Found: One Marriage

by Laura Parker

  He had been off duty, trudging toward FAO Schwarz to buy a birthday present for his partner’s four-year-old, when traffic screeched to a horn-blaring halt in the intersection he was waiting to cross. Flipping open his badge, he had waded into the tangle of taxis and curious onlookers and announced that he was a policeman.

  He had noted in appreciation the slide of honey blond hair veiling the Good Samaritan’s face and golden brown shoulders bared by her sundress as he would have the assets of any attractive woman. Then she had looked up at him, her eyes as cool and inviting as damp moss-dappled earth, and he had felt the top of his head lift right off.

  He never remembered exactly what they said to one another nor why they were still chatting after the ambulance had taken the unfortunate woman away. Afterward, he could only recall her wide disarming smile so unlike the usual skeptical, prove-it-to-me smirks of most city women. She had even touched his forearm, the briefest of touches, before she had finally turned away.

  He had returned to the precinct to announce to Hunter, his partner, that he had just met the woman he was going to marry.

  Halle Hayworth-he’d gotten her info for the record—was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Maybe not the most beautiful woman, he tried to explain to friends and colleagues, anyone who would sit still long enough to listen to his litany of infatuation. He had seen more spectacular women—or maybe he hadn’t. Once he saw Halle he was no longer an objective surveyor of women. He only knew one thing. She had to be his or he would die.

  “Dumb jerk!” he muttered. After two long sorry years he was still mired in the hopeless rage of bitter regret.

  She, on the other hand, had remarried so quickly he knew how Hamlet must have felt about his mother’s marriage to his uncle. ‘Unseemly haste’ might be an old-fashioned phrase but he was an old-fashioned guy. Toward the end, when he knew he was losing her, his jealous desire had sometimes made him say and do stupid things.

  Sometimes he thought he must be a little mad to be still clinging to the memories of a misguided marriage his friends had warned him was a mistake from the start. Hadn’t he just promised himself when he thought it was Lauren Sawyer at his door, that he was due a change of emotional climate? Only a masochist would willingly step back into an entanglement that had ruined his life.

  Yet he had been an investigator too long. His mind wouldn’t let go of the facts surrounding Halle’s sudden reappearance in his life.

  Forget the crap about her lost memory. He was pacing his living room trying to decide why she had come all this way. After all, no one accidently dropped into Gap on the way from Manhattan to anywhere. What reason could she possibly have for coming here?

  And why did she look so scared?

  He hadn’t missed her frightened expression. He had been a New York City policeman seven years. He had dealt with people in the throes of every kind of emotional turmoil. There had been too much of it in her face for someone in control of her feelings. That catch in her voice was new, too.

  Details played over in his mind as he plopped down in his chair and stared at the silent TV. The bandage on her hand bothered him. So did the fact she was not wearing a wedding band. And another thing, the way she stood in his doorway, a little too close, as if she did not just want entry but needed it. She had nearly danced on tiptoe at one point, as if something hostile was at her back. All part of her act? If so, she had become one heck of an actress in two years. He could feel her anxiety through the screen.

  He wasn’t vain enough to believe he was the cause. Even so, he wouldn’t be exaggerating to say she had first looked at him as if he were a six-foot chocolate sundae, complete with whipped cream and a cherry, and she had the only spoon. That was before he had refused to play along.

  He rubbed a hand briskly back and forth across his bearded face. Too many emotional spikes for reality. Too many mood swings. She was trying to hide something, cover up something. The only trouble was, after two years of silence, he could not begin to guess what it was that might be upsetting her. Unless it was...

  Daniel Shipmann. That was the name of her new husband. He even vaguely remembered meeting him at one of those posh, self-absorbed bashes frequently hosted by the exclusive Manhattan auction house where Halle worked. Tall, lanky, a Harvard man with straight blond hair cut to form parentheses along either side of his chiseled face, Shipmann had reminded him of a high-fashion model: all surface, no substance. He might have guessed the bas—the man would be trouble. Then Halle announced that Shipmann was her new partner at work and he knew it.

  She hadn’t joined in as usual his game of poking fun at the other guests on their way home. It was rare enough he got the time off to accompany her. It made him feel closer to her to make jokes that distanced them from the people she worked with every day; rich people, powerful influential people who considered him, a detective first class, little more than a grunt on the public payroll. That night she had defended Shipmann, said he was different. He came from money, yes, but she had known him since fourth grade. He was one of the good guys.

  Good guys. That left him no room to criticize.

  But it left him plenty of room for silent rage and jealous sniping, and other decidedly Neanderthal responses to the man who became Halle’s regular after-hours escort to business functions when he couldn’t make it. Halle’s response to his jealousy was to patiently wait each time for him to cool off. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust Shipmann. But how could he complain about Halle’s conduct when he regularly drew assignments with female detectives in some pretty tricky scenarios? He couldn’t. But he didn’t like it one bit.

  Was Shipmann the reason she had come here tonight?

  That thought shot Joe to his feet with a surge of perverse satisfaction. If Shipmann had hurt her, was threatening her, he would cheerfully disconnect every bone in his upper-crust body.

  He moved toward the door. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to launch right into that one. Maybe she had needed first the reassurance that he would help her. Could she have doubted that? Of course she could! He had not said or done anything right that last month they had been together. Still, she had come all this way to find him. The least he could do was open the blasted door.

  Latent embarrassment made him move to the window first, just to make certain she was still there.

  He saw her jump and whip around as he moved aside the curtain, as tense as a jackrabbit sighting an eagle.

  Then she turned to face him, a challenge in her expression.

  He smiled and reached for the dead bolt. She had been waiting for him to cool off. Good old Halle. That, at least, he might have predicted.

  He was stunned to open the door and not see her standing on the other side. It took only a second but his heart was double pumping by the time his gaze changed trajectory and he saw that she had not run away, but collapsed.

  Chapter 3

  As Joe gathered his unconscious ex-wife into his arms he had no rational reason for smiling. Touching her, feeling her weight as he lifted her from the porch floor into his arms, made her real for him in a way no amount of staring at her through a rusty screen could.

  Seconds earlier he had nearly burst through that screen instead of opening it when he had spied her sprawled on the porch. Years of first-aid training had taken hold as he bent over her. Her breathing had been shallow, her pulse thready and slow yet there were no other signs of physical distress. It seemed she had simply fainted. He decided that she might be reacting to the day’s heat though it was not that warm now. Or maybe the emotional trauma of their meeting had effected her more than he suspected.

  He had never known Halle to faint but two years could change a lot of things. Perhaps her tolerance for stress had changed drastically since their divorce. Perhaps she had recently been sick, or not eating right, or maybe the accident she had mentioned was real. Or maybe he was fooling himself. Maybe this was another trick.

  He glanced down into her very still face. It would ha
ve been hard for her to fake the slack stillness of her features or the clamminess of her skin. He, on the other hand, was sweating from a first-class case of nerves.

  He shifted her higher against his chest so that he could reach for the door with a free hand. The scent of baby powder drifted up from the cool skin of her shoulders. He didn’t want to think about how good it felt to hold her. He didn’t want to remember the feel of her body pressed to his, didn’t want the silky drift of her hair across his arm to remind him of how he had often begged her to let it grow. She had refused, saying short hair was all the rage. Had fashion changed or had she simply changed her mind...or had she done it to please Shipmann?

  Every muscle in his body tensed at the thought. That’s right, he goaded himself. He needed to keep thinking of her husband. It might help him get some perspective on the situation, find a dispassionate position. Once he had been a cop accustomed to weighing people’s words against their actions and possible motives. So far, Halle hadn’t told him anything he could accept as the truth. No reason to go off the deep end over her reappearance in his life. No reason to be anything else than a detached, disinterested party.

  He was halfway across the living room headed for the most comfortable spot in the house when it occurred to him that Mrs. Shipmann might not respond well if she came to in her ex-husband’s bed. Not that he might do any better. Seeing her lying on his grandmother’s patchwork spread might snap his control. He’d spent far too many sweaty nights tangled in his sheets dreaming about how she would feel if she was there beside him, beneath him, as he slid into her welcoming embrace. No, definitely not a good idea.

  He made a strategic swerve and changed his direction toward the sofa. The living room was at least neutral territory.

  Too bad his body wasn’t listening.

  By the time he bent his knees to lay her on the sofa, his heart had formed a conga line with his stomach and gut. Or maybe it was the birthday cake and beer doing the cha-cha. Either way, an antacid was definitely going to be his late-night snack.

  She moved a little when he released her. Her arm came up, across his back, not really clutching at him, but all the same it checked his impulse to draw away. He knelt down beside her, uncertain of what to make of her gesture. It couldn’t mean anything. She didn’t even know who held her.

  Eyes still closed she sighed softly and he smelled lemon-flavored candy on her breath. She had always liked lemons, loved to jab a peppermint stick into a fresh lemon then suck the juice out. It made his jaws ache just thinking about it, but he’d always made certain there were lemons and peppermint sticks in his apartment after they met.

  “Halle? Do you hear me? It’s Joe.” He touched her face. God. Her skin was softer than he remembered, and so cool. He noticed, belatedly, a dark shadow edging up from under the wing of dark hair dipping over her right temple. He reached over and snapped on the nearest lamp. His gut jumped.

  It was a bruise, all right, a big ugly purplish-greenish discoloration that ran from her right eyebrow all the way into her scalp. She had tried to cover the bruise with makeup but the only reasonable explanation for his having missed it before was his own shock at her unexpected appearance and the yellow light cast by his porch bulb.

  He gently lifted back her hair and saw at her hairline a half-healed contusion into which five delicate stitches had been sutured.

  He drew back his hand with the revulsion of one who had accidently uncovered someone else’s nasty secret, uncertain he wanted truthful answers to the police procedure-type questions forming in his mind. She had said she needed his help. He wasn’t so certain now that she didn’t need help. But his? No. That couldn’t be. Not now.

  He patted her cheek gently, bending closer as if he could see between her lashes. “Come on, baby. You’re okay.”

  Her eyes swept open and stayed open, no fluttering or tentativeness like in the movies. She was staring up at him and there was only six inches between them. She smiled, a beautiful smile of welcome that made his heart do a back flip.

  Her arm, trapped now between his own arm and side, flexed at the elbow. He felt her fingers touch him lightly between his bare shoulder blades. That touch burned. He held his breath.

  He doubted she had ever understood precisely what her touch did to him, how it went past every guard of ration and reason an adult male naturally developed to keep himself whole against the onslaught of living in the world. After a while the barrier stayed raised even with those he loved. A man needed his space, his place to be whole and wholly himself. But when Halle touched him the guard dropped—hell, disappeared. There was no holding back, no separate place for him to be. Like a snail removed from its shell, he was all soft and fragile and exposed when Halle touched him. Damn. It still happened.

  His body tensed in protest against the slide of her fingers down his spine. He thought he must be wrong about the cause of the sudden widening of her eyes. That intensified green in those gold-brown depths had once meant she was beginning to be aroused. Now it must be a trick of the light. Her softly parting lips must just be a reflex of relief. Her eyes drifting to his mouth couldn’t be a signal welcoming the possibility of his mouth on hers. She couldn’t really expect him to just bend closer and kiss her and forget two years worth of hell.

  He wasn’t that easy. He wasn’t still in that deep with her. He wasn’t—

  He jutted his chin out a fraction, testing the waters.

  She didn’t move. That was her first mistake. If she wanted him to beg, she should have protested, pushed at him, turned her head away, done anything but stare up at him. It was all the encouragement he needed.

  In a swooping gesture his mouth claimed the lips he had dreamed about for so long he thought he had made up or embroidered the power of their reality. But his dreams had not lied. The feathering of her warm breath across his lips, the taste of her secret self, the shape of her softer, fuller lips still fit his to perfection. He dug an arm under her shoulders to lift her close as his free hand moved up to cradle her face to his.

  Desire jolted him as he dragged her mouth open with his. He knew it was crazy. This was outlawed bliss. But he couldn’t stop. Not yet. He was too needy, had been dying by inches for months. Kissing her was like experiencing Saturday night and Sunday morning rolled into one. Halle had the power to lead him into wild abandon and still save his soul. How could he ever let her go when all he wanted was to get even closer?

  She moaned. Or maybe it was only a sigh. The spare inarticulate sound of distress got through.

  As he drew away, a smile lifted just the edges of her lips. Faint color summoned by his kiss warmed their surface... then she remembered. The sick lost look that had been in her eyes as he closed the door on her returned.

  Reality check!

  He saw her hazel irises swimming in twin pale oceans of surprise. “What were you—?”

  “Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” he lied baldly as he drew back. Sweet Grief! What had he thought he was doing?

  A frown puckered her forehead. “What happened?”

  Joe sat back on his heels, trying to casually withdraw the arm that had been supporting her shoulders. “You fainted.”

  “I never faint,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

  He pulled back farther, easing his butt down onto the rug, but his gaze never left her face. She had kissed him back, dammit! He wasn’t going to take all the heat. “Was this just an act to gain entrance?”

  “I’ve never been that desperate.” But her voice quavered just enough to call into question her statement on this occasion.

  “Whatever you say.”

  She reached up to smooth her hair back from her face. She threaded her fingers through it, forking it up and away from her head onto the sofa cushion beneath her. As she did so, the underside of her upper arm was revealed. He stared at the smooth flawless skin. He knew it was very sensitive. Once he had liked to kiss her there and other even more sensitive places.

  With a coughing sound
like that of a man trying to dislodge a crumb from his throat, he looked away. He hoped his expression didn’t reveal his thoughts for they were speeding readily along on their own raunchy course.

  Dangerous thoughts. More dangerous because she was looking at him again, her eyes wide with speculation of their own. Only there was now the dispassion in her gaze that he wished accompanied his own.

  “Tell me about your injuries.” He pointed at her brow and then her bandaged hand. “What happened?”

  She winced, as if it pained her to even think of it. “I told you before. was in an accident. The bus in which I was traveling collided with an eighteen-wheeler just outside Tyler almost two weeks ago.” She glanced at him, “You heard about it?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Oh.” She made the word sound very small. “It must have been on TV and in the papers.” When he shook his head a second time she said, “Well, it was a pretty bad accident. I’m told the truck driver was killed instantly. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel, crossed the median and struck our on-coming bus. We were forced off the highway into a ditch and then flipped over. I was on the impact side.”

  Joe’s stomach jumped. She might have died! He only said, “That so?”

  “Yes, that is so.” she said sharply. “Matter of public record, Mister Guinn.”

  Anger made her sit up. As she swung her legs off his sofa her skirt caught under her hips, hiking up her hem to midthigh. Those legs settled a few inches from his right bicep, their proximity causing Joe to notice how long and firm and tan they were. Where had she been to get a tan in March? She didn’t believe in baking under artificial light. Or, had that changed too?