Father Christmas Page 24

  “I do. It’s my job.” Another bottle flew through the window, followed by gales of obstreperous laughter. The bottle failed to reach the street, but landed in the snow with a dull thud. “Go inside and close the door,” he commanded. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Fear nibbled at her. Why did she have to go inside and close the door? Was it so dangerous to break up a teenage party that she needed to be shut behind a protective wall, locked in behind a door? “Maybe I could go with you,” she suggested, wishing she didn’t feel so frantic—or at least wishing she knew why she was feeling frantic. “I know Andy. I could talk to him.”

  “Go in the house and stay there.” The words were terse and blunt.

  “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

  “I’m going to my car to get my gun, and then I’m going to talk to your good neighbor Andy.”

  His gun? He had a gun in his car? He’d driven her home in a car with a gun in it?

  Her heart pounded. Her mind spun. She recalled the first time she’d seen him, when he’d worn a gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket. She recalled telling him she didn’t like guns.

  He was a cop, and cops used guns. It didn’t matter that she loved him. All that mattered was that he had a gun in his car and he was going to use it.

  Before she could say something—before she could even find the right words to say—he had nudged her across the threshold into her house and closed her door, leaving her alone and filled with dread.

  Chapter Sixteen

  SHE STOOD AT THE WINDOW, unable to drag her gaze from the disaster unfolding outside. She watched John walk down past the row of parked cars until she could no longer see him, and she watched him come back into view, sauntering down the sidewalk until he stood in front of her townhouse, his back to her as he scrutinized the noisy townhouse across the street. He looked no different to Molly, but she knew he had changed. He had his gun now, somewhere: under his jacket, tucked into the waistband of his jeans, up his sleeve, in his hand. All she could see was the back of his head, his dark, shaggy hair, the smooth surface of his leather jacket and his long legs. But she knew the gun was with him.

  When he didn’t immediately cross the street and raid Andy’s party, she experienced a glimmer of hope that he’d changed his mind. That hope was dashed within a few minutes, when a police cruiser rolled to a silent stop in front of him. Double-parking alongside one of the cars, the driver climbed out. So did the officer in the passenger seat.

  Three cops. Three of them, probably all carrying guns, were going to bust Andy’s party. It was more than overkill. It was hubris—a trio of arrogant policemen squashing a lively gathering of kids. Yes, the kids were too loud. Yes, some of them were evidently drinking, which was against the law. But for heaven’s sake, it was Christmas and people liked to celebrate. Even people a few years younger than the legal drinking age. Did such a situation really require three cops? With guns?

  After a brief conference, John broke from the other two and strode up the steps to Andy’s front door. They waited for him at the bottom of the porch steps, alert and apparently ready to spring.

  John must have rung the bell or knocked, because the door opened. He went inside.

  Her heart pounded. She was scared for him, scared for the revelers—mostly scared that something was going to happen, something ugly, something that would change the way she felt about the man who had given her a foam pit, a charm bracelet, a night of slow, deep lovemaking that she had been convinced was love.

  The door was left ajar, but no one emerged. The two uniformed cops climbed the stairs and entered. And then a thin, wiry young man crawled headfirst through the window’s narrow opening.

  One of the cops emerged from the house, charged down the steps and tackled the skinny kid as he pulled himself to his feet. The cop had to weigh at least sixty pounds more than the kid, who wasn’t wearing a jacket. Molly wo ndered why they were tussling. Couldn’t the cop just escort him to the police car?

  More kids streamed out of the house, along with John and the third cop. Through her window she heard muffled shouts. Some kids tried to run, but the snow slowed them, and John and the other policeman easily snagged them and hauled them back to the front of the house. The kids were lined up and told to press their hands against the clapboard edifice.

  None of them had on a jacket. Molly saw puffs of vapor emerge from their mouths as they breathed. The cops patted them down, one at a time, and Molly shook her head. What on earth did John think these young folks had on them? Weapons? Drugs? Why was he treating them like common criminals?

  One of the youths suddenly reared away from the wall and lunged at the cop who’d been frisking him. The cop tumbled backward into the snow, and then John dove toward the youth, grabbing him, slamming him into the snow and straddling him. In John’s hand was a revolver. She could see it more clearly than the faces of the kids, more clearly than John’s face. She saw John fist his hand around the back of the kid’s neck and twist his head until he could see the gun, just inches from his face.

  The entire scene seemed to shift into slow motion. The party guests turned, dazed and stiff. The cop who’d been knocked down stood slowly, awkwardly. He handed John a pair of handcuffs that had been hooked to his belt, and John manacled the wrists of the kid under him.

  Molly closed her eyes. She couldn’t turn away, but she couldn’t bear to watch, either. She couldn’t bear to see the man she loved brutalizing a drunk teenager. She felt tears slide damp down her cheeks, but she couldn’t even move to wipe them away. She simply let them fall.

  She heard an echo of Gail’s warnings about cops, about how they abused their power and bullied people, how they waved their guns around to make people submit to them. John wasn’t doing to the snow-soaked kid what another cop had done to Gail ten years ago, but he was bullying him, waving his gun around, making the kid submit. He was being nasty and cruel.

  Where was the man who was so concerned about doing right by his son? The man who had created a toy-size foam pit for her? The man who had kissed her in the real foam pit, and kissed her again in his bed, and made love to her with such tenderness that she wanted to weep with pleasure?

  Not here. She was weeping, but that man was not here.

  An eternity seemed to pass before another squad car arrived. The rowdiest of the youngsters were crammed into the two police cars and the more sober of them were sent to their own cars. Glancing at her watch, Molly was astonished to find that only twenty minutes had passed from the moment John had left her front porch to this moment when he stood on it, ringing her bell.

  She didn’t want to let him in when she was so upset. But the intricate gold links of the bracelet weighed on her wrist, her own romantic handcuffs, shackling her heart. She opened the door, stepped back, and let him enter.

  He brought the biting cold of the night in with him. Even after he closed the door, Molly couldn’t stop shivering. Tapping her courage, she lifted her gaze to his face. The iciness in his eyes made her shiver even more.

  He said nothing. She should have expected that. John never said anything unless he was forced to.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice taut with rage and sorrow.

  “They were drinking. Things were out of control.”

  “So? You think college-age kids should be banned from having a few beers on Christmas day?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. If someone breaks the law, I go in.”

  “You didn’t have to go in! For God’s sake, John! You could have just telephoned from here and told Andy to send everyone home!”

  “Some of those kids were too drunk to drive. I couldn’t let them get behind the wheel.”

  “Then why didn’t you leave it to the other cops?” Her voice rose; she was raging. She stormed in a circle around the living room, trying to burn off some of her anger so she could speak more normally. “Why did it have to be you?”

  “I was there.”


  “But it’s your day off. You’re not working today, John. Why couldn’t you have let those other cops handle it?”

  He opened his mouth and closed it. She felt his eyes on her as she paced the room. He seemed to be waiting for her to stand still before he spoke. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he had to say, but she came to a halt near the sofa and glared at him.

  “A cop is always working,” he said quietly, measuring each word. “It doesn’t matter if you’re off-duty. You’re always a cop.”

  She filled her lungs and emptied him. She knew what he was telling her: not just that he was a cop, but that he would never stop being a cop. Not on his day off. Not on Christmas. Not when he was being a father to Michael or a lover to her. He was always, always a cop.

  All right. Maybe she could accept that. But why did he have to be a violent cop? Why did he have to intimidate unruly youngsters with a gun?

  “You terrorized that boy,” she murmured.

  He didn’t retreat. He held her gaze, looking neither defiant nor contrite but stony and sure. “He posed a threat to one of the uniforms.”

  “What?”

  “One of the other cops. He threatened him, he hurt him, so I took him down.”

  Rage bubbled up inside her again. Unable to stand still, she crossed to the fireplace and back to the sofa, praying for her heartbeat to slow down and her mind to speed up. “How—” her throat tensed, and she swallowed to free her voice “—how could that drunk kid threaten anyone?”

  Again John checked himself before answering. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters! You were shoving your gun in his face!”

  “He impeded the officer. He hurt him. He said things I’d rather not repeat. There was a dangerous situation, so I took him down.” He paused, frowning. “You saw me take down that pick-pocket on Dudley.”

  “Yes, but—” She shuddered, remembering the visceral fear she’d felt when John had slammed the pick-pocket into a brick wall. She remembered the fear, and the thrill that tripped along her nerves as she recognized John’s strength and speed, his sheer male power.

  “The pick-pocket was just some stranger,” she argued. “This was my neighbor’s guest.”

  “That punk on Dudley was someone’s neighbor, too, Molly. When kids are doing something wrong, you stop them before anyone gets hurt.”

  “No one was going to get hurt here.”

  “Someone did. The uniform got hurt. And that kid didn’t get hurt. All I did was subdue him.”

  “`With your gun. You subdued him by waving your gun around like—like—”

  “Like what, Molly?”

  Like the cop who had waved his gun at her sister. Like any man who got a firearm in his hand and believed that made him a god. Like the sort of thug from whom John was supposed to be protecting the citizens of Arlington. If someone waved a gun at her, she’d be subdued, all right. Subdued and full of hatred.

  “When a cop is threatened, other cops defend him,” he explained. “It’s a code we live by. The kid threatened a cop, so the kid went down. He’s lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  Maybe the kid was lucky, but Molly couldn’t imagine anything worse than this. John Russo had transformed right before her eyes. He had gone from being a kind, thoughtful man to a robot with limited responses: a cop is a cop. When one cop is threatened, all cops defend him.

  Where was the humanity in him? Where was the kindness, the thoughtfulness, the gentle humor, the fierce passion?

  Not here, not in this tall stranger with dark hair and darker eyes and a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

  “Please go,” she whispered, steering her gaze away from his gun to the window. Through her ghostly reflection on the glass she saw Andy’s townhouse. Despite the lights glowing inside, the house appeared vacant. The party was over.

  John hesitated for a moment, then pivoted and stalked to the door. He wasn’t going to argue with her, or try to persuade her that, beneath his gun-toting automaton image he was still the man she adored. He knew who he was, and now she knew, too.

  She waited to hear the click as the door closed behind him. Then she sank onto the sofa and let her tears come. Around her wrist jangled the bracelet, a gift from a man she loved, a man who seemed to have vanished like a dream.

  ***

  HE SHOULD HAVE expected it. He did expect it. But when it actually happened...it hurt. Bad.

  He’d let himself believe what he and Molly had would continue. If he’d held onto his own understanding of reality, if he’d clung to his experience and refused to accept that this time—this woman—might be different, he wouldn’t be reeling with pain right now. He would have been prepared for this, right from the start.

  He blamed himself, not her. She’d made her promises with good intentions, unaware of the demands of loving a cop. If she hadn’t seen him jump on that punk, that foul-mouthed piece of crud who’d hurled himself at John’s colleague, his knee slamming against the cop’s crotch and his mouth spewing obscenities between vows to bite the cop’s finger off, she would have heard John talk about it. If he didn’t talk about it awake, he would have mumbled about it in his sleep.

  If he hadn’t talked about it, he would have dwelled on it, anyway. She would have taken him in her arms, and he would have had to say, “Not now,” because his head would still have been in the fight, in his colleague’s pain and that sonofabitch’s filthy words. When he was like this, he couldn’t be reached. Not even by Molly.

  Maybe it was just as well that she’d found out now, before the notions that had been swimming in his head for days could find their footing on solid ground. Notions about what a joy it would be to wake up beside her every morning for the rest of his life. Notions about what a fine mother she would make for Mike—and for any other children she might have. Notions that she might have those other children with him.

  It wasn’t meant to be. John had known that going in. He’d simply chosen to forget the reality for a while.

  But now, driving home from her house, his arm smarting where another sonofabitch’s knife had left a scar, his head thudding and his heart aching, he could no longer forget.

  Chapter Seventeen

  MOLLY WAS GRATEFUL for the holidays. She wasn’t ready to have to face John, and once the new year started and the Children’s Garden reopened, she would have to see him. She needed a few days to build up her strength.

  But she resented the emptiness of her time. She had nothing to do, nothing to distract her from her misery. She didn’t even have a Christmas tree to take down. The tree was at the Russo house.

  Everything that mattered was at the Russo house.

  When she closed her eyes, she could sometimes picture herself in John’s home, loving him, playing with Michael, eating breakfast with them, being a part of their lives. Other times, when she closed her eyes she saw only the melee outside her window, the ferocity with which John had tackled that young man and overpowered him, the way he’d fisted his hand around his gun and pointed it.

  She couldn’t spend the rest of her life with a man like that. She couldn’t be a part of that bitter world.

  She spent a quiet New Year’s Eve with Gail and one of her friends from the Public Defenders office. They rented a bunch of frothy thirties comedies starring Cary Grant and Clark Gable, men who didn’t need guns to get the girl—at least not in those particular movies. The three women drank champagne and ate popcorn, and at midnight they turned off the movies and toasted the new year. Molly spent the following day gearing up to go back to work.

  She loved her career. She loved the children, the school, the staff. And she reminded herself of that repeatedly, as if she could convince herself that January second was going to be a day like any other. She clung to the consolation that the second fell on a Friday, so she would have to see John at most twice—once in the morning and once in the evening, if she couldn’t avoid him—before the weekend rescued her. Then
she’d have two days to recover before their next confrontation.

  Then, too, Michael might not come to school Friday. Many parents had decided to extend their vacations through the weekend, and Molly expected a low turnout. Most of her staff had requested a day off on Friday, too. Shannon would be there, and Molly had arranged for a substitute teacher to help out. Arlene was in her fifties, but she’d taught in a nursery school before retiring to raise her own children, and she was patient and creative. She’d worked at the Children’s Garden many times, and Molly considered herself lucky to have been able to hire her for the day.

  Fifteen children showed up Friday morning. Molly divided the children into two groups, one younger and one older. She had some Disney videos on hand, a lot of modeling clay, the foam pit and—including herself—three sturdy adults to keep the children occupied. She was determined to get through this ghastly day. She would survive this, even though Michael Russo was one of the fifteen children present.

  She’d managed to avoid John during the morning drop-off, but she hadn’t reckoned on how hard it was going to be to see Michael, to hear his voice, his delicious giggle, his familiar whine. “Molly!” he shrieked when, after a safe interval, she emerged from the supply room, where she’d been hiding from John, and joined the others in the big room at the end of the hall. “Molly! Hi!” He dashed over to her, his arms outstretched, and she had no choice but to hug him.

  As her arms closed around him, she felt tears gather along her eyelashes. John wasn’t the only Russo she loved. She adored Michael, too. But now she could be only his teacher, not his friend. Not a woman who shared a life with his daddy, who had been in his living room Christmas morning and watched him unwrap his presents.

  The day dragged for her—and it raced by before she had a chance to brace herself for pick-up time. If she once again resorted to hiding in the storeroom when John entered the building, he would consider her a spineless wretch—which, admittedly, she was. But if she remained by her desk, greeting the parents as they came in to get their children, she would have to see him. And the minute she saw him, she would probably start blubbering.