LITMIR.BIZ

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      She didn’t really want one.

      Days off led to introspection, which led to…

      Nothing that she needed to be concerned about tonight.

      “Okay, so tell me why that’s your favorite movie,” she said, smiling at her companion.

      He shrugged, leaving the remote on the table beside him, the DVD flashing its welcome screen. “It’s funny.”

      “And?”

      “How do you know there’s more?” His glance was intense again—just as it had been during the movie. Her stomach tightened, whether from reaction or dread, she wasn’t sure.

      Maybe both.

      For a thirty-five-year-old woman who spent her days trying to protect the hearts of damaged children, she was embarrassingly inexperienced when it came to matters of her own heart.

      “I may have known you only a few months, Mercedes, but for a cop who’s been around long enough to make detective, you’re surprisingly empathetic. That’s an amazing feat. One that only a man with some depth could manage. So, show me the depth. Why’s that your favorite movie?”

      The wine was talking. Ordinarily, Audrey would never be so bold. Especially not with a man she actually liked. More than as just an acquaintance. A peer.

      Were they actually becoming friends?

      She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a personal friend.

      “I don’t know.” Ryan didn’t look away as many men would have when faced with a touchy-feely question. “Maybe because I’m a control freak and the idea of having God’s power is so compelling I have to keep coming back for more?”

      She studied him. Thought about what he said. Shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because you aren’t power-hungry.”

      “How do you know?”

      “You let me handle the Markovich kid.”

      “You’re his guardian ad litem. He knows you. Trusts you.”

      “And you were the arresting officer. Jurisdiction was yours. Most cops I know would not have stepped back.”

      “I still arrested him.”

      “You took him to the station to keep him safe.”

      “I charged him.”

      “He beat up his stepfather. He had to know there were consequences for that.”

      Scott Markovich was safe now. For now. He was one of her “jobs” for tomorrow. She was making a visit to the fifteen-year-old in detention.

      “How do you do it?” Ryan’s gaze was piercing. Personal.

      A combination that was dangerous to her budding sense of awareness around him. The tight jeans he was wearing and close-fitting polo shirt, stretching across the breadth of his shoulders, didn’t help.

      Or maybe it was just that she’d always been a sucker for light hair and green eyes.

      “How do I do what?” She wanted a little more wine, but didn’t want to be too forward.

      And she needed to go. Get home to her house. To her nice big pillow-top mattress and down pillows and lose herself in rejuvenating oblivion for a few hours so that she could get up tomorrow and start all over again.

      “How do you see all the stuff you do—kids like Markovich who’ve been sexually abused by people in positions of authority over them—and be able to get close to them? To suffer with them? How do you even get up in the morning, knowing that’s what you’re going to face?”

      How could she not? was the better question.

      “How do you?”

      “I don’t get close. I see them for a few minutes and my job is done. And I’m not always dealing with the little ones. I work with adult victims, too.” The room’s dim light cast shadows over his frown.

      “Still, why do you do what you do? Face danger every day—dealing with the toughest to handle crimes.”

      He seemed to give her question serious consideration. “I don’t have a good answer for you. I’ve wanted to be a cop since I was a kid, never asked myself why. I just know that if I can make a difference, I have to try.”

      There was more to his story. Audrey didn’t succeed at her job without being able to read between the lines, to read people, to hear what they weren’t saying as much or more than what they were. And she didn’t succeed without knowing when not to push.

      Ryan Mercedes was a private man. An intriguing man. A man who had the looks of Adonis and the heart of Cupid.

      A man who was occupying her thoughts so often he was making her uncomfortable.

      “How about you?” he asked. “Why do you do the work you do?”

      For maybe the first time ever, she considered telling someone the whole truth. Considered.

      “In 2003, in Ohio alone, there were 47,444 substantiated cases of child abuse and or neglect. More than seven thousand of them required the services of a guardian ad litem.” Hide behind the facts. It had always been her way. People couldn’t argue with facts. And win.

      “I understand the need for child advocates,” Ryan said. “Remember, I see the results of child abuse and know full well that there are far too many children in this city who need someone on their side, someone looking out only for them and their best interests. But that’s not what I asked. I asked, why you?”

      His perception surprised her. Or maybe not. Maybe her heart already knew that this man was good for her. That he was personal. In a life that was anything but.

      She opened her mouth to tell him about the volunteer guardian ad litem program. The hours of training it took for one qualified ad litem to emerge. The need for legal advocates sitting alongside children in court to help clear up the confusion that stole childhoods.

      And about the few of them, the paid lawyer ad litems who, in addition to looking out for the child’s best interests and supporting the child, also offered legal advocacy.

      She opened her mouth and said, “I…had a…rough childhood.” And in spite of the heat in her cheeks, the discomfort attacking her from the inside out, she couldn’t seem to stop. “Other than my parents’ divorce, things looked fine on the surface. Middle-class, well-dressed mom with a college education and respectable job. No one could see the things that went on underneath the surface, behind the closed doors of our home. And trying to get anyone to listen, when things looked so picture perfect, proved impossible.”

      His frown deepened. “She hit you?” He sounded as though he’d like to hit her mother back, and Audrey almost smiled. Too many years had passed, the wounds had healed, and still it felt good to have someone come to her rescue.

      She was falling for this man.

      “No,” she said. “She suffers from depression, though she refused counseling and has never been treated. Sometimes she’s fine, but when the darkness descends, watch out. She’ll turn on me without warning. Her way of loving is to control. If you do something to displease her, she’ll take away her love. And anything else she’s providing that she knows you want.”

      “Such as?”

      “When I turned sixteen, she gave me a car. I needed it to get to the university where I was attending class as part of a special high-school-student program. From that point on, she used that car to control me. From the classes I took, the people I chose as friends, the jobs I applied for, the clothes I wore, the church I attended, even the boys I dated. If I didn’t do as she suggested, she’d take away my car. Or my college-tuition money. Or the roof over my head.

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