by Debra Webb
Bob had been a sort of buffer, at least in Ali’s mind.
She sat on the sofa now, staring at the fire. It was late. She should go to bed. Tomorrow was a big day. The day after would be an even bigger one.
But sleep would not be possible. Not just now.
The one question she had been asked today would be the hardest to answer on Thursday.
Why did you stay after you found out what he was?
Shock, disbelief...fear.
She had asked him about the reaction of her covolunteers. From that moment he had known that the fantasy was over.
I knew the truth—at least a small fraction of that truth.
In today’s world of fearless women and total independence, no woman on the jury would understand her simple truth.
When she was in college and then after when she started her career, she had heard friends say that no man would ever rule them. Ali remembered feeling exactly the same way, especially considering how Jax had broken her heart.
But Harrison had been different. He had not been a mere man. He had been a monster. Taught by the mother of all monsters...his father.
Ali had been lucky to escape with her life.
If the jury chose not to believe her story, she could do nothing to change their minds. All that mattered was that they believed her when she stated who had shot and murdered the man to whom she had been married.
Nothing else about the trial mattered. It was not about her redemption or somehow proving she was not a total fool. It was about taking that bastard all the way down.
Jax was suddenly standing over her. She hadn’t heard him come into the room.
“You should eat.”
How many times had he suggested she eat the past few days? She was not a child. She could decide for herself when to eat.
“If I wanted to eat, I would eat.” Her tone was far sharper than she’d intended.
He lowered to the coffee table, settling there so that he sat directly across from her. Too close. She drew back into the sofa cushion.
“Thursday I’ll be in that courtroom with you. If there is anything you want to discuss with me now, it might make that day easier.”
She stared at him then. Why did he care? “I’ll be answering the questions in front of all sorts of strangers. Why would I feel any differently about you?”
Her words hit their mark. He flinched.
“Because I want to hear them from you before all those strangers.”
She was tired. Tired of all the pomp and circumstance of preparing for this trial. Tired of being protected. Tired of being alone.
When this was over, no one who had been involved with this case would care what happened to her. She would be left to fend for herself. Anger ignited in her chest. She wasn’t a person to those people who wanted so desperately to destroy the Armone family. She was evidence. Nothing more.
She looked directly into his dark eyes now. Eyes she had gazed into and gotten lost in all those years ago. “You want to hear all the dirty details of how he kept me in line? What prevented me from running away and going to the authorities sooner?”
He didn’t answer, just sat there staring at her with such concern and regret. Yes, regret. She wanted to laugh out loud. He regretted what she had gone through. He most likely had no idea exactly what that was. But he understood it was bad.
“All right. I’ll tell you why I stayed until the day I watched his father put a bullet in his head.”
He swallowed hard, then visibly braced himself.
In that clarifying moment, she understood without doubt that he already knew something. Part of her ugly story, at least.
Maybe he would even enjoy hearing her say the words. Only one way to find out. “At first he assigned a full-time bodyguard to me. I wasn’t allowed to go into a bathroom without him. I wasn’t allowed to walk around the gated and guarded property without my personal guard at my side. At night one ankle was shackled to the bed.”
She shrugged. “Maybe he worried that I would kill him in his sleep and try to run. This way, if I did shove a knife into his chest or use a hammer to bash in his head, I was stuck with his dead body.”
She had considered both those methods for freeing herself. She closed her eyes for a moment. Not once in her life had she ever considering harming another human being until then. Thank God her parents were long gone. They would have been so ashamed of her.
“How long did this go on?”
His voice was too soft. She didn’t want his pity. She looked away from him. “We had been married a year and a half when one of the other volunteers at the center asked me if I was his wife. One by one, over the next couple of weeks, they all started to shun me. Eventually I asked him if there was something he failed to tell me before we married. Things went downhill from there.”
Jax shook his head. “How did you survive?”
She laughed. “I can tell you I wished for death many times, but it didn’t come.” Her mind went back to those darkest days. “Once I even asked my guard to kill me.” She closed her eyes and thought of the look on Tate’s face. He had laughed and told her she was trying to get him killed.
And she had gotten him killed.
The burden sat heavily on her shoulders...on her heart.
“Harrison could have killed me.” Another shrug. “At first I didn’t understand why he didn’t. I slowly realized that he didn’t want me dead. He wanted to punish me for taking away his fantasy. With me he could pretend he wasn’t who he really was. He could be the wealthy businessman whose wife spent her time helping those less fortunate. The man whose wife looked at him with such adoration and respect. But I took that away from him. I suppose in part he wanted to keep up the facade. I helped him represent a different life than the one he actually lived.”
“He would have had to admit that he’d made a mistake,” Jax suggested.
She looked straight at him again. “Men don’t like to admit when they’ve made a mistake. I have the scars to prove it.”
He lowered his head, staring at the floor before she could get a glimpse of his reaction to that revelation.
Did he think she’d been held prisoner for more than three years and escaped unscathed? How nice that would have been.
She didn’t want to do this anymore. Her emotions were churning, and she just wanted to escape the memories...the feelings. When she would have stood and announced as much, his words stopped her.
“I made a mistake.”
He lifted his gaze to hers, and for several beats she couldn’t move. She could only stare at him, searching his eyes for the sincerity in his words.
Then the realization that it didn’t matter slammed into her chest, forcing the air out of her lungs. She launched to her feet. “Well, this has been...” There was no way to describe how this felt. “Anyway, I’m calling it a night.”
He stood, putting himself toe to toe with her. “I made a mistake.”
She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see what he might show her. But her body had a mind of its own apparently. Her eyes met his. “You said that already.”
“I’d barely settled in out in Seattle when I realized that. We were so young. I figured we had time. So I kept an eye on you.”
His words took her aback. “What do you mean, you kept an eye on me?”
“I checked on you. I had friends in Glynco. I had them make sure you were doing okay. That’s how I knew when your father got sick.”
What was he saying? This made no sense. She shook her head. “Why didn’t you simply call me?”
“Pride? Stupidity? Take your pick.”
This was a pointless waste of time and emotion. “I really—”
“I almost came back. I knew how hard things were for you.”
A realization barreled into her. “It was you.”
“That private nurse who came to help with my dad because we couldn’t afford to hire help...that was you.”
The nurse had said a private donor paid her salary. She would never say who. Ali had assumed it was some of her father’s friends who had gotten together and pooled their resources. God knew they had brought food every day. But she should have realized none of them could afford such a luxury any more than she could.
“My family pitched in, too,” he confessed. “We wanted to help.”
Ali held up her hands. This was too much. “I genuinely appreciate what you and your family did. I can’t tell you how comforting it was to have a nurse to help.”
Tears burned her eyes, but she couldn’t let him see. Her chest felt so full she would hardly manage a breath.
“When you went back to college, I was really happy for you. I knew how much that meant to you. I thought maybe when you finished I’d show up at your graduation and give you a hug to congratulate or something.”
“I’m sorry, I really don’t understand why you just didn’t call.” This made no sense.
“I thought there was time. I didn’t want to interfere with you finishing college. I was working hard to establish my career. Move up the ranks.”
If he was watching her, why on earth hadn’t he stopped her from marrying the bastard?
Before she could demand an answer to that question, he said, “I was sent on an extended undercover assignment, and while I was off the grid, you moved to Atlanta and got married.”
So he did know. “You knew I had married into that family and you didn’t warn me?”
This time she damaged him. Her demand shook him. His face told the story.
“I couldn’t see how you didn’t know what he was. I thought you’d decided you wanted what he had to offer regardless of who and what he was.”
How could he have thought such a thing? “Then you didn’t really know me at all.”
He stopped her when she would have moved away from him. His hands seemed to burn her skin through the sweater she wore. “I was wrong.” He shook his head. “My ego was bruised. I thought that if you married someone else, you couldn’t possibly have cared about me the same way I did about you. I was jealous. Shocked. Torn up. I never checked on you again.”
Whether he knew her as well as he should have, she did know him. He meant what he said. She had hurt him by marrying Harrison. But how could she have known Jax still cared or that Harrison was a monster?
“For that,” he said, his fingers tightening around her arms as if he feared she would run away, “I am truly sorry. It’s my fault this happened to you. Instead of turning my back, I should have come to you and told you the truth. We could have worked things out. But I couldn’t see past my bruised ego.”
She searched his eyes, felt the weight of his pain for her. “I wished a thousand times that you would show up and rescue me.” She laughed, tears slipping down her cheeks no matter how hard she tried to hold them back. “I thought of you so often. I think those little fantasies of you showing up to carry me away from the nightmare are what kept me from giving up.” Ali sucked in a sharp breath. “But you never came.”
“I’m here now, and I will keep you safe. I can’t change the mistakes of the past, but I can make sure they don’t happen again. I will not let Armone touch you.”
All those months that had run into years, she had longed to hear this man say those words. But now that was the part of all this that terrified her the most. She fully understood how ruthless Armone was. He wouldn’t hesitate to have Jax murdered. If he had the slightest idea Ali had feelings for Jax, he would relish the act of taking his life.
She had realized when she arrived in Nashville this morning that she had only one opportunity to do what she had to do. She’d already tried with Holloway, and it hadn’t worked out. But it was done now.
“I was thankful you weren’t in the room for most of the meeting this morning.”
Tension riffled through him, tightening his hold on her even more. “Why is that?”
“I spoke to AUSA Knowles. I told him I didn’t want you in Atlanta. He agreed that having you there would be a mistake. So once the plane lands in Atlanta, you’ll get on a flight back to Nashville. You won’t be leaving the airport. Another marshal will take over from there.”
Anger flashed in his eyes. “I see what you’re doing. You think you need to protect me. You’re wrong.” He pulled her closer—too close. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need you protecting me.”
She stared at his lips as he spoke. No matter that she hated herself for doing it, she couldn’t help herself.
“I will call Knowles and straighten this out. There is no way I will let you out of my sight. If they try and stop me, they’ll have a fight on their hands.”
Worry that she’d made yet another mistake twisted inside her. “You can’t do that.”
“Oh yes, I can. This time I’m making sure nothing happens to you. I took my eyes off you once. That won’t happen again.”
More tears spilled down her cheeks, and she wanted to scream at herself for falling apart.
Then he kissed her. Slow and deep and sweet. The way he had kissed her hundreds of times before. She remembered his taste, every nuance of the way he kissed. And her heart ached with longing.
She could not do this. If she let herself fall this time and he left again, she wouldn’t survive it. She wasn’t strong enough.
She pressed her palms to his chest, for one single moment savored the feel of him, and then she pushed him away. “We can’t do this.”
“Yes—” he pressed his forehead to hers “—we can.”
She pulled free of his hold, her knees bumping the sofa. “I can’t.”
Moving as quickly as she dared with tears clouding her vision, she hurried up the stairs. A long hot bath would help. Then she was going to go to bed and attempt to sleep.
Tomorrow was the beginning of the end.
* * *
ALI HAD NEVER been so grateful for a tub. Usually she preferred showers, but after this day she needed a long, hot soak. Strangely enough, she’d found some bubble bath under the sink, and all the necessities were available. Towels. Soap. Shampoo. She suspected the kind sheriff had ensured those items were on hand. He’d stocked the fridge and a few items in the pantry, too.
Winchester and the surrounding communities were growing on her. So many of the people she had met were so nice.
Once the tub was full enough and bubbles frothed up to the rim, she peeled off her clothes and slid into the welcoming heat. Her entire body sighed. She laid her head back, closed her eyes and did something not so smart by allowing that kiss to fill her senses. The way he’d tasted—pure Jax. In a hundred years, she wouldn’t have forgotten his taste. His strong arms around her had made her feel completely safe and far too needy.
“Don’t make another mistake,” she murmured. Whether the words were an order or a plea for strength, she wasn’t sure she could hold back if he came near her again.
She had dreamed of kissing him, making love with him a thousand times—perhaps more—over the past decade. Even when her monster of a husband had held her in his arms, she had found it necessary to push aside the memories of Jax. He had been such a part of her...so deeply entrenched in her soul.
She sighed. Let go of the last of the tension and sank more deeply into the sweet-smelling bubbles. Her muscles slowly grew completely pliable. She felt as if she could melt into the hot water and just slip away.
Except tomorrow was coming, and there was no way to change what she had to do.
If Jax stood between her and a bullet—
She squeezed her eyes shut and blocked the images.
If something happened to him because of her—she could
n’t live with that. There had to be a way to prevent him from going to that courthouse with her. She slid beneath the water, allowed it to cover her completely. She lay there for a half a minute, listening to the heavy sounds of the beating of her heart. Then she sat up, pushed her hair back from her face, pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her cheek to them.
She closed her eyes again and allowed memories of their time together to fill her. Maybe it was selfish, but she needed so badly to feel alive again, even if only for this one moment. Her body shivered with an abrupt rush of need. She should have responded more deeply to his kiss. Lost herself in his touch.
Who knew what tomorrow would bring?
What did it matter who did what ten years ago? He had been looking after her those first few years. Maybe if she hadn’t married that bastard, things would have been different. Jax would have come back for her.
Why hadn’t she swallowed her pride and gone after him once her father passed away? She could have looked him up, said hello and...
But she had been too hurt by his leaving.
Lonely and alone.
A dangerous recipe, which led to utter disaster.
“Ali.” He knocked softly at the door. “Can I come in?”
She hugged her arms around her knees more tightly. Did she dare? When he looked at her body, he wouldn’t see the smooth flawless skin from ten years ago. There were scars. Small and not so deep, but so many of them.
Could she bear the pity on his face when he saw them?
“I don’t want to talk anymore.” She pressed her forehead to her knees. Squeezed her eyes shut.
If he came in and saw all of her, there would be more questions.
Could she bear to tell him all the things that bastard had done to her? How he had nearly broken her? Actually, he had broken her, and somehow after witnessing his life ending, she had pulled herself together enough to run.
She should have trusted Jax all those years ago. Should have followed him to Seattle. Coming home to take care of her father wouldn’t have been a problem. Jax would have understood. Still, she wouldn’t trade those last months with her father for anything. As certain as she was of that, she was also certain her father would not have wanted her to suffer the way she had the past few years.
