Harper Allen - Protector With A Past

She was only five, and she was frightened. Her mother always had a glass in her hand and fell asleep downstairs with the television all fuzzy late at night, and when her father looked at her it seemed like he couldn’t even see her. Sometimes she was scared that if she held out her own hand to look at it she’d be able to see right through it herself.

She needed somewhere dark and safe to hide—somewhere even if she was invisible, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Somewhere so dark that everything was invisible and she could just wrap her arms around her legs and sit without making a sound and no one would be able to find her….

She moved like a sleepwalker out of the bedroom and down the hall to the side door that opened onto the garden where her mother had sat and pretended to read all those years ago, and as she passed by the broken redwood chaise that she’d never bothered to remove since she’d come back here to live she thought she smelled Shalimar, her mother’s favorite perfume.

She shivered. She kept moving.

Somewhere dark, somewhere that was darker than the night and darker than the woods behind the house. Somewhere a little girl would be able to hide for as long as she wanted. Somewhere small and safe. Somewhere no one would look except another little girl who’d once gone looking for a safe hiding place.

Her feet, still clad in the backless slippers, moved through the wet grass as surely and steadily as if they were following a path they’d worn down themselves. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was shallow.

Find the child. Save the child. Be the child….

She went deeper still, losing herself in the child she’d once been, and then even deeper, searching out the fear and pain of the tiny redhead who’d stared at her with the still blue gaze of a doll. In the silence of her mind she could hear a small, frightened whisper, almost inaudible.

Be the child. She concentrated, and the whisper became clearer….

The boathouse.

Julia stood like a statue on the wet lawn, her mind still operating on two levels and with both levels possessing the knowledge she needed. Only by letting herself become the child she’d once been had she been able to think like the little girl she was searching for, and she was certain now she knew where to find Lizbet. But Lizbet didn’t need the help of another child—she needed the adult Julia to protect her. It was time to set aside the fearful little ghost who’d entered her for the last few minutes, time to struggle free from the faded memories that this recent reliving had brought to life once more.

It felt like she was tearing her soul in two.

The past was powerful, and its ghosts were the most powerful of all, despite their pain and vulnerability. The child she’d once been always came to her freighted with guilt and loneliness, but when it was time to abandon her again she clung to the adult Julia with a strength born of fear, terrified to be cast into the shadows and forgotten until the next time.

And even though Julia knew that the frightened little personality was no ghost at all, but merely a long-ago echo of her own self, she felt as if she was turning her back on a real child—a child who had haunted her all her life for some purpose that she’d never been able to understand.

A convulsion ran through her body, and she felt the desperate presence receding into the furthermost corner of her mind with all the other memories that she never allowed herself to examine. She felt as if she’d just run ten miles, and her limbs were shaking with exertion.

“She’s nowhere around the house and I checked the woods as far back as the fence line.” Cord melted out of the grayness, King—the present King, not the long-gone one from her childhood, Julia thought with a moment of shaky confusion—at his heels. There was just enough light now to make out the tortured expression on his features and the straight, grim line of his mouth, and she put her hand lightly on his arm. Her fingers were still trembling, and her voice was unsteady.

“She’s in the old boathouse.”

The hope that flared in his eyes was instantly tempered with apprehension, and she forestalled his reply. “I know. She couldn’t have picked a more dangerous place—I’ve been meaning to have it pulled down since I came back here. You’re going to have to let me go in alone, Cord. I’m lighter than you are and those rotten floorboards might take my weight long enough for me to get her out of there.”

“No. I’ll go.” His tone brooked no argument, and her hand tightened on his arm.

“She was running from me, Cord! If you bring her back she’ll only try again. Don’t you see—she has to know that I came for her. She has to know that I want her enough so that I’ll never stop looking for her until I find her, and that just won’t happen if you deliver her to me like a package. She already trusts you—now I have to prove to her that she can trust me.” She hesitated, and then added in an undertone, “Besides, I’m her guardian. She’s my responsibility, too.”

She was using his own words against him, but she felt no compunction. She couldn’t wipe out the mistake that had ended her career—the mistake that no one knew about but herself and a dead man—but she could try to bridge the chasm she’d so unthinkingly created between herself and the child she’d vowed to protect.

She owed it to the best friends she’d ever had. Sheila and Paul had put their trust in her, and she’d let them down. She wanted the chance to make things right again, and her desperation must have shown in her eyes.

“I should know better than to try to talk you out of something you really want.” Cord glanced at the dark shape of the old boathouse with resignation. “It didn’t work when you were Lizbet’s age, it didn’t work when you were sixteen and wanted to ride my motorcycle, and it’s not going to work now, is it? But be careful. I’ll be standing right outside, so if you think the damned thing’s going to go, call out to me.”

He turned to the path that led to the boathouse and then paused. Swiftly he pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth. Just as swiftly he released her, his expression unreadable. “Twenty-three months, four days and two hours,” he said tersely. “You were my addiction.”

He held her shocked gaze for the space of a heartbeat and then gave her an ironic half smile. “Walking out of your life was the one thing I never should have let you talk me into. I’m not going to let you do it a second time.”

He lightly traced the corner of her mouth, still soft from his kiss. Then he turned and set off quickly down the path. After a startled moment she ran after him, her thoughts a chaotic whirl.

He hadn’t changed at all, she thought in frustrated confusion as they hastened to the water’s edge and the rickety building that ran alongside the dock. He’d always had more confidence in her than she’d had in herself, always seen her as strong and capable and supremely in control of any situation. Tonight had been the first time a crack had appeared in his golden-girl image of her, but already he seemed to have forgotten the messy vulnerability she’d displayed in front of him.

After she’d sent him away it had taken long enough for her to reach some kind of equilibrium in her emotional existence, as sterile and empty as that existence had been. How was she supposed to cope if he came back into her life again?

The door of the boathouse was slightly ajar, and Cord carefully pulled it open wide, wincing as it creaked on its rusted hinges. Shutting her mind to what had just happened between them with an effort, Julia narrowed her gaze and looked past him into the darkness, but it was almost impossible to see anything inside. She knew that the floor ran around the perimeter of the building and in the middle was the long-disused boat slip—in actual fact, a large square opening in the floor to the lake below. She could just make out the oily ripple of water where the floor abruptly ended, but there hadn’t been boats kept there for years.