by MJ Fredrick
Still, she excused herself from Judith and clicked to answer.
“Hey, Mom.”
“I’m coming home.”
Her mother’s sobs took her aback. Also, home? Her mother didn’t have a home. She’d lived a transient life, from man to man. Did she mean back to Willow’s?
She returned to the semiprivacy of her desk. “What happened?”
“He didn’t propose. I was so sure he’d ask me to marry him. I mean, he took me to the club to meet his friends. Why wouldn’t he propose?”
How many times had Willow heard this lament? She massaged her forehead, leaning her elbow on her desk, and resigned herself to repeating the words she’d said before. “Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe he wanted to give it more time.”
“No, he made it quite clear he has no intention of proposing, that this is nothing more than a casual thing. And I may have—well, reacted badly. I need to come home.”
Another complication in her already complicated life. “Mom, my place—I’m staying with the Trasks.”
“The Trasks? Why?”
“Jerry, the man you met at Judith’s wedding, was not who I thought he was. He trashed my house when I was in Seattle and stole all my money. I’m still waiting for the bank to go through the process to restore the money to my account.”
“Seattle? I thought you were in Montana.”
“Long story. But the point is, I don’t have a place for you to stay and I don’t have any money, not for a bit.”
“I’m sure we can manage. We have to stick together, we Hawkins girls,” her mother said with a brave sniffle, and Willow could hear her try to smile.
Willow swallowed a sigh. “Come home. We’ll figure something out.” She disconnected and lowered her head to her folded arms on the desk. When was her world going to stop spinning out of control? And how long until the urge to call Cam to unload would pass?
***
After another marathon meeting with Gwyn, Willow waited in the lobby of her office building for her mother, and watched as Brenda got out of the back of the cab. Anyone who glimpsed the elegant, beautiful older woman would never think she’d waitressed most of her life, that those manicured nails had once been broken, damaged from dishwashing, that she’d never worn heels because she was on her feet so much, that the suit she was wearing cost more than she used to make in a month. But Willow saw it all—the woman she’d been, and the woman she’d made herself into after Tucker.
The woman who was damaged by another rejection. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and held her arms open for her mother. They’d decided to get a hotel room—yay, another one—with Brenda’s money. But first they were going out to dinner, after fetching Willow’s things from the Trasks’ house.
Her stomach clenched on the drive to Angela’s. She almost felt ungrateful leaving the house after they’d been so gracious in taking her in, and the action would sever yet another tie to Cam. Now hardly any ties remained.
Angela was waiting at the door when they reached the house. The older women embraced. Willow tried to remember how long it had been since they’d seen each other. She left them reminiscing and slipped upstairs to Cam’s room. Now that she’d made her decision to move to the hotel with her mom, she wanted to be done with it. Her heart squeezed as she pushed her way into the room. She packed her few belongings, then hesitated before quietly opening the drawer of his desk. She’d seen it there the other night when she couldn’t sleep and felt like snooping, and the thought had started to tickle the back of her mind. Taking a deep breath, she scooped the class ring up and tucked it into her pocket. She took one last look at the room, at the pictures of the two of them on his dresser, before she hurried downstairs to gather her mother.
“Thank you, Angela, for taking me in,” she said, leaning forward to hug Cam’s mom and ordering herself not to choke up. “You don’t know what it means to me.”
“You’re both welcome—” Angela began, but Willow stepped back, shaking her head.
“You’ve done too much, and we need to find our way back on our feet.”
“Stay in touch, sweetie.”
Angela’s sincere words brought tears to her eyes, because she couldn’t. Not without Cam. She pressed the spare key into her palm. “Thank you for everything.” Because there was nothing else to say, she turned and bolted as Angela and Brenda exchanged a hug.
The Hawkins girls, as Brenda insisted on calling them, went to dinner at an Italian restaurant, the only one they could agree on. Brenda ordered a bottle of wine for them to share and nibbled on bread sticks as she regaled Willow with stories of her hobnobbing with the rich and famous.
“So what happened?” Willow asked after hearing about how wonderful Adrian had been.
Brenda sighed deeply. “Everything was perfect, and then he arranged this beautiful, romantic dinner on the terrace at his home, complete with outdoor fireplaces and candles and strings of lights, chilled champagne, an elaborate feast. I was certain he’d propose. I didn’t even taste anything, I was so excited. And then he didn’t. So I asked him why he went to all that trouble, and he said he wanted to show his appreciation.” Brenda took a sip of wine and looked away. “I admit, I didn’t react well. His response was that he wasn’t looking to marry again, he just wanted companionship. He’d promised his children that he wouldn’t jeopardize their inheritance, can you believe that?”
Willow shook her head and took a sip of wine. “Mom, you’ve only been dating since the summer.”
“But I don’t have time to waste.” Brenda’s voice took on a hint of shrillness.
Willow set her glass down with enough force to slosh some of the liquid over the rim, her impatience with her mother battling with her need to know the truth. “Why do you keep putting your happiness in these men’s hands? Why can’t you be happy on your own?”
Brenda’s shoulders sagged, a gesture she never allowed herself because it made her look old, tired, defeated. Willow was surprised to see it. “Because I’m tired of being alone, Willow. It’s hard to be alone, especially when you’re my age and you have no skills to work at a job that can make you happy and your friends are all married, doing couple things, or things with their children and grandchildren. It’s lonely. You don’t know because you have your friends. But they’re not always going to be there. They’ll get married and have their own lives and you’ll want the same.” Brenda studied her for a moment, as if seeing something that wasn’t there. “So tell me why you were in Seattle with Cam Trask.”
Willow took a deep breath. She didn’t want to talk about this with her mother. “He had a job interview.”
“So? Why were you with him?”
“He came to get me from Jerry’s.” She told her mother about Jerry’s family, their assumptions, their over-the-top actions, and watched her mother’s eyes take on a familiar glow. She should have known better than to expect sympathy. Her mother had never understood her drive to be on her own.
“But, Willow, he would have taken care of you, you could have stayed home and raised your kids.”
Willow’s shoulders tensed. “That was your dream, not mine.”
“Until you have kids and don’t have time to enjoy them.”
Willow drew in a breath. She knew that was true, that her mother had worked so much she hadn’t had time to spend with Willow. That Angela Trask had attended more school functions than Brenda Hawkins. “It was like watching you with Tucker, the way he was taking over, the way he didn’t care what I wanted. Don’t you remember how that made you feel?”
The glow left her mother’s face. Brenda averted her gaze as she shifted in her chair, twisting her fingers in front of her. Willow knew her mother didn’t like to recall what she’d given up. She’d watched her mother disappear into Tucker’s expectations, all so Willow would have security. Willow wasn’t that selfless.
“I want something different than you. I want to be in love.”
Brenda’s gaze returned to her. “You think that matters
in the long run?”
“I know it does. I know—” She stopped herself from saying she knew how badly she wanted to be with Cam every day, right now. She wanted to see him, touch him, smell him, hear his voice. “I know I want that.”
She took another swallow of wine. She didn’t want to be alone, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life comparing every man in her life to Cam. She didn’t want to watch him move on—even from afar. Didn’t want to hear about him falling in love with someone else, having children with someone else. Why had she been so shortsighted? Why had she been so afraid?
Because he mattered so much. Because other men hadn’t mattered, and walking away had been her choice. But Cam—she hadn’t walked away from Cam. She’d run.
Why?
She poured more wine, and after dinner Brenda drove them back to the hotel. The really nice hotel, with pillow-top mattresses, a working heater and hot water, no mirror above the bed, botanical prints on the wall in tasteful frames, a television that actually got reception. Brenda didn’t understand when Willow burst into tears.
***
Willow was getting ready for work the next morning when her cell rang. She frowned at the unfamiliar number, but answered.
“Miss Hawkins? This is the Cantonville police department. We wanted to let you know Jerry DiNorio has been arrested.”
Relief weakened her knees and she sank onto the edge of the nearest bed, jostling her mother awake.
“Good. What do you need from me?”
“I thought you might want to know that he wanted to make his one phone call to you.”
Her fingers tightened on the phone. “He what?”
“He said he wanted to explain.”
“You have the crime photos of my house, right?”
“Yes, ma’am. Just passing the word along. You have a nice day, now.”
She disconnected and sat with the phone hanging from limp fingers. She should be relieved, not tense that she’d be running into him at every corner. Instead, his sniveling request—okay, she didn’t know it was sniveling, but she imagined it that way—pissed her off.
She reached behind her and shook her mother’s ankle beneath the blankets.
“Come on. We’re going to the police station.”
The thought occurred to Willow as she pushed open the glass door that this was the second time in a week she’d been in a police station, and she’d never been in one before.
“Don’t forget, you promised breakfast after this,” Brenda said behind her.
Willow approached the desk.
“I’m here to see Jerry DiNorio. You have him in custody.”
“Are you here to bail him out?” demanded a stout woman with the tightest ponytail Willow had ever seen.
She stared, then pushed her hair behind her ear. “No! No. He called and wanted to talk to me. To…apologize or something.”
The woman looked from Willow to Brenda, as if to say, “Talk some sense into this girl.” Then she turned back to Willow. “Honey, I’ve seen this act a thousand times. ‘Let me just tell her I’m sorry, and I’ll never do it again.’ Don’t buy it.”
“Believe me, I have no plans to listen to his begging. I intend for him to listen to me.”
The officer drew back with a pleased smile crimping her lips. “That’s more like it. This way.”
Willow followed the woman down the cinder-block-walled hallway lined with aging anticrime posters. And then there Jerry was, blond hair disheveled as he sat in a cell. He stood when he saw her, and wrapped his hands around the bars.
“You came. I didn’t think you would.”
She cut him off, stopping just beyond the reach of what she saw was the holding cell. “You broke into my house, trashed it, stole my money and canceled my credit cards, leaving me stranded in Seattle.”
He drew back. “You left me stranded in Wisconsin.”
She couldn’t hold back a snarl, remembering the panic. “Not the same thing.”
“All I wanted was for you to like my family. And you ran off with another man.”
She flinched a bit at that. She hadn’t made the best decisions, starting with agreeing to go home with him, but she didn’t deserve what he’d done in retaliation. “I didn’t come here to listen to your excuses. I want you to pay for the damage you did.”
“I can’t very well get it to you if I’m stuck in here. Drop the charges, and I’ll make it right. Tell me when and where we can meet.”
She took another step backward. “We don’t meet. I’ll pick a check up from your lawyer. Not that I don’t trust you, but…I don’t trust you.”
“And then you’ll drop the charges?” Hope brightened his voice.
She took a deep breath. Would it really benefit her to go to trial, or was there a better solution? “If you pay for the repairs on the house. But if I so much as see you out of the corner of my eye, I’ll change my mind.”
“What about work?”
What about it? They would be working together, but for some reason, she couldn’t picture it. She couldn’t imagine being at the office with him. She couldn’t much imagine being at the office at all anymore. What did that mean?
“I’ll have to talk to Mr. LeFleur and request that we not work together. And if you go back on your word, or cross me in any way, trust me when I say I’ll take pictures of my house to Mr. LeFleur.”
Jerry winced. Yeah, well, if he wanted her pity, he shouldn’t have lost his mind. “I’ll talk to my lawyer. I’ll call you with the time as soon as I know. Will you answer your phone?” He said the last accusingly.
“As long as you’re not harassing me. Do we have a deal?”
He eased back from the bars, hands at his sides, looking defeated. “Yeah. It’s a deal.”
As they walked out of the station, Willow leaned against the stone railing of the stairs, needing the support after the encounter.
“What a weasel!” Brenda said, dropping her purse to her side for the first time since they got out of the car. “What did you ever see in him?”
Willow pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Someone who’d keep me from being lonely. Someone I didn’t love but who I was willing to settle for in order to have security.” She let her hands fall away and braced them behind her as she met her mother’s gaze. “Not worth it, would you say?”
Her mother looked shaken. “He had a look in his eyes that made me think of Tucker.”
Willow straightened. “That’s just what I told Cam.”
Brenda coughed out a humorless laugh. “Funny. I’d forgotten that while love can hurt, being tied to someone you don’t love can hurt too.” She reached out to touch Willow’s cheek. “At least with love, you have the happiness for as long as it lasts.”
Willow’s heart squeezed. Her confidence in being able to love a man had been eroded by her tendency to choose the wrong men, men she couldn’t love. She wasn’t sure she had the ability to work on a relationship, but she knew now that she wanted to, and only with one person.
***
Willow shivered as she sat in her car in front of Cam’s apartment. She really hoped she’d worked this out right with the train schedule, that he wasn’t already sitting in his apartment, toasty warm. God, she was compounding her idiotic decision with another idiotic decision. But his apartment complex didn’t have lobbies or hallways, so it was here or outside. She pulled her coat tighter around her, curled her toes in her thick socks and checked her watch. Two-thirty. She’d been here since midnight. Surely she hadn’t missed him.
Well, she’d missed him, but…
A taxi pulled into the silent lot and a tall figure unfolded himself from the backseat. She could tell by the slump of his shoulders that he was tired. Bad idea. She should wait, come back tomorrow. But before she could chicken out, she opened the car door, and the dinging of the bell alerting her that her keys were still in the ignition drew his attention. He straightened.
“Willow?” He took a step toward her as the cab drove off
.
She started shaking. Had she just compounded her mistake here? She tucked her purse against her side. “I wanted to talk, but it’s late. You’re tired.”
As he crossed the parking lot to her, she backed toward her car. What had she been thinking? She’d left him in Seattle without a word and now she was keeping him up when he clearly had had a rough day of travel. In the parking lot light she could see the shadow of his stubble, the circles under his eyes. His hair was mussed, his clothes rumpled.
“It’s freezing out here. You have something against being warm?”
“You can probably attest to the fact that I’m not too smart.”
He tightened his hand on his duffel strap and looked at her. Her heart ached with the urge for him to touch her. Wasn’t going to happen. She got that and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. Mistake. This was it, then. Her mother was right.
“I was surprised when I got back to the room and you were gone,” he said. “I mean, I knew you were freaked out, but I didn’t expect you to bolt.”
“Yet you still wanted to look out for me.”
“Will, you know—” He took a step back, toward the apartment, impatience in every line of his body, unfamiliar in him. He was the most patient person she knew, and she’d driven it out of him. “My mom’s going to be worried about you,” he said after a glance at his watch.
“I’m staying with my mom. She came back home and needed me, so we’re in a hotel.”
He smirked and she knew instantly what he was thinking. Would she ever have that connection with another man?
“A nice one,” she said, feeling a smile tug at her own lips. “Real movies, no porn.”
“Room service.” He took a step closer.
“Working climate control.”
“Come inside, Will.”
She didn’t trust herself to go inside. But of course he wouldn’t want to make love. She’d hurt him, hadn’t she? “No, I’ll go back to the hotel. You’re right, my mom will worry.”
He leaned forward and snatched the keys from her hand. “I’m too tired and too cold to argue. Get your butt inside.”
