She cradled him, with her body, with her arms, and with something else, too. Something he didn’t recognize. Something that was purely Ellen.
The experience had been about her—for her. But for the first time in his entire life, Jay felt, for a second, as though he’d come home.
ELLEN HAD TO LEAVE. HER car was parked outside Jay’s house. She’d left a light on in her living room. Both things people would notice.
But she had to leave for another, more serious reason. She had to leave because she so badly wanted to stay. Possibly forever.
She moved and Jay extricated himself from on top of her and was barely on his feet before she was retrieving her wet clothes.
“Let me get you something dry to put on.” He didn’t seem the least bit conscious of his own nudity.
She was going to remember him that way forever—her wild, long-haired savior, standing above her like some kind of Greek god, ready to be worshipped.
He’d given her back her life.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the dark green terry robe he handed her and slipping her arms through the sleeves. The old Ellen would have put on her wet clothes. A robe would be much harder to explain if she ran into anyone between Jay’s front door and her own.
But she wanted something of him to take home with her tonight. Something to hold while she lay in her bed alone.
Rolling up her wet clothes, she tucked them under one arm. He walked with her through the mostly dark house, their way illuminated by the light over the kitchen sink he’d left on.
“Are you coming to therapy in the morning?”
Ellen’s insides started up again. She could hardly believe she was living in the same body that had been hers all of her life.
“Do you think I need to?”
“I think I want to give you a real, full-body massage.”
The images his words conjured up…
“Okay.”
And after that she was going to have to give him what he most needed in the world—his freedom to leave.
“Hey, Jay?” She turned before crossing the threshold.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“Sweetie, believe me, I’m the one offering thanks at the moment.”
He’d liked it that much? Her goal had been to get through the experience with normal reactions. She’d never considered that she might actually be good at it.
“Did you mean it when you said that we could have another go at it?”
Rather than giving her a verbal answer, Jay motioned downward with both hands, showing her exactly how ready he was.
She called him from her cell phone during the short drive to her house.
“You okay?” she asked, thinking of him alone in a rental house in a strange town that hadn’t been all that welcoming to him.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about Cole.”
“It wasn’t like I knew how to be a dad, anyway. I would have sucked at it.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.” Turning into her drive, Ellen pulled into the garage and closed the automatic door behind her. “No one knows how to be a parent when they first have a child,” she said. “It’s something you learn as you go, taking from what life has taught you and trusting your instincts the rest of the time.”
“Some folks aren’t meant to be parents.”
Maybe. “You cared.”
She hurt for him during the long silence. And even more when she heard his softly spoken, “Yeah.”
“Don’t give up on him, Jay. He’ll call you at some point. He’ll want your side of the story.”
“If he does, he does.”
“What about your father? You still going to try to find him?”
“My need isn’t quite so urgent, but yeah. We stirred up too many unanswered questions. I need to know the truth.”
“So…you going to hang around a bit longer then?” Dammit. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t ask. That she wouldn’t even think that way. She’d promised him—
“I’ve already given my notice on the house. I leave at the end of the month.”
One day before Josh returned. The timing was perfect.
“That gives us almost a week.” To find his father. To make delicious love.
No.
Scratch that.
There was no love between her and Jay. Great sex, yes. But no love. They hadn’t known each other long enough.
He’d never even met Josh.
Her family hated him—except maybe for Shelley, who’d never met him.
He hated Shelter Valley.
She couldn’t live anywhere else.
They were from different universes. He didn’t believe in formal education. She valued it second only to family.
He was Black Leather. She was small-town gingham.
“Are you having regrets?” His question stole quietly into her thoughts.
“No.” She spoke honestly, without thinking. “Are you?”
“Only if we’ve made things more difficult for you.”
Because having casual sex wasn’t usual for her? But was old hat to him?
“I’ve discovered that I’m not dead, Jay. My world has possibilities again.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“Me, either. About you, I mean.”
“Sleep well, angel.”
“You, too.”
Hanging up, Ellen went in the house, thinking that sleep well was as close to I love you as she and Jay were ever going to get.
Maybe that was one tiny regret.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAY’S PHONE RANG AT seven-thirty the next morning. Ellen canceling was his guess. He’d been expecting the call. To verify his assumption, he glanced at the caller ID on his screen. It was a local exchange, but he didn’t recognize the number.
“Jay Billingsley.” His voice was pleasant. Even. Could be a client call.
“David Marks, here.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, as though he hadn’t had sex with this man’s stepdaughter the night before. He didn’t regret what he’d done—not if Ellen was still okay this morning.
His skin grew cold. Was she there at her mother’s? Had something happened to her? Because of him?
“I had a call from a woman I’ve been trying to reach all week. She lives in Phoenix with her daughter and grandkids, but thirty years ago, she volunteered in the church office.”
Daughter. Grandkids. Not Ellen.
“She remembers your mother,” David said. “She knows something about your father. She’s willing to meet with you this morning, if you’re free.”
“What time?”
“She can be in Shelter Valley by ten.”
If David knew that Jay had an eight-o’clock appointment and who it was with, would he still be so willing to help?
Probably, was Jay’s instant answer. People in Shelter Valley were unlike any people he’d ever known. When they wanted a guy out of town they didn’t use force or target him with rotten tomatoes. They helped him. Gave him what he needed so he’d move on.
Everyone won that way.
After agreeing to meet the woman at David’s church, and thanking the man for his facilitation, Jay hung up.
Answers. The final snip in the ties that bound him here. Cole didn’t need him. And once Jay had answers about his own life, he didn’t need Shelter Valley. He could be free by nightfall.
As long as Ellen wasn’t experiencing any repercussions.
He was thinking about the Shelter Valley way a short time later as he waited outside his treatment room door while Ellen undressed and prepared for their session.
This would most likely be their final treatment. If she could withstand a full-body massage, she was well on her way to the life she wanted.
There could be setbacks. He knew that. She did, too. But for her to know, to believe, that she was capable of normal responses to touch was most of the battle won.
With one thought in mi
nd, Jay walked into the room.
“YOUR STEPFATHER CALLED.”
Jay practically blurted the words when Ellen, fully dressed, joined him in the hallway an hour later. He was sweating like a pig. Had untucked his T-shirt from his pants, to cover the bulge beneath his zipper.
He needed a good long ride on his bike. Space. Air to breathe. Open road.
But he’d made it through the session, seeing muscle and bone, not a gorgeous female body.
“He did?” Her face was red, as though she’d been jogging instead of lying on his table.
Jay told her about the call. And stared at her lips. In the past hour he’d touched every inch of her body—minus the intimate parts. Those he’d relished the night before. His body had been inside hers.
Yet he hadn’t kissed those lips.
“Oh, my gosh, Jay.” Her entire expression lit up. “You’re going to find your father.”
“We don’t know that.” He’d been in the investigative business a long time—long enough to know that most promising leads led to dead ends.
“But you’ll learn something. I wish I could be there with you, but I have an appointment.”
Jay didn’t need her. Or anyone.
“David will be around.” Any disappointment that Ellen wouldn’t be with him had no place in this day.
“I’ll call you as soon as I’m free.” Her gaze was so warm, so…personal, he could feel her touching him and she was standing a good foot and a half away from him.
Her call wasn’t necessary. They’d catch up at some point. He nodded anyway.
“Okay then, I’ll talk to you in a little bit.” She started down the hallway and turned back. Walking right up to him, she put her hands on his shoulders, leaned forward and kissed him. A real kiss, not a peck. A lingering kiss. Full on the lips.
“That’s for luck.”
THAT WAS PLAIN STUPID, Ellen lamented as, car loaded with groceries and new assignments from Phyllis, she headed out of town toward Joe’s mountain.
Why in the hell had she kissed Jay? As though there was some kind of close affection between them.
Granted, they had had sex together, but that had been different. A favor. Therapy. Healing ground.
It hadn’t been personal, which was what she told Shelley when her sister called five minutes into the drive.
“Get serious, El.” Shelley snorted. “Of course it was personal. You got naked and slept with the guy.”
“No, I didn’t. I went home before I fell asleep.”
“You know what I mean.”
Blue sky, sunshine, the mountains, she took them all in. Allowed them to center her, to suck the nervous edge out of her veins. “Yeah, I know.”
“So how are you? Really?”
Really? She couldn’t look that close right now. “I’m not sorry.”
“Even if you felt that way because he’s your therapist? What if it was some kind of hero-worship stuff? Transference?”
“He turned me on, Shel. I’m physically and emotionally capable of sexual response. That’s what matters to me.”
“But what if it was a therapy transference thing? What if you don’t ever feel that way again?”
“If I don’t ever feel that way again, it’ll be because I don’t ever meet a man who attracts me like Jay does. You know as well as I do that the attraction thing is part personality, part circumstance and part pheromones. My person reacts to Jay’s person. I’m assuming it will also react to the man I’m meant to marry and spend the rest of my life with. But if it doesn’t ever happen again, it’s not because of the rape. It’s because Jay was the one.”
Slamming on the brakes, Ellen pulled over to the side of the road. She was hyperventilating. She put her head on the steering wheel.
Oh, God. Oh, my God. Jay was the one. Her lack of sexual response hadn’t been only the result of the rape—though certainly her reticence had been more acute because of it. But it had been as Jay had said—she wasn’t a woman who could have casual sex. She’d needed the right man.
And a bit of touch therapy, too.
As she sat there, hot and cold, sweating, she focused on breathing normally.
There had to be more than one right man for her. There would be. Her body was attracted to Jay so he could help her.
Her heart wasn’t involved. He wasn’t the only one who would bring her these feelings.
Yeah, that was it.
“El?” She heard the call from far away. “Ellen!” It came more sharply. “Ellen, talk to me dammit, or I’m calling Greg. Ellen.”
Shelley’s panicked shriek got through. Lifting the phone to her ear, Ellen half whispered, “Yeah, Shel, it’s okay. I’m here.”
She took a deep breath. And another. She was fine.
“What’s going on? Where are you? I thought you were on your way to the hermit’s place.”
“His name is Joe.” She managed to sound like a normal woman. The sky was still blue. The sun was still shining. Watching for traffic behind her, she pulled out onto the road. “And I am on my way to his place.”
“What happened?”
“I dropped the phone.” It was true.
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.”
“So tell me the truth, big sister. You fell for him, didn’t you? You’re in love with this biker dude.”
No, she had not. No, she was not.
“The truth, little sister, is that I’m fine. Jay’s fine. Life is fine. And I need to get to Joe’s before his milk turns sour.”
“Uh-huh.”
With Shelley’s skepticism ringing in her ears, Ellen hung up. She had something far more important than her sex life to think about.
Joe. And his life.
Jay had given her back her life. Could she do the same for Joe? If it turned out that his wife had been murdered by the same man who had killed Jay’s mother, would knowing help the older man?
If she brought up his past and it turned out she was wrong and there were no mementoes from Joe’s wife in Jay’s box, would she be sending the older man further into his personal hell?
In the end, as she drove up the track to Joe’s shack, all conflicting emotion faded away. Her decision had already been made.
If she didn’t at least try, there was no hope. And hope was a far better choice than safety that came with emptiness attached.
“YES, I KNEW THIS WOMAN. Tammy Walton. I remember because her last name reminded me of that old TV show The Waltons. You remember it?”
The eighty-year-old woman sat in one of the two chairs in front of David’s massive oak desk. Jay sat beside her, elbows on the chair arms, his hands clasped in front of his face as he twiddled his thumbs.
Claudia’s daughter, who had grown up in Shelter Valley and had driven her mother to town for this meeting, had taken her teenaged children to look at Montford’s campus.
“I remember the show,” David said from behind his desk. Wearing denim shorts, a T-shirt that advertised Acapulco Beach and sandals, the man didn’t look like any preacher Jay had ever known. “The family lived up on a mountain.”
“Right, and John Boy was a writer,” Claudia said, her voice cracking with age. “Tammy was a writer, too. That’s why I remember. Two Waltons. Two writers.”
Jay stopped twiddling. “A writer?”
The faded blue eyes still had a sharp gaze—as Jay discovered when the old woman’s attention turned to him. “Well, she wanted to be. She used to come to town to watch sports matches—said she did write-ups for a school newspaper.”
“What school?”
“I’m not sure. If she said, I can’t remember.”
“Was it the University of Arizona?”
“No. A college maybe, though. One of those community things.”
He sat forward, forcing himself to remain calm while adrenaline shot through him.
“Did you ever see her with anyone?”
“No. I only met her a couple of times. She came in to talk to Pastor Winslow. He
was the preacher back then. A really nice man. Passed away ten years ago from kidney failure.”
“Do you know why she needed to see Pastor Winslow?” David asked quietly.
“Of course I do. Back then, the church secretary was as much a pastor to the people as the pastor was. Especially with the women. She was pregnant. She and the young man were very much in love.” Claudia smiled as she glanced over at Jay. He had no idea if the woman had caught all of David’s explanation. If she knew that Tammy Walton was Jay’s mother. “You’ve never seen a girl so in love as that one.”
And the bastard had broken her heart, left her alone with a baby to support, which made her prey for—
“And the boy, too. I talked to him on the phone a couple of times. He loved that girl so much.”
Jay gritted his teeth. If the woman only knew.
But why should she? Why would she need to?
“That girl, Tammy, she was so sweet. And so conflicted, poor dear. Her and her sister both.”
“You know my aunt? Olivia Walton?”
“Olivia, yes, that was her name. Tammy called her Livvie. They were both trying so hard to live happy lives, and couldn’t seem to see that they were the ones most preventing it. Especially Livvie. She’d had it bad. Protected Tammy from the worst of the abuse.”
Jay shifted in his chair. The damned thing had to be the most uncomfortable—
“Abuse?” David asked.
“Their dad was a brute. Beat their mom until the day she died, then Livvie took the worst of it. But what hurt those girls most was their mom always telling them to never get married. She said their dad was a wonderful man, loving and kind, until they got married and had kids. She swore that men changed after they married and were never the same again. On her deathbed, she made both girls promise they’d never get married. That way she knew they would be safe, they’d never have to suffer like she had.”
He couldn’t be hearing right.
“That’s why Tammy came to talk to us. She was pregnant and so in love with her young man, but couldn’t bring herself to marry him. She didn’t want to go anyplace in Tucson in case her sister found out. Truth was, I think she was almost as afraid of letting her sister down as she was of breaking a deathbed promise or having love turn sour on her.”
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