by Julie Mac
“Next please,” called the officer at the window in front of her queue.
She moved forward. “Do you have a Ben Carter here?”
The man said nothing for a moment, but she saw the sudden spark of interest in his eyes, as he looked at her properly.
“Who’s asking, please?”
“Kelly Atkinson. His lawyer.” She handed the man her business card, followed by her driver’s licence because she figured he’d need ID.
He gave her another long, assessing look. “Just a minute please, Ms Atkinson.” He turned away and picked up a phone at a desk behind the reception area.
She couldn’t hear what he was saying because of the buzz of noise in the foyer, but he seemed to be making more than one call. Finding out if Ben was in hospital? Or the morgue? The horrible thought provoked a shiver that started at the base of her spine and shot up to her hairline. No, not in the morgue. He’s alive. He’s alive.
She shifted from foot to foot, and wished the man would hurry up. He was still talking to someone on the phone, and looked back towards her several times. Maybe Ben wasn’t hurt badly or, please God, not hurt at all. Maybe the man was locating the cell he A Father at Last
was in.
The paper had said seventy arrests had been made, and it was possible some of those arrested had been taken to holding cells at other police stations around the city.
She wasn’t looking forward to this. Ben would be vulnerable, possibly in pain. If injured, he may not be able to speak. Certainly, he’d be dishevelled, anxious, maybe scared about what would happen next. And humiliated for her to be seeing him here.
But she had to do it. She had to talk to him, tell him she loved him. Talk to him about Dylan.
As she stood in the crowded police station foyer, waiting, wondering, memories were flooding back: the day of her father’s arrest, all those years ago, then her visit to the prison. His face, gaunt and grey.
She’d thought about him constantly in the last few days. Her dad. Her dad and her, and all the lost years. And each time she thought about him, her mind would invariably switch to Ben and Dylan. Should a child know his father? Should a father know his son?
Whatever the circumstances? And always, the answer came back loud and clear.
Yes. Especially now. If Ben was injured, perhaps critically, it was only fair that he knew the truth.
She straightened her back and stood taller.
She’d failed her father in his time of need: she wouldn’t fail Ben.
“I’ve located him, Ms Atkinson.” The man at the desk had returned. “If you’d like to wait here near the counter for a couple of minutes, I’ll arrange for someone to take you to him.”
Trying to ignore the dull ache of sorrow in her heart, she stepped back from the queue to wait. Ten minutes later, she checked her watch. It was taking ages for someone to come, but she wasn’t surprised. The police station was really very busy this morning.
“Ms Atkinson?” A uniformed officer, a big man with a friendly face, was at her side.
He returned her ID, then led her to the bank of lifts at the rear of the reception area. When one arrived, they stepped in and he swiped an access card before pushing a button. They moved upwards.
Kelly was surprised: she’d been to the station before to see clients; the interview rooms were in the basement, near the holding cells. But then, maybe the number of people arrested had forced the police to use overflow rooms on the upper levels today.
They stopped at the tenth floor and stepped out. She followed the policeman past glass‐fronted offices along a corridor that seemed to go on forever.
She was a little girl again, scared but trying to be brave, her legs heavy as lead, following the seemingly never‐ending path to the visitors’ area at the prison. Eventually they’d reached the awful grey visiting room, her and Mum, and Dad had come in.
Julie Mac
The defeat in his eyes remained a stark memory.
Would she see defeat in Ben’s eyes, those beautiful, intelligent, fun‐sparked gold-green eyes, the gift he’d given her son? She hadn’t realised she’d stopped walking until the police officer beside her said, quietly, “Are you…is everything okay, Ms Atkinson?”
“Fine thanks.” She flashed him what she hoped was a bright, professional smile. No need for anyone else to know she was ripped apart by the searing pain of love found then lost. “Just admiring the view.” She indicated the floor to ceiling window that graced one wall of the corridor here, showcasing a picturesque view of the harbour in the distance.
They walked on.
Suddenly she saw him, inside one of the offices with an older uniformed police officer.
He was wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday afternoon: black jeans and a black T‐shirt. They looked rumpled—and dirty. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was dishevelled. His appearance didn’t surprise her. He’d looked rough enough when she’d seen him last; God knows what had happened last night, and then he’d spent hours in a most-probably overcrowded cell.
But she hadn’t expected to see him perched casually on the edge of the officer’s desk. Chatting to the man. Laughing, for heaven’s sake. With a paper coffee cup in his hand.
Too casual, Ben! Show some respect. You’re a prisoner. You’re not some damn cocky schoolboy anymore.
She desperately wanted to say these things, but she kept her mouth shut and stepped through the door to the office after her escort knocked, opened it for her and then retreated.
Ben’s face lit up when he saw her.
“Kelly, my sweet. How lovely to see you.” He moved from the desk to stand up, and held out a hand to her.
Behave yourself, Ben! She stood rooted to the spot, mortified. Then, she noticed the white bandage around his outstretched arm. So he was injured, but obviously not badly. She registered relief, then he was speaking again and waving his other hand towards the older man.
“Kelly Atkinson, meet Detective Inspector Ray Scott.”
Detective Inspector Scott! She knew the name; he was a very respected, very senior officer. And Ben was behaving in this unbelievably disrespectful way in front of him.
The man held out his hand to shake hers, his smile warm and welcoming. Then he nodded towards Ben, saying, “You and this young man have a lot to talk about. I’ll give you some privacy.” He left, shutting the door behind him, but not before he’d pressed a button that lowered a blind to block the view from the corridor outside.
A Father at Last
“We do have a lot to talk about, Ben.” She was trying to keep this formal, although her heart rate had cranked up, and she’d never felt less ready to work. In fact, she felt like crying. She loved the man in front of her, even though he could never be anything but her Mr Wrong. But she’d help him all she could, and she would tell him the truth about Dylan.
She pulled her notebook from her handbag.
“Shall I sit at the desk? And you in the chair over there?” She lifted her hand to point to the chair in the corner and that’s when she registered the dozens of little scratches on his face and arms. Her eyes homed in again on the bandage on his forearm.
“Are you all right, Ben?”
He shrugged. “Just a stray bullet. A graze. Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh‐h.” He had been shot at! She suddenly felt a little faint. Breakfast, she told herself. Too little. Concentrate on the job in hand. She cleared her throat and tried again.
“I’ll take down all the details—your injuries, circumstances of your arrest, a statement from you—then I’ll work with the more senior defence lawyers at my firm to make sure we get the right result for you. What?”
Ben was smiling at her, arms folded now across his chest, his head cocked to one side, his eyes dreamy.
There was certainly no sign of defeat in them, she noted. Would he never learn?
“Are you listening to me, Ben?” She tried again. “I am here to take your instructions.
We’ll mak
e sure you’re properly represented in court. Now, where shall I sit?”
“Standing’s just fine, darlin’. For now.” He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in close so she felt the steady beat of his heart against hers. “I’d really rather you were lying on a big soft bed. Naked. But that can wait.”
She gasped and attempted to wriggle out of his arms—not too strenuously, because she didn’t want to hurt his injured arm. But he held her tighter, so every inch of his body pressed against the length of hers, strong and unflinching, and somehow his energy and confidence were sucking up all hers, weakening her resolve.
“We need to keep this businesslike.” She was striving for her best dispassionate lawyer’s tone, but the words came out in a whimpering purr. “Let me go.” At law school they hadn’t taught the students how to be dispassionate when someone was planting little kisses on your neck. Or talking about beds and nakedness.
“I have to take a statement from you.” She tried breathing way down into her diaphragm to calm herself, but her lungs seemed to have forgotten how to behave as well.
He laughed, a rumbling, happy laugh that came from deep in his chest. Then he eased his head up, and fixed her eyes with his. She watched, fascinated, as his pupils dilated, so his eyes were suddenly darker, a rich, molten gold.
“I love it when you do that head prefect thing.”
Julie Mac
She made herself stand as upright as she could within his embrace.
“We’re not school kids anymore, Ben. I’m not a head prefect. I’m a lawyer.”
The whites of his eyes were bloodshot. He was tired. But then he would be, wouldn’t he? He’d been up most of the night getting shot at and goodness knows what else.
“And I’m a police officer.”
“What?” Distress slithered its icy path down her spine. Had he flipped totally? Had he been abusing substances that had addled his brain so that now he was suffering from delusions? Poor guy! She really would have to make sure he got the help he needed.
“Ben, please listen. You’re not a police officer. I’ll find someone now who can get you some medical help. I’ll—”
“Shh.” He placed a finger against her lips. “I am a police officer. A detective, even. A big boy, a grown up. If I want to talk about big soft beds and holding your naked body next to mine, I can.”
She saw amusement in his eyes—totally inappropriate amusement. Oh, poor, poor Ben.
He smiled a lazy smile. “I don’t need medical help. Look—” He reached over to the top drawer of the desk, pulled it out, and extracted a card which he held up for her to see.
Kelly read the words out loud, “Detective Sergeant Ben Carter.” And then again, giving each word its due weight and gravity. “Detective. Sergeant. Ben. Carter.” Was this a dream? Some kind of joke?
“At your service, ma’am.” He dropped a swift kiss on her lips, then lifted his head again, watching her eyes.
“You really are a police officer?” She stared at him. “And this is your office?”
Fragments of information were falling into place, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
“Affirmative.”
“But I thought—” She felt his arms tighten around her again. Strong, comforting arms. Good, honest arms.
She tried again. “I thought you were—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
How could she have got it so wrong? She was supposed to be smart.
“You thought I was a criminal.” Ben supplied the words for her. “And I let you think that, deliberately. But I’m not. I’m a police officer working in covert surveillance.”
Relief, happiness, unbridled joy, fizzed through her veins—then it was gone in an instant, flattened by reality.
“That night we spent together—that first time…” Memories were flooding in, crowding her brain. And they weren’t all good. Had she made a terrible mistake back then?
Or maybe she was right, after all. Maybe he was playing on both sides of the fence.
A Father at Last
She tried again to push back from his arms but he was holding on tight.
“What?” He was frowning slightly, watching her eyes. “That first time was beautiful, special. But then you ran from me. Hid from me.”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“I found the little plastic bag of white stuff in your jeans pocket. Drugs. I wasn’t silly. I knew what it meant.”
“Ahhh.” He exhaled a long breath.
“Exactly. And then people I knew told me they’d seen you hanging out with known drug dealers.”
“Flimsy evidence, Miss Atkinson. Do you think that would stand up in court?”
She didn’t answer—couldn’t think of an answer. He was right: her evidence was purely circumstantial.
“Why were you going through my pockets after we’d made love?”
Kelly thought she saw tiny sparks of anger in his eyes. “I was tidying up—picking up our clothes off the floor when you were in the shower.”
“Being the head prefect again.”
“No! Just…tidying up. I didn’t go poking in your pockets. The bag fell out.”
“And you didn’t think to ask me about it?” He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them she saw the anger had morphed into something suspiciously like anguish. “That’s why you ran from me? That’s why you avoided me? All these years, you’ve been on your own…thought the worst of me…” He closed his eyes again briefly.
Kelly felt the tension in his arms ease as they loosened their grasp on her body, leaving her free to step back if she wanted to. But she didn’t.
“If I’d asked? What would you have told me?”
“That I was in the police force. By the time we met up again that first time, I was already doing some work for the drug squad as a uniformed officer. I would have told you that when some dropkicks offered to sell me drugs outside that party, I bought them, quite openly. That purchase—that bag of white crystals you saw—led us to a fairly large scale dealer who’d supplied the stuff to the guys I’d bought it off. He got put away for a few years.”
“Oh, Ben.” She’d got it so wrong. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not half as sorry as I was when I realised you’d walked out on me. I assumed you regretted sleeping with me.”
Julie Mac
She shook her head, shocked. “Not for a minute.” Not then, or later. She thought of Dylan, her beautiful little boy, the light of her life. How could she ever regret the event which created him? “But this time, when we met up again, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me go on thinking…”
“It’s one of the cardinal rules of this type of police work. You don’t tell your friends or loved ones about your assignments.” He dragged in a deep breath. “Especially not this one. It was dangerous for you to know the truth, my sweet. Even more so because your firm was defending an associate of the guys we were after. It was dangerous for me, dangerous for you and Dylan. Risky for our operation. None of us were allowed to speak to anyone on the outside about this op.”
He lifted a hand to her face and let it trail down her cheek. “If it makes you feel any better, not even my parents know exactly what I do.”
“They don’t?” Kelly searched his eyes. He was speaking the truth, she knew. “What do they think you do?”
“They know I’m in the police force, and of course, they worry, because that’s what parents do and policing is a high‐risk job. But they think I work in the IT department. And it’s true in a way. I hack into a lot of computers.”
Kelly laughed, and he joined in. Happiness spread like warm honey, filling all the lonely gaps in her mind. “Our teachers from school will be pleased to hear you’ve put that particular skill to good use.”
“Maybe,” he murmured. “And I’ll be doing a lot more with computers in future. In the early hours of this morning, I decided I was quitting the special ops stuff. I’m going back to
good, regular, respectable police work.”
“Why?” Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer, could see it in his eyes.
“When there were bullets firing all around me, I thought of my family, and the pain it would cause them if I was shot dead. And I thought of you.”
He lowered his head to hers.
“I love you.” He’d said those words yesterday afternoon, before he’d left her, and she knew he’d meant them. Now he was telling her he’d thought of her in his moment of need.
She tilted her head to his, desperate for the touch of his lips on hers, and more—
much more. Ben Carter, the love of her life, was one of the good guys—always had been.
Was there anything to keep them apart now?
Oh, God.
There was the deluge of ice rushing down her spine again. “You said you were afraid to be a father,” she said. “Because of the blood that runs in your veins. Let me help, Ben.
I’ve been doing some reading; I could come with you to counselling—”
A Father at Last
“No need,” he said quietly. “I’ve come to a decision. Someone very wise reminded me that nurture is more important than nature. I was brought up by a caring, loving family—
that’s what’s shaped me—not some long‐gone accident of nature. I can do it. And if sometimes I falter, I know you’ll be there at my side, and my mum and my step‐dad, my sisters. Your dad, too. Sometimes, I might have to dig deep. I’m sure it won’t always be easy, but I know now that I can do it. Or at least give it a damn good try.”
He touched his lips to her cheek.
“I’ll be a father at last, Kelly.”
A picture filled her mind then: they were standing in bright sunlight, laughing together, her on one side, big, strong, handsome Ben on the other, and between them, holding both their hands, Dylan. In the background were a couple of sets of grandparents.
Then the picture shattered into a thousand fragments.
“Oh, no,” she gasped, jerking back just as his mouth, his sweet, hungry mouth reached hers. “Does this mean you have to go away to Mongolia or outback Australia or somewhere for ten or twenty years? Do you have to disappear because you’ve been working undercover or special ops or whatever you call it?”
