The Once and Future Father

by Marie Ferrarella

  Dylan laughed and the sound warmed her. It helped to quell the ache she felt in her heart. Saying goodbye to Ritchie had been even harder than she’d anticipated. It was all she could do to keep the tears under control.

  The knock on her window made her jerk. A smile slipped into place when she saw it was Alma. Lucy pressed the button to roll down the window.

  “You going to be okay, kid?” Showing concern, Alma’s eyes slanted toward Dylan’s profile as she asked her question.

  Lucy smiled. Less than three months separated them, but Alma had always insisted on calling her kid. “Yes. I’ll be in the store—”

  “In a month,” Alma told her sharply. “There’s nothing there that needs your attention. I’ve got Beth and Margaret taking turns coming in, though it always seems like the same person.” To Alma, the twin teenagers were utterly interchangeable. “And I can handle the receipts until the doctor says you’re ready to come in.”

  “Alma, I’m fine,” Lucy protested. Why did everyone insist on treating her as if she was some mindless, frail little thing? Didn’t anyone realize that she needed to be busy, to keep her mind busy until she could make peace with what had happened?

  “The doctor, not you,” Alma emphasized. She leaned into the car, raising her voice. “And you, stone face…” Dylan turned to look at her. “You see she gets her rest, or I’ll come after you.”

  For the first time since he’d walked back into her life, laughter bubbled in Lucy’s throat. She stifled it, but it took effort.

  Dylan merely inclined his head in silent acquiescence, waiting for Alma to withdraw. When she finally did, after first giving Lucy’s hand a quick squeeze, Dylan started up the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Alma still has that winning personality, I see.”

  Lucy turned back in her seat after waving goodbye. “Alma worries about me.”

  Barely avoiding being sideswiped by a blue sports car determined to beat the light, Dylan gripped the steering wheel a little harder than he might have normally. “She’s not the only one.”

  Lucy paused, considering. “I don’t think Palmero was worried as much as—”

  Dylan spared her a glance as he slowed down for the next light. “I wasn’t talking about Palmero.”

  “Then who?” Puzzled, she looked at him. There were lines around his mouth and that furrow along his brow, giving her the answer. “You?” When he said nothing, she thought of dropping it, then decided to push it instead. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to say yes.”

  “Yes.”

  The response was abject, lifeless. As if he were answering a routine survey that had no claim to his attention. Why was admitting to being concerned about her so hard for him? “Yes like you mean it.”

  “Yes like I mean it,” he deadpanned.

  Lucy laughed, shaking her head. “What are we doing here?”

  He kept his eyes on the road, thinking it simpler that way. She had a way of distracting him. “I’m driving you home.”

  “No,” she persisted, “I mean what are we doing here? You, me, this invisible waltz we’re dancing, what’s it all about?”

  She couldn’t quite read the look he sent her way, but there was a tinge of exasperation about it.

  “Alma was right. You need to rest. This was hard on you.”

  He was taking refuge in routines, in words and denial. She sighed and leaned back in the seat. She had to be out of her mind, trying to get something out of him. Thinking that if she just said the right thing, pressed the right buttons, she’d finally get some sort of show of feelings from him. You couldn’t get blood out of a stone, or even water for that matter. A stone was what it was. A stone, nothing more, nothing less. Stones were the kind of thing walls were made of, not bridges.

  Still, she couldn’t help herself. Maybe her emotions were more raw than she thought. “And you? How about you? Was this hard on you, seeing Ritchie buried, or was everything I ever thought about you wrong? Don’t you care about anyone?”

  Her words stung, surprising him. As far as upbraidings went, he’d certainly been subjected to worse. Hardened to worse. And yet, the sound of her voice cracking undid him the way a tongue-lashing heaped with vile names couldn’t have.

  “Yeah, it was hard on me,” he admitted quietly, still keeping his eyes on the road. “Ritchie and I go way back. He could always make me laugh even when there wasn’t anything funny to laugh at.” His mouth curved just a little as he remembered. “He always got such a damn big kick out of life. I thought he was crazy.”

  “I thought he was right. You’re supposed to enjoy life.”

  “Maybe he enjoyed it a little to much,” Dylan commented. “And forgot about the hard-work part. I guess he left that to you.”

  “He had a little growing to do,” she allowed, then realized she was still doing what she’d always done. She was defending her brother. He wasn’t going to need her defending him any longer.

  Pressing her lips together again, she turned her face away from Dylan’s. Tears were coming again and she didn’t want him to see them.

  Without a word, Dylan pulled up a tissue from the small dispenser straddling the bucket seat partition and handed it to her. He kept his eyes on the road as she took it from him. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Some things were just understood.

  “Well?”

  Palmero shrugged out of his expensive jacket and hung it meticulously on the hanger before easing it into the closet, where he made sure it wasn’t near anything else. He liked his clothes without a hint of wrinkles.

  “She’s either completely in the dark about the tape, or one hell of a cool customer.”

  The man behind the desk frowned, disturbed. “Never met a woman who could tell the truth yet.” Plunging his hand into a candy dish, he caught up a fistful of mints and tossed some of them into his mouth. “My guess is that she has it hidden someplace.”

  Palmero kept the disdain out of his voice. The man behind the desk was his superior and the rank demanded respect even if the man didn’t. “Where? We tore up her house.”

  “A safety deposit box?” he asked as he chewed.

  Palmero shook. “No keys, no bank statements to indicate that any box exists.”

  The other man tossed back what was left of his cache. When he spoke, irritation vibrated in his voice. “Maybe she’s got it hidden at work. Find out where she works.”

  The sneer on Palmero’s lips was condescending. “Already taken care of. It’s a card-and-gift shop at Ballenger and Havard. I’ve got someone there now.” He glanced at his watch. The job should be finished by now. “If the tape’s there, we’ll find it.”

  The other man’s eyes narrowed. Satisfied, he took another handful of mints. His eyes disappeared into slits as a smile took over his mouth.

  “Good work.”

  Chapter 8

  Dylan hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. Inside of him, there was a battle going on. He wanted to leave, but he was unwilling to close the door behind him, shutting Lucy out. Not when there was so much for her to deal with all at once.

  The girl from the card shop was still here watching Elena, and he’d seen another one of the off-duty detectives in a car across the street, but he still thought of Lucy as being alone.

  He sighed, turning from the door, knowing he was going to regret this.

  She looked worn, he thought. Beautiful, but worn. No one ever filled him with ambivalent feelings the way Lucy did.

  He looked for the right words. When they didn’t come, he asked, “You sure you’ll be all right?”

  That he even asked told her that there were at least some feelings left between them. Or maybe, she amended, it was the public servant in him that was asking.

  The thought almost made her smile. If there was anyone who the label “servant” didn’t begin to fit, it was Dylan.

  She bit her lower lip, as if she was actually thinking about his question, then raised her chin that way he’d seen her
do so many times before. That way that said she wasn’t about to let the world roll over on her. “I’ll have to be, won’t I?”

  The pragmatic answer wasn’t quite like her. The fire was missing. But then, there’d been a lot going on to extinguish it, not the least of which was apparently being abandoned by the father of her child. Duty silently warred with a sense of responsibility he’d long since told himself wasn’t his.

  Dylan looked over her shoulder. “I could stay for a while.”

  She knew where he was looking. At the clock on the mantel. He wasn’t anyone’s servant, but he was conscious of responsibilities and she was keeping him from his.

  “But then you’d have to leave eventually and I’d still be alone.” She moved toward him, ready to usher him out the door. Something akin to tenderness stirred within her. She figured when it came to Dylan, it always would. “Go, Dylan. Go to work. Go do what you’re good at.” She looked around the room, trying to lose herself in small details to keep the larger ones from assaulting her. “I can manage here. Since Alma won’t let me set foot in the store, I might even decide to repaint the house.” She smiled up at him. “What’s your favorite color these days?”

  He looked at her, feeling himself being pulled in all directions at once. “Blue.”

  “Blue.” Lucy shook her head. He’d said the word as if he were a stone statue come to life. She placed her hand on his arm, as if to coax or shake something more out. “C’mon, Dylan, even you can do better than that. Elaborate a little. Dark blue, light blue, electric-blue, blue-gray, blue-green, turquoise, what?”

  “Blue,” he repeated. And then he added, “Dark, like your eyes.”

  For just a moment, the past and most of the present disappeared. The air and her heart stood still. “I didn’t think you even noticed that.”

  Without being completely conscious of what he was doing, he cupped his hand along her cheek. It was as soft as he remembered. Maybe softer. “Hard not to when they’re looking right into me.”

  She felt each one of his fingers burn into her skin and told herself she didn’t notice. “Maybe that’s just your guilty conscience.”

  Dylan didn’t bother denying it. What was the point? “Maybe.”

  When he tried to reconstruct it in his mind later, he wasn’t sure if he had been the one who made the first move or not. Probably. Lucy was far too proud a woman to venture any further than she already had.

  All he really knew for sure was that what happened took place in a haze. One moment, he was looking into those quicksilver-blue eyes of hers, losing his way, and the next, he found his hands tangled in her hair, his fingers cupping the back of her head. And his mouth kissing her with all the passion that had been bottled up inside of him for all these long months. Kissing her as his blood surged and pounded through his body, mocking him and telling him that he’d been a fool to have ever turned his back on someone like Lucy.

  The instant she felt his breath on her lips, felt him touch his mouth to hers, her head began to spin. She didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to let the kiss be anything more than an aberration of time and space, didn’t want it taking all of her good sense.

  Sense had little to do with the feelings that came running out of hiding the moment Dylan began to lower his head toward hers. If she’d had any sense at all, she would have turned her head away.

  But she didn’t.

  She had a crying need to feel his mouth on hers again, to savor the feeling and the flavor one more moment and seal it to her.

  “I’m not the kind who makes promises, Lucy, just prophesies.”

  “Oh, and what’s your prophesy for me?”

  “That I’ll hurt you.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  And she had, she thought now, remembering his warning when things had heated up between them. She’d taken her chances and she’d lost. But for one second, she’d revisit what had brought her to this juncture in her life. What had caused her to leave her strict upbringing behind and give herself to a man who’d told her that nothing permanent could ever be between them.

  He’d lied. There was something permanent. There was Elena, and no matter what happened, she would always be grateful to him for that.

  When her body leaned into his, so softly, so willingly, temptation reared its head, whispering words into his ear. Urging him to forget everything but the woman in his arms and the moment he’d seized.

  Dylan normally regarded his cell phone as an annoying nuisance he was forced to carry with him because of his job. But when it rang now, he thought of it as an ally, offering him a way out. Before he allowed himself to do something Lucy would live to regret.

  Because he couldn’t give her any more now than he could before.

  Lucy drew her head back, fighting for focus. Struggling to gather her senses together. She nodded toward his jacket. “Unless your jacket has suddenly decided to break into a musical number, I think your phone is ringing.”

  He frowned, at himself, at his own weakness, and at Watley in absentia because the latter had reprogrammed his telephone not to ring, but to chime. The first eleven notes of the “Sound of Music” replayed themselves when he didn’t answer. He’d yet to get it reprogrammed and Watley had sworn he’d lost the instructions.

  Dragging his hand through his hair as he simultaneously dragged air back into his lungs and contemplated what he deemed as justifiable homicide, Dylan swore under his breath. He pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open and barked, “McMorrow.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, as if uncertain of the connection. And then he heard a woman’s voice. It wasn’t dispatch.

  “McMorrow, this is Alma. They gave me your number at the station. I’m at the card shop. I think you should get over here right away. And don’t—” But it was too late for her final instruction.

  “Alma?” He couldn’t begin to guess why a woman who hated his very shadow would be calling him on his cell phone. Or why her voice sounded so oddly shaky.

  Lucy was immediately alert. “Alma?” She grabbed his arm, trying to hear what was being said on the other end of the line. “Why is Alma calling you?”

  She heard Alma sigh. “I was going to tell you not to say anything to Lucy, but I see it’s too late for that.”

  “Yeah.” Lucy had managed to angle the phone so that she could hear, too. With very little effort he could twist his hand free. But to leave her in the dark wouldn’t be fair. He knew how he would have felt in her position. “What’s wrong?”

  Alma’s voice was deathly still. He’d been around enough victims to know she was struggling to keep her composure and not give in to fear. “Somebody broke into the store while I was gone.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Dylan flipped the phone closed. At the same moment, he saw the look on Lucy’s face. “You’re not coming with me.”

  Oh, yes she was, she thought. “We’re still in tune a little, I see.”

  His eyes narrowed. There was no way he was going to take her with him.

  “No, we’re not, because if we were, you’d be able to read my mind right now and you wouldn’t like what you found there.” He turned from her and went to the door. When she matched him step for step, he swung around again. “Stay home, Lucy. Paint the house like you said.”

  She tried to look glib. Tried not to dwell on the fact that everything around her seemed to be coming apart. “Too late, lost the inspiration.”

  He bit back his temper and attempted to reason with her. “You’ve got a baby, remember? What if she wakes up and she’s hungry?”

  “Breast milk in the refrigerator. Beth will handle it.”

  He closed his eyes. Breast milk in a bottle. “Too much information.”

  She thought she detected a slight pink hue along his neck and cheeks. Maybe it was the lighting. And then again, maybe not. The thought that he was embarrassed amused her. “You asked.”

  Dylan caught her by the shoulders, curbing the urge to shake sense
into her head. “Look, this isn’t some Nancy Drew story, Lucy. Someone is after something. We don’t know what, and we’re not completely sure who.”

  He’d all but told her he was certain it was Palmero. “But you said—”

  “Never mind what I said.” Exasperation was evident in every word. “I don’t want you getting in the way and getting hurt.”

  Her eyes held his. She wasn’t going to be talked out of this. “Haven’t you heard? I’ve developed very tough skin.”

  She was talking about them, about their past. Damn it, for two cents… “But it’s not invulnerable—”

  No, not invulnerable, she thought. He had seen to that. “I’m working on it.” Angry, Lucy shrugged him off, every inch the fighter. “Now, you look. It’s my store. I worked my tail off to buy that shop. You can’t keep me from going.” And then, as if reading his thoughts, she smiled a little. “And tying me up would come under the heading of police brutality.”

  “More like police smarts,” he muttered audibly. Scowling, he surrendered. “Okay, give your instructions to Beth and we’ll go.”

  But instead of going to Beth, the way he’d hoped, Lucy raised her voice and called out to the girl, telling her to come into the living room. Waiting, Lucy glanced at him. “I’m not stupid, Dylan.”

  So much for making his getaway while she was in the other room. He should have known better. “No, no one ever accused you of that.”

  Only me, she thought.

  The shop looked like an earthquake had hit it. The shelving that housed the greeting cards had been knocked over. The various figurines, fancy frames and stationery boxes were thrown from their perches to the floor. Christmas ornaments lay smashed and broken for the most part.

  Alma had looked up sharply when Dylan and Lucy entered. Fury was in her brown eyes as the petite blonde crossed to them.

  Lucy simply walked past her as if she was in a trance. “Why did you bring her here?” Alma demanded.

  Dylan didn’t take to being yelled at, but this once, he let Alma have some slack. He was annoyed with himself for the way things had arranged themselves. But kissing Lucy had stripped him of his ability to think and Alma’s call had caught him with his guard down.