Besides, he wanted to enjoy what little time they had left. It felt too precious to waste on recriminations.
* * *
AFTER DINNER, while Jack went to confer with Larry and the two male tenants about the following night, Casey prepared a bag to take to the hospital when the time came. She wouldn’t need much, just some toiletries and a bathrobe, but Gail had advised her not to wait until the last minute.
She finished tucking items into the case and went to the kitchen, where she took a roll of cookie dough out of the refrigerator. Although she certainly didn’t need the extra calories, she remembered Jack telling her long ago that the smell of cookies baking reminded him of his mother. It was one of the few things he’d confided about his early life.
If she planned to get him to open up, this seemed a good place to start. Sneaky, but, Casey hoped, effective.
A few minutes later, he returned. The crisp night air had reddened his cheeks and he wore a distracted air.
He halted in the living room, his expression lightening. “That smells great. Are you baking?”
“I thought you might need something to warm you up.” Pleased by the timing, Casey retrieved the tray from the oven. The cookies had started to brown but remained slightly chewy in the middle, the way she preferred them. “They’re chocolate chip.”
“Is there any other kind worth mentioning?” Shedding his outer garments, Jack came to stand behind her. “Hand me one, would you?”
“They’ll burn your mouth!” When Casey turned, he stood so close he overwhelmed her senses. “And we wouldn’t want that to happen. There are too many other good uses for it.” Lifting her arms impulsively, she drew his mouth down to hers.
Despite the awkwardness of the bulge, Jack kissed her for a long time. She gave herself over to enjoying his solid strength and answering tenderness.
Although Casey’s blood pulsed faster, it wasn’t only physical longing she felt. The child they shared united them at a level she’d never experienced before, as if the two of them had melted together.
He seemed to burrow into her, not only his tongue but also the way his tall frame arched over her and into her. She wanted him inside her, truly inside, but they couldn’t do that.
Not yet. But maybe in a few weeks. If only he’d stay.
When Jack lifted his head, his gaze lingered on hers. “I want to give you the same pleasure you gave me the other day.”
She knew what he meant, and she wanted it too. With a wrench, Casey remembered her plan to get him to reveal more about his past so she could win him over. Lovemaking between them had always been passionate and intensely satisfying, but although they had no trouble expressing themselves physically, it wasn’t enough to save her marriage.
“We should eat the cookies first,” she said. “Before they get cold.”
“You’re a wicked woman,” Jack murmured. “Tempting me and then stringing me along.”
“What could be more tempting than chocolate chip cookies?” she answered, and reluctantly slipped from his arms.
At the table, he took his first bite. She wondered what images flooded through him but realized that if she asked too bluntly, he was likely to brush it off.
“You know,” Jack said, “I think things will go well tomorrow night.”
“You do?” Although she would have preferred not to talk about their plan, Casey decided to follow his lead. “I hope we catch this guy.”
“That’s hard to predict. Still, it’s amazing how this thing is bringing people together,” he said. “Larry and I stopped by to talk to Enid. The two of them seemed a bit awkward at first, but soon they were actually joking with each other.”
“Enid didn’t treat Larry like a kid?” Casey asked.
“No. After a while, she picked up on his confident attitude and I could tell she respected him. And he knew it.”
“Maybe she won’t flunk him this time,” she joked.
“He’s going to pass muster.” Jack’s confidence dispelled the last of her doubts about the young officer.
“So you’re not worried about something going wrong tomorrow?” Casey pressed.
“There’s always some risk, even with trained personnel,” Jack replied. “On the other hand, our group is highly motivated and willing to follow directions. And I trust their innate good sense.”
“What if this guy does an end run? Since we don’t know what his motive is, he might surprise us. Strike at one of our cars at the Community Center, for instance.”
“That’s why I want the chief outside and Gail and Enid on the inside.” Jack downed another cookie. “The point is to plan for as many eventualities as possible and to build in enough flexibility to go with the flow. After that, if all hell breaks loose, we just have to accept it and move on.”
“I’m not sure I’d be good at accepting whatever happens.” Casey plopped her feet on an empty chair. “Still, I’d love to be the one who captures this jerk. I still resent the way he hosed me.”
“It’s hard to figure you out sometimes,” Jack said.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes you’re a mass of anxieties, and then you can be a real fireball.” Going to the fridge, he poured them each a glass of milk. “I can’t predict how you’ll respond to a situation.”
“Is there some virtue in being predictable?” Casey realized she needed to give him a more complete answer. If she expected her husband to reveal his vulnerabilities, she’d better be willing to start with herself. “I tend to be assertive by nature but I worry about the people I love. When I rely on my impulses, I go for broke, but when I picture all the bad things that could happen, I turn into a worrier.”
“What do you fear most?” Jack asked.
On the verge of saying she feared losing someone she loved, Casey realized that wasn’t the whole truth. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Death? Dismemberment?”
“Ouch!” She made a face. “I don’t think in those terms. Let me tell you an anecdote instead. Mom and I used to drive to Nashville to visit my grandmother in an assisted living home. She had her friends and her favorite TV programs, but what lit up her face was seeing us.”
“Because she loved you.”
“Mom explained it to me once,” she said. “Lots of people at the home had activities and casual friends but no family. There was no one who shared their memories, no one tied to them in a way that could never dissolve no matter what happened. Isn’t that what everybody fears most, losing that intimate connection, being really and truly alone?”
She felt as if she’d laid herself bare in front of him. Surely now he’d understand why their marriage had to take priority over everything else, because they had the capacity to mean that much to each other.
“That’s not exactly what I fear most, although I guess it used to be,” Jack replied.
“What do you mean?”
“The worst thing I could imagine actually happened when I was eleven.” He turned his glass around and around on the table, scarcely registering his repetitive action. “Pop bailed out while Mom was sick, and there were just the two of us. Even though I knew she had cancer, I never imagined she might die. Even at the funeral, it didn’t seem real. Then a neighbor took me home and told me to pack. She’d called Child Welfare and someone was coming to get me.”
“How awful.” Casey could feel the lost little boy aching inside the man.
“While I was packing, I kept listening for Mom’s footsteps or her voice. The silence was so deep it nearly swallowed me,” he said. “I remember thinking it would be a relief to go outside into the sunshine. But when the social worker took me to her car, the street looked empty, too, because none of the faces belonged to my mother. Every place felt empty after that. At least, until I got used to it.”
Casey didn’t see how a child could survive such a loss. “So you adapted?”
“It took a long time. I’d start to make friends and get attached to someone, then I’d get transferre
d to another place.”
“Why?” she asked.
“All sorts of reasons. My first foster family didn’t like me.” His matter-of-fact tone couldn’t mask the devastation he must have felt. “One family decided to leave the area. I wasn’t really their kid, so I got left behind. Another family couldn’t handle the way I kept getting into fights at school.”
“That’s awful.” Now Casey understood his mistrust of closeness, despite his obvious longing for it.
“For a while, I got seriously depressed, then my survival instinct kicked in,” Jack went on. “I realized that if you tear yourself apart over things you can’t help, it will destroy you. From then on, I accepted that nothing was permanent.”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Casey said.
“When we’re grown up, it’s true we can take more control of our lives.” He sat back in his chair. “That’s why I left the LAPD and went into business with Mike. I know companies can fail, but I’d found something that belonged to me, that I could put my guts into and depend on.”
“You didn’t feel that way when we got married?” she asked.
A startled look came into his eyes. “I never thought of it in those terms.”
Now she understood what she’d only guessed at before. “You didn’t really expect our marriage to last, did you?”
He frowned. “I wouldn’t say that.”
For once, Casey borrowed a leaf from Jack’s book and kept silent. Give him room to think out loud.
“To me, personal relationships are like shifting sand,” he said. “My business won’t run out on me. It’s solid. I understand it. There are rules I can depend on.”
“But if you don’t have someone to love you, someday you’ll end up with nothing.”
“I could end up with nothing anyway,” Jack told her. “The worst thing is to keep on hoping, to keep on needing people and letting it devastate you when they leave. That would eat me alive, Casey. And I won’t let it.”
She hadn’t expected this. She’d thought that when she finally saw inside him, the last barriers would fall and he’d admit his need for her. Instead, she realized, the more he allowed himself to love her and become part of her world, the more he stood to lose.
Still, she couldn’t give up that easily. “Sometimes you have to take a chance,” she said.
“It took me a long time to know myself,” Jack answered. “I’m sorry if I let you down. I wish I could have been the man you wanted and deserve, a guy who fits the bill as Father knows Best, but I’m not him, Casey.”
“You could be.”
Sadness and anguish mingled in his gaze. “I’m afraid you see things in me that aren’t there.”
She wanted to pummel him with arguments. How could he fail to understand his own depths and his own needs? But the self-protection he’d built to survive as a teenager had hardened into a wall that kept other people out, even her. Perhaps especially her.
And the baby. Opening up to that special, all-encompassing love a parent felt toward a helpless infant must be the most threatening thing in the world. No wonder he hadn’t wanted children. You could divorce a spouse, but once you gave your heart to your kid, you could never raise those defenses again.
At last, she’d begun to understand her husband—only to realize that perhaps she’d really and truly lost him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By Wednesday morning, Casey had regained some of her normal optimism. Deep inside, Jack obviously missed the closeness and connection of having a family. He also possessed strengths that he didn’t fully appreciate, including the ability to take a chance on what he feared most.
She still didn’t know how she was going to help him see that the risks were worth taking. She’d just have to play it by ear.
He spent much of the day on the phone, apparently organizing something related to his company. Since Gail had the afternoon off, the women scheduled a childbirth class at two o’clock.
At Gail’s suggestion, they met at her cabin to avoid disturbing Jack. A virtual twin to Enid’s in terms of layout, it had a rustic front room, a single bedroom and a cheery kitchen.
Her taste in decorating varied dramatically from the teacher’s, however. Instead of overstuffed coziness, the place had a simple, spare look. Aside from a couple of souvenir plates on the wall, a framed collage of babies she’d helped deliver constituted the only decoration.
Casey noticed right away that the nurse had installed folding child gates at the doors and a playpen in one corner. “What’s that for?” she asked in surprise.
“You’re going to need a baby-sitter,” the nurse pointed out. “A client was giving these away because her kids are too old, so I figured I’d put them to good use. This way, Diane can sleep here whenever you’re gone.”
“You’re fantastic,” Casey said. “I can’t believe you’re being so considerate. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“It’s no problem. I love kids even though I never had any.” On the floor, Gail spread a practice mat for prenatal exercises. “It’s too bad your husband won’t be here to help. Has he told you when he’s leaving?”
“Not exactly.” Although tempted to confide what she’d observed about him last night, Casey held back out of a sense of loyalty to Jack. If he kept his emotions and memories private, what right did she have to share them with others? “Let’s work on that breathing. I’ve been practicing.”
“Excellent!” Gail propped open the front door. “Now we’ll have plenty of fresh air.”
They were halfway through the session when Casey heard a sound from the doorway. It was Sandra, peering inside.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I went by your house and Jack mentioned you were here. He was just leaving—going into town, I think.”
“Oh, right.” He’d scheduled a three o’clock meeting with the police chief but obviously hadn’t wanted to mention that in front of a visitor. “Sandra, have you met Gail?”
“I don’t think so.”
Eyeing each other warily, the two women shook hands as Casey introduced them. “I’m a nurse and childbirth instructor,” Gail said. “Do you have children?”
Sandra shook her head quickly. “You two go ahead and finish. I’ll wait outside.” When she turned away and the sunlight hit her face, Casey saw tears in her eyes.
After she left, Gail lifted a questioning eyebrow. “She lost a baby,” Casey explained quietly. “I don’t think it was very long ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. We can wrap this up quickly so we don’t keep her waiting. You’re making terrific progress.”
“Thanks.” They worked for a little while longer, but both remained aware of the visitor outside. As Casey lumbered to her feet at last, she said, “I really appreciate the time you’re spending with me. It’s way above and beyond anything I have any right to expect.”
“That’s what friends are for.” The hoarse note in Gail’s voice hinted at the emotion she hid behind her nononsense manner.
Even had the bassinet and child gates not made it obvious, Casey knew how deeply Gail cared about her and Diane. In a way, she supposed, this connection might substitute for the family she didn’t have.
Impulsively, she caught Gail’s hand. “We’re more than friends,” she confided. “You’re like a favorite aunt.”
“I feel that way too.” The nurse squeezed her back. “Now you go and see what Sandra’s here about. Still, be careful. From what I’ve heard, she’s not the most trustworthy person in the world.”
“That’s what Jack says, too,” Casey noted. “But I know her. She can’t have changed that much.”
Outside, Sandra waited with her hands jammed into her coat pockets. The daylight emphasized the hollowness of her cheeks, but at least she’d regained some healthy color since Sunday.
By unspoken accord, they took the footpath toward Casey’s house instead of the paved drive. “What’s up?” she asked her visitor.
“I came to
warn you to be careful.”
It didn’t exactly sound like a threat. It was hardly reassuring, either. “What do you mean?”
“Everybody in town knows you and Jack are going to the Spring Fling tonight,” Sandra said. “Why did you broadcast the news? I mean, with the trouble you’ve had, I think you should be more discreet.”
Although her critical tone of voice put Casey’s back up, she tried not to respond in kind. “People keep asking if we’re going. I could hardly pretend we weren’t.”
“You could stay home.”
“I want Jack to get to know this town. It means a lot to me.”
Ahead of them, a couple of squirrels whisked past each other as if playing a game. Sandra gave no notice. “Don’t be an idiot! Surely you’re at least leaving someone to watch the property.”
“Maybe I don’t think there’s a serious problem.” Abruptly, Casey remembered her friend’s previous questions about the prowler. “You were asking about this the other day. Why are you so interested?”
“I was just making conversation. For heaven’s sake, don’t make a federal case out of it!” The blond woman kicked a rock out of her way. “I’m trying to do you a favor. You ought to listen once in a while instead of thinking you know everything!”
When she scowled, she didn’t look like the Sandra who’d grown up here. The little girl who’d livened up their school days with her joking had turned into an adult filled with anger.
Casey became sharply aware of how isolated they were. Sheltered by a canopy of trees, they’d passed out of sight of Gail’s cabin, and, since Jack had gone into town, there was no one to watch or hear them from below.
She shook off her fears. This was Sandra, her best friend. She certainly couldn’t be the prowler, anyway, since she hadn’t returned until this past weekend.
“I’m not going to let some trespasser run my life,” Casey announced. “Why should I miss a chance to enjoy myself with my husband?”
In the old days, she would have explained how much tonight meant, how she hoped against hope that Jack would begin to put down roots in Richfield Crossing. But she didn’t really know the woman beside her any more, certainly not enough to confide in her.
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