by Helen Brenna
Big happy families.
Oh, hell. Now Missy was holding Garrett and Erica’s baby boy. If she wanted kids so damned much why hadn’t she gotten married again right after he’d died?
“I’m happy for you guys that you’ve decided to adopt,” Jamis said. “It’s been the best thing for me and Nat.”
“What?”
“Adoption,” Jamis said, turning a couple burgers. “Missy’s—” He glanced at Jonas and immediately shut his mouth.
“Missy’s adopting,” Jonas murmured. That fit her.
“I’m sorry. I assumed…”
“That since I’m her husband I’d know. Don’t worry about it, man.”
Missy as a mother. Somehow it made so much sense. Jonas wondered if his sudden reappearance had impacted the process. Figures. One more way Jonas had screwed up her life.
The conversation turned to the mundane and several hours later, Jonas, having kept on the fringes for most of the night, finally sat silently around the blazing campfire. He would’ve gone back to Missy’s house except for the fact that he’d found himself fascinated by watching Missy, listening to conversations and getting to know these islanders a little better.
Drinking hot cocoa, chatting and laughing, a group of about ten had remained long after the rest of the party had gone home. Someone mentioned that a place called the Draeger mansion on the outskirts of town had finally sold, and the talk turned to rumors it had been purchased by the Andersens’ long lost daughter. In spite of the company, every time Jonas glanced over the flames into Missy’s face and caught her gaze, it seemed as if they were completely alone in the darkness.
During a lull in the conversation, Missy pulled a small pouch out of a pocket in her fleece jacket and handed it to Ron. “Happy Birthday, Ron.”
“Hey, we said no presents.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Ron reached inside the small, beaded fabric bag and took out a bracelet made from turquoise.
“Turquoise is a natural healing stone,” Missy explained. “It’s probably overkill, but I included all seven chakras stones to promote well-being. There’s one for Jan, too.”
Ron handed the bag to Jan.
She took out another bracelet and smiled at Missy. “They’re beautiful.”
“Thank you, Missy,” Ron said before he and Jan exchanged looks.
Jan released a heavy sigh. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell them.”
“What?” Sarah asked.
“Jan and I are retiring,” Ron said.
The sounds of disappointment traveled around the circle, but Missy held silent, straightening her spine as if waiting for more bad news.
“We’re not going anywhere, though,” Ron said. “At least not for a while.”
“You’re not?” Missy said.
“We don’t mind the winters,” Jan said.
“We’re just getting old,” Ron explained. “Tired. We need to relax more.”
“So I’m leaving my job at the Mirabelle Inn,” Jan said.
“And I’m selling the equipment rental business,” Ron added.
“What about the buildings you own?” someone asked.
“Oh, we’ll hold on to those.” Ron smiled. “I need something to do.”
Jonas was glad for Missy’s sake that the Setterbergs would be staying on the island. He glanced at Missy and noticed her almost sighing in relief. Jonas didn’t know much about Jan, but he could imagine how the older woman’s protective instincts had helped Missy feel the love she’d been wanting her entire life. Ron, though, was the father Missy had always wanted. Who wouldn’t want Ron for a father?
Although Ron’s comments to Jonas earlier in the day had held a distinctly parental tone, Jonas had felt amazingly comfortable with the man. Trust what we know. What did Jonas know?
He remembered back to the first months of his marriage to Missy. Remembered how she’d looked at him, with trust and reverence. How she’d touched him, with both tenderness and passion. Back then he’d never doubted her love for him.
So what had happened?
Unable to answer the questions turning over and over in his mind and feeling exhausted, mentally and physically, Jonas slipped away unnoticed from the fire. He went back to Missy’s house and sat quietly in one corner of the deck, hiding in the shadows.
Only partially listening to the conversation continuing by the fire at the Setterbergs’, he glanced into a brilliant night sky. Suddenly, the cat jumped onto his lap. Jonas scratched his neck and the animal slowly settled down to knead his leg. The tension that had been building inside him all night left his shoulders, freeing his mind. Over and over, he went through the time he’d spent with Missy what seemed so long ago, trying to find the moment when things had begun changing between them.
The group around the fire called it a night and dispersed, and a moment later Missy came back to her yard. She stepped onto the deck. He knew the exact moment she felt his presence. For a moment, she fell completely still, and then she turned to go inside.
“Missy?” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were out here.”
“When did our marriage start falling apart?”
At first, she didn’t say anything, but still she sat across from him. The cat jumped down from his lap and went to Missy. “I think for me,” she began slowly, “it was the night you called from Los Angeles to tell me you wouldn’t be back as expected. It was our six-month anniversary. Six months that we’d been married. I’d made a special dinner. Steak for you. Fish for me. Everything was out, ready to go. Your flight was supposed to have already touched down.”
“I remember. I was under a lot of pressure. That was the first really big case I was in charge of.”
“For me it was the first in a long string of missed dinners and weekends spent alone.”
“They were watching, wanted to see what I could handle,” he said. Not to mention the fact that if he’d made good with the FBI, maybe then her family—her father—would accept him. “I wanted so much for us, Missy. A home. A family. A life. I wanted to provide for you.”
“And all I ever wanted was for you to be there.”
“You knew the demands of my job before you married me.”
“I can’t argue with that. It’s true.” She put her head down. “I was naive, selfish. I thought…I thought I’d be enough. That you’d want to be with me more than be off on the next assignment.”
“Missy, I wanted to be with you, but it was my job. The way I paid the bills, cared for you, provided for you.”
“I didn’t need anyone to provide for me. Not then. Not now. I can take care of myself, Jonas. All I ever wanted was to share my life with you.”
His first reaction was to argue that she was being impractical again. There was no way he could’ve relied on her trust fund to support them, but that wasn’t entirely fair. A lot of FBI agents made a decent living without the long hours. Was it possible it hadn’t been her expectations alone that had driven him so hard in his job?
“I’ll admit, I was immature,” she went on. “Probably hard to live with, but I never set out to hurt you, Jonas.”
“You filed for a divorce.” She’d not only broken his heart, she’d hurt his pride. It was something he had to face and accept. What Ron had said to him suddenly struck home. Trust what you know. He knew Missy. She’d loved him. Something had happened. “Why? Can you finally tell me why?”
Missy looked away.
“Missy?”
“The last straw was not being able to get ahold of you, not being able to talk with you…” She paused, seemed to be gathering herself. “The day I’d had a doctor’s appointment and found out that I’d…I’d had a miscarriage.”
“What?” he said, not comprehending.
She glanced back at him. “I had a miscarriage.”
“Miscarriage?” He stared at her. “You were pregnant?”
She nodded.
“With our child?”<
br />
Silently, she nodded.
He tried to absorb it, make sense of it. Trying to remember back to everything that had happened the days preceding her filing for a divorce. He’d gotten home from two weeks away on a tough assignment and she’d changed. He’d sensed it the moment he’d stepped inside the house.
He covered his face with his hands as images of her holding that baby at Duffy’s and then tonight at Ron’s party ran through his mind. She’d lost her own baby. She’d been in pain, physical, emotional and she’d suffered through it alone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were gone. Like you were always gone. Because it hurt like hell to know whatever case you were working on was more important than me. That you would drop everything you were doing for work, but that I didn’t matter.”
“That isn’t fair.” Defense mechanisms quickly rose. “Things were different then. You were…immature and had unrealistic expectations of a husband.”
“Actually, there’s some truth to that.” She nodded, wrapped her arms around herself. “But is it unrealistic to expect a husband to be around more often than not?”
The ramifications hit Jonas like a bus. “You never even told me you were pregnant.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
He didn’t know what to say, couldn’t seem to find his voice. It was all too much to swallow.
She stood and headed toward the house. “That’s what I thought.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER having worked all day every day since Jonas had arrived on the island, Missy lay on her side in bed with Slim curled up in front of her. Gaia was opening, so Missy didn’t have to go in to Whimsy until after lunch. A brief reprieve before the hectic week of the Fourth of July was bound to do some good.
Slim stretched out a paw and gently patted her cheek, looking for attention. After scratching his neck, she was rewarded with a loud purr. “I’ve missed you, too.” She kissed his forehead. For so long it’d been just the two of them, it seemed odd to share her house with Jonas.
She pictured Jonas leaving Mirabelle and her stomach flipped. When he first showed up she couldn’t wait for him to go, and now she found herself wishing he’d stay. Apparently Jonas was more unfinished than the rest of her business.
“What do you think he’ll do, Slim?” She nuzzled his neck. As if she’d gotten too close, too soon, Slim stood and stretched his way off her bed. “You, too, huh? Figures.”
Marin had always loved cats.
Missy’s thoughts returned to the short conversation she’d had with her sister the other day. Had she cooled down enough to call her back? Probably not. Had she talked to their father, told him about their conversation? What if her dad simply showed up one day on Mirabelle? She might be ready to face a lot of things. He wasn’t one of them.
Missy tossed aside her covers, showered and dressed, but instead of following her instincts and hightailing it out of her house before Jonas roused, she hung around putzing in the kitchen and making them both breakfast.
When he wandered down the stairs a short while later in only a pair of boxers, she immediately regretted her decision. She couldn’t force her gaze away from the dusting of dark hair covering his otherwise smooth, muscular chest.
He spotted her and stopped. “Morning.”
“Good morning.” Awkwardly, she looked away.
“Sorry.” He rubbed his pec muscles and yawned. “I’d have put some clothes on if I’d known you’d be here.”
“It’s okay.”
“I think I have some things in the dryer.” He wandered into the laundry room off the kitchen.
Missy found herself watching him, taking in his strong legs flexing as he bent, pulled a clean, white T-shirt out of the dryer and tugged it over his head. He came back into the kitchen, looking rumpled with his bedhead and wrinkled clothing, but incredibly sexy. “Hope you don’t mind I did a load of laundry yesterday.”
All the unnatural politeness oozing from him was going to drive her crazy. Then again, he was trying to meet her on her terms. How could she fault that? “No, that’s totally fine.” She pulled a plate out of the oven where she’d been keeping warm a breakfast burrito, filled with scrambled eggs, peppers and hash browns, and set it on the counter. “Here.”
“You made me breakfast?” He wouldn’t take his eyes off her face.
“It’s the least I could do after stiffing you with the dinner bill at Duffy’s the other night.”
He chuckled, sat at the counter and pulled the plate toward him. “This smells great.” He picked up his fork and paused. “Missy?”
She held her breath.
“I’m sorry you went through a miscarriage alone. I can’t even imagine how you must’ve felt.” He gave her a small, tentative smile. “For what it’s worth, a baby might’ve turned the tide for me.”
“Meaning you would’ve never taken that undercover assignment? You would’ve stayed?”
“Absolutely. I could’ve never walked away from that responsibility.”
A responsibility. That’s all a baby would’ve been to him. So what was she? “I gotta run. Have to do a few more things at my store before opening up.”
Jonas held her gaze. Clearly, there was more he wanted to say, but she couldn’t bear to be around him just now. “Have a good day,” he whispered.
Her hands shaking, she took off out the front door. The moment she reached the porch, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Missy!” It was Ron calling from the sidewalk. “You coming, or what?”
“Yep. I’m coming.” Doing her best to put Jonas out of her mind, she caught up with Ron. They talked about Ron’s party for a few blocks. When they reached the back door of her gift shop, she invited Ron inside. “I have a surprise for you.” She unlocked the alley door and stepped back to let Ron inside.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,” he said, looking around at all the free space and organized shelves. “Honestly, Missy, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I don’t.” She laughed. “Jonas did this. He helped me out front, too.” She followed him, waiting for his reaction.
“Mmm-mmm-mmm,” he said, shaking his head. “This looks great. It’s like a whole new store. How does it feel?”
“Good. Great.”
He winked at her and then said, teasingly, “Maybe you oughta think about keeping that man of yours around for a little while longer.”
“Yeah. Right.” Then her smile dimmed. “What is it with men and responsibility?”
He cocked his head at her.
“Jonas,” she explained. “All I am to him is an added responsibility.”
Ron chuckled. “Oh, I’m quite sure you’re more than that to him.”
“Nope.” She shook her head.
“Missy, honey, other than…” he said, pausing and fumbling a bit. “Other than, you know…sex, nothing says love better to a man than bringing home a paycheck, or fixing a leaky faucet.” He pointed at the shelving in her back room. “Or cleaning a storeroom.”
Missy glanced around as Ron slipped out the back door. Was it as simple as that? Jonas wanting to take care of her? As she was puzzling through Ron’s comments, her cell phone rang. On picking it up, she glanced at the display. Barbara. This was it. She could no longer avoid the inevitable. “Hi, Barbara.”
“So we haven’t chatted yet about Jessica’s surprise visit. I have to tell you, she was so pleased to meet you. Said she felt an instantaneous connection. I think this is going to work.”
“I’m not so sure.” Missy took a deep breath and accepted this wasn’t the first time Fate had been wrong about her life. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
For more times than she wanted to count, Missy explained about Jonas. Barbara never said a word, no questions, no comments, no guttural sounds of disbelief. By the time Missy got to the end of the story, her apprehension about the adoption had escalated to foreboding. Under no circumstan
ces was she going to use her real family name and money to smooth over this situation. If she couldn’t adopt a child on her own, so be it.
“If I’d known you and Jessie were planning on coming to the island, I would’ve mentioned this sooner,” Missy finished. “Really, nothing’s changed. At least not—”
“I’m sorry, Missy,” Barbara interrupted. “I’m afraid everything has changed.”
Missy held her breath.
“Jessica has been adamant throughout this entire process that a divorce is an automatic disqualification. Her parents divorced when she was young and she doesn’t want that for her child.”
“What if Jonas and I don’t get divorced? What if we stay together?”
There was a long moment of silence. “I’m not sure I can, in good conscience, recommend you to Jessica. Under the circumstances.”
“I understand,” Missy whispered.
“Call me when the dust settles, dear, and we’ll start over again. Your match is out there somewhere.”
T HE MOMENT M ISSY WALKED through the front door later that night, Jonas knew something was wrong. Sorrow furrowed her brow. She only glanced toward where he sat on the couch and wouldn’t maintain eye contact. She didn’t even make a comment about the cat jumping down from his lap to greet her and barely noticed as he weaved in and out around her ankles.
“Hey,” he said, glancing at the clock. “You’re home early.”
She turned to set her keys on the counter, and he would’ve sworn the sudden brightness in her eyes was the pooling of tears. There was only one other instance he remembered her being this sad. When she’d asked him for a divorce. The cat meowed at her and she picked him up, nuzzled his neck.
He wanted to kick himself, but the urge to go to her and put his arms around her in comfort overwhelmed him. While he wouldn’t allow that to happen, he didn’t need to be an unfeeling ass. “You used to hate cats,” he said softly, hoping he could gently urge her into talking about what was bothering her.
A lopsided smiled touched her mouth. “I did.”
“So how’d he come into your life?”
“Now there’s a story.” She came into the living room and dropped onto one of the chairs not far from him. “Only a few days after your funeral, I hit the road to no particular place. Stopped at motels whenever and wherever I felt like it. About a week into it, I stopped at this motel, got a room and then proceeded to clean the garbage out of my car. Went back to the Dumpster to throw everything away. Just before I closed the lid, I heard the tiniest of mews coming from under all the garbage.”
