A MAN TO TRUST Page 4

  She scrambled to her feet. She wasn't going to go down that old trail. She should be thankful it hadn't taken her long to learn that there wasn't a man on the planet she could trust enough to maintain any kind of relationship. And she wasn't the type who could have a string of casual affairs and never look back.

  "So do without," she muttered as she looked for something to tidy or clean in the already spotless kitchen.

  "Without what?"

  Kelsey spun around, thinking that the pregnant girl should at least make some noise when she moved.

  "Er … dessert," she said, only after she spoke seeing that what she'd said was truer than she realized; she had a good life, and she was safe and happy. She had the main course, she didn't need dessert. Not if she wanted to stay healthy. She didn't need a man who would no doubt mess up her world, didn't need to learn a painful lesson all over again.

  "Oh."

  Melissa looked rather wan tonight, and Kelsey wondered with a qualm if the girl had been working too hard. She'd insisted on helping, and indeed had been the one to scrub the kitchen when Cruz was out at the pond, but perhaps it had been too much for her.

  "Are you feeling all right?"

  "Fine."

  "You look a little pale. Maybe you should sit down?"

  "No."

  The girl wasn't usually quite so laconic, and Kelsey's brow furrowed. "What is it, Melissa?"

  "I… It moved."

  Kelsey blinked. "What?" Then it struck her. "Oh. The baby?"

  Melissa sat down after all, rather heavily, and Kelsey took back the chair she'd vacated. It was then, at eye level, that she saw the expression in the girl's eyes; she looked stunned. She didn't know what to say, so she reached out and took the girl's hand.

  "It … didn't seem real, before. I mean, I knew, but…"

  Kelsey understood then. Melissa had known she was pregnant, but until she felt the new life moving inside her, she hadn't really realized all it meant.

  "How does that make you feel?" she asked quietly.

  "I don't know!" Melissa wailed. "I should have done something, gotten rid of it—then I could just go home and everything would be like it was."

  Kelsey sighed inwardly. The girl hadn't dealt with the reality of it still; nothing would ever be the way it had been again. She wasn't surprised by the denial; Melissa had told her she had ignored the possibility she might be pregnant until it became undeniable.

  "I knew my parents would have a fit," she'd said. "And after they threw me out, and Doug got so mad at me, I decided to keep it. At least a baby would have to love me, wouldn't it?"

  She'd sounded so forlorn that Kelsey didn't have the heart to disabuse her of that notion. The girl had refused to talk any more about either her parents or the baby's father. Kelsey had let her slide, with the warning that it would not be forever.

  She saw the girl tremble and tried to ease her distress by changing the subject for a moment.

  "Thank you for cleaning the kitchen so beautifully."

  Melissa shrugged and pushed a lock of her dyed hair back behind her ear. "I wanted to help. You've been so nice." She gave Kelsey a sideways look. "He sure stays close by."

  Kelsey nodded. "He comes here for peace and quiet, not to see the sights. He doesn't live very far away."

  Melissa looked away. "He's … kind of cute. For an old guy."

  Kelsey smothered a smile. "Yes, I suppose he is. For an old guy."

  "You like him?"

  "Yes," Kelsey said truthfully. "He's very nice."

  "Is that why you've been hanging with him so much? Or is it me?"

  Kelsey considered that for a moment, then settled on honesty as the best policy. She tried never to lie to kids; they sensed it, and when they found you out, they rarely forgave.

  "Both," she admitted, but didn't add that she knew just how unwise thinking anything would come of it would be. She'd known that long before she ever knew he went home and put on a badge and a gun.

  "I'm trying to stay out of sight."

  "You're doing fine, Melissa," Kelsey assured her. "Don't worry about it. It probably wouldn't matter if he saw you. We could just tell him—"

  The girl cut her off, shaking her head fervently. "No. I don't want anyone to know I'm here."

  Not for the first time, Kelsey felt there was something the girl wasn't telling her. Her fear seemed beyond that of a young girl away from home, even one who was pregnant and scared about it. And if she was this afraid now, Kelsey could just imagine how she would feel if she knew who—or rather what—Cruz was.

  "All right," Kelsey said soothingly. "We'll just keep things the way they are. It would be easier if I had other guests to add to the distraction, but we'll manage."

  "If you had other guests, I'd have to dodge them, too," Melissa pointed out.

  No, because they wouldn't be cops and already thinking something odd is going on because I'm the world's worst liar, Kelsey thought ruefully. So much for her vow, made years ago, that someday she would be where she never had to lie again, to anyone. All she'd done was manage to get so out of practice that she gave herself away even over the telephone.

  "We'll do fine," was all she said. "Let's get you some dinner."

  The girl had adapted so that she generally ate when Cruz was either outside or already upstairs in his room, but tonight he'd gone up rather late, so Kelsey imagined Melissa was hungry. She'd been goad about clearing up after herself, too, so there were no telltale dishes left out, betraying her presence.

  She thought Melissa would be fairly secure in the small room just off the kitchen; for a cop, Cruz showed little sign of being a snoop. For a cop, Cruz didn't ask nearly as many questions as she'd expected, knowing he knew she had lied about the water leak. For a cop, he was amazingly kind and thoughtful. She might even have said gentle.

  But she'd always thought him a gentleman, from the first time he came here. It was only the knowledge of what he did for a living that had changed the way she looked at him.

  And somehow that didn't seem quite fair, Kelsey thought. It wasn't as if he did something distasteful, not really. Just because she'd been let down long ago by the system he represented, that was no reason to condemn him. The fact that she was circumventing that system was reason to be wary, but was it fair to judge him just for being part of it? He was still the man whose visits she had looked forward to each year. He was still the man who took the same quiet pleasure in her home as she herself did. Did knowing he was a cop really change all that?

  She wasn't sure, but she had the feeling now that not only was Cruz Gregerson not what she'd thought a cop would be, but, as a man, far more than she had ever expected.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  "So how did you end up with the name Cruz Gregerson?"

  He blinked, a little startled at the personal question. Ever since that night in front of the fireplace, she'd kept the conversation fairly impersonal. They'd still spent more time together than during any of his other stays, but there had been no more betraying moments when her eyes were shadowed with remembered pain and unwelcome knowledge.

  He'd been well aware that they spoke mostly of him, places he'd seen, things he'd done—although never of his work—and very little of her. He knew little more about her now than he had before. And he couldn't remember the last time he'd talked so much without mentioning his job; a cop's work usually permeated every aspect of his life, and even though he came here to get away from it, it was odd to be so carefully avoiding the subject.

  But for some reason that he didn't stop to analyze, he didn't want to bring it up, didn't want it out in the open between them, didn't want to have to deal with whatever had made her react that way. He'd revised his estimation that she was in trouble; it seemed more likely that she was simply hiding something she would prefer he not find out. Maybe she'd let her car's license tags expire, he thought wryly; he'd seen people panic over sillier things.

  He might have been fl
attered that she seemed so intent upon him had it not been for that nagging suspicion about her motives. He was touched despite himself by the shy way she went about it, and he had to admit that there seemed to be a great deal of sincerity in her interest. In fact, if it hadn't been for that suspicion, he would have thought her utterly genuine.

  And that bothered him as much as anything except his own reaction to the idea of her genuine interest.

  "Elena Cruz Santiago married Frank Gregerson," he finally answered.

  Kelsey smiled as she moved her feet in the water of the pond. She'd asked him if he would mind if she came with him this morning and offered a picnic lunch as, she said, a bribe to put up with her. He'd told her that she hardly needed to do that, that he enjoyed her company. And he'd been a little surprised to find that what could have been an automatic polite response was more than a little true; his morning's jaunt had suddenly become even more pleasantly anticipated at the thought of her joining him.

  And he managed to put out of his mind the growing certainty that, while she seemed to enjoy his company as well, there was something else driving her to spend so much time with him. If she was a little better at the small talk, if she was more practiced, instead of acting as if she were very unused to being alone with a man, he might have taken her at face value. But between the change from her previous demeanor and the damning fact of that midnight phone call, he couldn't quite quash his suspicions completely.

  And he couldn't help wondering if there was a connection to the still-niggling sensation he had of another presence, evoked by the occasional unaccounted-for noise, or lights going on after he—and, he thought, Kelsey—had already retired for the night.

  No, he couldn't quite smother his suspicions. But he could avoid thinking about them, he decided, at least for the moment. And that task was made easier by the fact that she had traded her black slacks for a pair of shorts for the walk, baring long, nicely curved legs, and had slipped off her shoes to dabble her feet in the water, baring equally nicely curved feet, small and high-arched, and making Cruz wonder when the hell he'd started finding feet attractive.

  "I assume the blue eyes came from your father, then?"

  "I hope so," he said, with mock fervency.

  Kelsey gave him a startled look, then let out a hesitant laugh. He took pity on her and explained.

  "It's an old family joke. I'm the only one with blue eyes in the whole family. Even my dad's are brown. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm a dead ringer for my grandfather, my mother would have had some explaining to do."

  Her laugh was genuine then, and he had the idle thought that he would like to hear it more often. It was like the splash of the pond's sun-warmed water, light, cheerful, and somehow clean and pure in a way that was far too often absent from his life. And that thought should have had warning bells going off like mad in his head, but he was too lazily comfortable to worry about it.

  "You grew up in a big family?"

  "Not immediate. My folks just had me." He grinned. "Guess I was enough of a handful."

  "You? Don't tell me you got into trouble."

  "Constantly." His grin widened. "Nothing serious, though. I didn't dare. I have so many aunts and uncles and cousins scattered all around, somebody was sure to burn me."

  She smiled, but her voice took on that wistful note again when she said, "Sounds nice."

  "Sometimes. Sometimes, when a half dozen or so of them would come stay with us when I was a kid, or when one of them blabbed to my dad about something I'd done, it was anything but."

  "What … did he do? If you did something … bad?"

  He couldn't pin down the change in her voice; he only knew that it was there.

  "Not much. He just stood there looking at me with that sad 'I'm disappointed in you, son' expression he had perfected, until I felt like—" he flicked at the water with a finger as he finished "—pond scum."

  "That's all?"

  "That's all it took, believe me," Cruz said with a grimace. "He had a way of making me want to do whatever it took to make sure he'd never look at me like that again."

  "That," Kelsey said, "is a feeling I can relate to."

  Her tone was far different from his, with an edge he couldn't define. Whatever her childhood had been—and he had no idea, since they had been so busy talking about his—it had clearly left behind some unhappy memories. And not for the first time Cruz blessed his parents for the solid, happy family they'd built with their love and sweat and tears, although he had to admit that sometimes—completely unintentionally—they made him feel like even more of a failure because he hadn't managed to do what they had and keep his own marriage together. Not that they'd ever criticized. In fact, they'd made it clear that they knew it was no one's fault, but their example was a tough one to live up to.

  Maybe he would take Sam up for a visit this year, when the time for their joint vacation rolled around. Or maybe for the holidays. His mother had been hounding him for a couple of years, saying that she wanted her granddaughter home for Christmas.

  "Do your parents live around here?"

  He shook his head. "They still live up in Santa Rosa, where I grew up. They have a little restaurant. The Vineyard Inn." He glanced down the hill toward the inn. "In fact, they've been thinking about buying the big old house behind it and doing pretty much what you've done here."

  Kelsey looked intrigued. "Really?"

  He nodded again, then looked at her pointedly. "I should send them down here to take lessons from a pro."

  She blushed prettily, and looked so pleased that he felt absurdly warmed by what his simple words had done. "I'll bet they'd do well there, in the wine country."

  "Mom thinks so. Dad's not so sure."

  "He doesn't think it would be successful?"

  "It's not that. He worries about Mom, and the extra work it would be. She already runs the kitchen operation of the restaurant, and she's on the board of the Center for the Arts up there, and he's afraid of adding this to her load. Dad's got a good business head, but he doesn't know the first thing about what you do."

  "Does your mother?"

  "She's learning." He couldn't help smiling. "But then, she's always learning. She went back to school and got a degree in restaurant management before they opened the place. And she's back in school again for this."

  "She sounds like … quite a woman."

  "She is. She's a dynamo. I think this is going to happen whether Dad likes it or not."

  Kelsey's brow furrowed. "Will that cause a problem?"

  "Problem?"

  "Between them. If she goes ahead and does something he doesn't want her to."

  Cruz laughed. "If that were the case, they would have split long ago. She'll listen to advice and take it if it makes sense to her, but nobody tells my mother what to do."

  Kelsey stared at him. "Even your father?"

  "Especially him," Cruz said, curious about her expression. "He always says he married her for her spirit, so why would he want to crush it by trying to rein her in?"

  "She—they—sound … remarkable." Kelsey's tone was hushed.

  Cruz studied her for a moment, thinking that he'd been wrong when he thought he had learned very little about her in their talks this week. True, she hadn't told him her life story, not the way he seemed to be doing for her, but what few things he'd deduced were much more telling than all his light, amusing recollections. And he was sure he was learning more from her reactions to what he said than she knew she was revealing.

  "They are, but they're not so unusual," he said, watching her face. He saw what he'd expected, even though he wasn't sure why: a flash of reaction to his words, a look that bordered on, but didn't quite fall into, bitterness. She didn't speak, but she didn't have to for him to interpret that look.

  "Your folks are different, huh?" he asked.

  She went very still. "They're dead."

  He winced at her bald tone. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. It doesn't matter."

&nb
sp; Yes, he was learning more than she realized, Cruz thought.

  "So," Kelsey said, her voice now determinedly bright, "do you see your parents often?"

  "Not often enough, if you ask them."

  His mind wasn't really on his answer. He was thinking about how she diverted the conversation back to him whenever it strayed to her, or anything close to her. He wondered just how defensive she could be and set about finding out.

  "So how did you get started in this business?" he asked, figuring that was innocuous enough to begin with. "And how did you find this place?"

  "I got lucky. It was a rush sale, because of somebody's tax problems, at a time when I had some cash."

  Cruz lifted a brow; even this far from the coast, property with a view, however slight, of the ocean didn't generally come cheap. "Some cash?"

  She shrugged. "I'd been partners in a restaurant. It was fairly successful when we sold out. I needed to turn the profit over quickly, or I'd be the one with tax problems."

  "Must have been quite a restaurant."

  "It did well. It was in Marina del Mar, maybe you've heard of it? The Sunset Grill?"

  Cruz blinked. "You owned the Sunset Grill?"

  It was one of the trendier places in the wealthy resort town, with a menu that was never the same twice and a reputation for great ambience and better food. He'd been there a couple of times, with Kit Walker, and he'd liked the airy, open feel of it, with skylights to let in the sun and a unique design that made every table seem secluded and private.

  "A quarter of it," she said. "And don't look so stunned. It wasn't the Sunset Grill when I started working there. It was a little hole-in-the-wall kind of café that didn't have much going for it except a good location."

  "You started out working there and ended up an owner of the place?"

  She smiled with a pride she had every right to, he thought, if it was true.

  "I did. I worked there for six years. I got hired even though I had no experience, because I offered to work the first two weeks for nothing. I bussed tables, worked as a receptionist, then a waiter. I saved every penny I could, and when Mrs. Lerner—the owner—decided to renovate and start over, she let me buy in. On the condition I go to school nights and learn restaurant management. She wanted someone to help her run things."