Sterling's Reasons (10 page)
Okay,
she admitted to herself.
I’m not being reasonable. I’m not being rational.
But something had snapped inside her and she had yet to get control.
She didn’t like that he was speeding. It scared her more than a little since it was so dark and traffic had increased.
“Right, kill me, too, now.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she could have slid under the seat and hid.
Sterling could feel the power of his anger. The cockpit of the car filled with it.
He slammed the brakes on, making her claw for the dashboard. With a squeal of tires and a direct swerve, the car fishtailed to a dangerous halt on the side of the road.
“I don’t need this. Drive the damn car yourself and be quiet while you’re doing it.” He opened his car door and Sterling had a momentary pang of concern for him as the traffic whizzed by. And then he was on her side, opening her door and motioning for her to get out and get in on the other side.
Ignoring him, she hiked up her skirt so she could scoot over and under the steering wheel. Casting him a glacial look, she drove on the shoulder of the road until she built up some speed and then, turning the signal on, melted into the stream of cars.
The silence was deafening. She could hear his breathing. Hear him light another cigarette and slide the window down a little. She didn’t dare look at him.
Reaching the cottage at last, Sterling didn’t think she could keep quiet much longer. She parked the Porsche in front of her door. They both got out of the car and slammed the doors.
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They stared at each other over the hood of the car through the darkness for long moments, the mist cloaking both of them.
She shifted and held her bag with both hands. She felt like crying and tilted her chin to ward it off. After all, he was the one retreating from life. Why did she have to accept that without a fuss?
She heard Joe’s barely audible sigh and muttered curse and wondered what she should do now. Now that she had royally screwed up everything with her temper and her swirling feelings. He was standing there, looking at her through the darkness. Words were on the tip of her tongue. But they would probably be the wrong words again.
“You were wrong. You’re still a cop. Nothing has changed that. Nothing but you.” She felt the fresh sting of tears behind her eyes. “Red would hate this. I just bet he would.”
Joe merely stood there in the shadows, the sounds of the ocean behind him.
She ought to help him feed the kittens. They would all be very hungry. But he could do it himself. She stomped over the sand, and went inside her own cheery cottage.
After she showered and dried her hair she parted the curtains just a little and saw that he still had lights on. She puttered around, straightening things that didn’t need it and wondering. Wondering if she was doing more harm than good. Never did she doubt herself more than on this job.
She walked over to the phone. This could all be ended. It could be over. She could call Ramsburg and tell him she wasn’t qualified to help this man. He needed professional help, or at least unbiased help. She realized then that she would have to tell him that Joe T. MacDaniels was becoming too important to her. That she was becoming too involved in making him happy; too caught up in making herself happy.
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Her hand hovered over the receiver. Pulling away from it, she simply reminded herself that she’d called Joe a quitter. That would make her the same thing and nothing…nothing would be solved at all.
She flipped the lights off as she walked around the room. It was midnight. A fog had settled in over the ocean, clouding the windows with mist. She slid the door open to the deck and let the cool air wash over her. She didn’t want to leave. A man she knew only a few days…she didn’t want to leave him.
Sterling looked up toward the sky. All haze. Nothing clear. No definite line between earth and atmosphere. She knew what was out there, she just couldn’t find it right now. Tomorrow it would be there. Tomorrow.
Joe pushed the box of kittens back near the sink. Damn her. Damn her. She was getting to him. It might be in bits and pieces, but she was peeling away layers of him and reaching in, touching him, drawing him back into the human race. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to feel the things that crawled around inside him. It was easy before she came. Easy to cancel life. Easy to forget all the things he wanted out of life. There was something about her… He fixed himself a drink and turned out the lights as he walked through the house. Sliding the door back, he walked to the deck.
He was angry at himself for hurting her. She mattered to him. The exact moment at which she began to be important to him was evasive, but she definitely made him feel things…things that would have been better left alone.
Sterling Powell. He pictured her the way she looked whirling out of the shop with those silly clothes on, the way she talked to the sailor and made him smile.
He remembered the way she felt when she tucked her arm through his and leaned against him…the way her hair smelled.
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It seemed he was always angry at himself lately. Red. What would he think about all this? Suppose it had been Red who had shot
him.
He would have the support of family and friends. He would have survived. Joe remembered the night before the accident.
They had closed a job. Finished it with success and they were at Roper’s, the local pub, celebrating. Red sat across from him popping peanuts in his mouth and making remarks about the female bartenders that he didn’t mean. He loved his wife, was completely satisfied with his life, but that didn’t stop him from admiring beautiful women.
Red had always liked to toy with the English language. He raised his beer bottle to Joe and toasted. “Here’s to the baddest cops in town. We done good.”
“That we did,” Joe agreed, and they had clinked bottles dangerously hard and chugged them dry. And they had laughed and slapped each other on the back and tipped their chairs back on the rear legs. They had control of the world.
They felt invincible. They were unconquerable.
And then twenty-four hours later, Red lay in his arms, bleeding all over him.
He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it. Bringing his arm back and then swinging forward, he tossed the empty glass over the sand and into the water.
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Chapter Six
Pulling her lawn chair to the edge of the deck, Sterling sat down and propped her feet on the bottom rail. Opening her book, she laid it in her lap, but instead of looking at it, she watched the gulls and let them take her with them on their flight for sustenance and sunrise exercise.
Last night’s clouds lingered here and there, thawing dark, hazy lines across the reddening horizon where the sun floated up. It appeared to be smiling.
The strong rays chased the chill from her bare arms and legs. She felt the urge to strip and run naked over the sand. Freedom. Liberty. Abandonment. She smiled. She was bold but not that intrepid. She wished she could be.
Yesterday she had avoided Joe completely, which was easy since she hadn’t seen any sign of him. He needed time to think. Needed time to evaluate. If she had made a dent in his protective armor, then so much the better.
She made it a point not to look toward Joe’s cottage. Still, she couldn’t keep her thoughts at bay. She had lost her temper with him and she didn’t like that. A good forthright mad was okay, but she didn’t like it when her nature kept working her mouth.
How did a man learn to live with danger every day? What did it do to him?
What did it do to those who loved him?
She automatically turned her head toward his cottage the minute she heard his door slide open. He came out dressed only in jeans. She watched as he walked to the steps and looked out to sea, his hands in his pockets. His hair blew when the breeze crossed his face. He was handsome. Almost magnificent. Her
Sterling’s Reasons
heart fluttered, and she wondered if feeling like a teenager in love for the first time was possible. The anticipation was there again. Sterling picked up her Stephen King and tried to read the words. The next move was up to Joe.
In her peripheral vision, she saw him go back inside.
Oh, well,
she sighed to herself.
Maybe it wasn’t.
Returning to the kitchen, she pulled a box of cereal from the cupboard and grabbed a quart of milk from the refrigerator.
Sterling stopped short from sprinting up onto the deck. Joe was just inside the door with a gun in his hand. After her first rush of breath she could see that he was cleaning it. Feeling foolish, she drew her lips into a smile and bounced through the open door. “Morning.”
He grunted. “Stop by some other time. Like when you’re on your way out of Ocean City to say good-bye.”
“It’s going to be a wonderful day. What do you want to do?”
He pushed the gun-cleaning equipment under the couch and went into his bedroom to replace his gun. When he returned, he watched her setting the table in his kitchen with her breakfast materials.
“Just what I’m doing. Nothing.”
“Nope. You did that yesterday.” She sat down and gestured for him to join her. He sidled over to the sink and leaned on the counter. “So you’re over your little snit and you think you can come in here like nothing happened.”
She poured milk over her cereal and used her spoon to bury the Cheerios in it. “Basically. Come on. I went to a lot of trouble to prepare the breakfast of champions. The least you can do is eat it.”
“Wheaties are the breakfast of champions.”
“Come eat, Joe.” She leveled a spoonful of sugar over her bowl.
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He turned his back on her and set up the baby bottles. He proceeded to fill them and pull the box of kittens over to the couch. Plopping down, Joe reached in and picked one of them up. He pretended to be very interested in what he was doing. She was being dismissed again.
“You can ignore me all you want. I’m not going away.”
“I don’t care what you do,” he grumbled.
Sterling got up and snatched one of the bottles from the sink. Picking up one of the kittens, she went out onto the deck and sat on the top step. When she had finished feeding it, she placed the kitten on the deck and watched it crawl around. She ran a finger down the soft fur and encouraged it to explore.
Joe came out on the deck and scooped the kitten up and returned it to its box.
“You tried to feed me and you fed the cat, now go home, Sterling. I don’t need Mother Superior around all day.”
“That’s not very neighborly of you, Joe.”
“I’m not neighborly. And I’m not your knight in shining armor. You know that by now. Just leave me alone. If I’m screwing up your job, that’s your problem. If you’re here on vacation, then just do what you were planning on doing—without me. I’m not dependable, remember?”
“I wasn’t going to bring up the incident. Why are you?”
“Because it’s a something-nothing.”
She looked up at him then. “You mean it’s something that means nothing or nothing that means something?”
He snorted. “Would the robbery have occurred whether we were there or not?”
“Yes. It would have happened regardless.”
He shrugged. “Something-nothing.”
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She smiled at him and he continued to watch the waves. “Maybe you’re right. But that’s over. I’ve already been busy this morning. There’s a dinner cruise tonight. I’m not going to go alone. I made reservations for both of us.”
He turned to look at her. She had let her head fall back a little, to catch the direct rays of the sun. Her hair streamed down behind her, curling and soft.
Inviting. Her eyes were closed, but he knew the animation that would fill them.
“I don’t think so.”
She opened her eyes to slits. “I can’t very well go without an escort. Well, I
could,
but I prefer not to. I know. You can’t dance. That’s why you don’t want to go.”
“You’re probably right.”
When he just lit a cigarette she sat up straight and looked at him. “The other day you decided where we would go. Today it’s my turn. It’s that simple. I’ll teach you,” she teased, knowing a man like him knew how to dance.
He blew a smoke ring. “Right.” He watched it widen and disappear on a drift of wind.
Satisfied, Sterling smiled. He still wasn’t looking at her. He watched the ocean curl and roll. He watched the gulls swoop for breakfast. Though he had merely finger-combed his hair and his eyes still held that haunted look that touched her so deeply, he was coming out of it. Slowly, but surely. If he didn’t recognize it, she did.
She was pleased. When he had returned the gun to his room, he had pulled on a red tank top that complemented his muscled arms and shoulders. She knew the strength that was there extended to his spirit. She could even see the stirrings of it.
When he looked back at her, she smiled. He felt that tug in his stomach again. Sometime during the long sleepless night, during the hours of restlessness,
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he had felt it then, too. What was it about her that got to him when nothing else could? Because she was something good in his life. Something real and something nice. And because he saw a side of her the other day that told him she was hiding some wounds of her own.
The sun danced through her hair. A zest for life sparkled in her eyes. She might be a little bizarre, but if that’s what it took to make Sterling Powell who she was, then who was he to question? Besides that, she took his vote over nightmares, a drunken stupor, and a bad book any day. Furthermore, maybe she needed him. Maybe she was recovering from some crisis of her own and needed him.
