“You got a new puppy?” Jeb’s face squished up. New tears trailed along the recently dried tracks on his cheeks. “My momma said I could have a puppy someday.”
“You’ve got a puppy now,” Matt said as he shifted the vehicle into reverse and backed around a fire truck. “She’s all yours.”
Jeb’s mouth gaped. “Mine?” he finally said.
“Yep.” They rumbled down the gravel drive, following the taillights of the ambulance. “And she needs a name. What’re you going to call her?”
As he drove, Matt kept up a running conversation with Jeb, brainstorming puppy names, but his eyes never left the road, or the ambulance leading them toward the county hospital. Caroline’s heart swelled as she realized what her husband was doing. He was distracting Jeb. Turning the boy’s mind to something other than worry for his mother, and it was working.
For both Jeb and for her. She’d begun to wonder just what her husband was doing in Sweet Gum. When she’d left Port Kingston, she’d made it clear she’d didn’t expect him to follow, and yet here he was, with a suitcase obviously packed for a long stay, and a puppy for Jeb.
Why had he come?
“That’s a good name for a girl dog. What do you think, Caroline?” Matt asked, pulling her back to the conversation.
“Hmm? What?”
“Jeb is thinking of naming his dog Annie.”
“Annie.” She turned and dredged up a smile for Jeb’s sake. “Annie is a fine name, I think.”
Jeb curled into a ball on Matt’s lap. “I want my momma.”
“I know, buddy.” Matt’s chest tightened as the boy’s soggy plea dampened his shirt. Brad used to ask for his mom sometimes when the leukemia really got him down. Dads were mere mortals, but mothers…mothers were angels when a child was scared. But right now, Savannah Justiss was in need of a few angels of her own. After three hours in the waiting room, all Matt and Caroline knew was that she hadn’t regained consciousness, and the doctors were waiting on the results of an MRI.
Matt inhaled deeply and soothed his hand over Jeb’s back. “Your mom wants to be with you, too. But she has to stay with the doctors right now.”
“Is she gonna die?”
The tightness in Matt’s chest became an ache. Children like Jeb, like Brad, shouldn’t know so much about death. But he’d never been the kind of man—or the kind of father—to lie to a child. The need to comfort warred with the need to prepare Jeb for what might come, and the need to tell the truth. In the end, he decided Jeb wasn’t quite ready for the truth.
“Well,” he finally said, carefully returning the warning look Caroline cast from across the room where she sat with Hailey on her shoulder. “The doctors here have lots of special equipment and medicine they use to make people better.”
“But is she gonna die?”
The boy was like a terrier, Matt decided, and the only way to get a terrier away from one bone was to toss it another.
“Do you know what happened at the house? How the fire started?”
Across the room, Caroline’s warning became a glare.
Jeb sniffed. “I was takin’ a nap.” He pinched his lips together. “I mean, I’m too old to take naps and everything, but Momma wanted me to lay down and keep Hailey company.”
“I understand,” Matt said. “What happened then?”
Caroline stood. Matt could see her agitation in the straight set of her spine, but damn it, Matt was a cop, and the cop in him needed answers. Answers only Jeb had. He wasn’t upsetting the boy; he was taking his mind off his mother.
He looked away from Caroline, buying a few more seconds.
Jeb’s fingers twined restlessly in his lap. “I heard Momma yellin’.”
“Yelling for you?”
“No, she was talking to somebody. She was mad. She told ’em to git out. Somebody was hurting her. I wanted to go downstairs and help her but…” His lower lip fattened, wobbled. “I got scared,” he admitted, nearly whispering. “I thought it was my daddy.”
Matt blew out a breath, trying to collect himself, to stay objective, and not succeeding by much. “It’s okay. Everybody gets scared sometimes. It’s natural. But you can help your mom and me now, by telling me everything that happened so we can find out who hurt your mom, okay?”
Jeb looked up at him through unseeing eyes. “Okay.”
“Good,” Matt said, and cleared the emotion from his own throat. “What made you think it was your father? Did you hear a man’s voice?”
Jeb cocked his head, thinking. “No, just Momma’s. Then there were footsteps, running. I—I—” Jeb glanced up at Caroline, who had stopped pacing next to him, then at the floor. “I took Hailey and I hid under the bed. It got quiet, and I thought they were gone, but then I smelled smoke.”
Jeb shuddered. Matt could almost see the flames reflected in the horror in the boy’s unseeing eyes.
“So I got Hailey and I went to the door.”
“You tried to take Hailey with you?” Matt asked, astounded.
Jeb nodded solemnly, as if all young boys had the presence of mind to save an infant’s life in a crisis. “But I didn’t know which way to go,” he continued. “I didn’t know where the fire was.” He stopped, choked up.
Caroline sat in the empty seat next to Matt and pulled Jeb’s head to her shoulder. She murmured little nothings in his ear and rocked. “Shh. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Matt stilled them both with a hand on Jeb’s frail shoulder. “Just one more question, okay?” he said more to Caroline than to Jeb, sharing a look over the boy’s head. “How did you get out of the house, Jeb?”
The boy raised his head, eyes glistening and staring into the distance, focused on nothing. “Someone grabbed me and carried me outside. Me and Hailey both.”
Matt and Caroline shared a look over the boy’s head. “Who?” Matt asked.
Jeb shrugged. “Don’t know. They din’ say nothing.”
Which meant that the arsonist knew Jeb was blind, Matt concluded, and therefore as long as the boy didn’t hear anything, either, he wouldn’t be able to identify his savior. That ruled out a random burglary gone bad, as if Matt had ever had any doubt. Their arsonist knew the house, knew Jeb, and was mad enough at Savannah to leave her in a burning house, but didn’t necessarily want to see innocent children hurt. It didn’t take much investigative skill for Matt to figure out who fit that bill.
Gem Millholland.
Matt sat in the dark in a spare room at the Johnsons’ farmhouse, watching Jeb sleep. The boy’s limp arm dangled over the edge of the mattress. Just beyond the reach of his fingertips, Annie lay curled on an old blanket inside a cardboard box Matt had fashioned into a makeshift kennel. He could have left anytime—he’d fulfilled his promise to Jeb to stay until he fell asleep—but sitting here, keeping watch, felt familiar to him. It felt good.
It had been a long time since Matt had had anyone to watch over. Savannah still hadn’t regained consciousness, and he didn’t want the boy to wake up alone, and worried about his mother.
He stayed until his neck ached and his eyes burned with fatigue, then he rose silently. He lifted Jeb’s hand out of the puppy’s box and tucked his arm beneath the covers. It seemed natural as a sunrise to bend over and brush the boy’s forehead with a kiss. That, too, felt familiar. And good, even though it brought back bittersweet memories. Of all the things he’d lost when his son died, Matt missed the simple things, like good-night kisses, most of all.
Reluctantly he left Jeb’s room and made his way down the hall. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson had long since gone to bed, but a light still shone under the door in the room they’d opened for Caroline. Matt stopped outside, undecided. This morning he’d had so many things he wanted to talk to her about, to ask her, but now wasn’t the time. She was worried about Savannah, about Jeb and about her house. She had enough to face in the next few days without facing the reality of a husband she thought didn’t want her. Didn’t love her.
God, how could she think he
didn’t love her?
Because he’d forgotten to tell her, that’s how, his conscience answered. He’d been so wrapped up in his own grief that he hadn’t seen hers.
He started to walk by Caroline’s door, on to his own room. His brain commanded his feet to move, but instead his arm reached out and pushed the unlatched door. The hinges groaned.
Caroline sat on the edge of an old iron bed. Light from a lamp on the table behind her spilled around her, sheathing her in a golden aura. Hailey slept in her arms.
“I could have lost her, Matt,” Caroline said without lifting her bowed head. She pressed her lips together, but it didn’t keep her chin from quivering, or her voice from shaking when she spoke again. “I almost lost her.”
Matt’s fingers clenched on the door frame. Caroline wasn’t the only one who could have lost another child today. Hell, if Caroline had been in the house instead of Savannah, he could have lost them both. The knowledge settled in his stomach in a cold, tight ball, a time bomb just waiting to burst into a fiery nightmare when he slept.
If he slept.
“You were right all along,” Caroline said. Her words had suddenly taken on a clipped tone, matter-of-fact. They were rational words from the head, lacking the sincerity of the heart. “I shouldn’t have wanted another baby. I should have learned from what we went through with Brad. Raising a child isn’t worth the risk. The pain.”
She stood unsteadily and carried Hailey to the antique crib Mr. Johnson had brought down from the attic and Mrs. Johnson had cleaned and polished until the wood fairly glowed. Finally she lifted her head. Lamplight shone off the suffering in her watery gaze. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost another child. I couldn’t survive it.”
Matt closed his eyes. He ached to see her like this, his strong wife bent to the breaking point, her shoulders rounded and her head bowed. But he honestly didn’t know if he could help her. If he could stand there and tell her what he knew she needed to hear. That she was wrong. That they were meant to have Hailey. That loving her was worth any risk.
How could he tell her these things when he’d spent the past year denying them? How could he tell her everything would be all right, that they wouldn’t lose Hailey the way they’d lost their son, when he wasn’t sure he believed it himself?
He should go. He didn’t belong here. Not when Caroline so obviously needed reassurance and he had none to offer. But still he couldn’t leave. The need to take away her pain pulsed through him, pulled him into the room when better judgment warned him away. Caroline had been his too long, she was too much a part of him for him to walk away. If he couldn’t give her the reassurance she needed, he could at least offer her comfort.
He stepped up behind her and put his arms around her just as she turned. The embrace he’d meant to be casual, yet supportive, took on an immediate intimacy as her breasts flattened against his chest, her hips rubbed against his thighs. She’d showered, and the fresh, full vanilla scent of her filled the emptiness inside him.
“You didn’t lose her,” he said, tightening his arms around her and rubbing her back. “We didn’t.”
She smoothed her cheek against his shoulder. “No. But Savannah…oh, God. Savannah.”
“Don’t give up on Savannah. She’s getting good care, and she’s tough.”
“It should have been me, though. I should have been the one in the house.”
Matt’s chest burned with the same panic he’d felt when he’d thought it was Caroline who’d been hurt. His pulse leaped into high gear, and he wondered if she could feel his heart kicking against her chest. Wondered if she knew the guilt he carried. “I know it makes me a bastard, but I’ve never been so grateful as I was when I saw it was her in that ambulance and not you.”
She lifted her head. Matt was afraid to look at her too closely, afraid of the condemnation he’d see. But when their gazes met, compassion and understanding welled in her earthy, brown eyes, not judgment. “It doesn’t make you a bastard, Matt.”
“Doesn’t make me a saint, either.”
“No. Just human.”
He was human, all right. With all the associated weaknesses and faults. He’d come into this room to offer comfort, but he was the one finding himself restored. And, human that he was, full of greed and avarice, it wasn’t enough. He wanted more. Needed more. More of Caroline. Looking into her soulful eyes, he thought she needed him, too.
He tightened his arms around her, brought her flush with his body. “Let me stay with you tonight.”
Caroline’s thoughts stuttered and started, fuzzy and full of static like a radio not quite picking up the signal. The temptation to let her mind go completely blank, completely silent, nearly overwhelmed her. Nearly. “No,” she managed to say.
“You need me tonight.”
“I’ve always needed you, and you’ve always been there. That’s the problem. I never learned to take care of myself, until this year. But I did learn.”
“You’re wrong. You’ve always taken care of yourself. And me, and Brad, and everyone else in your life.”
Caroline’s mind broadcast loud and clear momentarily. Matt’s words, and the sincerity behind them, gave her pause. She’d never seen her life that way. Oh, she’d been happy enough in the years before they’d lost Brad. But when she reflected on her life now, she saw herself as the housewife dependent on her husband’s affections for her own sense of self-worth. The mother raising her child to achieve his dreams, but discounting her own.
“She knew,” Caroline said against his shoulder.
“What?”
“Something Savannah said to me before the fire.” Is it Matt’s love you doubt, or your own?
She’d been tested in fire this past year, and she’d survived. She’d found out she could take care of herself and her child. That she could build a life of her own.
She wasn’t sure she could ever go back to the person—the wife—she used to be. Maybe she didn’t want to.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t relive the past for just one night.
She rubbed her palms flat across the hard planes of his chest, felt the strength in the play of his muscles, the solidity of his shoulders. He’d always been such a solid man. Sturdy. Reliable. “I need you, Matt. I don’t want to, but I need you right now.”
His nostrils flared. Before she could take another breath he’d scooped her into his arms, crossed the room to kick the door shut and depressed the lock in the center of the knob.
Giving them both one last chance to change their minds, she said, “Making love isn’t going to change the future. Or the past.”
“Maybe not,” he answered. “But it sure as hell will make the present more tolerable.”
On that, at least, they could agree.
Chapter 13
Matt laid Caroline on the bed. Slowly, gently, he took off her clothing, lingering over each button, each snap, pulling down the zipper of her jeans so deliberately he could hear the release of each tooth as the tab slid past. But instead of lying passively as she might have in the old days, Caroline’s hands were busy as he worked. Sitting up, she unbuttoned his crisp white shirt and pushed it over his shoulders. She pulled the tails out of his waistband and the cotton swished to floor at his feet. Her fingers fumbled with the buckle of his belt and he helped her, quickly unfastening the brass snap beneath and shucking out of his jeans and briefs while she wriggled out of her jeans and panties.
Naked, he covered her on the narrow iron bed. The springs groaned in protest. Her skin quivered beneath his. Her breath caught. He rose up on his elbows so he could see more of her.
“You’re as beautiful as you were the first time we made love, Caro.”
The way her lashes lowered shyly over her eyes almost made him smile. “It’s been a long time since my virgin days.”
“Virginity is highly overrated.” He trailed his fingers from her collarbone down to the swells of her full, bare breasts. “Give me a woman who knows her way around the human body anytime
.”
It was true what they said about some women, like wine, getting better with age. Caroline’s shape may have shifted subtly, but the changes weren’t unattractive. Time had softened the hard angles of youth. Rounded the sharp edges. The effect gave her an air of durability no younger woman could project. Caroline’s body had been forged in the fires of pregnancy and cooled in the icy despair of loss. But then, tempered steel was the strongest, wasn’t it?
“Even if that woman walked out on you twice? Even if she has a child?” The confidence Matt had felt in Caroline just moments ago disappeared, blown away like a palmful of ash in a prairie wind.
“If that woman happens to be my wife.”
“Why did you come back?” she whispered. He wondered if she was even conscious of her fingertips digging deep into his shoulders.
“I came for you,” he said. “For us.” He wasn’t sure he could explain this quest he was on in any other way. Wasn’t sure he understood it himself. “I need to know what happened to the love we used to have for each other. If it’s still alive or if—” he swept his hand over her cheek “—if it’s just an old ghost that’s haunting me.”
“Oh, Matt—” Reaching for his face, she shifted beneath him. The friction of her hips against his straining arousal dragged a hiss out of him. By the time he’d recovered enough to talk, conversation was no longer a priority.
“Kiss me, Caro. Or tell me you don’t want me and I’ll leave. It’s your decision.”
She slid her hands around to the back of his head and twined her fingers in his hair. Her eyelids fell closed. He could almost hear her thinking, weighing the potential for hurt in what they were about to do against the potential for healing. His heart hammered while he waited for her decision. If she told him to go, could he really walk away? He would have to, even if it killed him, which it probably would.
Luckily, death would have to wait for another day to claim him. Much to his relief, Caroline lifted her head and kissed him. Her lips were cool and dry, her pressure light, but it was definitely a kiss. A yes.
Keeping Caroline Page 16
