Better it happened sooner than later. The longer she stayed, the more he could fool himself into thinking she belonged here. She had a whole other life out there, one that she would no doubt be glad to return to once she regained her memories.
And he’d be alone again. Which would be better for both of them. She didn’t fit into his life. He’d worked hard to carve out a space for his isolation, a way to live with Elizabeth’s death and everything that had followed. Mia had let him forget for a little while, had given him safe passage through the anniversary. But that wasn’t something he should be depending on.
He ran his hand over the place where she’d slept, only a trace of her body heat left on the sheets. Soon it would be as cold as it always was in this bed. He’d gotten used to that once before, when Elizabeth died. He hardly thought anymore about the emptiness of a solitary bed. Even if Mia joined him here again, he’d have to keep reminding himself her stay was only temporary.
Tossing aside the comforter, he pushed to his feet and headed for the bathroom, snagging a clean pair of boxers on his way. When he stepped back into the bedroom a few minutes later, the aroma of coffee drifted in through the partly open door. A quick glance told him she’d grabbed only her sweater before leaving.
He’d taken a step toward the door to go after her when it swung open and she edged inside with two mugs of coffee. As she walked past him to set a mug on the nightstand, he breathed in her enigmatic fragrance and caught a glimpse of pale, silky skin below the hem of her red sweater.
She sat cross-legged on her side of the bed, mug cradled in her hands. “Two sugars, right?”
What the hell did he care what was in his coffee when she sat there in his bed? But she’d made the effort to remember how he liked it, had brought him a cup. He took a sip of the scalding brew, set the cup down again. “It’s fine.”
She smiled, temptation in a slender, intriguingly scented package. The best Christmas gift he could possibly imagine.
Her smile faded as he hooked his thumbs in his boxers and slid them off. Hand trembling she set the coffee aside on the nightstand, a few drops of coffee sloshing on her skin.
When her gaze dropped to his erection, he felt himself grow even harder. Then she reached out for him and welcomed him into her arms.
She lost count of the number of times they made love. When the handful of condoms he’d set on the nightstand ran out, he suggested other ways to pleasure each other both rather than reach into the box for more. Their coffee grew cold on the nightstands as Jack explored a dozen ways to drive her wild.
They showered together, Jack soaping her body, the feel of his hands pushing her over the edge again. She returned the favor, her fingers circling the hot hard length of him until he reached completion under the warm shower spray.
When they finally emerged from the bedroom, Mia’s muscles ached, but her skin glowed with remembered sensation. In the kitchen she threw together a batch of banana muffins while Jack whipped up omelets.
But as they ate together at the breakfast bar, Jack seemed to shut down, bit by bit. Close himself off from her. As if he had second thoughts about what had happened in his bedroom, as if he worried that their lovemaking had meant more to her than he’d intended it to.
Of course it had. Each time they’d made love had only confirmed her love for him, anchored it that much more deeply in her heart. Despite the hopelessness of it, the impossibility of any life with him, during the past twenty-four hours she’d only come to love him more.
With that realization, despair settled like a rock in her stomach. What was she going to do when the road was cleared? When she had no more justification for being with him?
He’d promised her nothing. She had no reason to expect anything from him. Even now he wouldn’t look at her, and she could read regret in every line of his body.
She had to say something, had to find a way to hold on to those intimate hours with him. “Jack?”
“I’ll clean up.” He all but jumped to his feet, gathering the dishes and carrying them to the sink.
His broad back turned toward her, a formidable barrier as he shut her out. Emotion ambushed her, tightening the back of her throat.
She fought to keep her voice steady. “I think I need to lie down.” She hurried from the kitchen.
In the guest room, her back pressed against the closed door, she let the tears go. They soaked her face, wet her hands as she pressed them to her cheeks. This was the aftermath she’d sworn she could handle, the lie she’d so easily let herself believe. And part of that lie was her conviction that somehow Jack would come to love her as she loved him.
She shivered, the coolness of the room chilling her. She’d been so warm after her shower she’d pulled on only a T-shirt. Now she wanted her sweater but had left it behind in Jack’s room.
She could just grab another sweater or one of the sweatshirts Jack had given her from the dresser drawer. But the red sweater with its snowman and Christmas-tree decoration was the only thing from her forgotten life that had any meaning for her. Right now she needed the comfort of that dim familiarity.
When she made her way down the hall, Jack’s office door was shut and she could hear the rumble of his voice as he spoke on the phone. She quickly crossed the great room toward the master suite, then scanned the room for her sweater. She spotted it at the foot of the highboy where Jack had tossed it when she’d brought them coffee earlier.
She pulled it on and hugged herself, willing her memories to return. It was a useless effort; her mind was as empty as it had been since she’d arrived in Jack’s woods. Only a few disparate bits of information knocked around in her potholed brain, nothing she could hang a life on.
Her gaze fell on the wedding photo of Jack and Elizabeth. She took it down, seating herself on the foot of the bed. The happiness on Jack’s face filled her with joy and longing in equal measure. If he would only smile at her like that, even once, it would be enough.
A faint scent of cinnamon drifted toward her, likely from the coffee that still sat, cold, on the nightstands. She remembered sprinkling cinnamon on the grounds before she’d started the brew cycle. Cinnamon, like the tea, like the sticks she’d upset in the cupboard. She’d put it in the spice muffins she’d made last week, had almost spooned some in the banana muffins.
The spiciness tugged at her, fogged her mind. Her hand holding the photo shook, the image seeming to scramble, rearrange itself. Her gaze fixed on Jack’s face as it changed, morphed into something different, darker. His smile froze into a grimace of rage and she shrank back from it, dropping the photo on the floor.
Fragments of memory ripped through her mind, puzzle pieces in a whirlwind, passing by too quickly to grasp. One by one the pieces coalesced, overlaying a new image on top of the one lying at her feet. She saw the new photograph in a flash of recollection, and the story she’d read years ago was suddenly fresh in her mind. A woman beaten to death. Her husband arrested for her murder.
The woman was Elizabeth. Jack was her husband.
Horror welled up in her, grabbed her by the throat. At first she couldn’t make a sound, could barely breathe. Then terror punched out a scream that all but deafened her. She stood there, frozen, the noise of her own fear horrible to her own ears.
Then the monster burst into the room and she tried to run, slamming into the windowed wall, jamming herself into a corner. When he tried to grab her, she punched and kicked at him, crazed, insane with fear. She only knew that if he caught her, he’d beat her like he did his wife, kill her, too.
Then his arms were around her, holding hers in place. His legs across hers to hold them down. She sobbed and screamed until her throat was raw, then quieted into whimpers. Only then could she hear his voice, soft, soothing.
“Honey, sweetheart.” His murmur sifted into her ears like a balm. “Shh, quiet, love. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
She forced out a few rasping words. “Can’t let you.”
“Can’t let me what
, sweetheart?”
“Can’t let you touch me.”
He kissed her, the brush of his mouth so gentle. Her heart ached with love for him. “Why not, love? Why shouldn’t I touch you?”
“Because…” She steeled herself against the softness spreading inside her. “Because you killed her.”
Ice filled his veins, and Jack’s body went rigid. He swallowed back the compulsion to run, to leave Mia in here to battle her own demons. Where the hell he’d go, he had no idea. Out to freeze to death in the woods maybe, anything to not have to face Mia’s accusation.
But he stayed. “I didn’t kill anyone, Mia.”
She was shaking again, and he released her long enough to pull the comforter from his bed. She didn’t move. He supposed that was a good sign; maybe she was coming to her senses. Or maybe she was just catatonic.
Sitting beside her again, he threw the comforter over them both. To his everlasting gratitude, she didn’t bolt. But he could feel the tension in every line of her body.
“How did your wife die?” The words came out in a whisper.
All this time she’d never asked him. He gave her the bald truth. “An intruder broke into our apartment and beat her to death.”
“An intruder.” There wasn’t a shred of accusation in her tone, but his mind put it there, anyway.
“A meth addict, Reggie Phillips. There was a dealer in the complex next door to ours. Phillips got them mixed up.”
“But they arrested you.”
An iron weight dropped in the pit of his stomach at the memory. “Before they found Phillips. He’s the one they convicted.”
She drew back from him, turning, a light of recognition in her eyes. “I remember. I read about it in the papers. On the Internet.” Her brow furrowed. “I read everything I could about the story.”
The weight in his stomach grew heavier. “Then maybe you can explain to me,” he said bitterly, “why the hell everyone thought I owed them every damned detail of my life.”
She blushed. “I swear, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t you I wanted to know about as much as her. Because of what had happened to me.”
“Because your father beat you.”
She shuddered, reaching for his hand. “I didn’t like how obsessed I became with your wife’s story. I forced myself to stop reading around the time you were acquitted.”
“Not acquitted. The charges were dropped.” He fixed his gaze on her, wanting to be sure she understood.
Her fingers laced more tightly with his. “It must have been so horrible for you.”
Mia’s words echoed in his mind, a sense of déjà vu rolling over him. Joanna Sanchez had said nearly the same thing to him to induce him to spill his guts to her.
The walls he’d slowly let down over the past week and a half slammed back into place. “Fishing for details?”
The confusion in Mia’s face seemed real. “Of what?”
“Of what she looked like when I found her. The mess the apartment was in. The way I slipped in her blood on the kitchen floor.”
The color drained from her face and her hand grew lax in his. “I don’t…please…”
With a shock he realized she was about to pass out from his graphic description. Not the reaction he’d come to expect from the ghouls like Joanna who had hounded him five years ago.
Guilt goaded him into pulling her toward him again. “I’m a damned idiot. I’m sorry.”
She leaned against him, the small tremors running through her body slowly quieting. “I’m sorry she died in such a terrible way.”
Her words poured over him like a soothing balm. For the first time since his ineffectual sessions with a therapist, he wanted to talk about what had happened. Not the worst of the horror—he’d have to spare Mia that. But if he could just talk it out, maybe he could dull the images that still lay in his mind, as sharp as broken crystal.
He shut his eyes, her warmth enfolding him. “I was dead tired that night. I’d spent three days at a conference, then three more visiting my sister for an early Christmas.”
Her nod against his chin invited him to continue. “Elizabeth and I had fought a few days earlier when I’d called her from Seattle. We hadn’t quite smoothed it over before I hung up, but I thought I’d have time to make it up to her on Christmas Eve.”
Every detail came back in sharp relief as he described them to Mia. “The door into the complex used to stick, so it wouldn’t close right. I kept meaning to tell the manager. That night it wasn’t quite latched shut.”
He’d thought nothing of it at the time, nor had he noticed the thin film of blood on the interior knob as he pulled the door shut. “Then I saw the apartment door was open. My first thought was that Elizabeth had gone out and we’d been robbed.”
He remembered listening at the door to see if someone was still inside. Later his hesitation had torn him up inside—maybe he could have saved his wife if he’d gone inside those few seconds sooner. Even when the therapist had reminded him Elizabeth had been dead at least an hour by the time he got home, he couldn’t let go of the what-ifs.
“I still thought it was a burglary when I saw the living room torn up. Then I went into the kitchen.”
A sob caught at his throat. He dragged in breath after breath to keep from breaking down.
“I yelled her name. Screamed it so loud the whole floor heard me. When she wouldn’t answer me I grabbed her and shook her.”
She’d been so limp. Her blood was everywhere, and he’d gotten it on his hands, his clothes. It hadn’t helped his case later, no matter how many times he’d tried to explain it to the police.
For a long time after, he could still feel her blood on his hands, even after he washed them. “I called 9-1-1. The police came and took my statement. Three weeks later, they arrested me.”
Mia stirred. “There was a witness.”
“A homeless woman picked me out of a lineup. Phillips was my height and build. He’d been wearing gloves, so the only prints were mine.”
“What made the police look for him?” Mia asked.
He laughed without humor. “They didn’t. Dawson knew I hadn’t killed her, so he hired a private investigator to keep digging.”
“And he found Reggie Phillips?”
“Thanks to sheer luck. The old guy across the hall from us, Mr. Padresky, had dementia. He’d gotten so paranoid, he’d rigged up a video camera out in the hall, hidden behind a light. Afraid someone was out to get him, I guess.”
Elizabeth used to visit the old man, bringing him borscht and rugelach, listening to him talk about the old country. At the time, Jack hadn’t had the patience to listen to Padresky’s ravings like Elizabeth did. Now he regretted his indifference.
“Mr. Padresky died a month after Elizabeth was killed. When the P.I. went down to the apartment to question my neighbors, Padresky’s son was there cleaning out his father’s apartment. The son had found the camera and a stack of video tapes. He gave them to the P.I.”
“And Reggie was on one of the tapes.”
“He was caught going in and coming out.” The police had shown him the tape, hoping he knew the man. The image of Phillips’s crazed eyes, Elizabeth’s blood splattered on his face, was burned into Jack’s mind. “The homeless woman recognized him, knew where he hung out. Phillips still had the gloves.”
The ugliness of the past clung to Jack like a shroud, seemed to dim the room despite the brightness of the sun streaming in through the window. With an effort he pulled himself back to the present.
And gazed down at Mia, looking up at him. Her smile, her eyes sent a message that tore away the darkness, poured joy into his well of grief.
He looked away, unprepared, overwhelmed. Eased away from her and rose.
She stood, letting the comforter fall away. Her smile fading, she stared out the bedroom window at the thicket of trees outside. Melted away by the sun, snow no longer frosted the branches of the ponderosas and cedars. A squirrel scolded a jay as it sailed by with a
deep-blue flash of wings.
“I know Christmas means too much to you, Jack. That you can never forget. But for today, can it just be Christmas?”
A few days ago it would have seemed impossible. But with Mia beside him, he thought he might be able to find some joy in the day as he once had. “I have a gift for you.”
Surprise flickered across her face and her smile returned. “I have one for you, too.”
He couldn’t hold back his own smile, couldn’t resist kissing her. “Let’s open them out in the great room.”
Laughing with a child’s exuberance, she hurried from the room. Jack stopped to pick up his wedding photo, still on the floor by the foot of the bed.
As he gazed down at Elizabeth’s radiant face, he steeled himself for the familiar grief. But like the snow that had lost its grip on the tree branches when the sun warmed it, it seemed Mia had shaken loose his sorrow. He felt a sadness for everything he lost when Elizabeth died, but the emotion lacked the intensity that had so often brought him to his knees.
That in itself was Christmas gift enough from Mia. Even when she left him—he ignored the bone-deep ache he felt contemplating that eventuality—he could think of her, remember how she brought light back into his life.
Setting the photo carefully back on the dresser, he retrieved the wrapped package he’d tucked into the closet. He’d had a hell of a time finding Christmas paper, finally locating the red-and-green-striped roll buried on a shelf in the garage.
Mia was sitting on the sofa, long legs folded under her, the firelight shimmering in her hair. As he stood behind her, out of her field of view, his imagination moved into dangerous territory—sharing his life with Mia, having her with him always. Having again what he’d had with Elizabeth.
Except he didn’t love Mia, wouldn’t love her. He’d had his world ripped inside out when Elizabeth died. She had been his one and only. His experience with Joanna had shown him that his ability to recognize real love had died with his wife.
Her Miracle Man Page 15
