A MAN TO TRUST

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

  Epilogue

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  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  Rabbit?

  No, too big.

  Raccoon?

  No, too small.

  Possum.

  Cruz Gregerson yawned and rolled over, satisfied that he'd correctly labeled the small sound that had awakened him. He should move Sam into this room when she came home, he thought sleepily. Then she could listen to all the noise her menagerie made during the night.

  He yawned again, knowing he didn't really mind. He would rather have her here, her every spare moment spent caring for her small zoo, than involved in some of the activities that seemed to occupy other kids. His daughter was preciously innocent of the uglier ways of the world, and for that he would gladly put up with the collection of wild creatures she tended.

  Except for the snake.

  He shivered—a reflexive reaction to an aversion so deep-seated he couldn't remember ever not having it. It was a damn good thing the camp let her take the slithery thing with her; feeding the furry ones was one thing, but he wasn't about to feed their smaller brethren to the beady-eyed reptile that made him shudder every time he looked at it. And it took every bit of restraint he had to watch her handle the beast. Just the sight of it curling around her slender arm made him shaky, but he still refused to let her handle it unless he was there. Sam's patient explanation that the black-and-white king—which she had named, appropriately enough, Slither—was a good snake had had no effect at all.

  "Some big, brave cop you are," he muttered to himself. For Sam's sake, he'd tried to overcome the fear. He'd tried often enough to know that it was something he was going to live with for the rest of his life; if he couldn't do it for his beloved little girl, he couldn't do it for anyone.

  But the two-foot-long creature had thankfully gone with Sam, curled docilely in a loosely woven cloth bag and placed in a small cage Cruz himself had checked the latches on at least a dozen times before allowing Samantha to put it in the truck for the trip up to the summer camp in the San Bernardino Mountains this morning.

  And tomorrow morning he left for his own summer camp. He smiled into the midnight darkness. And jumped when the shrill ring of the phone cut through the night.

  They wouldn't, would they? Not when he was officially on vacation for two weeks, as of yesterday. No, they wouldn't. Even if something big had broken, Ryan would handle it, or Gage. The detectives of Trinity West were the best there were, and—

  The second ring of the phone jarred away the last remnants of sleep. He reached for the receiver.

  "Gregerson," he said, out of long-ingrained habit; late-night calls to detective sergeants were rarely of the social variety.

  When no answer came across the line, he sat up. The last time he'd gotten a call like this, it had been Lacey Buckhart, Ryan's wife, and the start of the steamroller case that had brought the end of Trinity West's worst gang and the rebirth of the Buckharts' marriage.

  "Hello?" he said into the silent telephone.

  "Hello, Cruz."

  Cruz blinked, startled. He hadn't heard that voice in a year, but it was unmistakable to him, just the same.

  "Kelsey?" Lord, she sounded just as Lacey had that night, when she was shaken by the premonition that Ryan had been hurt. "What's wrong?"

  "I… Nothing."

  He refrained from stating the obvious, that she wouldn't be calling at midnight if it was nothing. "Kelsey—"

  "I'm just calling to tell you … you can't come tomorrow."

  "What?"

  "I… We're closed."

  Cruz ran a hand over his sleep-tousled hair. This didn't make any sense. He went to the Oak Tree Inn every year at the same time, but now, the night before he was to arrive, she called to cancel?

  "Closed?" he asked.

  "We're… We have a water leak."

  Warning bells went off in Cruz's mind, several of them at once. An occupational hazard, he supposed, although he doubted anybody could miss the fact that Kelsey Hall was lying through her pretty little teeth. And it wasn't just the fact that he knew the small bed-and-breakfast inn had all-new plumbing—she had just opened it when he almost literally stumbled across it three years ago—it was also that Kelsey was one of the worst liars he'd ever heard, and in nine years as a cop, he'd heard plenty.

  "Kelsey, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing," she repeated. Too quickly. Too urgently. "I'm sorry, Cruz, I know this is horribly late notice."

  "So," he said, keeping his tone even as he concentrated intently on the undertone in her voice, "the whole place is flooded? Even the rooms upstairs?"

  "No, but … it's a mess."

  "I'll help you clean it up."

  "No! I… That is, I've got help. Thank you, but—"

  "If it's that bad, you can use more, right?"

  "That wouldn't be right, it's your vacation."

  "And it's up to me how I spend it."

  "Cruz, please, just don't come, all right?"

  He was right. He knew he was.

  Sometimes he hated being a cop. Sometimes he wished he could be like most people, accepting others at face value. But there was no off switch on a cop's tendency toward suspicion; the best he could do was try to control it.

  But sometimes it shouted too loudly to be controlled.

  "What's wrong, Kelsey?" he asked softly.

  She said nothing. And as was often the case with Kelsey Hall, her silence spoke volumes. He'd often welcomed that silence when he was at the inn, when she left him alone to find what peace he could in the quiet setting she'd made so welcoming. But now it rang in his head, unstoppably, as it so often did, that gut-level suspicion that was so easily triggered by a flicker of an eye, sweat on a brow, or, like now, by the faintest of tremors in a usually calm voice.

  And by the vivid memory of Kelsey Hall's shock when, just as he was leaving at the end of his stay last year, she'd discovered he was a cop.

  He'd never intentionally hidden the fact, it was simply that this was his one time away from it, and the whole point was to try to leave the job behind, at least for a while. When it had come up in their casual conversation, he'd used the camouflage many cops used when they didn't want to discuss their jobs; he'd said he worked for the city of Marina Heights and let it go at that. And Kelsey never seemed to pry; Cruz hadn't quite been able to decide if she simply wasn't the curious sort of woman, or if she was just exercising the discretion of a good innkeeper.

  But on that last day, when he was literally in his truck in the inn's driveway, his mind already back at the department, he'd let it slip, thinking it would hardly matter at that point, after three years of coming to Oak Tree.

  And Kelsey had paled as if he'd confessed to a felony.

  "Cruz…" she began on the phone now, then stopped.

  He couldn't help it, that undertone was still there in her voice, and all he could think was that it wasn't that she didn't want anyone there, it was that she didn't want him there. She'd always genuinely welcomed him before, even laughingly christened him "First Guest," as if it were a royal title, after he found Oak Tree and she let him stay before she had even officially opened.

  "You look at this place like I do," she'd told him then. "Like there's peace for you here." And she'd added teasingly that as long as he kept coming back, she would know she must be doing something right.

  Apparently it was he who'd done something wrong. He'd let her know he was a cop. And it seemed it was the cop she wanted to keep away.

  "You can come some other time, on the house," she said.

  "No," he said, not exactly sure what he was saying no to�
��the simple fact that this was his only vacation without Sam, her request that he not come, or the odd urgency in her voice.

  "I'm sorry, Cruz. Really. But I have to cancel."

  She hung up, rather abruptly, as if to forestall his saying anything more.

  He sat there for a moment, the receiver still in his hand. His thoughts were tumbling in that rapid-fire manner he'd become used to when his suspicions were aroused. He barely knew Kelsey; her reserve had kept their acquaintance just that, despite the fact that he found her quiet demeanor appealing, and the combination of dark auburn hair that flashed coppery highlights in the sun and vivid green eyes strikingly attractive. Not to mention her distinctly female shape, curved in all the right places, not the rail-thin, boyish figure so many women seemed to strive for these days.

  In fact, when he first set eyes on her, that day she found him sitting beneath the lovely, shade-spreading California oak, he'd almost turned down her offer to be the first guest at Oak Tree. He'd felt the spark of interest when she immediately put her finger on exactly what had drawn him off the main highway to this place, the lure of quiet and peace and the sparkle of the Pacific in the distance; Oak Tree was close enough to the ocean to offer an enjoyable view, yet not so close that it was caught up in the bustle of coastal activity and the resultant fast and expensive life-style. He'd felt that spark and wanted to retreat; Kelsey Hall was intriguing enough to be dangerous to his hard-won peace of mind.

  Now he hung up the phone and flipped on the bedside lamp, blinking at the sudden flare of light.

  He remembered what had changed his mind that day, what had overridden his instinctive retreat from this woman who caused a reaction in him that he didn't want and certainly wasn't going to pursue. She had not only seemed to instinctively understand why he was there, but had been more than willing to leave him to seek the peace he found only in this one week out of his year, in this place that held no memories but pleasant ones, no connection at all to the life that had shattered around him. She seemed to know that he came here for a respite, and her calm serenity helped him find it; he even found himself striving to equal the tranquility she exuded.

  That was why her nervousness now set him so on edge. True, he hardly knew her, they'd barely gotten beyond casual conversation and perhaps one shared meal during his stays. He'd sensed that she had a private side she kept hidden—and, considering his own past, he could hardly fault her for that—but he'd by necessity become a quick, accurate judge of people, and he would swear on his badge that there was nothing underhanded involved. She just wasn't the type.

  But he would also swear on that badge that there was something wrong. Kelsey was not a woman who was easily fazed, yet she had definitely been distressed.

  Sam was already at camp, Kit was going to take care of the zoo—minus Slither—and he was already packed. The facts marched through his mind like a checklist, and he knew he was looking for a reason not to cancel his plans. He wondered why he didn't just admit the biggest reason of all: He needed this escape.

  So why not just go? If he was wrong, if she was really knee-deep in water, he would just help out as he'd suggested. It wasn't that he needed to rest physically, it was the mental break he needed. And if she truly didn't need help, or he would be in the way, he could just keep going up the coast, until he found a likely place to spend the week.

  But if he was right…

  All the more reason, he told himself rather crisply. He liked Kelsey, and if she had a problem—he couldn't quite manage to believe she herself had gotten into some kind of trouble that would make her so anxious to keep a cop away—maybe he could help. Whatever the problem was, it was clearly disturbing her. And he felt an odd need to help her restore her serenity; he saw so few people truly at peace, he didn't like to see it shattered in one who had managed it.

  He would have to change his approach, he supposed, since he usually kept pretty much to himself while at Oak Tree. He would probably have to probe a little to get her to open up to him, but he'd always been good at that. It was one of the reasons he was a good cop; people tended to trust him.

  "Yeah," he muttered to himself as he sat up, rubbing at gritty eyes. "They trust you because they don't have a clue how screwed up you are."

  He knew it was true; everybody always talked about how together he was, how he never shorted either his job or his young daughter, but he knew he wasn't anywhere near the superman they painted him. He knew that half the time he was flying blind, running on hunches and instinct, never really knowing if he was right or wrong, just hoping that he didn't make any major goofs.

  On the job, it could get somebody killed. At home, it could screw up a little girl's entire life. A little girl he loved beyond measure. Sam was the best thing in his life. He'd been sort of neutral about kids when Ellie announced her pregnancy, but the moment he held that tiny bundle of humanity in his hands, he'd lost a part of his heart he'd never even known existed. He'd known then that he would never get it back, but he didn't want it back; it was Sam's, no matter where she went or what she did.

  And every time he saw a kid in trouble, he thought of her, felt the fear every parent felt, only magnified a thousand times by the knowledge of the dark, ugly side of the world cops were privy to. It was why he didn't work the juvenile section; he knew he would go crazy. He didn't know how Gage Butler did it. Maybe not having kids of your own did make a difference. But he doubted it; Gage was as driven as any man he'd ever known, although Cruz didn't know why.

  He lay back, knowing that somewhere beneath all the random thoughts, another level of his mind had been busy. It was how things worked, and he'd grown used to this process he couldn't really explain; it was what had helped him solve more than one tough case.

  And it was what decided him now. It wasn't just that, as a cop, he was automatically suspicious of anyone who didn't want a cop around. It was that gut reaction to somebody in trouble, that reaction he couldn't seem to shake, couldn't bury beneath a layer of self-interested indifference as so many did.

  Kelsey Hall had a problem, and he liked her just enough not to be able to walk away.

  He sighed and rolled over, wondering what he was letting himself in for this time.

  * * *

  "Great," Kelsey muttered to herself. "Now you've really done it."

  She stared at the phone, wishing she could take back the idiotic call she'd made. She sighed. She'd reacted impulsively, panicking when she looked at her calendar late last night, for the first time all day, and realized Cruz Gregerson was due to arrive tomorrow.

  Cruz Gregerson, who had been her first guest, before she even opened Oak Tree, who had so clearly been drawn to this quiet, peaceful setting for the same reasons she had been, who had been back for a week every year since, who had spent hours sitting beneath the spreading oak that gave Oak Tree its name, quietly working on something in the small spiral notebook he always brought. Just looking at him had given her an odd sense of satisfaction; that, as much as anything, was why she had opened the inn in this spot, to see people find what he had found here.

  And the pleasure she took in watching him had nothing to do with his looks, she told herself. Nothing to do with the striking combination of thick, nearly black hair and bright blue eyes, a walking explanation of the mixed heritage evident in his name. Nothing to do with his quiet smile and his way of moving with such easy grace. He wasn't overly big, a hair under six feet, she guessed, but he was solid, muscular and probably even stronger than he looked.

  It was that unmistakable strength, so much greater than her own, that had made her wary. Not in the way any woman is by necessity wary of a more powerful male she didn't know could be trusted not to use that strength against her, but in the way of a woman who caught herself thinking of that power turned in other directions.

  "He's a cop," she reminded herself fiercely.

  Not that she needed reminding. She'd been so stunned when, just as he was leaving last year, he muttered something about putting t
he badge back on, that he stared at her in surprise. Her shock had turned to embarrassment and, flustered, she had waved him away hastily, wishing only that he would leave so that she could recover.

  A cop. Her favorite guest, the man who so fascinated her, albeit against her will, was a cop. And she'd never known, never guessed. How could she? He was quiet, unobtrusive and seemingly bent on nothing more than utterly and completely relaxing while he was here. They'd never talked much about personal things, partly because she sensed he came here to escape them. And, having some secrets of her own, she wasn't one to pry. She had, despite her fascination, left him to his solitude, sensing how much he needed the peace he got from this place.

  She'd never suspected why he needed it so badly. Never suspected that when he left, he went back to a job that had one of the highest death rates in existence, and divorce and alcoholism rates even higher than that. She'd sensed that there was something beneath his surface calm, that his quiet demeanor was deceptive, that there was hidden fire there, but never had she expected that.

  Cruz Gregerson was a cop.

  It still made her feel oddly off balance. She'd welcomed him here, to this haven she'd built. She'd looked forward to his visits. And he was a cop.

  "And now you've made him suspicious," she muttered, getting up to pace her room. "At the worst possible time."

  Just what she needed around here, a suspicious cop. That could endanger everything, could ruin all she was trying to do here.

  She sat on the edge of her bed. It creaked, as usual, and she quickly stilled it, not wanting to awaken Melissa. The girl needed rest, badly.

  She shouldn't have panicked, she thought miserably. All the times before, when Cruz was here, although perfectly friendly and congenial, he had never intruded on her any more than any other guest. He had never pried into her life or privacy, or asked her any questions she couldn't answer. She hadn't thought anything of it at the time, had just classified him as an innkeeper's dream guest: quiet, undemanding, pleasant.