Protector’s Temptation

by Marilyn Pappano

  “No. You’re wrong, Cate.”

  “Tell me she wasn’t important to you. Tell me you didn’t care a great deal about her.”

  He couldn’t do either. Masiela had been important. He had cared about her. But… “It was a long time ago—and not in the way you think. We worked together. We were partners.” Ex-partners. Ex-friends. A one-night stand.

  She hadn’t been too drunk to remember that night. She’d just chosen to pretend it didn’t happen. Why?

  “I’ve seen you with people you work with. It’s a totally different vibe. There’s more here.”

  He shook his head stubbornly. “That’s just anger. Maybe a little hostility. Things didn’t go so well between us when she quit the department.”

  She shook her head just as stubbornly. “Lie to yourself, AJ, not to me.”

  “Cate, I’m not—” He broke off. He wasn’t lying, not about Masiela. But it was true that he didn’t feel the right feelings. He liked Cate a lot. He might even love her, but not in the way he should. Not in the way he needed to marry her. Hadn’t he acknowledged in the last few days that she deserved more? And if it made her feel better to think he couldn’t give her that because of Masiela…

  She gave his fingers a squeeze before pulling away. “I sent Luisa to get the truck. She should be at the door by now. Do you need help getting into this chair?”

  Slowly he sat up, letting his legs dangle over the side of the bed. “Cate—”

  She smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m okay. Really.”

  He looked at her a long time. Was there more truth in her face than he’d expected? Sixteen years on the job had taught him how to read people, and she didn’t seem as upset as he might have predicted. There was a bit of sadness in her eyes, but mostly it was resignation. Acceptance. She looked like someone whose casual relationship had just ended, not like a woman who’d just found out that the man she loved didn’t love her back. She didn’t even look close to heartbroken.

  Maybe there was someone in her past that she hadn’t yet gotten over.

  Cate waited next to the wheelchair, ready to help. He stood, gritting his teeth, then carefully lowered himself into the chair. She flipped the footrests into place, unlocked the brakes and pushed him from the cubicle.

  His truck was parked underneath the portico again, and Masiela waited beside the open passenger door. He should have made her stay home, shouldn’t have taken the risk of her running into Cate. But it wasn’t regret that eased the tension in his shoulders, just relief that things were ended with Cate.

  He worked his way into the seat, stifling a sharp intake of breath at the pain the effort caused. This time it was Cate leaning across to fasten the seat belt, smelling of crisp cotton and shampoo.

  “You got everything?” she asked, and Masiela nodded. With a nod of her own, Cate stepped back. “No work until you see Dr. Stafford. Take care of him, Luisa.” Then she grinned, and he recognized clearly what she was feeling: relief, just like him.

  Maybe, like him, she thought it was time to settle down and have kids. Maybe, like him, she thought he was as acceptable a candidate as anyone. Apparently, like him, she hadn’t really been in love.

  After she closed the door, Masiela shifted into gear and drove away. They were halfway to Copper Lake’s only all-night pharmacy before she broke her silence. “She’s nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  Another block passed. “Did she buy my story?”

  “No.”

  One more block. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. She’s not.” He waited until she’d turned into the drive-through before grudgingly adding, “I’m not.”

  She had nothing to say to that.

  A drowsy-looking clerk sent the pain medication out through the tube, and Masiela pulled away from the drive-through and stopped in the parking lot before twisting open the bottle and shaking out two tablets. Clutching them in one hand, she opened the bottle of water she’d bought earlier from a waiting room vending machine, then offered both to Decker. “Take these.”

  His heavy-lidded gaze shifted from one hand to the other. “I can wait until we’re home.”

  “You can, but there’s no reason. It takes them a while to kick in. You’ll be tucked in your bed before you get any goofier than you already are. Take them.”

  It was a testament to the severity of his pain that he obeyed without further argument. After washing down the pills, he laid his head back and closed his eyes with a sigh that sounded a lot more like a groan.

  Suddenly she was tired, too, more than the late hour could justify. Wishing she’d paid more attention to the directions he’d given her, she turned onto the first westbound street she came to. The worst that could happen, she would have to find her way downtown and start again from there. Luck was with her, though. She found Oglethorpe and turned onto it, only two blocks from their destination.

  She slowed, about to pull in the driveway, when movement in the house caught her eye. Through the uncurtained front windows she saw a form pass from left to right, then a second appeared in the hallway. She glanced at Decker, his chin dipped to his chest, and grimaced. Clearly, she’d underestimated the power of the pain pills mixed with whatever medication he’d been given at the hospital.

  Easing her foot off the brake, she drove slowly on. Lights were off in most of the neighboring houses, and the only two cars parked on the street both had Georgia tags. Of course, any intruder with half a brain would leave his vehicle elsewhere and hike in through the woods behind the house.

  Half a block away, houses gave way to woods on her side of the road. She eased the truck into the shadows of a huge tree and retrieved her pistol from the glove box. “Decker?”

  A quiet snore was his only response.

  Her fingers were knotted, her stomach cramping, as she studied her options. She could get the hell out, find a motel a town or two over for them to spend the night, and let him deal with it all in the morning. She could make an anonymous call to the police department, but if they went in expecting vandals or burglars and found killer cops instead…

  Or she could walk back through the woods and try to catch a glimpse of the intruders herself. To confirm that it was an eighteen-year-old punk and his buddy, obnoxious but not much of a danger, or something—someone—far worse.

  You don’t go out. You stay out of sight.

  I’m not stupid, Decker, she’d told him the first time. I understand the concept of hiding out.

  Was sneaking around in the dark stupid? Sure, if she wasn’t armed. If she didn’t have the benefit of being as well trained as the bad cops and way better prepared for trouble than a couple of teenage punks. Besides, she wasn’t going to confront anyone. They’d never know she was there. And she needed to know if she’d been found. If she’d brought danger to Decker’s door.

  She pocketed the keys, then slid to the ground, pushing the door closed with as little noise as possible. After attaching the holster to her waistband, she withdrew the pistol, keeping it at her side as she moved deeper into the trees. The night was quiet: she heard a truck braking on a road nearby, an owl hooting closer. It was entirely too peaceful a setting for danger…which made the possible threat that much scarier. She expected goose bumps and knotted nerves when she was walking into a dimly lit tenement where violence was the norm, but not in woods surrounded by houses filled with sleeping residents, not with a bright moon overhead and a lazy breeze drifting the scent of summer flowers on the air.

  Masiela circled behind the house north of Decker’s and crouched in the shadows of its fence near the edge of the trees. Decker’s back door stood open, casting a wedge of pale light onto the grass. Voices sounded distant: male, at least two, possibly three, making no effort to be covert.

  She judged the distance between her hiding spot and Decker’s house. If she got close enough to hear the voices clearly, to make out what they were saying, she’d have her answer. The Brat Packs’ voices were burned into her memory—every insult, every
innuendo, every threat.

  Forty feet to the side of the house, ten more to the back stoop. If the intruders talked on their way out, she would have enough warning to make it back around the side of the house. If they surprised her in the open with no cover…

  Snuffling immediately to her left startled her, and she had to shove out her right hand to stop herself from tumbling over. On the other side of the board fence, sniffing switched to a low whine that quickly ramped up into barking.

  “Shh! Good dog,” she whispered. “Be quiet, puppy.”

  The dog continued to bark, his paws scrabbling in the dirt. Masiela shushed him again, then put a few feet’s distance between them. Her action excited the animal further, his barks turning to rapid, squealing yips.

  A shadow, tall and distorted, fell across the patch of light spilling from the door. “Hey,” the form called. “Let’s get out before that mutt wakes everyone up.”

  By now the dog was hysterical, making Masiela’s ears ring. She ducked behind the nearest tree, staring at the figure in the doorway. Backlit as he was, it was impossible to tell anything about him except that he was tall and muscular. That matched both Kinney and Taylor, though she figured a star pitcher might fit the description, too.

  She held her breath, willing the dog to shut up and the guys in the house to come out where she could see them. When the barking went silent for a moment, she thought the first wish had been granted, until another voice cut through the night.

  “Pepper, we’re trying to sleep in here. What’s gotten into you?”

  The dog went into a frenzy, racing around the yard, then circling back to the fence, making as much noise as a dozen sugar-fueled kids. Swearing silently, Masiela watched the intruder take a step back, out of sight, then surged to her feet and ran the opposite direction. The unseen Pepper followed her progress along the fence, with her disgruntled master muttering, “What the hell?” an instant before the backyard lights blazed on.

  Keeping a firm grip on her pistol, Masiela sprinted forward, her gaze locked on the ground ahead and any obstacles that might trip her. She didn’t slow until she reached the truck, where Decker still snoozed, and she didn’t manage a full breath until they were parked in the back corner of the parking lot of an all-night convenience store two miles away.

  Thanks to the damn dog, she couldn’t say whether the one voice she’d really heard belonged to one of her enemies; and seeing him—a dark shape wearing dark clothes, with his face obscured by shadows—had been useless. Admittedly, partly her fault.

  Kind of like her protector’s condition at the moment. She gazed at Decker with a thin smile. She could wake him if she tried hard enough, but she knew from experience that he’d be groggy and thickheaded. He didn’t handle narcotics well; they either made him loopy or knocked him out, nothing in between.

  Okay, so her plan had failed. Next step: call the police? It was the obvious action, one she would have taken without hesitation, until the past few months. Now everything inside her protested. If anyone from Decker’s department had to know she was there, let him choose the person, the one he could absolutely trust, the way he trusted the Brat Pack. The way he’d once trusted her.

  She yawned so wide that her jaw popped, leading to her decision: they both needed rest—someplace safe, someplace other than Copper Lake. She used the truck’s onboard navigation system to choose a town seventeen miles away and a motel on its far side.

  It was an easy drive on a moonlit road with little traffic. She found the motel, parked out of sight of the office and checked in with cash she’d stowed in her laptop case before leaving Dallas. Key card in hand, Masiela returned to the truck and opened the passenger door. “Decker.” She gave his leg a shake. “Hey, Decker, come on, wake up. Time to go to bed.”

  He opened his eyes, nodded and murmured, “I’m okay here.”

  She cajoled, commanded and pestered until she finally got him inside, out of the awkwardly hanging shirt and onto the closest bed. A few seconds later, he was snoring again. The other bed looked damned appealing, but not yet. Tucking the key card in her pocket, she climbed into the truck and drove a few blocks away, parking it in the lot of an apartment complex, unnoticeable among all the other vehicles. Then, laptop tucked to her side and pistol in easy reach in its holster, she jogged back to the motel, let herself in, locked up and leaned against the door with a heavy sigh.

  Masiela took the time to gently prop two of the room’s four pillows under Decker’s right arm, then turned on the bathroom light before sinking onto the second bed and immediately dozing off. It seemed like only minutes later when a string of curses woke her.

  Decker was sitting up on the edge of the bed, cradling his arm to his chest, groggy, pain etching deep lines in his face. “What the hell—? Where the hell—?” His gaze shot to her as she sat up, and he demanded, “What the hell’s going on? Where are we? What happened?”

  Shoving her hair from her face, she forced her eyes to focus on the nightstand clock. She’d slept three hours, which meant his next dose of pain medication was past due. “Give me a minute,” she mumbled, rising from the bed and heading for the bathroom sink. She splashed water on her face, dried it, filled a paper cup and returned to the beds with it and the pain pills. “We’re in a motel in Peachton. You remember going to the emergency room?”

  He grunted. “We were supposed to go home from there.”

  “We did. But somebody else was already there. At least two males. Went in the back door. I couldn’t get a good look at either one, and thanks to the furball next door, I couldn’t hear the one guy’s voice well enough to recognize it.”

  Stillness settled over him, his arm apparently forgotten. “You went in to check it out?”

  That was a voice she remembered well, cold and menacing, usually followed by an angry eruption that led to a lot of shouting. She tried to head it off with reason. “You were passed out, unarmed and incapacitated. I wasn’t about to call the police, and I needed to find out what I could before I went running off to hide. I was armed and I was careful.”

  He took a slow breath. “Not careful enough to outwit Pepper.”

  Masiela blinked. “I got caught by a dog named Pepper?”

  “Yeah. She’s about as big as your shoe.” Another slow breath.

  Interesting. She was way more familiar with Decker in a temper than she was with him trying to control it.

  “So what did you find out?”

  She grimaced. “Not much. I saw two figures inside, then one at the back door. He was tall, muscular and every other detail was in shadow.”

  “You didn’t recognize him.”

  She shook her head and waited for him to say something snide: You didn’t recognize him because it wasn’t Myers, Kinney or Taylor, because they’re not after you, because they had nothing to do with Teri’s murder, because your client is guilty. When he didn’t, she drew a breath to ease the tightness in her muscles, then asked, “How do you feel?”

  This time he grimaced. “Like I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my damn wrist.”

  She wasn’t about to give voice to the twinge of sympathy deep down inside. In her experience, the more sympathy men got, the more they wanted, and pampering wasn’t her style. “Poor baby. Here are your pills.” She took two from the bottle.

  “I just want one.”

  “Okay. Here’s one pill.” She handed it to him, then the water, waited until he swallowed, then held out the second tablet. “Here’s the other one.”

  “I don’t need two.”

  “Are you hurting?”

  Even in the dim light she could make out his glare. “Like hell.”

  “Then take the second pill. It’s easier to keep the pain under control than to chase it when it’s out of control.”

  He stared at the pill but made no move to take it. She made no move to withdraw it. After a long moment ticked past, he grudgingly accepted it and swallowed it with a gulp of water.

  “Still no bette
r at being the patient, are you? That time you sprained your ankle chasing a suspect, we thought we were going to have to put you down like a horse gone lame.”

  “I damn near broke it,” he growled.

  “Yeah, so you kept telling us. It might even have hurt as much as my face did when that three-hundred-pound gorilla punched me, but you didn’t hear me complain, did you?” Now things would be different, but that had been in her better-than days: she’d had to be better than the male officers she worked with to be considered half as good. She would have bitten off her tongue before complaining to any of them about the pain—or the fact that her backup hadn’t backed her up.

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t have to bear weight on your face.”

  “No, I just had to eat, breathe and talk.”

  Silence settled between them, heavy, thick, the kind where sounds magnified in her ears. When it grew so loud she was tempted to plug her ears with her fingers, he broke it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He’d asked the question earlier that evening, along with others, and she’d buried her answer in the answer to the others. You know how narrow-minded cops are when it comes to their own. How narrow-minded he was when it came to his own.

  She’d been one of “their own,” too, but there wouldn’t have been any sympathy or support for her. It was always the cops being accused who got the backing of their fellow officers. In an us against them environment, the cop doing the accusing suddenly became one of “them,” the enemy.

  “You don’t believe me now. Why pretend that you might have all those years ago?” Even though they’d been best buds and partners and had trusted each other with their lives, he would have said she was overly sensitive or reacting out of her dislike for the three cops. They’d never been out of line when anyone else was around, so it would have come down to her word against theirs. And Decker would have believed them.

  “I never saw anything inappropriate.”