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“Did Beth tell you that?”
She must have. But anybody could see from his stance, from the way he held himself ready for battle, that Rafe Montoya would stand alone against whatever challenge came his way—and that an offer of support would only make his determination more fierce.
“You don’t need anyone looking out for you,” Anne observed.
It surprised her when a flicker of remorse crossed his face. “No,” he muttered, dropping his gaze to the carpet. “That drove her crazy.”
And that sounded like the kind of marital problem a sister-in-law had better stay out of. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said hastily, closing the drawer with the wreath, which had started her thinking of Beth. “This is none of my business.”
He didn’t even bother to voice an agreement. Instead, he straightened his shoulders as if dismissing the entire topic. “Anyway, let me know if you want some coffee later.”
“Thanks.” It actually sounded tempting, but she’d already intruded enough. “I ought to get some work done.”
His smile flashed so quickly that she was caught by surprise at how attractive this man could be. “I hear you. The job comes first.”
He was right, Anne thought a little breathlessly. What was the matter with her, anyway? Here she was, wearing her sister’s clothes and living in her sister’s home…but feeling her sister’s appreciation for Rafe Montoya was going way too far.
“Tell me,” she blurted, “how you and Beth met. I mean, the whole thing. How you fell in love with each other.”
Rafe looked taken aback, but he shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the doorway, as if searching for the right words.
“Because you did love her,” Anne prompted. “I mean, Beth probably told me the whole story at the time. It’s just, I don’t quite remember.”
His guarded expression softened slightly. “Well,” he said, “it was here in Tucson. You’d gone off to Harvard, and Beth was at the U of A.”
“That was after our dad died, right?” She’d pieced together enough scraps of memory to know that their mother had died when they were young, and their late grandmother had raised them without much help from their dad. “So it was just Beth and me left.”
“Right, and she came to this homeless shelter with a bunch of her sorority sisters. Volunteer weekend. I was coming off shift—this was an internship, my last year of school—and when I saw her reading to these kids, it just kind of hit me.”
“Love at first sight,” Anne said. This was what she needed, hearing about Beth from someone else who had loved her. And already the story was setting off chords of memory. “She’d never met anyone like you.”
Rafe gave her a rueful smile. “She didn’t know the half of it…I didn’t want to scare her away. But I kept working extra hours, hoping I’d see her again, and she kept on showing up with dolls for the kids. You remember the dolls, right?”
“Nobody makes dolls who look like they have Down syndrome,” Anne quoted her sister, who had spent years volunteering at the group home in their neighborhood. “And everybody should have a doll who looks like them.”
“Of course you remember that,” he apologized. “She wouldn’t have turned it into a business without your marketing. Anyway, that was how we met.”
“And fell in love.”
“And fell in love, yeah.” Rafe hesitated, then squared his shoulders, and for a moment she saw a grimace of pain cross his face before he resumed his look of calm control. Even so, his voice was a little unsteady when he muttered, “Thanks for asking. I needed to remember that.”
Chapter Three
He had loved Beth.
He needed to remember that, Rafe knew.
He needed to hold on to whatever he could, if he was going to get through this cemetery visit.
“You don’t have to drive me,” Anne had told him early this morning, as if she might have seen some sign of the uneasiness that had haunted him all night. “I can always get a cab from the physical therapy clinic.”
But that wasn’t how Beth would want her sister cared for, he knew. And he needed to care for somebody.
Especially after how badly he’d failed his wife. Letting her think the street kids mattered more than she did, letting her leave on vacation without making the time to fix things…
“No, I’ll take you,” he’d told Anne, and now they were almost to the Fairlawn Memorial Park.
With a bouquet of yellow roses and a wildflower wreath on the seat between them.
“I really appreciate this,” she said. “I know you’ve got a lot of work backed up.”
He did, but this visit mattered more. Because Anne needed this trip.
“No problem,” Rafe assured her, pulling into a parking space. “It’s been twelve days since the funeral, and I should’ve come before now.”
But she surprised him with a quick gesture, laying her hand on his arm as if to cut off the very thought. “Not if it tears you up inside. Beth wouldn’t want that.”
No, she wouldn’t. Not Beth.
If this visit tore him up inside, though, it was no more than he deserved for letting her leave with things still uneasy between them.
And besides, he could handle it. As long as he had Anne to look after, there was no risk of breaking down.
Even so, accompanying her across the endless lawn to Beth’s grave cost him more self-control than he’d anticipated. And Anne seemed to realize that he wasn’t quite as strong as he’d hoped, because she made no attempt to engage him in conversation.
Without speaking, he placed his sheaf of yellow roses by the headstone and retreated to give her some time alone with Beth’s memory. Yet after a few minutes of what looked like silent prayer, she turned to him without even wiping away the tears on her cheeks.
“Rafe,” she said softly, “you have a right to feel bad, too.”
“I know.” But crying wasn’t an option. He swallowed and shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s okay.”
“I mean,” she faltered, addressing the flowers in her hands as if meeting his gaze might be too intimate, “I know you feel like you have to look out for me, but if you need a shoulder to cry on…I can look out for you, too.”
“That’s okay,” he said hastily. This trip was for Anne, not himself, but it was kind of her to make such an offer. “Thanks.”
She seemed to realize that he didn’t need comforting, because without another word she turned back to the grave and gently laid her own flowers next to his. Then she stayed still, probably saying goodbye to her sister in her own way, which Rafe hoped would take a while.
Because he needed to get himself back in control. Back to the kind of strength he’d relied on for years, the kind that kept him looking out for whoever needed protection.
Which didn’t include Rafe Montoya.
No matter what Anne thought. But since she wouldn’t be around for long, anyway, there was no point in explaining that he didn’t need a shoulder to cry on.
Never had, never would.
So get yourself together.
It helped to remember the day of the funeral, Rafe discovered, mentally reviewing all the mourners he’d seen around the closed casket. Beth’s friends from the quilt shop. The whole crew from Legalismo, because he hadn’t thought to insist on keeping the clinic open. A couple of former clients. Their old neighbors from across the street, the Harts, Roger and Linda and Marci and Jim….
“Thanks for bringing me,” Anne said, startling him with the realization that he’d completely lost track of the present. But apparently she had finished crying, leaving her wreath behind, because she was standing beside him and looking a lot more composed. As if she’d unloaded whatever grief was haunting her. “I needed to say goodbye.”
“I’m glad it helped,” he managed to answer as they started back toward the car. Back to real life, with its ongoing list of demands. Which reminded him of the guy who’d come in this morning, worried about his girlfriend taking their baby to Mexico. “Listen, if I go back to work tonight, will you be okay?”
She shot him a surprised glance. “Of course.”
Maybe he was judging all women by Beth, who’d hated it when he stayed late at the clinic. “You sure? I don’t want to leave you alone if you need—”
“A shoulder to cry on?”
He hadn’t even thought of that, but of course he’d be there for her if she needed to cry. “Well, yeah,” he said, reaching for his car keys. “Whatever I can do.”
Anne waited until he’d opened her door before fixing him with a wry gaze. “Kind of a one-way street we’ve got here, isn’t it?”
What, just because he wouldn’t cry on her shoulder? “Look,” he explained, holding his hands out in case she needed assistance, “I take care of people. I don’t need people taking care of me.”
She settled into her seat without taking his hand, moving so much more easily than yesterday that he felt a jolt of admiration for the physical therapist. “Ever?”
“Well, not since I was a kid.” Not since his mother had fled the burden of caretaking. Not since he’d learned it was all his fault.
Anne reached for her seat belt, flinching a little as she stretched her arm back, and returned her gaze to his. “Tell me about when you were a kid.”
Maybe she thought it would help him let go of some old grief or something, but he couldn’t expect her to enjoy hearing about his childhood in the barrios of L.A.
“That’s a story for some other time,” Rafe said lightly, closing her door and moving to his own side of the car.
But as soon as he took his seat, Anne shifted her posture as if to get a better look at him. “All right,” she said, and in her voice he heard the same determination he used to hear from Beth, whenever she tried to nurture him. “I’ll make sure and ask some other time.”
Some other time took a few days to arrive, but she wasn’t going to let him out of talking about his life. Not when, Anne suspected, this man was carrying more grief than anyone should have to carry alone.
So when Rafe picked her up after her last therapy session of the week and apologized for having to return to the clinic as soon as he dropped her off, she told him to skip the trip home. “I’ll just go with you,” she said, and felt a shimmer of satisfaction when he turned the car around.
Maybe a visit to Legalismo would give her the chance to help Rafe Montoya.
Because there was something bothering him, she knew. And if she could encourage him to talk about it—not directly, not when he’d made it clear that he didn’t need any nurturing—she might feel more capable of honoring Beth’s wishes.
Her sister wanted the people she loved to be taken care of, and Rafe needed someone to talk to.
There wasn’t much time for talk, though, she discovered when they arrived at the clinic and he introduced her to Oscar, a threatening-looking teenager who was evidently helping him replace a window.
“Only one bullet,” Oscar told him, fingering a dent in the wall behind Rafe’s desk. “Good aim, that’s all.”
Anne swallowed a gasp. “Somebody shot at you?”
“No, we were closed,” Rafe said, rolling up his sleeves while Oscar removed a sheet of cardboard from the window frame. “This happened last night, I just never got time today.”
He sounded as matter-of-fact as if the window had been shattered by a baseball, but apparently her start of alarm raised a red flag, because he turned to her with his usual swift offer of aid.
“Why don’t I take you home and come back later? You don’t need to wait around here.”
“No, that’s okay.” If she waited, it would give her a chance to read the Legalismo flyers she’d seen on the battered coffee table. And that, in turn, might give her some clue to drawing out this man. “Really, I’m fine. You guys go ahead and fix things.”
“This won’t take long,” Rafe promised as he and Oscar turned their attention to the pane of glass in the corner, so she returned to the lobby with its green plastic sofa and dented folding chairs. And by the time she made her way through the company-history brochure, halfway listening to the dialogue in Rafe’s office, she found herself more intrigued than ever.
How did he do that? she wondered. How did a Law Review attorney, regardless of his past experience, keep up such a natural, easy conversation with a gang-tattooed boy who responded only in monosyllables?
How could Rafe do such a breathtaking job of caring for everyone around him, and refuse to accept any support for himself?
And why should she care?
But she did, Anne knew, even though she had never been much of a nurturer. That was Beth’s role, while hers was to succeed in the world. Yet maybe the loss of her sister had made a difference in her priorities…because right now this man’s welfare mattered far more than any business.
More than anything, she wanted to give him a chance to let down his guard.
“Thanks,” she heard him tell Oscar, who came back through the lobby and headed outside without even a glance at her. All right, they must be finished—which meant she could start another attempt at looking out for the man her sister had loved.
“I didn’t think lawyers could install windows,” she told Rafe when he came down the hall, buttoning the cuffs of his sleeves.
“Depends on where they practice,” he replied, then shot her a quick grin as he wiped a streak of plaster dust off his face. A simple gesture, but one which—without any warning—suddenly made her heart skip a beat. “We’re in a pretty good location for this part of town, but bulletproof glass would be nice.”
Anne caught her breath. She had no business reacting to the sight of this man—not even in the context of physical labor, which made her more aware of his powerful body—with such raw, primitive yearning.
“Is it safe,” she asked, hoping her voice sounded normal, “working here?”
“Pretty much.” He evidently hadn’t noticed any flush of warmth on her skin, for which she could only be grateful, because he was moving with his usual unconscious grace. Opening the door, reversing a sign, twisting home the lock. “I won’t let the interns work alone, but I’ve never had any problems.”
She was supposed to be offering support, here, but for the moment all her carefully rehearsed openings had vanished, leaving her with a faster pulse and the desire to blurt out any question, any distraction she could think of. “Uh, do your clients carry guns?”
Rafe held up the No Drugs/No Weapons sign he’d just removed from the door and set it on the coffee table. “Not inside,” he announced, then glanced back at his office. “I just need to grab a few things, and we’re out of here.”
“Take your time,” she told him, and used the free minute to steady her breathing, pressing her hands against her thighs until she felt herself edging back into common sense. Enough so that by the time he returned with a handful of file folders, she was able to ask a casual question.
“Was this a pretty typical day?”
“Well, it’s not every day we have to replace a window.” He gave her an apologetic smile as he turned toward the ancient answering machine on the front desk. “Sorry that took so long.”
“No, I enjoyed seeing you in action.” Which wasn’t what she’d meant to say! Although she had enjoyed hearing his conversation, even before he came down the hall adjusting his shirt—and she’d better change the subject fast. “Is Oscar some kind of an assistant or something?”
Rafe picked up the machine and shook it until a red light came on. “I’m just keeping an eye on him.”
“How come?”
“He reminds me of myself, I guess.” He met her gaze with the same half confident, half defiant expression she’d noticed the other day, then set the machine back in place. “I’d like to see him get out of here.”
So her impression of Oscar as the dangerous type had been valid, Anne realized. Because according to the company brochure, Rafe himself had grown up as a gang member in Los Angeles…until his last juvenile conviction had started him down the road toward rehab, law school and the crusade to help kids like those he’d done time with.
“I saw that fund-raising story about your background,” she told him, and saw his posture stiffen as he headed down the hall.
“That was Peter’s idea,” he said, snapping off the light switch at the end of the hallway. “Guy who put up the money. He said we’d get a lot more donations if people saw a poster child make good.”
