A Mother's Love (13 page)

“Oh, good,” she sighed as much as said. How could she feel so aroused again so quickly?

“And,” he whispered against her mouth, “there is a drugstore not ten blocks from here.”

Oh, yes. He was a cop. He knew every square yard of the city. How convenient.

He lifted his head just an inch or two. “Unless you want to talk.”

It seemed, she thought in surprise, that all the revelations about her parents and about her own assumptions and fears these past weeks had led to this. To
him.
Explaining how and why could wait until another day. Tonight she was going to live dangerously with a man who might not be at all safe.

She kissed the corner of his mouth, answer enough.

They used that condom, and he had to go out to buy more.

It wasn't until morning, when she awakened to the sound of the front door closing quietly behind Mark, that Leila realized what had been missing. For all that Mark had been willing to let her talk, he hadn't said much himself. Especially, he hadn't said the words she'd wanted to hear.
I love you.

She closed her eyes against the gray light seeping through the blinds and acknowledged the flare of panic in her breast. Last night she had let herself assume he did love her.

What if she had been wrong?

F
ORGETTING WHAT THE
day before a wedding was probably like, Mark called Leila's cell phone in the late morning. He'd left his partner in the car and gone into Good Time Doughnuts to buy them both coffee and, yeah, doughnuts, but had to wait while a woman ahead of him selected three dozen to take in to her office. He'd stayed at Leila's place last night—except for the run to the pharmacy—until dawn, when it had occurred to him that he had to go home for a change of clothes before he went to work. Now he just wanted to talk to her.

When she answered her phone, he turned his back on the counter. Her tone was constrained, though, and in the background he could hear other people and laughter.
Family,
he realized.
Oh, yeah.
No intimate pillow talk for them.

“You're busy,” he remembered.

“We're at lunch. All of us.” She sounded bemused. “We've about taken over the restaurant. Next we have the rehearsal this afternoon, then dinner.”

“Ah.” Message received: no time for him. “Just wanted to check in.”

“Thank you,” she said rather formally. As if responding graciously to a gift of a bouquet, not to a lover's morning-after phone call.

He ended the call with his early-morning ebullience chilled. Last night he'd taken her invitation into her bed as a sign of her trust, passion and love. Words hadn't seemed necessary, although a couple of times he had almost said them anyway.

This morning, driving away from her house, he'd been on a high.
I've been blind,
he had thought, dizzy from the knowledge. All along he'd been on a straight-as-an-arrow highway and not even realized it. Attraction, true confessions, intimacy, vulnerability, love. Happily ever after was the end point, wasn't it?

But hanging up the phone, he was remembering that she hadn't said anything last night about loving him, either. And weren't those words supposed to be more important to women than men? Was it possible that she'd just shrugged and thought,
Why not have a fling?

He didn't believe it. Now that he knew to look for them, he'd have sworn he'd seen all the same signs in her as he saw in himself. But…he didn't
know.
And it was driving him crazy. He was in his thirties and he'd never truly fallen in love, never been hit by the stunning realization that a particular woman was his future. Now that he had…damn it, he needed reassurance!

He knew rejection. His father had dealt him the ultimate form of it with a single gunshot. But if Leila didn't want him the way he wanted her…yeah, this could be worse. He'd been fifteen, after all, when his father died. Almost a man, already engaged in pulling back from his parents. They weren't his future.

Leila was. Or so he'd believed.

He'd spent the night making passionate love to her and left her house this morning the happiest man alive. Now,
after hearing her voice on the phone—pleasant, perhaps a little surprised he had called—he felt as if he were teetering on the edge of a cliff that was crumbling beneath his feet. The view was dizzying, the potential plummet deadly.

What if the next time he talked to her she said,
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression
? For the first time in his life he imagined waking up in the morning not sure why he was bothering to get up.

Crap.

His turn in line came, and he made a couple of quick selections, paid and took the tray with the coffee and doughnuts. Shouldering open the glass door, he thought,
I'll see her tomorrow.
He'd be able to watch her face as she listened to the words about commitment in sickness and in health. Hadn't she said there'd be dancing after the wedding? He'd be able to hold her close. Dry her tears after her mother left.

It steadied him remembering that she'd invited him to her mother's wedding. That meant something, didn't it?

Tomorrow.

 

T
HE NEXT DAY WHILE
Leila was at the salon getting her hair done, Mark called.

“We had a drive-by shooting.” Somebody asked him something, and he muffled the phone, then came back. “Middle-aged woman just pumping gas at the place on Broadway, minding her own business. Doesn't look drug-related. I got called in. I'm sorry, Leila. Of all times… Tell your mom how sorry I am.”

“I will. Don't worry.” She tried to lighten the moment. “At least you're not the best man.”

He gave a short laugh. “You've got a point.”

“Be careful,” she told him almost steadily.

“Always am.”

Officers as decorated as he was were rarely “careful.” After telling what she knew perfectly well was an outrageous lie, he was gone. Her chest felt hollow.

She pretended to admire her hairdo when the beautician was done, then went over to tell her mother she was leaving to get dressed.

“You look gorgeous!” her mother declared, then studied her more closely. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am. Mark just called to let me know there's been a drive-by shooting and he's involved in the manhunt. He…can't make it.”

“Oh, sweetie!”

She managed a smile that, in the mirror she and her mother both faced, looked serene. “That's what I get for dating a cop. You,” she added, “look gorgeous, too. And not the tiniest bit nervous!”

“Nope.” Joanne Foster's smile verged on smug. “I've never been surer of anything in my life.”

Yes. This time she was choosing for reasons so much simpler than the last time, when she had to have been conflicted.
I love him. I have always loved him.
Leila could see it in her mother's eyes and she was both glad and a little bit envious.

She had to dab at a tear in her eye. Her mother's eyes grew misty, too.

“Let's not get puffy or blotchy!” Leila said hastily. “I'm leaving. I'll see you at the church.”

Her mother laughed and waved her on.

At home, Leila got dressed and applied her makeup without the sense of anticipation she'd had from the moment she awakened that morning. Mark wouldn't be there to see
her in the dress or lead her onto the dance floor. She shouldn't feel so crushed. He hardly knew anyone else there; he wouldn't be leaving a hole in the wedding party. He'd been coming only for her.

What if the whole drive-by business was an excuse?
she wondered, pressing her hand to that hollow place beneath her breastbone. What if the other night hadn't meant as much to him as it had to her?

She didn't believe it. Anyway, he couldn't lie about something like the shooting, not when she'd hear about it one way or the other Monday morning.

Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't
glad
to have a legitimate excuse to miss the wedding.

But she truly didn't believe that, either.

No. What really scared her was that he might be the one to find the shooter. Detective Mark Duncan was very good at his job. He could well be the one who'd have to walk up to the car they'd pulled over or to the front door of the house or apartment of the suspect. He might be the one who would put his life on the line.

If she let herself love him, she'd not only risk the possibility that he would hurt her, she'd risk the oh-so-real possibility that he might die in the line of duty.

Feeling brittle with fear, she finally put on her jewelry and left for the church. Today was about her mother, not her. Leila was determined to celebrate her mother's joy and put off her own worries about heartache until her mother was gone.

 

L
EILA'S MOTHER WAS
radiant, and the look on Robert's face when he saw her walking down the aisle to him was every woman's dream. Leila was afraid she'd have cried throughout the wedding if she wasn't stiff with worry.

She turned her head a couple of times, searching the pews on her mother's side of the church in hope Mark might have slipped in at the back, but he wasn't there. Her disappointment each time was acute. Even though she wasn't certain about his feelings, she was about her own. A day about family and celebration wasn't complete for her because he wasn't here.

“Do you, Robert Wojack, take this woman, in sickness and in health, to have and to hold until death do you part?” the minister intoned.

Leila tore her gaze from the back of the church and watched in awe as these two people who had found each other, lost each other and been lucky enough to find each other again took their vows.

The man her mother had thought was the rock she'd cling to for the rest of her life had failed her when she'd needed him the most and then he'd died unexpectedly. The risk-taker she'd run from in panic had been a good husband to another woman, built a solid business, raised children and dared to hold his tiny granddaughter with amazing care. After everything,
he
was still alive, waiting to kiss the bride, his first love.

Which means, Leila thought, that a woman can never know what the future will hold. Her mother had been courageous enough to seek out Robert, and on the basis of a few months of e-mails and a mere few days together she had promised him the rest of her life. With an example like that, how could Leila keep hiding?

Laughter and applause followed the kiss. Once more searching the crowd, she followed the bride and groom as they swept up the aisle. Mark still wasn't here.

If I marry him, I'll never be able to rely on him to be at
special occasions or to sit down to dinner at six o'clock or to pick up our children on time.

But she thought—she believed—she
could
trust him to love her and keep loving her. Hugging first her mother, then her stepfather, she felt…peculiar. It was as if all her hopes and fears had come together, puzzle pieces that finally fit, placing Mark beside her.

The crowd enveloped them, and she was able to slip to the back, shaken by the tenor of her own thoughts.

She could so easily see Mark beside her forever. If he'd meant the way he had touched her and kissed her and listened to her and trusted her with his own childhood wounds.

Of course he had.

Please be all right.

The reception was held at a community center where her mother had served on the board. Pot after pot of azaleas in spectacular bloom transformed the plain hall.

The food was lovely, the wedding toasts and short speeches moving. Leila cried when Jon spoke about their mother in ways Leila had never articulated to herself. He talked about her courage, her ability to overcome tragedy and to earn the admiration and affection of everyone in this community center today.

At last, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wojack went into each other's arms for their first dance, their eyes only for each other. Something he said made her laugh, and Leila marveled,
I've never seen her look that happy before.

“May I have this dance?” her brother asked, and Leila smiled and went onto the floor with him.

“Are you reconciled?” he asked, much as their mother had before.

“Oh, yes. Mom and I've talked quite a bit.”

He spun her. “So when am I going to meet this guy she's been telling me about?”

She had opened her mouth to explain when she looked past Jon and saw the man who'd just walked in. Mark paused there by the entrance, his head turning as he sought her.

Her feet just…stopped, rooted to the floor. Her brother stopped a beat later, his gaze following hers.

“How about now?” she suggested to Jon.

Mark spotted her in that same instant, and his gaze never left hers as he wove between tables toward her. It was as if no one else was there.

Weak with relief, she thought,
He's safe. He cared enough to come.

He looked out of place in a twill shirt open over a navy-blue T-shirt. Hiding his shoulder holster, of course. She wouldn't have minded if he'd been wearing shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt.

“You made it,” she said inanely.

His hand gripped hers. “I had to have one dance.”

“Oh. Um…Mark, I'd like you to meet my brother, Jon Foster. Jon—Mark Duncan.”

“Detective.” Her brother held out his hand.

“Mark, please.” They shook, assessing each other.

Their conversation was brief. The song ended and the band began another, an old-fashioned love song.

“I can't stay long,” Mark said. “May I have this dance?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, you may.”

Her brother, she saw, was smiling as he walked away in search of his wife. Then the world shrank once again for Leila so that only she and Mark existed.

When she laid her hand on his shoulder, she couldn't help
feeling one of the straps that held his holster in place. The reminder of what he did for a living didn't bother her the way it once did. She knew the kind of man he was, that his ability to care so deeply had made it inevitable he would choose a life of service. He wasn't about swagger or the heady power of the job or the thrills of living dangerously, the way some law enforcement officers were. This is who the man she loved was, and she could only accept all it meant, including the inconveniences and risks.

Pulling her close, he murmured, “I missed you yesterday.”

“I missed you, too.” She tilted her head back. “I can't seem to think about anything
but
you.”

His eyes blazed. “Good.”

He danced well, holding her as if he wanted the music to go on and on. Of course it didn't. When it stopped, they quit moving, but neither released the other.

Finally, reluctantly, he said, “I'd better go. Will you walk me out?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

They found her mother and Robert first, and Mark congratulated them. Her mother smiled at him. “I'm very glad you made it.”

Straight-faced, he said, “I threatened to quit if I couldn't get away for half an hour.”