Love Built to Last

by Lisa Ricard Claro

  Maddie shivered, and every inch of her vibrated when she said, “This is between me and Jack. I don’t want you, Caleb. I don’t need you. Get out.”

  He winced, but stood unmoving. They stared at each other for five seconds, ten. Jaw tight, he inclined his head in a single resolute nod and left without another word.

  Alone, Maddie’s grief ripped through her anew, and she sobbed Jack’s name until her throat ached. She covered her face with her hands as she wept, tears soaking her skin, the salty wetness burning her eyes and tasting bitter on her lips and tongue.

  The ceiling spit a few final drops. Caleb fixed it, he made it stop, a voice in the back of her brain told her. She pushed the thought of Cal away. She couldn’t think of him now. Guilt overrode every other emotion. Had she been home where she belonged, she could have prevented this. If she hadn’t been with Caleb Walker, in his arms, his bath, his kitchen, his bed, this wouldn’t have happened. She’d still have Jack.

  But Jack was gone, really gone this time.

  And she still hadn’t told him goodbye.

  ***

  Brenna Kinkaid flirted with a county sheriff’s deputy while working the counter at the Lump & Grind. She comped his vanilla latte and tossed in a chocolate chip cookie for good measure. When her phone buzzed, she glanced at the ID, smiled when she saw that it was Maddie, and took the call in spite of the line of customers waiting for service.

  “Hey, you wild woman,” Brenna said without preamble. “Give me all the sexy details about last night, and don’t even think of leaving anything out. I want to hear about the tool belt and every yummy accessory at his disposal. So dish.”

  “Brenna, this is Caleb.”

  “Oh. Geez.” She huffed out a laugh. “Well, this is awkward.”

  “Maddie needs you. There was a flood out at the house. An upstairs pipe burst. I’ve shut the water off, but there’s a lot of damage.” His voice caught and Brenna’s chest tightened. She knew misery when she heard it. “Jack’s office took the brunt of it. Right over the damn desk.”

  “On my way.”

  Brenna apologized to Greta who drew her thick brows into a bristling vee of battleship gray and mumbled about young people having no sense of responsibility, a lambasting Brenna ignored because she had her purse in hand and was already striding toward the back door. She forced herself to ease into traffic and keep to the speed limit. She made a few phone calls on the way, finally reached an employee who agreed to come in and cover her shift. The girl had been a questionable hire, young and not very well spoken, but she was reliable and Brenna wouldn’t forget that she’d come through in a pinch.

  The drive to Maddie’s took forever. Brenna cringed when she drove past the skid marks left from Maddie’s near accident, and tapped the steering wheel with her fingers in a useless attempt to ease the nerves that itched along her skin.

  She slowed when she turned into Maddie’s long drive, sped up again, heedless of the gravel shooting up from the spin of her tires and pinging the finish on her beloved Audi. She fishtailed into the yard and skidded to a stop.

  Cal sat on the porch steps with his head in his hands. Maddie’s goofy looking mutt lay behind him with his nose pressed to the kitchen screen door. Cal stood up when Brenna cut the ignition. He looked like hell, and considering the man was gorgeous, that was saying something.

  “Hey, so a flood?” Brenna asked on her jog up the stairs.

  “The carpet sucked up a lot of the water. It was just hitting the living room when we discovered it. Jack’s study took the biggest hit.” He pushed his hand through his hair and the wavy, sun-kissed strands fell right back into place. The bastard. Why did men always get the great hair?

  “So let me guess. She’s at the desk asking Jack how to fix the pipe.”

  He stared at her through eyes that just didn’t have the right to be that deep an emerald green, especially when they held such obvious wretchedness. No wonder Maddie fell for the guy. It was a damn shame he didn’t have a brother, just that Neanderthal pal of his, Dante Caravicci.

  “She’s having a helluva a meltdown, Brenna. I’ve never seen—she’s sobbing her heart out, crying like her whole world just ended.”

  “So what the hell are you doing out here?” Brenna threw her hands up. Idiot man. Apparently, being good looking didn’t boost a man’s brain power. She stomped to the door. “She needs you. You don’t run and hide on the porch just because you see a few tears.”

  His lips compressed into a firm line and his expression darkened. “She told me to get the hell out, that this was between her and Jack, and she didn’t need me or want me. She’s upset enough already without me going all alpha male on her, so I did what she asked me to do. And then I called you.”

  Brenna read his expression and it made her heart ache. “I’m sorry. That had to hurt.”

  “Please be sure she calls her insurance agent, and don’t wait. They’ll send someone out to extract the water and set up big fans to dry the place out. I imagine someone will assess for electrical compromise, too. And they’ll send a plumber to look at the pipes, see what needs to be done, someone else to assess structural damage.”

  “Wait. You’re just going to leave?”

  “What do you want me to do? Stand out on the porch for the next three hours?”

  “If she needs you—”

  “She doesn’t.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket and extracted a business card. “My contact info is on there, and I put your number in my phone. Please call me. Let me know how she’s doing. If she changes her mind, if she needs me, I’ll move heaven and earth to be here.”

  Brenna nodded and tucked his card in the back pocket of her sunny capris. “I really think you should stay.”

  “Well, you’d be the only one.”

  Brenna watched him walk away, hands deep in his pockets, a scowl on his face. The man personified misery in motion. She gave Pirate an apologetic pat on the head. He whined when she let herself into the house and kept him out. Grimacing, she stepped into the dining room, made an “ugh” sound the closer she got to Jack’s study. She’d taken off her sandals, glad she’d thought of doing that when water oozed over her feet. She took a steadying breath and poked her head through the doorway. “Oh, my god.”

  Jack’s study had, as Cal warned, taken the brunt of the flooding. Jack’s desk appeared beyond redemption, the wood swollen and marred, veneered portions peeling. The papers on his desk, what remained anyway, were saturated—for who knew how long?—and lay in a pathetic mound of pulpy waste.

  Maddie sat in Jack’s chair with her legs pulled up to her chest, cheek resting on her knees. She lifted her head at Brenna’s approach.

  “Hi, honey. Caleb called me.”

  Maddie’s eyes, already tearful, welled more. She nodded. “I told him to leave. I don’t want him here.”

  “Maddie.”

  “If he’s not gone, please tell him to leave.” Maddie made an attempt to lift a few of the papers on the desk, but they tore in her hands. “Look. Do you think they will dry out? Do you think we can save any of it?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Let’s worry about that later, okay? We have to call the insurance company. Who’s your agent, Maddie?”

  “I don’t remember. I’ll have to look it up,” she said with a shuddering breath.

  “I’ll do it. Where’s the information?”

  Silent tears trailed down Maddie’s face. “The file folder with the homeowner’s information is in the desk. The wood is ruined. I don’t think I can get the drawer open.”

  “Let’s try.”

  ***

  Hours later they sat side by side on Edie and Papa Ron’s porch steps. Déjà vu, Brenna thought, sitting with her arms around a devastated Maddie who wept, inconsolable, for the loss of Jack. Four years later, she thought, and here we are again.

  “I know you’re sad,” Brenna ventured. “But don’t you think you should have asked Cal to stay? He wanted to. One phone call, honey, and he’l
l be here. He didn’t want to leave you, but he didn’t want to upset you more by staying.”

  “I can’t see Caleb right now.” Maddie’s voice rasped like gravel. “If I had been home, instead of with him, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Brenna pulled back a little. “Really? Is that the road you’re taking here? You’re going to be a martyr now?”

  Maddie lifted her head from Brenna’s shoulder and wiped her eyes. “Jack tried to tell me, Brenna. The water bill, remember? The water bill. He wasn’t saying go with the flow. He was trying to warn me that the damn leak in the damn upstairs bathroom, the one that I forgot about because I got so damn wrapped up in damn Caleb Walker, was about to turn into a goddamn flood! Jack told me the only way he knew how. And do you know what I did? I ignored Jack’s warning because I was too busy getting laid. I should have been home with Jack. This wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Can you hear yourself?” Brenna’s patience frayed and split. “It’s like you’re blaming Jack for this, as if he made it happen to punish you for trying to have a life.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Yes, in essence, it is.” Brenna stood up, blue eyes glittering with tears of her own. “Jack loved you. You were everything to him. He would never, never, Maddie, deliberately do anything to hurt you. Not when he was alive, certainly, and by god not now that he’s dead. How dare you even think it? And you know what else? If Jack did have anything to do with that flood, if he did work some kind of ghostly woo-woo magic to ruin that damn desk, maybe he did it because he knows you will never let him go if that desk is still in that room with those papers on it. Have you ever thought of that? That maybe Jack stuck around just like you said because you needed him. But he’s dead, Maddie. Jack’s dead.” Brenna blinked back her tears. “He’s not your personal Ouija board, and if there’s life after this one, then he’s still got great things ahead of him, important things to do that matter more to the universe than what you should order for dinner or which dry cleaner to use. For the love of god, Maddie, let him go.”

  Maddie stared at Brenna, as if she were a stranger, then stood up and ran into the house.

  Brenna wrapped her arms around herself and rocked her body back and forth. God, oh, god, she hadn’t meant to go off like that, but damn it, Maddie needed to hear it.

  Antsy, she meandered through the yard, wiping her cheeks dry with impatient fingers when tears escaped her eyes. Her phone buzzed and she answered it without checking the display. Probably the L&G.

  “Hello, this is Brenna.”

  “Hey, it’s Caleb. How is she?”

  Brenna sat in the tree swing and pushed off with her foot. “The insurance adjustor has already been to the house, and when we left, the restoration crew was pulling up and a plumber was on his way. My dad’s there with Sean. They’re dealing with it. I packed a bag for Maddie and she’ll be staying with my folks for a few days.”

  He sighed and sounded relieved. “Good.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry, but she’s not ready to see you. You were right to go.”

  “I know. That’s not why I called. I’d like to make arrangements to swing by the house when Maddie’s not there, to pick up Jack’s desk. I’ll bring it back to my workshop and do what I can to restore it for her. Would that be okay?”

  Brenna found talking difficult for the sudden lump in her throat, and her voice was husky when she said, “That would be a really great thing for you to do.”

  “I can’t change what’s happened but I can do that much. Give me a call when I can come get it.”

  “I’ll talk to my dad.”

  “Thanks.”

  Brenna tucked the phone in her pocket and twisted on the swing. She looked up at the house, at the window to Jack’s old room, the room Maddie stayed in now.

  “Fix this, Jack,” Brenna said. “You’re the only one who can.”

  Chapter 14

  Maddie lay in Jack’s childhood bed and stared through swollen eyes at the ceiling. She squeezed her lids shut to ease the burning, then blinked to clear her vision. Ten feet up the ceiling appeared cool and smooth as a sheet of glass, pale blue, with white crown molding and a fan dead center that spun with a rhythmic tat-tat-tat. She turned her head and sniffled, blinked at Jack’s student desk with the bookcase hutch filled with trophies he earned in high school track and field. The windows on either side of it carried no curtains, just plantation shutters like all the windows that faced the street.

  She curled up and tugged a fresh tissue from the Kleenex box to replace the one she’d shredded. She had cried herself dry over Jack. Again.

  Maddie closed her eyes, shuddered a breath, able at last to inhale without choking on tears. An eternity ago she lay in Caleb Walker’s beautiful oak bed, thrilling to the touch of his lips and hands, a million miles away from Jack and the farmhouse.

  She replayed the night, the morning, the intimate moments and bit back new tears, a new ache, when thoughts of what passed between her and Caleb tightened in her chest and belly like a vise.

  She’d hurt him today when she told him she didn’t need him, didn’t want him. He’d flinched, as if she’d hit him with her hand instead of her words. And something changed in his eyes, like a window being shuttered. She’d seen that, too, and the memory coiled in her core, that vise squeezing tighter.

  What a mess she’d made of things. She gulped to quell the nausea.

  And poor Jack. She’d let him down twice now, once on the day he died and now, again, when she twisted his communication into what she wanted it to be. And, sweet Lord, maybe she wasn’t done crying for Jack, because more tears seeped from her eyes.

  Enough. Enough.

  Maddie sat up, blew her nose, tossed the tissue into the mesh trashcan beside the desk, and pulled yet another from the box.

  Her mind wandered back to Caleb. He had nothing of Gwen in his master bedroom, at least not that she had seen. No photos, no clothes, no female knick-knacks. He was the polar opposite of the way she was with Jack. It was as if he had abolished the physical mementos. Except for a few photos in the living room, she recalled seeing no sign of Gwen in Cal’s home. How had he done that, and why?

  The answer came to her as Jack’s voice in her head. ‘Because they had time to say goodbye, Mads. We never said goodbye.’

  Maddie twisted and pulled at the tissue in her hand. I’m sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry.

  It was her fault, she knew. Everything was her fault.

  “You slide into stubborn like a pair of old shoes,” Jack had told her the morning of the day he died.

  He looked so handsome in his gray gabardine suit and indigo tie—the one that turned his eyes from blue to violet—and his hair, black as a raven’s wing, jetting over his ears. He had followed her from the kitchen to the upstairs bathroom and slid his arms around her from behind while she squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush.

  “You’re going to get toothpaste all over you,” she said, eyebrows slanted in a frown. She shifted her shoulders to release his hold. “Go to work, Jack. We’ll talk about it later.”

  Those eyes pinned hers in the mirror’s reflection. “I’d rather clear it up now, Mads.”

  She pulled away from him. “You’re going to make me late for work.”

  Jack slid his hands in his pockets and cocked a brow, his GQ cover look. He was a beautiful piece of work, no denying that.

  “You just accused me of cheating on you, Maddie. I think it’s worth our time.”

  “I didn’t accuse you of cheating, Jack. I caught you in a lie. Not the same thing. But now that you mention it.” She let that hang.

  “I can’t believe you don’t trust me.”

  “Jack, you told me you were with Sean and yet I saw you with…whoever she was.” She crossed her arms to hide her trembling. “So you want to tell me what you were doing at a bed and breakfast over in Helen, with another woman in your arms, when you were supposed to be at the Ted watching a Braves game with Sean?”

&n
bsp; “I did go to the Braves game with Sean, we just didn’t drive down to Atlanta together, and the woman is my client and an old friend. Her name is Natalie and she and her husband, Sid, own and operate that bed and breakfast. Her husband was just getting over a bout of food poisoning so they asked if I’d drive over instead of them coming to my office here. And she wasn’t ‘in my arms’ for more than a second. What you saw was a hug goodbye. If you had told me you were taking a day trip to Helen with the animal rescue group, we could have gone together, but you didn’t say anything.”

  “Maybe because I was under the impression that you were, say it with me, Jack—going to the Braves game with Sean.”

  Jack looked up at the ceiling, as if appealing to God for insight or patience, and sighed. “I did go to the Braves game. I didn’t lie. I just didn’t mention going to Helen.”

  “Why? Since it took a big chunk of your day, why didn’t you?” Maddie caught sight of herself in the mirror, arms folded across her chest, lips pursed like an old fishwife. And still she hung on to her stubborn.

  Jack opened his mouth to respond, paused, and closed his mouth again. It was a full minute or two before he responded with, “You didn’t mention that you were going to Helen either, although it took up a big chunk of your day, too. And you know what, Maddie? I’m not going to fall over myself trying to convince you of anything. All I’m going to say is that you need to trust me. I’m not your father. I would never cheat, and I don’t lie to you—”

  “A lie of omission is still a lie, Jack.”

  “I don’t lie to you,” he repeated, “and you’ve got your stubborn on so there’ll be no getting through to you right now, anyway. I love you, even when you’re driving me crazy. Can I have a kiss goodbye?”

  Maddie’s cheeks flamed from anger, hurt, and yes, stubbornness. She stuck the toothbrush in her mouth and started scrubbing. Jack moved behind her and dropped a kiss on the side of her neck.

  “Say, ‘goodbye, I love you, Jack.’ Say it. C’mon, you know you want to. Tell me goodbye.”