Still, life was meant to be lived, not avoided.
Ellen slowed from the 15 mph she’d been going to climb the steep track to 5 mph as she pulled into the cleared bit of dirt in front of Joe’s rudimentary cabin. He’d cleared the spot for her—had that been almost five years ago?—when Sheriff Richards had first asked Ellen to be his partner in this effort to assist the lonely mountain man who’d helped the sheriff find his father’s killers.
“Joe?” Pulling the thin, short-sleeved button-down over the top of her shorts, Ellen climbed out of the SUV and stood.
Ellen was a trained social worker. Joe needed to be socialized in the worst way.
“Joe?” she called again. She wouldn’t go any farther, take another step, until the fiftysomething bearded man appeared. If this wasn’t a good day, she’d come back.
Joe knew that. He knew he could stay hidden.
He never had before.
They had something in common, Ellen and Joe. A shared awareness of the tragic effects of inexplicable violence against women.
“I’ve got your syllabus and textbooks,” she called. Joe had a thirty-year-old degree in engineering. Once Ellen had discovered that fact, she’d started planting the seeds of him upgrading his courses with the hope that a love of learning would be able to do what five years of visits had not—get him out of the hell he’d thrown himself into after his wife’s death.
She had bags of groceries, too, as always.
“Where’s the sheriff?” Joe’s gruff voice came from somewhere behind the one-room log cabin he had built by hand over thirty years ago.
Ellen and Greg usually made this trek up the mountain together. But not always.
“There was a traffic accident out by the highway.”
“You shouldn’t be here without him.”
“Of course I should be,” she called, completely without fear. “Sheriff Richards knows I’m here. And you need your groceries.”
Besides, Joe would never, ever do anything to hurt Ellen. Ever.
Now if she had been meeting Black Leather, as she’d come to think of the man she’d seen roaring through town the other day, she would have—
She simply wouldn’t have done it. Period.
“Can I come sit by the window?”
He’d built a seat for her there when she’d first started visiting him. Greg would sit in the cruiser and Ellen would counsel with Joe in plain sight but out of hearing range of the sheriff. Then somehow things had changed and Ellen and Joe had been more friends than social worker and hermit.
“Wait.”
She heard a rustle of grass then saw the thin, slightly stooped man, dressed in baggy overalls and a flannel shirt, skirt around the front of the house and inside. He promptly latched the door with the board Ellen knew he used to lock himself in.
“’Kay.” She only heard the word because she’d been waiting for it. Listening.
Leaving the cooler in the back of the Escape, Ellen grabbed the blue book bag she’d purchased at Walmart the same day she’d bought Josh’s and headed to the house.
With her back to the building, she pulled out a folder of papers and rested them on the windowsill.
Joe’s fingers didn’t come close to brushing hers as he gently tugged the folder away from her.
“It’s all there. Dr. Sheffield is glad you’re in her class. And she hopes she gets to meet you before the semester is through.” Classes didn’t officially start for another couple of weeks, but Phyllis had agreed to send along Joe’s work early. Ellen figured her mother’s friend shared her wish that the studies would interest him enough to get him off the mountain and into the classroom.
“If it was anyone else but you, I’d think there was a trick here. Psychology class. Like I need psychological help.”
“You probably do.”
“Not up here, I don’t.” It wasn’t the first time they’d had the conversation.
“I have an ulterior motive, Joe,” Ellen said, as honest with him as always.
Their ability to speak openly was one of the things she valued most about their peculiar relationship. Conversation with Joe was stripped of most social graces. Or pleasantries.
“I hope that you love the class enough that you’ll need to take more of them.” She chose her words deliberately.
Joe grunted. He didn’t believe himself capable of feeling anything as alive as love. “How’s Josh?”
“Lonesome.” Just thinking about her son hurt her heart. “But I think he’s having fun, too.” This was their first time apart for more than a few days.
“How are you?”
“Fine. Busy. Mom and David have had me over for dinner twice this week. And I’ve been going to work in the evenings. I’m helping some of the residents cheer up their rooms. We’re doing collages, mobiles and photo mosaics. I’d like to paint the multipurpose room, too.”
“How many dates have you been on?”
Josh was her usual excuse for not dating.
“None.”
“You’re not fine.”
She sighed. “Mostly I am, Joe. I’m busy at work. I love the center. How could I not? I get to spend my days helping senior citizens enjoy life. And Josh and I have a new house that I love. We even have a pool. And…” She fiddled with the hem on her shirt. “I’m really okay. I’m running every afternoon. I’m going to do a 10K with Randi Foster in November.”
“In Shelter Valley?”
“Of course. Montford is sponsoring it.”
“Is Randi training with you?”
“No. She runs at school.” Randi was the athletic director at Montford—and baby sister to the university president, Will Parsons, Mayor Becca’s husband.
“Who are you training with?”
“No one.”
“You’re running alone.”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t be running alone.”
“I’m careful. I carry pepper spray. And I’m not going to be held hostage to fear.”
“You shouldn’t be running alone.”
He wasn’t going to be convinced. She understood that. And even understood why. But she was still going to run.
Because it was something she had to do for her. Whether Joe understood that or not.
She could so easily end up like him.
“You should be dating.”
“You’ve done fine on your own.”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
“I— My… She was the one.”
“Maybe Aaron was, too.”
“You really think so?”
She had. At one time. Then…time…had changed things. Less than sixty minutes of it had changed everything.
Forever.
And that was something that Joe Frasier understood all too well.
CHAPTER TWO
BEFORE DAWN FRIDAY MORNING, Jay left his motorcyle in the short-term parking lot at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. He caught the shuttle for the off-site car rental place he’d phoned the night before.
Half an hour later he was on I-10, his six-foot frame chafing beneath the seat belt in the Chevy Impala. He’d never driven in Phoenix before, but at that early hour there was little traffic and he’d studied maps. He also had a sense of direction that could get him from one dark hole to the next without a spot of light.
Mostly what he wanted to do was remain inconspicuous. As inconspicuous as a long-haired, broad-shouldered man could be. He’d shed his leather vest and figured his white T-shirt blended in as well as anything might.
He’d signaled his exit and followed his preset route to his destination. The neighborhood, once he got to it, was a nice one. Elegant. Expensive. The best.
He’d expected nothing less.
The gated entry slowed him not at all. Saying he was surprising his sister with a visit, he’d coaxed a garbage guy down the street to give him the service code.
Jay had been investigating those who didn’t want to be found too
long to let things like gates stop him.
Not that this particular jaunt had anything to do with him finding someone who didn’t want to be found. No, this time it was him who didn’t want to be seen. Not yet. All in good time.
“HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN Josh hugs you?”
Ellen didn’t want to answer Shawna’s question. She didn’t want to answer any more questions ever again. Period. Questions made her feel like a freak.
And…they helped.
Which was why she was in counseling again.
She took a deep breath and forced herself inside, where the truth she was seeking lay waiting for her. “Sometimes his arms around my neck, his little body close to mine, is like what I imagine heaven to be. Light and free and so good you need to cry. With overwhelming joy. Other times, I feel peaceful.”
There. All true. And as normal as it got.
“And?” Shawna peered at her over the reading glasses she always wore when she had Ellen’s file on her desk in front of her.
Ellen, hands folded across her stomach, met the older woman’s gaze head-on.
She and Shawna had been together, on and off, since before Josh was born.
“And sometimes, most particularly when he comes at me when I’m not expecting it, I have to fight the instinct to tear his hands away.”
And then she quickly added, “But my patients at work hug me all the time and I’m fine with that. I love it.” She was fine. Healthy.
She just wasn’t dating.
And while no one but old Joe Frasier was on her about it, Ellen didn’t want to spend her life alone, raising her son alone, watching him grow and succeed alone.
She didn’t want to sleep alone for the rest of her life.
“How many of them come at you unexpectedly?” How could Shawna’s question come out so quiet when her voice sounded so firm?
“None.”
“Are there times when Josh hugs you, when you are expecting it, that you feel cramped?”
Oh, God. Was she a horrible mother? “Yes,” she barely whispered.
“Hey.” Shawna leaned forward, her blond hair falling over her shoulders to her desk. Ellen focused on the hair. “It’s okay.”
She met Shawna’s gaze and listened intently.
“You’re fine,” Shawna said. “Look at you, Ellen, you live independently. You have a successful career that you love. From what I can tell, everyone in town, young and old, comes to you for assistance because they know they can rely on you. You go out alone all the time.”
Of course she did. She was alive. She lived.
She just didn’t date.
“You’re going to have hard times. We talked about that five years ago. I told you to expect them. And to know that you would get through them.” But…
“And you have gotten through them, haven’t you?” Shawna asked.
Ellen thought to the time when she couldn’t be in a room alone. When she couldn’t leave her mother’s house.
It had taken her two years to walk into Walmart.
She thought of the years when she hadn’t slept through the night—any night.
“Yes,” she finally said.
“You’ll get through this, too, if that’s what you want.”
Because she could do anything she set her mind to. She knew that. Believed it.
And yet…
“Listen, I have a suggestion…” The way Shawna sat back, her words trailing off, got Ellen’s attention. “What?”
Studying her, Shawna remained silent, then glanced at Ellen’s file and seemed to come to some kind of decision. “There’s this new guy in town. He arrived this week. His name’s Jay Billingsley.”
Black Leather. Ellen’s mother and most of the heroines of Shelter Valley—as Ellen secretly called the ladies who officially met for lunch once a month to solve the world’s problems, but who spoke to one another almost every day—had assured Ellen last night that they were going to have him out of town in no time. Not that Ellen had asked for, or needed, the reassurance.
She didn’t doubt the heroines’ prediction for a second—though she was half rooting for the bold man who had the courage to roar through their quiet town without apology.
“I heard he’s a massage therapist.”
Suddenly, considering that Shawna might actually be about to suggest that Ellen use massage as therapy for what ailed her, she decided this Friday-morning visit was unnecessary after all. She was happy not to be dating. Who had time for it?
When she met the right guy…
When she was ready…
“That’s right.” Shawna folded her hands on her desk. “I hired him.”
“Why?”
“He’s a medical massage therapist, and a good one. His reputation is above reproach. He works with elderly people, volunteers his services a lot of the time, and his success stories would keep the Hallmark Channel in business for years.”
“What kind of successes?”
“Patients with broken hips facing being bound to a wheelchair walking again. Stroke victims brushing their teeth, feeding themselves, learning to talk. A cerebral palsy patient taking his first step at seventy-two.”
“I don’t have a muscular disability. Nor am I geriatric.”
“No, but he’s also done quite a bit with trauma patients. Soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and abused women and children.”
“He helps them walk again?” She was defensive. She knew it. She just couldn’t help it. She wasn’t getting undressed for some biker guy. No way. Even if she was half rooting for him.
“No, he helps to retrain their instincts, teaching them to trust sudden physical movement in their space and, eventually, accept touch to their skin. He’s assisted women who couldn’t tolerate any kind of physical contact. Apparently several of them have invited him to their weddings.”
“Abused women. You mean women who were beaten? Like domestic abuse.”
“Yes.”
“What about rape victims? Has he ever had a rape victim for a client?”
“Not that I know of.”
She was off the hook then. “I don’t see—”
“What you’re going through, this aversion to being touched, even in a completely noninvasive, trusted situation, is the same thing many abused women experience.” Shawna’s words hung in the air. Echoing around the small office. Getting louder by the second.
Or so it seemed to Ellen.
“Fine,” she blurted to silence the sound. “I mean, what does this guy do? If you think I’m suddenly going to want a massage because a good-looking biker wants to give me one—” Heat flooded under her skin.
“You’ve seen Jay.”
“Maybe.”
“Were you afraid of him?”
“Not as much as I would have expected.”
“Good. He’s got a way about him.”
“My mother and her friends don’t think he should be trusted.”
“It’s not like them to judge by appearances.”
“I guess David invited him to the men’s group at church Sunday night and he said no. No excuses, just no, thank you.”
Shawna didn’t dignify the comment with a response.
“And Ben and Tory invited him to dinner. He turned them down, too.” Why Ellen felt compelled to defend the heroines wasn’t clear to her.
“Jay’s personal life has nothing to do with his skills as a therapist,” Shawna said. “I think you know that.”
Ellen didn’t always agree with some of the more narrow-minded opinions espoused by the heroines of Shelter Valley, as Shawna was well aware.
“If you see Jay, I’ll insist on being a primary player in your treatment. So far, with the few clients I’ve referred to him, Jay’s insisting on that, as well. I’ll want to speak with him first, but from what I know about his methods, the treatment will be completely noninvasive.”
The repetition of the word noninvasive set Ellen off. “What does that mean?” The words were out bef
ore she had a chance to take a deep breath. Temper her reaction.
“It means you’ll be fully dressed at all times.”
Oh. Well, then. She relaxed her fingers from the edge of her chair. “Where?”
“Here. I’ve given him a room right down the hall.”
She’d known she had to seek all the help she could get the second she’d pulled her son’s arms from around her neck five days ago.
She had a month to fix herself.
CHAPTER THREE
JAY HADN’T PLANNED TO spend the entire morning sitting in a car. It was a school day, Friday—what crazy school system started at the beginning of August?
With the academic year barely under way, why in hell hadn’t the kid left his house to catch the bus with the rest of the junior-high-aged kids?
There had been five of them. Three girls and two boys. Jay could describe them all in detail. He knew which houses they’d come from, too.
But he hadn’t seen the boy he wanted to see.
Only to see.
Without being seen.
At ten o’clock, after three hours of surveillance, he gave up. Either the boy was sick, cutting school, had spent the night at someone’s place or was in juvenile detention.
Hoping it wasn’t the latter, Jay made a couple of calls to be sure.
Satisfied with the news that Cole MacDonald—his primary reason for being in this state—wasn’t in custody, Jay spent the rest of the morning at the Department of Vital Records and the library accessing newspaper archives tending to the other reason he was in the godforsaken desert when he could be watching waves hit the sand. Before he could offer anything to an out-of-control boy, he had to find his father. Find some answers about his life, about himself.
Cole apparently needed a strong hand—and stability. Jay had an aversion to being tied down. Shied clear of emotional attachment to the point that he’d never had a committed relationship beyond the kind but emotionally distant one he’d had with the aunt who’d raised him.
Jay’s father had had an aversion to family ties, too.
Was Jay a chip off the old block? A man who couldn’t be counted on to hang around? Was his need to be a free spirit hereditary?
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