Falling For The Cop

CHAPTER THREE

NATALIE SLID THE key into the lock and turned the knob in painstaking increments. Still, the click of it was as loud as a gunshot. Just a few more seconds. She just needed a minute to herself. Sometimes she felt like the oldest twenty-eight-year-old in the world.

“Is that you, Natalie?” her mother called out from the other room, asking the same question she asked every day.

Expecting anyone else? But, like always, Natalie didn’t respond that way. They both knew the answer, anyway.

“Yes, Mom. I’ll be right there.” With her back to the door, she lifted one foot and pulled off her boot and then repeated the process on the other side. She carefully set both on the mat.

“Make sure your boots don’t drip all over the floor,” came the voice from the other room.

Natalie’s jaw tightened. “I’ll be careful.” She would clean it up if she did make a mess, anyway.

She hung her coat in the closet, pausing to rub her fingertips over her temples and close her eyes. But she couldn’t stall any longer. Lifting her lids, she padded across the freezing tile in her socks.

“You’re home late,” Elaine Keaton said the moment her daughter came into view in the family room doorway.

“There was traffic.”

And medical records to update. And one client in particular who had her feeling off-kilter.

Elaine nodded, accepting the excuse, and turned back to the television, where an ’80s sitcom was streaming. She’d probably been watching for hours, unless her daytime caregiver had insisted that they play cards today or work on a crossword puzzle. Her electric wheelchair was parked in the middle of the room, and the lamps on the end tables that bookended the sofa provided little more than shadows on the wall.

“Hi, Mom.”

Natalie crossed the room and dropped a kiss on her head and then adjusted the wedding-ring quilt Elaine had once hand stitched herself. Before. In what seemed like another lifetime. Because it was Wednesday, Elaine’s hair looked clean from her shower day, but the straw-colored strands stood at odd angles. Natalie could only hope that the caregiver had been more insistent with Elaine’s toothbrush than she’d been with the hairbrush.

“Laura left forty-five minutes ago.”

Her mother didn’t say it, but her message couldn’t have been clearer: You weren’t here.

“Sorry.” Natalie busied herself by replacing the sweater that had fallen from her mother’s shoulders. “I should have asked Laura to wait for me. Can I get you something? Are you warm enough? Do you need to go to the restroom?”

“No. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

Of course she was. Her passive-aggressive antics just didn’t work as well without an audience. Without a daughter to send on yet another guilt trip when she already had a passport filled with destination stamps.

Natalie swallowed. She really was a rotten daughter. Her mom might not be a grateful patient, but she deserved her daughter’s respect and the best care she could give her. It was the least she could do.

“What have you been watching today?” Natalie indicated the TV with a wave of her hand.

Elaine barely looked back from it to answer. “Season three.”

“How many seasons are there?”

“Ten.”

“Then you’ll be binge watching 24/7 through next Wednesday.”

“It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“Maybe you could cook dinner, then. Since you have so much free time and all.” Natalie forced a smile.

“And maybe you could try it from a chair like mine.”

Natalie swallowed. Was a flippant reaction better than none at all? She didn’t know why she was so determined to spark her mother into action—any type of action—when Elaine appeared determined to set a record for how long someone could bask in self-pity.

Would it be easier if she finally gave up hope that Elaine would one day return to that funny, interesting mom she used to be instead of the shell that remained after the accident? It was as if her mother blamed the world for her unlucky lot in life. Or was it only Natalie she blamed?

“Bad day at work?”

Natalie startled as much from the odd question as from the surety that she’d been caught entertaining disloyal thoughts. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had asked her about her job. Or her life.

“Just a busy day, I guess.”

“Your work is too stressful.”

She studied her mother for several seconds. Did she care about what was going on in her daughter’s life, after all? Was she just unable to show it?

“I have a challenging case,” she said finally.

She didn’t even know why she’d mentioned it. She never talked about work at home or about the clients.

“You just wish you’d finished music school so you could be living a stress-free artist’s life now.”

Natalie chuckled. This wasn’t the first time her mother had joked about her earlier career choice. “Stress-free? Except for wondering whether I’d be able to pay my bills.”

“You’re probably blaming me again for making you change your major. You probably hate me every day.”

Natalie blinked as she realized she’d walked right into her mother’s trap. Usually she was better at reading the signs and changing the subject, but now she could only backpedal.

“You never made me change anything, Mom. You know that. I just realized how much I enjoyed helping people.” She massaged her mother’s shoulders, hoping one day Elaine would buy her story. Hoping she would, as well.

I’m more concerned about getting back to work so I can help people.

Her breath caught as Shane’s words slipped, uninvited, into her thoughts. She turned her head, hoping her mother hadn’t noticed. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about this guy? It couldn’t matter that he was the first man who seemed to really see her when she’d felt invisible for so long, the first one to challenge her, even if only to call her on her bull.

He was a cop, after all.

How could she betray her mother by bringing thoughts of a police officer into their home? It didn’t matter that this guy seemed different from those other officers. He wore a badge. They were all the same.

“So you’d better help put dinner on, or at least one of us is going to starve to death.”

“Wonder which one.” She smiled, but when Elaine didn’t return it, she added, “Better get to it, then.”

“What are you making? Hope it isn’t chicken again.”

Natalie’s cheeks ached from the effort to keep smiling. “It’s chicken, but I think you’re going to like this new recipe.”

“Probably not.”

Natalie waited to shake her head until she’d rounded the corner into the kitchen. Since she’d stretched the truth about having a new recipe, she grabbed her phone and searched for chicken dishes. A series of colorful food photos covered the tiny screen. Orange chicken. Chicken à la king. Surely there was something her mother would eat. Now, to eat it without grumbling, that would be tougher.

If only she had the guts to call her mother on her childish behavior the way her client had blasted her on hers earlier. Shame washed over her again. How could she have acted so unprofessionally?

Sure, he didn’t know what she dealt with outside the clinic, but she never shared that with any of her clients. She shouldn’t have brought her personal baggage to work with her this time, either. Even if it felt heavier than usual today. This was her life, the responsibility she had accepted almost from the moment the doctors had informed her that she would walk out of the hospital but that her mother would never walk anywhere again. At the time, she’d believed this was the worst news she could receive. No one had warned her then of the real tragedy: that Elaine Keaton would never really live again.

As she combined orange juice, lemon juice, rice vinegar and soy sauce for a makeshift orange chicken in a saucepan, she couldn’t help wondering why her mother couldn’t be more like Shane. In attitude only. Sure, his prognosis was more promising than her mother’s had been, but why couldn’t she have been as determined as he was to make the most of her situation?

She shouldn’t have been comparing them at all. Their cases were too different. Anyway, Shane was a stranger, and her mother had been there for her all of her life—at least until the accident. Then it had been her turn.

“You owed her that much.” Her words seemed to spill into the kitchen of their own accord, but she immediately recognized them as truth.

For the past eight years, she’d understood that her focus had to be on her mother’s care. She couldn’t allow one hour with a client—one she’d begged not to work with—make her question her mother’s post-accident life. Or hers.

While she waited for the chicken to brown in the olive oil, she searched on her phone for scholarly articles on spinal cord injuries. The sooner she found out what was keeping Shane from walking, the sooner he would no longer need her help, and she could get back to her life.

* * *

SHANE MANEUVERED HIS wheelchair across the parking lot of the Brighton Post Building the next evening, stopping outside the rear entrance. If he hadn’t already been convinced that it was a mistake to stop by the post after their visit with Kent at the hospital, the barrier beneath the steel door ahead of him would have changed his mind.

“Why aren’t you going inside?” Vinnie asked from behind him. “You don’t need an invitation.”

“But I do need a little help.” Shane waved with his gloved hand toward the step beneath the door.

Vinnie, whose brainchild this little detour had been, took in the situation with a frown. “Oh. I didn’t think about that.”

“I should have.” Of course there would be no wheelchair ramp at the troopers’ entrance. His gaze moved toward the front of the building, where there was surely an Americans with Disabilities Act–compliant entrance since citizens with disabilities filed police reports and applied for gun permits as often as anyone else.

“You want to go around?” Vinnie asked.

“Why don’t we just forget it and go home?”

“Who’s the prima donna now?” But Vinnie was looking back and forth between the door and Shane’s chair as if weighing his options. “Have a problem with popping wheelies?”

“Why would I?” As a matter of fact, he did have a problem with that, but he refused to tell his friend that. He might have had to give up his dignity to accept help since the shooting, but there was no way he was surrendering his man card completely. “But it might not work—”

“Guess we’ll see.” Vinnie pushed the buzzer for entrance, pulled the door wide and popped up the chair onto two wheels, wedging it through the opening before the door could fall closed again. “You see? It wasn’t that high.”

“Guess not.”

But Shane tightened his arms across his chest. With a few bumps and a loud scrape along the steel, they got his chair parked on the large textured mat inside the door.

“You see, the place hasn’t changed much.”

Shane bristled, not entirely because his friend was hovering the way he did too often these days. Vinnie was also dead wrong. Everything about this place felt different now. Foreign. As if someone else had changed into that uniform in the locker room just to his left. As if a stranger had joked with the others before daily announcements at the beginning of each shift, had called on them for backup and had met with them to decompress after work hours.

That man had been willing to give his life in place of any of his fellow officers. Nearly had.

“Smells the same,” Shane said finally. “Like stale subs and gun oil.”

“Our signature scent. We’ve been trying to bottle it for years, but so far distributors haven’t bit.”

“I wouldn’t be waiting by the phone for that one.”

Even the banter didn’t feel right tonight. Shane rolled toward the open area at the squad room’s center, a line of desks with desktop computers forming its perimeter. His chair bumped the first desk, the monitor rocking before settling back into place. Vinnie pretended not to notice.

Coming here today was a mistake, all right. It only emphasized the truth that he might never have any of this again, and just the possibility of it bore down on his shoulders so hard that he could barely sit straight in the chair. He shouldn’t have let Vinnie talk him into coming. But Vinnie had been so desperate to do something that Shane had taken pity on him. Now he only had to endure a few more minutes until he could get out of there and return to his house—a sanctuary that most days felt like a prison.

At the sound of heavy footsteps, Shane turned toward the hall that led to the superior officers’ offices. Trooper Nick Sanchez, a black-haired ladies’ man who’d switched from the midnight shift just after Shane was shot, started toward them.

“Well, look who took time out from his vacation to pop in.” He crossed to them and shook Shane’s hand.

“Yeah, great vacation. I’d show you my tan, but I’ve been sunbathing nude, and it’s pretty cold out today.”

“Thanks for not sharing.” Nick cleared his throat. “But seriously, man. How are—”

“He’s great, Trooper,” Vinnie answered for him.

Apparently, there would be no downer talk tonight.

“He nearly broke my arm, twisting it to make me bring him to Casey’s tonight,” Vinnie continued.

Shane shot him a glance, but Vinnie refused to look his way. They’d made no such plans. “Yeah, Vinnie’s here to file assault charges. He brought me along to save time.”

“You going?” Vinnie asked Nick.

“I’ll be there if I get that report finished.” Nick pointed to a desk with a travel coffee mug on top.

At the sound of voices behind him, Shane turned to find midnight-shift troopers Dion Carson and Clint McNally emerging from the locker room, one patting his duty belt and the other touching his breast pocket for his badge and nameplate. Both glanced over at the same time and crossed the room to them.

“Hey, look who’s here,” Clint said.

“Good to see you, man,” Dion said as he took his turn patting Shane on the back.

Other officers trickled from the men’s and women’s locker rooms, each stopping to greet him, but Shane could feel their gazes on him after they stepped past, sensed their unspoken questions. Could he blame them? Wouldn’t he have the same questions if one of them had still been in a chair like this one? Wouldn’t he wonder if they would ever be back?

Lieutenant Scott Campbell emerged from his office as he was coming off his shift. “Didn’t know there was a party going on back here. I would have brought balloons and root beer.”

“You don’t have anything stronger here?” Shane asked him.

“Nothing I’ll admit to. What are you two doing here? Did Leonetti kidnap you?”

“Damn near.”

Scott shrugged. “You have to forgive him. He needs work on his sweet-talking skills.”

“I’m trying.”

Shane exchanged a meaningful look with the lieutenant, one he hoped Vinnie would miss. They might joke about forgiving Vinnie, but the sergeant was nowhere near forgiving himself for not arriving at the scene quickly enough to prevent Shane from being shot. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but nobody could convince Vinnie of that.

Vinnie had just been talking to Liz Gallagher, the midnight shift’s only female trooper, about road conditions, but now he turned back to Shane.

“Ready to go?”

“Sure.” He glanced to the door. The trip down the step would be jarring, though not as difficult as going up.

But before they reached the door, it flew open, with several troopers stepping inside and bringing the frigid air with them. They crowded around Shane, telling him how they couldn’t wait for him to return to duty. Shane only wanted to get outside and away from all of them. He couldn’t breathe.

As if Vinnie finally recognized his distress, he opened the door and moved in front of the chair to guide it over the step. Shane’s back teeth crunched as the wheel bounced to the asphalt below.

“You okay?”

Shane nodded. Still, he paused for several long seconds, breathing in the chilly air until his lungs ached. He started toward Vinnie’s SUV, but when he reached it, he couldn’t help glancing back at the unimpressive, single-story brick building.

Why did it feel as if he was seeing the place for the last time? He pushed away the thought, but the sense of loss remained. It was like saying goodbye to a place that had felt more like home to him than anywhere he’d ever lived. The loss hurt more than any bullet wound ever could.

“You don’t look okay,” Vinnie continued.

Shane stared at him until it sank in that he hadn’t answered Vinnie’s earlier question.

“I’m fine.” His laugh sounded strained. “Anyway, you’ve seen me far worse than this. Bleeding like a stuck—”

“Don’t!”

“Not funny yet?”

“It never will be.”

“Never’s a long time.”

“Yes, it is.” Vinnie pushed the automatic button for the SUV’s tailgate, opened it and pressed the transfer board into Shane’s hands.

Apparently, the subject of the shooting was closed, at least for tonight. Shane wasn’t the only one who carried scars from that night. His might be on the outside, but Vinnie’s scars were every bit as real and, perhaps, even deeper.

“Any chance you’d consider just taking me home instead of going out tonight?” Shane asked as he shifted himself from the chair to the SUV’s bucket seat.

“Is that what you want?”

“It’s just that I’m pretty tired.” Maybe his friend would let him off the hook after all.

Vinnie closed the door and, after loading the chair in the back, settled in the driver’s seat. “The guys will sure be disappointed if you don’t come.”

“Is that right?” Shane grinned into the darkness. He’d spoken too soon.

“How about we just make an appearance? Thirty minutes...tops,” Vinnie said. “Just so they all won’t think you’re avoiding them.”

“Okay. Fine,” he said, although their visit tonight should have been enough proof that he wasn’t dodging anyone.

“Great.”

Shane gripped his hands in his lap. As great as it would be to spend time with the rest of the team, hearing the war stories and chuckling at Vinnie’s classic jokes, going to Casey’s would serve as a reminder of everything he’d lost when that bullet had penetrated his back. The laughter. The fellowship. The unique understanding of the risks they willingly faced every day, for each other and for people they’d never met.

All the things he might never have again.

* * *

APPLAUSE BROKE OUT the moment Vinnie pushed Shane’s chair through the front door of Casey’s Diner, the bells jingling like a charity bell ringer with an empty kettle.

“Thank you. Thank you.” Vinnie took a bow. “I’ll be signing autographs for those who would like to cover my dinner.”

“Then put your signing pen away,” Trooper Trevor Cole called from across the room.

Shane’s coworkers usually sat at two booths across from each other, the separation wall between them lowered, but tonight they’d moved to a line of square tables. One of the chairs on one end had been removed, leaving an empty spot for Shane.

“Aren’t you glad you came?” Vinnie said as he pushed Shane’s chair into the spot.

“You knew I would be.”

And he was. These were some of the best people he’d ever known. The most honorable. From the senior officers to the new arrivals. A dozen officers crowded around the table, more than would usually go out on any given Thursday. It couldn’t have been more obvious that they’d come because they’d heard he would be there.

As Vinnie took a seat farther down the table, Ben Peterson leaned over and patted Shane’s shoulder. “It’s a little overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Wondering how you’ll live without all of these people if you can’t come back.”

Shane blinked at Ben’s directness, but the lieutenant knew what he was talking about. Not so long ago, Ben’s job and freedom had been in jeopardy when he’d been a suspect in an evidence-tampering investigation at the Brighton Post. The officer responsible was in a cell now, but Ben had faced his own long days of uncertainty.

“You’ve got that right,” he answered finally.

“You’ll have to forgive Vinnie for trying too hard. He’s still beating himself up for not being there.”

Shane shot a glance down the table, but Vinnie was deep in another conversation. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Yeah, try telling him that.”

“I have. Repeatedly.”

“And yet here we all are.”

Shane shifted in his seat, sweating but not ready to take off his coat. A waitress, a little older and harder on the eyes than their usual server, stepped up and started taking orders.

“Too bad Sarah isn’t working tonight,” Lieutenant Scott Campbell said. “She could pretend you’re invisible, like always.”

At the opposite end of the table, Kelly leaned forward.

“Hey, Shane, I was just telling Delia about your new physical therapist.” She paused long enough to exchange a meaningful look with the other female trooper across the table. “That she seems to be keeping you on your toes.”

As if all the officers took a collective breath and held it, the side conversations stopped. Only a clattering of pans could be heard coming from the kitchen.

Kelly cleared her throat. “Well...you know what I mean.”

Shane did the only thing he could do—he started laughing. “She’s right. The PT’s not even bothering with regular steps. I’ll be dancing en pointe in no time.”