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

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Her insight had opened his eyes.

  And that Sunday afternoon, Max was left caring for an out-of-sync two-year-old, and feeling blind as a bat.

  As tempting as it was to just sit at home in front of the television and take the opportunity to introduce Caleb to football, he knew better.

  He wasn’t giving in. Or giving up. They’d find Meri. She’d be back home soon.

  Until then, he had to carry on with his life. Which meant taking his son to the beach as was their Sunday afternoon tradition.

  And maybe some of the inspiration his wife seemed to get from being there would rub off on him, too.

  Caleb sat quietly in his car seat as Max drove. At first Max thought he’d fallen asleep. But when he glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw his son staring out the window, a wide-eyed, serious expression on his face.

  Max wished he could see into his son’s mind. To know what the boy was thinking. To know how best to help him.

  “Sand!” Caleb squirmed in Max’s arms, wanting to be let down, as soon as they reached the section of public beach that had become their regular spot not only because it was next to the playground, but also because it provided the most unfettered view of the beach strip.

  No hiding places, Meri had said.

  “You want to play in the sand?” he asked Caleb, as he adjusted his step to keep his son within arm’s reach. Meri would be holding Caleb’s hand, but it was time for the boy to spread his wings. To find his wings and learn how to use them might be a better metaphor.

  Because Meri kept them clipped and tied? Had she been right, that wise woman who’d so completely stolen his heart? Had she been telling the truth in the letter she’d left him? Had she believed that she’d been holding their son back with her paranoia?

  Had he been so blind that he hadn’t recognized the extent of his wife’s personal struggles?

  Max didn’t think so. Meri was careful. But she also gave in when Max put his foot down. They made a good team, she’d said. “Daddy, sand!” Caleb sat and pounded the ground beside him.

  Though there were many people about, the beach wasn’t overly crowded that Sunday in September. The weather had cooled over the past week and even in the jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts he’d dressed himself and his son in, he could feel the first hint of winter’s chill.

  With a glance around, checking out the few people scattered across the beach and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he sat.

  “Cassie, cassie,” Caleb said, pounding the ground again. Castle. The toddler wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t running and throwing sand and showing other signs that a happy, extroverted two-year-old might show, but he wasn’t whining, either, which was a blessing after four days of little else.

  So Max dug his hands down to damp sand and did his best to form enough of a lump to satisfy his son that they had a castle in front of them.

  “This is the moat,” he said, finding the sand sifting through his fingers therapeutic, and enjoying his son’s rapt attention. He dug a trench around the lump he’d built. “There’s pretend water running all around it here, see?”

  “Fish!” Caleb said loudly enough for people several yards away to hear, as he picked a small piece of debris out of the sand at his side and threw it into the trench.

  “Good!” Max said, smiling. “Fish are good. I think we need more.” He struggled to hold the smile. He wasn’t feeling it. But if collecting beach debris in a small circle around a nondescript mound kept his son occupied, he’d gladly force a lot more than a smile.

  And would gladly stay on the beach as long as Caleb was happy there, too. The sand and the breeze, getting lost amongst people who were milling around as though the world was perfectly normal, was far better than facing a closet full of clothes that weren’t being worn and wondering if they ever would be again.

  “Mama!” As though Caleb could read his father’s mind, he cried out.

  “Mama’s not here,” Max said. “Look! A big fish. Maybe we should name him.”

  But Caleb had no interest in the sea bark he’d just unearthed from the sand. The boy was staring across the beach. “Mama!” he said. Not as though he was lonely. Or asking for her.

  But as though he saw her there.

  Following his son’s gaze, Max saw a big group of people walking together as they crossed from the parking lot to the beach. A family reunion of some kind? Maybe a church group?

  But he didn’t see any sign of Meri. Still.... “Mama!” Caleb called again, scrambling to his feet to charge off in the direction he’d been looking as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him in the sand.

  On his feet in seconds, Max was already at a run as he settled Caleb on his hip, holding the boy with both arms. “Where, buddy? Where did you see Mama?”

  “Mama!” Caleb’s call turned into a cry. “Mama!” he screamed.

  They’d reached the edge of the beach and were approaching the bushes that separated the sand from the sidewalk.

  “Mama!” Caleb cried again, tears in his voice now. He hitched himself up and down on Max’s hip as if he was riding on a horse, kicking Max in the groin as he did so. “Mama!”

  They rounded the corner to the parking lot. A couple was exiting their car. A mom was strapping a baby into the infant seat in her van.

  There was no sign of Meri. Or even anyone with her height and build.

  “Mama gone,” Caleb said and started to cry. “Mama gone.”

  Not even the allure of French fries could console the little boy as Max drove home, no closer to having any answers or insights into his wife’s disappearance.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DAY FIVE.

  I saw Caleb today. After standing around in the parking lot for an ungodly length of time, the reunion organizers finally decided everyone had arrived and moved the group toward the beach.

  I took a couple of steps and there he was, playing in the sand with his father.

  He saw me, too.

  He stood up. Ran toward me. Oh, God, I almost lost it. Almost ran to him.

  But his father picked him up and I slipped away before Max spotted me. I can’t think about my husband, about how much I am hurting him. I won’t have the strength to carry on if I let myself dwell on Max.

  He’s a man who shoulders the cares of all those around him. He’s the calm in the storm. Reason in the face of drama and fear. He’s loyal and kind and honest.

  And he has a heart that is as vulnerable as mine. Sometimes I think more so because mine has been hardening since I was twelve. His hurts are far newer.

  I know how sensitive he is about losing his wife. I know how close he came to not asking me to marry him for fear that he’d lose me, too, like he lost Jill. And, for now, I’ve made his worst nightmare come true. I’ve left him.

  But it’s the only way we’ll ever have a chance of being happy together. If I ever get back to him. If he’ll be willing to take me back if I make it out of this alive.

  Getting Steve out of my life is the only way Max will ever be able to live without the constant threat of losing me. He doesn’t understand Steve. He doesn’t want to believe that we’re in danger. I know differently.

  If I don’t stand up to Steve, he will return again and again. And someday he’ll kill me. And maybe them first just to make me suffer for choosing them over him. Which is why I had to go. So he’d see that I didn’t choose them, either.

  Jenna stopped, staring at the wall in front of her. Her hands trembled and she drew in shaky breaths. She should never have left the Stand that day. It had been too soon.

  She wasn’t ready.

  Thankfully her housemates had been out when she’d returned a little over an hour before. She’d avoided the sidewalks that meandered through the property and walked between buildings to get to their bung
alow and then come straight to her room.

  They’d be expecting her to have dinner with them, though. They’d raided the shelter’s pantry together the evening before, choosing what they needed to prepare a Sunday dinner together. Each of them had chosen a favorite recipe. Her potato casserole, Carly’s parmesan chicken breasts, and Latoya’s dirty pudding, minus the gummy candies because they couldn’t find any.

  And while the pantry was there for anyone to take what they needed, Jenna had left money in the donation box from her stash of cash after the other two had left the room. Too many women needed the free facilities offered at the shelter—those who had no money whatsoever because their abusers controlled all of their income. And while The Lemonade Stand had enough to go around, she wasn’t going to take from someone who was more in need.

  Now she wished she’d never agreed to the dinner. How on earth she was going to keep up appearances, or be of any benefit to the two women sharing her space who were hurting so badly, she had no idea.

  Jenna was strong. Capable. Tonight she just felt broken.

  She’d slipped through the buses as soon as Caleb started toward her that afternoon. She’d run as fast as she could without drawing undue attention to herself. And as she’d rounded a corner, heading toward a bus stop she knew of on the next block, she’d tripped and fallen. She was fine. Picked herself up. But not before a police officer had seen. Stopped her and asked if she was all right.

  She’d tripped because she hadn’t seen the uneven crack in the sidewalk. Because she hadn’t been able to see much of anything through her tears....

  She’d been a fool to go.

  And couldn’t afford to be a fool twice.

  * * *

  “YOU NEED TO EAT, son.” Max sat at the kitchen table with Caleb on Sunday evening. He’d only been able to convince the toddler to sit at the table when he’d moved the booster seat to Meri’s chair.

  “Mama,” Caleb said, his eyes big and moist as he glanced at Max. It was the only word the little boy had said since leaving the beach.

  “You love hamburgers and French fries,” Max said, pointing to the opened paper wrappings spread in front of Caleb. He had his own disposable container in front of him. And took a bite of a sandwich he didn’t want, chewing on the cardboard-tasting substance, to convince his son that it was the thing to do.

  And wondering when Chantel would call. Another day had passed. With Meri still out there.

  “After you eat, we’ll go get ice cream,” he said, pulling the words from the pool of desperation settling in his midsection. He’d been an active dad from the moment of Caleb’s conception—eagerly sharing in every part of raising him that he could, from bringing him into the world to midnight feedings, first bath, first everythings....

  He’d thought himself fully capable of every aspect of parenting.

  He’d never realized how much Meri had done without him even being aware. He’d never realized quite how much her nurturing had filled up their son—and him, too....

  He jumped when his cell phone rang, eager for news about his wife.

  And then he saw who the caller was.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said, answering because he knew she’d worry if he didn’t. “How was your week?”

  He patiently half listened as she told him about her doctor’s visit, about his father’s refusal to slow down, and about a country-and-western show they’d seen at the clubhouse of their San Diego resort community the night before.

  “How are Meri and Caleb?” she finally got around to asking the question he’d been dreading. He’d been debating what to tell his elderly parents, who’d taken Jill’s death hard. Because they took anything and everything hard if it had to do with their only son—a late-in-life baby that they’d never expected to have.

  “They’re fine,” he said. “Busy as always.” And what in the hell was he going to do if she asked to speak with Meri?

  “Did you go to the beach today?”

  “Yes.”

  Caleb was quietly eating his French fries now. Wonder of wonders. So Max continued, “We built a castle and then found things in the sand to serve as fish for the moat.”

  “Any new words this week?”

  Not unless you considered hearing Mama screeched over and over again with heartache. “No.”

  “Dad and I would sure love to see you,” she said next. “It’s been a couple of weeks since you came down and kids grow up so fast....”

  “We’ll talk it over and set a date,” he said, hating the lie, and the desperation pushing him into it. If he told his folks Meri was gone, it would be an official part of their family memories.

  He wasn’t ready for that.

  Or for the myriad questions her disappearance would raise. He didn’t have any answers to give them.

  He couldn’t afford to worry about them worrying....

  “I know Meri has a client going in for surgery this week and she’ll want to be around afterward, for as long as the recovery takes.”

  “Is that the throat therapy she was talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that little girl needs her,” his mother said. “Just let us know and we’ll put you on the calendar,” she said, easily enough.

  His mother, who would be eighty on her next birthday, generally went with the flow. Unless she was worried.

  And after her bypass surgery the year before, he didn’t want to worry her at all.

  He asked about his father. Watched Caleb eat over half of his hamburger, squeezing the bun between his fingers, and getting mustard on everything he touched.

  Meri knew how to get mustard stains out.

  And the internet would know, too.

  Telling his mother he loved her, sending love to his father, and promising to share their love in return with Caleb and Meri, he rang off, hoping against hope that he’d bought himself another week before he’d have to answer to his mom again.

  And that by the time that week had passed, his wife would be home to do the answering for him.

  * * *

  RENEE WASN’T IN Jenna’s group counseling session. Nor was she in the class Jenna had signed up to take on the basics of business management, in an attempt to appear to be a normal resident. Then again Renee didn’t have a husband with his own medical practice who might benefit from the class.

  The older woman didn’t have a child who stuttered and so wasn’t involved in Jenna’s first professional sessions at The Lemonade Stand, either.

  And yet, over the next couple of days, Jenna saw as much of Renee as she did anyone else, her housemates included.

  Renee sought her out. And maybe she sought the other woman out, too.

  “I’m worried about the bruise,” she told her new friend as they sat together at the kitchen table in Renee’s bungalow. Renee had three other women living with her, but they had all gone to a fashion show at the main building on Tuesday evening, leaving Jenna and Renee to have a quiet dinner of salad and iced tea together.

  Renee glanced at the expanding mark on her forearm, one that was turning a dark red instead of changing to purple and yellows as it healed, and shrugged. “It’ll heal.”

  “I think it’s more than a bruise,” Jenna continued. It was the first time she’d seen Renee without sleeves, and only then because the bungalow was warm enough that Renee had taken off the cardigan sweater she’d had on that day. “Brian did that to you, didn’t he?”

  Renee’s silence was answer enough.

  “When?”

  The other woman poked her fork around her salad. Jenna suspected then that the bruise wasn’t healing because it was new.

  “You saw him on Sunday, didn’t you?” She’d looked for Renee after her stint at the library. And again later that evening when, after her dinner with Latoya an
d Carly, she’d felt like taking a walk on her own. The other woman hadn’t been on the grounds as far as she was aware.

  Dropping her fork in her bowl, Renee laid her arm on the table with obvious care and looked up. “I called him,” she said. “I asked him if we could meet together with the head pastor of our church.”

  From what she’d read, when it came to abusers and victims, attending counseling sessions together wasn’t recommended. At least not in the beginning.

  “And?”

  “He agreed to meet. I told the pastor what had been going on in our home and asked him to help us.”

  Jenna held her breath.

  “Brian responded with contrition and shame and asked for a sabbatical from the church so that he could enter an abuse counseling program immediately.”

  Renee shifted in her chair and Jenna’s eye fell on that bruise at the same time her heart sank.

  Renee’s eyes had filled with tears, though the older woman wasn’t crying. Jenna recognized the look. The pain was there, but buried so deeply it couldn’t be released.

  “Thinking that all was well, the pastor left. We’d met in the public park by the amphitheater downtown and....”

  She could have filled in blanks. “There were people around. I thought I was safe....”

  “What did he do?”

  “He grabbed my arm.” Renee was looking at Jenna, but her arm jerked on the table, as though remembering....

  “He told me that I was a traitor to him, to his father, and to God. He said that I was evil for trying to come in between him and God’s work. And he said that if I didn’t want to end up in a home for the elderly, I would never, ever embarrass him like that again.

  “He also told me that I could expect to pay all of his bills until he could get back to work.”

  Glancing at Renee’s arm, Jenna asked, “He did that just by grabbing your arm?”

  Renee gently covered her bruise with her free hand. Did she think she could make the problem disappear if she could just stop feeling the pain?

  Did Jenna?

  “He gave my arm another hard squeeze for each accusation.” Renee’s throat caught on the words. “I felt something snap. I think he may have cracked the bone.”