by Cindy Gerard
“Maddie—you know me. I love Emma. I am not cheating on her.”
For one fleeting, hopeful moment, she did believe him. At least she wanted to. He could see it in her eyes in the instant before they filled with venom. “I thought I knew you. Now all I know is that you hurt her. Dammit, Garrett. You hurt her! That makes you slime in my book. And it sure as the devil doesn’t get you into my home to see her.”
With that, she grabbed an umbrella from the stand by the door and jabbed it hard at his abdomen.
The sharp, sudden jolt of pain buckled his knees. He doubled over with an “oomph,” clutching his arms around his middle as the door slammed in his face.
Gasping for breath, he staggered backward into the hall, his eyes squeezed shut against the involuntary sting of pain-induced tears. In a blind stumble, he hit the hallway wall with his shoulder and crumpled slowly to the floor.
“Nuts,” he gritted out as he slumped there, catching his breath, riding out the pain. “Every...last...one of them...are...nuts.”
When he could take a breath that didn’t feel like it would rip his guts out, he eased to his feet and slunk out of the apartment building like the snake everyone thought he was.
Two
Monday morning Garrett strode stiffly into the suite of offices that housed James Construction Company, which he and Clay ran as partners. Agnes Crawford, their secretary since Jonathan James had founded the company back in the sixties, opened her mouth, then wisely shut it. She correctly read his glacial glare as a warning. Touching a nervous hand to her blue-gray hair, she watched in wary silence from behind the round frames of her trifocals as he walked directly to his private office and slammed the door behind him.
Garrett sank down in the leather chair behind his desk and waited. He knew it wouldn’t be long. Agnes had no doubt reached for the phone and dialed Clay’s extension as soon as Garrett had closed his door. He also knew there was nothing for it but to suffer through it.
Fortunately he just had Clay to contend with today. Only the wind knew where Jesse was. He could be anywhere from Cheyenne to Fort Worth as he worked the pro rodeo circuit, chasing his dream of a PRCA world championship in bull riding.
Garrett hadn’t even reached a ten count when Clay rapped a knuckle on the door then barged in without an invitation.
“Don’t start,” Garrett warned with a deadly edge that anyone but his brothers would have had the good sense to heed.
Squinting as if in deep thought, Clay crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the closing door.
“You look different today,” he observed conversationally. “I can’t quite pinpoint what it is, though, with the light reflecting off your head that way.” Nudging aside a black leather vest, he fished a pair of sunglasses out of the breast pocket of his shirt and slipped them on. “Hell of a glare in here.”
Garrett clenched his jaw. “You’re pushing it.”
“I’m pushing it?” Clay barked, whipping off the glasses and shoving away from the door. “When Emma gets a load of your Michael Jordan hair don’t, she’s going to burst a vein. Maaannn...this is scary, Garrett.”
Garrett got as far as five on a ten count. “I didn’t do this.”
Clay grunted. “Which means you paid someone else to. That’s even scarier.”
Garrett met his brother’s eyes. “Emma did it.”
Clay’s brows lowered in disbelief before he broke into a crooked, speculative grin. “Kinky.”
With a weary breath, Garrett rose and shoved his hands deep into his pants pockets. Shoulders hunched in defeat, he turned his back on his brother and walked to the window. “She left me.”
He didn’t have to turn around to know that Clay’s jaunty stance had deflated to a troubled slouch.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yeah.” Absently fingering the change in his pocket, Garrett stared out the window. “Oh.”
“What the hell happened?”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew. From the bits and pieces I’ve scraped together, it would seem she thinks I’m cheating on her.”
Another contemplative “Oh” from Clay was followed by “Then I’d say you’re damn lucky she didn’t take that razor to something else.”
Garrett turned slowly away from the window. “What am I going to do?”
Clay regarded him with a concerned frown. Garrett was always the one who was asked that question by his brothers. He was the one they always turned to. He was the one they depended on for answers. Sobered by the turn of events, Clay asked softly, “Let’s back up to what did you do?”
“You know me better than that.”
“Yeah,” Clay said, watching Garrett’s face carefully. “I do. Then the question is, why does Emma think you’re messing around?”
Garrett sank back down in his chair. “I had a business lunch with Gloria Richards on Friday.”
“Oh, boy.” Those two small words encompassed a wealth of understanding. “She come on to you again, did she?”
Garrett snorted. “Like a Sherman Tank. I thought I had it covered. I made reservations at Shady’s—you know that open-air restaurant down on 5th and 22nd? I figured that if we were out in public with God and the free world—and evidently Emma—watching, the woman would keep her hands to herself.” He toyed absently with a paper clip then tossed it aside and rocked back in his chair. “Emma must have been there and seen Gloria doing her octopus routine.”
Clay whistled long and low. “Talk about rotten timing.”
“Yeah.” With a lost look, Garrett scrubbed a hand across his face.
“Have you tried to talk to her?”
“That’s the problem. I can’t get near her. Anyway, that’s part of the problem.” He backtracked thoughtfully as Clay settled a hip on the edge of his desk. “I know she’s been unhappy lately—but I don’t understand why she was so ready to believe what she thought she saw. And why didn’t she just confront me so we could talk it out? Why did she—” he raised an open palm in the general direction of his head “—do this?”
Clay shook his head sagely. “At the risk of repeating myself, consider yourself lucky all you lost is your hair. It’s a renewable resource. Various other body parts are not.”
Clay’s attempt at humor fell as flat as the stack of invoices on Garrett’s desk—just as the room fell silent with the weight of Garrett’s misery. Garrett buried his face in his hands.
Clay’s misery grew to match. “This is my fault.”
Garrett’s head shot up. “Your fault?”
“You work too many hours, Garrett You take on too much of the responsibility around here. I shouldn’t let that happen. I should make you go home to your family.”
“You can’t make me do anything. And you more than pull your weight. Besides, I squeeze out time when I can.”
“Yeah? When? When was the last time you got home before seven? The last time you took a weekend off—and I’m not counting Sunday afternoon from three o’clock on as a weekend.”
Garrett’s sober frown and the guilt that weighted down his shoulders had Clay backing off.
“Hey,” he said, reaching across the desk and clamping a hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “Do you love her?”
The look Garrett shot him provided a definitive answer.
Clay’s return look was just as conclusive. “Then fix it. Go get her back.”
“Right. Between her steel magnolia of a mother and her pit bull of a best friend,” he paused, his hand rising automatically to rub the tender spot on his midsection that bore the sting of Maddie’s anger, “I haven’t been able to get within shouting distance of her all weekend.”
This time it was Clay who paced to the window. After a long moment of thought he spun around, a huge smile splitting his face. “Then there’s only one recourse that I can see.”
Garrett shifted in the chair, eyed him warily. “And that would be—”
An outlaw gleam shone in Clay’s eyes. “I’ve always wanted to explore
the kind of mind-set it requires to stage a kidnapping. This appears to be a golden opportunity.”
With a muttered oath, Garrett buried his face in his hands. “Go away.”
“Well, it was just a thought,” Clay said with a sheepish shrug, then had the good sense to back out the door and shut it softly behind him.
Emma didn’t jump anymore when Maddie’s phone rang—but she still didn’t answer it.
Watching through vacant eyes, she absently stroked Maxwell, Maddie’s purring calico tomcat who was curled up on her lap. She responded to the call as she had since the night she’d moved into Maddie’s apartment. She waited for the fourth ring and listened to Maddie’s short, upbeat voice-mail message announce that she wasn’t available. Then she tried to ignore the sound of Garrett’s voice as it filled the echoing silence of the afternoon.
“Emma, please. Pick up the phone. I know you’re there.”
With the animation of a statue, Emma stared past the phone and out Maddie’s third-floor apartment window.
A week had passed since she’d left him. A week of dealing with the guilt of what she’d done to him and refusing his calls. A week of justifying that his actions were responsible for driving her to the edge of the deep end that night.
Somehow she’d made it through the last few days of the school year. But if Garrett could see her, he’d know she was hovering on a very dangerous edge. She was a mess: she’d lost weight; she didn’t eat; she didn’t sleep; and since that first night, she hadn’t even been able to cry.
“Emma. Don’t do this to us.”
The ache behind her eyes foreshadowed tears that never came, as Garrett’s voice—his gruffly velvet voice that had whispered to her in the night and promised her forever—threatened to breach her resistance again.
But no matter how many times he called, no matter how much pain she heard in his words, it only took the picture of him with that woman to harden what was left of her heart.
“Em...how can we fix this if you won’t talk to me?”
Every day he called. Sometimes four, five times a day. Every day she steeled herself against the wanting to believe there was something left to fix.
“Fine. Don’t talk. Don’t do anything but sit there and throw away what was once the most important thing in our lives. I’m tired, Emma. I can’t do this much longer. I can’t...”
His voice trailed off, setting her senses on alert.
“I just can’t,” he repeated sounding so weary, so beaten, her heart twisted for the ache m his.
“Look, just...just tell Pea I love her. Will you do that for me? And tell her I’ll see her tomorrow at four in the park. And, dammit, Emma, tell Maddie or whoever’s playing bodyguard not to leave with her if I’m a few minutes late. Yesterday couldn’t be helped. I got tied up in a conference call and Clay was late taking over. I’ve got to see her again, Emma. Without you...” His voice broke. The brief pause that followed was filled with his struggle for control. “Without you... she’s all I’ve got left.”
A deep, echoing silence passed, then the line went dead.
Emma dropped her head back against the sofa. Her throat felt so tight she couldn’t swallow.
She may have left him, she may want to rip his heart out for what he’d done, but she hadn’t stopped loving him. She doubted that she ever would. And she couldn’t deny him his daughter. Just like she couldn’t deny Sara her daddy’s love. He was a good father. He always had been. Even with all the hours he worked he managed to find time for Sara. It was the part about being a husband where he’d dropped the ball.
Maddie, standing silent and supportive behind her all this time, lowered a hand to her shoulder. Emma covered it with her own before she set the disgruntled tom aside, rose from Maddie’s overstuffed, abstract-print sofa and headed for the kitchen. On the way to the coffeepot, she raked her fingers through her hair, thinking as she did that it was as dull and lifeless to the touch as she felt.
Maddie followed but lingered in the doorway. “Second thoughts?” she ventured finally.
“Second? Try third. Hundreds. Thousands,” Emma muttered in self-disgust and, ignoring the tremor in her hand, filled a mug with coffee. She raised it halfway to her lips, then let it hit the counter again with a soft thud. She sucked in a deep breath then exhaled wearily. “It’s just...it’s so damn hard.”
Barefoot, her long skirt rustling, Maddie shuffled up beside her. “Men are pigs.”
Maddie’s indignant indictment finally made Emma smile. “What a novel summation. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put so eloquently before. Especially from a woman who has a date an average of two-point-five nights a week.”
“Yeah, well.” Maddie shot for a throwaway grin as she hiked herself up and settled her bottom onto the counter. “They have their purposes. The problem is getting rid of them when they’ve been served.”
The blatantly hedonistic statement brought another slow, tired smile. “You are not a user, Matilda, no matter how well you bluff.”
“Well, I’m certainly not marriage material,” Maddie muttered with a sniff as she stretched back and riffled through the cookie jar. “But I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun pretending to audition for the part.”
Though her heart wasn’t in it, Emma grinned at her friend’s innuendo à la Mae West. “You’re not a tramp, either.”
“And you’re a real spoilsport,” Maddie sputtered around a mouthful of chocolate-chip cookie, her relief at Emma’s slight lift of mood evident. “You’re systematically ruining my bad reputation.” She offered Emma half of the cookie.
Emma shook her head. “That’s because I’m into ruining things these days. Reputations. Moods. Marriages. Specifically my own.”
Maddie’s grin faded. She shook what was left of her cookie at her. “Hold it right there. I will not allow you to take this on your shoulders. You’re not the one who was playing around.”
Emma stared at her hands. “But I’m the one who drove him to it.”
Maddie swore softly but roundly before trying again. “Emma—”
“I didn’t say what he did was justified. And I didn’t say I forgive him for it. I’m just admitting that I had a part to play in this, too.”
“What part? What could you have possibly done?”
Emma turned away. She’d done plenty. Two years ago, when she should have turned toward him, she’d turned away. But she’d hurt so much when she’d lost the baby. Their baby that they’d tried for years to conceive. Their baby, only weeks old in her womb but loved so deeply in their hearts.
How she’d failed him then wasn’t something she’d come to terms with. Just like she still hadn’t come to terms with the loss of that precious life that had grown inside her.
“It took both of us to get to this point. I just—I just didn’t realize—I didn’t think I’d pushed him this far. I didn’t think anything would ever push him this far.”
When the panic hit, she should have been ready for it. But as it always did, it struck hard and swift and without warning.
She clutched the coffee mug with both hands to quell the violent trembling that gripped her. Her eyes were wild when she turned to Maddie. “My God, what have I done? I drugged him. How could I have done that?”
“He deserved worse. And you were hurt,” Maddie defended gently. “And scared.”
“Nobody deserves what I did to him. And I wasn’t just hurt. I was out of control.” She dragged her hair from her face with both hands, feeling like she was drowning in a sea of self-doubt. “I still am. Sometimes... sometimes I don’t think I even know who I am anymore.”
“Well, I know who you are. And what you are. And I know what you aren’t.” Maddie scooted off the counter and touched a supporting hand to Emma’s shoulder. “You are not crazy. And you are not immune to pain. All you did was react to it. And dammit, you were entitled.
“You were entitled,” she repeated with feeling when Emma’s eyes swam with unshed tears of guilt and humiliation. “If
I’d been holding the razor, he’d be singing soprano about now.”
When her attempt at teasing her out of a smile failed, Maddie tried again. “Okay. So your reaction was extreme. A little dangerous even. That doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to a little latitude. Even you, steady, sensible, enduring Emma James has a breaking point. That doesn’t change who you are.”
“And who am I? Can you tell me that?” Desperation clawed and twisted inside her.
“You’re the woman who opted for natural childbirth when everyone around you was rooting for an epidural,” Maddie reminded her forcefully. “You’re the woman who took on the school board over the book ban and won. You’re a wonderful mother and a good person. You’re strong and you’re resilient. And you’re going to come out of this and show Garrett James and everybody else in this town what you’re made of.”
Well-intended words. Emma wished she could believe them—like she’d believed in Garrett. Like she’d believed in the strength of their marriage.
“Give yourself some time.” Maddie’s soft reassurance infiltrated her thoughts. “You’re stronger than you think. You’ll sort it out. You’ll get through this.”
Yeah, Emma thought with a dispassionate sigh. She’d get through this. But at what cost?
Garrett couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d been waiting in the park since three-thirty, making damn sure Viola or Maddie didn’t find an excuse to leave with Sara before he got to see her.
But it wasn’t either one of them who drove up to the south side of the park, got out of the car and walked Sara toward him.
It was Emma.
His heart slammed into a wild rumble. Slowly he rose from the merry-go-round, dusted playground sand off the seat of his jeans and walked hesitantly to meet them.
When Sara saw him, she broke into a huge grin. Running at a coltish lope, she launched herself into his arms.
“Daddy!” she cried as he scooped her up and hugged her against his chest.
