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

by Janice Kay Johnson

  From there he raced through the rest of the house.

  She’d been in Caleb’s room. The blanket...he’d left it folded neatly in the crib. It was still there, but bunched. He picked it up, holding it to his chest with one hand while he went into the bedroom next door.

  He could smell her there, too. And told himself that she’d reclaimed the room that Chantel’s presence seemed to have taken over.

  The hall bathroom had been cleaned. Everything shone.

  Max practically ran into their room. She’d have been in his shower, and probably scoured her garden tub, too. Cleaned their sinks and...

  Throwing open the door he was only vaguely aware of the television blaring in the other room, of the music and voices associated with the movie he’d seen bits and pieces of many times over the weekend.

  He didn’t realize, until he felt the utter emptiness of his bedroom, that he’d been picturing Meri there on the bed, waiting for him.

  She hadn’t been in the room. Everything was just as he’d left it that morning. His closet door was still open. Meri hated open closet doors. The faucets in the master bath didn’t shine. His towel was still wadded on the counter where he’d left it that morning. His dirty underwear hadn’t made it to the hamper yet, either.

  But more than the lack of Meri’s touch was the stale smell. The absence of her energy.

  She’d been home. But she hadn’t come to their room.

  Because she couldn’t? Because it had been too hard for her? Because she missed him as much as he missed her and the pain was too devastating to bear?

  Or maybe Smith had been with her. Wayne had seen a light on in the house by the beach.

  But if her ex-husband had been with Meri, why come here?

  And who would kidnap someone and then wait around while she cleaned house?

  For that matter, why had Meri come home? And why had she stayed long enough to clean but then left again?

  Leaving his room, he strode back to Caleb’s. Maybe she’d left a note. Some sign for him.

  And then he was back in his room. Maybe she’d been in there but only to get something. Maybe that was why she’d come home. To collect something she needed.

  Which still didn’t explain the cleaning.

  He tore from room to room, managing to keep enough of his wits about him to check on their son on a regular basis.

  Every time he looked, Caleb was sitting on the floor, the teddy bear Chantel had brought him clutched on his lap, staring at the television set.

  He’d have to break that habit. Soon.

  But not tonight.

  Max checked the kitchen. He checked every room in the house and couldn’t find anything missing.

  So he checked the garage. Had she been in her car? Needed something from the glove box?

  Left keys for him under the front seat—a sign that she was in trouble and needed help?

  That was it! She’d come to ask for his help.

  Running around the vehicle like a madman in Converse high-tops and cartoon scrubs, he banged his knee on the way to the driver’s side, but didn’t slow down. Grabbing the handle, he practically yanked the door off its hinges and dived for the floor. He felt everywhere. Under the driver’s seat. The passenger seat. The backseats. He even checked the back hatch.

  Everything was just as he’d left it when he’d pulled the van into the garage two weeks before.

  Back in the house, he thought about dinner. Briefly. Checked that Caleb was still content on the floor and not asking to eat, and went back to check every room one more time.

  Meri had been there. He wanted to breathe the same air. To take her breath inside him and keep her there. He needed her energy.

  Hell, he needed her love.

  He ran his fingers gently over the clean faucets and felt tears pushing at the backs of his eyes.

  She must still love him. She wouldn’t have cleaned for him if she didn’t still love him.

  Would she?

  The knocking at the front door startled him. Feeling like an idiot, practically getting ready to cry over a bathroom faucet, he turned off the light and went to the front door.

  “Am I on time?” Chantel came in, her ubiquitous duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Meri was here.” He spoke softly so Caleb wouldn’t hear him.

  Chantel dropped her bag. “What? When?” Her happy expression was gone, but her frown wasn’t so much displeased as focused.

  “Today,” he said, walking with her to the kitchen where he’d failed to get dinner started. “Sometime after I left and before I got home. She cleaned the bathrooms.”

  “She dusted, too,” Chantel said, running her finger over the sideboard in the dining room just through the kitchen archway. “You could write your name in this thing last night.”

  He hadn’t noticed.

  “I think she wants to come home, Chantel. That’s why she was here. She needed to be here. Needs us. Maybe this is all coming to an end.”

  She wasn’t smiling. “Then why didn’t she stay?”

  “Because he’s still out there. And she’s not going to put us in danger.”

  “Then why not leave you a note?”

  “Maybe he was with her. Or watching her. You said Wayne saw a light on at his house.”

  “We don’t know for sure it’s his house. And you really think he’s going to wait patiently while she cleans your house?”

  He’d had the same thought, but... “You got a better explanation?” he asked, angry, and knowing that it wasn’t Chantel’s fault. She’d been a godsend to him. And to Meri, too.

  When this was over, they were inviting Chantel for Christmas. And Thanksgiving. And...they’d go to Las Sendas and take her out to dinner. Or introduce her to a handsome resident at the hospital or...

  “I think she probably came because she needed something.” Chantel’s voice was soft. Caring. “She didn’t have a chance to pack anything, Max. I’m guessing there was something here she wanted or needed. Maybe an important paper or something. Her passport....”

  He shook his head. “She carries her passport in her purse.”

  “So it wasn’t her passport.” Chantel opened a cupboard, pulled out the spaghetti sauce. Took spaghetti off the shelf in the pantry. Got a pot out of the bottom drawer of the stove, filled it with water, and put it on to boil. “Clearly she needed something. It’s also clear that she purposely came for it when she knew you and Caleb weren’t going to be here.”

  He’d thought of that. But Meri wasn’t the type of woman who would come waltzing back into their lives until she was ready to stay. Obviously she still had some things to work out. But she was coming home.

  She wouldn’t have let him know she was there, wouldn’t have cleaned, if she wasn’t coming home.

  She loved him.

  “Maybe she cleaned because she felt guilty for leaving you in the lurch like she did. Or maybe she didn’t want her son living in filth. Maybe this was her way of letting you know you need to hire a cleaning lady.”

  Chantel didn’t know Meri.

  “Nothing is missing from this house,” he said, completely calm now. He knew his wife. She was all about leaving messages in code that only the two of them would understand. He couldn’t expect Chantel to get it. “I’ve opened every one of her drawers. Been through every room.”

  He’d had an hour and a half between the time he’d pulled into the driveway and Chantel had shown up.

  “What about the garage? Maybe she had something hidden out there.”

  “I checked.”

  “Check again. She wouldn’t have risked coming here without reason. She wouldn’t have cleaned if she didn’t want you to know she’d been here. And it seems to me that if she was thinking about coming home she’
d have at least left a note. This almost borders on cruel, Max. Which you tell me she isn’t. So she’s telling you something. Go find it.”

  So while Caleb watched his movie about talking cars and Chantel made dinner, Max went through the house again, opening not just Meri’s drawers, but all of them.

  It was waiting for him in his top desk drawer. Where he couldn’t miss it the very next time he sat down at his desk.

  That was something he hadn’t done in a few days, but used to do daily. Back when reading the news on the internet while his wife made breakfast had seemed important.

  With a feeling of dread weighing him down, he picked up the little tin in the drawer. But he didn’t need to open it to know.

  He checked anyway. He wasn’t sure why.

  And for the first time since Meri had disappeared, he started to believe that it was just as Chantel had been saying all along.

  She’d left him because she wanted to.

  Meri didn’t want to be married to him anymore.

  The missing money told him so.

  She and her private, covert messages. Like keys under a car seat. She’d insisted on having predetermined ways they could communicate with each other without words, because she’d known what he hadn’t. That her past wasn’t just going to disappear.

  She’d tried to tell him about the world in which she lived. A world where you might have to rely on coded messages, clues that no one else would understand, to communicate. A world where things were nothing like what they seemed on the surface.

  He’d called her words paranoia.

  She’d described a world where your husband, your protector, a decorated detective, could beat you and hound you and stalk you and you were afraid to say or do anything in case you were seen or overheard.

  He’d figured her for a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder.

  All along she’d known that she wasn’t the least bit delusional.

  He got it now.

  Just as he got that he was too late.

  Meri had left him because she chose to do so. Because she was afraid of what impact her past would have on Caleb. Exactly as she’d said in the note she’d left in her van.

  And she wanted him to move on.

  Taking their anniversary money was a message he couldn’t misinterpret. Nor could he convince himself that that missing money was anything other than what it was. There couldn’t possibly be a way anyone else would have known that money was there or forced her to take it.

  If she’d needed money she could have accessed her bank account. Or their joint one. Or taken the emergency cash from the house. They’d had a thousand bucks stashed for “just in case.” It was still there. He’d already checked.

  No, she’d taken their anniversary money.

  Because she didn’t plan to have a distant anniversary with him.

  She’d let him know she’d been there, not by anything as personal as a note, but by cleaning—a chore he could have hired someone to do.

  And then she’d taken their special money and left him the empty tin. The message couldn’t be any clearer.

  Funny how, in that worst moment of his life, he didn’t feel like crying at all.

  He just felt dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE LEMONADE STAND was abuzz with anticipation for Saturday’s pool party. Some of the craftier residents were making decorations, some for the kids’ gathering and others for the pool’s christening, which was what they’d decided should be the theme for the party. A pool christening.

  Jenna had suggested the theme and also put forth the idea that they use the party as a surprise baby shower for Maddie Bishop. They really wanted to surprise the developmentally delayed woman who cared so much about everyone and spread her perennial joy so freely amongst them.

  Maddie’s joy was as valuable to the residents as Sara’s counseling and Lynn’s medical skills.

  Jenna attended Wednesday night’s crafting and planning meeting, taking place at a building on the outskirts of the property, and threw herself into the preparations as much as the next woman.

  Because she didn’t want to think about anything else.

  She’d said goodbye that afternoon.

  To the only man she was ever going to love. The only child she was ever going to have.

  To the only life she’d ever wanted.

  And she knew, instinctively, emotionally and logically that she’d done the right thing.

  * * *

  MAX ATE DINNER. Then he bathed his son, playing boat and fish with him—a game Meri had conjured up with a plastic bathtub toy, soap and Caleb’s fingers and toes. The boat carries the soap that then jumps out of the boat to fish for things to wash. He put Caleb to bed and rubbed his back until Caleb’s breathing grew heavy, indicating that he was asleep.

  He took a shower. Changed from his scrubs into sweats and a T-shirt and went back out to do dishes that had already been done.

  Chantel had her laptop open on the table.

  “What are you working on?” he asked, a glass of freshly poured tea in his hand. He should have offered her some.

  “More record searches,” she told him. “There’s got to be some way to figure out who’s living in that house. Electric was turned on in the name of the company, with the residence as the billing address. But that doesn’t mean he has to be there to get the bill. He probably has it sent electronically.”

  “Or he could have it turned off for the time he isn’t there.”

  “True. For that matter, maybe he has a generator.”

  “Maybe it’s not his house.”

  “Wayne has a buddy who is helping him check out other possibilities, one by one,” she said. “Since you, as a private citizen, made a complaint he thinks has merit, against someone who’s being investigated for murder in another state, he’s made the investigation into Steve at least pseudo-official. He’s keeping it quiet.”

  Max nodded. Whether his marriage was over or not, he wanted the man who’d made his wife’s life hell taken off the streets.

  Meri wanted to be free and he wanted that for her.

  “Diane called while you were in the shower,” she said, looking over at him. He hadn’t told her what he’d found in his desk drawer.

  “She found a bartender who knew Smith and the dead woman. Said that the woman had told him she wanted to break things off with Smith because he was scaring her, but that she was afraid to tell him, afraid of what he’d do, so she was making plans to move out of state.”

  “And the bartender didn’t come forward when she was killed?”

  “He didn’t know she’d been killed. It was a car accident. Not big news in Las Vegas. He just assumed he never saw her again because she’d moved as she’d said she was going to do.”

  “Is it enough to get her body up?” If they could prove definitively that the woman’s body had been beaten to the point of trauma before she’d gotten in her car...

  “Diane thinks so. She’s putting in a request for a warrant first thing in the morning.”

  Good. Sitting at the table, Max noticed the open bottle of beer on Chantel’s other side. Reaching for it, he took a sip.

  “Diane said something else, Max.” Her expression, while serious, held none of the pity he’d grown used to seeing there. Her blond hair framed pretty features—and a frown. “She paid a visit to one of Smith’s old sources, some old guy, Victor something or other, who’d been a big-time drug dealer in his day and now lives comfortably in an active retirement community, playing golf and getting tanned. She knew that Smith and the guy had had a falling-out and wanted to know why. The guy had heard some rumors about Smith and one of Victor’s girlfriends. Turned out they were false, but while he’d been watching Smith he overheard a pretty brutal fight betwee
n Smith and Meredith. He was outside their apartment and waited for Smith to leave before knocking on the door. He wouldn’t tell her who he was, but he got her medical help after promising her that where he was taking her, they wouldn’t call the cops. And he told her that if she ever needed anything to give him a call. He gave her a private number.”

  Max borrowed a second sip of beer and welcomed the burn as the liquid went down. He noticed his fingers tapping on the table and stopped them. Then started up again.

  Meredith’s life had been a living nightmare. And he’d blithely made assurances to her that she was fine and safe and just paranoid, promising her a happily-ever-after that he’d had no way of providing.

  He’d been so self-righteous. So sure he knew better than she.

  He hadn’t had a clue.

  And maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough to explain her past to him. Except what more could she have said? She’d told him Smith was a decorated cop. That he’d stalked her from state to state....

  “She used the number, Max. About a year later. She had bruises all over her arms, and that’s just what he could see, but he said she moved like an eighty-year-old woman so he was pretty sure there were cracked or broken bones involved. He offered to get her medical help. She refused, said she didn’t have time. She wanted a new identity. He gave her one. Said he heard from her a few more times after that. He couldn’t remember if it was three or four, but that each time he’d send her new papers, no questions asked.”

  A burst of blood filled his mouth. He was gritting his teeth so hard he could barely part them to get words out when he asked, “Will he testify?”

  “I don’t think so. Even if he did, his testimony would never hold up in court. He’s living on drug money. And clearly still has illegal connections. He also loses credibility because he’d accused Smith of philandering with his girl. Too much possibility of tit for tat, and not enough trustworthiness.”

  “So we still have nothing.”

  “We may not have enough yet for a conviction, but we have plenty enough to know that Steve Smith is a very bad man and that’s enough to get badges working for you in two states, Max. We’re going to find this guy. I promise you. And then your Meri will be free to come back to you.”