Found: His Perfect Wife

by Marie Ferrarella

  And soon.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When he woke up the next morning, Alison was just coming out of the bathroom. Freshly showered with the smell of herbal soap about her, she was dressed and ready to leave.

  She was going to go without saying a single word to him. The thought saddened and angered him at the same time. He didn’t usually get angry.

  “Alison?” He heard her sharp intake of breath, as if he’d caught her off guard.

  She’d hoped to leave before Luc was awake, wanting to avoid him and any possible scene. It was the way she and Derek had lived out the last weeks of their marriage—avoiding one another.

  Without turning in his direction, she indicated the door. “I was just on my way out.”

  “I kind of figured that out on my own.” He paused, waiting for her to say something, to turn around. When she didn’t, he got out of bed and crossed to her. Tension took up three quarters of the bedroom. “We can’t go outside this room like this.”

  Forced to look at him, she raised her head and met his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll still go on pretending that I’m your wife.”

  It took a great deal of self-control for him not to grab her arms and shake sense into her head. He had no idea what had come over him. He wasn’t a physical man, not in that way. But last night had broken all the rules.

  “Damn it, I don’t care about what you’re pretending. I care about what’s going on inside your head.” He raked his hand through his hair, struggling to maintain control, searching for an anchor. “Look, Alison, if I took advantage of you last night in any way…”

  She stared at him, her voice deadly calm. He hadn’t a clue what was in her mind. “You think you took advantage of me?”

  He shrugged, helpless. Damning himself for his own weakness. “Well, you did have a few Smiles in you by the time we came home.”

  A jagged sigh escaped her lips. “If you thought that I was drunk, why didn’t you stop?”

  “Not drunk, just light-headed.” And so damn tempting, a saint couldn’t have turned away. “And I didn’t stop because I couldn’t. I tried, but you were so beautiful and so passionate—”

  You were just so pretty, Alison. The memory stabbed at her, she felt as if she’d received a physical wound. “So it’s my fault.”

  He stared at her. “Nobody used the word fault.”

  Her eyes were accusing as she raised them to his. “But that’s what you meant.”

  He’d always had infinite patience; why didn’t he have any now? “Damn it, stop putting words into my mouth, Alison.”

  She could hear the anger, reined in, but there nonetheless. Like Derek right after the beginning. Derek, who’d demanded his connubial rights. An urgency to flee came over her. She moved around Luc to the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.”

  He caught her wrist, turning her around. There was accusation in her eyes. Angry with himself for what he was doing, and with her for bringing out emotion he’d never known existed, he let her hand go. But he still stood blocking the door.

  He had no idea what to say, how to begin. So he didn’t. “We have a picnic to go to this afternoon.”

  She nodded curtly. “You know where to find me.”

  “That’s just it,” he said to the door after it closed. “I don’t.”

  The day passed in a fog, holding her brain hostage and refusing to release it, even for a moment. It took concentrated effort to get through the simplest of things. She felt as if she were sleepwalking through Shayne’s clinic. Alison didn’t know what to do about the feelings that were all knotted up inside. She wanted to be with Luc in every sense of the word, but at the same time she was afraid to be with him. Afraid of freezing. Worse, afraid of being afraid of freezing.

  It was best not to get involved with him in the first place.

  Too late, the phrase mocked her. She was there already, in the middle, or close to it. What she needed was a road map to show her how to get back outside again. Back to where things were just what they seemed and fun meant listening to hours worth of CDs.

  “You look a little preoccupied.”

  Her eyes jerked up from what she was writing. Without thinking, she flipped the folder closed. Jacob was standing in front of the reception desk, not more than six inches away from her. She hadn’t heard him come in. The clinic was supposed to be closed for lunch.

  “Jacob, hi. I missed you both at breakfast today.”

  Sitting on the corner of her desk, he took the excuse in stride. “Luc said something about you needing to get an early start. I hope we’re not driving you out.”

  The smile on his face was easygoing, genial. “No, of course not.” She took a breath, collecting herself. Trying not to sound like a scatter-brained idiot. “I just didn’t expect you here.” And Shayne was out on a call. Nerves drummed through her.

  She looked up at Jacob’s face. He looked a little pale, but she’d assumed that was his normal color. “You’re not sick, are you?”

  “No, I’m actually feeling a lot healthier than I have in quite some time. I’m strictly playing errand boy.” She flashed a grin. “Luc sent me to get you.”

  So, he didn’t even want to come to pick her up. Could she blame him? She’d almost taken off his head this morning. And as for last night…

  She pushed the file into the overflowing To Be Filed box. Maybe she’d come by later to catch up on that. Hearing about the picnic from Luc, Shayne had insisted on giving her the afternoon off. She owed him time. “It’ll only take me a few minutes to get ready.”

  “No rush.” Jacob got off the desk, stepping back and out of her way. “Gives me a chance to say a few words to you.”

  She slanted a look in his direction. Had Luc said something to him about her crazy behavior? “About?”

  “Jean-Luc.”

  She released the breath she’d been holding. “What about him?”

  “Just that I came back expecting to find…” How did he put this without making it sound insulting? “Well, whatever I expected to find, I didn’t find it. Instead, I see that Luc’s really happy. A large part of that’s due to you.”

  She waved away his words. They had nothing to do with the truth. “I think you’re giving me too much credit.”

  “No, I’m not.” Jacob came around so that he could face her. “He was always an easygoing guy, happy with whatever he had. But when—” He stopped, flushing. “I guess you know the circumstances surrounding the three of us.” She merely nodded in reply, allowing him to continue. “When Janice left him and then married me, well, I was afraid that was the end of our friendship. Worse, I was afraid that Luc would never come around again as far as relationships went. For the first time in my life, I’m really glad to be wrong.”

  Taking her hand in his, Jacob looked at her for a long moment, then added, “If the road gets bumpy up ahead, give him a little slack. He’s a really great guy.”

  “Yes,” she answered quietly, drawing her hands away. “I know.”

  “All set?”

  She nodded, taking her purse. “All set.”

  But that was far from true.

  The sky, framing a pristine mountain range that picturesquely still retained some of its snow, seemed endless. Endless and crystal-blue.

  “I forgot how beautiful it was out here,” Jacob said. His head cradled in his wife’s lap, he lay in the grass just staring at the sky. “How peaceful.” By the sound of his voice, a laziness was beginning to slip through him. “I’m really going to miss this place when I go back.”

  “Right.” Sitting on one side of the red-checkered tablecloth he’d purloined for the afternoon from the Salty, Luc laughed. “You can’t take more than three days of peace and quiet in a row without looking as if you’re about to go crazy.”

  “Maybe,” Jacob conceded, “but it’s still nice having someplace to go to unwind.”

  “We could look into that cabin the Andersons are selling. It’s close to home,” Janice r
eminded him, home being Los Angeles.

  “Yes, but there’re roots here.” Jacob sounded wistful. Then, as if hearing himself, he squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll sell the old homestead.” He knew that was what she was worried about. That he’d find an excuse to hang on to it.

  “Why?”

  It was Alison who posed the question, and they all turned to look at her.

  Janice frowned at her. “Because that’s why we came. To sell his parents’ property.”

  “But why sell it?” Alison prodded. She rose on her knees, enthusiasm getting the better of her. The idea she was toying with seemed like a nice way around everything. “Why not turn it into something? Some kind of business?” She turned to Luc, looking for backup. “You’re good at that sort of thing. Can’t the house be turned into something? A sort of bed-and-breakfast-type hotel, maybe?” Work on the hotel that already existed, Sydney had told her, had been at a standstill for almost two years now. The money and interest on the owner’s part had long since run out and it remained now like an incomplete thought, standing in the shadows of the town. “People do come through in the summer, Shayne told me so.” She’d even had a tourist or two pointed out to her. “Maybe they’d stay a while if there was somewhere to stay.”

  Jacob rolled the idea over in his head. The more he did, the more he liked it. “She might have something there.”

  “Sure I do. It wouldn’t take much work. Just a little carpentry.”

  She probably had no idea how adorable she looked when she was being enthusiastic, Luc thought. “What do you know about carpentry?”

  Now she was talking strictly to him. In a way, this breached the gap caused by the words they’d had this morning.

  “Enough. My brothers were always fooling around with power tools, building on to the house. Kevin and I worked on the room you slept in above the garage,” she told him proudly. “I’m a lot handier with a drill than I am with a skillet.”

  Luc had a sudden image of her wearing only a tool belt and had to curb the grin that came to his lips.

  “You slept over her garage?” Janice looked at him curiously. “When did this happen?”

  Too late she remembered she wasn’t supposed to elaborate on the past and inadvertently throw a wrench into whatever tale he’d told them about her.

  “Long story,” Alison said quickly, waving it away. “But I am handy. Probably half the people here are handy.” She saw the highly amused look exchanged between Luc and Jacob. “What? What did I say?”

  “You obviously never told her about the house raisings we’ve had around here,” Jacob surmised.

  “Well, there you go,” Alison declared, glad that was solved. “Now you don’t have to sell.”

  But Jacob wasn’t completely convinced, even though he wanted to be. “Who’s going to run this so-called hotel?”

  “Details, just details,” Luc told him easily. “They’ll take care of themselves in time. They always do.”

  Translation, he’d take care of them, Alison thought. Something akin of pride filtered through her as she looked at Luc.

  “Okay,” Jacob allowed. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “Jacob—” Janice began to protest.

  He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Let me work this out on my own. I think we might have the perfect solution here.”

  Janice merely shrugged, knowing when to back away.

  “That was pretty sharp of you today,” Luc told Alison in their room later that evening, after Jacob and Janice had gone to bed. “Coming up with turning the old house into a hotel.” He undid the buttons of his shirt as he talked, trying his best to seem nonchalant. Holding his breath as to her reaction. “I don’t think Jacob really wanted to sell it. Getting rid of it was Janice’s idea.” Making money always was. There but for the grace of God… “Now that you showed her there was profit to be made in keeping the old place, she’s not against keeping it anymore.”

  As with any compliment, she shrugged it away. “Glad I could help.”

  He saw the set of her shoulders as she turned from him. It was happening again. But this time he wasn’t going to ignore it, wasn’t going to hope it would resolve itself without any intervention on his part. He owed it to her to intervene.

  His shirt hanging open, he moved around her until they were face-to-face. “Alison, I don’t want you to think that you have anything to be afraid of from me.”

  The defiance that had always seen her through was quick to rise. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  He hadn’t meant that to sound like a challenge of some sort. “Not me, exactly, but something about me.” He saw the denial begin to form. “Don’t lie to me, Alison. It’s there in your eyes. I just wish…”

  She bunched her pajamas up against her, turning the doorknob to the bathroom. “Yeah, me, too.”

  When she came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Luc was on the floor. He’d made a pallet for himself beside the four-poster. She set her clothing down on the chair beside the bureau.

  “What are you doing?”

  He glanced in her direction. As if he hadn’t heard her come out. “Getting ready for bed.”

  She ran her brush through her hair, trying vainly to keep her mind on what she was doing. She lost count after three. “It’s your bed. If anyone belongs on the floor, it’s me.”

  “You’re right. It is my bed and I get to decide who sleeps in it.” He glanced at her, then went back to smoothing out the blanket. “My decision is that it’s you.”

  Still holding the hairbrush, she crouched down beside him. Their eyes met. Her mouth curved. “This is ridiculous—you know that, don’t you?”

  He smiled in response. “I make it a practice never to argue with a lady.”

  The sigh that escaped her lips seemed to empty her completely. With her back against his bed, Alison eased down beside him. “It wasn’t you last night.”

  He tried to keep it light, thinking it might make it easier on her. “Felt like me.”

  “I mean…” She was diving into deep waters, waters she wasn’t sure if she knew how to navigate. “I wanted to make love with you. It wasn’t the alcohol. The alcohol only kept me from stopping myself.”

  “Otherwise you would have?”

  “Otherwise I couldn’t have.” There was a difference. And there was more. “You would have stopped it. I mean, you would have sensed something wrong and turned away from me. And I didn’t want that.”

  “Is that what he did? Derek? Did he turn away from you?” How badly had her marriage scarred her? From the looks of it, pretty badly.

  She nodded. “Eventually.” Alison dropped the hairbrush beside her. With her knees against her chest, she leaned her elbows on them and dragged both hands though her hair. “I can’t really blame him.”

  No, and that was what set her apart, he thought. “Then why are you blaming yourself?”

  The question roused her. Alison looked at him, confused. “What?”

  “That’s what you’re doing. Blaming yourself for whatever it was that started all this.” And it was eating her up.

  She shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then tell me,” he urged. “Tell me what I’m talking about, Alison.” When she began to get up, he caught her hands in his, holding on. “I need to know. Let me in, Alison. I swear I won’t hurt you.”

  The fight, the defensiveness within her, was beginning to wane. “I know you won’t. At least, you won’t mean to, but…” Biting her lip, she looked off.

  He sighed. “Have it your way. I won’t pressure you, Alison. We’ll do this at your pace.” With that, he lay down on the floor and wrapped the comforter around himself, his back to her.

  Alison sat there beside him, looking at Luc’s back for a long time. Thinking. Wrestling. Maybe it was because she thought he was asleep that she even had enough courage to whisper, “I was too afraid to say anything. When it happened, I was too afraid.”
<
br />   He turned around slowly, not sure if he’d imagined hearing her. One look at her face told him he hadn’t. Without a word he took her into his arms and just held her.

  Alison felt something hitch in her throat. Tears, fighting to block her words. But suddenly she needed to get rid of them. Needed to have someone hear. And maybe tell her it was all right.

  “I was…I was eleven.” Every word felt as if she was running razor blades along her tongue. “My father had just died and I guess I was really scared. Scared about the future, scared about Kevin dying, too. He was like another father to me. I’d already lost my mother three years earlier so I was one parent short, and then Daddy died….” Her voice caught. It took a moment before she could continue. “So I was scared. That was when Uncle Jack started coming around. Right after my Dad’s car accident. To see that everything was all right. To help out.”

  Luc tightened his arm around her, somehow knowing what was coming. Wishing that holding her would make the words come out differently.

  “Kevin and Jimmy thought he was a great guy. So did I. He wasn’t my real uncle, just my father’s best friend. Uncle Jack had always been around, so we didn’t think…I didn’t think…” She took a deep breath. It shuddered its way into her lungs. “When he touched me, I got so scared.”

  Anger flared. “The son of a bitch—”

  She couldn’t let herself acknowledge Luc’s comment. She’d break down if she did. So she caught her lip to keep from crying, forcing the words out instead. “But he said it was all right, that it was just because I was so pretty and he loved pretty girls. He said that what he was doing wouldn’t hurt. That he’d never hurt me—”

  Words he’d said to her, Luc realized. How had that affected her? Had it triggered more painful memories? “Oh, Alison, I’m so sorry.”

  She shut her eyes, tears squeezing through the lashes. “I stopped eating, stopped going to school. Kevin didn’t know what to do with me. He thought it was because Dad was gone. And then one day, he heard me crying. I was in the closet. Praying and asking God to forgive me for making Jack do what he did. I’d never seen Kevin so pale. He made me tell him. Everything.” Her control shredding, she looked at Luc. “Kevin’s the only one who ever knew all the details. I thought he was going to kill Uncle Jack with his bare hands. Two of his friends had to pull him off.”