The Tough Guy and the Toddler

by Diane Pershing

  She opened the cover of the album and turned the pages slowly, reliving those first few months of Michael’s life. There was the wrinkled newborn, the first bath with the towel wrapped all around him. Baby Michael in his grandmother’s arms, his father’s arms, his mother’s arms.

  When she found the one she’d been looking for, she stopped, smoothed a hand over the page. It was a picture of Michael on his knees near a bed of flowers, clutching the stem of one in his fat little hand, caught in the act of glancing at whoever was taking the picture, an expression of pure joy on his face. Jordan felt her heart cracking under the strain of the memory of that day. One precious moment in time, captured forever.

  It had been early last year, and she and Reynolds had just had another fight. This one was about her unwillingness to go to yet another party with the same spoiled, wealthy people he’d been friends with since childhood—each of them, men and women, on their second or third marriage. She knew how it would go. There would be too much drinking and catty remarks and golf stories. One or two of his friends would come on to her, and she would wriggle out of it as gracefully as possible. Reynolds would disappear for a half hour, and when he returned, his clothes would be a little less immaculate than when he’d left, and there would be a trace of lipstick somewhere on his shirt.

  No, Jordan had told her husband that day, she would not go to his stupid party. Since Michael’s birth she’d been speaking up for herself more and more, and Reynolds’s scowl had been fierce. She’d grabbed her camera, picked up Michael and driven him to a nearby park. There she’d set him down near the flower beds and watched him, fascinated as he examined the blooms, clapped his hands at a buzzing fly. His child’s interest, his joy at these simple things, had allowed her insides to return to some semblance of calm. As her son had fingered the petals of a daffodil, Jordan had picked up the camera and called his name. When he looked up, she’d snapped the picture.

  She pointed to the photograph. “See?” she told Dom. “That’s who he was. That’s the real Michael.”

  Dom leaned in, straining his neck in an attempt to see what she was pointing at, but the angle of his chair made it difficult. Glancing at him, Jordan seemed to notice his discomfort because she said “I’m sorry,” moving over on the couch and patting the cushion next to her. Her invitation was innocent enough, but he found himself hesitating. For some reason, he felt safer keeping a physical distance from her.

  Safer? he asked himself silently. What was being safe all about? He was here to help her out—she’d asked, and he’d accepted. He shifted from the chair onto the couch, so that he sat next to her on the overstuffed cushion. Still, he was careful to keep several inches between them as she showed him a couple more snapshots of a blond-haired, chubby-cheeked little boy.

  “There he is with his yellow ball. And on his first birthday.” Angling her head, she offered an apologetic smile. “Am I being awful? There’s nothing worse than having to look at other people’s pictures, especially of their children.”

  Her eyes, he thought, drawn into their depths against his will. They were the strangest color of green. Translucent. And that mouth, the way she smiled, the teeth white and even, the lips full and oh, so tempting.

  “Hey, I asked,” he said gruffly. “It’s okay.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Man, was it hard to concentrate. Dom kept being distracted by the woman sitting next to him and the impact she made on his senses. This close, he could smell her fragrance, a mixture of expensive perfume and clean, lemon-scented hair. Sexual awareness throbbed in every part of him. He wanted to caress her hair, stroke her skin, to feel the touch of her fingers on every part of him.

  Schooling his face to keep from revealing any of his thoughts, Dom forced himself to concentrate on the pictures, offering appropriate grunts of acknowledgment and appreciation. Picking up the recent snapshot she’d received, he tried to compare the faces. There was some similarity, sure, but not enough to make a big deal over. And okay, the kid was cute, but he was a kid. Dom knew how that went—he had a bunch of nieces and nephews, and according to all his siblings, the sun rose and set on each one of them.

  He and Theresa had had bad luck in the baby-making department so, long ago, he’d stopped planning to be a father, ceased fantasizing about a little miniature version of him sitting on his knee or catching a softball. He’d put that part of him away, and that’s what Jordan Carlisle would have to do. Put it away.

  Her little boy, she needed to remind herself, was no longer living and breathing. The sad but real truth was that Michael Carlisle, this child whose face was spread over all the pages of this album, was now a statistic.

  But not the woman, Dom added silently, she was not a statistic. Again, he inhaled the fresh smell of her as his gaze moved to the album. Her hands on the pages were beautifully formed, with long, slender fingers and clear polish on her nails. Lamplight glinted on the large diamond.

  Jordan Carlisle. A real upper-crust name; it went with the jewelry, the house, the woman. Jordan Carlisle. Perfect No one in his world was named Jordan. They were Maries and Sallys and Annes, not Jordans. So, okay, he and Jordan didn’t hang out at the same places—that didn’t alter the fact that, like it or not, there was something between them, some...connection. An invisible wire, electrified, ready to go off any moment.

  On his part, anyway. Glancing quickly at her profile, he wondered if she was aware of that connection, but then decided that, nah, she was too wrapped up in happy-painful memories to be paying much attention to him.

  The album reflected her recent past, its snapshots revealing a whole other Jordan Carlisle than the one he knew. Here was a loving mother with child, romping in the sand at the beach, riding a bike with the kid in a small seat behind her, her legs long and bare in shorts and tennis shoes. Jordan, waving and laughing. Relaxed. The way she could be, he saw, but not the way he knew her. He hadn’t seen that side of her yet. The pictures showed Jordan before her world fell apart.

  He knew all about that. He’d been a different man before the obsession for a baby had started eating at Theresa. Not softer—he’d never been soft a day in his life—but less closed off than he was now. Loving another human being made people nicer, kinder, he figured. Hopeful.

  “Here,” Jordan said, snapping him out of his reverie. He’d been thinking about Theresa again. Why now? It had been three years, and her memory had faded.

  As Jordan indicated one more photograph, Dom observed the slight tremor in her hand and how she bit her bottom lip to keep from crying again. This was hard on her, it was obvious, and the effort to hold on to her composure was costing her.

  The picture showed the kid in front of the house, one thumb in his mouth, his feet turned in slightly, hugging a brown stuffed animal with his free hand.

  “He was about fifteen months old when I got him that dog,” she said shakily. “He loved it so.”

  Abruptly, she rose from the sofa and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows at one end of the room, continuing to speak as she did. “We couldn’t have a real dog because Cynthia is highly allergic, so I found that one, a pretend puppy, and from the moment he got it, he never let it out of his sight. It was like some kind of talisman, a kind of, you know, a friend to have when you got scared. Michael was a little shy until he got comfortable.”

  Angling her head to face him, she smiled softly at Dom. “Kind of like me. But then when he knew someone, he was all right. He was quick to walk, slow to talk, but he was doing both fine when—”

  Her breath hitched, and she bit her lip again, in an obvious effort at control. Averting her gaze, she moved the curtain aside and seemed to stare out at the night.

  Dom stood, started to walk toward her, but stopped. The instinct to reach out and take her hand was strong, but he didn’t follow it up with action. Clenching his fists, he held back, kept his distance. That push-pull thing was here again, although he wasn’t quite sure why—only that physical contact with
Jordan Carlisle didn’t seem like a smart thing.

  “He was doing fine when what?” he prompted.

  “When he died,” she said, still staring out the window at nothing but black night.

  What could he say? What was left to say? They both lapsed into silence. She was still shaky, he saw, so he walked in her direction, saying, “Look, we don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

  She shook her head but didn’t look at him. “No, I want to. Give me a minute.”

  Another few moments of silence went by. Then the phone rang and was quickly picked up somewhere in the house. Jordan turned as Dom glanced at his watch. Almost nine-thirty. He was on duty again in less than eleven hours.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Do you have to leave?”

  “Not for a little while.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah.” He scratched his head. Were they done? Had she told him all she could? Did he want this time with her to be over?

  No, he did not.

  “Do you feel up to telling me about the accident?” Dom asked. “More details, I mean. If you want to.”

  She examined her rings, and he wondered if she knew what a giveaway that nervous gesture was. She was pretty easy to read anyway—everything she felt showed on her face. Her heart-stoppingly beautiful face.

  “Detective—” she began, but he cut her off.

  “Dom.”

  “Oh, yes, Dom.” Placing her hand on his arm, she said softly, “I want to thank you for taking time to come here, and all. I really appreciate it.”

  His skin burned where she touched him, even through his jacket, and the gratitude on her face made him feel squirmy. “Hey, forget it.”

  She moved away, made a beeline for the bar. “I’m going to get another drink. Sure I can’t interest you?”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll take a Scotch.”

  Man, he needed one, he thought. The woman made him uncomfortable. Obviously, she, too, needed some fortification. Was she a lush? he wondered with the cop part of his brain. She exhibited none of the signs, but it was possible. Tragedy often turned a lot of one-a-day recreational drinkers into candidates for AA.

  He watched her as she walked toward the mirrored built-in bar, her slim hips swaying slightly. Dom removed the gum from his mouth, discarded it in a crumpled wrapper he found in his pocket, then deposited it in a heavy crystal ashtray on a side table.

  As he did, he asked himself what he was doing here. And why was he staying? She’d given him an out—it was late, he was tired—but he hadn’t taken it. Which was nuts—he’d put in twelve hours already, hadn’t taken a day off in over two weeks. He was wiped out, running on nervous energy. The letter was a scam, he’d done his bit. So why was he here?

  Instead of answering his own question, he found himself walking toward the bar. “Can I help?” he said.

  “No, thank you.”

  Even so, he stood behind her while she mixed the drinks, gazing at the back of her neck. Her hair had some brown and blond mixed in with the auburn and was cut so that it tapered into a slight V. At the point of the V, a soft, blond line of down continued downward, past the clasp of her pearls—which shimmered in the soft lighting—disappearing beneath the neckline of her sweater.

  Her neck was long and graceful, her skin nearly as pale as the pearls. He longed to run the pad of his finger over that line of down, wondered how her skin would taste.

  Why was he staying? asked that same nag of an inner voice. Why was he having a drink, prolonging the encounter? And fantasizing about the taste of her?

  There was no way the two of them belonged together. Dom preferred his women more down to earth, more Wal-Mart, less Neiman-Marcus. And she obviously went for guys in thousand-dollar suits and home gyms, which had nothing to do with the way his hormones clanged loudly in her presence.

  But, even more worrying than this physical reaction was his need to get to know her, to learn all there was to learn about her, more and more and more. as much as she would reveal. Which was not like him, but there it was.

  So, to answer his question, he was still here because, somehow, he couldn’t see himself cutting off her reminiscences, hopping up, waving goodbye and taking off. Couldn’t see it, didn’t want to.

  What he needed to do, however, was to go back to being a cop. Return to being Mrs. Carlisle and Detective Sergeant D’Annunzio. Yeah, that’s what he needed to do.

  Soon, he assured himself, staring again at the jeweled clasp of her pearl necklace and at the tiny mole beside it. Real soon.

  Jordan sensed Dom’s presence behind her—solid and strong, but also warm. It was as though he gave off heat, like a furnace. It had the strange effect of rattling her and comforting her at the same time. In fact, in the past few moments, the atmosphere in the room had changed. Up to then, her grief and the pictures of Michael had made her tune out everything but her own emotions. Now the air was heavy with this new element.

  She glanced into the mirror behind the bar, and as she did, Dom’s eyes met hers. It was hard to decipher the look in his eyes, but it was intense. She was aware of how dark he was, especially in the backdrop of the room’s white and beige tones. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, the beard shadow. He was a half a head taller than she was, but he seemed even larger than that. Overwhelming and powerful. Hulking.

  She turned to give him his drink, and face to face, their eyes locked. She saw it then.

  Hunger.

  Raw, primitive desire.

  A brief flash of it before he pulled the shutters closed. It was not her imagination. She was too used to men and the way they looked at her, wondering if she would be a trophy, to miss the signs.

  With abrupt movements, Dom took the drink from her, then turned away. After downing half of it, he walked around the room, staring at pictures, vases, knickknacks, keeping his back to her. Avoiding her.

  So, Jordan thought with wonder, Dominic D’Annunzio wanted her. She stood still and let the realization wash over her. It felt...nice. No, wrong word. Not nice. Exciting. And a little scary, too. This felt like unknown territory. Even with all her experience of men, she wasn’t familiar with this type of man and his particular set of rules.

  Jordan hadn’t had much success with lovers, hadn’t enjoyed much pleasure in bed. But that didn’t seem to have soured her on the possibilities, did it? From the start, she’d found Dom disturbingly sexy and now she knew it was mutual. She’d seen it in Dom’s eyes—a naked yearning for her. He’d let her glimpse it for just a millisecond, and then it was gone.

  She followed his movements as, obviously unsettled, Dom prowled the room. She wondered briefly what it would feel like to have all that restless energy inside her and felt a warm shiver go through her at the thought. He stopped in front of a framed wedding picture, Jordan and Reynolds on the day of their marriage, and stared at it, but said nothing.

  Drink in hand, Jordan walked over to the picture and stood next to Dom, aware of him with that extra sense, now that she knew how he felt. Both of them studied the formally dressed bride and groom.

  “I was so happy that day,” she said. And she had been, impossibly young and filled with the dream of a solid, secure future.

  Her speedy journey from dirt-poor and naive to the jet-set world of high fashion had been more than she could handle emotionally. In the beginning, of course, at the age of fifteen, she’d loved the attention, the fuss, the money. But after a couple of years, when everyone wanted a piece of her and she’d stopped feeling like a person and more like a commodity, after her family had begun to “invest” her money for her and every man she met wanted to bed her, underage or not, she’d been on the verge of collapse. That’s when Reynolds had come along, riding up on his white horse.

  A white top-of-the-line Mercedes, in actuality. He’d been raised in privilege and had been singularly unimpressed with her fame, which was a nice change.

  He’d been determined to have her. He’d wooed her with thoughtful gifts, corrected h
er grammar, taught her about wine and how to select the best quality jewelry. When he’d weeded out his competitors, he’d informed her she’d better marry him because he was what she needed. Barely eighteen years old and already exhausted by life, she had agreed.

  In her wedding picture, her face was wreathed in a happy smile. Her happiness that day had been real, but it had not been in love happy. It had been relieved happy. Finally, there was someone to lean on, someone whose arms would be large enough to take her in, to protect her from a world that puzzled and terrified her.

  Jordan glanced at Dom’s profile as he continued to study the portrait. “Nice picture,” he said finally.

  “It was a nice day.”

  “Did it stay that way?”

  He angled his head to face her, piercing her with those coffee-brown eyes of his. See-all, seen-all eyes. His expression was grim. Again, she was struck by how thoroughly out of place he seemed in this delicate room with its neutral shades and aura of quiet good taste. He brought not only darkness with him, but also street smarts, rough edges, eyes that had seen all the worst mankind could offer.

  He repeated the question a shade more insistently. “Did it stay that way?”

  She answered with a shrug. “Does anything?” she asked.

  He stared at her a little while longer, his face impassive, then shrugged also. “Sometimes it does.” He said it offhandedly, but she sensed there was more to it.

  Then she remembered. Yes, of course. His wife had died, he’d told her. Here she was, so wrapped up in her own tragedy she’d forgotten that until this moment. His marriage must have been successful, one of the good ones.

  “So,” Jordan said softly, placing her hand lightly on his arm, “you must really miss your wife.”

  Something flashed across his face, some emotion she could not read and that he made sure she couldn’t-by drawing the shutters again. “Yeah.” He turned away from her, and her hand fell to her side. “But I’m here to talk about you.”