by Marta Perry
He couldn’t blame her. The situation was far too complicated even without the error of becoming emotionally involved.
Did that excuse him from answering honestly her question about his love life or lack thereof? He knew more than she could imagine about her marriage and divorce as well as her social life since the divorce—a life limited to the occasional girls’ night out. He didn’t like the way his evasion made him feel.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RACHEL REALIZED THEY’D worked their way through the living room and kitchen with barely a word spoken between them. Clint was giving a final wipe to the kitchen floor he’d insisted on mopping once he’d swept up the contents of the flour canister. She studied what she could see of his averted face.
Something had been said that had brought that stoic mask back to his face, and she couldn’t think what it had been. Was it her comment about his having someone in his life to give opinions on decorating?
She fought back a surge of embarrassment. She hadn’t meant anything by it. Or had she? Didn’t she, at some level she didn’t want to recognize, long to understand his personal life?
That was natural, wasn’t it? He had come so far into her life...farther, maybe, than anyone else in years. He couldn’t expect that to run only one way.
But clearly he did. And just as clearly this train of thought was getting her nowhere.
Clint straightened, surveying the floor with satisfaction. Obviously he was a man who took pride in a job well done.
“If you hire yourself out, I’m sure I could find you a few jobs.”
He smiled, but that shadow lingered in his eyes. “I might have to turn to that eventually. Coming up blank for a client isn’t the way to build a good reputation in this business.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” No, she’d been too absorbed in her own troubles to look beyond them. “Surely one dissatisfied client won’t hurt you.”
“Don’t worry about it. Logan would say I have a constitutional dislike of loose ends. And speaking of loose ends...” He picked up his jacket, hanging on the back of a kitchen chair, and pulled out her cell phone. “There you go.”
“Thanks so much.” She’d never considered herself one of those people who grew permanently attached to their cell phone, but she was ridiculously glad to have it back.
Clint cleared his throat, bringing her gaze to him. “We had to look through it. I’d apologize, but...”
“But you’re not really sorry.”
“At that point, I was desperate. I had to do anything I could to find you.”
“And to find out if I was involved.” She shook her head when he started to speak. “Never mind. I’m annoyed, but I’ll get over it. I understand your reasons. You had no reason to believe you could trust me.”
“I wanted to.”
For an instant his words hung between them, and she wasn’t sure how to respond. Did he mean... Was he saying his instincts had told him to trust her, just as hers had said the same about him?
He moved, not meeting her eyes. “Let’s move on to the bedroom.”
Wordless, Rachel led the way. She’d been putting this off, and she knew why. If any remnants of her marriage were left, they’d be stowed away in the dower chest her grandmother had given her. And that stood at the foot of the bed.
“Anything stored under here?” Clint knelt to peer under the bed, reminding her of that moment in the hotel room when he’d done the same.
“I’m not a believer in under-bed storage,” she said. “Collects dust. That would be the Pennsylvania Dutch hausfrau coming out in me.”
“Inherited from your grandmother, no doubt.” He replied lightly, but the words didn’t cover the way he winced when he got up from the floor.
Humiliation drenched her when she realized what she’d done. “I shouldn’t have let you mop that floor. Your injury...”
“It’s nothing.” The brusque tone told her that he didn’t accept sympathy. “It doesn’t bother me now.”
His brush-off annoyed her, and the words burst out of her. “Of course it’s something! You had to give up your work because of that injury, so it was serious. Don’t tell me it’s nothing.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He eyed her warily. “You always get that riled up by little white lies?”
“When they’re used to shut someone out they’re not so little.”
She could see him pondering that, fitting it together with what he knew about her. Addicts lie. He probably knew that, could probably see exactly why lies affected her the way they did.
Rachel pressed her lips together. She gave entirely too much away each time she talked to Clint. She ought to shut up entirely.
“I’m sorry.” She hurried the words. “I didn’t... I shouldn’t push in where I’m not wanted.”
“It’s not that. Believe me, it’s not.” He sounded as if he meant it, but how could she be sure? “I don’t like to talk about it.”
She shrugged, turning away. She’d made a fool of herself enough for one day, it seemed. The silence hung heavy between them. And then he took a step toward her.
“My partner and I were following a small-time drug dealer, hoping he’d lead us to the bigger fish behind him.”
Clint spoke very deliberately. Rachel looked at his face, and her breath caught. He’d understood exactly what she was thinking, and why. And he was making amends in the hardest possible way, telling her the thing he didn’t want to.
She was afraid to listen, but also afraid not to.
“The guy led us into an alley behind some boarded-up stores. My buddy wanted to call for backup, but I was afraid we’d lose him. So we went in. It was a trap.”
His pain was so obvious. Just remembering turned his face white and brought out a line of perspiration on his forehead. How could she ever have thought him stoic?
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to...”
Clint’s sharp gesture stopped her. “He was hit first. I headed for him, cursing myself for not listening to him. The next round hit me. I tried to reach him, but turned out my hip was shattered and my spinal cord affected. I couldn’t move. I could just lie there, watching. He bled out before help reached us.”
“I’m so sorry.” Tears choked the words, and she reached out a tentative hand to touch his. “That’s a lot to carry around with you.” It was so little to say, but she sensed he couldn’t handle anything more.
“Most people don’t see that.” His voice was taut with pain. “It was part of the job, they think. One of the risks cops take.”
“Most people aren’t very observant. Including me.” Her throat closed, making it difficult to get the words out. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Yeah.” He squeezed her hand. “I’ve gotten into the habit of shying away from talking about it.”
“Until I yelled at you and bludgeoned my way in.” She tried to ease the weight of emotion. “Not one of my more attractive qualities, I’m afraid.”
“But effective.” The tension in his face eased. “You deserved an answer, given how much I’ve probed into your life. I wish...well, I was going to say I wished we’d met under other circumstances, but we probably never would have.”
“I guess that’s true.” It was difficult to imagine her life without him now, but that was a dangerous place to go. She might very well have to.
Rachel forced herself to move away from such emotional territory. “If we’re going to look for any remnants of my marriage, the place to start is with the dower chest.” She nodded at it. “If there are any reminders of Paul here, that’s where they’d be.”
“Okay.” He went to the chest, sitting down on the floor in front of it. She sat cross-legged next to him, her knee brushing his leg.
She undid the clasp and lifted the lid, surveying all the things she hadn’t had the heart to get rid of. She couldn’t do
it before, but with Clint next to her, she felt strong. It was time to deal with it and be done, once and for all.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, Rachel decided, counted as a red-letter day. She was moving back into her house. And she was driving her own car once again. Either Clint or Logan had rescued it from the airport lot.
Amazing how freeing that was, being able to drive her own car and go where she wanted to. She hadn’t realized that until she was confined, first at the farm by her own choice, and then here, because Clint was so determined to keep her safe.
She turned into the drive, hit the garage door opener button and pulled in. It was good, very good, to be back. But even so, she didn’t close the garage door until she’d had a thorough look around.
Satisfied, she carried her few belongings to the front door, dropping them on the porch while she unlocked the door. Home again.
Carrying everything inside, she turned to lock the door and discovered a new addition. The door bore a shiny new dead bolt. Her heart twisted. Clint. He had known he couldn’t keep her away from her home any longer, so he’d done the practical thing. As a homecoming gift, it couldn’t be better.
She locked the door turning the knob on the dead bolt. She’d have to unlock it when Lyn arrived in a few minutes, but that was better than taking chances. Clint would approve of her caution.
At least, she supposed he would. He hadn’t wanted her to come back yet, but she’d assured him she’d be fine. And then he’d said she should wait until he could come with her. But she’d grown impatient waiting for his call, so here she was, home again. And the first thing she saw was his determination to protect her.
He wasn’t going to be happy with her for coming without him. She glanced at her phone, half expecting an irate call. But if she’d waited, she’d still be sitting in that hotel room.
She walked through the house, making mental notes of what had to be done to restore it. She wasn’t surprised to find that there was a dead bolt on the back door, as well. She was fortunate that he hadn’t seen fit to install a guard dog, too.
She and Clint seemed to have crossed some sort of a bridge in their relationship the previous day. It would take a while to get used to the new normal, once she figured out what it was. They were no longer investigator and suspect, or protector and protected, though she suspected Clint still wanted to believe that. And colleagues wasn’t the right word. Friends? If she ignored her uncontrollable shiver of attraction whenever she was near him, that might be it.
Carrying her bag into the bedroom, she hung up the few things she had with her. When she turned to the dresser, the first thing she saw was the manila folder containing photos from her marriage. She’d left it out after they’d finished looking through the contents of the dower chest, thinking she should get rid of it.
For a few minutes she stood irresolute, holding the folder. Then she walked into the kitchen, intending to throw it away. Her marriage was over and nothing would be gained by holding on to reminders of it.
The doorbell pealed, and she dropped the folder on the table. Lyn. She hurried to the door, remembering to look through the peephole to confirm that it was actually her friend, and opened the door.
Lyn, carrying bags from their favorite Chinese take-out place, nodded approvingly. “That’s right. Now lock everything up again. I don’t want any nutcases wandering in here.”
“If anyone came, I doubt they’d be wandering.” Rachel locked up and led the way to the kitchen. “I know it’s a little early to eat, but I’m hungry. I hope you want to eat and talk at the same time.”
“My idea exactly,” Lyn said. Together they got out plates and wineglasses before opening containers. They’d done this so many times since Paul moved out that it had become a pleasant routine.
“You got Crab Rangoon!” Rachel seized the package. “I thought we agreed we’d only indulge in that for special occasions.”
“This is a special occasion. You’re home, and that’s worth celebrating.”
“Good, because I intend to be greedy.” Silly, that such a simple thing could lift her spirits so much.
Lyn dumped a generous portion of sweet and sour shrimp on her plate. “Just this once, it’s all for you.” She took a sip of the wine she’d brought and her expression turned blissful. “Now this is the appropriate end to a stressful day.”
“Problems at school?” Even as Rachel asked the question, the longing overflowed to be back in her classroom, seeing the children’s faces as they mastered something new.
“Nothing that won’t be cured when you come back. So when is it going to be? Tomorrow?”
“I wish.” She forced herself to cling to what she knew was right. “Not until I’m sure there’s not going to be any public kickback from what Paul did.”
“You’re just being stubborn.” Lyn put her chopsticks down. “Honestly, nobody could possibly blame the school for something done by the former husband of a teacher.”
“And you’re being too optimistic. Of course they could. You should know our helicopter parents better than that. After all, my classroom was invaded because of Paul’s actions. If I had a child...”
She hesitated, hit by another foolish wave of longing. Where had this come from? Had she been that affected by seeing Sadie with her children?
“If you had a child, you wouldn’t turn into a helicopter parent,” Lyn said tartly. “And you wouldn’t allow fear to overrule your judgment.”
“But plenty of people do,” Rachel said, trying to make her tone final. “So I won’t come back until I’m sure it’s safe. Please don’t make me miss it any more than I already do.”
Lyn studied her for a moment, and then sighed. “All right. I see you’re determined, so I promise not to push.”
“And I can count on your not breaking that promise more than ten times a day,” Rachel added, smiling.
“I’m a natural-born pusher.” Lyn grinned. “But I’ll try. Let’s talk about something else. That’ll help. What’s this?” She picked up the folder that lay on the table.
“Feel free to look.”
“I’m going to.” Lyn flipped it open and started leafing through the photos. She stopped at one taken of the wedding party, standing in front of the lake where their outdoor ceremony had taken place.
“That wasn’t such a long time ago. Why do we look so young?”
Rachel leaned over to see. She and Paul, flanked by Lyn and Ian, who had been their only attendants. The rustic bower where the ceremony had been performed formed an arch over their heads.
“Maybe we’ve aged a lot in the last few years?”
Lyn sniffed. “I’d prefer to think I took a little more care with my makeup that day. You were lucky it didn’t pour.”
“That’s the risk of planning an outdoor wedding. As it turned out, the weather was fine. It might have been more appropriate to the outcome if we’d had thunder and lightning.”
As usual, Lyn saw what was behind the words. “You couldn’t have foreseen what was going to happen. Paul was an expert at putting on a good front.”
“I wish I could believe that. The truth is that I looked at him and saw what I wanted to be there. And he probably did the same with me. No wonder we were disappointed in the end.”
Lyn returned the photo to the stack and closed the folder. “You were in love. People in love do that. It’s just human nature.” She lifted the folder. “This is the past. How about getting rid of it?”
“Give me a little credit. That’s what I was about to do when I heard you at the door.” Seeing the doubt in Lyn’s face, she nodded toward the trash bin behind Lyn. “Go ahead. Toss it in.”
Lyn held it a second longer, and then she dropped it into the bin. “Good. Why did you have those pictures out? Brooding over them?”
“No, I wasn’t. Clint wanted to see anything I still had that related
to Paul, so we went through the house.” She seemed to see Clint straightening up, wincing in pain. Seemed to hear his story again, echoing in her thoughts.
Lyn was watching her again, and Rachel could read the concern in her eyes. “I’ll be glad if you can drop all those regrets about Paul. Just...don’t jump into caring for someone else too quickly.”
She couldn’t pretend not to understand what Lyn was driving at. “It’s not...it’s not that way with Clint. Really.” The fact that she had to emphasize it was a dead giveaway. “I’m grateful to him for his help, that’s all.”
“Tell that to someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do. I’ve seen your expression when you mention him.” She waved Rachel to silence when she’d have protested. “Don’t bother. You’re a smart woman. You’ll figure it out. I just don’t want to see you depend on somebody you don’t really know.”
It was good advice. And true that she didn’t really know Clint in the sense of knowing his tastes and his habits and the kind of movies he liked. But what she did know about him went deeper than surface details because of the situation that had thrown them together. She knew he was dogged, determined to do what he saw was his duty, and honest.
Circumstances had pitchforked them past all the externals to what really counted at the heart of a person. Clint was a man of integrity. And if she were wrong about that, she’d just have to take the consequences.
* * *
“NOTHING.” CLINT SLAPPED his hand down on the desk, rattling the remains of the take-out meal he and Logan had shared. “We’ve been over every scrap of information we have, and I don’t see another thing to pursue.”
“Yeah.” Logan’s more equable temperament didn’t lead him to smack inanimate objects, but he was exasperated. “How does a guy vanish so completely? It’d be different if he were a pro, but we’re assuming this is his first venture into illegal activities. Or are we?”
Clint caught his drift. “The gambling? Yes, he might have met some questionable types that way. But would he be likely to turn to them for help with such a specialized theft? Seems unlikely.”
