Along Came a Husband

by Helen Brenna

  “This is wrong,” he called out. “Son of a bitch!” From English to Spanish and back again, his dialogue in his dreams bounced back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball. “Matthews, get down!”

  Apparently, he was reliving the ambush where he’d gotten shot. He’d done this from time to time when they’d been married. While he was awake he’d analyze his cases, take them apart piece by piece to make sure he hadn’t made any mistakes, to see where he could improve. Sleep only brought on another level of analysis.

  Most often he’d only talked in his sleep, usually not more than a word or two, a sentence at most. A few times, he’d actually thrashed about, carrying on for long periods in this same type of frenzied, chaotic state.

  Back then she’d tried everything to get him to quiet down. Waking him hadn’t worked. As soon as he’d fallen back asleep, he’d start at it again. She’d tried earplugs and moving to another room. He’d been too loud. There’d been only one thing that had calmed him, only one thing had helped them both fall back to restful sleep. She’d snuggled against his backside. Only her touch had relaxed him.

  Jonas groaned loudly. Quieted for a few minutes, though she could hear him tossing about, and then started up all over again.

  She glanced at the clock. Two. She’d gotten, at best, a couple hours of sleep and had to be up and about in a little more than four hours, and Jonas had given no indication he’d settle down any time soon. She didn’t have earplugs, and a pillow hadn’t worked to block the noise. There was only one thing she could think to do. While it didn’t sit well, it seemed her only option. Besides, she’d decided she’d no longer avoid him.

  Throwing back the covers, she climbed the stairs and snuck quietly into Jonas’s room. He was on his back, tossing his head back and forth and muttering to himself. The last thing she wanted to do was place her hands on his body. From the first to the last, every time she’d ever touched this man, her body had gone crazy with need. She was asking for trouble simply being in a bedroom with him, thinking this way, feeling this way.

  Nonsense. You were only twenty-three when you met him. You had no self-control back then. Things can be different today.

  She took a deep breath, slipped her hands under his covers and slowly placed her palms over the tops of his ankles. He was warm. She was warmer. The coarse hair on his legs tickled her fingers, sending a zap of awareness up her arms and she almost pulled away. In order for this to work, though, she had to clear her own mind.

  He wields no more power over you. You are in complete control. You can help him, give to him, without losing a piece of yourself.

  Closing her eyes, she relaxed her arms, let her hands lay heavy on his ankles and focused on calming him. Once he relaxed, she could possibly find and clear his energy, helping him heal, helping him rest.

  Jonas. Settle. Find the peace in your heart.

  O NE GUN SHOT . T WO .

  Jonas ran through the empty parking ramp. They were almost on him, two steps behind him. Suddenly the only footsteps he heard were his own.

  Watching. They had to be watching, but who were they? What were they waiting for? He could feel their eyes on him. Behind him. Over him. Almost as if they were inside him.

  Out of breath, he stopped and yelled, “Who the hell are you?” Then he spun around and fired several rounds into the air, at nothing and everything at once. He paused to listen and catch his breath.

  Suddenly, as if he’d stepped into a hot pool, warmth enveloped his ankles. The warmest touch he’d ever known. Gently. Softly. Hands held him. Deep, bone-melting heat traveled up his legs. Suffused him with a sense of calm. As if he’d become a slow, lazy river, his breathing slowed.

  How could this be? He never—

  Missy. She was touching him. It had to be her. Jonas hovered between the states of sleep and awareness. Half of him felt almost tormented by the knowledge she’d place her hands on him. The other half desired nothing less than to sink into the oblivion of her sweet touch.

  Infinitely slowly, with the kind of patience Jonas never had, never would possess, her hands moved over him. Her heat transmitted deep into the marrow of his bones, and a sense of relaxation like nothing he’d ever felt wrapped Jonas in a cocoon. She moved from his ankles to his knees. Then to his hips and ribs. All over him at once as if she had eight arms.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered before he felt sure he’d relax to the point of losing all ability to speak.

  She pulled away. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was, but don’t stop.” He kept his eyes firmly closed. “Please.”

  Hesitantly, her fingers rested on his forehead, hot and heavy on his cool skin. “It’s called Healing Touch. Clears and balances your energy. Helps you heal faster.”

  “Chakras shit?” he murmured.

  “Yes.”

  “When did you learn to do this?” he asked, almost slurring his words.

  “Over the years.” Her touch grew stronger, more assured. “It’s been an interest of mine.”

  Didn’t surprise him. Her hands always had worked magic on him. Lots of magic. His thoughts tracked to the other night and all he could think of was how she’d come alive in his arms. Her hands moved to his chest and his pulse raced. His mouth turned dry. He couldn’t swallow.

  That’s when he felt it, the subtle change in sensation. Her fingertips curled into him, her nails nearly bit into his skin. Suddenly there was nothing healing about her touch. This was an outright jolt of raw, sexual heat, coursing through him like a drug.

  No. Not again. He grabbed her wrist and snapped open his eyes. “I’m going to guess my chakras are just fine now.”

  Her eyes were heavy-lidded. Her breath came in short pants. She pulled against his grip on her wrists.

  “Tell me something,” he murmured.

  She stared at him, distrust sparking in her eyes.

  “That night we met at that bar in Quantico, what did you see in my hands?”

  For a long moment, she said nothing. He’d almost given up on an answer when she whispered, “Your love line. Looks exactly like mine. One true love in your life.”

  “That’s bullshit. There’s no such thing as love, Missy. We had sex. Great sex. Amazing sex. But still just sex. It’s not the kind of thing real people build lasting relationships around.”

  “If you say so.”

  He didn’t just say so. He knew so. They’d failed, hadn’t they? “Then why file for a divorce? Sounds like a damned easy way out to me.”

  “Staging your death wasn’t?”

  He released her and looked away. “I need to get back to sleep.”

  “You do that, Jonas,” she said, heading toward the door, “While you’re at it, keep telling yourself that our marriage failing was entirely my fault.”

  No, he wasn’t fool enough to tell himself that. Not anymore. “Missy?”

  She paused on her way out of the room.

  For a moment, he couldn’t speak. Emotions seemed to overwhelm him. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For the…healing massage.” As she went back downstairs, he knew there’d be no more nightmares tonight because he wouldn’t be falling back to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EVERYTHING SEEMED WRONG .

  Chin in hand, Missy sat at the front counter and contemplated her shop. Her thoughts felt disjointed and scattered. It had to be due to how the shelving in her store was arranged. The energy couldn’t flow. Even her thoughts were all over the place. One minute she worried about Sarah. The next about Jessie and her baby. More often than not, her thoughts had something to do with Jonas.

  What had she been thinking last night? Putting her hands all over him? Healing touch or not, she’d been out of line. Delirious from lack of sleep. That had to be it. But he’d sure felt good. Amazing contradictions of hard and soft, hairy and smooth. Warm. No. Hot.

  She sucked in a quick breath and tried to eradicate from her mind the remembered image of his hand on her wrist. She’d always loved
his fingers, the way his dark hair traveled up the back of his hand. Damn. Then again, her problems most likely had nothing to do with blockage of energy. Her entire life was a mess. Jonas. Sarah. Her family.

  Marin. A long forgotten memory about her sister poked at Missy. Throughout much of their elementary years, Marin, despite the fact that she was older, often crept quietly into bed with Missy on Sunday nights. Missy had never said a word. Her sister hated going to their strict private school, and Mondays were the worst. Missy smiled, sadly, wondering if her sister still dreaded Monday mornings, or if she was happy in her job, her life.

  It was time to tackle one more issue. Abruptly, she dialed a number she’d kept stored but unused on her cell phone all these years.

  “Rutherford and Barker,” a receptionist said, answering.

  Missy couldn’t breathe.

  “Hello? Anyone there?” the woman said.

  “Um.” She swallowed. “Is…Marin Camden in?”

  “One moment, please.”

  Without any transfer noises, the sounds of soft classical music played over the line, letting Missy know she’d been placed on hold. She looked out her window, took a deep breath and made herself wait.

  “This is Ms. Camden’s office,” said, most likely, a personal assistant. “She’s in a meeting with clients at the moment, may I take a message?”

  “This is Marin’s sister, Melissa…Camden. Could you please—”

  “Excuse me, did you say sister? Melissa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold, please.”

  That was weird. The classical music came back online while Missy waited. And waited. Her hands may have finally stopped shaking, but now she was getting supremely irritated.

  Suddenly the music clicked off and a long moment of silence hung on the line. Then, tentatively, a voice whispered, “Melissa?”

  “Marin, is that you?”

  “Holy freaking shit! It’s really you.”

  Missy laughed. “Sounds like it’s really you, too.”

  Marin was to Missy as night to day. Marin swore, sweat and walked around with a chip on her shoulder the size of a Lake Superior boulder. Missy never had found common ground with her sister, one of the few people on this earth with whom Missy should’ve been able to connect.

  “I don’t believe it,” Marin said. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  Neither did Missy it’d been so many years.

  “Where are you?” Marin finally asked.

  Missy hesitated. The one question she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer, but she hadn’t thought to block her number, so it wouldn’t take much for someone as resourceful as a Camden to locate Missy. “Don’t tell Dad, okay? I’m on Mirabelle Island, Wisconsin. I’ve been here for about two years.”

  “And this is the first time you bother to call and touch base?” Marin asked, the tone of her voice laced with a definite note of challenge if not hurt feelings.

  “I guess I didn’t think anyone would care—”

  “Not care? You don’t get it, do you?”

  “I didn’t ask to be born a Camden.”

  “Well, you were, so get over it. Do you have any idea how many tears Mom has shed over your immature and incredibly selfish disappearance? Maybe you should be calling her first. Maybe I just don’t give a shit. Maybe…”

  Missy didn’t know what to say.

  “You know, for the first couple of months after you disappeared, everyone pretended you’d show up. Eventually. Then the holidays rolled around and no phone call, no letter. Nothing to let any one of us know you were still even alive.”

  Missy probably had only thought of her side of this equation. “I’m sorry, Marin. Honestly, I never thought me disappearing would make a difference to you, Max or Art. Dad, I don’t care about. And Mom? I guess I didn’t want to think about her.”

  “Well, that sounds all very well and convenient. Good for you, Mel.”

  The use of the childhood nickname after all these years felt like a punch to the gut. Maybe she had been more connected to her siblings than she’d realized. “This was…difficult…to call you.”

  No sound. Nothing.

  “Marin?”

  “You know what? Maybe you being out of my life wasn’t such a bad thing after all.”

  Click.

  Her sister had hung up and Missy couldn’t think of a reason why she had a right to feel the slightest bit indignant.

  J ONAS GLANCED AT HIS WATCH . His wound was healing as well as could be expected and he had most of his energy back, so he’d spent the majority of the day repairing Missy’s stone fence along the front sidewalk. Now it was well past dinnertime, and he was starving.

  He put away the tools and supplies in the shed in Missy’s backyard, cleaned up and didn’t bother scrounging around in the kitchen for something to eat. Lunch had proven he’d eaten through everything from his last run to the grocery store, so he walked into town for dinner and planned to stop at the grocery store afterward. By the time he finished a burger at the Bayside Café, the little village was on the verge of closing up. A trip down Main proved Newman’s closed for the night, and he was heading back to Missy’s house when he passed her gift shop.

  It was the only store along the block, other than Duffy’s, with lights beaming through the windows. It seemed odd Missy had chosen to stay this late, especially after the way she’d been making it a point to no longer avoid him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  Jonas opened the door to her store and stepped inside. The other night when he’d charged in here bent on verifying that Reynolds had been right about Missy falling apart at his funeral, he hadn’t paid any attention to the surroundings. Today the place nearly overwhelmed him in its Missy-ness.

  A sweet, fruity scent permeated the evening air. Music, if that’s what you could call that new age instrumental sound, came softly from the direction of what he presumed was the front counter. Although there was no way to tell where purchases were to be made from browsing areas. The place was in complete and total disarray.

  Merchandise lined the haphazardly arranged shelving units with no discernable rhyme or reason. Several shelves were in various stages of being dismantled and rearranged, stock was piled everywhere, and Missy was nowhere to be found.

  “Missy, you here?” he called.

  “Go away.” She sounded so pathetically miserable he could barely keep himself from smiling.

  Sidestepping a couple of boxes stacked in the middle of an aisle, he headed toward the sound of her voice. He found her sitting on the floor, her elbows resting on her knees, her head in her hands, and something in him softened to mush.

  The expression on her face was exactly the one he remembered so many years ago when he’d come home to find her in their kitchen in the midst of making vegetable lasagna. From scratch. Fresh tomatoes were bubbling in too small a pan on the stove. Grated mozzarella was everywhere. Chunks of Romano had landed in her hair.

  One look at her back then and he’d forgotten he was hungry. They’d made love on the kitchen floor amidst fresh crushed basil and slices of eggplant. What he wouldn’t give to go back to that moment and start all over again. Maybe this time he could fix it before it all fell apart.

  Right. And he was a calm, patient, loving man.

  He looked away for a moment, gathered himself, and then asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Why would you care?”

  He raised his eyebrows at her, and that’s when he noticed she wasn’t wearing the protective crystals around her neck.

  “Oh, all right!” Her shoulders sagged. “I wasn’t happy with the flow of energy in here. I was trying to feng shui the space and all I’ve done is messed up everything.” She glanced at him. “Go ahead. Gloat.”

  She reached up to run a hand through the curls of her long hair and the tattoo markings on the inside of her left arm became visible, and gloating was the last thing on his mind. Obviously, due to the placement of the tattoos o
n the underside of her arm, they were important to Missy from a personal standpoint as opposed to trying to send a message to the world. Quickly, he stifled the urge to ask her what they meant.

  “What is feng shui, anyway?”

  She studied him for any crack in his sincerity. “Literally, it means wind-water,” she said. “It’s a way of arranging space and color to create harmony in life by keeping the positive energy flowing.”

  Who was he to judge? Whether feng shui worked or not, Missy believed it did, and that’s all that really mattered. “What were you trying to do?”

  “Move this aisle over there and that one over here.” She pointed this way and that as she explained her master plan.

  “So where’s the problem?”

  “I can’t move the shelves, Gaia’s already gone home for the day, and this is a bigger job than I expected.” She shrugged. “I’m all out of energy.”

  “You plan on opening in the morning, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes, b—”

  “Then let’s go. If anyone can do this it’s you.”

  Distrust clouded her eyes. “Why do you say that?”

  He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d made that statement, but he knew it to be true.

  “Jonas?”

  “Because you’re not only a dreamer, Miss,” he finally answered. “You make dreams come true.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “Where would this world be without dreamers? Without people who looked outside the box and took on new challenges?” For all his analytical pragmatism, Missy’s outlook on the world was one of the things that had initially drawn him to her years ago and even now pulled him in.

  She hesitated.

  In spite of everything between them, he found himself holding his breath for her. You can do it, Miss. He held out his hand to help her stand. “You’re stronger than you think. I’ll help. So let’s do this.”

  “Why? Why would you help me when you should walk away?”