Father Figure

by Rebecca Daniels

  With the toe of his wet boot, he kicked the lid on the tackle box closed, and reached for his fishing vest that lay beside him on the rock. He slipped in on over his bare chest, inspecting the pockets again, double-checking that he had what he needed—flies, line, needle-nose pliers. He and Josh had decided they weren’t going home until they’d each caught their limit, but the way the fish were biting, they would easily make it back in plenty of time for dinner.

  It had been well before dawn when he’d pulled up in front of Marissa Wakefield’s condominium. But Josh had been ready and waiting, standing on the porch with rod and reel in hand.

  Dylan had been a little surprised to see the kid standing there alone. He’d expected to see Marissa waiting there with him—or maybe it was just that he’d hoped she’d be there.

  He pulled the black gnat from the breast pocket of his fishing vest, attaching it to the end of his yellow monofilament leader. But a frown etched deeply into the rugged lines of his mouth as he thought about those moments in front of her house. He didn’t like thinking about what it had felt like to look up to see her run out the front door toward him as he’d loaded Josh’s gear into the back of his truck. At first he’d been too caught up in the sight of her, too distracted by the short robe wrapped around her and the long hair falling free and loose down her back to feel much of anything at all—but then later…

  Dylan shook his head, trying to push his thoughts aside. He felt beads of sweat form along his upper lip, knowing they had nothing to do with the sun blazing down from overhead. He’d been trying to purge the image of her from his mind all morning.

  His gaze glinted to the blanket spread on the shore, and to the bleached wicker picnic basket that sat on top of it. In his head he saw her running down the sidewalk with that basket in her arms, carrying the lunch she’d packed for them—fried chicken, potato salad, cold sodas and a beer. But it wasn’t the food he was thinking about, it was the satiny material of her robe, and how it caught the light of the street lamp and shimmered pink with every move that she made.

  He swiped angrily at the perspiration on his lip, swearing beneath his breath.

  “You okay?”

  Chapter 9

  Dylan looked up, surprised to see Josh standing in the ankle-high water just beside him. “Yeah, I’m fine, why?”

  “Just wondering.” Josh shrugged, tilting the baseball cap he had on backward away from his forehead and setting his tackle box down onto the rock next to Dylan’s. “You just had a funny look on your face, that’s all.”

  Dylan shook his head. “No, I’m fine.” He gestured with his chin to the creel basket Josh had slung over his shoulder. “Any more?”

  Josh flipped up the lid and smiled. “Just three more little beauties.”

  Dylan peered into the basket and muttered under his breath. Looking up at Josh, he shook his head. “They don’t look so little to me.”

  Josh’s grin widened. “I was being modest.”

  Josh lifted each of the sizable rainbow trout from the basket, one after the other, and added them to the line of others he’d strung earlier and had anchored in the cold rushing water of the stream. He peered deliberately at the shorter line of trout on Dylan’s line anchored nearby.

  “Gosh,” he mused, making a play of comparing the two lines of fish. “I’d say I might be one or two up on you. What would you say, Sheriff?”

  Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “I’d say it’s not nice to mess with the sheriff.” He glanced up at the lure dangling from Josh’s pole. “What are you using now?”

  “Same thing, the gray ghost,” Josh said, pulling the fly close and inspecting it. He looked up at Dylan and smiled. “What did you think? A goofus bug?”

  Dylan laughed. “So how is our friend Mathers, anyway?”

  “That’s Mr. Mathers,” Josh corrected prissily. “According to Aunt Mar I should be respectful of my elders.”

  Dylan’s smile stiffened. “Sounds like your Aunt Marissa and…Mr. Mathers are pretty good friends.”

  Josh shrugged. “I guess.”

  Dylan nodded, busying himself with something on his reel. A picture of Marissa and Mathers flashed into his mind and the muscles in his jaw clenched tight. “Spend a lot of time together, do they?”

  “Sometimes,” Josh said, looking down and making an adjustment on his line. “You know—at school.”

  Dylan nodded again, but his hold on his reel relaxed just a little. “How’s it going, anyway—at school, I mean, and with the toolshed?”

  “Okay—for school, that is,” Josh said, tightening a knot around his lure. “And the shed…” He stopped and looked up at Dylan. “You know, actually, it’s been kind of…neat. I mean, Mathers is kind of a jerk—you know. But the other stuff…” He nodded his head. “It’s actually been okay.”

  “You and Randy getting along okay?”

  “Sure,” Josh said simply.

  “How about Skip?”

  Josh’s smile faded, and he shrugged.

  “You two don’t talk much, I take it.”

  Josh shook his head. “Not much.”

  Dylan studied him for a minute. “He giving you trouble?”

  Josh looked away. “I can handle Skip.”

  Dylan didn’t doubt that he could, but he also didn’t doubt that the strain between the two had gotten worse. He suspected if Skip were to know Josh had gone fishing with the sheriff, it wouldn’t help matters.

  “Well,” Josh said, sighing, “my line’s getting dry, and I hate it when my line gets dry.” He waded a few steps through the water, then turned back to Dylan. “Something tells me I’m going to catch my limit before you.”

  “Get out of here, kid,” Dylan said in his best tough-cop voice, tossing a water-soaked piece of bark at him. “You’re buggin’ me.”

  Dylan watched as Josh waded through the rushing water—baseball cap turned backward, T-shirt dangling from the back pocket of his shorts.

  With his hair away from his face, Dylan couldn’t help thinking how much he reminded him of Kenny, his brother Michael’s son. They were both about the same age, had the same dark eyes, the same solid build. Dylan had brought Kenny fishing with him before, but Kenny didn’t have the interest in it like Josh had, didn’t have Josh’s coordination and natural abilities.

  It was easy to see that Caleb Wakefield had loved fly-fishing, because he’d certainly passed his passion for the sport on to his adopted son. Josh was not only a knowledgeable fly-fisherman with a relaxed style and impeccable form, he also had an uncanny knack for catching fish. He’d mentioned to Dylan more than once during the morning how his dad had told him how he should “listen” for the fish, and how important it was to rely on his instincts as much as his skill and equipment.

  Listening as Josh talked about his dad had Dylan understanding just how Caleb’s death had affected the kid, and just what a void it had left in his life. Dylan thought of Marissa, and her fervent concern for her nephew. Maybe she’d been right, maybe jail time wasn’t the kind of discipline he’d needed. Maybe what the kid needed was someone to step in and fill the void left by his father. Maybe what he really needed was a father figure.

  Dylan thought of Marissa’s proposal and the program they were supposed to develop from it. He’d had a chance to read over it thoroughly in the week since he’d pulled them over during their driving lesson. The plan was as optimistic and idealistic as he’d suspected, but he had to admit that for the right kid, at the right time, it might help.

  He glanced up, watching Josh’s fluid motions as he cast the long line back and forth into the churning water. A year ago all he wanted was to see Josh Wakefield locked up behind bars, now…

  Just then Josh pulled another twisting trout from the icycold water, and Dylan chuckled silently to himself. Maybe he hadn’t made up his mind whether Josh was a juvenile delinquent or just a troubled kid, but there was one thing he knew for certain. The kid was one hell of a fisherman.

  “I just what?” Marissa glanc
ed down at the sink full of rainbow trout, trying very hard not to look at the staring eyes.

  “Just cut off the heads,” Dylan explained again, picking up one of the fish and laying it down on the cutting board. He reached for a meat cleaver from the knife rack. “Like this.”

  “No!” Marissa gasped, stopping him with a hand on his arm. She’d nervously drank a glass of wine while waiting for them to return, and the thought of watching him lop off a fish’s head had it resting uneasily in her stomach. “Please, don’t.”

  Dylan shifted his gaze, looked at her and smiled. “Something tells me you don’t like trout.”

  “I love trout,” she insisted, reaching for the chilled bottle of chardonnay and pouring him a glass. “With a light amandine sauce and a glass of white wine.”

  He smiled as he washed his hands in the sink. “So I take it you’ve never cleaned one before.”

  She gave him a…look and offered him the glass. “You make it sound as though it was some kind of crime, Sheriff.”

  He leaned close and took the glass from her. “This is fishing country. It practically is.”

  “It’s cattle country, too,” she pointed out, crossing her arms in front of her. “Yet I still manage to resist the urge to run out and rope a steer every time I want a steak.”

  He laughed. “Spoken like a true outdoorsman—or should I say outdoorswoman?”

  “I like the outdoors. I camp, I hike,” she insisted, picking up her glass from the counter. “Just because I can’t cut off a fish’s head with any degree of enthusiasm doesn’t mean I’ve got anything against nature.”

  He laughed again. “I can’t believe you grew up around here and never learned to clean a fish. Didn’t your dad or your brother ever take you fishing?”

  “Sure they did. But I was the smart one, remember?” she reminded him.. “The one bird-watching back in camp. Mallory was the one who did all that fun stuff—like cutting fish heads off.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dylan murmured, the smile slowly fading from his lips. “I seem to remember you liking fun stuff, too. He clinked his wineglass to hers. “Remember the fun stuff we did together?”

  Marissa felt a jolt of emotion bolt through her system like an electrical current running through a power line. She looked up into his dark eyes, her throat feeling strangled and tight. She felt warm and breathless, as though suddenly all the air had been sucked out of the room. She couldn’t seem to move, to think. For one glorious, crystallized moment there was nothing else—only feeling and sensation, and the haunted, hungry look of desire in his eyes.

  “Dylan,” she whispered, unaware until she heard her voice that she’d even spoken at all.

  “Finished cleaning the fish yet?”

  The fragile spell shattered into a million tiny fragments, and Marissa felt herself catapulted back into reality with a harsh, cold rush. She looked quickly away, not wanting Dylan to see just how flustered she was. She turned just as Josh came through the back door, his fishing pole banging against the door frame as he passed.

  “Are you kidding?” she said, her voice sounding breathy and coarse to her ears. “And take all the fun away from you? No way.”

  “Get over here, kid,” Dylan said, putting the wineglass to his lips and draining it in one gulp. The wine moved through his system, feeling weak and impotent in the wake of the emotion it followed. “You’ve got some work to do.”

  Marissa stepped back, sipping at her glass of wine and forcing herself to calm down. She tried not to think about the picture the two of them made—father and son standing there at the sink, cleaning the fish and laughing. She’d never forget how Josh had looked when he’d come running up the walk toward her, proudly displaying the reeking string of fish, and looking happier and more relaxed than he had in a very long time.

  She took another sip of wine, watching Dylan cut and clean the fish, watching him joke with Josh, watching him so relaxed and at home in her kitchen. He was so comfortable with Josh. Was there something about the blood they shared, something in their biological connection that made it so natural and easy for them? Would Josh relate as well to any other man who took the time with him, with whom he had a common interest, who offered him the same kind of attention?

  Marissa finished her glass of wine, and poured herself yet another. She felt jumpy and nervous. Frankly, she’d felt uneasy all day, and her little encounter with Dylan just now hadn’t helped. And even her weekly phone call with Mallory hadn’t made her feel any better.

  Marissa watched Josh as he listened to something Dylan was saying, watched the look in his eyes, the smile on his face. She knew Josh missed his father—missed Caleb. But she was only beginning to realize just how much he missed the kind of camaraderie and bonding he got from a strong male role model.

  She lifted her glass to her lips for another sip of wine, but ended up taking a gulp. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but watching Dylan laugh and joke with Josh was enough to drive her to drink. It just didn’t seem fair. She loved Josh and would do anything she could for him. But no matter how much she loved him, no matter what she said or what she did, a father was the one thing she couldn’t be for him.

  She took another swallow of wine—too much this time and it caught in her throat. For a moment her airway was blocked, and she coughed loudly.

  “You okay?” Josh asked.

  She glanced up, nodding, embarrassed to find both Josh and Dylan staring across the kitchen at her, the same look of concern on their faces. “F-fine,” she croaked, taking a breath and covering her mouth with her hand. “Went down the wrong pipe.” She coughed again. “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?” Dylan asked, taking a step toward her.

  Marissa nodded her head and grabbed a kitchen towel to muffle another cough, waving him off. He hesitated for a minute, giving her an uncertain look, then turned back to the fish when she gave him another dismissing wave.

  She rushed into the small bathroom near the stairwell, clearing her throat loudly. She quickly splashed water on her face, reached for a towel, then stared at herself in the mirror.

  “Stupid,” she muttered to the image staring back at her. Her eyes were red and watering, and mascara trailed down her left cheek. What was she doing, drinking glass after glass of wine? She certainly didn’t need something to dull her senses when she was around Dylan James. She needed something to sharpen them.

  She took a few deep breaths, cleared her throat again, and did a quick patch-up job on her makeup. By the time she walked back into the kitchen, Dylan and Josh had the kitchen looking spotless—and smelling a lot fresher. They stood proudly examining the row of cleaned fish laid out before them.

  “Pretty impressive,” she said as she walked up behind them. “At least we won’t go hungry.”

  “Not for a while, anyway,” Dylan commented, turning around and looking at her closely. “You okay now?”

  “I’m fine,” she said with a careless wave of her hand. “Fine. Just swallowed wrong, that’s all.”

  “I invited the sheriff to stay for dinner,” Josh said, pointing to the large kettle simmering on the stove. He picked up a wooden spoon and tasted the chili bubbling in the pot. “There’s plenty, and nobody makes better chili than Auntie Mar.”

  Marissa’s smile faltered, but she struggled not to let it show. She wanted Josh to feel comfortable enough to invite his friends for dinner, but why did it have to be Dylan? It would take more than a few sips of wine to get her through an entire meal.

  “Sure,” she said brightly, avoiding looking directly into Dylan’s dark gaze. “Like Josh said, there’s plenty.”

  “Looks good,” Dylan mused, peering into the kettle. “But you mean you’re not having trout?”

  Marissa laughed, glancing down at the fish on the counter. “Oh, something tells me we’ll be eating plenty of that in weeks to come. So,” she said, clearing her throat and pasting a placid smile across her face. “You’ll stay, then?”

  “Uh…thanks, but I�
��m not exactly dressed for dinner,” he said, pulling at the T-shirt he’d tossed on over his sunburned chest. “And I really should check in at the station. Besides, I think there are laws against dinner guests who smell like a pile of dead fish.”

  “I think it’s okay,” Josh joked back, giving his own shirt a tug and making a face. “As long as at least one of the hosts smell the same way?”

  Dylan laughed, walking to the small table in the breakfast nook and gathering up his gear. He wasn’t sure he could last a whole evening—sitting across a dinner table from Marissa, smiling and making small talk as though everything was just fine and dandy. He wanted her so bad it made his insides hurt. “Thanks, kid, but maybe some other time.”

  “You sure? We—”

  “Josh,” Marissa said pointedly, cutting him off. She certainly wasn’t crazy about the idea of having Dylan James share a meal with them, but she couldn’t help feeling just a little insulted knowing he didn’t want to. Did he have another woman waiting? A date? “The sheriff said he can’t stay. Just drop it.”

  Marissa ignored Josh’s confused look, turning instead to Dylan and following him to the front door.

  “Well, kid, I enjoyed it,” Dylan said to Josh, offering him a hand. “And how you managed to catch every big one in the stream, I’ll never know. You’re a hell of a fly-fisherman.”

  “Thanks,” Josh said, the color in his cheeks deepening. “And thanks for taking me. I enjoyed it, too.”

  Dylan turned to Marissa. “I looked over your proposal. Think you’ll have some time next week to get together and talk about it?”

  “Sure,” Marissa said, opening the front door. She’d wondered when he would get around to reading it. “Give me a call.”

  She closed the door behind him and started back for the kitchen. She glanced up at Josh as she passed him. “Chili?”