Between Love and Duty (10 page)

Ahead, Tito let out a hoot and bounded the last little way, skidding onto the gravel beach. Duncan smiled at the boy’s eagerness.

I was as eager, that long-ago day.

When had he lost the ability to have fun?

“Look at that driftwood! Can I climb on it, Papa?”

“Of course you can,” his father said. “But be careful. It’s easy to slip.”

Hector stopped and watched Tito scramble over whole trees, silvered by the salt water and cast by winter waves like so many pickup sticks against the island bluff. Duncan and Jane paused, too, but it seemed to him that Hector was pretending they weren’t here.

After a minute Jane turned away from the others. She chose her own pile of driftwood and, to Duncan’s amusement, straddled a fat log and then swung herself to her feet atop it like a gymnast on a balance beam. She walked its length then stepped onto a narrower log that lay at a slant. Duncan paralleled her, keeping his feet on the gravelly beach. Once she slipped and stretched her arms out to help herself balance. When she reached the top of the slope, she grinned at him in triumph.

“I’m queen of the mountain.”

“Is that a challenge?”

She made a laughing face at him. “No, I don’t want an elbow to the nose, thank you, anyway.”

An elbow…? Then he remembered telling her about giving Judge Lehman a bloody nose. He grinned up at her. “Would I do that? I’m a gentleman, remember?”

She started to answer, but looked past him and called out in alarm, “Tito! What are you doing?”

Duncan turned, too. Hector was laughing and calling something up at his son. The boy had clambered high atop the heap of driftwood and was now swinging from the branch of a madrona that had grown from the bank at an angle. Bright red bark was crumbling onto his head and shoulders. Even before his mind consciously noticed that pebbles and dirt from the bank were showering onto the beach below, Duncan was already moving.

He brushed past Hector, who had turned to glower at Jane. Within seconds Duncan had leaped up the driftwood and reached Tito. He grabbed him around the waist and ordered, “Let go. Now.”

“Why?” Tito protested, kicking at him.

“The tree’s not strong enough to hold you.” Once Duncan had the boy’s feet planted beside him on a solid stretch of log, he pointed at the fresh tears in the bank. “See?”

“Oh.”

The anger knotted in Duncan’s gut wasn’t for Tito, who was only a kid. Kids did dumb things. It was their fathers who were supposed to stop them.

Jane had reached Hector before Duncan did, though.

“If he’d fallen, he would have been badly hurt,” she was saying.

Duncan was too mad to tell whether Hector’s belligerent expression hid guilt.

“That boys need to play. To be physical.” He sneered. “Women always want to baby their sons. You can’t help yourselves.”

Duncan grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “You couldn’t see that the tree wasn’t deeply enough rooted to hold him? He’d have hit a log if he’d fallen and been badly injured!”

Hector shoved him hard. Duncan barely fell back a step, his anger suffusing him, blinding him. He’d known this son of a bitch wasn’t good enough for Tito. If he had been, he’d have thought of his family before he got in the vicious brawl that resulted in a prison term. He would have put them first. Tito wouldn’t have been left with no parent at all.

“Don’t you put a hand on me,” he said in a low, hard voice.

“You put a hand on me first!” Hector’s face was inches from his. Violence boiled in the air.

For once in his life, Duncan didn’t care. He felt like hurting someone. This pathetic excuse for a father needed a wake-up call. Duncan could provide it. He was snarling and leaning in even farther when Jane shoved her way between the two men, planted a hand on each chest and pushed.

“What are you
thinking?
” It was him she was looking at, not Hector. “Get a grip! Behave yourself.” Finally she spared a fulminating glance for Hector. “Both of you.”

Duncan staggered a couple of steps. He felt stunned, as though he’d taken a blow to the head. Had he really been about to slug a man who hadn’t done anything but egg his kid on to do something that was a little bit dangerous? Duncan was always in control. Always. He was the original iceberg. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d let himself feel much of anything.

“There’s a child here! What a fine example the two of you set. About ready to get in a fistfight over nothing! Men!” Jane said in disgust.

Duncan saw that Tito had clambered down behind him and now stood staring at them with shocked dark eyes. He looked as scared as he had the night Duncan had drawn a gun on him.

Jane stalked over to Tito and swept him into her arms for a big hug. “Pretend you didn’t see that,” she told him. “I’m quite sure your father and Captain MacLachlan will be apologizing to each other and to you.” She stared at them over Tito’s dark head. “Won’t you?”

Still in that state of disbelief, Duncan realized he’d have placed any of his officers under suspension for behaving with so little self-restraint. Thank God no one was near enough to have seen.

He groaned and looked at Hector. “Ms. Brooks is right. I overreacted. I thought Tito was about to fall and…” He swallowed and finished. “I acted out of fear.”

Hector didn’t look any happier than Duncan felt, but after a moment he dipped his head. “I thought what Tito was doing was safe. From here I couldn’t see well.”

Duncan turned and saw that it was true. Hector’s view had been partially blocked. He probably hadn’t seen the crumbling bluff. Which didn’t altogether excuse him; he should have moved so that he could monitor his son.

But you can’t watch them every minute.
Duncan had tried, once the sole responsibility for his brothers was his, but he’d learned it wasn’t possible.

After a minute Duncan held out a hand. Hector’s eyes narrowed and he stared at it for a moment that stretched. Duncan was aware in his peripheral vision of Jane and Tito watching, the boy still held close to her. Perhaps Hector felt them watching, too, because finally he held out his hand and they shook. Their gazes met and held, still challenging, but Duncan saw traces of the shame he felt in the other man’s eyes.

“Why don’t you two go look at tide pools?” Jane suggested, giving Tito one last hug and then a gentle push forward. “Let’s not waste a glorious day.”

Duncan stood where he was and watched Hector and Tito walk away, more distance between them than had been there earlier. He felt guilty for that, and bothered because, damn it, it
was
his fault the whole thing had blown up like that.

At the same time, the fact that
she
had had to intervene, that in this situation she held the authority, tasted bitter in his mouth.

Jane stood a few feet away looking at him. Eventually she said, “Do you want to walk? Or find someplace to sit down?”

He was still full of adrenaline and a complicated stew of emotions. “We can’t go very far.”

“Hector’s not going to take off with Tito. We can walk a ways down the beach.”

Duncan gave a curt nod. They set out side by side, by common consent staying close to the lap of water. The smooth beach pebbles slipped and slid under their feet. From time to time dried seaweed crunched underfoot. The sun was still high, still warm, but Duncan felt cold inside.

“What was that about?” Jane finally asked. Quietly, as if she really wanted to know. “I know you don’t like Hector, but…” Her sidelong glance was uneasy.

Crap. The frustration at being in the wrong, at having been called on it, still ate at him. She could block him from Tito’s life if she felt inclined. He hated knowing he had to answer her question.

What was
that
about?

Things he didn’t like to talk about. Resented having to tell her.

He stared ahead, vaguely aware of some kids running and trying to get a kite aloft, of people in small clusters peering into tide pools, of some teenage boys lounging in a V formed by driftwood and drinking beer from a cooler.

“When I was growing up, my father was in and out of prison. He was a drug dealer. A real professional.” His tone was ironic, giving away nothing of how he’d felt as a child with a father like that. “He never used. I guess that was one good thing. Dad was sentenced to ten years the day Mom threw up her hands and walked out.”

“He wasn’t there when you needed him.”

He wanted to tell her that was simplistic psychobabble, but…she was right. “No.”

“You were angry at your father, not Hector.”

Duncan could tell she was thinking it out, wanting to believe his idiocy had been triggered by some deep childhood trauma. Because she wanted to excuse him?

He didn’t deserve to be excused, detested being psychoanalyzed.

“Tito broke into my house. Did I tell you I pulled a gun on him?”

Jane stared at him, aghast.

“Where was his father when he was getting into trouble?” Duncan asked, the remnants of rage roughening his voice. “The same place my father was when my brothers were in and out of juvie. I can’t excuse how I behaved, but you know what? Hector wasn’t there when his son needed him, either.”

Their hands brushed. Duncan realized that, sometime in the past few minutes, he’d become conscious again of Jane as a woman. Her supple calves and ankles, bared by cropped chinos. Long, narrow feet, toenails painted the color of spring blooming lilacs. The shimmer of sunlight off her hair, the curve of her cheek, those eyes.

She was gazing ahead now, looking troubled. Not as if she was reacting in any way to him. Hell, he thought, a few minutes ago she’d regarded him with disgust, and he couldn’t blame her even as it made his skin crawl to know that he’d revealed too much of himself to her through that display of anger.

Finally she said, “But…Hector’s trying to be there for Tito now.” She stopped and they both looked back.

Duncan spotted the two immediately, Tito standing and his father crouched, both with their heads bent as they peered intently down.

“For how long?” he asked. “You’ve seen how easily he loses it.”

“He’s only been arrested the once. His older kids speak highly of him. He’s got a temper, sure.” In her pause, it was obvious what she was thinking.
So do you.
“You have to admit, this whole setup has got to be hard on his ego. He gets out of prison, thinks at last he has his dignity again, only to be told he can’t even see his son without someone making sure he behaves himself. These aren’t exactly ideal circumstances.”

“No.” Duncan could understand why Hector’s pride felt rubbed raw right now. Which didn’t excuse the way he’d failed his young son.

She stopped. He took another stride and realized she wasn’t with him. When he turned to face her, she was looking gravely at him.

“You know you should back off. Leave this to me.”

“I played right into your hands,” he realized, feeling foolish. Not angry now, but…unsettled. With that one flash of blinding fury, he’d handed her power over him, and there was nothing he hated more than knowing somebody had a bit in his mouth. “I suppose you’ll be calling Lehman come Monday morning and telling him I’m not dispassionate enough to be involved.”

She kept looking at him for a disconcertingly long time. But finally she shook her head. “No. I won’t. What happened here today is nobody’s business but ours. If you’d actually hit Hector, I wouldn’t have had any choice, but fortunately it didn’t go that far.”

“I wouldn’t have let it.” He sounded hoarse, and wished he could be sure.

“Okay,” she agreed, after only the tiniest of pauses. “Maybe we should turn around.”

He nodded. They walked in silence.

“Do you want to look at tide pools?” he finally asked.

Her sigh wasn’t meant for him to hear, he was sure. “We might as well,” she said, sounding resigned more than pleased.

They’d been having a good day. He’d ruined it. No, he thought with a spurt of anger, it wasn’t all his fault. Tito could have been hurt. Duncan had had to intervene, whether Hector liked it or not.

Whether Jane liked it or not.

The idea that they could have fun today—that had been doomed from the get-go. He didn’t have fun, and this was why. It was hardly an epiphany to admit to himself that he couldn’t let go of his sense of responsibility long enough to have genuine fun. Even as a teenager, he’d been too fixed on his goals. There would be time once he made his escape, he had promised himself. Except that then he hadn’t been able to escape after all. Duncan remembered that sensation of his back bowing beneath the weight of the burden he had knowingly, grimly accepted: his brothers. He’d done his duty; they’d grown up. But had he ever felt light, free of the weight?