Shotgun Honeymoon

With a snort of self-derision, Russ gave the wall a final swipe and returned the rag and spray to the kitchen. The blinking red light on the counter caught his eye. He punched the button to listen to his messages. A reminder about a meeting in Gallup scheduled for the following morning. A suspiciously timed call from his mother telling him she hadn’t heard from him in too long. A circumspectly inquiring message from Jeth and a follow-up one from Guy, neither of whom had missed the tension vibrating through him by the time he’d left the restaurant.

And finally a voice almost too deep and husky to be feminine, though it was: Maddie. His best friend since as long as he could remember, his first adolescent crush, his prom date—and the child-girl-woman he’d spent most of his life trying to rescue and protect from more horrors than he cared to remember.

Maddie Thorn, who’d been abused unmercifully by her father, before he had finally attempted to kill her that night thirteen years ago…

“Russ?”

She sounded edgy, as though she looked over her shoulder while she spoke. Not at all the way she’d sounded three weeks ago when he’d let her know that her father was going to be released from prison early because the psychologists and psychiatrists who’d been working with him thought he was rehabilitated enough—medicated enough—to walk about in polite society again despite his track record as being, well, not.

Russ, who’d seen the man over the years, listened to his rambling assertions on having found religion and wanting to set things right with his daughter, had told Maddie that Charlie might be looking for her. Maddie, truly and completely happy for the first time in her life and with other things on her mind, had more or less blown him off.

And now here she was, exactly as he’d known—as he’d felt, with that strange extra sense with which he’d been gifted, with what his brothers called his spider sense—she’d be.

“God, Russ, where are you? I need to see you. You were right about him. He found me. He said you—” She broke off suddenly. He heard her breathing, raggedly. Afraid. “No,” she whispered, though not directly into the phone. “Oh God, no. He can’t have. He couldn’t—no.” Then a deep, steadying breath and more strongly, firmly, “No!” And into the phone again, “I have to go. But God, Russ, please. Be there. Please.”

The receiver on the other end of the line clattered into place hard, and Russ’s machine beeped once and announced, “End of messages.”

Russ could only stare at the message light for a moment. He’d come in not quite thinking about her, his heart on Janina—the woman he’d wanted across almost every single hot cup of coffee she’d served him for the past thirteen years—and the current Maddie-involved reasons he’d yet to act on his longings for her.

And here Maddie was calling him.

Needing help again.

Palms flat on the counter to hold himself erect, he gave her call for help some thought. Whispered “screw it” to the cupboards because he knew there was no way he’d ever walk away from Maddie, no matter what happened.

Maddie had been a different person when they were younger, a messed-up abuse case beyond what even he’d realized at that time. And he’d been the only friend, only person, to see her, know her and love her for who she was.

And now she’d gotten herself together and found Jess, the life partner who made her happy and…

Now this.

All of this.

Her father out of prison and looking for…something. Revenge, maybe. Reconciliation, he’d said, but Russ didn’t believe that for an instant. The cop’s gut in him crawled, remembering Charlie’s eyes. The man in him, the friend, simply unhooked the chain that held his temper and withdrew any pretext of masking the savage within the trappings of civilization should Charlie get too close, legally released from prison or not.

Russ rubbed his hands hard across his eyes. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Because as well as he understood Maddie, as good as he was at working with wounded females, he was no damn good at emotions, or at figuring them out. Not his own, and not women’s. Particularly not while Maddie needed rescuing by him yet again, and Janina—who constantly tortured his dreams—seemed to him about as obtainable as the moon.

Always had been, truth be known.

Emotions. Geez-oh-Pete. God save him from female best friends, who pulled themselves out of hell by their toenails when offered the slimmest of chances, feminine soul mates with nerves of steel and hearts of gold and courage as raw as anything he’d ever seen—yeah, Janina thought he didn’t know about her shadowing him that night thirteen years ago, right? Wrong!—and freaking, obfuscating emotions.

With an oath, Russ turned his back on the kitchen and headed for the small room at the back of the trailer that should have been his bedroom but was now where he kept his silversmithing and lapidary equipment. He opened the heavy safe he kept there, withdrew the envelope he’d placed inside six months prior and emptied its contents into his hand. It was a sort of Guinevere-style ring he’d designed in platinum with a single large not-quite-square piece of green Baltic amber canted diamondwise in the center and offset by a small but exquisitely cut and flawless diamond at each of the amber’s points. The wedding ring lay heavy in his palm, spoke to him of plans and cowardice, a life lived in faux courage.

Oh, he could take down bad guys, face bullets, walk into domestic quarrels, go through fire with the best of ’em—hell, he’d even had enough chutzpah, damn it, to make her a ring—but put him in front of Janina and say anything remotely having to do with a you and me—a we—and ha! It came out sounding like, “I’ll have today’s special and coffee.”

Dating was simply beyond his limited verbal capabilities.

Russ started to drop the ring back into its envelope, putting Janina away for another time once again in favor of seeing what he could do to help Maddie, always Maddie. Suddenly he felt the hair on his neck stand up and stopped, hand poised.

Even before the knock came low on his screen door he knew Maddie was there.

Nerves alight, he shoved Janina’s ring into his pocket and went to push open the door.

“Hey, Maddie,” he said quietly, and stepped aside to let her in.

“Hey yourself.” She crossed the threshold with a shaky laugh.

Then she flung herself forward, threw her arms around his neck and hung on for dear life.

Without further thought, he folded his arms around her and held on tight.

No matter how hard she worked at it, no matter how disgusted she got with herself, nor how unrequited she knew her feelings were, every time she saw Russ Levoie, Janina Gálvez Carmichael fell smack-dab right back head over heart over heels in love with him again.

Had ever since the first time he’d walked into the Fat Cat Diner thirteen years ago when she was a sixteen-year-old waitress and he was a fresh-from-the-academy rookie working his first evening shift for the Winslow P.D.

It still happened now that she was a twenty-nine-year-old working-her-way-through-college-a-class-at-a-time waitress who’d been around the block a few times and who damn well knew better than to fall for a guy who carried a torch for someone else and who wasn’t going to budge from that path no matter what.

The idiot.

Him and her. Meaning not only her as in herself, Janina Gálvez Carmichael, but as in her, that blasted Maddie Thorn that Russ couldn’t seem to let go of long enough to notice the girl with the heart-on-her-sleeve look who’d served him coffee, flirtation, offhand friendship, advice and good humor almost every day of the week for the last thirteen years.

Geez, what a fool.

Both of them.

No, make that all of them, because though she seemed to count on his friendship like a lifeline, Maddie’d never really given in to Russ in a one-on-one love-me-tender-and-forever way, either. Which was pretty damn stupid of her, in Janina’s oft-considered and far-less-than-humble opinion.

Fuming, Janina watched Russ seat himself and the ice-cool Sharon Stone look-alike, wearing the expensively cut slim white designer sheath, at his usual back booth. His concern for the beautifully coiffed and manicured blonde was plain, spelled out something subtle to the green-eyed monster Janina knew she wasn’t entitled to harbor yet harbored anyway. Maddie’d had to scrape and scrap hard to pull herself out of the hell she’d grown up in, Janina knew that. Once Maddie had made her own way through beauty school—with Russ’s help, damn it!—she’d gotten a job, worked hard, paid him back and she was now one of the most sought-after stylists in Phoenix.

And that was not to mention the time Janina knew Maddie put in at a couple of Phoenix battered women’s shelters doing corrective makeup and makeovers for girls and women trying to get out of situations similar to her own past.

Janina also knew that Russ never brought women into the diner. In fact, she’d never seen him out with anyone other than his brothers or other cops unless it was in a crowded social situation like a community barbecue. And even then he never paid particular attention to anyone special.

Especially not to her, Janina Carmichael née Gálvez—and chalk that married name change up to one truly witless mistake. Damn it.

On all counts.

She grimaced wryly at herself in the revolving dessert-display cooler mirror. Russ was thirty-two years old, for pity’s sake. He had a life, presumably. She didn’t own him, more was the pity. And other than the little time they spent flirting when she waited on him, Russ probably barely thought of her or remembered she was alive.

Another glance at Maddie Thorn made Janina growl unintentionally under her breath.

A half snort, half chuckle at her shoulder made her catch herself, realize what she was doing and redden. In self-defense she snatched up a pot of coffee and a rag, preparing to head over to the table to greet Russ and his…

Guest.

“Don’t say anything,” she said without looking back.

“He’s got a friend tonight,” Tobi Hosey observed, ignoring her. Tobi usually ignored Janina when Janina wanted Tobi to say nothing. It was the basis of their friendship. Tobi spoke her mind regardless of the tact involved and Janina swallowed it and spoke her own back, no baloney involved. Which meant they each had someone who’d laugh at their bouts of temperamental stupidity.