Read Online Between Love and Duty by Janice Kay Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t allowed to have minors in the car with him unless an adult was also along. He’d apparently been showing off by speeding. They’d left the road and rolled several times before coming to rest in a large drainage ditch. “The girl?” Jane asked.
     
    Duncan shook his head. “The boy. The girl’s still hanging in there.”
     
    “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.” She made a face. “When I have a lousy day, it means my receipts are down or an employee called in sick. Not that someone died.”
     
    Duncan took a bite and didn’t say anything else for a long time. Somehow she knew he intended to, however, so she waited.
     
    “The boy’s mother is a dispatcher. She was at work when…” He stopped.
     
    “Oh, no,” Jane whispered again.
     
    “Oh, yeah.” He sighed. “It really brings it home. You know?”
     
    “I can imagine.”
     
    He told her about how hard the responding officers were taking it, about how the car had been nearly flattened, about calling the boy’s parents himself. And then he talked about the proposed budget and about the maddening inability of city council members to grasp the needs of the police department they took for granted. His voice grew hoarse. Jane ached to reach across the table and take his hand in hers, but she kept hers on her own side of the table.
     
    We are not friends, she told herself, and had to repeat it. We are not friends.
     
    Uneasiness stirred in her. She hardly knew Duncan. They were strangers sharing a pizza. So how had this conversation morphed into something so…intimate?
     
    They were both startled to discover Hector and Tito stood beside their table.
     
    “I’m taking my son home now,” Hector announced.
     
    Jane smiled, but injected steel into her voice. “I’d better do that, Señor Ortez. Tito, why don’t you say good-night now?”
     
    Hector’s nostrils flared. “I can’t drive my own son home?”
     
    “Your visitation is supervised. You understand that.”
     
    “I’m a good father. I don’t deserve to be embarrassed in front of my son.”
     
    She sympathized. This whole process must be humiliating for a man of any pride, but at the same time the arrogance in his stance and voice made her wary. They were still in the first week. Did he understand what he risked if he chose to be uncooperative?
     
    “If all goes well, it’s not for long,” she reminded him, very conscious of Duncan across the table. He sat utterly still, but she knew without touching him that every muscle in his body was rigid.
     
    Hector said some uncomplimentary things in Spanish, but finally left Tito with Jane and Duncan and stomped out, his displeasure evident in his body language. Tito waited, head hanging low, while Jane got a box and put the leftover pizza in it.
     
    She offered it to Tito. “Why don’t you take it home. The last thing I need is leftovers.”
     
    His head came up and she saw that she’d offended him. “It’s not my pizza.”
     
    “Oh, I shouldn’t have bothered with the box, then. I don’t want to take it home. Duncan, do you?”
     
    He shook his head. “I’m having both lunch and dinner out tomorrow. Tito, are you sure you don’t want it?”
     
    Tito hesitated, suspicious, but finally grabbed the box. “If nobody else wants it. Yolanda and Mateo might like some.”
     
    Jane knew they were his small niece and nephew. She couldn’t remember the baby’s name, if she’d ever heard it.
     
    “Good,” she said with a big smile, and laid a hand on Tito’s shoulder as they walked out, Duncan silent beside them. Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he accompanied them to her car, waiting until Tito had gotten in and she’d opened her door.
     
    “Nicely done,” he murmured in her ear, so close she felt the warmth of his breath and heard him more as a vibration than actual voice.
     
    “Good night, Duncan,” she said firmly.
     
    He bent to look into her car. “When’s our next visit?”
     
    Tito shrugged. “Papa