Safe Harbor (14 page)

“I
read
poetry on my own,” he corrected her. “Worked in a bookstore for a while. Did a lot of reading on my breaks and during lunch.”

The revelation surprised her. She couldn’t picture him reading poetry willingly. And from what he hadn’t said, she surmised that he hadn’t gone to college.

She had to think before she spoke, Stevi thought, upbraiding herself. She hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings for the world.

“You know, they say that life’s the best college, the best teacher anyone could have,” she told him.

He knew what she was doing. She was trying to make him feel better about the path he’d taken.

He was surprised that this touched him. But it did.

“‘They’ say a lot of things,” he pointed out. “Now, what is it you need help with?”

Finding a way to get you to stay.

Out loud Stevi said, “I need you to help me move a few things out onto the back lawn. They’re all right this way.” She gestured toward the area he’d helped her decorate the other day. “Follow me.”

I only wish I could.
The thought telegraphed itself through his mind before he could stop it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“D
O
YOU
REMEMBER
YET
?”

“Excuse me?” Mike looked up at her, caught off guard by the out-of-the-blue question.

They had been working together for a good part of the afternoon, occasionally being interrupted by guests wanting to know details about the inn’s Fourth of July celebration. Despite that, they’d accomplished a great deal.

Struggling, they’d managed to erect a long, rectangular red, white and blue awning, which would shelter the food on the buffet table. For the most part, it was to shade the guests and the food from the sun, although there had been talk of the possibility of rain on the big day, anywhere between ten to twenty percent chance, depending on which news station Stevi tuned to. She’d rented the awning as a precaution, just in case twenty percent turned out to be a reality.

The final decorations were hung up and all in place. The big day was still three days off, but Stevi, he had discovered, didn’t like leaving things to the last minute. It made her nervous, she’d told him.

The only thing that needed to be done on the actual day, besides the cooking, would be to bring out the tables and chairs for those who preferred to sit while they ate.

After working for several hours straight, Stevi had suggested that they break for an early dinner. Rather than eat in the dining area, because the weather was as perfect as it got in San Diego County—a moderate, comfortable temperature accompanied by a soft summer breeze—she’d suggested that they avail themselves of the party area and eat outside.

Mike had set up one of the small, round tables and brought out two folding chairs. They brought their plates of, appropriately enough, fried chicken outside and enjoyed the peaceful solitude.

That was when Stevi had asked him whether he remembered anything yet.

The question, when he replayed it in his head and realized what she was asking, brought reality sharply back into focus. Stalling for time didn’t really help him come up with an answer. He had no pat story for her.

Moreover, he found himself not wanting to offer her a pat story.

He wanted, instead, to be honest with her even though he knew he couldn’t be. For a number of reasons, both professional and personal.

“Do you remember anything yet?” she pressed. She’d hoped that by now his recovery would be nearly complete, and he’d be able to recall the memories that had eluded him. She tried to make her reason for asking as innocuous sounding as possible because she didn’t want him to feel as if she was pushing—even though, technically, she was. “It’s been a month and I was just wondering if anything’s jostled your memory yet.”

“You’re asking me if I remember who shot me,” he said bluntly.

“Actually, I’m asking not just that but if you remember anything at all,” she stressed. “Where you come from, who you are, what you did for a living before you did an imitation of a seashell and washed up on the beach.”

“Is that important to you?” he asked, wanting to know if, for some miraculous reason, things worked themselves out, if he could remain here like Dorothy and Silvio before him, would she be satisfied with the man he was trying to be or did she need to know about the man he’d been?

And if it was the latter, would she accept him or find him lacking and send him away? Would she focus on the heroics in his life, or at bottom, would she just see the foster kid nobody wanted and ask him to go away?

“I’m just curious,” Stevi said. “I always have been. I always need to know how a book ends. It’s the same with secrets,” she said, lowering her voice. “I
have
to know. I wouldn’t pass it on, wouldn’t tell a soul, but I just need to know.” She flashed a smile at him. “Working for the FBI or the CIA would probably drive me crazy.”

He did a double take. Why had she mentioned those organizations? Did she suspect? Or was that just an off-the-cuff remark?

“Sometimes secrets are best kept just that—secret,” he told her quietly.

Her eyes met his and she looked at him for a long, drawn-out moment before she said, “Then you don’t remember anything.”

“What I remember,” he said in the same low, calm voice as he reached for her hand, “is opening my eyes and seeing this blonde, blue-eyed vision looking down at me, and thinking that I was either dreaming or had died and reached the threshold of heaven. As far as I’m concerned, everything that came before then was part of another lifetime, another reality. Mine started a month ago, with the sand beneath my back and your face blocking out the sun.”

She could feel her heart hammering even as she silently told herself not to get carried away. There could be a number of ways to interpret his words. Still, she needed to put the question to him.

“Does that mean you’ve decided to stay?” she asked uncertainly.

Mike was saying everything she wanted to hear, but something within her doubted that it was the truth. It wasn’t that she thought he was deliberately lying; she just had the feeling that this was his way of trying to spare her pain.

It was as if he’d looked into her heart, seen his name written there and knew what she was feeling for him. Knew that leaving her would be really upsetting for her. So, while he was still here, he was telling her what she wanted to hear.

With all her heart, Stevi wished she could believe him.

What she
could
believe was that he was trying to be kind to her. That he cared about her in some small way and that, she told herself, was going to have to be enough for her.

Ha!

As if....

“I can’t very well desert you in the middle of all these preparations. You still need someone to set up the tables and chairs on the Fourth, right?” Mike reminded her.

“I’m also going to need help breaking everything down after the celebration’s over—most likely that will be the day after the Fourth,” she amended, “since the fireworks are going to be around eight-thirty, or as soon as it’s dark. A couple of our guests brought their young children with them and I don’t want them being up very late—although if they turn out to be anything like Ricky,” she said, “they’ll be putting their parents to bed while they’re still raring to go.”

Mike shook his head. “I didn’t know that there were all these logistics involved in throwing what’s supposed to be just a simple celebration.”

“That’s why these days they refer to it as event planning. Because of all the details involved, all the different people who might be attending, a great deal of planning goes into throwing almost any kind of party.”

Had she taken his offhand comment as an insult? “I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was belittling what you do—” he said, thinking that if he’d put his foot in his mouth, he needed to correct that right away.

He almost looked flustered, she thought, amused at his reaction. He looked his most adorable when he was being his most human, rather than the strong, silent type—although that, too, had its appeal.

Face it, Stevi, you’ve got it bad.

“No offense taken,” she assured him. “That’s why they have event planners, because most people don’t think of all the contingencies that might come into play. I don’t, either,” she confessed in case he thought she was bragging that she could think of
everything,
“but I am better than most people at remembering the minutia.” He was smiling. Why? “What?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Your eyes dance when you talk about what you do,” he observed.

“No, they don’t,” she protested with a laugh.

Event planning wasn’t her passion. This job was a temporary sidebar, a place filler, just something she was doing at the moment until she found her true calling, the really important thing that she could dedicate herself to accomplishing. Using balloons to underscore themes did not fit into that category.

“I beg to differ,” Mike said, interrupting. “I’m on the other side of those eyes, so I’d know. You can’t see them the way I can. There’s no shame in enjoying your work. It
is
important in its own way.”

Now he was pandering to her. “Yeah, right.”

Mike wouldn’t be dissuaded. “You create memories for people.”

Anything she was going to add to her dismissal of her work vanished. She looked at him in surprise. “What a lovely thing to say.”

Mike shrugged, turning his attention to the soft drink in his glass as he took a sip. “Yeah, that’s me, the guy who says lovely things.”

“You do,” she insisted. “What you say makes a person feel special.” She paused, then decided she had nothing to lose by speaking up and perhaps something to gain. “You made me feel special.”

Surprised, Mike raised his eyes to hers. “Ditto,” he whispered after a moment.

Ditto.

Not exactly one of the most romantic words in the English language, Stevi thought, but she’d take it because the sentiment behind that word
was
romantic, at least in her eyes, and that, she realized, was very, very important to her.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Mike shrugged again, meaning to shrug off her thanks and anything else that went with it. Sentiment—any other emotion other than anger, he supposed—made him uncomfortable.

He only understood anger because he’d grown up with it, a great deal of it.

Stevi and her family were ruining him, he thought, not for the first time. They were making him think things he had no business thinking. Feeling things he had no right to feel. Yearning for what was completely out of his reach.

Moreover, for them to continue having the life they had, he needed to leave so that nothing and no one could threaten it or disrupt it.

But he didn’t want her thinking he’d just turned his back and walked away. Didn’t want her thinking that he’d just used her for his own ends because he needed a place to heal and someone to tend to his wounds, the way she had insisted on doing.

Because she’d given him so much, given him something to dream about, no matter how unattainable, he wanted to give her something in return.

A piece of himself because he had nothing else to offer.

“I grew up in the system,” he reminded her abruptly. “Foster care. I never knew my parents. Didn’t know if they died or just couldn’t be bothered and gave me up.”

Stunned both at what she was hearing and that he was actually telling her something like this, Stevi stared at him. More than anything she wanted to comfort him, but she knew that he would see it as pity and would withdraw from her, his pride wounded.

So she kept her silence and let him talk. That was all that she could do for him.

“The parents I did get to know didn’t give a damn about me one way or another. Even the best of them—and I use the term loosely—were in it for the monthly check from social services.

“The second I aged out, I was gone.”

The story could stop here and his secret would still remain safe. She’d have her glimpse into his life and he would still retain the anonymity that was the hallmark of his existence. But that was only half of who he was and he wanted to let her see the other side of him.

“My first job was at a mom-and-pop store. Guy who owned it, Lee, was decent enough. He didn’t work me too hard and gave me the day-old foodstuffs to take home with me.

“One night, he and I were closing up and these two hoods came in and tried to rob him. They weren’t happy that there wasn’t much in the register so they started beating him. I guess something just snapped inside me. I got the drop on them and suddenly I was the one doing the beating. When it was over, they were the ones on the floor.

“The cop who was first on the scene took my statement. Instead of hauling me in, he asked if I’d ever thought about becoming a cop myself. A couple of days later, I went down to the precinct to see him. He gave me some brochures, introduced me to a couple people. I knew what my destiny was....” Mike’s voice trailed off as he shrugged, letting her fill in the blanks for herself.

Stevi’s eyes widened. “You’re a policeman?” she asked.

Since he’d come this far, he decided to give her the more accurate description of what he did. “I was, before I became an undercover DEA agent.”

It wasn’t hard for her to put the rest together. “You were shot while you were on the job.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

After a moment, he inclined his head and said, “Something like that.”

She knew she couldn’t ask for any details because he wouldn’t be able to tell her. But there was one thing she could ask. “Isn’t there someone you should be reporting this to?”

His smile was warm, she thought, and for the first time, almost boyish. “I am. You.”

“I mean someone official.” He didn’t answer. “So you’ve decided to take a break, is that it?”

It was as good an explanation as any, he supposed. And maybe even accurate to an extent. Since he didn’t know the good guys from the bad guys without a scorecard, he’d just stepped back from everything until he could gain some perspective about what mattered.

His decision not to get in contact with anyone to let them know he was alive was because just before he’d been shot he’d caught a glimpse of Larry Crenshaw, one of the main men involved in the drug smuggling ring, on this side of the border. From the local police department. Mike had a feeling the guy had been the one to blow his cover.

What he didn’t have a clue about was how many more people had a foot in both worlds. If he told the wrong person about this discovery—and that person was also involved, he’d be signing his own death warrant. At the moment, everyone who’d been on that cruiser thought he was dead and he’d decided to make use of that by just disappearing altogether.

He’d thought, for a little while, that the inn was the perfect place where he could disappear. After all, Silvio had and the man hadn’t exactly been a choirboy before he landed on Richard Roman’s doorstep.

But now he knew he’d just been fooling himself. This was far too visible a place to “disappear.” The people on that cruiser, the one or ones from this area, were bound to see him sooner or later and then he really would be dead.