A Year and a Day (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Cooper, Inglath

  The third police officer came out and clapped Nicholas on the shoulder, looked at Audrey and said, “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  “Are you sure?” Nicholas asked.

  She nodded.

  “He could have killed you,” he said, anguish in his words.

  “I never meant to drag you into this mess,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I think there’s little question I willingly put myself here.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her against him. Audrey closed her eyes and welcomed the security. “He has to tell me where Sammy is,” she said.

  “Come on,” Nicholas said, pulling her up beside him. “I have a feeling he may be ready to cooperate.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Nicholas banged on Ross’s massive front door. Audrey stood just behind him. They’d said hardly anything on the drive here. Nicholas knew she needed to see her son, to know for herself that he was okay.

  The door opened to an irritated Ross Webster. “Wakefield, what the hell—” His gaze swung to Audrey. He pressed his lips together. “I can’t give him to you, Audrey.”

  Nicholas shoved Ross backward into the house. “The hell you can’t. Where is Sammy?”

  Ross’s face blazed red with anger. “Get out of my house, Wakefield, or I’ll call the police.”

  “They’re a little tied up with Jonathan at the moment.”

  That stopped Ross cold.

  Audrey ran to the bottom of the curving staircase in the foyer. “Sammy!” she called out. “Where are you?”

  “Mama?”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall above, and then Sammy was running down the stairs, catapulting into her arms.

  “Oh, baby,” Audrey sobbed, holding him to her.

  Sammy pressed his face against her, clutching her neck. “Daddy said that you didn’t want me to live with you anymore. That you were never coming back.”

  “Oh, Sammy, you’re the most important thing in my life,” she said, fighting back tears. “I will never leave you.” She raised her head to look at Ross. “How could you do this?”

  “He’s Jonathan’s son, too,” Ross said, sounding less than convincing.

  Audrey stared at him for a moment, then said, “I wonder if you’ll feel the same when he does this to your daughter.”

  Ross went suddenly still, his face losing its color. “What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe you should ask Laura,” she said. And with that, she reached for Sammy’s hand and walked out the door.

  THEY STAYED at Nicholas’s house that night. Exhausted, Sammy was asleep before Audrey left the room.

  She found Nicholas in the kitchen, Lola at his feet, looking up at him with adoration. He’d gone to pick her up from his friend’s house while Audrey showered and put Sammy to bed. He pulled the cork from a wine bottle now, then handed her a glass.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking a sip, and then adding, “for everything.”

  “You don’t owe me any thanks.”

  “If you hadn’t come when you did—”

  “But I did,” he said, his eyes intent on hers.

  She dropped her gaze. “Yes. You did.”

  He set his glass on the counter, crossed the room and stopped in front of her, one hand cupping the back of her neck. “So where do we go from here?”

  Audrey looked up at him, her heart full with emotion. She loved him and wanted him to know it. But timing was everything, or so the saying went. She could not offer him anything until she had her own life in order, figured out who she was without the specter of Jonathan’s violence hanging over her. “I think we both have some loose ends that need tying up,” she said.

  He lifted her chin with a thumb. “If you decide there’s a place for me in your life, then come and find me. That’s all you have to do.”

  He leaned in and kissed her, and Audrey wondered if she were crazy to let him go. She kissed him back, and in her kiss let him know what she could not say.

  EPILOGUE

  The following spring

  AUDREY DROVE with the windows down, the wind lifting her hair from the back of her neck. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in April. The trees were in full bloom, color was everywhere.

  She’d dropped Sammy off at her parents’ house that morning. He loved staying with them, loved going fishing with his grandpa, loved sitting at the kitchen table waiting for his grandma to pull a batch of cookies from the oven. The past year had given them time to get to know one another, and Audrey was unbelievably thankful for it.

  For most of the three-hour drive, she stayed on secondary Georgia roads. It had always been her theory that you missed the good stuff on the Interstate.

  She picked up a piece of paper from the passenger seat and checked her directions. The turnoff was just ahead on the right. Her stomach flipped. She should have called first.

  It had been a year after all.

  A year was a long time. A lot had happened.

  For the most part, she felt as though she had a handle on her life. She would never be completely free of Jonathan. She hadn’t once let herself think that she would. She’d handed the information Nicholas had given her over to the D.A., Kyle Travers, and that alone had earned Jonathan eighteen months in prison. Ross was serving a year and had been disbarred.

  Six months ago, just after the divorce became final, Audrey had received a distraught phone call from Sylvia Webster, asking her to speak to Laura about Jonathan. They were getting married as soon as he was released. But Audrey knew that Laura saw in him what she wanted to see, and it wouldn’t matter what she said to the younger woman. She would have to figure it out for herself.

  Audrey hit her blinker now, turned onto the hard-top driveway and followed the tree-lined road a quarter mile or so until the trees gave way to fenced pasture. At the end of the road sat a stone farmhouse with twin magnolia trees in the front yard.

  She stopped the Explorer and sat with her hands clenched on the steering wheel. A black-and-white dog bounced down the porch steps, barking. Audrey got out of the car, crouched down, and held out a hand. “Hey, Lola.”

  Lola’s tail became a wagging blur.

  A door opened. Audrey looked up. Nicholas stood on the top step of the porch, clearly surprised.

  “Hey,” she said, standing.

  “Hey.” He walked down the steps, his hands shoved in his pockets.

  “I spoke to your parents,” she said, feeling less certain of her decision to come now that she was here facing him. Maybe it was too late. “They told me where I could find you.”

  He stared at her for several long moments, not saying anything.

  “How are you?” he asked finally, his eyes steady on hers.

  “I’m good,” she said. “Really good. And you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  Silence weighed heavy between them, and Audrey wondered again whether she should have come. “Could we talk?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Come in.”

  “How about out here? It’s such a nice day.”

  He waved a hand at the porch. They crossed the yard and sat down on the steps.

  “So how did you get all the way out here?” she asked, elbows propped on her knees.

  “I decided the city wasn’t for me. This farm belonged to my grandparents. No one’s lived here for several years. My parents held onto it, hoping I would one day want it.”

  “They seem like very nice people.”

  “They are.”

  “Do you see them—”

  “Yes,” he said. “You were right. I had some loose ends of my own to take care of.”

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  “Me, too.” He looked at her then, something between hope and uncertainty waging a struggle in his eyes. “I have to say I was beginning to think I would never see you again.”

  “This past year—it’s had its rough spots. For a long time, I worried that
I might lose Sammy because I took him out of the country. Jonathan’s lawyers were of the pit-bull variety.”

  “It’s all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And he’s happy. Really happy. Playing soccer. And he’s doing really well in school.”

  “That’s great.”

  She nodded. “It is.”

  They fell into silence. Lola spotted a crow and darted after it, barking. The bird perched on a bottom limb of an apple tree, looked down and flapped its wings. Lola dropped onto the grass beneath the tree, panting.

  “I can see she’s busy these days,” Audrey said.

  “Oh, yeah. She has to keep the local wildlife in line.”

  Audrey smiled.

  “So how about you?” he asked, his voice soft. “What have you done for you this past year?”

  She looked down at her nails and rubbed her thumb across the back of her hand. “The first thing I did was to let myself admit I wasn’t responsible for the direction my marriage took. For a long time, I blamed myself for not guessing how things would turn out, for not having the courage to find a way out sooner than I did. I started seeing this therapist, a woman who had been through something similar. She helped me a lot. I finally decided the blame and regret have no place in my life now. If anything, they’re just an anchor to the past, and all I want is to sail on.”

  He reached out, covered her hand with his, squeezed once. Her heart sped up, and she felt the color rush to her cheeks.

  On the fence at the edge of the yard, a pair of doves sat side by side. Audrey thought how right they looked there, how peaceful. It was the one thing she had yearned for—peace—and she had finally found it. But, undeniably, it hadn’t been enough.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “I missed you, too.” They let the words sink in. And then he leaned over, his lips barely brushing her cheek. He pulled back and stared at her for a moment, as if reassuring himself of her presence. Something inside her collapsed with longing, and she kissed him back with all the feelings she’d kept locked away this past year.

  She put her hands against his chest. He deepened the kiss, wrapping his arms around her. They kissed for a long time, reacquainting themselves, picking up where they’d left off. As if it were only yesterday. As if they had all the time in the world.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, his voice uneven. He pushed her hair back from her face, his hand resting on her shoulder.

  “I had to see who I was without all of the baggage from Jonathan. Find out whether I could be someone on my own.”

  “I know,” he said. “And what did you decide?”

  “That I can be. That I want more than just being on my own.”

  He looked at her, something warm and pleased in his eyes. “Does that mean there might be room for this? For us?”

  A few seconds passed, and then she replied, “Yes. I think it does.”

  His grin was teasing. “Life with a small-town lawyer with ambitions of running for district attorney. Word has it the guy lives on a farm and doesn’t know the first thing about farming.”

  She smiled. “So what kind of farming is he interested in?”

  “Tomatoes. Green beans. Or so I hear.”

  “I’ve always wanted to grow watermelons,” she said.

  “Watermelons are good.”

  They were silent for a moment, eyes locked on one another.

  “Do you happen to have an extra shed anywhere around here?” she asked. “I kind of have a little business going.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “So,” she said. “Maybe this could work.”

  “There’s just one more thing I think we need to be sure about first.”

  “Oh?” she asked. “What’s that?”

  “This kissing thing. That’s pretty much got to be right, or none of the rest will work.”

  “You have that on good authority?”

  “Pretty good,” he said.

  “So maybe we’d better practice?”

  “Highly advisable.”

  “Well,” she said, lifting her shoulders, “I’m available if you are.”

  He smiled and stood, holding out a hand. She took it. He dropped an arm behind her knees, lifted her up and carried her inside the house, the screen door slapping closed behind them.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-2159-8

  A YEAR AND A DAY

  Copyright © 2005 by Inglath Cooper.

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