DEFENGING THE EYEWITNESS

by Rachel Lee

  Because any way she sliced it, she hadn’t been doing that badly all these years. She spent an awful lot of her time with women, listening to them talk about everything under the sun, and if there was one thing she had figured out, it was that every single one of them had problems. Sometimes they were quite open and talkative about it. Other times, she just got hints that things weren’t quite right in someone’s world.

  Nobody had a perfect life. Nobody was pain-free. The important thing was coping with it somehow.

  She already did that fairly well. At least until Austin.

  No, she needed to be fair. Until the notes. She doubted anything would have happened last night at all except for her reaction to that note. She’d finally reached out to someone and had gotten more than she had bargained for.

  He’d held up a mirror, showing her that she apparently didn’t seem as “okay” as she’d been pretending. Or maybe he was just unusually perceptive. Either way, she’d looked at herself in a fun-house mirror and now had to decide how much of the reflection was true. And once she decided that, she needed to figure out whether she wanted to do something about it.

  Goading her, though, was the memory of his kiss. The memory of having her hand welcomed by his much larger one. If she ever wanted that kind of stuff to be part of her life, then she would have to change.

  For the first time in her life, she truly sensed what she had been giving up. Just a taste of all that she was passing by in her determination to avoid men and remain “okay.”

  Damn. By the time she pulled into her driveway, she was mad again. She couldn’t remember the face of a single man, so she didn’t trust any man. Well, except for a very small handful, like Gage Dalton. She doubted she would have allowed him within her protective circle except for the hours she had spent at the local library with his wife, Miss Emma. Getting to know Emma inevitably meant getting to know Gage. Even after all this time, the two were a classic pair of lovebirds. Sitting in the library on any given Saturday afternoon often meant Gage would be hanging around, sometimes with their two adopted sons, sometimes by himself. Emma sparkled when he was around, and he smiled a lot.

  So she’d gotten to know him well enough, and a few other guys. Just a few. Nor would she ever forget the time Gage had stood as a bulwark with her when those detectives had come up from Denver trying to discover if she remembered anything at all. They’d been careful, but even at her young age she had remembered that Gage had hovered protectively and kept them not only careful but kind.

  She glanced at her watch and realized she still had some time. She had started backing out of the driveway again when Austin startled her by rapping on the side of the car.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. “I thought you wanted a shower.”

  “Cemetery,” she said shortly.

  He frowned. “Can I ride along?”

  She shook her head. “I need to be alone.”

  “I’ll follow you, then.”

  Damn. She cussed under her breath and pulled out. Let him follow. She couldn’t prevent that.

  The cemetery lay on the eastern side of town in one of the flattest areas around. Though the mountains rose abruptly from the high plains, as one approached them the ground began to roll gently. The farther east one went, the flatter the land became.

  From the cemetery, though, you could see for miles. The caretaker kept it in fairly decent shape, keeping the grass trimmed if not manicured. She vaguely remembered when someone had suggested they plant trees out here, but the idea hadn’t flown well. The area was drier than most and besides, everyone claimed to like the unobstructed view.

  Without trees, however, the prairie wind keened ceaselessly, pulling her hair loose from its ponytail, whispering in her ears as if to share long-forgotten messages. She heard Austin’s car pull up as she walked down the rows, knowing exactly where she was going.

  Three canted granite stones lay side by side, one for her mother, and identical ones for her aunt and grandmother. Nearby was a bigger stone, for her grandfather. He’d left a place for his wife, but before she had died she had told Corey to bury her beside the girls in the same way.

  She dropped to her knees and sat on her heels, studying the headstones. She hadn’t known her grandfather at all. He had died before she was born. That left three she had known, all she had known of her family, and she couldn’t remember one of them. Not really.

  Oh, she had photos of her mother to remind her, but it wasn’t the same. She had only the merest snatches of memory, the slightest fragments of speech or lullaby, and after all these years she couldn’t know if she remembered that correctly.

  What she did know was that not having a mother had left a gaping hole in her life. Memories shared by Cora and Lucy hadn’t been enough to fill the emptiness Olivia had left behind her. Reaching out, she brushed some dried grass from her mother’s tombstone. It was an old hollow inside her and the years had made it familiar. It didn’t eat her alive anymore. Lots of kids lost their mothers.

  But this was the last of her family, lying here in a row beneath the ground of the place her grandparents had come to settle so long ago.

  Looking at the row of tombstones, she faced the fact that all life ended here. All around her stood markers to lives that were gone, some of which were probably forgotten. All those experiences, all those years, and it came down to a gray slab that marked nothing except that a person had once lived.

  Olivia’s life had been dreadfully short. As far as Corey knew, the only mark her mother had left on this world was a daughter.

  Look at that daughter now. Somehow Corey didn’t think her mother would be especially pleased with her. After all, Olivia had taken life by the horns as a single mom who had moved to Denver with big dreams. She had dared to have a child in this little town without revealing who the father was, or marrying. All she had ever said about the man was that he was someone she had met on a trip to the West Coast. Clearly he hadn’t been black Irish.

  It was all very odd, but Corey could also see how very brave it had been. No one would have blamed Olivia if she had left her daughter behind with her mother and sister while she struck out on her own. In fact, Cora had often assured Corey that she would have been glad to raise her from birth. Maybe she had even wanted to.

  Questions would never be answered now. Sighing, Corey kissed her fingers and pressed them to each headstone in turn. Life always ended here.

  Maybe it was time to take more advantage of the years she had been given.

  * * *

  Austin watched from afar. He sat in his car and kept an eye out, but apparently no one else had any desire to visit the cemetery this morning. Nor to even drive by, although it didn’t seem to be on the way to anywhere. It was set off by itself in a place that appeared desolate, the town disappearing from view behind a bit of rolling land.

  He wished he knew what Corey was thinking. She’d had a rough time last night, thanks to him, yet she hadn’t shared a single thought this morning. If he’d hoped to break down her walls, he was now wondering if all he’d done was to raise them higher.

  The workout this morning had been good. She apparently remembered a lot of her self-defense training and merely needed a tune-up. She’d certainly pummeled the punching bags in a way that suggested she was dealing with something unpleasant. But not a word. A few smiles, an occasional laugh, but otherwise she talked about nothing except the moves they made and how to do them better.

  Then a trip to the cemetery? This didn’t strike him as a good thing, but how would he know? Maybe she came out here frequently. Some people did. All she had now was memories, after all. Maybe this was Sunday dinner with the family.

  Damn, that sounded awful. He shouldn’t have even thought that. But looking at her over there kneeling by some headstones made her loneliness stand out as if it were limned with neon.

>   He had a big family. Huge by some estimations, he supposed. Growing up, his best friends had been his cousins and brothers. He’d straddled two worlds while all the time being swaddled in family. He couldn’t imagine what life must be like for Corey, surrounded by people but none of them family. Not anymore.

  Of course, he’d also seen cases where family wasn’t such a great thing, either. What was that saying? Family aren’t necessarily people you would choose for friends. Probably true. Maybe he’d just been blessed.

  Still, she looked awfully alone, and he had to batter down an impulse to go to her. She had said she wanted to be alone out here, so maybe he should respect that. He’d respected little enough last night.

  At last she rose, brushed off her knees and returned to her car. At once he turned and headed back to town, giving her the space she wanted.

  Had he made things worse for her last night? The glum question followed him all the way back.

  * * *

  The store was quieter than usual, even for a Sunday afternoon. Corey felt disappointed, then realized she’d been hoping for an unlikely flow of customers so she wouldn’t have to think about anything.

  “Coward,” she said aloud. And maybe that was the definition of everything she’d become since her mother’s death. Hiding, always hiding inside herself. Afraid of things she had no reason to fear.

  Really, to be afraid of almost all men because of one she couldn’t remember? Maybe Austin had been right when he said she might be better off if she could remember the man who attacked her mother.

  But how could she do that? The entire episode had been firmly walled off by her brain. Protection, maybe, but useful? Maybe not. Probably not.

  For heaven’s sake, she was twenty-five, nearly twenty-six, and she hadn’t even dated. Until last night, she’d never held hands with a man or kissed one. She’d blocked out a huge chunk of her life because of fear.

  Didn’t that make her feel proud?

  She cleaned the store with a vengeance. By the time four o’clock rolled around and it was time to close, she was sure the place had never sparkled quite the way it did then. Working with fabrics tended to create perennial dust and little bits of thread and lint, but they were all gone now. She figured it would last about two or three days.

  She didn’t think again of the mysterious notes until she was walking the three blocks to her house.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  What in the world did that mean? All she knew was that it felt seriously creepy. Even though it was still daylight and people were about, she quickened her step. She wanted to get back to the safety of her house, and hoped Austin would be waiting there.

  A little shiver of nervousness hit her as she realized she hoped a man would be waiting for her. She hoped this was a sign she was growing out of at least some of her shell.

  This morning she had kept their conversation to the purely impersonal, avoiding any possibility that he might penetrate her defenses the way he had last night. He was no fool, and probably realized exactly what she was doing.

  That note hovered at the edge of her mind, then burst to the foreground, making her seriously uneasy. It felt like a threat, and made stepping out of her hiding place even scarier. But how would hiding within herself make it any better?

  Austin’s car was parked out front when she arrived home, but as soon as she entered she realized he wasn’t there. Disappointed and despising herself for it, she went to shower and change. Cleaning the shop had created a need for her to clean herself. The thought amused her somehow, and lifted her mood.

  After she dressed, she picked up her clothes hamper and headed for the laundry room beside the back porch. After she started her first load, she went to make a pot of coffee and started when she saw Austin there already making it.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “Not at all. I was just about to make it.”

  “Good. How was your afternoon?”

  “Quiet. No customers at all, so I cleaned the place.”

  He nodded and turned around, leaning back against the counter as the coffee brewed. “Dinner tonight.”

  She waited, looking at him uncertainly. “Yes?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’ve tried it before, but your grocer makes his own Polish sausage.” One corner of his mouth tipped up. “I think we’ve gotten to the point of dueling ethnic foods.”

  In an instant everything else vanished and a laugh escaped her. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. He gave me some of his smoked stuff to sample and told me how to cook it. Have you eaten it before?”

  “I didn’t even know he made it.”

  “Well, something to do with health codes and all that. He can’t sell it in the meat case, so only those of us who are blessed to be considered trustworthy are offered any. The only Polish sausage I ever had was made by a big company. He assures me this is the real thing, that it’s much better, and we’ll love it. Given the hour, I guess we’ll eat it like hot dogs. I got bakery buns.”

  “Sounds good.” She was still smiling, and liked the way his eyes seemed to hold warmth for her.

  “Great. Next week he’s going to teach me how to make cabbage rolls. And I promised to teach him how to make chiles rellenos. Cooking class begins.”

  Turning, he filled two mugs and brought them to the table.

  She realized she liked the way he had fit into this town. “Food must be an international language.”

  “It’s certainly at the core of most socializing.” He sat facing her, still smiling. “Nothing like exchanging recipes.”

  Another giggle escaped her. “Do you know how funny that sounds coming from a man?”

  His smile widened. “Pardon me, but we’re chefs.”

  “Excuse me.” She was still smiling, and unreasonably happy. This development both amused her and warmed her.

  They ate the sausage on buns, the mood cheerful. She enjoyed the break from all the heavy thoughts she’d been having. Austin was good at diverting conversation, and he made her laugh easily.

  But the laughter had another effect. It made her increasingly aware of him, of the attraction she felt for him. Last night’s kiss had seared itself into her memory, along with the totally novel sensation of sitting on a man’s lap. She had felt his desire for her, a secret and guilty pleasure. She wasn’t sure he had wanted her to notice that.

  How would she know, with her limited experience? Men were a mystery to her, she realized, and she had only herself to blame for that.

  But mystery or not, there was nothing mysterious about the feelings he was evoking in her. She tried to look at her plate, but her gaze kept drifting back to him, drinking him in. She wondered vaguely if she was using him as an excuse not to think about all the hard and scary stuff of the past day but didn’t believe that was true.

  From the instant she set eyes on him, she had noticed how darkly handsome he was. Exotic. She had felt a pull toward him, unlike anything she had ever felt before. From that first instant, he had been turning her common sense and protective shields into shredded paper.

  How did he do that?

  He had finished eating and glanced up to catch her staring at him. A faint smile framed his mouth.

  “You keep looking at me like that, and I may grab you again. I’m sure you don’t like being manhandled.”

  She didn’t. Except for last night, when she hadn’t minded it at all. Feeling her cheeks grow hot, she dropped her gaze. “Sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry, chica. I like that expression in your eyes. I like the way it makes me feel. It makes me imagine all the ways I’d like to make love to you.”

  She drew a sharp breath and dared to look at him. Inside her, everything went crazy, then started to melt into a hot ache. A throbbing she did know began between he
r thighs, so strong that she felt she couldn’t stand it if someone or something didn’t touch her there. She shifted on her chair, trying to ease it, but even the pressure of her jeans wasn’t enough.

  Sensations and needs she’d been forcing herself to ignore for years refused to be ignored. Instead of fearing them, she wished she knew what to do about them.

  “You don’t have to be scared,” he said quietly. The smile had vanished. “But if you want to explore this, you have to take the next step. I won’t grab you again.”

  Her breath stuck in her throat. Her heart speeded up from a steady, heavy beat to pounding as if she were running a marathon. Fear and desire warred in her as never before.

  She had to take the next step? She didn’t know how. What was the next step? Imagine being her age and knowing less that the average high schooler. All her fault. She’d been denying this side of herself for a long, long time. Because she feared it. Because it would bring her close to a man.

  She had done an amazing job of shutting down her desires, making them almost nonexistent. Then this guy shows up and it was game over?

  She wished she could get mad at him for eliciting these feelings and making her so confused. But it wasn’t his fault she’d been hiding inside herself for so long. The only question now was whether she had any real courage left.

  The kind of courage that would help her take the next step. She felt an urge to just run from this, but she’d been running for a long time, and apparently her safety had been illusory. Was she going to run again, this time from something she truly wanted?

  He sat there completely still. She studied his olive-skinned face, his dark eyes, his high cheekbones and strong jaw. He had made her see herself through his eyes, made her recognize what she was doing to herself, yet he was still here.

  “If you had a brain,” she whispered, “you’d be heading for the hills right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m so messed up.”

  He shook his head slightly. “I don’t think you’re messed up. I think you took the best path you knew to deal with some terrible things. The question now is, do you want to change that path? It won’t be easy.”