Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good ManPromises Under the Peach TreeHusband by Choice

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The little boy did everything he could to please his aunt and when she took sick while he was in his teens, he kept her home, caring for her with patience and kindness until the day she died. Some thought he’d done so for the money he’d inherit when she was gone. But he’d known they were paupers. He’d cared for her himself because he’d known what kind of state facility she’d have ended up in if he hadn’t kept her home.

  She’d opened her home to him. It was his duty to keep her there. God—and his aunt—had taught him well.

  Shortly after his aunt died, he met a girl who’d lost her family tragically young. They hit it off from the very beginning because they had in common that sense of not really belonging, of having been denied the core foundation of a stable home life. And they married as soon as she was out of high school.

  He was good and patient and kind to his wife, understanding her tender heart. He just did not tolerate any actions from her of which he did not approve. He was boss of the house now. And with that responsibility came the right to make those in his home follow his rules. By whatever means.

  He provided. So he got to rule. And sometimes ruling meant that you had to teach those in your care about the dangers of hell’s fires.

  He didn’t burn anyone. Remembering the burn-related nightmares of his youth he would never do that. He just used his words, and later his hands, to save his wife from falling down the devil’s hole.

  He did so with God’s blessing. Using scripture to manipulate and control. To instill fear. Using hard work and dedication to family as proof of his own good heart.

  And...

  “Are you okay, dear?” Jenna jumped in her seat at the sound of a voice just over her shoulder.

  “Yes!” she said, quickly minimizing the screen. “I’m fine, why?” Still lost in the story she’d been reading, she wasn’t sure if the sixtyish woman was the same one who’d been behind the desk when she came in, if she even worked there at all, or was a resident like herself.

  “You were trembling so hard I could feel you,” she said, pointing to an adjoining cubicle perpendicular to the one at which she sat.

  The woman had presumably been on a computer as well, and since the computers were reserved for residents, that would make her one.

  “I’m sorry,” Jenna said now. “I guess I’m a little cold. They’ve got the air conditioner blowing pretty hard in here.”

  It was. But she hadn’t noticed that either, not until then.

  “I’m Renee,” the woman said, nodding.

  “I’m Jenna.”

  “I know. I saw you at dinner last night. You hardly touched a thing.”

  “I wasn’t very hungry.”

  “You also don’t act like this is your first dance. You aren’t looking lost, or trying to figure out the way things work.”

  She shrugged.

  “It’s not mine, either.”

  If the woman needed to talk, she’d listen. There were others milling around. A woman a few tables over, with an opened encyclopedia and a pad of paper and pen in front of her. Another sitting in an armchair reading a magazine. And someone else reading from a tablet. There were a couple of women huddled together across the room, too.

  Women seeking solace through conversation with other women was part of the healing process.

  “You’ve been here before?” she asked Renee, as the other woman pulled her chair around and sat down.

  “A few years ago. I’d just put my husband of forty years, Gary, in the hospital with a shove that ended up paralyzing him.”

  Renee couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds. “You hurt him?”

  “The police said it was self-defense. So actually did Gary when he realized that he could lose me if he lied about it. He’d been about to throw me down the stairs. I shoved against him, purely a terrified reaction on my part, and it caught him off guard at just the right moment and he went down instead.”

  It wasn’t a story she’d heard before. She could only imagine the guilt mixed with fear and confusion that one would carry in such a situation. She’d gone through years where she’d believed Steve’s anger was her fault. If she didn’t nag as much, ask so many questions, if she didn’t need so badly to be loved, if she hadn’t pissed him off at just the wrong moment, if she’d been more understanding of the very real pressures of his dangerous job....

  Renee shifted and it dawned on her that she wasn’t meeting the woman on the “outside.” Renee was back in a shelter for abused women.

  “You said your husband was paralyzed. Was it only temporary, then?”

  “No.”

  “But he hurt you again?” They were sisters, in a place where secrets were safe.

  “No, he didn’t. He went through counseling, and once he saw what he’d been, he was truly sorry. He met with his group every week, long after he’d completed the program, just to make sure he never slipped back. He said that since he hadn’t seen the abusiveness in himself to begin with—you know the lies they tell you, they sometimes believe them, too—he wasn’t going to take a chance on having that happen again. He really did love me....”

  Renee’s eyes filled with tears. And Jenna was at a loss. Hearing about an abuser who was also one’s true love wasn’t...something she’d ever been privy to before. Or even considered.

  “But...you’re here....”

  “Gary died last year, just after Christmas. Our son, Brian, who’d gone through a divorce shortly before his father was hurt, had moved home to help me take care of Gary these last few years. He... It was hard for him, to see his father so helpless....”

  Uh-oh. Jenna’s heart lurched.

  “...the counseling, he was all for it at first. I mean, he’d known the back of his father’s hand a few dozen times himself. But later...he said the weekly meetings, they turned his dad into a wuss....”

  Wanting to stop what was coming so Renee wouldn’t have to relive something she shouldn’t have had to endure the first time, Jenna held herself back with effort.

  Renee wouldn’t be talking to her if she didn’t need to do so. And sometimes, worse than having to tell your story when you didn’t want to, was having someone tell you to stop when you did. “Brian’s ex-wife, at the time of the divorce, had claimed that he was too much like his father. Brian said she was crazy, that she was just trying to make his life miserable, to make him pay, because he couldn’t put up with her lying anymore. He’d caught her with another man. We believed him at the time. I knew my son. He’s the assistant pastor of our church....”

  Renee stopped and her chin trembled. So did her lips. But her eyes didn’t waver as she looked at Jenna and continued, as softly as before, “The first time he raised a hand to me, I died a bit inside.”

  A mother shouldn’t ever have to face such an atrocity. No woman should ever have to face abuse period, most particularly from a trusted loved one, but from your own child? From the human that you grew and bore and raised with unconditional love? Your own flesh and blood?

  In the moment, Jenna felt incredibly lucky.

  “You’re here because Brian’s been abusing you?”

  “That’s right. It’s been... I’ve been here for six weeks, and really, I should be ready to go, but....”

  “Are they pressuring you to move on?” Most places had to. With money constraints and regulations that didn’t allow them to house residents long-term; shelters could only do so much.

  “No! They don’t do that here. Not unless you aren’t trying to help yourself. But even then, they help find alternate housing. The Stand isn’t funded principally with government money. There’s some, but it’s primarily funded by investments and private donations and a lot of the work is done by volunteers, so they aren’t as tied to generic regulations as most places.”

  “So you can stay until you’re
ready to go....”

  She nodded. “I just... He’s still a pastor at the church where he grew up. At the church where his father and I grew up. I’m just... I...” She glanced at Jenna’s computer screen.

  “I was standing behind you for a bit before I called attention to myself. I... You were shaking and seemed upset, but you were engrossed and I... The article you were reading... I...”

  Understanding dawned. She’d been reading about the abuser who used religion to keep his victim under his control. “You want to help your son.”

  With tears in her eyes, Renee nodded.

  “You realize you can’t help him if he’s not willing to help himself.”

  “Are you telling yourself the same thing?”

  “I’m... My situation is different.” She couldn’t let the other woman assume...she couldn’t be responsible for setting an erroneous example. She was willing to die in this quest. She couldn’t be responsible for another woman doing so. “I’m not trying to help anyone else.” The words finally came to her. “I’m trying to help myself by gaining an understanding of...the other side.”

  Renee studied her for a long minute. And then, standing, she nodded.

  “Please.” Jenna reached out to her and was surprised when Renee took hold of her hand. “I’ll... We can study together, if you like. We can learn together. I just...promise me one thing....”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you won’t put yourself in a position that will allow your son to hurt you again.”

  “I can promise you that I won’t have false hopes where he, or my ability to help him, is concerned. But he’s my only child, Jenna. I can’t promise never to be alone with him again.”

  It wasn’t what she’d asked. But she understood that it was all the other woman could give.

  And that made it enough.

  For now.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHANTEL HAD TO leave on Saturday. She was on shift that evening. Max didn’t want her to go. While she was there, working with him, he felt as though he was actively on the way to finding his wife. He was actually doing something to bring her back home to him.

  He’d continue his online searching—people were more open on social networks. They showed their true colors. And as Chantel had said, abusers with ego problems could be drawn by a social network’s platform to brag about oneself.

  Cops, she’d warned, were less likely to use online social networks, however, because they were so aware of their traceability.

  She’d promised to continue investigating from her end, though she was treading carefully until she found out how the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department viewed Steve Smith—as one of their own that they would protect, or as one who’d betrayed them all by making a mockery of the badge.

  From what she’d been able to determine so far, it was the former.

  “What about that list of contacts I gave you?” he asked her while Caleb sat on the living room floor engrossed in a kids’ show on TV. He and Meri didn’t let the television babysit Caleb. But Meri had walked out on them and now he had to make do the best he could.

  Ashamed of the thought he moved a little closer to the front door, while still keeping his young son in sight.

  “Dead ends.”

  Chantel was doing what she could. So was he.

  And so, he was certain, was Meri.

  It would all work out. They were going to be fine.

  “I’ll stay on this, Max,” she told him. “Between the two of us we’ve spoken with anyone she had contact with recently. I’ll continue making calls.”

  “Thank you.” But... “Something made her run.”

  “I agree. I’m just not convinced it was the dangerous threat you assume it was. She might just be a runner, Max.” Chantel’s voice was soft. “You married a woman with serious issues. They aren’t her fault. I’m not saying they are. Based on the little bit we’ve been able to put together this weekend— her aloneness in the world, her marriage to an allegedly abusive detective from LVMPD, a man who is now a private investigator and has hunted her down on four different occasions—she couldn’t help but have issues. Some women, when they start to feel emotionally pressured, or to feel as if they’re going to fail, run. It’s their way of avoiding the pain of disappointing those they love.”

  He wanted to push her out the door and close it behind her. Permanently. “You’re saying they’re motivated by their fear of retribution to get out before they disappoint,” he guessed, because the rational part of him knew there was some truth to her statement.

  Just not with Meri. She’d never be afraid of him.

  “Sometimes. Or maybe it’s like she said, leaving Caleb at day care was too much for her. You said that she’d fought you on that issue, that the amount of time she left him each week was getting less and less. And she knew you weren’t going to allow her to get away with it.”

  This wasn’t about their son’s day care. He and Meri had talked about that issue. And he gave in to her whenever she was at the point of panic.

  Because he really did understand.

  Just as she understood that he had a bit of a sensitivity where losing his wife was concerned. She wouldn’t just up and leave him.

  “If your relationship was exactly as you say it was, if Meri is all you believe her to be, then why would anything make her run?” The question came quietly, but also with grave seriousness. Chantel, a couple of inches shorter than he was, somehow made it difficult for him to look away. “If she trusts you as much as you think she does, why didn’t she come to you with whatever was bothering her? Why not talk to you about it before she took off?”

  “Because Steve wouldn’t let her,” he said, engulfed with tension anew. “It’s what I’ve been telling you for three and a half days. He was there even though you didn’t see him on the tape. He’s got her, Chantel. I’m certain of it. For the reasons you just stated.”

  And what if Meri wasn’t running because of fear for her own life? What if another part of the letter she’d written was the truth? The part about protecting Caleb? What if she was somehow protecting her son from Steve Smith?

  It didn’t really make sense. She’d call the police if that was case. She knew he had an “in” here, just like Steve used to have in Las Vegas.

  But what if Meri was in the grip of irrational fear, if she wasn’t being logical? Then there might be truth to the idea that she believed she had to run to protect them. “We have to find him.”

  The brown eyes gazing up at him shadowed, and Chantel grasped his arm, holding on tight. “We will, Max. Even though I’m not sure you’re right about Steve, or Meri’s reasons for leaving, your conviction makes me think you might be. I’m going to keep looking for him. I’m going to find her. For you. I’m not going to desert you. I promise.”

  He nodded. And, choked up with too much emotion for one calm guy to handle, held on a little too long when she leaned in and hugged him goodbye.

  * * *

  DAY FOUR.

  I have the bungalow to myself tonight. They’re having Saturday night at the movies up at the main building and both Carly and Latoya went. They wanted me to go with them. I just couldn’t. I can’t be a part of their temporary family unit. I have a family.

  Whether we ever see each other again, whether Max would ever forgive me for leaving like I did, with no warning, whether I’m successful in my attempt to have the threat of Steve permanently gone from my life or not, able to return to Max and Caleb or not, they are and will always be my family.

  Jenna stopped writing, read the words on the page. And stared at the wall in front of her desk. On it hung a picture of an elegant, old-fashioned boudoir—a woman’s place with upholstered eyelet furniture and soft roses in a vase.

  And it occurred to her that she liked
her room. Felt safe there. And couldn’t remember a time when she’d really felt safe.

  They said that secrets were safe at The Lemonade Stand. Maybe some were. Some probably weren’t.

  She was a secret.

  And needed desperately to be a safe one.

  I made a decision today. I know that my purpose, to keep my boys safe from Steve’s ugliness, to keep them apart from the sense of being hunted like animals, from the fear of being hounded, gives me strength. Meredith Bennet gives me strength. She is the me I was born to be.

  And while I was talking to Renee it occurred to me that if I am to succeed in my mission, I must keep alive the parts of myself that drive me. I must keep Meredith alive.

  Jenna is a necessary part of me. And Meredith is even more so. Beyond this journal. Beyond my own mind.

  I, Meredith, am a three-dimensional human being with a full life. And if I am going to keep her spirit alive, I have to be allowed to fly. At least a little bit.

  Renee is a mother. Her selfless love for her son touched a chord in me and I know that it was no mistake that she found me today. She needs me. I got that right away. But I needed her, too.

  I must stop Steve’s stalking, put an end to the threat he poses to me and my family. But I must also keep Meredith’s life alive where I can. It is the life that I am willing to die to preserve.

  Tomorrow, I am going to make a phone call to the mother of the three-year-old patient I’ve been working with. Someone I can still help, someone from Meredith’s daily life who can coexist in Jenna’s. Olivia’s mother, Yvonne, is a survivor. She will settle for as little as I can give her.

  And then, maybe later, if I can figure out a way to do so undetected, I will check in on Max and Caleb. I will watch over my men.

  For now.

  And for eternity.