shook his head and let the ghost of a smile cross his defeated features.

“My God, you’re one mule-headed woman. Why couldn’t you have held on to what we had just as stubbornly?”

He let his hand slide from the back of her neck and shrugged, that ironic smile still lifting one corner of his mouth. A crazy mixture of relief and disappointment swept through her, but she forced herself to concentrate on the former instead of the latter. He started to turn away, and suddenly her limbs felt like lead.

Then he stopped and turned back to face her. His eyes were unreadable.

“Hell, no. Not this time.” With one fluid movement, he bridged the space between them, pulling her to him so swiftly that she had no chance to react. “Good God, I just have to have this,” he muttered, his mouth coming down on hers.

She could taste salt on his top lip and the same sweat slicked her exposed skin where the vee neckline of her sweater dipped as he gathered her to his chest, his arm tightening around her. With his other hand he pushed her hair from her temple, his opened fingers sliding through it until they reached the back of her head, and then spreading wider. Individual sensations fell away, overwhelmed by the shock of sudden mindless need that tore through her.

She’d first kissed him when she’d been seventeen and he’d been twenty-two. Now it was ten years later, and if she’d had to guess a few seconds ago, she would have said that after all the years of intimacy between them there was nothing about Cord Hunter that was unfamiliar to her. She couldn’t have been more wrong, Julia thought incoherently.

Never, not even in the last few months of their relationship when everything had been falling apart, had he ever seemed to forget the physical disparity between them, and his size and strength had always been downplayed when he’d been with her. But this kiss was different from anything she’d experienced with him in the past—harder and hotter, his mouth open against hers with an almost adolescent lack of finesse. Once he’d been able to maintain some semblance of control even at the height of their lovemaking. Now not only had he lost that control, but he seemed to have forgotten any subtlety he’d ever possessed. All that was left was urgency.

He wanted her. He wanted her now, and badly enough that he hadn’t been able to ease into the moment or prolong the waiting. Despite the warning bells that were shrilling frantically in that part of her brain that was still functioning, there was no real choice left to her.

She kissed him back, opening herself fully to him, and he immediately took advantage of her lack of resistance and moved in even closer, his biceps tensing against her breasts. Liquid fire flashed through her. She could taste him, Julia thought disjointedly, and even that was different from the way she remembered it—he tasted ripe and dark, like cherries flamed in brandy, burning their way down her throat and exploding sweetly as they reached the pit of her stomach. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she felt her fingers fumbling at the buttons of his shirt, impatiently opening them. Her hands slid possessively against his skin, and she felt the faint ridge of scar tissue that followed the line of a bottom rib.

Another woman would have to ask him how he’d gotten that, Julia thought fiercely. Another woman could question him for years and still never know Cord the way she did. Once she’d lain in bed beside him, touching every mark on his body with gentle fingers and recalling the circumstances of each while he’d watched her, a faint smile playing on his lips as she went through the litany—falling from the oak tree when he was nine; getting a fishhook in his shoulder when he was teaching a tourist how to cast; being hit by a piece of flying debris when, as a member of the community’s volunteer fire department, he’d arrived at the blaze that had leveled the old box factory in town just as an ancient propane tank had exploded.

She knew him—every inch of him, Julia thought. He was hers and no one else’s, and not having him had been like existing in hell for two years. She arched her body to his and his grip around her tightened convulsively. His mouth moved to the corner of her lips, and she could feel his lashes flicking against the line of her cheekbone.

“Right about now I usually wake up,” he whispered hoarsely, his breath warm on her upper lip. His words were muffled against her skin. “Every time I do it’s like dying. Tell me it was the same for you.”

The scar on his ribs was from a stray round he’d caught the year before they’d separated. He’d been instrumental in tracking down the Donner “family,” a chillingly twisted group of serial killers who in the end had chosen to die in a violent confrontation with the authorities rather than surrender. Her fingertips passed over it gently, like a blind woman touching her own features in a reaffirmation of something she’d always known.

“It was the same for—”

The words died in her throat. Past the scar on his ribs her searching fingers had found another—a raised weal that snaked down from the side of his torso to the top of his hip. It felt ugly. It felt unfamiliar. She had no idea how he’d gotten it or when it had happened. All she knew was that it had to be less than two years old.

It had to be less than two years old, because two years ago their life together had come to an abrupt end. Two years ago she’d sent him away, knowing that it was the last acceptable option she had.

He still loved her. He still wanted her. But he’d made some kind of a life for himself that didn’t include her—the proof was right here, under her fingertips.

She still loved him. She would never love anyone the way she loved him. And the only thing of value she had left to give him—the last token of love she could place before him—was his freedom.

“I felt the same way, Cord.” She drew slightly away from him, bringing her hand up to his mouth and tracing the line of his bottom lip. His gaze darkened with desire. “We were fabulous in bed together and you were right—there’s no way I could kiss you without feeling anything. But…”

She hesitated, avoiding his eyes and imprinting every minuscule detail of his mouth on her memory. “I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that it wouldn’t be fair for me to let you believe we could rebuild a relationship, based only on a childhood hero worship that I outgrew long ago and the fact that we both like fu—”

“Don’t.” Cord’s hands fell from her to his sides. He took a step back, his eyes narrowed to black slits. “That was never what we did in bed together. We made love.”

He rubbed the side of his jaw wearily, still watching her intently. “Honey, I was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who taught you how to lie, remember? You got good at it, but not that good. It doesn’t take a detective’s badge to see that your life’s fallen apart just as badly as mine has, and for the same reason. We belong together. And this time I’m not leaving until I find out why that terrifies you so much.”

She only had to hold herself together for another minute or two, Julia told herself shakily. She met his gaze with her own, the sunlight turning the hazel in her eyes to a clear bronze, the rich chestnut glints in her hair contrasting with the lack of color in her face. “I’m not the stubborn one, Cord—you are. I’ll work with you on this case, but that’s all. We’re temporary partners, and nothing more.”

High in the sky above them a windblown cloud passed over the sun, and its shadow raced across the tops of the pines, the porch of the house, Cord’s features. Something flickered behind his eyes for the briefest of instants.

“Sometimes you almost convince me,” he said softly. “Maybe I’m not as stubborn as you think.”

Then he turned, striding along the overgrown path toward the house. Julia deliberately didn’t watch him go, but instead turned her face to the lake. She hugged her arms across her body, her hands so tightly clenched that her nails, short and blunt, pressed into her palms. The light cotton sweater was no protection against the breeze that came in off the lake, but the freshness soothed the hot, burning sensation behind her eyes.

She’d been wrong to feel even the slightest antagonism toward the woman she’d fantasized about over the last two years—that blue-eyed, blond, tennis-playing Californian that she’d feared would take her place in Cord’s heart. Whoever he eventually made a life with, and whatever she looked like, Julia thought painfully, the woman who would one day make Cord forget he wasn’t her enemy.

“I’ll never know you, but one day you’ll learn about me.” Tears blurring her vision, she forced the nearly inaudible words past numb lips, her gaze fixed on the whitecaps near the middle of the lake where the water was choppier. “You’ll wonder what kind of a woman could let him go. You’ll think I couldn’t have loved him—but you’ll be wrong. You’ll be so wrong….”

She’d missed her period, and she hadn’t been able to tell him. She’d told herself it was because she wanted to be sure before giving him the news, but when the home pregnancy test showed positive she’d been glad that she’d waited until he was out of the apartment before taking it. Hunched over like an old woman, she’d sat down on the edge of the bathtub and started to shake.

It was what they wanted, she’d told herself, staring at the pink-tinted stick in front of her as if it was a snake about to strike. Wasn’t it what they’d wanted—a family of their own someday? Two boys, two girls, and Cord had always joked that he’d teach the boys how to be as good a cook as their father if she’d show the girls how she caught five lake trout to everyone else’s one.

He would be the perfect father-to-be, worrying about her health, indulging her quirks and cravings, attending Lamaze classes with her. Finally the day would arrive when he bundled her into the car, drove like crazy to the hospital, and she gave birth to their baby—a tiny, perfect, fragile human being that they would be responsible for.

And she wouldn’t be up to the task, she’d thought with cold certainty. Of all people, she knew how swiftly tragedy could strike, how no amount of precaution could totally insure a child’s safety. The world was a dangerous place, and more often than not its victims were the innocent, the defenseless—

The children that she hadn’t been able to save.

She’d taken each failure personally—the instances of abuse that she had been informed of too late, the Have You Seen This Child? photos that eventually faded and curled on bulletin boards and telephone poles around the city, the confused bereavement of parents who berated themselves and each other with a barrage of if onlys—if only I hadn’t let go of her hand, if only we hadn’t let him sit in the front seat, if only we’d taken her with us, if only we’d kept him at home…if only we could have kept our child safe.

What it all came down to was if only they’d known, they would have done things differently, Julia had thought. But she did know. And, having that knowledge, what had she been thinking of by making a child with Cord—a child that would be born into such a capriciously violent world?

When she’d eventually learned that her pregnancy result had been an error, she’d felt as if she’d been given a second chance to avert a tragedy, and more than ever she’d been glad she hadn’t told Cord anything yet. She’d left the doctor’s office and had sat in a nearby park until afternoon grayed into dusk. When she’d finally risen from the park bench, her limbs stiff from the hours of frozen immobility, she’d known what she had to do. Her job was to save the children she could, and even at that there were dozens who slipped through the cracks. But she could ensure that no child of hers and Cord’s would ever be lost through her inadequacy.

She would send him away. She would tell him any lie it took to make him leave her, but the one thing she would never tell him was the truth. If he ever knew her fear he would try to make things right for her, and because losing him would break her heart Julia was afraid she might weaken enough to listen to the lies she knew he would tell her. He would tell her that a life without children wouldn’t devastate him, he would tell her that he wouldn’t ache for the feel of a baby’s fist holding his, he would tell her that he wouldn’t envy the friends of his who were fathers themselves.

And he might even believe it himself for a while. But as the years passed the sense of loss would grow in him, because more than any man she knew, Cord wanted children of his own. And no matter how much he loved her, he would always know that but for her he could have had them….

“You’ll never know me,” Julia whispered. Back at the house King barked playfully on the porch, and a flock of mourning doves flew fussily into the trees. “But one day you might learn that there was a woman before you in his life. Don’t let that worry you.”

Their children would look like Cord. They would grow up beside the Pacific. They would be tennis players like their mother.

“I let him go because I love him so. I always have.” Blinking the tears from her eyes, she started up the path toward the house. Then she turned and looked one last time at the blue lake, the far shore, the distant horizon. “I always will,” she whispered to herself.

Chapter 5

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

Her spine ramrod-straight, Julia stood beside Cord’s immobile bulk and stared unseeingly ahead. The job of a police officer was no picnic. The hours were grueling, the respect often nonexistent and the danger ever-present, but when an officer was killed there was always a good turnout at the funeral. It was one of the few benefits of being a cop, she thought, her black-gloved fist clenched tightly around the shoulder strap of her purse. She’d known how Paul and Sheila had scraped along on his salary when he’d been a rookie, how for years they’d celebrated Christmas the day after or the day before because Paul had always been working on December the twenty-fifth, and how Sheila had lain awake nights when Paul had been working a case, wondering if this would be the night when her cell phone rang.

But now that he was dead and especially since the job had claimed Sheila, as well, his fellow officers, many of them in dress uniform, had gathered to show the world that however scant the material rewards of their career were, the profession and those who chose it were worthy of the highest honor. It was all about solidarity, Julia told herself tightly. The grim-faced men and women around her were there to bid farewell to one of their own, knowing full well that the next funeral could be theirs.

It had been a touchingly beautiful service. But here at the graveside under a cloudlessly perfect blue sky nothing could blunt the terribly symbolic sight of the token shovelful of earth falling onto the two polished mahogany coffins that were even now being lowered into the ground. Sheila’s mother, Betty Wilson, was sobbing quietly a few feet away, her frail figure flanked by friends and relatives, and most of the other mourners’ faces were distorted by grief.

Who in this crowd had betrayed them? Which grieving face hid a lying heart?

“How are you holding up?” As people began to move away from the graveside, Cord took her arm and met her watery gaze. “If you think you can manage it, I’d like to stick around for a while and talk to a few people. But if you’d like to leave—”

“Someone here isn’t who they seem, Cord. Someone here was no friend to Paul or Sheila,” Julia cut in flatly. “I know that as well as you do, and of course we’ll stay and find out what we can. Stop treating me like I’m a basket case.”

“You remind me of a sweet little girl I once knew who told me she could recognize poison ivy without my help,” Cord said dryly. “Oh, yeah—that was you. Still as prickly as ever, aren’t you? I only thought you might feel out of place here now that you aren’t on the force anymore.”

“Oh.” Julia was nonplussed. “I thought you were worried that I might…” Her words trailed off, and a faint color mounted her too-pale cheeks.

“Worried you might what?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought you might wonder if I could handle an emotional situation like this without a—a crutch.” She looked at her hands, unconsciously twisting the strap of her purse. “Without needing a drink,” she said quietly.

“Do you?” His question held no condemnation. When she didn’t answer his hand gently cupped her chin and tipped her face back so that their eyes met. “Do you need a drink to face something like this?”

“Once, I would have,” she said simply, looking into his gravely sympathetic face. “And for the rest of my life I’ll be aware that it’s a trap I could fall into again if I let myself.”

In the strong sunlight, dappled by the overarching elm boughs, his eyes darkened, the thick lashes throwing sharp shadows onto his high cheekbones. “Were you going through this when we were together?”

The conversation, personal as it had been from the start, was straying into forbidden territory as far as she was concerned, Julia thought. She withdrew from his grasp and shook her head.

“No. There was an incident at work that…”

She closed her eyes as the familiar images flashed through her mind like a home movie from hell—the narrow ledge of the office building, the stalled traffic far below, the hopeless and hate-filled expression of the man holding the child—

She drew a deep breath and forced her eyes open. The day was still perfect, the peaceful park-like setting around her a watercolor-like blur of soft greens and the gray of weathered stone as her vision wavered and cleared. “I was stressed out and I chose the wrong way to handle it. It had nothing to do with us.”

Her tone was deliberately final in an effort to shore up the barrier between them—a barrier that had somehow dangerously weakened in the last few minutes. He’d always been able to slip under her defenses, Julia thought nervously. It was one of the reasons she’d been relieved yesterday when he’d decided to make his base of operations a motel room in town rather than the lake house with her. He’d said it was more convenient that way, but they’d both known that living under the same roof, however temporarily, would be too emotionally distracting at a time when they needed to focus on working smoothly together.

She looked past him to a nearby group of mourners—fellow officers of Paul, she realized, recognizing one or two—and then her own edginess vanished as she took in the uncomfortable expressions on the group of faces and saw the reason for them.

“Good Lord, isn’t that—” she began, but Cord, following her glance, finished her thought.

“Dean Tascoe, damn him. And it looks like he’s spoiling for a fight.” His lips thinned and he scanned the area swiftly. “Betty must have left already, thank God, but even so, I’m not about to stand by and let Paul and Sheila’s funeral be turned into a free-for-all by that bastard. Emotions are running high enough as it is.”

Turning on his heel and striding purposefully across the lawn, he was already several yards away from her before Julia gathered her wits together and hurried after him. Ahead of her, Cord’s back was rigid with anger, the broad shoulders set stiffly under the somber and well-cut suit jacket. His hair, as glossy as a raven’s wing, gleamed with blue-black highlights under the buttery afternoon sunlight.

Tascoe had chosen the wrong place to air any grievances he might feel he had, she thought apprehensively. Cord had dealt with the man in the past and had made no secret of the fact that he considered him a disgrace to the uniform he’d once worn. To have him attempting to sully this solemn occasion was intolerable.

“Hey, Chief—long time no see.” Breaking off from the heated discussion he’d been having with an attractive but angry-looking woman—Paul’s partner, Cindy Lopez, Julia realized with belated recognition—the stocky ex-cop fixed a grave expression on his heavy features. “Hell of a note, isn’t it? The thin blue line just got a little thinner, but we all know that comes with the territory. To take out Durant’s lady too, though…”

He shrugged meaty shoulders. “Well, I guess we’re agreed that when this scumbag gets caught, the odds are pretty damn good he’s going to suffer a fatal accident long before he gets the chance to go before some bleeding-heart jury and tell them how misunderstood he is, right, folks? We know how to handle cop killers—all of us except for Chatchie here.” He shot a disgusted look at Lopez, and her lips tightened.

“Tascoe, I just lost the best partner anyone could have, so don’t tell me I wouldn’t know what to do if I found his killer,” she said, her dark brown eyes hard with contempt. “I’d read the bastard his rights, cuff him and expect justice to take its course—because that’s the way Paul would have handled it. I swore to uphold the law, not take it into my own hands.”

“You sound pretty cool for someone whose partner just got whacked, chiquita. I thought you people were supposed to be hot-blooded,” Tascoe drawled insinuatingly. “Or do you just reserve all that passion for your girlfriend? Now, that’s one hell of a waste.”