When Somebody Loves You (32 page)

“No. There’s no pain, but . . .”

“But?” she urged when he hesitated.

“But the general consensus is that the infection did its damage.”

She tipped her face to his. He brushed the hair back from her forehead and answered her questioning frown. “Lord, girl, haven’t you wondered? As many times as we’ve made love, we’ve never used protection.” He heard the hollow emptiness in his tone. “I’ll never father children, Joanna. Did you think I’d risk the possibility of a pregnancy knowing that when I left, you’d be forced to deal with it alone?”

Jo couldn’t say what hurt her more, the fact that he’d voiced the inevitability of his leaving or his unspoken pain over the loss he’d suffered. And no, she hadn’t wondered. She’d just accepted what they’d shared and not once considered the potential consequences.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and dropped her head to his chest again. “You should have been a father. You’d have made a good one.”

A thousand splintering emotions ricocheted through him. He wanted to hold her forever, to absorb the healing balm of her spirit and reconstruct the shambles his life had become. He’d never felt as whole as when he was with this woman. And he’d never felt as bleak as when he faced the prospect of life without her.

“Adam!” Her excited whisper brought him back to the night. “Look. It’s starting.”

A brilliant streak of white light arced across the indigo sky. It was followed by another, then a profusion of rocketing fireballs trailed by diamond-dusted tails. The shooting stars crisscrossed and careened through the heavens like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The meteor shower was as stunning and as brilliant as she had promised.

“Have you ever seen anything as beautiful?” she asked with breathless awe.

His dark gaze lowered to her face. The star glow reflected in her eyes showed the wonder with which she watched the sky. “I hadn’t . . . until I met you.”

He loved her slowly that night, with exquisite awareness of her pleasure, with torturous knowledge that when he left he would cause her pain. Their days together might be numbered, but he intended to do everything in his power to make the most of them.

She evidently had the same idea.

“Come on,” she said playfully as she knelt beside him the next morning, extending a mug of coffee for them to share. “It’s a beautiful day. Let’s explore the island.”

He yawned and braced himself on his elbows to look at her. She was all bright green eyes and challenging smiles as he leaned toward her morning kiss.

Loving this joyful side of her, he followed her lead. “I can save you the trouble, Red,” he said, teasing her with a lazy smile. “To your left is rock, water, and pine. To your right is rock, water, and birch.” He paused for a careful swallow of hot coffee. “And to your immediate front and center is a man who’s too tired to do anything but look at you.”

She considered his sleepy speech, grinning mischievously. “What do you suppose it would take to put a little life into those old bones?” she asked, toying with the top button of her shirt.

“Oh, no.” He sat up laughing when the first button slipped free of the buttonhole. “Any more of
that
kind of exercise and they’ll be feeding me intravenously for a month.”

Her staged attempt to look put out broadened his smile. The self-effacing, sexually shy girl who’d come to him that first night would never have had the confidence to engage in this kind of love play. This woman had reached fulfillment. He felt a sudden stirring of response to the invitation from his wild, uninhibited lover.

“All right, then,” she countered, trying another tack, “what about the prospect of a little excitement?”

“I repeat,” he said, intentionally misunderstanding, “any more of that kind of exercise—”

Her bubbly laughter cut him off. “I was thinking more along the lines of mystery and intrigue.”

He eyed her suspiciously over the rim of the mug. “On Jug Island?”

“Especially on Jug Island. Surely you’ve wondered how Jug got its name.”

“I’ve wondered how I ended up here, I’ve wondered how you ever survived long enough to get here . . . and I’ve wondered about that little mole on the inside of your left thigh.” He grinned, thoroughly enjoying her blush. “But to tell you the honest truth, Red, I’ve never wondered how Jug got its name. Should I have?”

“Absolutely. Local legend has it that Jug has a history of illicit goings-on.”

He was fully awake now and his wicked grin suggested he might be interested—at least in the illicit part. Propping his arm on an updrawn knee, he handed her his coffee mug. “Such as?” he asked, playing with a strand of the red hair he seemed always compelled to touch.

“Such as moonshine and Prohibition booze.”

He arched a brow. “In Minnesota?”

“Of course in Minnesota, and specifically here. Remember, we’re only minutes away from the Canadian border by boat. Kabetogama runs into Lake Namakan and over half of Namakan is in Canada. It was a short dash across the border with the illegal hooch. Jug, and the way the mouth of Blue Fin Bay is practically hidden unless you’re looking for it, made this the perfect place to stash the goods.”

“Stash the goods? Illegal hooch?” He tugged her onto his lap. “You watch a lot of old Bogart movies up here in the winter, Red?”

“Go ahead, make fun of me. But I happen to know that Capone himself once walked Jug’s shores.”

“Looking for his stash, no doubt.” He wiggled his eyebrows Groucho Marx style, then pulled an appropriately serious face to match her scowl. “All right. I’m sorry. Tell me more. What brought Capone to Jug Island?”

“He came to check out the location for a possible drop.”

“Oh.” He nodded sagely. “He was casing the joint, huh?”

Her eyes narrowed and her chin came up a notch. “You have an incredibly smart mouth for a man with a bad leg and a cup of steaming-hot coffee balanced over his lap.”

He laughed. “And you’ve got a hell of a lot of cheek,” he said, hugging her tight. “No . . . no . . . not the coffee. I’ll be good, I promise. Please . . . do continue.”

Over a breakfast of leftover fish, she convinced him with animated gestures, wide-eyed excitement, and suspiciously sincere accounts that Jug had in fact been a drop point for contraband liquor during the Roaring Twenties.

“Somewhere on the island,” she said, “though no one knows for sure where, there is said to be a cave. And in the cave is an undelivered shipment of bootleg booze, still fermenting in its stone jugs.”

“Hence the name Jug Island?” he concluded, now mildly curious. He regarded her thoughtfully, a fork full of fish poised over his plate. “There’s more to the story, right?”

She nodded and got up to refill their coffee mugs. “There’s supposed to be money in the cave, Capone’s money, gold bullion, left for safekeeping until he could come back for it.”

“I can’t believe no one’s found the cave by now. From what I’ve seen of the island, it’s not all that big.”

“True, but there’re so many ravines and crevices in the rock that if the bootleggers were clever, they could have easily hidden the entrance. Over the years, the undergrowth could have erased any evidence of the cave’s existence.”

“And you think we can find it today?”

She shrugged, rounded the table, and settled herself down on his lap. “We could give it a try.” She smiled demurely and tried some trick with her eyelashes. “Unless you can think of something better to do.”

He shook his head sadly. “You were so innocent when I met you.” He kissed her soundly and lifted her off his lap. “And yes, I can think of a hundred things I’d
rather
do. But my body is forbidding me to even entertain such thoughts . . . for now.” He punctuated his warning with a leering grin, then rose, grabbed his jacket from the peg by the door, and tossed her his sweatshirt. “Last one to the cave is a dirty rat, see?”

“
Who’s
been watching old movies?” she asked archly, and nestled into the spot he made for her under his arm as they squeezed out the door.

They didn’t find the gold. They didn’t even find the cave. And it was only after Adam’s good-natured grumblings about his suspicions she’d been talking through her hat that she admitted she may have stretched the truth just a bit. But only the part about Capone . . . and about the gold . . . and maybe about the bootleg brew. She
did
know that a man named Jensen used to keep his jug of moonshine hidden out here from his wife, and wasn’t it nice that Adam had gotten some exercise after all?

Then she’d run like hell when he came roaring after her like a thwarted mobster.

No, they didn’t find the gold, but they did find a sun-drenched glen. Sheltered from the wind by a copse of cedar and pine, softened by grass and moss, their island bed was warm and secluded. Their lovemaking was lusty and lush. Only the eagle gliding in the blue sky above them soared higher.

Nine

Jo lay sprawled across Adam’s pounding chest, their hearts hammering in tandem as they languished in a gradual meltdown of spent desire. His hands were tangled in her hair, his breath slow and heavy against the top of her head. Replete and relaxed, she let herself drift on currents of deep satisfaction.

The sun felt warm against her bare skin; the southerly breeze was a friendly caress. Adam was solid and strong beneath her. Her question was completely unexpected.

“Have you ever been married?”

It surprised them both, disrupting the moment, jangling into the present like the distant rumble of an oncoming train.

His hands knotted tighter in her hair, and he pressed her closer to his body. In the long moment before he spoke, both wondered how much he would disclose.

“Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

She felt his chest constrict, then relax under her cheek.

“When they shipped me home from Iraq, it was to a VA hospital in Virginia to recover.”

Her hand moved reflexively across his scar. “How long were you there?”

“Too long. Several months. It wasn’t so much the bayonet wounds and the concussion as it was the infection that kept me down. What blood I had left when they dug me out of that foxhole was full of poison. I lay there for over forty-eight hours before the cleanup crew came in and found me.”

Adam didn’t tell her they’d thought he was dead. He’d been dragged out of the pile of bodies in that bloody hole, and only his unconscious moan had saved him from a body bag. Yet she shivered, as if piecing together the rest of the picture herself. Reaching above his head, he found the sweatshirt and covered her with it to keep away the chill.

She snuggled closer to his warmth.

“Anyway, it was in the hospital that I met Annie. She was a volunteer on my ward.”

The silence stretched between them. Each for their own reasons was hesitant for him to continue. He began again slowly, measuring his words. “Annie was everything my life had never had. She was kind, caring, and obviously vulnerable. I was a ‘wounded warrior’ and she empathized. She must have thought she saw something in me—I don’t know what—that made her think she loved me. It wasn’t long after my release that she convinced me we should get married.”

Now that he’d started, Jo wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest of it. Yet she sensed it was as important for him to tell her as it was for her to know.

“Jack had a spot waiting for me on the police force, and when no other prospects turned up, I felt I had to take it.”

“It wasn’t what you wanted to do?”

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was still broke; I still needed a job. In short, nothing had changed.”

“Except you had Annie.”

He stared at the awning of blue sky, deciding the vastness above him equaled the magnitude of his transgressions. “Except I had Annie. Annie and Jack. They were the most important things in the world to me. I owed Jack, so I took the job and adjusted. Annie never did. She was too gentle, too fragile. She couldn’t adapt to life as a cop’s wife. And then, too, she wanted something I couldn’t give her. Children. After seven years of marriage, it had become apparent that the military doctor’s speculation about my being sterile was actually fact.

“And then,” he said after a long pause, “there was the drinking.”

Unaware, he ran his hand up and down the length of her back, pressing her closer against him with each long, sweeping caress. “She never knew if I was going to show up drunk or sober. Neither did I. One night I came home pretty badly beaten up after a particularly nasty bust. Annie was horrified. She issued an ultimatum. Either I leave the force or she’d leave me. Said she didn’t want to sit by and watch me systematically destroy myself, whether it was with booze or for the good of the department.”

“What happened?”

His hand stopped midmotion. “I called her bluff. I didn’t feel I had a choice. I guess she didn’t either. She wanted out, so she left. And I let her go.”

“You loved her,” Jo said very softly.

“Yes.”

“And now?” Her voice was softer still.

“And now . . .” His tired sigh stretched into an eternity. “And now it doesn’t matter. What happened between Annie and me was a long time ago. I’m not the same man I was then. Hell, I’m not the same man I was two months ago. I’m not sure I want to be. . . . I’m not even sure anymore if I can be.”

Jo levered her weight above him with her good hand. The unqualified love he saw in her eyes made his chest constrict with emotion.

“I don’t know what you were,” she said, “but I think I know what you are now.”

He shook his head. The self-disgust that had been quietly festering inside him erupted unexpectedly as anger—at himself for revealing so much of his life, at her for her unwavering trust. Trust he hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve.

“No,” he said defeatedly. Gripping her by the shoulders, he held her away. “You know nothing of what I am. Nothing.”

“Then tell me.” Her eyes issued a challenge he wasn’t ready to face. “Tell me what you think I don’t already know.”

In clench-jawed silence, he set her away from him. Rising stiffly, he jerked on his jeans. She followed his lead, quietly dressing, waiting for him to vent the anger that had slammed between them like a wedge.

Without a word, he tugged the fly of her jeans together, zipped and buttoned them shut. The silence became poignant with the implications of his tender attention, then brittle with his unspoken tension as he knelt and tied her shoes.

The silence held as they began walking through the forest toward the cabin. The wind rustled through the pines. Its breezy song was a melody Jo had grown up with. Once foreign to Adam’s ears, its whisper was now intrinsically meshed in his consciousness. Its gentle caress stole the last of his anger and brought home the fact that needed facing. She was in love with him. That certain knowledge filled him with awe . . . and bludgeoned him with guilt. If he did one decent, honest deed in his life, it would be to convince her he wasn’t worthy. She was a woman full of passion. She needed a man to share it with—a whole man.

He stooped to snag a fallen piece of birch bark and systematically shredded the paper-thin parchment as they walked. For the past few days he’d let loose pieces of his past. The one piece that mattered remained untold. It was time she knew about the man he really was.

“Frank Keller had been my partner for ten of the fifteen years I’d been on the force,” he said without preamble. “Not once in all that time did he let me down. Not once did he leave me vulnerable. I was his backup the night he was shot. Because I screwed up, Sharon Keller goes to bed alone every night and is now trying to eke a living out on a police widow’s pension. That’s what you need to know about me, Red. Now maybe you can believe what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m not a man you can depend on.”

She was quiet for a time, and when she finally spoke, her voice was reedy with the strain of uncertainty. “I’ve never been where you’ve been, Adam, so I can’t begin to relate to what happened. But I think I know you well enough to realize that your partner’s death couldn’t have been your fault. You’re too much of a protector. You put too much into what you do.”

She seemed to come to a conclusion then. “That’s the reason you ended up here, isn’t it? You needed some time off to deal with what happened to him. Boy, what a sorry waste of your time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Instead of helping me, you should have been coming to terms with what happened, owning up to the truth that you weren’t responsible.”

“I
am
responsible.”

“No. You’re not. And you need to let the guilt go.”

“Just cut it loose like a fish that’s too small to keep?” he bit out.

“Yes,” she answered emphatically, reacting to the sarcasm in his voice. “Just cut it loose. Holding on isn’t going to bring your partner back. You’re fighting something you can’t defeat and until you recognize that, you’ll never be able to get on with your life.”

“Lord, if it were only that simple.”

“It
is
that simple,” she insisted softly.

“Just like it’s so simple for you to forgive your father for leaving you? You talk a good line, but you don’t fool me, Joanna. You still blame yourself for his leaving, just like you did when you were a child. You blame yourself for driving him away.”

Her eyes revealed her hurt and the fact that he’d hit upon the truth. Still, he persisted. “But there’s the difference between us. You’re wrong to bear the blame. In my case, I’m the only one who can bear it.”

As usual, she brushed over her own hurts to help with his. “I won’t pretend to know what you were up against, but no matter how vehemently you deny it, I
do
know you. I know what kind of man you are. You’ve shown me with your actions. You’ve told me with your care. And I know the truth when I see it. I’ve no doubt that every time you went out on the streets you took the same risks your partner did. It could have been you, not him.”

“No it couldn’t! I screwed up, and because of it, he’s dead.”

She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Convince me you’re as guilty as you feel you need to be.” The look in her eyes was gentle but demanding. “Tell me what happened.”

He glowered at her. “You want the thumbnail sketch, or all the gory details?” he asked bitterly, then made the decision for her.

Talking to himself as much as to her, he resumed his slow gait up the path. “The Oldtown merchants had been experiencing a multitude of break-ins. We got a lead on who was responsible. It was a street gang that had been rumored to be behind a number of thefts and beatings in that end of town. We’d been looking for something concrete to pin on those thugs for months. Finally, we got a solid tip and set up a stakeout we hoped would put an end to the terrorism.”

He stopped walking and looked hard at some unseen spot in the forest, rethinking the series of events as they’d transpired. He shook his head helplessly. “It should have been routine. Frank was covering the front of the liquor store and I was at the back waiting for it all to come down. When I heard shots, I broke through the back door. Frank had one of them spread-eagled against a counter. I checked his back just as this”—he broke off, choking on the memory—“just as this kid came up behind him. I recognized him. It was Juan Gomez. He was a kid from the projects. I’d been working out with him at the gym. I couldn’t believe it was Juan, didn’t
want
to believe it. That split second of indecision was all the time he needed to shoot Frank and turn his gun on me. Frank was dead and I was down with a bullet in my thigh before I ever got a shot off.”

He cupped the back of his neck with one hand and stood quietly, willing the thundering in his chest to ease the pain that was always with him.

“He was fifteen years old. Fifteen years old! He killed my partner and crippled me. Once I started firing I didn’t stop until I’d emptied the clip.” He breathed an oath through clenched teeth, wishing he had a wall to shove his fist through. “I saw so much of myself in the boy. I wanted to be for him what Jack had been for me. I wanted to give him a chance. He’d been a hard case, but he was beginning to come around, you know?”

His eyes burned into hers with the torment of a thousand questions and as many sins. “How do I justify what I’ve done? How do I tuck that little bit of history away in the back of my mind and say, hey, it wasn’t my fault? How do I live with killing a child and with leaving a good woman a widow? And where, for God’s sake, do I find the courage to go back on those streets again?”

His questions were addressed to her, but asked of himself. He’d been searching for the answers for over two months. “I lost more than my partner that night. I lost my nerve.”

He turned to her, his expression hardened by rage. “So wipe the stars out of your eyes and the hero worship out of your mind, Red. What you see before you is just an old, used-up man. A used-up cop. A coward. I break out in a cold sweat just thinking about facing a dark alley alone, about the next punk waiting in the shadows with a switchblade or a gun. There’s nothing,
nothing
I want to do less than go back there. And
every
night, there’s nothing I want more than a drink of liquid courage.” He turned away, staring out into space again.

“You know,” he went on reflectively after a minute, “you hit the nail dead center that day when you asked me if I was running from some kind of trouble. You were right, in capital letters. I told myself I wasn’t, but I
was
running. I
am
running. I’m scared down to my socks to go back to Detroit.”

“But you’ll go.”

He shook his head, looking to the sky for relief. “I’ll go . . . because worthless as my miserable life is, I have to live it. I have to look at this face in the mirror every morning. I have to learn to deal with what I did. And I have to face those streets again, or I’ll never have a moment’s peace for the rest of my life.”

“And where will you find your peace, Adam?” she asked him carefully. “In the layers of guilt you wrap around yourself like an indictment? Will your self-blame bring Frank or the boy back? Do you honestly think you are so exclusively liable that you can take responsibility for lives other than your own?”

She frowned at him thoughtfully. “Frank knew the risks he took the same as you did. And the boy could have gained by his association with you. It was his choice not to, just as it was yours all those years ago to accept the hand Jack offered you. Just as the choice is yours now to accept that you were
not
your partner’s keeper, or the boy’s. You were not to blame. You’re not a coward. You’re a strong, honest man.”

He whirled on her, his eyes stormy. All the anguish and anger of his past failures got mixed up with the wrongs he’d done to this woman. “Strong? Honest?” He had to convince her he wasn’t worth losing sleep over, had to convince himself to leave her while the thought of doing just that boiled like an infection in his blood. “You’re deceiving yourself, Joanna, if you see those things in me. Was I strong where you were concerned? Was I honest when I told myself it wouldn’t hurt you when I left?”