Doogie,
Sometimes, when a fellow is hurting, he does a stupid thing. I know. I’ve been there. Once in anger and hurt, I reacted before thinking, then pride and stubbornness kept me from admitting I just might have been wrong. That cost me the future—and the family—I thought I’d have.
Well, a man makes his choices.
The only problem then is you have to live with them. Make sure yours are the ones you truly want.
Your dad was lucky in having a son like you. I thought so the first time I met you, and I still do. You have the makings of a fine man. I know I’d be proud to call you “son.”
Your mom’s a little uptight about things right now, but be honest with her, and you two will work it out For one thing—she loves you. Don’t ever forget that. I did once, and it cost me. That’s neither here nor there. Just remember, you can talk to me anytime. I’ll be here.
Love,
Nick
Nicholas Dorelli shifted restlessly from his left foot to his right, but his attention didn’t wander. He watched his quarry with the expertise honed by ten years on the job. As a senior deputy sheriff and special investigator in Colorado, he was there on business. Stephanie Bolt was that business.
He tongued a toothpick from the right side of his mouth to the left. With a quick jab of his fingers, he shoved the annoying wing of hair that arced over his forehead to the side, where it stayed momentarily before returning to its natural position. He settled his hat with a firm tug over the stubborn cowlick and wished he was anyplace but here.
“Here” was the public park. Stephanie was sitting on a bench gazing at the mountains that surrounded the small town high in the Rockies.
Her short brown hair glowed with honey highlights in the June sun. She caught the strands blowing across her face and hooked them behind her ear. Her wedding band reflected the warm noon light, winking at him across the well-tended lawn of the park as if laughing at a private joke.
The joke was on him. Once she’d been his girl. Until he’d found her in the arms of another man.
For three months that fateful winter while he’d been away at college, he’d refused to believe the friends who reported Steph was seeing another man, not even when his own brother had confirmed it. He’d come home on spring break, determined to find out the truth. He had.
Steph, the woman he’d trusted. Steph, who’d clung to him for comfort at her father’s funeral only three months before. Steph, who’d been his first love, had sat on her front porch and let another man hold and caress her….
After all these years, that bitter betrayal still lingered like a burr under his hide.
So did the hunger. It made him angry, this need that wouldn’t go away. With it came a sense of things unfinished, the tattered ends of emotions left over from those days when he’d thought the world was his for the taking.
He shook his head slightly, as if he could cast off the past and the feelings associated with it. It had been a mistake to return home when he finished at the police academy. Having graduated at the top of his class, he’d been offered a job with the FBI in Virginia, a long way from here and from memories….
He watched as she plucked a blade of grass, and he wondered what she’d felt for her husband. She’d certainly played the faithful and dutiful widow in the two years since Clay’s death. Too bad she hadn’t been as faithful as a lover…. He cursed silently.
When she stood, the breeze pressed her silk shirt against her breasts. Her skirt folded between her thighs. He clenched his teeth. The toothpick snapped in half.
With a grimace he dropped the two pieces into the pine needles and shoved himself off the wrought iron fence. Stephanie was heading his way.
He knew the moment she spotted him.
She stopped and watched him. Her eyes, blue as the noontime sky, seemed to become even deeper in tone. She opened the gate, stepped out, then closed it behind her, her movements precise as she made sure the latch clicked into place.
“Nick,” she said.
Not exactly a fond greeting for the man who had once been the love of her life, or so she’d claimed. They’d gone steady during their last year of high school and first year of college.
He cursed silently and nodded his head. “Stephanie.”
He noticed the faint perpetual frown she’d worn for two years. He observed the tiny, perfectly round mole one inch from the corner of her mouth on the left, a place just made for kissing…before a man moved on to the lush fullness of her lips.
She was a woman to make a man dream. Full breasts. Slender waist. Rounded hips. Shapely legs. At five-nine, she was a good height for him. In heels, she’d fit his six-one frame perfectly. Once, they’d danced the night away, locked together so tightly he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.
She’d seldom worn heels during her marriage. That would have put her taller than Clay.
A knot formed in his throat, startling him with the unexpected emotion. Clay had been his mentor on the force, taking him on as his partner when Nick was a rookie, as green as a spring leaf on a cottonwood. It had been difficult, but he’d learned to admire the seasoned officer who was eight years his senior and husband to the woman he had thought to wed.
“What brings you here?” she asked, her eyes wary.
He’d put that wariness there. Last Christinas, after a cup of hot buttered rum, he’d kissed her at the mayor’s annual party.
The mayor’s wife had hung mistletoe over every door. He’d resisted temptation for an hour. When he’d run into Stephanie in the kitchen doorway, the mistletoe had been in place, they’d been alone for a minute and he’d given in to the passion that had erupted abruptly, catching him off guard.
So sue him.
“Doogie,” he answered her question.
Surprise flew over her face, then she became wary again. “Doogie?” She sounded suspicious, as if she thought he might be lying for his own nefarious purposes.
“Yeah.” He hesitated to disclose his news.
“If he were hurt, I assume you’d tell me right off.”
“Of course.”
“So he must be in trouble.” She hooked the hair behind her ear with an impatient gesture. Her fingers trembled slightly. “What’d he do this time?”
“This time?”
