All Shook Up (24 page)

“People who care for each other see to it that those they care for don’t get hurt!”

“Which only proves my point.
We
don’t appear to be the target here, J.D. Your Robbie person is gunning for
you
, not us, so why do you need to go anywhere? You might as well stay right here, where we can make sure you don’t come to harm.”

“Oh, yeah,” he scoffed. “Like a bunch of hotelkeepers are going to be any kind of defense against a lunatic with a grudge.”

“And who do you fancy yourself to be in this scenario—GI Joe?”

“Of course not,” he said stiffly, but Dru rode right over him.

“I think you do. I think
you
think that because you lived in a few foster homes while you were growing up, it somehow makes you worlds tougher than me.”

That brought his hard-angled jaw up. “There’s no ‘think’ about it—I
am
worlds tougher than you!”

“You are so full of it, John David! You think your life was so much harder because your mama didn’t want you? Well, big deal—my parents didn’t have time for me, either. I’ve learned to take care of myself just fine, thank you very much, and I neither want nor need you to sacrifice yourself for me.”

He pulled the truck up to its parking space outside the lodge and looked across at her. “I’m leaving, Drucilla.”

“And how do you figure that will help us—help
me?
Just how will your leaving to make yourself a moving target, and us never knowing what the hell happened to you, help me or Tate or Aunt Soph and Uncle Ben?”

“It’ll take all of you out of target range.”

“And what about the fact that I love you, J.D.? Doesn’t that count for anything? It seems to be something you like to hear—but I guess when it comes right down to it, my love really doesn’t matter to you at all, does it?”

For a second he looked as if he were going to
explode, but then his expression went blank. Dru fully expected him to look her in the eye and agree that it didn’t. Instead, he said flatly, “It matters. But I’m still leaving.”

Frustration erupted and she jumped out of the cab. Holding the door open, she stared up at him across the length of the bench seat. “Then you’re a fool,” she said. “Because you could have had me, but you threw me away for the stupidest reason in the world: to satisfy your damn fatheaded, macho pride.”

She closed the door and refused to drop her eyes before his turbulent dark-eyed gaze. “I hope it keeps you warm at night.”

“I
hope it keeps you warm at night,”
J.D. mimicked sourly as he shouldered the gas can and tramped down the hill to his car.
Keeps you warm, keeps you warm, keeps you warm.
The words echoed in his mind, and no matter how hard he tried to shut them out, they accompanied him step for step down the road like a choir of tinny voices from a fever dream, repeating endlessly.

You could have had me,
Dru’s voice whispered
, but you threw me away for the stupidest reason in the world: to satisfy your damn fatheaded, macho pride
.

He swore and ruthlessly clamped a lid on the voices, to shut them down—especially that last one. Dammit, who needed pride to keep him warm? He had his indignation. Star Lake Lodge was as close as he’d come to a home in twenty years, and Drucilla and Tate,
Sophie and Ben, the nearest thing he’d had to family. To hear Dru tell it, though, you’d think he was about to stroll out the door swinging his pocket watch and whistling a happy tune, when he felt like his guts were being ripped out without anesthesia.

He’d never known anyone remotely like Dru, had never realized it was possible to feel about a woman the way he felt about her. He’d done his best to shroud the truth from himself, to cloak it behind lust, but now that Lankovich had made it impossible to stick around any longer without putting Dru and her family in danger, J.D. could no longer dodge the facts. Sure, he wanted to make love to Drucilla day and night; that was a given. But more than that, he wanted to move in with her and her kid. He wanted the right to protect her, to raise Tate as his own, to be the guy who maintained upkeep of the lodge. He wanted the kind of life he’d believed only other people got to have, the kind of life that Dru had shown him could possibly have been his, too.

“Possibly” being the operative word here, Boscoe.
J.D. arrived at his Mustang and swung the gas can to the ground. The fact was, if Lankovich hadn’t stepped in to trash that particular dream, something else probably would have come along to mess it up. Face it: he wasn’t cut out for a Disney family kind of life. He hadn’t believed it even existed, until he’d met the Lawrences.

That he now knew better—too late to do him a damn bit of good—left a bitter taste in his mouth, but J.D. swallowed it and buckled down to the business at hand. He popped the car’s hood and unfastened the gas cap. Then he poured the contents of the can into
the gas tank, except for the last cup or so, which he dumped into the carburetor.

As he slammed down the hood, tossed the empty can into the Mustang’s trunk, and then walked around to climb into the car, he still found it hard to sink his teeth into the fact that Robbie Lankovich was the instrument of his leaving. He would have sworn the man was all talk and no action.

The car cranked over on the first try, and he smiled grimly. Didn’t it just figure that this would be the one thing to work without a glitch today? He headed back up toward the lodge.

Dru had demanded to know what possible risk Robbie could present to her and her family, since J.D. was his target. And, hell, maybe she was right. Maybe he could—

He jerked the thought up short. No.
No
, dammit.
Don’t
even
go there
. How would he live with himself if something happened to one of the Lawrences? He was doing the right thing by leaving. It was the only thing he
could
do.

It was just painful, was all. But he’d live.

He pulled up behind his cabin and climbed out of the car, slamming the door closed. He needed to throw his stuff into his duffel and hit the road before he could do anything stupid—like decide to stick around despite the risks to Dru and her family.

Indulging in a fantasy that he knew would never be realized, J.D. entered his cabin and was almost to the bedroom when he realized he wasn’t alone. A man sat in the big Mission-style rocker in front of the window,
the afternoon sun backlighting him so that his face was in shadow.

The gun in his hand, however, was clear as day as it pointed straight at J.D.’s chest.

Char took one look at Dru’s face as her friend walked through the lobby, and excused herself to the activities clerk with whom she’d been checking her schedule. She caught up with Dru just as the elevator doors were closing between them.

“Hey, Dru. Hold up.”

Dru appeared not to hear her, and Char dove for the doors, thrusting her hand between the closing panels to trigger the opening mechanism. She slid through as the doors once again bounced apart.

Dru turned her head then and looked at her through stricken eyes that didn’t quite track. Char had the distinct impression her friend hadn’t any idea who stood in front of her. “Dru?” she said gently. “What happened?”

When there was no reply, Char reached out to rub her hand up and down her friend’s upper arm.

Dru started. Then she blinked and, focusing, discovered her best friend standing in front of her with a look of concern on her face. “Char?”

“Where’s Tate, Drusie?”

“With Aunt Sophie. I don’t want him to see me like this.” She felt her chin wobble and gave her best friend a helpless look. “I can’t seem to hang onto my Mom face.”

“What happened?”

The pain struck anew and, wrapping her arms around her waist, Dru hugged herself. “He’s leaving, Char.”

“Who’s leav—J.D.?”

“
Yes
.” Tears rose in her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously. “The shit. The lousy, lousy
shit
.”

“But why? He’s crazy about you.”

“He says it’s to
protect
me. And Aunt Soph and Tate—to protect all of us.”

“Protect you? From what?”

“Some guy who sabotaged his canoe and his car.” Drawing a deep breath, Dru gathered her scattered wits enough to relate what had been happening.

“And he thinks that by leaving he can protect you from this fellow? Why, that’s actually kind of romantic.” Dru’s feelings must have been written across her face in screaming neon, for Char immediately scowled. “Romantic for a guy who’s basically a lousy shit, that is.” Then she looked Dru in the eye. “So what did you have to say about all this?”

“I tried to change his mind. I argued with him until I was blue in the face.” A niggling voice in her head whispered,
Not really,
and tried to tell her that she’d been reeling from the shock too much to debate effectively, but she shook it aside. “I told him this Lankovich person was clearly gunning for him, not us, so there was no reason for him to leave. But he’s got it in his mind that removing himself is the only answer and he won’t listen to reason.” The elevator doors opened on the top floor and they stepped out into the corridor. Skirting a Housekeeping cart outside one of the rooms, Dru stalked over to the private staircase that
led up to her and Tate’s apartment, but turned to face her friend, her arms still crossed over her waist in an attempt to hold in all the hurt. “So I told him it was the stupidest decision I’d ever heard in my life, and I hoped it kept him warm at night.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What do you mean, and what? That’s
it
?” Char demanded incredulously. “You hope it keeps him warm at night? I’m embarrassed for you, Lawrence. You’ve been able to argue me into a corner since we were ten years old, but now that you’ve got a fight on your hands that matters more than any you’ve ever had, you hope
it keeps him warm at night
? I’ve never heard anything so feeble in my life!”

Dru’s misery was replaced by a red-hot flash of anger. “I felt like I was being broadsided out of the blue by a two-ton truck, McKenna. What was I supposed to do, beg him to stay?”

“Hell, yeah, if that’s what you really want. And if you truly do believe he’s a lousy shit, then at the very least you were supposed to lay into him. If he’s leaving anyway, don’t you at least want to tell him exactly how you feel?” Tilting her head to one side, she raised her eyebrows at Dru. “How
do
you feel?”

“Like a fool. Like once again I let my hormones sucker me into believing I’d found my One True Love, when what I’d actually found—
again
—was just another man looking for a little temporary satisfaction. I took the biggest risk of my life with him, Char. I knew better, but I did it anyway—I opened myself up to the possibility of falling in love again. And even
though he never said so, I thought it was a real love for
both
of us. Not just a flash-in-the-pan sexual attraction, but the honest-to-God real deal.” She glared at Char. “But only on my part apparently, if he can just walk away this easily.”

“I think you ought to tell him that.”

That struck a chord with the resentment beneath Dru’s hurt, and she straightened her spine. “Yes. Absolutely. He doesn’t get to do this—he doesn’t get to set me up for a fall, then just walk away with that mealymouthed rationalization.” She pivoted and walked back to the elevator, where she jabbed the Down button. When it didn’t immediately arrive, she turned on her heel and set out for the stairs.

“Now, that’s more like it,” Char called. “You go get him, girl.”

“Hello, J.D.” The man with the gun stood up and took a step forward, away from the blinding backlight. The gun in his hand remained doggedly aimed at J.D.’s chest.

“Butch?” Recognizing his friend’s voice was like taking a swift kick to the solar plexus, and J.D. scrubbed his fingertips over the spot as if it had taken an actual blow. Another corner of his mind, however, promptly breathed
Aha
. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, eyeing the man he’d always thought of as his closest friend. “I
knew
Robbie Lankovich didn’t have the stones for this.”

Butch’s laugh was full-bodied and robust. “You thought
Junior
was behind these little incidents? Jesus,
boy, spending so much time in Pissville U.S.A. has clearly cost you your edge. Not only does Robbie lack the balls, he’s a mite too busy to concern himself with Big Daddy’s woes. He’s spending all his time trying to explain himself to the IRS.”

“Is that so? Well, excuse my lousy judgment, but I was working without the facts.” J.D. sat down on the edge of the couch. Bracing his hands on his knees, he looked up into Butch’s smiling face and tried to reconcile his friend’s grin with the gun that hadn’t wavered. While part of his mind refused to believe Butch would ever pull the trigger, another part rapidly selected and discarded a multitude of ways to get out of this situation.

Knowing just what the hell the situation
was
would be a real help. “I can honestly say it never once occurred to me that my best friend would want to remove me from the picture. Care to share why?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know, Carver.”

“Sorry, bud, but I
don’t
know. What, did you find out about the lodge and it pissed you off for some reason?”

“This place?” Butch looked sincerely baffled. “What’s this place got to do with anything?”

“I inherited part of it. Remember Edwina Lawrence? She owned part of this resort, and she left it to me.”

“Well, hell, if that isn’t just perfect.” Butch shook his head in disgust. “I mean, is that goddamn typical, or what? How is it that you can always wade in the same shit as the rest of us, but somehow come out smelling like a fucking petunia?”

“Just good, clean living, I guess.”

“You think this is funny, you pious jerk-off? You closed down Lankovich’s entire operation and put two dozen men out of work. But do you have to scramble for a job like the rest of us? Hell, no. You end up owning a swank lodge.”

“You can go to hell before I’ll apologize for that again,” J.D. snapped. “
I
didn’t put you out of work, Lankovich did! If I hadn’t blown the whistle on him, that building would have collapsed like a fucking house of cards. Innocent people would’ve died.”

“So? It wouldn’t have been our fault. We did what we were supposed to.”

“Christ, Butch, you never change, do you?
It’s not my fault
—what is that, your freaking anthem? Who the hell’s fault is it that you’re standing here pointing a gun at me, if not yours?”

“Yours. If you hadn’t taken my job away, none of this would have happened.”

“And I suppose if I’d drowned or gone off a cliff, that would have been my own damn fault, too.” Gripping his knees to keep from lunging for his friend’s throat and giving him the excuse to fire his gun, J.D. marveled, “I’d actually forgotten your convoluted way of reasoning. This must be the Dickson version of that old if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods thing, huh? If someone dies because of what you set in motion, but you aren’t actually looking, does it really count as murder?” Disgust welling up, he gave Butch a contemptuous once-over. “Frankly, I gotta wonder how you can sneer at the size of Junior’s balls. I sure as hell never would’ve expected you to show up to confront me face-to-face
like this. Face it: the leaks in the boat and the siphoned gas tank are more your speed. Head-on like this, you can’t pretend it isn’t really happening.”

“Shut up, J.D.!”

“Or what?” he demanded, nodding at the gun. “You’re gonna shoot me with that thing?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t plan to shoot me if I stay nice and quiet?”

Butch shifted restively and his gaze cut to the side for a second.

J.D. laughed bitterly. “That’s pretty much what I thought. Since it looks like you plan to shoot me either way, what possible reason do I have to keep my mouth shut?”

“I’ll give you a goddamn reason,” Butch snarled and leaned forward intently, his eyes narrowed to cold slits. “I can make it quick and painless, or I can blow your goddamn kneecaps off before I take you out.”

“You’re right; that is incentive.” The proposed violence surprised him: Butch had always been a hothead, but he’d never been vicious. J.D. kept his face impassive, however, for Rat City rules decreed that the guy with the best poker face usually won. “You want to tell me why, first?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” Butch rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand as he stared down at J.D. “Great—don’t that just freakin’ beat all? I coulda stayed home and saved us both a shitload of trouble.”