“Not good enough. You were safe then because Rico was behind bars. Now he’s not, and that changes things. Besides, remember what I said earlier? That I was able to take Conor with me in his own car seat because none of the car doors were locked? You can’t be that lax, even after I go back to Chicago. Rico has friends. And they have friends. This may not be over for years.”
“Great. Just what I wanted to hear.”
He still wasn’t letting the basket move. “Whether you want to hear what I have to say or not, you have to listen. And listening means doing what I’m asking, like locking the car doors. Can we agree on that?”
Her aggravation and anxiety levels were growing by the second. Wasn’t there anything she could say that would make him listen? This was her life they were talking about, and she wanted to stay in control. “But Alex, I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Nobody in Safe Harbor is that concerned about security. It’s a very small town.”
Shaking his head, Alex finally let go of the cart. He wasn’t letting go of his ideas, though. “Yeah, it’s a small town, all right. With a very small police force, I’ll bet. And a large tourist population.”
“So?”
“So nobody would notice a stranger like Rico or the guys he hangs out with if they came around looking for you. The Safe Harbor force has gotten our bulletins, but they don’t know how you fit in. The force here will have to be educated on what to look for, and chances are nobody around here is ready. Maybe I can make some money while I’m here, giving security seminars. Reimburse the county for some of these expensive groceries.” He illustrated his point by putting two half gallons of ice cream into the cart. It wasn’t the store brand, either.
Holly gave up. Arguing with him only made him more determined. “All right. Fine. I’ll lock the car doors. And make sure the dead bolt is on at night in the apartment.”
“And screen your phone calls. You do have caller ID, don’t you?”
The man was relentless. “Sure. Whatever.” Whatever was going to get him out of her hair the fastest. And if that meant agreeing with him on all his much-too-cautious safety notions, so be it. They were coming up to the checkout counter now and she knew there wasn’t enough money in her purse to pay for this heaped cart of food. So arguing with Alex at this point would be counterproductive.
But then, Holly was beginning to get the idea that arguing with Alex at any point was going to be fairly useless. He was a man used to getting his way. She might have plenty of experience arguing with stubborn little boys, but Alex with his courtroom training was a whole different kind of adversary.
Didn’t the woman ever get tired of arguing? Alex picked up as many plastic sacks of groceries as he was sure he could take in one load and straightened up from the car trunk. If he took any less she’d only load herself down, sure that she needed to pull her weight in every endeavor. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever met anybody this stubborn. His aggravation probably made him close the trunk a little more forcefully than he should, but he had to get rid of some frustrations somewhere.
Independence was a wonderful thing, especially in a situation like the one Holly found herself in. When she didn’t have anybody around it was good that she was self-reliant. But Alex was pretty sure self-reliance could be carried too far. Why not take the help when it was available and offered? Holly seemed to push him away for no reason. If positions were reversed and he normally had a family to support on as little as he knew she was getting by on, he’d welcome a little help once in a while. Did she really expect a week or two of pork chops instead of hot dogs would spoil those kids for life?
What he remembered about Holly told Alex that she hadn’t always been this way. The way Kevin had talked about Holly, she’d seemed a little more willing to compromise, to give in, to share the burden with others.
Toiling up the apartment-house stairs, arms laden with groceries, Alex flashed back to his own childhood again. He remembered how routine his mother’s life and his own had been during those long periods when his dad was at sea. Not that routine was bad, especially for little kids. They seemed to thrive on it. He knew he had, but life alone with his mother had somehow often slipped from routine to much too quiet.
The celebrations that took place when his father came home along with the rest of his ship’s crew always made the old man seem like an even more special individual. And come to think of it, the celebrations also helped to mask, for years, how drab their lives were when he was away. What Jim Wilkins couldn’t see didn’t exist, and Alex knew his mother made sure that his father saw just what she wanted him to when he was on leave.
The door to Holly’s apartment was wide open when he reached her floor. He knew she was probably only seconds ahead of him, but still her carelessness aggravated him. Hadn’t they just talked about this? He went through the open door and pointedly kicked it closed behind him without saying a word, making enough noise to remind her to shut it next time.
“I heard that,” she called from the kitchen. “Real subtle.”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” he called back.
Her face was flushed when she turned to meet his entrance into the kitchen. “What did you want me to do, shut it in your face so that I’d have to come unlock it again when you knocked? Your expensive ice cream would melt on the countertop while I did that.”
“Better melted ice cream than unwanted visitors.” Alex put down his pile of bags on the kitchen table. “I shut the trunk, too. It’s more work, I know, when we’ve got another load of groceries to bring up here. But you have to stop announcing to the world what you’re doing, Holly.”
She looked at him from her place sorting canned goods from the sacks. “I know all that, Alex, really I do. But can’t you realize what this does to my life?”
Her violet eyes held traces of harried fear. The expression made Alex want to put an arm around her, find a way to drive away the concern that wrinkled her smooth skin. “I know we weren’t really any safer before you came to town. But I could fool myself into thinking we were. That all the ugliness had been left in the big city along with the constant memories of Kevin’s death. That maybe, just maybe, I could raise my kids in a normal environment where I wouldn’t have to fear for their safety, and my own, every waking moment.”
It was the sadness in her voice that finally pushed him to action. Alex crossed the small kitchen and put his arms around her, knowing she’d fight the embrace but needing to offer it anyway.
“I’ll do anything I can to make it better,” he told her, meaning every word of it as he wrapped his arms around her thin shoulders. Surprisingly she didn’t struggle, but leaned against him. The action caused a thrill of shock to course through him, compounded by the myriad thoughts that crowded his brain at the same time. What made her smell so good—mildly floral with a hint of some kind of spice? Who knew that her dark hair would be so soft, with her head fitting so well under his chin as he pulled her closer?
Merely offering comfort to another human being had never caused feelings like this in him. For once Holly was accepting his help, and it was nearly killing him to give it to her. He wanted to pull back as if he’d touched hot metal instead of the pliant woman who nearly melted in his arms.
“You mean well,” she murmured. “And I want to believe you, really I do. It would be so easy if I could believe you. But I know I can’t. What I need is some kind of superhero, Alex, and as nice a guy as you are, you’re no hero.”
For
