by Eve Gaddy
She nodded. “Yeah. He’s not in jail. He’s dead. Ben Fairfield shot and killed him but not before he’d managed to shoot both of us. At least, we think it was Ben’s shot and not mine that got him.”
“You could have been killed.” Maybe it wasn’t what she needed to hear, but it made him sick to think how close she’d come to—He shook his head, not wanting that thought in it. He knew the dangers of police work. Hell, anyone who watched the news knew them. It was just different when it was personal, when it affected someone you cared about. When it affected his wife.
“It’s nothing. I got lucky. Sara Myers didn’t.”
“Why do you feel so responsible for her?”
“Because she trusted me. Because I couldn’t get her into a shelter where she could get help.” She got up and started pacing. Tucker could sense the frustration coming off her in waves. “I tried everything I could think of to get her to a shelter, but she wouldn’t buy it. She was so damn sure he was a good guy underneath it all. I failed to convince her of the danger and now she’s dead.”
“Maggie, you can’t possibly blame yourself over every case or every call that goes south. You’d be crazy by now. You couldn’t function as a cop. So why are you letting this particular one get to you so badly?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “No, that’s a lie. I know exactly why she gets to me. Why this whole miserable situation gets to me.”
“Tell me.”
She came back and sat beside him, picked up her nearly empty glass and drained it.
“Do you want more?”
She shot him a look he couldn’t interpret, then shook her head before setting down the empty glass. “I don’t usually drink when something bad happens. I’ve known too many cops who slid inside a bottle and couldn’t seem to make it out. But tonight…God, talk about ghosts of the past.” She was quiet for a long moment, then she began.
“I met him for the first time when we went out on a domestic disturbance call.”
“Met who?” he asked, but he had a feeling he knew.
“Spencer Whitman.” She laughed bitterly. “The love of my life. I was in Dallas. It was my first call with the department and they gave me to him. He’d been around several years longer than I had and he had a rep for being a negotiator. He could talk anyone into anything. If we had a jumper, say, and couldn’t find a shrink, he’d be the guy everyone wanted to talk him down.” She smiled. “He really had a golden tongue.”
“Were you partners?”
She nodded. “Eventually. That first time, I was just a rookie, following him around. Anyway, we went to a domestic disturbance. Almost exactly the same scenario as the one I walked into the night I found Grace. Sara Myers even looked a bit like that woman. But Spencer was able to talk the woman into going to a shelter. It was amazing, how he convinced her.”
“And you feel like you should have been able to convince Sara Myers just because he got lucky that one time.”
“It wasn’t luck, or just an isolated incident. He had a gift. I saw him do it, time after time. And I learned from him, or thought I had. I’ve had a good success rate in these kind of situations until now.”
“Maggie, it was Sara Myers’s choice to stay with her abuser. None of this is your failure.”
“You’re wrong. My failure killed Sara.” She put her head in her hands, then looked at him with tormented eyes. “My God, Tucker, I turned her into a sitting duck. I should have told her to run.”
“And that could have turned out just as badly. Or even worse if other people had been hurt. You don’t have a crystal ball. You can’t say that if you’d done or said something different you could have saved her. As it was, both you and your partner were shot. One or both of you could have been killed. Or any number of innocent bystanders could have been hurt if the man hadn’t been contained to that apartment.”
She looked unconvinced.
“Did they have kids?”
Maggie nodded. “Three. They were huddled in the other bedroom, terrified to make a sound in case it reminded their father they were there. CPS has them now.”
“At least the children weren’t hurt. Can’t you take any comfort from that?”
“Some.” She frowned at him. “Okay, a lot. But I still hate that it turned out this way. I hate that she’s dead and I couldn’t stop him.”
“I can understand that. But I don’t understand why it reminds you so much of your past. Of Spencer.”
She got up and walked back over to the bar, but she didn’t pick up the whiskey bottle. Her shoulders squared and she turned back to him. “I don’t know, exactly. It’s like they’re connected in my mind. I think failure connects them. Whenever I fail, especially if it’s a domestic disturbance case, I think about Spencer. I feel inadequate again. Just like I felt with your mother earlier. I’m not good enough for your mother. I wasn’t good enough to save Sara. And I wasn’t good enough to make Spencer fall in love with me. No matter how much I loved him.”
He’d thought he wanted to hear the story. Now he wasn’t so sure. “Maggie, come sit down.” He didn’t care how minor she said the wound was, she’d been shot. She ought to be in bed, but barring that, she should at least sit down.
She crossed the room and sat beside him again. “I fell for him. Completely, madly in love. We had an affair. A red-hot affair that lasted about eight months.”
“I thought cops weren’t supposed to get involved with their partners.”
“Technically they’re not. In reality it happens all the time.”
“Was he in love with you?”
“No.” She shook her head, quick and decisive. “No, he never told me he loved me. Never lied to me or tried to make me believe what we had was anything more to him than something to keep the loneliness at bay. He cared about me, I know he did. And he liked the sex, but he didn’t love me.”
So big deal, the guy hadn’t lied to her. He’d used her. And obviously, he’d hurt her. Tucker wished for just a few minutes alone with the man.
“I knew he was hung up on another woman, but I was so damn sure I could make him fall for me instead. She was the only person I ever knew of who Spencer couldn’t convince to do what he wanted. He wanted her to leave her husband for him. She refused, said she wanted to save her marriage, so she and Spencer couldn’t see each other anymore. They’d only been broken up a month or so when I met him.”
“He hurt you. Badly.”
“More like I hurt myself by not seeing reality. Then I got pregnant. I was so happy. I had all the fantasies that, once he knew, Spencer would marry me and the three of us would live happily ever after.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “We were both off duty and I went to tell him about the baby. But I found him packing. He said he’d been planning to tell me that evening. He was leaving Dallas. Seems he’d finally talked the woman he loved into leaving her husband and they were going to start fresh somewhere else. So, bye-bye, Maggie, it’s been nice knowing you.”
“Bastard.”
“No, he wasn’t.” She shook her head. “Don’t blame him for my problems. He didn’t know I loved him. I never told him. And I knew all along he was in love with another woman. I just didn’t want to admit I couldn’t change his mind and make him fall for me. But you can’t make someone love you. I learned that the hard way.”
Tucker had a bad feeling he was going to have to learn the hard way, as well.
“Did you ever tell him you were pregnant?”
“No. I didn’t see the point. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I figured a baby with me would just ruin his life and he’d finally gotten what—who—he wanted. So I left Dallas and came back to Aransas City. I…wanted to be near family. I thought it would be better since I was going to be a single mother.”
Tucker remembered when she’d said she’d needed her mother, and her mother hadn’t been there for her. “What happened to the baby?”
Her expression was bleak. Her eyes huge and full of pain. “
I had a miscarriage, not long after I came back. I told the chief I was pregnant but no one else knew. I thought I’d wait until I started showing. I never reached that stage.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry, Maggie. You wanted it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I wanted the baby. More than I’d ever wanted anything. The doctor said it was just one of those things. Nothing I did to cause it, nothing I could have done to prevent it. But I’ve always wondered….”
“Wondered what? That you were at fault?”
She started to shrug, then caught herself, wincing. “Maybe. I always wondered if the miscarriage was payback.”
“Payback for what?”
“Remember my affair with the married man? The married man with the pregnant wife?”
Tucker just stared at her. She couldn’t possibly believe what she was implying, could she? “Maggie, that’s crazy. The whole situation was much more his fault than yours. He lied to you, told you he was legally separated. Besides, it’s not like there’s some kind of cosmic karma that says, ‘Oh, Maggie screwed up so we’re going to take her baby away from her.’”
“It was as good an explanation as the one I got from the doctor.”
“Have you ever talked to anyone about this?”
“No. What would have been the point? I had a miscarriage. Wham, bam, no more baby. It was over and done with and I moved on.”
But had she moved on? Suddenly her reasons for wanting to keep Grace became much clearer. As well as her fear of intimacy. At least two of the men she’d been intimate with had screwed her over royally. No wonder she didn’t trust men.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Maggie said. “Grace isn’t a substitute for the baby I lost. I feel a connection with her, that’s all.”
He didn’t know what to say to her. How to comfort her. Because she needed comforting, no matter how much she believed she didn’t. So he didn’t say anything. Not yet. Careful not to jar her injury, he urged her closer and put his arm around her. “I’m sorry. I wish someone had been there for you when you lost the baby.”
She put her uninjured arm around his neck and sighed, leaning against him. “Why are you so nice to me? You’re always so nice. So understanding.”
Because I’m in love with you, he thought. But there was no way he could tell her that. He’d only begun to admit it to himself. She wasn’t ready to hear how he felt. Maybe she never would be.
“You deserve someone to be nice to you,” he said lightly. “And you also need someone to put you to bed, since you won’t go yourself. You’re exhausted, Maggie. You need to get some sleep.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t have drunk that whiskey on an empty stomach. I don’t feel so good. And now if Grace wakes up—I’m just batting a thousand tonight for doing the wrong thing.”
“I’ll take care of Grace if she needs anything.” And he intended to take care of Maggie, too. “Come on, I’ll make you some scrambled eggs.”
She sat at the kitchen table and watched him prepare the eggs, not saying anything. But her eyes were stricken and he knew she was replaying the events of the night in her mind. Torturing herself with what-ifs.
He put the plate in front of her. “Eat.”
While she ate he steered the conversation to Grace, and what she’d done that day, and had the satisfaction of seeing the desperate look slowly leave Maggie’s eyes as she talked about the baby and that she could now sit up. A milestone, Maggie said, and he’d even managed to snap a picture.
“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” Maggie said, laying down her fork. She’d eaten a little, though not as much as he’d have liked. At least she had some color back, but she looked exhausted still.
“It might have something to do with being shot.” He led her to her bedroom, ignoring her when she tried to thank him and get rid of him. No way was he leaving her alone with her memories. Not tonight.
He picked up the tank top she’d thrown on the chair. “Can you get into this by yourself or do you need help?”
She took it from him. “Tucker, I’m fine. You don’t have to baby me.”
“Would you for once listen to me? Get undressed and get into bed.”
He knew how exhausted she was because she didn’t argue. She simply stripped out of her uniform where she stood and pulled on her tank and shorts. Then she crawled into bed. He got into bed with her, on top of the covers, with her uninjured arm against him. “Don’t even try to argue with me,” he told her.
“I won’t. I should, but…I’m glad you’re here.” She snuggled against him, laying her poor injured arm over his chest.
“Yeah, me, too. Go to sleep, Maggie.” She dropped off soon after, and just as he’d expected, she woke in pain, with a nightmare, deep in the night. Tucker gave her aspirin, then he held her, comforted her until she calmed down.
And his heart twisted when she said sleepily against him, “Tucker, you’re my best friend,” before she dropped off to sleep again.
She needed a friend, and he was happy to be there for her. But he wanted more, as well. A whole hell of a lot more. Because he’d finally admitted tonight, when he heard the chilling words “officer down” come over the police scanner and known it could be Maggie, what he’d tried to ignore for weeks now. He was totally, madly and, in all probability, hopelessly in love with his wife.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MAGGIE WOKE EARLY the next morning, aware that her arm was throbbing and that her head rested on a warm, hard, masculine chest. Tucker’s chest. She sat up suddenly, then had to bite her lip to keep from screaming at the dizzying rush of pain. Whoever had said flesh wounds weren’t a big deal had obviously never had one. As she gazed at him, Tucker’s eyes opened and he smiled at her sleepily.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” she said, smiling in spite of the pain.
“How’s your arm?”
His voice was a deep rumble, rough with sleep. He looked as good as he sounded, all rumpled and sexy with his morning beard and those beautiful deep-water-blue eyes smiling at her.
“You didn’t have to stay with me.” She sounded ungracious, but damn, she’d been dreaming about him—sexy, sensual dreams, and then to wake in his arms…Still, no wonder she was a little shaken. The sexy dreams beat the hell out of the other dreams she’d had.
“You had a nightmare,” he said, then rolled on his side and propped himself on one arm. “Which isn’t a surprise, considering.”
The night before came back in a flood of memories. She and Tucker, about to make love. Then the call. The whole futile scene at the apartment. Sara Myers, dead. And when she’d come back home…
God, she’d told Tucker her whole miserable history with Spencer. How much had she drunk? And what in the world was the matter with her to spill her guts like she had? She never did that. Never. But then, for some reason Tucker caused her to do a whole lot of stupid things she didn’t usually do.
She got out of bed, careful not to jar her arm any more than she had to. “Yeah, I remember. But you didn’t need to sleep with me.”
“Trust me, Maggie, it wasn’t a hardship.” He looked amused. And tempting. He’d gotten under the covers at some point the night before and now the sheet pooled around his waist. She tried not to look at his bare chest, to see the ripple of muscles as he got up and stretched. But that was impossible.
She took the coward’s way out and dashed into the bathroom. He was gone when she emerged a few minutes later and she breathed a sigh of relief. Grabbing her rattiest, oldest robe, she went to get Grace and found Tucker there before her, talking to the baby while he finished changing her diaper.
“That’s right, Gracie. Tucker’s going to give you a bottle and then we’re going to check out the newspaper.”
Her heart simply melted. God, they were cute together. Grace was kicking her feet and babbling that strange language only babies understand. Tucker had put on a plain white T-shirt and he looked…like a father taking car
e of his child, she realized with a pang of longing. Oh, damn, she had to stop this. “I’ll take her if you want me to.”
He glanced over at her and smiled, then put the baby against his shoulder and walked to the door. Grace peeped at her over Tucker’s shoulder, all blond curly hair, big blue eyes and sweet as only babies can be. “I don’t think so. Have you tried to pick up anything heavy?”
Maggie frowned. “I can manage. Besides, you’re going to work, so you might as well let me have her.” She reached out for her and sucked in a breath, then cradled her arm against her side. Okay, so taking care of Grace wouldn’t be easy, but she could still do it.
Ignoring her, Tucker carried Grace into the kitchen and fixed her bottle of formula, then set out the cereal to give her when she finished. It annoyed Maggie that he was already at least as competent as she in caring for the baby.
“I’m taking a couple of days off work,” Tucker said. “I already called Janice and told her to reschedule, so don’t argue.”
“You don’t need to do that. I can take care of Grace.” Maybe.
“Didn’t I say don’t argue? You’ll have to go in to finish your report. And you’ll have to talk to a lot of other people if they determine your shot killed that man, won’t you?”
“Ben and I both think it was his. Anyway, what do you know about what happens when you shoot someone?”
“Just what I see on TV. But it’s true, isn’t it?” She didn’t answer and he continued, “So let me take care of Grace while you deal with your business.”
He’d left her with nothing to say or do, which irritated the heck out of her. She stalked over to the phone to call the hospital for an update on Ben’s condition. Even though she’d expected good news or she wouldn’t have left the night before, she still breathed a huge sigh of relief to hear they would release him later that day.
For the next few days, she and Tucker played house. At least, that’s how Maggie tried to look at it. Because she sure couldn’t afford to look on those days together, as a family, as something real.
