Come Morning (21 page)

The words echoed in Slade’s head, their meaning cutting through to his core.
Please, bring me my baby.
Oh, God, not again.

Unable to look at her another minute, Slade walked away, then broke off in a run. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he couldn’t stay there, couldn’t hide out
organizing
when what he really needed to do was search like everyone else. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe this time, the gods would be with him.

Briana slowly walked back to the pet store, her steps dragging. She’d been up and down the streets, in dozens of shops, talking with countless people, asking if they’d seen a small, towheaded little girl about six. No one had. As she approached, she saw Pam sitting on a bench, Chris crouching in front of her as she wept. Several police hovered around together with onlookers and members of the search party who’d returned.

But no sweet, freckle-faced child.

Almost in tears, she joined them, seeing by their faces that no one had gotten lucky. Irma had lost her bounce as she moved to sit alongside Pam, to pull her close and lend a measure of comfort. Behind her glasses, her blue eyes were swimming with tears.

The senior officer’s name tag read “Sgt. Bremer.” He turned to Chris Reed and Briana, who was standing with him. “I think we’re going to have to face some harsh facts. We could be looking at an abduction.” He kept his voice low.

Chris turned even paler as he glanced at his wife, making sure she hadn’t heard. “Why would someone abduct our child? We don’t have that kind of money.”

“Well, sir, not all abductors are interested in ransom money.”

His mouth a grim line, Chris closed his eyes as the unspoken fear washed over him. “What do you want us to do?”

“I’m going to ask you and your wife to …”

“Look!” Irma cried out loud enough to be heard above the hum of voices as she squeezed Pam’s hand. “Do you see what I see?” Everyone turned toward the direction she was pointing.

Briana gasped as she recognized the tall man carrying a blond little girl wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans. He was hurrying down the hill. For just a moment, with his head backlit from a glowing streetlamp, Briana could imagine Slade carrying someone else’s child out of a burning building, rescuing, helping. She felt he must have done just that countless times, yet he’d walked away from his profession. The thought didn’t sit well with her.

“Annie!” Pam screamed, getting clumsily to her feet as her husband rushed to her side. Together, they hurried to meet Slade.

He handed the child over to Chris, then stepped aside so Pam could embrace her daughter, too. For a moment, he stood watching the small family sob with relief. Then he turned and walked toward Briana, who quickly put her arms around him, her damp face burrowing into his shoulder.

“Thank God you found her,” Briana whispered.

He’d found her crouched behind a big old evergreen on a side street four short blocks from the pet store. In her arms, she’d been cradling a calico cat, a stray she’d spotted while her parents had been occupied, one she’d mistaken for Rascal. So of course, she’d had to go after her. By the time she’d caught the kitten, Annie had gotten confused and lost. She’d heard people walking by and calling her name, but they were all strangers and she’d been afraid. It wasn’t until Slade showed up that she recognized someone and crept out.

“Dumb luck, Briana, that’s all,” he told her after finishing the story. “A stroke of dumb luck that she recognized me in the dark.”

“We’ll take it,” Briana answered, watching the Reed family.

“Mommy, I’m sorry. I thought the kitten was Rascal and …”

Pam hugged her daughter tighter. “It’s all right, honey. Everything’s all right now.”

Several people hovered around, offering their good wishes. Quite a few stopped to slap Slade on the back and congratulate him on a job well done. Still, it wasn’t enough to make up for the other time, he knew. Nothing he did would ever be enough.

Finally, he took Briana’s hand and pulled her aside. “Let’s get out of here.” He’d had enough. This was not a scene he enjoyed, despite the relief and happy ending. He didn’t want credit. He wanted to erase the memory of another time, another child.

“I have to find Irma.”

“All right, but then let’s go.”

Briana located Irma, but the older woman decided she wanted to stay and chat with a friend who’d drive her home later. She hurried back to Slade, then followed him to where he’d parked the truck, barely able to keep up with his long strides. Finally seated, she huffed out a jagged breath. “What’s your rush, fella? You’re a hero now, you know.”

His head swiveled toward her, his eyes bleak. “Don’t call me that. I don’t deserve it.” He started the motor and lurched out into traffic.

Thoughtfully, Briana watched a muscle in his hard jaw twitch, and wondered not for the first time what he was thinking, and what had triggered this particular reaction. A man of many moods, most of them enigmatic, she decided. Would he even confide in her if she asked? Doubtful.

In his driveway, outside the parked truck, Briana decided to try. But she’d have to go slowly, using caution. He was as skittish as a newborn colt. “Will you come in and have coffee with me?”

Slade rubbed a weary hand along the back of his neck. “Brie, I’m a little tired tonight and …”

“Please?”

He knew what she wanted from him, and it wasn’t coffee. He knew he hadn’t revealed much about his recent past in words, but his actions, his reactions, had disclosed a great deal. Briana Morgan was very good at reading between the lines.

He also knew he was scared to death.

He’d come to this island a skeptic, a loner, a man unwilling to let anyone get close to him, with good reason. He’d grown up ashamed—that his father had left them, that his mother drank, that they’d had to live hand-to-mouth, none of which had been the fault of a young boy. As a defense mechanism, he’d done everything he could to protect himself from people who would judge, who would criticize, who could hurt him.

Then, as an adult, he’d done something that had brought disappointment, pain, and disgrace on himself. After that, he’d bottled up his feelings, sharing them with no one except in the most casual way, living with a loneliness so entrenched that at times he’d felt desperate.

Then Brie had come into his life, a beautiful, vulnerable woman whose pain was as deep as his own. Only, she hadn’t set into motion the cause of that pain. She was an innocent and he was a guilty man. How could she understand what he’d done and forgive him when he couldn’t forgive himself?

“I’m not very good company tonight, Brie.”

But he had been until the incident with Annie. Briana was certain that whatever triggered Slade’s reaction to that missing child held the key to his past problems. Without asking herself why, she knew she had to find out what that was. “You’re afraid to trust me, is that it?”

“No!” Slade scrubbed a hand over his face, wishing he’d said goodnight and gone inside. Better to be thought unfriendly than to strip yourself down to a raw and aching soul. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want anything in my past to hurt you.”

That surprised her, but she remained unconvinced. “It’s not your call. I’m a big girl. I can handle more than you think I can.”

Slade shifted his feet on the grass. In a distant yard, a dog began barking, vying with the sound of the relentless waves rushing in to the sandy shore. He felt his stomach muscles clench. God, when had he become such a coward?

He wanted to tell her, but he also wanted her to understand, and there were no guarantees that she would. He hadn’t been aware that the need to share his feelings had been steadily growing inside him, and that Brie was the one person he wanted to confide in. But what if she turned from him? He’d already lost so many. He wasn’t certain he could handle losing her, too.

Maybe he could talk her out of this. “What happened to me in the past shouldn’t have anything to do with you and me now.”

“But it does. Everything that happened to form us before we met and since is what makes us what we are. I saw my son die. That experience changed me forever. I’m not the person I was before then. Just this week, you learned that the man you thought all your life was your father wasn’t.You’re a different person knowing that.” Suddenly, Briana felt tired. Why was she pushing him? It was obvious he didn’t want to confide in her. She had no business badgering him.

“Listen, let’s just forget it. You have a right to your privacy. I told you weeks ago that I’d butt out, but here I am, doing it again. I’m sorry. I’ll talk with you tomorrow.” She started to walk toward her house.

“You’ll hate me if I tell you everything.”

Briana stopped, then slowly turned back, meeting his eyes in the patchy moonlight. “I could never hate you,” she said, her voice whisper-quiet as she realized she spoke the truth.

“Why not? There are those who do.”

“Because … because I care about you.” She took a step closer, well aware that what she’d said could send him scurrying for cover. “I know what you’re thinking, that if I learn what’s bothering you, I’ll walk away. All your life, people have abandoned you. I’m not like that, Slade. When I care about someone, I’m in for the long haul. There’s precious little they could do that would cause me to leave.”

“You walked out on your marriage, on Robert.”

“Yes, I did, because it was no longer a marriage in any sense of the word. I didn’t know it when I met him, but Robert was already married—to his work. I couldn’t compete. Indifference kills even the strongest love.”

Opposing emotions warred in him, yet the overriding one was fear—fear of losing her before he really had her. Not until he’d faced the possibility of that loss tonight did he even realize that he wanted her. Maybe a clean break would be best before things got out of hand. “I told you once before, it would be unwise of you to get involved with me. I warned you. You should have listened.”

“I remember and I gave you some breezy answer. But the truth is, admit it or not, we’re already involved. Aren’t we, Slade?” She kept her eyes steady on his. Showdown time, Briana thought. She’d never been much of a gambler, but she’d put a lot on the line this time.

Slade stared back. There was nothing to do but tell her the truth. Then watch her walk away.

“Maybe. The question is, do you want to be involved with a man who’s responsible for the death of an innocent child and the utter ruin of her mother?”

Chapter Ten

I
t was several seconds before Briana could speak. Her first thought, irrational as she knew it to be, was that she’d heard wrong. Slade couldn’t have caused someone’s death. He was a firefighter sworn to save people’s lives.

She was aware he was watching her closely and knew that her first reaction was one he’d remember. “Come with me,” she finally said. “I’ll make coffee. I want to hear the whole story.”

Slade didn’t move. “It’s not going to make any difference. The bottom line is that a four-year-old died because of me and her mother’s a basket case. Period.”

“Nothing is that simple, Slade. Certainly everything isn’t all black or all white. You told me you didn’t want to be judgmental like Jeremy. I’m not quick to judge, either.” She touched his arm. “Come with me, please.”

He let out a shuddering breath. It was bad enough that he’d blurted out the end result. He didn’t know if he had the strength to tell the rest. Or rather, he didn’t know if he could stand watching her face while she heard the terrible details. “Maybe it’s best if we just leave it alone. I told you I’m not a good person, that I’ve done things.”

“I wish you’d stop trying to make up my mind for me. Are you so certain I’m incapable of listening and deciding for myself what to believe?”

“It’s cut and dried, Brie. A done deed.”

She was tired of fencing with him on the front lawn. Taking his arm, she pulled him along the walk to her front porch, leading him inside. “The best I can offer you is the floor. Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

In the kitchen, Briana busied herself with the coffeemaking, her thoughts on his words. She could tell he firmly believed that he was responsible for the child’s death, the mother’s devastation. But was he? There had to be extenuating circumstances. If he were guilty, wouldn’t he be in prison? Chances are he only
thought
he was responsible.

The whole thing had to be tied in to his work. She knew he’d been with the fire department over five years. Surely in that period of time, there had to have been some casualties. Surely Slade couldn’t take full personal responsibility for those deaths.

Plugging in the pot, she went into the living room and joined him as he sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at her new blue carpeting. “Are you all right?”

Slowly, he raised bruised eyes to hers. “I’ll never be all right again, Brie.”

She nodded, understanding. “I remember saying those very words after Bobby died. Was this child a stranger or someone you knew?”

“Oh, I knew her, all right That makes it much worse.”

Briana waited, hoping he’d go on without her prompting.

Finally, like a man reciting a bad dream, Slade began to talk. “The woman I mentioned living with earlier tonight, the one who threw me out? Her name is Rachel. You remember when we first met, I said that you reminded me of someone?” When she nodded, he went on. “I thought you resembled Rachel more then than I do now. Same hair coloring and eyes. But there it ends.”

He cleared his throat. “Anyhow, I worked with Rachel’s brother, Alex, and he introduced us. She was a single mother, married and divorced real young, and she had this really cute little girl. Megan. She wasn’t quite four then, blond hair, big blue eyes. She was on the shy side, loved to be read to.”

Briana listened, not wanting to interrupt, allowing him to tell it at his own pace.

“Rachel and I started dating and we hit it off right away. After about a month, she asked me to move in with her. She was always short of money because her ex-husband had skipped the state and never paid child support. So I sublet my apartment and we split the expenses on this older house she was renting. Things were okay for several months, then I began to see signs of restlessness in Rachel.”