Hmm. She had continued the therapy, so Joe couldn’t be completely opposed. “He didn’t warn you against such unusual therapy or me?”
“No, actually. He said I need the therapy. He wants me to get married.”
Did this Joe want to be the bridegroom, too? Jay didn’t ask. The answer was none of his business. It didn’t have anything to do with her healing.
That led him to why they were here. Jay would rather ram a car into Rabbit Rock than tell Ellen that he was attracted to her.
“I have something I need to talk to you about.” He couldn’t work on her again unless she knew.
“Okay.”
“Can we sit?” He indicated a large boulder in full view of the mountaintop. Ellen sat. Leaving several inches between them, he did, too.
What to say? Depending on how he handled the next few minutes, he could lose all chance of helping Ellen.
Despite this inability to stop thinking about her sexually, he still believed that he could be a part of her healing process. If he could send her into the world able to love fully, into the arms of a man who would cherish her and make her happy…
“Is this about your dad?”
It took him a second to catch up with her. “No.” But he should have figured that she’d think so. And that was going to make what he had to say that much more shocking to her.
“It’s about us.”
“Us?”
He couldn’t identify the tremor in her voice. Fear? Or something else?
“I’m struggling, Ellen.”
“About what?”
The way they sat, they faced out at different angles, which made not looking at her a little easier, a little less like avoidance.
“The lines are blurring. I still believe I can help you—partly because you’re so committed to helping your self.”
“I hear a but in there. If you’re trying to tell me that you want me to stay out of your business, then fine. I’ll stay out.”
He should accept her offer. Instantly.
“I’m trying to tell you that I don’t think of you as only a client.”
The sun was hot, but this late in the afternoon, it was behind the peak of the mountain, giving Jay some relief. Dry heat was much better than air that hung with moisture, but it was still hot.
“How do you think of me?” He could hear the tremor again.
“I’m not sure.” Liar. “I find you attractive. But it’s more convoluted than that.”
“How so?”
Sweat trickled down the back of his T-shirt. He thought of the guy watching them, and wondered if he was aiming his gun.
“I was there. I was asleep in my crib in the next room when it happened.” An abrupt change of subject, but he wasn’t sure how to get her to understand something he’d never articulated for himself. “A friend stopped by, heard me crying…found my mother— They called my mother’s sister.”
Her sharp intake of breath registered first. He could feel her gaze boring into the side of his head. Jay didn’t move, didn’t turn to meet her eyes. He couldn’t say all that needed saying if he saw the compassion, the pity in her eyes.
“I know I was an infant, completely incapable of taking care of myself let alone anyone else. But…I have always wondered if I heard what was going on. Did I hear anything? Sense the danger? Did I know on some level what was going on? And if I did…if I’d cried sooner or something, could I have saved her?”
“What could you have done? Sure, you might have cried sooner, but who knows? And maybe it was for the best that you didn’t. If the guy had known you were there, he might have gone after you, too.”
“Possibly. In any case, I spent a lot of time thinking—especially in prison—about that day, wondering if I’d heard something. You have a lot of time on the inside, and I couldn’t get away from the idea that I might have been able to make a difference for her. I was right there…”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Of course not. But I determined that as soon as I got out, I was going to find my mother’s killer. It was something I could do. I had some idea that I might subconsciously know something, or recognize some thing, that would lead me to him. I was the only witness.”
“They never caught the guy?” Her question was barely above a whisper, so close to him he could almost feel her breath.
“They have now.”
“And?”
“He’s on death row here in Arizona.”
Her breath caught again and he turned toward her. Ellen’s compassionate expression, the open under standing in her gaze, grabbed at him.
“Because of you?”
“It took me more than ten years to track the guy down. In the end, it was a series of newspaper articles that put it all together. My aunt had gone on about this handkerchief that my mother had had. It belonged to their grandmother. My aunt claimed that handkerchief was missing. No one paid any attention to her. My aunt couldn’t remember when she’d last seen it and nothing else was missing from the house. My aunt couldn’t really even remember distinctly what it looked like. But she was insistent she’d know it if she saw it and was equally insistent that my mother would never ever have disposed of it.
“As I’ve told you, my aunt was a bit…odd. She tended to glom on certain things and, frankly, I agreed with the police that the missing handkerchief—if it really was missing—had nothing to do with my mother’s murder. Then one night I was reading through other unsolved cases against young women in their homes in the United States—one of which had been in Wyoming. A newspaper article said something about a chain missing. Something that mattered a lot to the victim.”
Through this part of his story, Ellen had maintained her stare. Jay didn’t focus on her. He couldn’t get lost in that gaze.
Because she was his client. And because, other than as a therapist, he had nothing to offer. She didn’t need what he had to give. And he didn’t have to give what she needed.
Neither fact stemmed his growing desire for her.
“I started looking through newspapers from all over the West and hounding police departments for any unsolved cases where something of emotional importance to the victim was reported missing. Turns out there were two others. One in Montana and one in Oregon. When I looked at all four cases, I was able to discover enough similarities and compile enough evidence from the four separate cases that, when put together, gave law enforcement officials sufficient evidence to find the guy.”
“And they got a conviction.”
“Eventually.”
“Were you at the trial?”
“Every day. The day the guy was sentenced to death he blurted out in the courtroom that he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. He turned to face us, the families of his victims, and said that he’d told the women that he wasn’t going to hurt them, that he only needed a safe place to hang out for a couple of hours then he’d be gone. He let each of them hold something that was meaningful to them to give them comfort.
“While they were holding their most precious item, he raped them, slit their throats, then stole their prized possession as a memento.”
“Did you get the handkerchief back?”
“Yeah. Those mementos—found in a box in the trunk of his car—were what finally convicted him. There were others, there, too, indicating that the four women we know about weren’t the fiend’s only victims.”
There were other families, other kids who had grown into adults maybe, who were still as lost as he’d been all those years without answers.
Jay felt for them.
His mother’s handkerchief, the small square of white linen, stained with his mother’s blood, was in his wallet. It went everywhere with Jay. Every single day of his life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THERE WERE OTHER MEMENTOES. Other women, victims of similar crimes. Victims of a serial rapist who had ravaged the West thirty years before.
Glancing toward the top of the mountain, certain that Joe was watching out
for her, Ellen couldn’t quell the nervous tension racing through her.
Just as Tammy Walton’s friend had found her raped and dead, just as the other women had been raped and murdered, left for dead, in their own homes, Joe had come home to find his wife raped and dead.
By her best guess, Joe’s wife had been murdered a year or two before Jay’s mother had suffered the same fate.
Her mind leaped to possibilities, with her heart completely keeping up. What if the same man had killed both women? What if Jay had found the man who had killed Joe’s wife? What if a memento of Joe’s wife was missing? Would he know? Or had he left town before going through her things?
And if Jay had found Joe’s wife’s killer? Would closure help the man? Give him some sense of peace? Of justice? Just enough to get him off that mountain and into life?
“What about the other mementoes? Were any of the other victims found?”
“Yes. The FBI followed up, based on cold case files, and I was given some cases to investigate, as well. All in all we found a total of nine victims.”
“Did you find them all?”
“No. There were fourteen mementos.”
Five victims unaccounted for. Could one of them be Joe’s wife? Her stomach churned, but Ellen said nothing.
“Were all the victims from the West?”
“All who were found. The national missing persons database was searched but no cases from the East or Midwest matched the evidence we had.”
Joe’s wife wouldn’t have been listed as a missing person. And with Joe gone, there might not have been anyone pushing the Tucson police to solve her murder. What if her case had been left…unnoticed?
And what if, by stirring up the past, she sent Joe even further into his self-imposed isolation?
Ellen was being assaulted by the confusing and dichotomous signals from her heart, all of them somehow wrapped up with the man sitting beside her.
She couldn’t get involved with him. She didn’t want to get involved with him.
Yet her heart had leaped when he’d told her he was attracted to her.
She was afraid of the power he had to stir her. Yet filled with a need to make things better for him.
Ellen was a nurturer. And Jay needed nurturing more than anyone she’d ever met.
Whether he knew it or not.
“Is that why you work with victims of domestic abuse? Because of what happened to your mom?”
A few strands of hair had come loose from his pony tail on the ride out. “It’s why I feel so compelled to help you.”
“So the lines that are…blurring… You’re confusing me with your mother?”
That would make things safer. A whole lot easier. It wasn’t easy waiting for his answer. “No.”
Her heart rate sped up.
“It only makes this more convoluted. I can’t walk away from you because of her. Ever since you told me what happened to you I knew I had to help you—like I knew I had to find my mother’s killer.
“But the way I’m feeling, the attraction, has nothing to do with my mother. And everything to do with you.”
Ellen had absolutely no idea what to do next. What to say. His words excited her.
And that shamed her.
What in the hell was the matter with her? Because while the idea of Jay wanting her was, well, maybe a little exhilarating, she wanted no part of a physical relationship with him. Or anyone—yet.
What kind of woman did that make her? That she wanted a man to want her with no intention whatsoever of giving him what he wanted?
“Where do we go from here?” she finally asked to escape her thoughts.
“That’s up to you. I’m a professional. I do not, ever, cross the line between the therapy and personal while I’m working. You have my word on that. But I’ll understand if you decide that you can no longer trust me to treat you.”
Silence fell and Ellen closed her eyes, tuning in to the warmth of the rock beneath her. The quiet of the desert. Searching for peace.
And finding the heat of the man sitting beside her. Her stomach churned.
Oh, God.
How could she trust a man to touch her nonsexually after he’d told her that he was sexually attracted to her?
Actually, no, he’d merely said he was attracted to her. He liked her. Maybe the way he liked his bike. Or a good steak for dinner. Maybe the lines that were blurring were between friendship and professionalism.
The desert’s peace found her.
She was helping him find his father. It was reasonable to expect that he would rely on her a bit. To experience a sense of indebtedness. Or gratitude. To think of her as a friend.
“This man part of you, the part where the lines are blurring, you just…like me, right?”
“Define like.”
“You appreciate that I want to help you find your father. My personality resonates with you in some way.” Ellen flushed with embarrassment. Or Arizona’s afternoon heat. She sounded like a textbook even to herself.
“I get turned on when I think of you for any length of time. And sometimes when I have a flash of a thought. If our situation was different, if I wasn’t your massage therapist, if I’d met you in a nonprofessional setting, my current goal would be to get you into bed with me.”
Okay. No room for misinterpretation on that one. He wasn’t giving her an easy out. No pretending allowed.
“So how do I know that when I’m lying on your table and you’ve got your hands on me that you aren’t fantasizing about me?”
“Because I give you my word that I’m not.”
“You’re a man, Jay. I assume you have normal male sexual instincts and drives. How do you expect me to believe that you can simply turn those off because you walk into a little room with a table in it?”
“It’s not the room. It’s the mind-set,” Jay said with out hesitation. And with conviction. “You’re a counselor. You know that sexual drive, while a product of hormones, is also largely a product of thought process. Controlled by thought process. When I’m working, I’m not seeing male or female. Sexual parts don’t exist on my table. I am fully focused on muscle placement, tightness, obstruction. On ligament and skeletal alignment, tension and elasticity, tissue depth. I communicate with my client the entire time, listening to what the client’s body tells my hands so that I can best serve the body’s muscular needs. I’ve never yet met an adult with completely healthy muscles. We all carry tension and toxins within us. My job is to find them and attempt to release them. Damaged muscles are not a turn-on.”
“Then why is massage recommended to couples in sexual counseling?”
“Like I said, it’s all in the focus. When you are lying naked with someone who is also naked, your mind tends to focus on the ultimate goal of sexual intimacy. Even if you aren’t naked, but you know you’re touching them for mutual pleasure, you tend to focus on the ultimate goal of mutual physical pleasure.”
She was not only a certified counselor, she’d been through marital counseling with Aaron. And enough of her own counseling to write a textbook. What Jay said fit everything she’d been taught. It made logical sense.
There was nothing logical about Ellen’s issues.
Sometimes the simplest touch was an invasion to her. A threat. A hug from her son felt as though she was being tied up. Bound. Robbed against her will.
To submit to touch from a man who admittedly wanted something from her body for his own gain—something that could be invasive and painful…
She’d be stupid to continue treatment with Jay. Setting herself up for failure.
Disappointment welled within her. She hadn’t realized, until that moment, how much she’d been hoping Jay had been right in his assertion that he could help her heal. She’d actually been considering, in random passing thoughts, that she might be capable of enjoying sexual encounters someday.
Marry. Have a full family of her own. And become a normal part of Shelter Valley society, rather than the girl who stood out.
She couldn’t stand to be that girl anymore. To face an incomplete life.
So what if she failed with Jay? Would she be any worse off than she was now?
And if he really was a miracle worker…
Minutes passed while Ellen contemplated, debated, and tied herself up in knots.
Jay didn’t push. Didn’t defend his case. Or try to talk her into anything.
“It’s different.” Her words cracked the silence loudly.
“What is?”
“Being around you. You don’t seem to need me to see your position. My family, the town, it’s as though if I don’t do what they think is best, it will be bad for me. They need me to see things like they do. To agree with them.”
“That’s not normal. You know that, right?”
“They care, Jay. You didn’t see me five years ago. They did. They know how fragile I was.”
“You were injured, Ellen, not fragile. You recovered.”
For the most part he was right.
“It goes deeper than that, though.” She struggled to verbalize something she’d never expressed before. “I think guilt prompts a lot of my mom’s actions. She feels like she let me down, that she wasn’t a good enough parent, a good enough protector and that if she had done better, I wouldn’t have been raped. She knows that I didn’t call her for help because she was so overworked, trying to do the job of two parents. Any other time I would have called. And if I had—”
“Your mother didn’t ask her husband to leave her for another woman. She was one person, doing the best she could.”
“I know that. I don’t blame her. But I think she blames herself. I think she promised herself that she won’t let me down again. She won’t miss one little thing that she might do or say that could keep me safe.”
“You’re an adult. It’s no longer her job to keep you safe.”
“I know. But it is my job to watch out for her. She’s my mother and I care about her struggles. I want to be there for her. Which means that I have to understand when she gets too forceful with me. I just have to be careful not to give in to what she wants unless I believe it’s the right thing to do. Which means that I’m always on alert when someone is asking me to make life-changing decisions. I appreciate that you give me the space to think things through on my own.”
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