Unsanctioned Memories

by Julie Miller

  Sid Taylor immediately stepped forward and gripped Sam in a firm handshake. “O’Rourke.”

  Sam understood that he was being checked out for his suitability to spend time in his daughter’s company, even as an employee. Sam had done the same thing himself with his sister’s dates and co-workers.

  It was the one man he hadn’t met who’d torn his life apart.

  “Mr. Taylor.” He could appreciate Sid Taylor’s protective instincts and respected the way he sized him up.

  Martha Taylor wasn’t shy, either. She handed the dish she carried to her daughter and insisted on shaking hands. “I’m Martha,” she smiled. “So tell us about yourself, Mr. O’Rourke. Where are you from? What kind of work are you doing for Jessie? Do you like antiques?”

  “Ma.”

  “Martha.”

  Reprimanded on both fronts, she shrugged off her family’s warnings and smiled. “Pay no attention to them. You look like a healthy eater. I’ve brought some of my homemade lasagne. It’s a low-cholesterol recipe for Sid’s heart, but the whole family eats it up.”

  Sam slowly withdrew his hand. “I’m sure it’s wonderful.”

  “Does your wife cook for you?”

  “Ma!”

  “Martha.”

  This time she answered their warnings. “I can’t help it.”

  Jess’s cheeks bloomed with color, but Sam could only laugh. So Martha had been checking him out, too. But for entirely different reasons. “I’m not married, Mrs. Taylor.”

  “But you do like antiques?”

  “I’m no expert at finding them. But I like working with my hands, rebuilding and refinishing old furniture. That kind of thing.”

  Sid Taylor wasn’t so easily charmed. “That’s not your regular job.” He inclined his head toward the bridge of Sam’s nose. “Your sunburn’s fresh.”

  “Dad, he’s the hired help. Nothing more. I checked his references.” Jess intervened before the inquisition got fully underway. She slid in between Sam and her parents, bringing her close enough to breathe in the herbal scent of her shampoo on her hair. Sam retreated a step before his libido could get in the way of his duty again. “Sam’s just working here for a month. He’s passing through on his way to San Diego.”

  Sam? What happened to Mr. O’Rourke and keeping a polite distance? Why was she defending him?

  “Is that so?” Sid challenged, glancing above his daughter’s head. His brown eyes looked as doubtful as Martha’s were intrigued. “You’re a drifter?”

  “Only part-time,” he joked. Sid didn’t laugh. “I’m on a leave of absence from my regular job. In Boston. I’m traveling the country, working my way when the money runs short. I ran short when my car broke down yesterday.”

  “I see.”

  Before Sid could follow up with any more questions, Jess turned and lifted an imploring gaze. It was a silent plea for help. “Don’t you need to finish cleaning up?” She strongly hinted that he make a hasty exit. “I already have dinner in the oven. It’ll be ready in twenty minutes, tops.” She refocused her smile and turned back to her parents. “Can you guys stay? We’ll eat the lasagne tomorrow.”

  In the midst of excuses about having already eaten and being en route to baby-sit four grandsons, Sam took his leave, feeling three sets of eyes on him.

  He rolled the wheelbarrow back to the garage and out of sight before he stopped to consider his immediate, heart-slamming response to the panic he’d read in Jess’s unspoken appeal. The instant she’d turned those true blues and honest despair on him, something inside him had shifted into gear. The need to help her. To protect her. To keep her secret. The desire to grant even the simple request that he leave and take a good deal of her tension with him.

  Ah, hell. He was falling under her spell. One she wasn’t even trying to cast. He was getting personal, when this job should be nothing but professional. After just twenty-four hours he was thinking of Jess as a woman. A desirable woman. Jess. Not a victim. Not the answer to the mystery surrounding Kerry’s death. Certainly not as a pawn he intended to use to uncover the truth.

  “Ah, hell.” He repeated the damnation out loud and tried to concentrate on the details of what he’d just witnessed.

  Sid and Martha Taylor didn’t seem overly concerned that their daughter lived alone out in the country. Or that she had a man they didn’t know living on the property. Martha had even hinted at some unsubtle matchmaking. Sid had done his best to try to figure him out, yet he hadn’t sicced the dog on him or ordered him to leave or offered to stay and chaperone.

  And that didn’t even begin to address Jess’s effort to give the appearance that everything was hunky-dory and under control in her life.

  Sam closed the garage door and climbed the outside stairs to his apartment, letting the possibilities simmer in his mind as he headed for a quick shower. Either Sid and Martha were the most open, trusting parents he’d ever met—which, after that fatherly grilling, Sam suspected wasn’t the case.

  Or her parents didn’t know she’d been raped.

  Chapter Four

  Jessica had assumed that sending Sam away would make it easier to face her parents and deal with their caring, curious chitchat. Instead she felt exposed, as if she’d lost some kind of shield between her and the outside world.

  She loved her parents dearly, but keeping a secret from them—when they had to suspect something was wrong—was slowly eating a hole of guilt deep in her gut. Why else would they be dropping in so often? It wasn’t as if she was on the way to her brother Gideon’s house, where they had promised to baby-sit tonight. And now Martha was bringing food? They definitely suspected something.

  “Sam seems like a nice man,” Martha observed, following Jessica behind the long, narrow counter that divided her kitchen from her dining room and office. “Did I detect a trace of an accent?”

  Jessica opened the fridge and found a spot for the lasagne. “His parents were immigrants from Ireland. But he was born in the United States.”

  “You know that for a fact?” Sid was still on a toot about protecting his little girl from the new stranger in town. He’d brought a thick steak bone from his butcher shop for Harry, and the dog had sprawled out on his rug inside the screen door to tackle the tasty treat. “What happened to that high-school boy who was working for you?”

  “Derek still works for me. But during football season he can only come on the weekends, and when harvesting starts I’ll lose him completely.” Jessica poured some fresh glasses of lemonade and handed them to her parents. “Sam worked his butt off today without a complaint or any hassle. You can call his reference yourself. The number’s there by the phone.”

  Sid crossed the room to her workstation and picked up the slip of paper with Virgil Logan’s number on it. “I just might do that.”

  When her parents both sat at the table, Jessica was certain they were here for more than an impromptu visit. She put herself on guard and tried to guess at their concern.

  “Have you heard anything from your brother Cole lately?” Martha asked, unable to hide the wistful tone in her voice. “I haven’t seen him since the reception after Gideon and Meghan’s wedding. I do worry about that boy.”

  That boy was thirty years old. But even though he was twelve months older than she, Cole and Jessica were as close as twins. She, too, had worried when he abruptly left the police force and drifted from job to job. His only contact with the career he once loved was in his occasional brushes from the other side of the law. But deep in her soul, where that almost empathic connection with her closest brother existed, she knew he was still a good man at heart. That he was searching for something. That his conscience, and the values they’d all been raised with, wouldn’t fail him.

  “I think he’s okay, Ma.” Jessica squeezed her mother’s shoulder before sitting beside her and joining the mini family meeting. “I get an e-mail from him once a week or so, sometimes a phone call. He always asks about you and Dad.”

  “But if he’s in
trouble…” Sid reached across the table and took his wife’s hand. They traded a look that only two people who had lived and loved a whole life together could understand. “We just want him to be safe. And happy.”

  “He’s safe,” Jessica assured her. She didn’t know it for a fact, but she felt it. She’d know if Cole was in real trouble. “I can’t vouch for happy. But I think he’d come to us if he needed to.”

  Sid and Martha exchanged a look in a beat of silence, and Jessica realized discussing Cole had been a setup. Martha turned to face her. “Would you come to us if you needed to?”

  As the only daughter in a family that included five close-knit brothers and a male cousin, to say she received some extra attention would be an understatement. She had to be the best-loved, best-protected female in the city. There wasn’t one of her big, bad, loyal brothers who wouldn’t come to her rescue in a heartbeat. Who wouldn’t see that justice was done on her behalf. In their minds there were consequences for hurting her.

  But she didn’t want her family to face any consequences of their own making. She didn’t want them to risk a career or put themselves in danger in their gung-ho effort to make the man who’d hurt her pay. Especially when she could do so little to help them—when she’d been able to do so little to help herself.

  “Jessie?” Her father had moved to the chair on the opposite side of her.

  Trapped. Could they have found out the truth? Jessica tried to brace herself without giving anything away.

  “I know you had a gentleman friend in Chicago.” Martha’a tone was kind, compassionate.

  “Gentleman friend?” Relief rushed out on a noisy sigh. Of course. Alex. Old news. Not the rape. She tried not to be too eager to respond. “Alex Templeton is just a business partner. And he won’t even be that as soon as I set aside enough money to buy him out.”

  “Then you’re not still seeing him?” asked Martha.

  “No.” Jessica turned to include both her parents. “He wasn’t the man I thought he was. It didn’t work out between us.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Sid’s question was more direct.

  Had Alex broken her heart? Not really. Had he humiliated her? Yes. Would she tell them what had happened to her the night she’d broken it off with Alex? Never. She was more cautious with her response this time. “Why do you ask?”

  “You haven’t been the same since your March trip to Chicago.” Martha’s hand squeezed tight around her daughter’s. “That’s when you came home with the bruises on your arms. You said you’d been mugged, and that the Chicago police would take care of it.”

  “They did. They are. There’s not much they can do.”

  Sid took her other hand. Jessica closed her fist to hide the scar that bisected all four fingers, a tangible reminder of that fateful night. Her father traced a circle around her wrist where the worst of the welts and bruises she’d borne had long since disappeared. “Did Alex put those bruises on your arm?”

  “What? No.” She could hear the pain in her father’s voice. A helpless fear that his little girl had been hurt. He’d survived one massive heart attack already. He didn’t need the added stress of worrying about her safety. “Alex didn’t hurt me. I wouldn’t stay in an abusive relationship. The bruises were from the…mugging.”

  There. She hadn’t stumbled over the word too much.

  “But you’ve been keeping to yourself,” Martha reasoned. “You haven’t come home for a Sunday dinner in months. I know you work more in the summer with the tourists, but it’s a family tradition. It feels like you’re avoiding us.”

  Avoiding a roomful of sharp-eyed detectives and scientific minds with fiercely protective instincts? Precisely. Jessica had to tell her parents something, or this discussion would wind up in the one place where she couldn’t give them answers. She pushed her chair away from the table and circled to the opposite side. She crossed her arms in front of her and absently massaged her elbow. “Alex and I did have a thing going. I even thought he might be the one. He was handsome and exciting. Attentive. He wasn’t showing up at the same sales I was going to out of coincidence.” She forced a laugh.

  “He worked in marketing, knew a lot about art. Our business skills complemented each other. It made sense for him to invest in my company. Eventually, working together led to something more.” Her naive joy at his declaration of love seemed a distant memory. “I spent almost all my time with him when I was in Chicago. He traveled with me to the coast a couple of times. I thought I loved him. On some level, I did.”

  Sid and Martha seemed to relax, now that they were getting some kind of explanation. “Well, clearly he’s not the one, or we would have met him by now.”

  Alex’s betrayal still stung. “I found out he’s married.”

  “What?” Sid’s hand curled into a fist.

  “Oh, sweetie.” Martha got up and came around the table to hug her. “I’m so sorry.”

  Now her father was up and hugging her, too. “Is there something we should do?”

  “No. I just need time. And space.” She’d lie about the cause, but she couldn’t lie about her feelings. “I should have known he wasn’t being honest with me. I feel stupid. Like I was used.”

  “You were,” Martha defended. “It’s his fault, though, lying about his marital status. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Not with us.”

  Jessica smiled. There was so much support, so much love in her family. She wished she could tell them everything. “I just need some time to rebuild my confidence and believe in my instincts about men again.”

  Sid patted her arm and pointed a stern finger at her. “Maybe you shouldn’t trust your instincts about Sam O’Rourke, then.”

  “Dad.”

  Sam wasn’t her rapist. She’d know that, wouldn’t she? Even if her mind was a blank, she was counting on recognizing her attacker if she saw him again.

  Attacker. Sam had used that word earlier when she’d confessed to being mugged. Maybe in his mind, mugger and attacker were synonyms. Or maybe there was something more there that she should question.

  Harry’s deep, resonant growl ended her speculation.

  “Knock, knock?” Sam. Calling to her from the back porch through the screen door. “Am I interrupting anything? You said dinner was at seven.”

  The dog’s early-warning system gave her only a split second to prepare for the sound of that Irish-tinged voice. How long had Sam been standing there? Had he overheard any of her private conversation? She hadn’t heard his boots on the wooden floorboards. Had Harry?

  Jessica blew out a silent breath and crossed to the side of the armoire that separated her living space from the sales area inside her cabin. “It’ll be ready in a few…minutes.”

  She stopped moving when she saw his outline through the screen. He’d showered and changed. He’d tucked a white button-down shirt into fresh jeans and rolled up the sleeves to his elbows. His black hair was still damp against his collar, and it glistened in a lingering sunbeam. He was tall and broad and beautifully proportioned, and her heart skipped a beat with an emotion that had nothing to do with fear.

  Suddenly self-conscious of her own sloppy appearance and the fact she’d been staring, Jessica tucked her hair behind her ears and whistled. “Harry, heel.”

  The black dog reluctantly left his post at the door and sat at her side, his head tucked beneath the stroke of her fingertips.

  “Is it safe to come in?” Sam asked. “I thought I’d get the dishes and set the table out here like I did last night. Not that I’m hungry or anything.”

  Jessica smiled at the outright fib. “You put in a full day’s work and then some. It’s safe.” She put her hand out by her side. “Harry, stay. Come on in while I say goodbye to my folks.”

  Sam opened the door, and Jessica squelched the urge to retreat a step. Harry and her parents were here. It was safe for him to come into the cabin. Safe, though not necessarily self-preserving. He was even more devastating without the screen to mask his rugged features. H
e walked around her and Harry, giving them a wide berth, his cool gray eyes and softly accented voice acknowledging her parents on his way to the kitchen.

  Her dad mouthed the words, “I’ll call this guy,” and pointed to the reference number he’d copied down.

  Martha hugged her tight and whispered in her ear. “He can help you forget about Alex.”

  “Ma!” Matchmaking was in her mother’s blood. But Jessica couldn’t be interested in a man in that way. Could she? She escorted her parents to their van, refusing to dwell on her unexpected fascination with her hired hand. “You’d better go or you’ll be late to Gideon’s.”

  “Oh, I forgot.” Martha paused on the porch. “Tomorrow night Gideon and Meghan are throwing a birthday party for Matthew. He’ll be five. That’s why we’re going tonight, so they can finish their shopping. The whole family’s invited. Can you come?”

  Jessica sighed. Her four newly adopted nephews had quickly worked their way into the hearts of all the Taylors, but one family inquisition per weekend was plenty. “I can’t, Ma.” She saw the protest rising to her mother’s lips and added the first excuse that popped to mind. “I’ve already been invited to a reception at my neighbor’s tomorrow night. You remember Trudy Kent? We’ll be discussing some area land business, so I really need to be there.”

  “Are you sure?” her mother prodded.

  “I’m sure.” Of course, now she’d have to put in an appearance at the Kent soirée. She was already living a big enough lie without compounding it. But a houseful of neighbors making polite conversation about business and the weather might be easier to face than a houseful of nosy, well-meaning family. At least she wouldn’t feel as guilty when she excused herself early from the festivities. “I’ll take something over for Matthew later this weekend or Monday. Okay? Give him my love and tell him happy birthday.”

  Then it was a matter of trading kisses and hugs and goodbyes before her parents were driving away and she returned to the cabin to put the finishing touches on dinner.