“My surrogate fathers.”
Cooper’s voice came from so close behind her she did jump this time. God, she’d been so oblivious she hadn’t even heard him board. True, he moved with amazing silence when he wanted to—another trick of the trade, she supposed—but you’d think she would have at least heard something.
He set down the stuffed backpack and the two large bags he’d come back with. He walked over to stand beside her. It didn’t do much to calm the startled racing of her pulse.
“One on the left is Dave Lindsey, my dad’s partner when he went down. Next is their boss, Lieutenant Pinsky, he’s a captain now. Then Chuck Hernandez, my dad’s first partner on the force, who retired a couple of years before Dad was killed.”
She was steadier now, although still mentally chastising herself for getting so lost in her thoughts she’d been taken unaware. What if it had been Jeremy?
“Surrogate fathers?” she asked.
“They all pitched in. Stayed involved in our lives. Helped my mom when she needed it, and when I needed it. Helped me with sports, or chewed me out if I was straying off the path.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“It was a pact they made. A cop thing. That if anything happened to one of the four, the other three would see to their family.”
She couldn’t imagine living like that, with what to most people would be an abstract, remote chance being an absolute and very real possibility.
“That’s even more wonderful,” she said quietly.
“They’re good guys. We all still get together on Dad’s birthday. And I know if my mother needed anything I couldn’t handle, they’d be there.”
That made her shift her gaze to the woman in the picture. “She’s lovely,” she said.
“Yes.”
“She must have been so proud that day.”
“As opposed to now?”
She flushed. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Why not? Most women do. Rootless, drifter, immature, homeless, that’s the general riff.”
“You’re not homeless.” She gestured around at the cabin. “I was just thinking earlier, if you count it all, this isn’t much smaller than my first apartment. Besides, if you really wanted to be completely rootless, you’d have a sailboat, like you said. Not tied to anything.”
He blinked, as if he were startled that she’d used his own thoughts back at him.
“And I think wanting to hang on to your father’s dream is admirable,” she added. “As long as you love it, too.”
“I do love it.”
He was looking at her with that intensity that made her edgy. And she was surprised at herself, at the way that defense had leaped to her lips without a thought. Especially since, in the beginning, she’d thought the same way those women he’d quoted had felt.
And now, she didn’t want to think about those women at all, whoever they’d been. Didn’t want to think about him being with them.
Any of them, she guessed, wouldn’t have kept him sleeping down the hall. Which made who the fool? Them? Or her?
And then he tossed the bucket of cold water that shocked her out of the haze of heated musings she’d been mired in since last night.
“What about your father, Nell?”
Chapter 26
Nell visibly stiffened. “What about him? He walked out on us, and never came back.”
There was anger and bitterness in her voice.
“When?”
She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter anymore. But he knew better; you weren’t angry or bitter if you didn’t care.
“The day after my eighteenth birthday. Tris was nineteen, twenty in another month. My father said he’d gotten us that far, now it was up to us.”
“Cold.”
“Yes. And I don’t talk about it.”
“You should.”
She made a muttered sound that somehow managed to express rather eloquently what she thought of that opinion.
“It’ll just eat you alive, Nell. Bitterness is an acid that’ll eat you up from the inside out.”
“Right.”
“Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. It almost did me in. After my dad was killed I was so angry, so bitter, that I was headed down a very wrong path. Getting in all kinds of trouble.”
She gave him a sideways glance then, and he saw that she was at least listening. He gestured at the graduation photo, at the man on the far end.
“Dave got wind of it. My mom probably called him, because I wasn’t listening to her. He tracked me down. Took me out to the middle of nowhere, chewed me a new one. Told me I was betraying my father’s memory, and that he’d be ashamed of me. Making my mom worry and all. Then he told me to think about it until he came back in the morning.”
She blinked. “He left you there? All night?”
He nodded. “Miles from anywhere. Left me a bottle of water. I spent the night pretty cold, hungry and miserable.” His mouth quirked. “And a little scared. They don’t call them the Washington State Cougars for nothing.”
She shivered. “That’s awful.”
“Tough love,” he said. “And it worked. I’d been so angry and bitter that he was gone that I never thought about what my father would think of the way I was acting.”
He saw her expression change. “So I’m supposed to forgive him?”
“Did your mother love him?” he asked, dodging the question with one of his own.
“Yes. And to be fair,” she said, almost reluctantly, “he stuck with her throughout her illness. He did everything for her.”
She sounded as if she hadn’t thought about that in a long time. He supposed it was too painful to dwell on, a feeling he understood all too well himself.
“So he loved her,” he said.
She nodded. “That we never doubted.”
“You just don’t think he loved you.”
“Not enough to stay.”
“But he did stay. Until you were legally an adult.”
“He had to, didn’t he?”
He let that go. He wasn’t even sure why he was pursuing this, except it seemed important. And he’d been there. “Don’t you think he trusted your brother to look out for you if you needed it?”
She blinked. “He knew Tris would always take care of me.” She seemed to hear how that sounded, and added, “In an emergency, I mean. I didn’t need a…keeper.”
Her hesitation before the last word told him she knew that was exactly what she’d gone for with Jeremy Brown. She didn’t need him pointing out the obvious. So he went for the money point instead.
“What would your mother think of how you feel about him? How you blame him?”
“She would have wanted him to take care of her children!”
“And he did. He didn’t walk out when he probably wanted to, Nell. He stayed, fighting his own pain, until you were old enough to take care of yourself. And you had your brother as…insurance.”
She stared at him. Something he’d said had gotten to her, he could see it. He just didn’t know what it was.
“His own pain,” she whispered.
He seized on it. “You think you and your brother were the only ones hurting? My mother always said kids are only yours for a while, then they’re off to make their own lives. Your mate is the one who’s forever. Or is supposed to be. Lose that, and it’s like losing a big chunk of yourself. And all of your future.”
She gave a tiny, choked cry, then she spun on her heel and ran, vanishing into the master stateroom and closing the door sharply behind her.
“Nice work, Grant,” he muttered.
He busied himself putting away the things he’d bought. The small store’s selection had been mainly basics, with the addition of some local seafood that looked tempting. There was room in the small freezer, so he’d bought enough to provide a nice variety, along with some other meats. He’d never shopped for two on a regular basis, so it was a bit of a novelty for him.
To his own surprise h
e enjoyed it, and it kept him distracted from the promise he’d made, perhaps rather rashly. Just because his father had helped take down one of the biggest drug operations in the state didn’t mean he had the same ability. And just because his father had once won a medal of valor for rescuing a woman and two children from a burning house didn’t mean he could rescue this one from her powerful soon-to-be-ex, he thought, recognizing wryly that he seemed bent on referring to Brown that way.
He wasn’t his father. He wasn’t some larger-than-life hero, respected by all and loved by many. He was just a boat bum who played at being a detective, respected by few and loved by fewer. Mom aside, of course. But that was kind of in her job description.
“Did you ever want to be a cop, like your dad?”
He’d heard the sound of her sock-clad feet, so he wasn’t startled by her approach. He was startled by the question. Enough to answer honestly.
“Always.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He gestured at the bottom photograph. “My mother. She made me promise. From the time he died, she made me promise every year, on his birthday.”
“Not to become a cop?”
He nodded. “It was the only thing she ever asked of me. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t say no. It was the only thing I could do to make her happy.”
“But if it was your dream…”
He shrugged. “She might have let up, later. She even told me, a couple of years ago, that she shouldn’t have forced that on me. But by then, it was already out of my head as an impossibility.” He’d had enough of the subject, so he slid into a joke. “Along with nuclear physicist, brain surgeon and president.”
She smiled, albeit halfheartedly. “Because?”
“Not smart enough, not careful enough, not ambitious enough.”
“Ambition builds countries. Blind ambition destroys them,” she said.
He blinked. “Who said that?”
“I’m not sure if anybody real did. I read it in a novel.” She looked down, studying her toes for a moment. Then she took a breath and looked back at him. “I’m sorry.”
He’d put his foot in it, and she was apologizing to him?
“I’ve always been so angry at him that I never really thought about it from his side. And I think I even blamed him, partially, for Mom dying. He should have saved her. That kind of childish thing.”
“That’s normal.”
“Like you thinking you should have saved your father? Somehow kept him from being in that store that day?”
He nodded.
“But you got over that.”
“Eventually. In my head. My gut, sometimes not so much.”
She gave him a look that was almost grateful for that. “I didn’t. I let my emotional reaction stay what it had been when she died. And when he left, it just seemed to validate my feelings. He didn’t care, he never had.”
“And it never occurred to you that maybe he cared too much?”
She sighed. “No. He tried to explain, but I wouldn’t listen. And now—” she gave an embarrassed shrug “—I’ve done what he did. I ran. You’d think I would have understood better how he felt.”
“When he left, were you all right? I mean, he didn’t leave you out on the street, did he?”
“No. He had inherited some money from his father. Quite a bit, actually. He left it in trust for us, with Tris as trustee. The monthly amount was more than enough, until we got going on our own.”
“So he didn’t really abandon you.”
She sighed again. Her face showed the torment she’d been through, then and now. It was startling how much the glasses and even the dark contacts had masked; now it seemed her every emotion was there in her eyes.
“No. He didn’t. He just escaped an intolerable situation.”
“Did you ever hear from him?”
“For a while. Cards on our birthdays. From all over the country. I burned mine.”
“Unopened, I presume.”
This time the sigh was accompanied by a grimace. “I was an angry, scared, immature kid. I know that. What’s so wrong, and so pitiful, was I let my emotions about him freeze there. I hung on to that sense of betrayal and abandonment, long after I should have outgrown it.”
“I was angry at my dad, too. For leaving me.”
“But he had no choice. Mine did,” she pointed out. Then the grimace again. “See? It’s ingrained.”
“Let it go, Nell. You know you have to. You’ve known for a long time.”
She frowned. “What makes you think that?”
“You wouldn’t have gotten there so quickly just now, if you hadn’t already been there on some level.”
She looked doubtful, then thoughtful, as if she’d realized there was truth in what he’d said.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft.
“My mom always said there’s absolutely no point in going through hell unless you can later show someone else the way.”
“Your mom sounds wonderful.”
“She is. You’d like her, I think.”
Nell glanced at the photograph. “So do I.”
“When this is over,” he began. Then he stopped, realizing what he’d almost said, that he’d like her to meet his mother. He nearly groaned at what he’d let slip into his thinking, that there would still be a connection between them when this was over.
“So whose fault was your brother’s death?” he said abruptly, almost harshly.
She drew back sharply at the unexpected offensive. He’d meant it to shock, to distract from his own floundering, but the look on her face made him feel like he’d slapped her. As, figuratively, he supposed he had.
“I just thought while you were reapportioning guilt, you might have made some changes there, too,” he said, trying to say it lightly enough to blunt the initial impact.
For a moment she simply looked at him, and he was utterly unable to read her expression. Then she gave a sharp nod.
“I have. I know whose fault it was. Tris died protecting me, but not because of me. That lies completely at Jeremy’s feet.”
He let out a relieved breath. “You’ve been working on that in the back of your mind, too, haven’t you?”
“I must have been,” she agreed. “Or like you said, I wouldn’t have gotten there so quickly now. Nor would I,” she said, holding his gaze levelly, “without you. Thank you. You’re a remarkable man, Cooper Grant. No matter what you might think.”
He felt suddenly awkward.
And suddenly, fiercely hot.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered.
“Like what?”
“Like you wish you’d come down the hall last night.”
“I do.”
He blinked. Struggled for air that seemed suddenly in short supply. If she hadn’t looked so startled at her own temerity, he doubted if he could have gotten a word out.
“We could make up for that now,” he said, hardly recognizing the thickness of his own voice.
He heard her breath catch. “You’re sure you want to?”
Given he’d been battling images of this incessantly, he nearly groaned aloud. “Isn’t that supposed to be my question?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
For a moment he thought she was teasing. Then he realized she was honestly asking. And he vowed in that moment that, if nothing else, he was going to make sure that she didn’t think of that bastard she’d married once when she was in his arms.
And then she was, and Cooper’s body responded with a speed that jolted him; it had already gotten the message that the battle was over, that this time the images would be made reality.
By the time they got to the stateroom he knew he was in overdrive, and tried desperately to slow down. What small part of his logical brain that was still functioning knew he had to go slow, knew that she had to know every step of this was at her pace, her choosing. She’d had too few choices before, he was going to give her all of them now. Even if it kil
led him.
Which, he thought as he tugged at her shirt, it just might.
But she didn’t seem inclined to let him go slow. Or perhaps it was just that he was so revved up it seemed every move he made she countered with her own. When he slipped off her shirt, he barely had a moment to savor, then tamp down the fierce heat that rose in him at the sight of the luscious curve of her breasts, so often hidden by the excess cloth. Because she was tugging at his shirt in turn. In the process her fingers brushed over the bare skin of his belly, and every muscle beneath them clenched so hard he could barely breathe.
He unhooked her bra, spilling perfectly shaped breasts tipped with pink loose to tempt his hands. But even as their softness rounded into his hands he lost his breath again as she reached for his waistband. She fumbled for a moment, but then she had the button undone, and the restraint of denim eased as she unzipped him.
He barely had the determination to get out the words he knew he needed to say.
“You want to stop, say so. Whenever.”
In answer she slid her hands around to his hips and began to push his jeans downward.
Things happened fast after that. And he gave up any pretense of going slow.
“Next time,” he muttered as they went down to the berth in a tangle of naked limbs and gasping breaths. “Next time, slow.”
He tried, genuinely tried to keep some tiny bit of focus on any signals she might give him, that she wanted to stop, that she’d changed her mind, but thinking wasn’t something his brain did very well when every bit of blood and every nerve in his body was occupied elsewhere.
And then she was touching him, caressing his aroused flesh with such a gentle, hesitant motion that it was all he could do to hold back. He groaned her name, clutching at the pillow beneath her head, grasping for any kind of control. But then he reached down, touched her, found her slick and wet, heard her tiny gasp as he brushed over that knot of nerves. He circled, pressed, stroked until she was arching to his touch.
And then he ran completely out of restraint. He shifted over her, grateful when she opened for him, beyond grateful when she guided him home.
It was so hot, so intense, if the chilly sound was boiling around them it wouldn’t have surprised him. And when she moaned his name, when he felt her body tighten around him, felt the rhythmic clenching, he let himself go with a groan of her name that broke from a place so deep and protected he felt as if he’d been simultaneously ripped apart and made whole.
Enemy Waters Page 17
