Читать книгу The Harbor of His Arms - Lynn Bulock - Страница 11

Grocery shopping with Alex was a nerve-racking experience for Holly. She was sure she would rather have been pushing the cart through the aisles with both boys along, and that was her least favorite way to shop. But Alex was much more adamant about putting into the cart large numbers of things she couldn’t afford and didn’t usually get. And unlike her boys, a pointed look in his direction did not make him put things back on the shelves.

In fact, no amount of arguing made him stick to her list or her budget. “You’re not doing me any favors in the long run,” she told him when he put the third expensive package of meat into the cart. “Once you’re gone in a few days the boys will only wonder why I’m not getting all this again.”

“Then they’ll be happy to have good old Uncle Alex stick around a while, won’t they?”

It was all Holly could do not to roll her eyes. “That’s what they’ll see when they look at you, isn’t it? An uncle to spoil them and let them do things that I wouldn’t on a bet. Of course they’ll be happy to keep you around.”

“Hey, I’d think you’d be just as happy. You get a little help, and Cook County pays both at the same time. If I were in your shoes it wouldn’t bother me to have them pay for a whole lot.”

Holly didn’t know how to answer that one. She’d tried hard not to blame the police force for Kevin’s death. It had been a struggle not to blame his job, or God, or even fate or whatever for what had happened. None of those alternatives seemed like the Christian way to deal with what had happened. But if she were honest with herself, the kind of feelings Alex was describing welled up in her more often than she’d like to admit. How did he do that? She didn’t remember inviting Alex Wilkins into her personal world of thoughts and feelings, yet he managed to get there often enough to make her quite uncomfortable.

She hoped her discomfort didn’t show. Holly wasn’t ready to share her deepest feelings with this man yet. “Well, be glad you’re not in my shoes. Because it’s not a very nice place to be right now.” Even that amount of honesty surprised her. She was used to keeping her problems to herself. What was it about squabbling over expensive cookies in the grocery store with this man that brought out so many mixed feelings?

“Gee, do I sense a little hostility here?” Alex stepped back from the cart. “If so, hooray. You need to vent some of that once in a while, Holly.”

She pushed the half-loaded basket past him, narrowly missing his toes. He was a cool customer; he didn’t even flinch when the cart rolled by that close. “Since when have you added psychologist to your other degrees, Wilkins? It doesn’t become you.”

“Not really psychology, just common sense. There’s still plenty of that taught in the academy and at law school. Maybe even we don’t apply it as often as we should.”

“How’s that?” He sounded genuinely concerned, and Holly wanted to know what he meant.

“I’ve been telling the brass for years that we don’t give enough support to victims and their families. Which is why I probably got this assignment,” he finished with a rueful grin. “Maybe they figure if I see what that kind of support actually entails I won’t be so quick to volunteer it.”

“Suits me. Then maybe I can get back to life as I know it.” Holly pushed the cart past another aisle, anxious to get out of the store without too much more goody-buying from Alex.

He wasn’t about to let her get away easily. Alex walked in front and put both hands on the end of the cart, blocking her way. “Yeah, well, don’t be so quick to go back to life as you know it. You weren’t doing that great a job, Holly.”

His gaze on her made a shiver run up her spine. She couldn’t ignore the serious tone of what he said or the implications of the words, either. “What—what do you mean by that?” she stammered.

“I may have only been here a day or so, but I’ve looked around. In a perfectly normal situation you’d be doing an okay job. But this isn’t a perfectly normal situation. And from what I’ve seen, you’re stressed and short on patience and money. Raising kids alone can’t be fun or easy.”

“No, but it’s reality, so you might as well let me get back to it.” Holly felt like folding her arms and pouting. Of course, neither action would make Alex take her any more seriously.

“Sorry, I can’t do that. I think I’ve made it perfectly clear that I’m not leaving for a while. I want to make sure you’re plenty safe first. You and the boys.”

“We’ll be safe. We have been for the entire time we’ve lived in Safe Harbor. It’s well named,” Holly argued.

“Not good enough. You were safe then because Rico was behind bars. Now he’s not, and that changes things. Besides, remember what I said earlier? That I was able to take Conor with me in his own car seat because none of the car doors were locked? You can’t be that lax, even after I go back to Chicago. Rico has friends. And they have friends. This may not be over for years.”

“Great. Just what I wanted to hear.”

He still wasn’t letting the basket move. “Whether you want to hear what I have to say or not, you have to listen. And listening means doing what I’m asking, like locking the car doors. Can we agree on that?”

Her aggravation and anxiety levels were growing by the second. Wasn’t there anything she could say that would make him listen? This was her life they were talking about, and she wanted to stay in control. “But Alex, I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Nobody in Safe Harbor is that concerned about security. It’s a very small town.”

Shaking his head, Alex finally let go of the cart. He wasn’t letting go of his ideas, though. “Yeah, it’s a small town, all right. With a very small police force, I’ll bet. And a large tourist population.”

“So?”

“So nobody would notice a stranger like Rico or the guys he hangs out with if they came around looking for you. The Safe Harbor force has gotten our bulletins, but they don’t know how you fit in. The force here will have to be educated on what to look for, and chances are nobody around here is ready. Maybe I can make some money while I’m here, giving security seminars. Reimburse the county for some of these expensive groceries.” He illustrated his point by putting two half gallons of ice cream into the cart. It wasn’t the store brand, either.

Holly gave up. Arguing with him only made him more determined. “All right. Fine. I’ll lock the car doors. And make sure the dead bolt is on at night in the apartment.”

“And screen your phone calls. You do have caller ID, don’t you?”

The man was relentless. “Sure. Whatever.” Whatever was going to get him out of her hair the fastest. And if that meant agreeing with him on all his much-too-cautious safety notions, so be it. They were coming up to the checkout counter now and she knew there wasn’t enough money in her purse to pay for this heaped cart of food. So arguing with Alex at this point would be counterproductive.

But then, Holly was beginning to get the idea that arguing with Alex at any point was going to be fairly useless. He was a man used to getting his way. She might have plenty of experience arguing with stubborn little boys, but Alex with his courtroom training was a whole different kind of adversary.

Didn’t the woman ever get tired of arguing? Alex picked up as many plastic sacks of groceries as he was sure he could take in one load and straightened up from the car trunk. If he took any less she’d only load herself down, sure that she needed to pull her weight in every endeavor. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever met anybody this stubborn. His aggravation probably made him close the trunk a little more forcefully than he should, but he had to get rid of some frustrations somewhere.

Independence was a wonderful thing, especially in a situation like the one Holly found herself in. When she didn’t have anybody around it was good that she was self-reliant. But Alex was pretty sure self-reliance could be carried too far. Why not take the help when it was available and offered? Holly seemed to push him away for no reason. If positions were reversed and he normally had a family to support on as little as he knew she was getting by on, he’d welcome a little help once in a while. Did she really expect a week or two of pork chops instead of hot dogs would spoil those kids for life?

What he remembered about Holly told Alex that she hadn’t always been this way. The way Kevin had talked about Holly, she’d seemed a little more willing to compromise, to give in, to share the burden with others.

Toiling up the apartment-house stairs, arms laden with groceries, Alex flashed back to his own childhood again. He remembered how routine his mother’s life and his own had been during those long periods when his dad was at sea. Not that routine was bad, especially for little kids. They seemed to thrive on it. He knew he had, but life alone with his mother had somehow often slipped from routine to much too quiet.

The celebrations that took place when his father came home along with the rest of his ship’s crew always made the old man seem like an even more special individual. And come to think of it, the celebrations also helped to mask, for years, how drab their lives were when he was away. What Jim Wilkins couldn’t see didn’t exist, and Alex knew his mother made sure that his father saw just what she wanted him to when he was on leave.

The door to Holly’s apartment was wide open when he reached her floor. He knew she was probably only seconds ahead of him, but still her carelessness aggravated him. Hadn’t they just talked about this? He went through the open door and pointedly kicked it closed behind him without saying a word, making enough noise to remind her to shut it next time.

“I heard that,” she called from the kitchen. “Real subtle.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he called back.

Her face was flushed when she turned to meet his entrance into the kitchen. “What did you want me to do, shut it in your face so that I’d have to come unlock it again when you knocked? Your expensive ice cream would melt on the countertop while I did that.”

“Better melted ice cream than unwanted visitors.” Alex put down his pile of bags on the kitchen table. “I shut the trunk, too. It’s more work, I know, when we’ve got another load of groceries to bring up here. But you have to stop announcing to the world what you’re doing, Holly.”

She looked at him from her place sorting canned goods from the sacks. “I know all that, Alex, really I do. But can’t you realize what this does to my life?”

Her violet eyes held traces of harried fear. The expression made Alex want to put an arm around her, find a way to drive away the concern that wrinkled her smooth skin. “I know we weren’t really any safer before you came to town. But I could fool myself into thinking we were. That all the ugliness had been left in the big city along with the constant memories of Kevin’s death. That maybe, just maybe, I could raise my kids in a normal environment where I wouldn’t have to fear for their safety, and my own, every waking moment.”

It was the sadness in her voice that finally pushed him to action. Alex crossed the small kitchen and put his arms around her, knowing she’d fight the embrace but needing to offer it anyway.

“I’ll do anything I can to make it better,” he told her, meaning every word of it as he wrapped his arms around her thin shoulders. Surprisingly she didn’t struggle, but leaned against him. The action caused a thrill of shock to course through him, compounded by the myriad thoughts that crowded his brain at the same time. What made her smell so good—mildly floral with a hint of some kind of spice? Who knew that her dark hair would be so soft, with her head fitting so well under his chin as he pulled her closer?

Merely offering comfort to another human being had never caused feelings like this in him. For once Holly was accepting his help, and it was nearly killing him to give it to her. He wanted to pull back as if he’d touched hot metal instead of the pliant woman who nearly melted in his arms.

“You mean well,” she murmured. “And I want to believe you, really I do. It would be so easy if I could believe you. But I know I can’t. What I need is some kind of superhero, Alex, and as nice a guy as you are, you’re no hero.”

For her he wanted to be one. But Holly’s warm body this close to his was causing some very un-heroic feelings to assault him. Even as Alex used one finger to tilt her chin up so that their gazes met, he knew he was proving her right. He was no hero if he wanted this badly to comfort them both with a kiss. Still, she didn’t fight him, didn’t protest at all as he drew ever closer. When their lips met, the actual contact was soft and incredibly sweet. It was all he could do to stay standing upright, not crush Holly between himself and the kitchen cabinets in a much more fervent embrace.