Between Love and Duty (24 page)

“Children are expensive to raise. Particularly teenagers,” the judge observed.

“A few more weeks…”

“You may recall, one of my stipulations was that you have a home to offer Tito before I granted you custody.”

Hector simmered in silence.

“I see that Ms. Brooks had to curtail your home visits at your daughter’s apartment.”

“The apartment is so small! All we did was…”

The judge’s sharp gaze sliced off the beginning of an impassioned defense.

“I think we must once again continue any final decision. Mr. Ortez, when do you anticipate being able to make first and last months’ rent on a place of your own?”

Hector flattened both hands on the table. He was sweating, his dark eyes fixed in a kind of desperation on the judge’s face. “Only a few more weeks. Perhaps a month. Not that long… Tito could come stay with me now. Two of the men have left. I now have a bedroom he could share.”

Tito shriveled even smaller. The judge’s gaze flicked to him and then to Duncan, seated beyond Jane.

“Captain MacLachlan, you don’t properly have a place in these proceedings. However, through the perspective of your relationship with Tito, how do you believe the visits have gone?”

Jane tensed. With all her being, she prayed for him to be honest, fair. To be the man of honor she wanted him to be. Like Tito, she bent her head.

“Mr. Ortez didn’t cancel a single visit,” Duncan said slowly. “I…have come to believe that he loves his son.”

Her muscles began to unwind.

“However, I’m still not convinced he’s Tito’s best alternative.”

Jane went rigid again.

“I’ve seen several displays of Mr. Ortez’s anger. To my knowledge, Tito has to this point been compliant. I have grave reservations as to what will happen when he defies his father, as will inevitably happen.”

The thought spurted into Jane’s head.
Maybe you should teach him violence as a parental tool.
She was immediately horrified at herself. It was unfair even to think that; Duncan had been in a quite different situation. The violence had been…staged. His brothers had never been at risk. Not the way he feared Tito would be.

Assuming he actually believed any such thing, and wasn’t saying what he was out of dislike, or jealousy, or because he didn’t like the way Hector talked to her. Or because he believed, with utter narrow-mindedness, that Hector had scrawled obscenities on her bedroom wall in blood. Used serrated scissors or shears to shred her clothes.

No. Not Hector. She didn’t believe it.

Still, she shivered.

“Ms. Brooks?”

She looked up reluctantly. “Mr. Ortez is unquestionably under a great deal of stress right now. I can hardly blame him for feeling some resentment of me, given my role. His behavior toward his son has been entirely positive, however, aside from encouraging him to break—” the rules? “—the parameters of the court-ordered visitations.”

The air stirred beside her. She’d pissed Duncan off, no question.

“Hmm.” Lehman appeared to think for a minute, during which they all stared at him, except Tito, still curled in on himself. Finally he said, “We’ll continue the supervised visitation for one more month. At which point—” he leveled a look at Hector “—I anticipate you will have a home to offer your son? Ms. Brooks, can you do this?”

Oh, God.
She didn’t want to. But she’d never bailed midstream. “Yes. Of course.”

An explosive exhalation beside her brought her head around so that she could see the fury gathering on Duncan’s face. She quickly looked away and saw instead Hector’s walnut skin flushed nearly purple. Veins bulged out on his temple.

“Very well.” The judge’s gaze swept over them. Narrowed slightly. He only banged his gavel, nodded, rose and walked out.

“Gotta run,” Jennifer muttered, apparently impervious to the atmosphere. “Lupe, I’ll call you. Jane, you, too.” Briefcase snapped shut, she hurried out.

Jane touched Tito’s shoulder. Somehow he hunched farther, so that her hand barely grazed him before falling away. Jane met Lupe’s eyes, black with worry, and said, “Lupe, did you understand all that?”

“
Sí.
Yes.” In Spanish she said, “I hoped…” but stopped, leaving unsaid what she had hoped for. “Tito, come, let’s go.”

The boy pushed back his chair and stood.

Jane did the same without looking at Duncan. She walked into the hall and ached to keep going, out to the parking lot. But no. She might be able to prevent a confrontation between the two men. This wasn’t like after the Jones hearing, when she hadn’t seen that she could accomplish anything good.

Hector’s callused hand grabbed her shoulder and swung her around. “You lied to me!”

As if in slow motion, she saw the alarm on Lupe’s face, saw her put an arm around Tito and pull him away. Jane was dimly aware that other people were in the wide corridor. Heads were turning. A uniformed bailiff started down the hall toward them.

Duncan was there first. With a snarled, “I warned you to keep your hands off her,” he wrenched the smaller man away from Jane. Hector stumbled against the wall, hitting hard. With scarcely a pause, he flung himself forward with his fists raised.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“PAPA!” TITO AND LUPE cried simultaneously.

The bailiff was still coming. Had he broken into a run? He wouldn’t get there in time, Jane realized. Other people were backing away. Violence flavored the air, like ozone after lightning. What was Duncan doing?

Standing solidly between her and Hector, of course. He hadn’t lifted his fists or reached for a weapon, but he was balanced lightly on his feet. Hector would be hopelessly outmatched. And then arrested, for assaulting a law enforcement officer. What had Duncan once said?
I played right into your hands.
That’s what Hector was doing; playing into Duncan’s hands.

Jane stepped between the two men.

Somehow, she never knew how, Hector stopped. No blow connected.

“Goddamn it, Jane!” Duncan grabbed her and tried to lift her away.

She fought him. “Did you set this up, too?” she snapped, and hated herself when she saw his face. When he backed away.

She made herself turn from him and look instead at Hector. “I didn’t lie. You knew you had to be able to provide a home for yourself and Tito. You knew that violating part of the judge’s orders would have consequences.”

His smoldering gaze was aimed beyond her, where Duncan stood. “If
he
has his way, I’ll never have my son. He’s exactly like those police officers that arrested me. Like all the guards in that place.” He symbolically spat to one side. “He makes himself feel big by trying to make everyone else small.”

“I think—” she had to swallow “—Captain MacLachlan loves your son. He is looking out for him. You should be glad there are more people than only yourself who care about Tito.”

“Tito has family. He has a father. Why would he need someone who tries to keep him from his family?”

Unexpectedly, Duncan spoke. “I want you to live up to your responsibilities, Mr. Ortez. I want you to be the kind of father who worries less about how big or small he feels, and more about what is best for his boy.”

A fine speech, if it hadn’t been spoken with such deep contempt.

“Like you, who are so big you have to hide behind a woman?” Hector snarled. “A man needs to be a man in his son’s eyes.”

Apparently neither man saw the boy huddled in his sister’s arms, or the expressions on both their faces.

“Please don’t have this argument in front of Tito,” Jane said desperately.

She couldn’t see Duncan, didn’t know how he reacted to her plea. Hector glared at her.

“
I
am his father.” He turned to Tito and Lupe. “It is time that you choose. Is it that you wish your father had stayed out of your life? This man gives you an hour here and there. How long will he bother? But if you have more faith in him than you do in me, your father, now is the time to say so. I will not keep fighting for you.”

Jane cringed. Oh, poor Tito! How could Hector do this to him?

“Come,” Hector said to his daughter and son.

Lupe started forward, trying to urge Tito with her. His feet seemed rooted to the floor. He stared in panic from his father to Duncan and back again.

“You don’t have to make a choice,” Jane said, trying to inject urgency into a voice she also kept gentle. “This isn’t an either/or, Tito. It’s not. You can love your father, and still want to be friends with Duncan. Your father is speaking out of anger.”

Tito looked at her for a minute, his eyes filled with despair and confusion. She couldn’t tell if he’d really heard her, taken in what she was trying to say.

“Family doesn’t matter so much to you, then?” Hector made a sound of disgust. “I should never have left Mexico for a place where people think a man of dignity can be treated like a child.”

“Children,” Duncan said with scorn, “don’t knife a man to death.”

Jane wheeled around. “What’s wrong with you? Do you only want to win? Is that all that matters?”

For one tense, angry moment his eyes glittered at her. The next, a shutter seemed to close over his expression. He looked at her, hard and cold and utterly aloof.

Hector turned away and started down the hall. Small, stocky and roughly dressed, he did have a kind of dignity, but Jane felt mostly frustration.

Tito gasped, broke free of his sister and, with only one wild glance at Duncan, ran to catch up to his father. Hector laid an arm over his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Lupe hurried after them. Neither Jane nor Duncan moved until the small family had disappeared through the glass doors.

“I have to take him to school,” Jane said, recalled to her responsibilities.

“You do that.”

She felt as if her chest were being crushed. “Duncan…”

His seemingly uninterested gaze met hers. “I’m not much in the mood to talk to you right now. I’ll catch you later.” He nodded and strode in the other direction, reminding her the courthouse was linked to the public safety building where his department was housed.

He never looked back.

DUNCAN WALKED STRAIGHT through the building, aware he passed people he probably should have greeted, but he was so frozen inside that, by the time he shut himself alone in his office, he couldn’t have named a one.

He stood for a minute, not having the slightest idea what he’d intended to do when he got here.

Sit down.

All right, I can do that.

He looked at his computer and couldn’t remember if he’d left it on. What difference did it make? Right now, he was incapable of doing any meaningful work.

Because it was easier and less painful, he thought about Tito first. He wasn’t surprised that, when push came to shove, the boy had chosen his father. Really, what else could he do? Hector was right. Who was to say that Duncan would stay interested in a kid who wasn’t his own, wasn’t even his brother?

Wasn’t family.

So why the hell did it hurt so much?

He realized he was bent forward as if protecting his soft inner core.

Too late. Maybe he’d been wrong; maybe thinking about Tito wasn’t less painful than thinking about Jane.

But even thinking her name told him he hadn’t been wrong. This pain was sharp and deadly. The way she’d looked at him.

Did you set this up, too?

Well, he’d wondered what she thought when he told her the harrowing story of scaring his brothers into obedience. It was plain enough now; he’d disgusted her. As he’d disgusted himself. What he’d done that night was despicable.

But what else could I have done?

He had no more idea than ever.

It worked, didn’t it?

Oh, yeah. But at what cost?

He heard her voice again.
Do you only want to win? Is that all that matters?

The pain in his belly could have been a bleeding ulcer. Or a knife that had slid between his ribs. Duncan ignored it. He sought for his familiar dispassionate outlook. Was she right about him? God knew, he was an intensely competitive man. Above all, he hated to lose. Was that how he’d seen Hector? As his competition for the affections of a scrawny, needy kid?

Duncan stared into space, stunned by the fact that instead of an answer, he had a vacuum.
I don’t know.

But then he reexamined everything he’d said and done today, and couldn’t see what he could have done differently. He
did
believe Hector loved his son. As Jane had reminded him, Hector was in there trying, unlike Duncan’s father.

No, he thought, frowning, that wasn’t quite fair. In his own way, Rory MacLachlan had loved his sons. When he wasn’t in prison, he spent time with them. Duncan was the one to reject Rory, once he figured out that his father’s love had one gigantic limitation: he wasn’t willing to work a hard, honest job for his sons’ sake. He needed too much to feel like a big shot, someone to whom money came easily, a man who was above the law and petty questions of morality.

It wasn’t Dad’s brand of love I rejected,
Duncan realized.
It was Dad himself. The kind of man he was.
Now, why should that be a surprise? In the end, hadn’t all three MacLachlan boys become their father’s antithesis?

Okay, but Duncan’s father wasn’t the point; Tito’s was. And Duncan did have grave reservations about Hector’s temper and the potential danger to Tito. Duncan wasn’t so sure that Jane could see the difference between Hector and him, and that was part of what hurt. The difference was the ability to control himself, to channel his anger into constructive action. Duncan didn’t lash out. Hector had shown once, in a big way, that he did.

Duncan hadn’t moved in a long time. He sat in his chair, looked at the far wall of his office without really seeing it and thought bleakly,
Was I supposed to let Hector manhandle her? Hurt her? Is that really what she wanted?

If so, she didn’t know him. Or, face it, didn’t like who he was.

He tried to remember a particular moment last night: her face after he’d kissed her, when they had drawn apart slightly and looked at each other. His fingers had been tangled in her hair, cradling her head. She was so beautiful.

But the picture wouldn’t form, blocked by a more recent one. The way she’d looked at him today, in the hall outside the courthouse. She’d been angry and upset. Duncan frowned. More upset than his behavior warranted? He was a cop. Of course he wasn’t going to let Hector grab her or give her hell.

Niall had stepped into a similar situation, he remembered. She hadn’t been exactly grateful, from what Niall said; she’d apparently been pretty confident she could handle the situation on her own. But she hadn’t been furious at Niall, either, even though he’d actually threatened the guy who’d stormed after her. So why was she so pissed at Duncan?

He didn’t get it. Suspected he never would.

All I can do is what I think is right.

No matter what, he would protect her. From Hector, or anyone else.

If she’d let him.

JANE HAD A SINKING FEELING when she saw that lights were on in Duncan’s house when she arrived at the end of the day. She let herself in with the key he’d given her. Of course they had to talk. She owed him an apology for what she’d said about his setting up that scene. She’d betrayed his confidence. She hadn’t meant it, either. Jane didn’t even know why she’d said it.

She called, “Hello.”

“I’m in the kitchen.”

Can’t chicken out.
Dropping her purse and coat on the sofa, Jane made herself follow the sound of his voice.

He was putting something in the oven. It was in a ceramic casserole dish with a lid on. She couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe one of the dinners his housekeeper made and froze for him.

Duncan closed the oven door, straightened and turned to face her. His expression was guarded.

She had to start somewhere. “Thank you for recommending that cleaning firm. They called to say they’re done. They didn’t even have to repaint.”

His dark eyebrows drew together. “You’re not thinking you’ll go home.”

“There’s no reason I can’t.” She didn’t actually want to go home, but that wasn’t the point.

“No reason?” He stared at her like she was an idiot. “There’s every reason! Of course you’ll stay here until Niall arrests that nutcase.”

If there was one thing calculated to get her back up, it was being told what to do. Who did he think he was, God?
I have spoken.

No. Don’t overreact.

“I spent a whole lot of money on a home security system so no one can surprise me again. Why did I waste the money if it’s still not safe for me to go home?”

Duncan leaned against the counter. “It’s a sensible precaution if you’re going to keep taking these kind of cases.” His tone was exaggerated, as if he were lecturing a sixteen-year-old who’d done something foolish and potentially dangerous. “It is
not
adequate protection when someone’s after you who has already painted your bedroom with blood.”

She swallowed the taste of bile. Her mind wanted to shy away from the memory of those hideous scarlet words on the wall. The thick texture of the—not paint—blood. Dripping. Like the words spray-painted on the door of her store, and yet…not like.

“Thank you for the reminder,” she said sharply.

“Apparently you need it.”

He wasn’t like her father;
he
hadn’t bothered to lecture. His word was law, often laid down in Biblical language. His voice had thundered out, “In this house, so shall my word be.” But Jane was having a bad case of double vision. One man seen through the filter of another.