Guardian in Disguise

This time when they mounted the bike she put her gloves on. It didn’t matter. He grabbed her hands and tucked them up inside his leather jacket. Warmth from his body, and a marvelous sense of intimacy filled her. Even through her gloves she could feel hard, rippling muscles as they bounced back down the rutted track to the paved road.

“So where is it they want to put this new resort?” he shouted over the bike’s roar.

“Just up ahead about two miles.”

When they reached the pavement’s end, he pulled them off into a small glade where a few late wildflowers blossomed in red and gold. The air smelled so fresh up here, scented with pine and mulch, and the trees were close enough to swallow the breeze. A few deciduous trees edged the small glade, their leaves like golden teardrops.

The cloudless day was so beautiful that she couldn’t help but let go of all her curiosity and suspicion. Max was just another guy, albeit damned attractive, and there didn’t seem to be one thing about him to arouse her curiosity. Not now, not today.

She was content to sit on the ground and lean back against a log while he pulled out sandwiches and bottles of water. She could tell by the packaging that he’d picked up the sandwiches at Maude’s diner, and her mouth watered.

“So,” he said, “this Dexter guy has been bearding me about saving the wolves up here.”

“He got me, too.”

“Are there many of them?”

“There’s a pack, maybe two. I guess all of a dozen or so.”

He nodded and settled beside her, also using the fallen log as a backrest. “Down from Yellowstone?”

“They must be. There’s no place else left for them to come from.”

“Is Dexter a pain in the butt?”

She grinned. “I don’t know yet. I guess we’ll find out. So tell me, why aren’t you practicing law? Isn’t that why most people get a law degree?”

“Most do, I suppose.”

Biting into a sandwich helped her to remain silent and wait for an explanation, but when it didn’t come, her suspicions about him rose to the fore again. “Is there a reason,” she asked when she finally swallowed, “that you don’t want to discuss it?”

He looked at her. “That’s a helluva loaded question. Sort of like, When did you stop beating your wife?”

She couldn’t help laughing. “No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I just wondered.” Although truthfully, maybe she had meant it that way. This guy kept making her bristle with suspicion, no matter how ordinary he appeared. Instinct told her that meant he wasn’t ordinary and she’d better take care.

He shrugged, chewing a bite of sandwich before answering. “I haven’t made up my mind,” he said finally. “The law fascinates me, obviously. That’s why I became a cop, in part. But the longer I was a cop, the more I wanted to understand just what I was enforcing, and the more I realized I didn’t want to be a cop forever. Studying law seemed like the way to go. Lots of opportunities. If I wanted, I could become a prosecutor, maybe. Work in a private practice. Get into politics. Teach.”

“So now you’re teaching. Do you like it?”

“It’s early days yet. So far it’s fun.”

“I bet the girls are all over you,” she said. She couldn’t help it.

“You mean my students?” He lifted a brow. “Well, they do seem to cluster around a bit.”

She snorted. “You’re a new guy in a quiet town. Interesting. Attractive. I bet it’s more like flies to a honey pot.”

He unleashed a laugh. “Not yet, Liza. Not yet.”

“It’ll get there.”

“Are you warning me to protect my chastity?”

She snickered. “Not exactly. I just remember being that age and how some interesting, attractive professor could rev me up. They’ll swarm eventually.”

“What revs you up now?”

The question caught her sideways, and she almost blurted the truth: you. Thank goodness for that small hesitation between brain and mouth.

“Curiosity?” he suggested smoothly. “Like wanting to know everything about someone new?”

“Not everything!”

He smiled. “Okay. How about the Cliff’s Notes version. I was born in Michigan, after college I joined the … department, took some time to get my law degree, and otherwise I’ve been yawning a lot.”

She wondered if that hesitation before department meant anything. She sat up a little straighter, but decided not to probe that. She didn’t want to warn him he might have slipped because that usually turned people into clams. “No wife, no kids, no significant other?”

“Nope. Being on the streets only appeals to women until they have to live with it. It’s stressful and I saw a lot of spouses leave because of it.”

She nodded. “I saw that in my job, too. Bad hours. But your job had a lot of danger, as well.”

“Some. But you can’t blame a person for not wanting to wonder if someone they love is going to come home. Not everyone has a problem with it, but it takes a toll. I figured I’d wait until I changed careers.”

“And here you are, with a brand-new career.”

“That was the point.” He returned to eating his sandwich.

She bit her lip, then said, “You went to Stetson College of Law, right?”

“Right.”

“Then how come you didn’t mention it when I said I’d been working for a paper in Florida?”

He turned slowly to look at her, and something in his gaze seemed to harden slightly, just a little, but enough to almost make her shiver. “It never occurred to me. Is it all that important that I was there for three years? I’ve lived other places, too.”

She didn’t know how to answer him. While most people would automatically have said, “I lived there for a while,” when she mentioned Florida, that didn’t mean everyone would.

She looked down at her sandwich. This guy was a cop. He was probably used to asking questions, not offering information.

So maybe this was an innocent difference in their way of making connections. She was a reporter who had spent a lot of years learning to create rapport. His job was different, and maybe had taught him different things.

Or maybe it was something else. Trying to explain it away wasn’t making her feel any easier.

“I just thought it was curious, that’s all,” she said firmly, and bit into her sandwich to forestall any other questions. She had asked too many. How many times had she been told that she asked too many questions? More than she could count.

After a moment he spoke again. “I just didn’t think about it, Liza. Everyone who looked at my CV knows I went to Stetson.”

“True,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food.