A MAN TO TRUST Page 8

"Why don't you come in for a minute?" he asked, knowing he was going to regret it, but unable to stop himself. He told himself it was just like Sam's animals; she'd never been able to resist a wounded stray, and apparently neither could he. There was nothing more to it than that. Kelsey was hurting, for whatever reason, and he couldn't turn his back on her. Not even for his own good.

  "No, I have to go. But thank you."

  She tilted her head back to look up at him then, and for the first time he saw her face in full light.

  "God, Kelsey, what's wrong?"

  He took a step forward onto the porch, reaching for her. He sensed she was about to draw back and quickened his movement until he had grasped her shoulders. He held her still, gently but firmly.

  "You look exhausted," he said, staring down at the huge dark shadows that circled her eyes. "What the hell have you been doing?"

  She looked away, and he felt the tension in her as she began to pull away.

  "Never mind," he said shortly. "It's obvious that whatever you've been doing, it hasn't included sleep. Come inside."

  She blinked. A tremor rippled through her, and he felt the weariness that caused it as if it had been his own. "Inside?"

  "It's late, you're thrashed, come inside and rest. Whatever it is, it can wait."

  She shook her head. "No. No, it can't."

  He tightened his grip on her shoulders and urged her toward the open door. He got her to step inside, but there she stopped dead.

  "It has to wait," he insisted. "You're dead on your feet."

  "I have to keep going, I have to—"

  He didn't know what was driving her. It didn't matter, not at the moment. "What good is it going to do if you collapse? Or maybe drive your car into a tree?"

  "But—"

  "Don't make me pull rank on you, Kelsey. I can't let you out on the street when you're too tired to even walk straight."

  A shudder went through her this time. Her head slumped and her shoulders sagged. "Always the cop," she whispered.

  "That has nothing to do with it."

  Her head came up sharply, and her voice was suddenly angry. "It has everything to do with this."

  "What it has to do with is you being too stubborn to listen to reason."

  "What it has to do with is you making like a TV cop, snapping out questions, demanding answers, scaring people…" Her voice trailed away, and she lowered her head again.

  "What," he said slowly, "does any of that have to do with why you're standing here in the middle of the night, about to topple over?"

  When she didn't answer, he lifted one hand and nudged her chin up, making her look at him.

  "Kelsey?"

  "This could ruin everything," she said, shaking her head slowly, as if she were in pain. She sounded as if weariness and fear had worn her down to a nub, and he guessed she was running on pure nerve and had been for a while now. He felt a surge of protectiveness he barely recognized, something he'd only felt toward Sam before. He wasn't sure he liked the revelation.

  But he knew for sure he didn't like being accused of ruining everything, even if he had no idea what "everything" was.

  "I'm the same guy I've been for the past three years," Cruz said, a bit weary of the whole thing himself, after spending all this time trying to figure it out. "What the hell have you done that you're so afraid now that you know I'm a cop?"

  "Me?" She wrenched free and glared at him. "You're the one who was firing off questions like a machine gun! You're the one who kept pushing. You're the one who scared her away!"

  "What?"

  "Melissa! She's out there now—" she gestured wildly behind her, toward the city "—all alone and scared and thinking she can't trust anybody because the one person she did trust called the cops on her!"

  "Didn't you … explain?" What the hell had the kid done, to be so scared?

  "She didn't give me a chance, she took off. But what else was she supposed to think? She's just a kid, and she's scared, and then you show up right after she did… I have to find her."

  He blocked her as she started for the door. "That's what you've been doing? Looking for her?"

  "Yes. Let me go."

  "When did she leave?"

  "The same night you did," Kelsey snapped. "Now let me go. I have to find her, and soon."

  "She's a runaway?" he guessed.

  "Just let me go."

  "But there's more to it, isn't there? She was more than just scared she'd get sent home. What else is going on?"

  "What does it matter to you? She's just another kid in trouble, somebody to badger with questions and not listen to the answers."

  Cruz frowned. There was an undertone of fierce emotion in her voice that triggered some deep, intuitive response in his gut. Kelsey wasn't simply worried about Melissa, there was something much deeper, much more personal, going on here. Every instinct he'd ever had, every knack he'd developed in nine years on the job, was telling him so. This normally quiet, almost reserved woman was beyond passionate in her empathy with the missing girl. And Cruz couldn't help wondering why.

  "Kelsey—"

  "Just let me go!" she cried out, twisting to try to get past him.

  "Daddy?"

  Cruz spun around as the tiny voice came from behind him. Samantha, clad in her beloved Tigger T-shirt, stood in the center of the living room, staring at the two of them, her eyes wide with worry and a touch of fear that made his stomach knot violently.

  "Sam," Cruz breathed.

  And cursed himself for being so distracted by Kelsey that he'd forgotten his daughter.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  "I heard yelling," Samantha said. And then, in a tone that was oddly, almost frighteningly adult, she looked at her father and asked, "Are you all right?"

  Kelsey stared as Cruz crossed the room in two long strides, then bent to sweep the child up in his arms. In a movement that was clearly automatic, the girl's arms went around his neck and she hugged him fiercely.

  "Everything's fine, squirt."

  Wide brown eyes the color of cinnamon looked at him, then shifted to Kelsey, who was feeling nothing less than dismayed as Sam clung to him in a way that seemed both fearful and protective at the same time.

  "Then why was she yelling?" the child asked. "And who is she?"

  "She," Kelsey said, stepping forward and feeling utterly contrite at having frightened this lovely, innocent child, "is a silly woman who's very sorry she woke you up."

  Samantha seemed to consider this for a moment, never relinquishing her hold on Cruz. He kept quiet, just looking at Kelsey, as if to point out that she had been doing the yelling, so she could deal with the result. But she noticed he never stopped rubbing the child's back, never eased up on his secure hold of her.

  "I'm Kelsey," she said, taking another step forward when Sam didn't draw back. "And truly, I'm sorry if you were frightened. I didn't mean to yell."

  "I was worried," Sam said after a moment, still eyeing Kelsey warily. "My dad puts bad people in jail, and sometimes they get mad."

  "I … imagine they do," Kelsey said. Her gaze flicked to Cruz. He looked back at her levelly, as if he knew perfectly well she'd never thought of that aspect of his work, that by its very nature he lived under the constant threat of revenge.

  This time Sam's expression and voice were doubtful. "But you don't look bad."

  Cruz didn't make a sound, but Kelsey saw him bite his lip, as if to keep from smiling. Kelsey grimaced. She knew all too well what she looked like. And didn't look like.

  "No, I don't," she said. "I look … nice."

  She's such a nice girl, that Kelsey.

  Kelsey, you shouldn't try to wear that dress, it just doesn't suit you, it's too … sexy.

  You shouldn't use all that makeup, Kelsey. You have that fresh-scrubbed look, and it just looks wrong on you.

  She'd heard it all her adult life, the well-meant reminders that she wasn't the kind of woman who stopped traffic. At l
east not the male kind. Not with her plain, no-more-than-pleasant appearance. She'd told herself for years that she was grateful for that fact; she didn't want a man in her life, because she was certain it was all highly overrated. But underneath it all had been the niggling thought that it would be nice to have the choice.

  "No," she added, unable to help sounding a bit sour, "I'm just the girl next door."

  "No, you're not," Sam said, clearly taking it with a ten-year-old's tendency toward literalness. "Tammy is the girl next door. Her dad died. Now her mom likes my dad."

  Of course, Kelsey thought. What woman wouldn't?

  "Of course she does," Cruz said quickly, but in an entirely different tone, as if he were uncomfortable with how his daughter's words had sounded. "Because I help her out now and then, that's all. And now you—" he reached out and tapped Samantha's tiny, upturned nose "—need to get back to bed. It's late."

  "The zoo. I have to check—"

  "I know. Come on, we'll make sure everybody's okay." He looked back over his shoulder at Kelsey. "Don't take off, all right?"

  "She can come see the animals," Sam suggested, apparently having decided Kelsey wasn't any danger. And Kelsey had no doubt it was the danger to her father that concerned the child more than anything else.

  "If she wants," Cruz agreed as he flipped on a light in the hallway.

  Kelsey didn't want. She didn't want any of this. She didn't want to watch anymore while Cruz comforted the girl who had moments ago been so frightened for him. She didn't want to see how exquisitely gentle he was with her, how tenderly he soothed her fears and brought her world back to safety. She didn't want to see the zoo, including the detested snake he put up with for the simple reason that he loved his little girl so much he would do anything to make her happy.

  What she wanted was to run. To get away from him and the incredible pull he seemed to exert on her. In all the time she spent searching for Melissa in the past two days, he had never been far from her thoughts. And coupled with the memories of how much she'd enjoyed the time she spent with him last week was the nagging awareness that she hadn't been quite fair to him. If she stayed now, all she would end up doing would be piling up more memories that would haunt her, more images that would taunt her with her own longings and loneliness.

  She should run. Far and fast. If she had any sense at all, she would.

  But what she did was follow meekly, her eyes fastened on the little sprite who still clung to Cruz's neck, not quite over the last vestiges of her scare. Her blond head was a startling contrast to his dark one, but they were the same in one very important way: the sheer love that radiated from them.

  It was a tangible thing, a cocoon spun around them. Kelsey didn't think she'd ever felt so shut out. Not just shut out from the connection between these two, but from ever having known that kind of feeling, that kind of ultimate love between parent and child. It was not a new sensation, but she hadn't experienced it in a long time. She'd thought herself over this.

  But then, she'd thought herself immune to such foolish feelings as Cruz Gregerson evoked in her, too.

  She watched as Cruz flipped on a light and then gently set the little girl down in the doorway of what looked, from the wood paneling and shelves, as if it had once been a den or library of sorts. But now the shelves—the lower ones, at least—were full of a variety of cages and aquariums. Some of them were empty and set to one side. Some were obviously in use, and she heard a rustling as some tiny creature moved in response to their presence.

  She guessed that a glass aquarium, topped with a piece of screen fastened with a very secure-looking latch, held the snake loved by the daughter and detested by the father, although she couldn't see from where she was. Two more aquariums, these serving their original intended purpose of holding brightly colored fish, sat against the far wall, bubbling cheerfully.

  Kelsey wondered where Frisbee the dog was, and why he hadn't set up a fuss when she came to the door, or when she was being such an idiot inside, yelling at Cruz and waking up this little sweetheart.

  "Where's the dog?" she asked. "I half expected to hear him waking up the whole neighborhood when I came to the door."

  "Frisbee? He doesn't bark much," Samantha said, adding matter-of-factly, "That's 'cause he's deaf. He can't hear anything to bark at."

  So even the dog was a recipient of Sam's generous compassion. And Cruz's seemingly endless patience. With his daughter, at least, Kelsey amended; he didn't seem to have that much with her.

  Samantha moved from cage to cage with the sureness of long experience. Cruz watched with the same air, and Kelsey realized this was a long-established routine. Sam peered into each cage, chattering soothingly to the occupants one by one in a tone that, Kelsey realized with a sense of poignant wonder, she had clearly learned from her father.

  "It's okay, Bandit," she murmured, Kelsey supposed to the baby raccoon Cruz had mentioned. "You just go on playing."

  Samantha glanced at Kelsey. "He's a raccoon. They're nocturnal," she explained, not stumbling at all over a word Kelsey doubted many ten-year-olds would know. "That means they're awake at night."

  "I see," Kelsey said with a nod, not having to fake being impressed.

  "So is Nosy. He's a possum. It's really opossum, but that sounds funny."

  Kelsey smiled; she couldn't help it. The girl was enchanting, with her tousled blond locks and those big brown eyes, and her solemn air as she introduced the visitor to her obviously precious zoo.

  "Yes, it does," Kelsey agreed.

  "Bandit got hit by a car, and Nosy got in a fight with a cat, like the rabbits. But they're both almost well now," Samantha said. "And the rabbits will be soon, too."

  "Then what happens?" Kelsey asked.

  Sadness shadowed the little girl's eyes, but she spoke with utter conviction. "I have to let them go. I don't want to, but Dad says it's not fair to keep them caged after they're well."

  Kelsey looked up at Cruz, moved by his daughter's utter, total belief in him.

  "I'm sure he's right," she said softly, still looking at the father instead of the child. After a moment Cruz shifted, as if uncomfortable with her steady regard.

  "Okay, squirt, that's it. Everybody's fine. Back to bed with you."

  The child ran to him, holding her arms up. Cruz picked her up in a smooth, practiced motion, and they planted noisy kisses on each other's faces. Again Kelsey knew she was seeing a long-standing routine. And again she stifled the tiny ache inside her, knowing it was the child she'd once been who was hurting.

  Cruz set Sam back on her feet and watched as the child scampered down to her room and went inside.

  "She's a wonderful, smart and obviously happy child, Cruz," Kelsey said, meaning every word. "You should be proud."

  "I am," he said softly, still looking down the hallway after his daughter. "Very proud."

  "What about her mother?" The words came out before Kelsey could stop them, although she instantly wished she could call them back.

  He turned sharply. "What about her?"

  "I … I'm sorry. I just wondered. It's obvious you have custody…"

  "She's dead."

  More than ever, Kelsey wished she hadn't asked, and she floundered for something else to say, to get that awkward moment behind her. "This is wonderful," she said hastily, gesturing at the room and its occupants. "What she's doing here."

  He looked at her for a moment, then apparently decided to let it pass, to Kelsey's relief.

  "The vet bills when she finds one she can't handle are a little steep," he said with a shrug. "And it's tough on her when she finds one beyond saving. But she deals with it, and I can't seem to say no to her."

  "I can see why." Not that that made the fact—and the admission—any less touching, Kelsey thought.

  "She has a way with them. Even when they're hurt, they seem to know she's going to help them."

  "It must be hard for her," Kelsey said, remembering the child's expression, "when she has to let them go.
"

  "She hates it. She'd like to keep them, even when they've healed. But Ryan's been helping with that."

  "Ryan? You mean … the man in the drawing?"

  Cruz nodded. "He's a great wood-carver."

  He pointed to a collection of whimsical carvings that graced one of the shelves above the cages. Each one was small, yet all were so beautifully done that they fairly radiated personality. A tiny squirrel, its tail fluffed out over its head … and missing part of one forepaw. A bird—a pigeon, she thought—softly plump-looking … and with a very crooked wing. Another squirrel, this one with a decided kink in a tail that had obviously been broken.

  "He's been carving each member of the zoo for her, so she'll always have a piece of each one to keep before she has to let them go."

  Kelsey knew she was gaping, but she couldn't help it; the idea of that man in the picture, that dramatically handsome and more-than-a-little-intimidating man, doing such a thing, boggled her mind.

  "And he's … a cop?" she said in amazement, even though Cruz had already told her it was true.

  "Yes," Cruz answered dryly. "And in his spare time he spits and roasts small children."

  Kelsey felt herself flush. "I didn't mean—"

  "I know what you meant. Or rather, what you assumed. It doesn't matter to you that he got shot trying to shut down the worst street gang we've ever seen in Marina Heights. Or that he got a medal of valor for pulling three kids out of a burning house and nearly died of smoke inhalation doing it."

  "I didn't know—"

  "You didn't know that behind the badge is just a man, a man who felt unbelievable pain when he and Lacey lost their first baby, a man whose divorce devastated him because he never stopped loving his wife, so much so that he changed himself, his entire approach to life, to get her back. You don't know any of that. You just know he's a cop, and that's all that matters to you."

  Kelsey absorbed the emphatic words, knowing she deserved the sting of them. She had never thought of cops as people, not really; they were just the ones who hadn't saved her, the ones who had thrown her back into hell. She'd thought she didn't blame them anymore, but perhaps she'd been kidding herself.