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He summoned his strength and squeezed Rafe’s hand one last time. “You take care of my Josie. Patrick, too. This’ll be hard on them. They need someone to depend on.”
Rafe nodded. “I’ll be the big brother they never had. Until you get better.”
“You’ll…need family, too.”
“You’re my family. Now shut up. Save your strength.”
“Got to say this… A father worries…” Rafe wouldn’t know. The man who’d sired him hadn’t worried about anything but his booze and keeping child services out of his hair. Years of practice shut down the memories of pain and anger and betrayal that tried to rear their ugly head. Aaron needed him. His bloody fingers were scratching blindly across his belt. “Where’s my badge?”
“Here.” Rafe plucked the scuffed-up badge off the pavement and put it into his hand before pulling them both onto Aaron’s chest. “Your badge is right with you, Sarge. Feel it?” The blue eyes drifted shut. “Sarge! Stay with me!”
They opened again. “Take care of my girl. Such a good heart. She has…crush…on you.”
“I know. With you watching over my shoulder, nothing will ever happen.”
“No, I…damn.” A shallow rale stuttered through his chest.
“Aaron?”
“Watch Patrick…he’ll fight ya.”
“I can handle him.”
His eyes opened and closed in lieu of a nod. “I love them. Tell ’em that.”
“I will.”
“You’re…better man…than you think.”
The tears chafed beneath his eyelids. “Quit talking like you’re—”
“Promise me…protect them.”
And then Aaron’s scrappy boxer’s fist went slack. His eyes glazed over and he was gone.
“I promise.”
Chapter One
November—Ten Years Later
Rafael Delgado wore jeans, a badge and black leather well.
As he uncrossed his long legs and pulled away from the black heavy-duty pickup he’d been leaning against in the nearly deserted parking lot behind Kansas City’s Shamrock Bar, Josie Nichols got a glimpse of the gun he wore on his belt, too. She smiled, unafraid, her pulse doing its customary flutter at the broad shoulders and fluid stride of the man who’d waited in the dark to walk her to her car nearly every night since she’d taken the job tending bar at her uncle’s tavern four years earlier.
But then Rafe had been looking out for her almost ten years now, ever since he’d made a promise to her father—his first partner at KCPD—on the night Aaron Nichols had died.
Josie locked the Shamrock’s back door and shook off the sadness that tightened her shoulders at the memory of her father’s senseless slaughter in the line of duty. She could hear the assurance of booted footsteps crunching on the asphalt behind her. The shadows wouldn’t be so scary tonight. The loneliness she lived with wouldn’t prick so sharply. Chivalry was not dead. At least not in Rafe’s book. She tucked the keys into her backpack and fixed a teasing smile on her face before turning to meet him.
“You know, Uncle Robbie installed a security camera back here. And the city put in an extra light. You don’t have to wait and walk me to my car after closing every night.” It was hard to miss the lack of an answering smile on his ruggedly sculpted features. “Especially when you’ve put in a long day like this one.”
“It’s no trouble.” The flat response was a recitation of duty. Her heart squeezed at the exhaustion she heard in his gravelly tone, and she simply fell into step beside him when he took her elbow and walked her toward the beat-up Ford compact parked beside his shiny, supersize truck. “You warm enough in this?”
“I’m fine.”
“I can buy you a new winter coat if you need one.”
“No, you won’t. And I don’t.”
“Damn it, Jose—are you going to argue every little thing I say to you tonight?”
“Whoa.” Josie planted her feet, forcing him to halt. What the heck? She tipped her chin to try to decipher the sharp bite to his tone. “What’s going on?”
A white cloud of breath formed in the chilly November air at his chest-deep sigh. “Sorry. I’ve got too many things running through my mind to be civil, I guess.”
“Rafe?”
“Just walk.”
She might have imagined the slight tremble she’d felt in his long fingers before they wound around the sleeve of her insulated jacket and resumed their pace across the parking lot. But she wasn’t as concerned with the thinness of her thrift-store jacket as she was with her friend’s cryptic remark. Rafe looked tired. It was that bone-deep kind of weariness that seeped into the soul and indicated a man who had seen and endured more than he should.
Although his stern face remained a mask just above her line of sight, Josie could see the signs. She was the kind of woman who noticed subtle details and read others the way most folks read a book. That talent came in handy working nights as a bartender, and she hoped to put those same skills to work once she completed her nursing degree next summer. Her senses were even more finely tuned when she cared about that person.
And Josie Nichols had cared about Rafe through a teenage crush, the loss of her father—a man they’d both loved—and the bond of adult friendship. In some ways, she was closer to Rafe Delgado than she was to any other person on the planet. But he’d made it clear his heart was off-limits to her, and so she’d buried those feelings of infatuation that had matured into something much more profound now that she was a twenty-five-year-old woman.
Except for times like this—when the hour was late and the night separated them from the rest of the world. When they were alone. When Rafe was hurting and the self-avowed loner needed someone and she knew she could help.
Josie could guess at the pain shading his amber brown eyes. She’d seen the tragic story played on the news over and over that evening. She’d listened to the sketchy details he and his friends on KCPD’s SWAT Team One had shared when they’d come in to drink a beer after this afternoon’s deadly, heartbreaking standoff against one of Kansas City’s most violent gangs. And then, before they’d had any real opportunity to decompress from the stress of the day, his SWAT team had been called away to the scene of a bomb threat to help calm a restless crowd who feared a serial killer had struck again.
Rafe had every reason to be in a mood. An innocent boy had died today. And while Rafe and his team had saved dozens of lives, it was the one life he’d lost that stayed with him. She’d heard the speech before. The first time was the night ten years ago when Rafe, little more than a rookie patrol cop himself, had come to the house to tell Josie and her half brother, Patrick, that their father had been mowed down in the street by a group of bank robbers in their getaway car. He’d glossed over the fact that he and her father had stopped the armed thieves, protecting bystanders on the street and recovering hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen money. Instead, he’d sat on the couch between her and Patrick, with barely a tear leaking from the corner of his red-rimmed eyes, even though she knew he felt as though he’d lost a father, too.
Rafe was thirty-four years old now, but little had changed. Saving lives was doing his job—losing a life was personal. But that damn pride and noble code of honor he lived by kept him from grieving properly. Kept him from dealing with the rage and frustration and guilt that must be eating him up inside.
“Rafe, stop.” She halted beside his truck. She couldn’t keep her hands to herself when