Protector With A Past. Harper Allen

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      They’d never had children together—never would, now. She turned the cold tap on, holding her hand beneath the icy water and watching the crimson sluice away down the drain. When the bleeding slowed, she one-handedly reached for a clean dish towel and wrapped it around her thumb before bending again to pick up the dustpan.

      “Let me finish that.” He came into the kitchen, King at his heels. His movements were deft and economical, and within a minute all traces of the glass had been disposed of and the floor was almost dry. He stood at the sink, wringing out the rag he’d mopped the liquor up with, and Julia stood by silently, feeling the tension build inside her.

      Whatever his reasons for coming here and whoever the little girl was, they couldn’t stay. She had to make him see that. She had no idea why he’d said what he had about the child belonging to the two of them and she didn’t even want to know. That part of her life was over.

      Everything she’d once been had burned away in a single searing moment two years ago. Only through the grace of God had her self-destruction narrowly missed destroying an innocent victim.

      She couldn’t let him know that, but she wouldn’t let them stay.

      For a split second Julia saw again the heart-shaped little face with the blue, doll-like gaze. She thrust the image away from her.

      “Whatever you want from me, the answer is no. I’m not responsible for that child, Cord, no matter what cryptic comments you choose to make. You’ll have to go when she’s had some rest.”

      She felt the shaking start and she turned away from him, willing her body not to betray her. The muscles in her arms tensed as she hugged herself tightly, the dish towel still wrapped around her hand. Slowly the tremors subsided.

      “But she is your responsibility. She’s our responsibility.” The husky voice behind her held a thread of incredulity. “Dammit, Julia—don’t you realize who she is?”

      When she’d been a child she’d had a kaleidoscope. It had been the old-fashioned kind, with bits of colored glass that tumbled noisily every time she twisted the metal cylinder, and there had always been a slight delay between the sound of the glass rattling into place and the jewel-like pattern bursting into existence in the dark tube in front of her eyes.

      It was as if she heard Cord’s words clicking into place inside her brain, but for a moment she couldn’t see what they meant. Then everything suddenly made a terrible kind of sense. Julia whirled around to face him, her unhurt hand flying to her mouth as if to hold back the words that spilled from her lips.

      “Dear God—she’s Lizbet, isn’t she?” She searched his expression apprehensively, and the pain she saw on his features sent a chill through her. “Paul and Sheila—are they all right? What happened, Cord? Were they in an accident?”

      Her voice had risen steadily on each unanswered question, and with two strides he was in front of her, pulling her to his chest and holding her tightly. He smelled of the whiskey she’d spilled, she thought incongruously. Her mind skittered away from the terror it already sensed was about to envelop it and frantically tried to busy itself with irrelevancies.

      He was wearing a blue chambray shirt that she was almost sure she remembered from before. Blue had always looked good against the coppery tan of his skin and the blue-black sheen of his hair. His jeans still rode low on his lean hips, and her head still came to the exact place on his chest where she could hear his heart beating. She felt his hand on her hair.

      “It’s as bad as it can be, Julia. Get ready for it.” His breath was warm against her temple, and his voice shook slightly. She felt the icy dread coalesce into a stomach-clenching certainty, and she cut him off before he could continue.

      “I didn’t recognize her at first. She’s grown so fast, Cord! She must be four—no, five now. Remember when we went to her third birthday party, and the clown tried to give her a balloon and she started crying? And you’d just gotten King for me, and she gave him cake under the table and Sheila and I put a party hat on him and took pictures of him and Lizbet, both with their hats on and both of them with icing smeared all over their faces?”

      She was babbling into his chest, her words tumbling over one another. Her throat felt as if it was constricting, and she raced on, refusing to meet his eyes.

      “Remember when she was baptised and she wore the same antique lace gown that Sheila had worn, and her mother and grandmother before her? And you said that you wanted to be around when it was brought out for Lizbet’s firstborn, and Paul said he wasn’t planning on letting her start dating until she was thirty? And we all started laughing, and then when the priest called us forward to make our vows as her godparents I started—I started crying and I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”

      Her throat had closed up completely, and the torrent of words came to an enforced stop. Inside her an intolerable pressure was building, desperately seeking release, but at the same time it felt as if her rib cage was being squeezed tighter and tighter by some cruel, gigantic hand.

      She raised her head from his chest, unaware of the tears streaming down her face. Her eyes slowly met his. Her pupils were enormously wide, as if they were attempting to find and collect a glimmer of light where there was none.

      “They’re dead, aren’t they?” With the harshness of ripping silk, her hoarse whisper sliced through the silence.

      She’d never seen him cry before but now his skin was wet, and even as she watched, the shimmer at the outer corners of his eyes spilled over into slow silvery tracks that gleamed against his tan. He held her gaze and didn’t attempt to hide his tears or brush them away.

      “I like your version better,” he said. “I like thinking about them the way they were when we were all together. But yes. They’re dead.” His voice cracked and his grasp on her tightened painfully. “They were killed, Julia. Somebody killed them.”

      “No!” The cry burst from her before he’d finished speaking.

      “All the way up here I was trying to think of a way to break it gently. There isn’t any.” His eyes were shadowed and the faint lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there two years ago deepened, but she was beyond noticing. She shook her head in refusal and tried to push herself away from him. He didn’t release his hold on her.

      “Cord, you—you’re crazy! You show up here with some insane story about our best friends being killed and expect me to believe it? What the hell are you trying to do?”

      In the corner by the door King looked up worriedly, aroused by her tone. “I won’t accept it. It’s all some crazy lie or you’ve got your information wrong or—or something! Paul and Sheila murdered? Things like that just don’t happen!”

      “Things like that do happen. Before you left the force you used to see it every working day of your life, Julia.” His words were low and intense. “They’re not supposed to but they do. I saw them myself, just minutes—” He stopped, and a muscle worked in his jaw. “Just minutes after,” he continued bleakly. “I was just a few minutes too late.”

      She’d known from the first that it was true, but denying it was a way of keeping Paul and Sheila Durant alive for the space of another heartbeat or two. She hadn’t seen them for years, Julia thought wrenchingly. She hadn’t been able to see anyone. But in the back of her mind she’d always known that they were there—Sheila, with her glorious mass of red hair and her wicked sense of СКАЧАТЬ