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

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She glanced around, seemingly taking in the full wall of books, the leather chairs with gold braid and cherry frames and the cherry wood desk with one quick look. And then she made a slow perusal of him, up, down and back up again.

  “Did you find Steve’s place?” he asked. He’d been watching the clock all day, wondering if they’d get lucky.

  And wasn’t sure what lucky would have meant: Finding that his wife’s stalker had purchased a home nearby? Or that he hadn’t?

  Lifting one hip onto the corner of his desk, Chantel shook her head, giving her messy blond hair a sexy windswept look. “Not for sure. But maybe.

  “There’s an older one-bedroom home across the street from the beach. It was purchased four years ago and is titled in the name of what appears to be a bogus company. Neither Wayne nor I could find record of it doing business anywhere. The problem is the buyer paid cash so there’s not much of a paperwork trail.

  “I called Diane and she’s never heard of the business, either, but get this, it’s the name of a dog she’s certain that Steve Smith used to own. Pepper, Inc. is the name of the company. Did Meri ever mention having a dog named Pepper?”

  He stood with his hands in the pockets of his cartoon scrubs, rocking back and forth in his high-top tennis shoes, and listened to his heart pound. “No.”

  She’d never mentioned having a pet at all.

  Or wanting one, either.

  “The place sits off by itself,” Chantel continued, her gaze locked on his. “No one was home, and there wasn’t anything to tell us if it had been occupied recently. The outdoor trash can was empty, but he could take the trash with him when he goes. There’s no city service to the place. It’s on septic and a well. The yard is hard dirt, so wouldn’t show footsteps. It’s in decent repair. Blinds were closed. Not a lot of cobwebs or debris on the front step.”

  Max just didn’t know what to do with any of this. He didn’t need more possibilities. He needed answers. Needed to know that the man who’d spent years stalking his wife wasn’t after her now.

  Or needed to know that he was and stop the guy before it was too late.

  “The drive was paved so we couldn’t see evidence of fresh tire marks if there were any,” Chantel was saying. “But we talked to a guy who lives about two blocks away. He said he wasn’t sure who owned the place, but he’d seen someone there a time or two. Said he drove a white pick-up truck. Wasn’t sure if it was rented or not. We showed him Smith’s picture. He said it could be him but he wasn’t sure. Said he was friendly, though. Waved anytime he went by.”

  Was he disappointed? Or relieved? At the moment Max wasn’t feeling much of anything, except lonely. And frustrated.

  Steve Smith had apparently been highly liked in Vegas. By a lot of people. It wasn’t a stretch to think that neighbors could find him friendly.

  “He did say that he’d seen a local work truck there a month or two ago. He couldn’t remember which company, but he remembered thinking that maybe the owner was going to fix the place up and put it on the market. Or rent it. Says it’s a shame to have it sitting there empty so much of the time. He’d been planning to stop and ask the guy if he was interested in selling it to him, but hadn’t gotten around to it.”

  “Now what?” And why couldn’t Chantel have just called him with this news? Shamed at the thought, he reminded himself that Meri’s leaving him wasn’t her fault.

  “Now we keep checking. Wayne’s going to watch the place, ask around some more. And we see what Diane comes up with in Las Vegas. We’ll find this guy, Max. We just might have to be patient.”

  The problem was he’d run out of patience.

  * * *

  JENNA HAD HER speech therapy session with the little boy who stuttered on Wednesday morning. And afterward, she worked with Romar on mouth exercises, retraining the woman’s muscle memory so that when she spoke she didn’t automatically revert to the motions she made without conscious thought.

  Then it was time to see Olivia. At yet another new house. She took the bus, as usual, and watched her back.

  She just wasn’t as sure anymore that she needed to be doing so.

  Thirty-six hours had passed since she’d visited Lila in her suite. A day and a half to assimilate, do some soul searching, and listen to her heart. And she couldn’t be certain what her instincts were telling her.

  If Steve wasn’t after her, if she’d left her life and the home and the man and the boy she loved because her paranoia and fear had snuck in the back door and ambushed her, then she had some very serious repairs to make.

  With her husband. Her son.

  And in counseling, too.

  But as she rode the bus home, and thought about counseling, that didn’t sound right, either. She could recite, by rote, the things she’d be told. The things she needed to do.

  The things she was already doing.

  No counselor could give her the clarity she needed. It had to come from within.

  It just had to.

  If she couldn’t trust herself, she couldn’t trust anyone.

  And so, when the bus made a stop a block from Max’s house, Jenna stood up. The few steps down the narrow rubber aisle of the bus seemed to take forever. She could hear each step she made. Counted them.

  One, two, three, four and she was there. Down one step and then the next. One more and she was on the blacktop. Stepping up the curb to take two steps in the grass and then she was on the sidewalk.

  She didn’t trek through yards. She wasn’t hiding. If there was no one chasing her, she could walk as normally as anyone else would. One foot in front of the other, enjoying the hint of coolness in the autumn air and the sun on her face. The smell of freshly cut grass.

  Looking for the roses that had been planted at the house on the corner of her street, she noticed a new bloom since she’d left. A pink one. Perfect enough to be photographed. Like a work of art come to life.

  And there was the fountain in the Thomases’ yard. It wasn’t on, but then it wouldn’t be. They had it on a timer, set for four o’clock, so the fountain would be running when they got home from work.

  She wondered how the Bradys’ baby, Melissa, was faring. They’d been married fifteen years and she was their first child, born prematurely, but had been doing well.

  And then she was...home. The house was dearly familiar to her. Standing there on the same street with all the homes it had stood amongst since the day it was built.

  Her key worked the front door. And she used it there, not bothering to hide her actions.

  No neighbors were about, not that she was surprised. There were many times that she and Caleb were the only ones home during the day.

  The house smelled the same. Maybe a bit stale. Max wasn’t big on dusting. Nor, she discovered, on cleaning the bathrooms. So she decided to do it herself. It felt odd, being there, a stranger in her own home. Like she was trespassing. She retrieved her cleaning things that were exactly where she’d left them, and scrubbed the toilet and the bathtub.

  And while she was at it, she pulled out the dusting spray and disposable cloths. Might as well take care of that business, as well.

  Max would have his hands full taking care of Caleb on his own. The refrigerator was stocked, but not the freezer. Almost all the meals she’d prepared ahead of time and frozen were gone.

  The dishes were done, dishwasher emptied.

  And the kitchen floor had been swept.

  She was home. But it didn’t feel like home.

  She was moving about freely and didn’t feel free.

  Leaving the bedrooms for last, Meredith entered Caleb’s first. The crib sheet had been changed. His blanket was folded and put on the end of the mattress just as she’d always done.

  She picked it up and the softness clung to her hands, or maybe she clung to it
. As if to a lifeline.

  But in whose life?

  When tears started to choke her, she kissed the blanket, and turned her back.

  “I love you, my baby.” Her voice broke as she left the room. And on the way to her own room across the hall—the one she’d shared with the husband she adored and missed so desperately—she caught a glimpse inside the spare bedroom.

  That was when she admitted to herself that she was looking for a duffel bag. Black. With a shoulder strap.

  It wasn’t there.

  But the bed had been slept in. The pillows weren’t arranged as she arranged them.

  The spread wasn’t on as straight as she kept it, either.

  She fixed both.

  And skipped the master bedroom.

  She couldn’t go in there.

  Because she knew, standing there in that home, that she’d left for a valid reason. She wasn’t losing her mind.

  Maybe things weren’t exactly as she’d thought them to be. Maybe she had issues she hadn’t dealt with.

  But the Steve issue...the threat he posed...was real. Being in the home she’d put together, with the things she’d purchased and arranged, had quieted the confusion in her mind. Because the home she was standing in was a fantasy she’d created.

  Her reality existed only inside of her.

  She didn’t belong where she was. She was a danger to Max and Caleb. Just as she’d known she was.

  And being there was completely selfish. She had to get out, get away, and pray that Steve wouldn’t punish her by taking her visit out on the two innocent Bennets.

  The possibility that had occurred to her days ago, the idea that she’d always known she wasn’t free to share her life with Max, that she’d made promises to him knowing that she wouldn’t be able to keep them, was true.

  It was the cold hard truth.

  She’d wanted to believe Max when he’d told her she was suffering from paranoia. He was a doctor. Not a psychologist, mind you, but he’d had enough medical training to recognize fear-based delusion. She’d really wanted to believe that the threats were behind her. She’d wanted to do what Max had told her to do, which was to move on and be happy. To give them a chance to be a family.

  But she knew Steve. He’d refused to acknowledge their divorce even after the judge had signed it into fact without him. He’d followed her to four states.

  How many times had he told her she was his and he’d never let her go?

  She couldn’t go in the bedroom she’d shared with Max because her time there had been a farce. Based on lies.

  Her lies.

  To herself.

  And to him.

  And the only way she could right this most atrocious wrong, was to go back to Steve. She had to find a way to get him to let go of her, to somehow convince him that he wanted to let her go, or she would die trying.

  She wasn’t sure what her chances of success were. She might live. And she might not. But she didn’t have anything to give to anyone until she rid her life of the demon.

  Maybe she’d hoped, by going home that day, that she’d find out she’d been sabotaging her own life. That she’d prevented herself from being happy out of a sense of misplaced guilt.

  Maybe, in the back of her heart, she’d planned a welcome home dinner for her husband that night—preceded by a phone call of course so he could prepare their son. And so she could be certain she was still welcome home.

  Maybe she’d hoped that she could go back two weeks and pretend that Steve Smith didn’t exist.

  What she’d hoped was that the past two weeks had been a product of her mind playing games with her. She’d hoped that she could end the madness and crawl back into bed with the man she loved.

  She’d let emotion take over, had tried to justify giving up on her plan by telling herself that there was no need to confront Steve. She’d given in to the weakness that would probably always plague her, the need to be cared for, to not be alone. To the temptation to lose herself in the love she shared with Max, at the possible cost of his life.

  No. She could not risk being responsible for the death of another human being.

  And she knew a way to prevent herself from waltzing back into her home and taking up residence again.

  Quickly, so she wouldn’t have time to change her mind, she reached into the bag she’d taken with her, pulled out the little metal tin, and placed it where she knew for certain that Max would find it.

  And then she sneaked out the back door, and went around the shed, through the shrubbery....

  And heard the bushes move behind her.

  Turning, she thought she saw a branch move, but couldn’t be sure. She picked up her pace, taking a different route than usual, cutting through yards she didn’t know, and as she changed course, rounding a three-car garage, she saw a flash of color. Someone had just ducked behind the other side of the building.

  Someone she recognized.

  That was when Jenna stopped thinking and acted. Purely on instinct. Sliding in and out of places that should be too small for her to fit. Sucking in her breath, running without making a sound, climbing a half brick wall and hiding behind it until she heard footsteps go past.

  She waited some more. To make certain they didn’t come back. That he didn’t come back.

  Running, keeping an eye on her surroundings, staying one step ahead, was familiar.

  She’d eluded him.

  For now.

  But she knew who he was. She’d seen his face. And she was done being hunted like an animal.

  Soon, she was going to be stalking him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “MAX? IT’S CHANTEL.”

  He knew that. He might be driving, but his phone was hooked up through a device in the car that let him speak through the stereo. And the stereo displayed the caller’s ID.

  “I’m in the car with Caleb,” he said quickly, glancing in the rearview mirror at his son. He’d just picked up Caleb from day care and the boy had been listless. Was he coming down with something?

  At the moment, he was sucking on his thumb and staring out the window. The whole thumb-sucking thing. They’d broken him of it. But sometime over the past week or so he had started doing it again.

  The first time Max had noticed, Caleb had been sucking his thumb in his sleep as he lay in his crib at night.

  Max had pulled his son’s thumb out of his mouth that night. But he hadn’t bothered to fight the habit since.

  “Okay, got it. Wayne and I split up this morning, to cover more ground,” she said, injecting a note of cheer in her voice, for Caleb’s sake, obviously. “We didn’t turn up anything and I was just getting on the highway to head back to Las Sendas....” She’d taken her bag with her that morning, planning to head home after a bit more canvasing. She was on shift at noon the next day, working three twelve-hour days in a row.

  “But then Wayne called. He’d driven by the house we’d seen yesterday and...Caleb’s there, right?”

  “Yes.” Another glance at his son and he saw the boy looking at him, not quite a frown on his face, but maybe a toddler version of one.

  “Wayne was certain there was a light on inside the house,” she said. “So I turned around and came back. If...well, I didn’t know and...”

  With an eye on the road, Max turned onto his street, and checked on his son once more. Still sucking his thumb, Caleb was back to staring out the window, his head against the side of his car seat.

  He didn’t look sick. Or even unhappy.

  Just far too mellow for his father’s comfort.

  “So...is someone there? At the house?”

  “It doesn’t look like it. I’ve driven past several times. I’m just sitting down the street from the house right now. There’s no sign of
life.”

  “But Wayne thinks he saw a light?”

  “He’s not positive, Max.”

  “But he was sure enough that he called you.” Which was sure enough for Max.

  “Yes. He also just checked to make certain that...everyone he’s been checking on...is okay.” Meaning Meri. “Anyway, I thought I’d hang around here a bit longer and then head your way, if you don’t mind. I’d rather make the drive back to Las Sendas in the morning.”

  “Of course I don’t mind.” He pulled into his driveway, hitting the button to raise the automatic garage door and pulled inside. “Have you eaten?”

  “I can grab a burger.”

  “Nonsense. We’re doing fish sticks and fruit, but you’re welcome to join us.”

  “What time’s dinner?” She sounded as if she was grinning.

  It was four-thirty. “How about six?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Max was certain she would be. And liked being able to be certain. He just wished that his wife would be there, too, to welcome his friend into their home.

  * * *

  SHE’D BEEN THERE.

  “Da, ca. Ca.” Caleb squirmed down from Max’s grasp, and ran straight for the living room, grabbing the remote. He brought it to Max. “Ca,” he said again.

  Max hardly heard him. Meri had been there.

  The house smelled like it used to smell after she’d cleaned. Like pine and flowers. Because she always sprayed floral air freshener after using the strong-smelling chemical cleansers.

  The small bathroom off the living area had definitely been cleaned. He’d noticed the pink ring around the toilet that morning, but hadn’t done anything about it.

  It was gone.

  The faucets were polished, no drops of water or any residue on them.

  “Ca. Da-Da. Ca!”

  Caleb had followed him into the bathroom and pulled on the edge of his Bugs Bunny scrub shirt. Standing on the toe of Max’s gray high-tops, Caleb reached the remote up as high as he could get it, aiming for Max’s hand.

  “Ca, Da-Da.”

  And because he was sweating and as close to panic as he’d ever been, he walked almost zombielike to the living room and set Caleb up with his favorite movie in the DVD player.