At the beginning of their relationship, he’d been good to her … respectful and seemingly loving. It was only after they’d been married a few months that she saw that beneath the façade was a flawed, shallow man. She had accepted her marriage wasn’t perfect … little had she known how incredibly imperfect it had been. Days before Stephen died, she found out just how much he’d duped her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
It wasn’t until he spoke than she realized she was crying. She wiped at her face and swallowed back the rest of her tears. “I can’t believe I’m crying about him. Guess I’m just a little more emotional than usual.”
As she’d been doing since Stephen died, she described him as she thought of him before that awful day when the affection she’d felt for him shriveled and died. “He was funny, often kind and generous. When we first started seeing each other, I was still grieving for my mother … she’d died just a few months before. Stephen made me laugh … feel better.”
“You were very close to your mother?”
“Yes. Very. She was my best friend … even more so than Jenna. Her illness was long and drawn out. Losing her was devastating … I was in a fog of grief for months.” Keeley closed her eyes as she remembered that grief—how she’d lost her mother. She had been expecting it, but the day it happened had been a devastating, horrendous blow.
“You okay?”
Drawing in a shaky breath, she pulled herself away from that torturous memory. “Yes … sorry. Anyway, I had gone to school with Stephen … he was a few years older than me. I hadn’t seen him in years, not that he even noticed me in school. One day he came into the diner where I worked, sat down, ordered pie and a side order of a date.”
“Smooth.”
She laughed at his sarcasm. “You had to be there. He said it so charmingly, I said yes before I knew what I was doing.”
“How long did you date?”
“Only about four months. Though no one knew we were dating.”
“Why is that?”
She snorted. “Poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks dating the son of the richest family in the county? Even I knew it wasn’t a smart idea. But we were young.”
“And in love,” Cole added.
She shrugged. “I thought so.”
“What happened when everyone learned you were dating?”
“No one knew until after we married. We eloped.”
“Bet that went over well with his mother.”
“Can’t say it was the most pleasant experience of my life when we announced it to her. Elizabeth made sure I knew she’d had plans for Stephen. Those plans didn’t include him marrying ‘trash.’”
Cole blew out an explosive curse.
Keeley smiled. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. To be hated by Elizabeth Fairchild is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. She hates many more people than she likes. Actually I’m not sure she likes anyone. However, there are few people she hates more than me.”
“I understand that she tried to blame you for Stephen’s abduction.”
“She did her best. When no one believed that, she found other ways to try to destroy me.”
Those grim days were engraved in her memory forever. Learning of Stephen’s numerous affairs had torn her apart. Realizing how stupid she’d been was made all the worse by the knowledge that apparently she was once again the cliché: the wife is always the last to know. She’d barely comprehended that pain when she’d learned that Stephen had been abducted, and then his body had been found days later.
And then a new agony had begun when Elizabeth accused her of setting it all up.
“On the surface, it probably looked as though you were guilty.”
She huffed out a breath. “Yeah, even Jenna asked me if I did it. Miranda never asked, but I think she wondered, too.”
He took his eyes off the road to give her a sympathetic glance. “Bet that hurt.”
“It did. What hurt worse was that both of them had known for a long time that Stephen was being unfaithful to me. They never told me.”
“They say why?”
She lifted her shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Stephen was Miranda’s brother; she loved him and didn’t want to hurt him or me. I guess I understood that. It hurt, but I understood. Jenna not telling me was worse. She said that by the time she heard about it, I was pregnant with the girls. Then, after they were born, she just couldn’t figure out a way to tell me.”
“How did you convince the FBI that you had nothing to do with his abduction?”
“I just told the truth. Nothing more. I offered to take a polygraph test and I passed. They questioned me but I don’t think they ever looked at me as a real suspect.”
He shot her a grave, sorrowful look. “I’m sorry you went through that.”
“Thank you. Having Hailey and Hannah helped a lot. They were a blessing.”
“Was he good to you? I mean, other than the affairs?”
“Do you mean was he physically abusive? Not at all. Most of the time he was charming and witty.”
“Most of the time?”
Long past the stage of being hurt by Stephen’s sometimes very barbed and pointed stings, she shrugged. “He had flaws like most of us do.”
“Was he a good father?”
“Oddly enough, he was. I’m not sure if that would have continued once the girls got older. Stephen was such a child himself in many ways, being an actual father might have been tougher for him.”
“I’m sorry he was taken from them.”
“Thank you.” She twisted around in her seat to face him. “What about you?”
His entire body jerked as if he were shocked at the question. “Me?”
“Yes, we’ve been talking so much about me…. I know as an LCR operative you can’t tell me some things, but other than you grew up in Oklahoma and used to live in Texas, I know almost nothing about you. Can you tell me more than that?”
“Like what?”
“I know you’re not married.” She offered a tentative smile, a little embarrassed to have that information. “Jenna told me she asked you.”
He didn’t return the smile, just said, “No, I’m not married.”
Well, that was short and sweet. She could feel the tenseness of his body and knew he was uncomfortable. With that question or any question? It seemed almost ridiculous to not know more about the man she’d shared such intimacy with last night.
“What did you do before you started working for Last Chance Rescue?”
“High school history teacher.”
Wow. If he’d told her he was an android from Mars, she couldn’t have been more surprised. None of her history teachers had ever looked like him. Probably a good thing, since she would have had some major concentration problems.
“In Texas?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s why you don’t want to talk about yourself.”
“I never thought you would. I just don’t have that interesting of a past.”
“Why did you start working for LCR?”
“My family was murdered. I needed focus. LCR gave me that.”
The old adage “Be careful what you wish for” suddenly hit her square in the face. A simple “I’m sorry” seemed woefully inadequate, yet what else could she say? “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“When did it happen?”
He was silent for so long, she was beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “Almost six years ago.” After a palpable pause, he whispered, “Six years …”
“Does it still seem recent?”
A dry huff of a laugh held no amusement. “Sometimes it seems like only yesterday … other times, like it happened to someone else and I read about it.” He glanced over at her. “That make any sense?”
“Actually, yes. Maybe that’s all part of the healing process.”
“Maybe.”<
br />
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Kids busted into my house, looking for me. I wasn’t there, my wife and daughter were.”
Horrified, Keeley whispered, “Why?”
“They failed my class … got kicked off the football team. Thought it’d be cool to beat the hell out of me. Unfortunately, one of them was high on drugs. He brought a gun to the party. When they couldn’t find me, he shot them instead.”
Tears blurred her vision of the grim-faced man beside her. The emotionless way he’d recited the events told her more than if he’d been sobbing. There was such pain and grief and a whole lot of anger there. Maybe she detected it because she’d lived it herself.
“So they caught them?”
“Yeah. Put ’em away for a few years. They’ll probably get out before they’re thirty.” She heard him swallow. “My daughter never saw her eighth birthday. My wife never saw her thirtieth.”
“You must have hated those boys.”
He nodded. “That hate consumed me for a long time. Then I found LCR, or I should say LCR found me.”
“So you never want to go back to teaching again?”
“I’m not the same man I was back then … in too many ways to count.”
“Where do you live when you’re not on a case?”
“Tampa, Florida.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Florida.”
“You’ve never been out of Fairview, have you?”
She laughed. Did she seem that backward? “I’ve been to Greenville and Columbia a few times. And Stephen and I honeymooned in Tahiti.”
He flashed her a small apologetic smile and Keeley found herself focusing on his well-shaped mouth again. It could look so stern sometimes, but even then, it was beautifully shaped. When he smiled the least little bit, Cole’s face transformed from handsome to gorgeous.
“Isn’t that right?”
Keeley jerked her attention back to the conversation. “Sorry, what?”
“But you’ve never lived anywhere else other than Fairview?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “We didn’t have enough money for me to go away to college. So I stayed here and went to the community college in Myerstown, the next town over. I was in my second year of college when mama died, and still grieving when I started dating Stephen. Then we got married.”
“Why have you put up with Elizabeth’s antics all these years?”
Another person might have been offended by his bluntness. Keeley wasn’t. It was a fair question. “I didn’t know about them for a long time. Oh, I knew she didn’t like me, but I was busy with my own life. I was still in school and newly married. I got pregnant before I finished my degree. Stephen didn’t want me driving back and forth to school during that time, since I was sick almost the entire nine months. So I stayed home and took online classes to finish up my degree. Then my babies were born.” She shrugged. “I had my girls … I stayed busy.”
Keeley inwardly winced as she heard herself describe her life. She probably sounded like the most boring person in the universe. “It wasn’t until after Stephen died that I realized what a hatchet job she’d done on me. Stephen never told me. Miranda and Jenna never told me.” She grimaced a smile. “You must think I’m the dumbest, most idiotic and boring person in the world.”
“You sound like someone who believes the best of people.”
She cracked a dry laugh. “That’s a nice way of saying I was clueless.”
“But you don’t back down when confronted with Elizabeth’s hatred.”
“Her opinion isn’t important to me. As I said, having Elizabeth or even an entire town hate me isn’t the worst thing that can happen. I don’t measure my worth by other people’s opinion.”
His approving glance had Keeley’s heart picking up an erratic rhythm.
“Eden said you were in the process of putting your home up for sale and moving somewhere else?”
She nodded. “There’s no real reason for us to stay. Other than my mom, Fairview holds few fond memories for me. Moving to another state and starting all over again would be good for all of us. Smearing my name and harassing me is one of Elizabeth’s hobbies; I don’t see her stopping anytime soon. I refuse to allow my daughters to be exposed to her hatred.”
“Did you tell anyone that you were leaving?”
“A few people.”
“Like who?”
“Why?”
“I’m just wondering if someone didn’t want you to leave and this was a way to keep you here.”
“Why would anyone care?”
“I don’t know … but who did you tell?”
“Let’s see … Jenna and Miranda, of course. And the realtor, Mr. Dotson. And I might have mentioned it to Mrs. Thompkins.” A gasp caught in her throat as she remembered an event that took place only days before Hailey and Hannah were taken.
“What?”
“I told Elizabeth. I was at the bank. Hailey and Hannah were with me. Elizabeth came in, glanced at the girls as if she were looking down at garbage, and then turned her back to them. I marched up to her, told her that we were leaving town and that I was glad we would never have to see her sour old face ever again.”
Cole’s shout of laughter surprised her. And from the expression on his face, it surprised him, too. When was the last time he’d laughed?
“I’m sure that went over well.”
Remembering the shocked surprise on Elizabeth’s cold face, Keeley grinned. “Since we were standing in the middle of a busy bank and everyone heard me, not really. She glared at me as if I was some sort of vagrant and stalked out the door.”
“So several people heard you say you were leaving.”
“Yeah, so I guess more than a few knew about it.”
“Do you remember who was there?”
“No. I was so angry at the way she’d snubbed her own grandchildren, I grabbed the girls and left. I know several people were watching, but I learned a long time ago to ignore them.” She sighed. “But in a small town, as soon as a few people know about it, everyone seems to know. And since I’m often their favorite topic of conversation, I’m sure everyone knows about it now.”
“You had a tough time growing up, didn’t you?”
“No, actually I didn’t.”
He shot her a surprised look. “I thought—”
“Oh, we were poor, and yes, people whispered about my mother and I heard ‘bastard child’ more than once, but I would never say I had it tough. My mama made sure of that.”
“She sounds like she was an exceptional woman.”
“She was the best mother a child could have.”
“Jenna told me that your mother basically raised her, too.”
“Now, Jenna’s the one who had it tough.”
“She was poor, too?”
“Poor and abused. When she was thirteen, her mother broke Jenna’s kneecap with a hammer.”
His expression one of horror, he shook his head and asked, “Hell … Why?”
“She was drunk. Jenna gave her lip. Her mother grabbed the first thing she saw to hit her.” Keeley swallowed a lump in her throat. “Jenna had to wear a brace for years. By the time she could afford surgery, the damage was already done. She’ll always have the limp, but it’s a lot less noticeable now.”
“I’m sure she was grateful to have you and your mother.”
“She’s been my best friend since we were in the first grade together. Her mother died when she was seventeen. She came to live with us and was a huge help when mama got sick. We took turns staying with her.”
“True friends like that are hard to find.”
Cole’s compassion continued to surprise her. Not only had he survived a tragedy no one should have to live through, he chose to help others instead of focusing on the hatred he must still feel. When she’d first met him, she’d wondered if he had enough humanity in him to care. She now knew that he probably had more than most. He care
d enough to risk his life to save others. Her mother would have liked and approved of Cole Mathison.
She wanted to ask him about his scars but wouldn’t. Not only was it none of her business, she wasn’t sure that knowing more about Cole was a good thing. The more she knew, the more she wanted to know.
Last night was an anomaly. He’d come to her room to comfort her and had gotten a whole lot more than he had planned. She was the least sexually aggressive person she knew; the fact that she’d practically asked him to make love to her amazed her.
With Stephen, when they’d first married, she had initiated their lovemaking from time to time, but the longer they’d been married, the less secure she became in her sexuality. Stephen had never turned her down, but neither had he acted like it meant that much to him. Of course, after finding out that he had numerous women on the side, she understood why their lovemaking was no big deal. To Stephen, sex had been sex, outside or inside the confines of marriage vows. They made no difference to him.
She knew to her soul that Cole was different … in that way … in every way from Stephen. But he was here to do a job. Once her children were back with her, he would leave. Having any kind of feelings for him would be futile and could only invite heartache. Something she was all too well acquainted with already.
She’d made a mistake with Stephen. She couldn’t make another one, especially where Hailey and Hannah were concerned. If and when she ever had another relationship or marriage, she would make sure that not only would he be the right man for her, but he’d also be the right father for her daughters.
Just because Cole was the opposite of Stephen didn’t make him a better choice. Besides, just because she was incredibly attracted to him didn’t mean he felt the same way. Yes, he’d been aroused last night, very much so. But that didn’t necessarily mean he was interested in anything more. Other than last night, he’d never given any indication that he found her remotely appealing.
That thought depressed her.
Cole took his eyes off the road to shoot a quick glance at Keeley. She had gone silent on him. Had he told her too much about his life? Why he’d felt the need to be so open about his past he didn’t question. He was keeping so much from this woman, the least he could do was be truthful about everything else. Problem was, having her know of his loss only drew them closer together, and damned if he needed that to happen.
Last Chance 05 - Second Chance Page 12
