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With a snort of self-derision, Russ gave the wall a final swipe and returned the rag and spray to the kitchen. The blinking red light on the counter caught his eye. He punched the button to listen to his messages. A reminder about a meeting in Gallup scheduled for the following morning. A suspiciously timed call from his mother telling him she hadn’t heard from him in too long. A circumspectly inquiring message from Jeth and a follow-up one from Guy, neither of whom had missed the tension vibrating through him by the time he’d left the restaurant.
And finally a voice almost too deep and husky to be feminine, though it was: Maddie. His best friend since as long as he could remember, his first adolescent crush, his prom date—and the child-girl-woman he’d spent most of his life trying to rescue and protect from more horrors than he cared to remember.
Maddie Thorn, who’d been abused unmercifully by her father, before he had finally attempted to kill her that night thirteen years ago…
“Russ?”
She sounded edgy, as though she looked over her shoulder while she spoke. Not at all the way she’d sounded three weeks ago when he’d let her know that her father was going to be released from prison early because the psychologists and psychiatrists who’d been working with him thought he was rehabilitated enough—medicated enough—to walk about in polite society again despite his track record as being, well, not.
Russ, who’d seen the man over the years, listened to his rambling assertions on having found religion and wanting to set things right with his daughter, had told Maddie that Charlie might be looking for her. Maddie, truly and completely happy for the first time in her life and with other things on her mind, had more or less blown him off.
And now here she was, exactly as he’d known—as he’d felt, with that strange extra sense with which he’d been gifted, with what his brothers called his spider sense—she’d be.
“God, Russ, where are you? I need to see you. You were right about him. He found me. He said you—” She broke off suddenly. He heard her breathing, raggedly. Afraid. “No,” she whispered, though not directly into the phone. “Oh God, no. He can’t have. He couldn’t—no.” Then a deep, steadying breath and more strongly, firmly, “No!” And into the phone again, “I have to go. But God, Russ, please. Be there. Please.”
The receiver on the other end of the line clattered into place hard, and Russ’s machine beeped once and announced, “End of messages.”
Russ could only stare at the message light for a moment. He’d come in not quite thinking about her, his heart on Janina—the woman he’d wanted across almost every single hot cup of coffee she’d served him for the past thirteen years—and the current Maddie-involved reasons he’d yet to act on his longings for her.
And here Maddie was calling him.
Needing help again.
Palms flat on the counter to hold himself erect, he gave her call for help some thought. Whispered “screw it” to the cupboards because he knew there was no way he’d ever walk away from Maddie, no matter what happened.
Maddie had been a different person when they were younger, a messed-up abuse case beyond what even he’d realized at that time. And he’d been the only friend, only person, to see her, know her and love her for who she was.
And now she’d gotten herself together and found Jess, the life partner who made her happy and…
Now this.
All of this.
Her father out of prison and looking for…something. Revenge, maybe. Reconciliation, he’d said, but Russ didn’t believe that for an instant. The cop’s gut in him crawled, remembering Charlie’s eyes. The man in him, the friend, simply unhooked the chain that held his temper and withdrew any pretext of masking the savage within the trappings of civilization should Charlie get too close, legally released from prison or not.
Russ rubbed his hands hard across his eyes. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Because as well as he understood Maddie, as good as he was at working with wounded females, he was no damn good at emotions, or at figuring them out. Not his own, and not women’s. Particularly not while Maddie needed rescuing by him yet again, and Janina—who constantly tortured his dreams—seemed to him about as obtainable as the moon.
Always had been, truth be known.
Emotions. Geez-oh-Pete. God save him from female best friends, who pulled themselves out of hell by their toenails when offered the slimmest of chances, feminine soul mates with nerves of steel and hearts of gold and courage as raw as anything he’d ever seen—yeah, Janina thought he didn’t know about her shadowing him that night thirteen years ago, right? Wrong!—and freaking, obfuscating emotions.
With an oath, Russ turned his back on the kitchen and headed for the small room at the back of the trailer that should have been his bedroom but was now where he kept his silversmithing and lapidary equipment. He opened the heavy safe he kept there, withdrew the envelope he’d placed inside six months prior and emptied its contents into his hand. It was a sort of Guinevere-style ring he’d designed in platinum with a single large not-quite-square piece of green Baltic amber canted diamondwise in the center and offset by a small but exquisitely cut and flawless diamond at each of the amber’s points. The wedding ring lay heavy in his palm, spoke to him of plans and cowardice, a life lived in faux courage.
Oh, he could take down bad guys, face bullets, walk into domestic quarrels, go through fire with the best of ’em—hell, he’d even had enough chutzpah, damn it, to make her a ring—but put him in front of Janina and say anything remotely having to do with a you and me—a we—and ha! It came out sounding like, “I’ll have today’s special and coffee.”
Dating was simply beyond his limited verbal capabilities.
Russ started to drop the ring back into its envelope, putting Janina away for another time once again in favor of seeing what he could do to help Maddie, always Maddie. Suddenly he felt the hair on his neck stand up and stopped, hand poised.
Even before the knock came low on his screen door he knew Maddie was there.
Nerves alight, he shoved Janina’s ring into his pocket and went to push open the door.
“Hey, Maddie,” he said quietly, and stepped aside to let her in.
“Hey yourself.” She crossed the threshold with a shaky laugh.
Then she flung herself forward, threw her arms around his neck and hung on for dear life.
Without further thought, he folded his arms around her and held on tight.
No matter how hard she worked at it, no matter how disgusted she got with herself, nor how unrequited she knew her feelings were, every time she saw Russ Levoie, Janina Gálvez Carmichael fell smack-dab right back head over heart over heels in love with him again.
Had ever since the first time he’d walked into the Fat Cat Diner thirteen years ago when she was a sixteen-year-old waitress and he was a fresh-from-the-academy rookie working his first evening shift for the Winslow P.D.
It still happened now that she was a twenty-nine-year-old working-her-way-through-college-a-class-at-a-time waitress who’d been around the block a few times and who damn well knew better than to fall for a guy who carried a torch for someone else and who wasn’t going to budge from that path no matter what.
The idiot.
Him and her. Meaning not only her as in herself, Janina Gálvez Carmichael, but as in her, that blasted Maddie Thorn that Russ couldn’t seem to let go of long enough to notice the girl with the heart-on-her-sleeve look who’d served him coffee, flirtation, offhand friendship, advice and good humor almost every day of the week for the last thirteen years.
Geez, what a fool.
Both of them.
No, make that all of them, because though she seemed to count on his friendship like a lifeline, Maddie’d never really given in to Russ in a one-on-one love-me-tender-and-forever way, either. Which was pretty damn stupid of her, in Janina’s oft-considered and far-less-than-humble opinion.
Fuming, Janina watched Russ seat himself and the ice-cool Sharon Stone look-alike, wearing the expensively cut slim white designer sheath, at his usual back booth. His concern for the beautifully coiffed and manicured blonde was plain, spelled out something subtle to the green-eyed monster Janina knew she wasn’t entitled to harbor yet harbored anyway. Maddie’d had to scrape and scrap hard to pull herself out of the hell she’d grown up in, Janina knew that. Once Maddie had made her own way through beauty school—with Russ’s help, damn it!—she’d gotten a job, worked hard, paid him back and she was now one of the most sought-after stylists in Phoenix.
And that was not to mention the time Janina knew Maddie put in at a couple of Phoenix battered women’s shelters doing corrective makeup and makeovers for girls and women trying to get out of situations similar to her own past.
Janina also knew that Russ never brought women into the diner. In fact, she’d never seen him out with anyone other than his brothers or other cops unless it was in a crowded social situation like a community barbecue. And even then he never paid particular attention to anyone special.
Especially not to her, Janina Carmichael née Gálvez—and chalk that married name change up to one truly witless mistake. Damn it.
On all counts.
She grimaced wryly at herself in the revolving dessert-display cooler mirror. Russ was thirty-two years old, for pity’s sake. He had a life, presumably. She didn’t own him, more was the pity. And other than the little time they spent flirting when she waited on him, Russ probably barely thought of her or remembered she was alive.
Another glance at Maddie Thorn made Janina growl unintentionally under her breath.
A half snort, half chuckle at her shoulder made her catch herself, realize what she was doing and redden. In self-defense she snatched up a pot of coffee and a rag, preparing to head over to the table to greet Russ and his…
Guest.
“Don’t say anything,” she said without looking back.
“He’s got a friend tonight,” Tobi Hosey observed, ignoring her. Tobi usually ignored Janina when Janina wanted Tobi to say nothing. It was the basis of their friendship. Tobi spoke her mind regardless of the tact involved and Janina swallowed it and spoke her own back, no baloney involved. Which meant they each had someone who’d laugh at their bouts of temperamental stupidity.
Which was exactly what Tobi was doing now.
Which was exactly what Tobi did each and every time Russ came in and left without Janina saying one word to him about going to a movie or dinner or anything else that resembled something that might turn out to be romantic or relationship-developing—or that might at least get him home and into Janina’s bed. Because they both knew that Russ Levoie did not do casual in any way, shape or form. Hell, the creases in his uniform and even his jeans were knife-edged. Of course he didn’t do casual—any kind of casual. And if you wanted confirmation, all you had to do was ask his brothers.
Janina and Tobi had each, in fact, casually dated—as in “hung out with” not “bedded”—all three of Russ’s younger siblings. And enjoyed themselves tremendously in the process. But Janina really wasn’t interested in casual dating anymore. She was interested in Russ, pretty much constantly, nonstop.
But there had been moments in her life when she got intensely, out-of-control lonely and had to do what she had to do to keep her sanity intact. These were past tense, of course. Still, they’d led to the smart-girl-doing-stupid-things someone had written the book about.
Like letting herself be flattered into her first romantic relationship with and then marrying that good-for-nothing bruiser Buddy Carmichael a couple years after high school just because she thought she’d finally gotten over Russ, lost her mind and fallen for Buddy, let him have her virginity and then thought he’d gotten her pregnant.
Which would have been a mistake of gargantuan proportions even if he had, which he hadn’t. Because not only had she not been pregnant, but Big Man on Northland Pioneer College’s Campus, Buddy Carmichael, had turned out to be a drinking-man’s wife beater with friends in high places and an ability to manipulate the system to his own ends.
And so much for doing what some desperate mutation of yourself thought you had to do to keep yourself from being lonely!
After the Buddy idiocy Janina had started hanging out with Russ’s brothers, almost exclusively. They were fun and they didn’t stray beyond boundaries they all knew existed but none of them mentioned.
True, they weren’t Russ by a long shot, but they shared minor similarities and were a fairly safe substitute for, not to mention a good source of information on, the real thing.
Foolish, but there she was.
Head high in refusal to succumb to the truly moronic things she knew about herself, Janina slung a pair of brown coffee mugs from a finger and sashayed out from behind the counter, hips swinging in her best “I don’t give a damn what you’re doing or with whom, Russ Levoie” style.
Not that he’d get it, but that wasn’t the point.
At least not entirely.
“Damn the torpedoes,” Tobi suggested helpfully, grinning.
“Shut up,” Janina retorted and, head high, huffed off.
“I don’t know how I can help you, Maddie,” Janina heard Russ say as she approached. She watched him run a hand over the back of his freshly shorn neck in a gesture of frustration with which she was all too familiar. He accepted responsibility for the world, and when the world didn’t cooperate, it got to him. “It’s not like—”
“I know you don’t have jurisdiction, Russ,” Maddie said, not quite able to keep the panic out of her voice. “I just thought maybe…” She swallowed, drew herself together. “Hoped maybe there’d be something…” Her voice trailed off.
Janina paused, watching.
Maddie’s face grew shuttered, her troubled hazel eyes clouded, and the perfect bow mouth took on the edgy shape of self-derision. “I don’t know what I hoped. Aside from—from…” She swallowed convulsively, clenched her fists and looked away, at the table, at the window, anywhere but at him. “Aside from the other stuff…m-my fath—Charlie getting out an-and coming for me…” She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Shrugged. “Other than that, I dunno. Maybe I hoped partly that you’d changed your mind about what I asked you. Or something.”
She looked at him, suddenly in command of herself again. “I’m sorry, this was stupid. What am I thinking? You’d think I’d have learned how to rescue myself by now, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe not from this,” he said quietly then eyed her directly, hard. “But is that what you’re here looking for, Maddie? A knight-in-shining?”
Maddie laughed without humor. “Wouldn’t that be a kick if I were. Why? You looking to joust windmills again, Russ?”
Russ shrugged. “We all need a little rescuing once in a while.”
“Even you?”
“Not by you, Maddie.” The comment was terse, accompanied by an unconscious, half-reflexive glance that skimmed the room and brought his gaze to rest for half a second on Janina.
She stopped dead in her tracks. He needed to be rescued, but not by Maddie. Not by Maddie! And he’d looked at her—her, Janina!—when he said it. So he did notice her—maybe. If she was reading correctly the signals he might not even be aware he was sending.
A frisson of—Janina wasn’t sure what—shimmied down her spine. Fear and anticipation, caution and recklessness, pure unadulterated and exhilarating hope.
In less than a heartbeat, hope changed the “I don’t give a damn” swing of her hips into a “come-hither” sway-and-roll, turned her step into a glide, sparkled her eyes, instinctively curved her mouth into its most welcoming and flirtatious “hey-how-you-doin’” smile, and focused her entire attention on Russ.
In just longer than that same heartbeat, and seemingly from out of nowhere, a large, booted foot shot out and tripped her, sent her sliding and sprawling across an empty table that tipped and dumped her, the burning-hot coffee, the mugs and the chair she smashed into, crashing to the floor.
Somewhere off to the right the air filled with raucous, full-bellied, hatefully familiar, cruelly delighted laughter surrounded by shocked silence.
Half-stunned, Janina lay in the middle of the mess, feeling the bruises gather and the coffee scald its way through her skimpy pink uniform. She couldn’t quite find her right wrist, and the left fingers that had carried the coffee mugs felt pinched and a trifle slick.
The spiteful laughter lasted for less than a moment longer before Russ jerked Buddy Carmichael out of his seat by the throat, slammed him backward into the wall, tripped him face-first onto the floor beside his ex-wife and handcuffed his beefy wrists behind him.
Oblivious of her expensive white designer sheath, Maddie knelt amid the debris beside Janina and gently began to feel for broken bones. Tobi arrived at Janina’s other side almost simultaneously to do the same.
Not far from Janina’s face, Russ gripped a hank of Buddy’s hair and lifted his head, forcing him to look at Janina. “This what you think’s funny, man?” Fury tightened Russ’s voice to a whip crack. “Seriously, man, you find this funny?”
Apparently unaware of who had him pinned, Buddy sneered, unrepentant. “Yeah.”
Russ dragged Buddy up farther, hard, by the hair. “What?”
Buddy’s smirk wavered hardly at all. “Yeah—sir.”
The chains on Russ’s temper seemed to snap. Even as the rolling whoop of sirens filled the air outside the diner, he dropped Buddy’s face onto the floor and hauled him up for another go.
Suddenly, Buddy was neither cocky nor smirking. He also no longer found what he’d done to Janina funny, and croaked that to Russ through bruised and bleeding lips. Hardly satisfied, but knowing it was the best he’d get, Russ removed his knee from between Buddy’s shoulder blades, released the man’s hair, jerked a nod in his brother Jonah’s direction as he came into the café and moved to squat beside Janina.
Casting a wry look at his oldest—and tallest—brother, young officer Levoie went to collect Russ’s prisoner.
Gently, Russ touched Janina’s cheek. “How you doin’?”
She tried a wobbly smile on for size. The man had reduced her ex to pulp for her, for her, the least she could do was smile at him and say thank-you. Because no one had ever done that for her before, had ever even tried to rescue her.
Janina blinked. Her eyes watered and tears spilled. Russ stroked her cheek and she’d never known a man’s hand to feel so gentle, so calm, when less than two minutes ago he’d been Buddy’s terror from hell. Why had she never asked him for help when she’d been married and needed it? He’d have given it. But she hadn’t asked because she hadn’t wanted Russ Levoie, of all people, to know how stupid she’d been over a man who wasn’t him.
“Hey,” Russ whispered, spotting her tears. He pulled a clean hankie out of his back pocket and blotted her cheeks awkwardly. “It’s okay. You’re okay now. We’ve got you, Janie. You’ll be okay. It’s only friends here now.”
It’s only friends here now.
The problem exactly. Because of all the people in the world with whom Janina didn’t want to be “only friends,” Russ Levoie was at the top of the list and had been for the better part of a baker’s dozen years now.
Unable to contain her multihued emotions, Janina let the sobs loose. Without thought, Russ sat down on the floor, carefully gathered her into his arms and held her close while the EMTs checked her over and Janina cried into his chest.
Chapter 2
July 18
Janina stood in front of her closet and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror.
