After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  She put a little more pressure on the accelerator under her foot.

  They didn’t talk. There was no need for words right now. Their only communication was the comfortable presence of each other and the feel of his hand on her neck.

  Without warning, a dark-silver GMC Yukon appeared in her rearview mirror, the front end so close to her bumper the SUV’s headlights weren’t visible. And its windows had such a dark tint, she couldn’t see much of the driver beyond a general shape that told her nothing.

  “Who is that back there?” she wondered aloud.

  Mitchell craned his neck to see from his side-view mirror. “I don’t know, but you’d better slow way down. I don’t like the look of this.”

  She took her foot off the gas, stuck her arm out the window and waved the vehicle around. “Just pass me, you jerk, and get off my butt!”

  Instead, she felt a bump and realized they were speeding up. “They’re pushing us!”

  “Let up on the gas,” Mitchell directed and twisted in his seat to look at whoever was behind them.

  “I did!”

  “Then carefully steer over to the shoulder.”

  Before she could do that, the aggressive SUV fell back a bit, then revved up and bumped them again, this time much harder, making the truck swerve a little. Her seatbelt caught and held her in place. “My God! Mitchell, they’re going to run us off the road!” she said, fear gushing through her body as if from an open hydrant. Adrenaline made her palms prickle, and she gripped the wheel to keep their very lives in this truck and on the road.

  He turned in his seat again. “Who is that son of a bitch? I don’t know anyone with an expensive rig like that.”

  “I can’t even see the license plate, they’re so close. And the truck bed is in the way.”

  They were headed for a sharp curve in the road that Julianne knew well. Drunk drivers tended to miss it on dark nights and go crashing through the scrub and creosote bushes, then down a thirty-foot embankment. Even sober drivers had flown over the edge and rolled their vehicles, especially if it was raining. “Damn it, I’m not going to let us get pushed off the ledge.” Her arms and legs felt boneless and weak, but she mashed both feet on the brake pedal, hoping that would help. The steering wheel shuddered in her hands. Blue smoke poured off her tires, creating a dense veil between her truck and the SUV.

  She expected another impact.

  Suddenly, their pursuer fell back just enough to swing around, then went flying past them like a rocket. All the windows were dark, and she couldn’t see inside. Julianne skidded to a dead stop on the side of the road just short of that deadly curve, her dry mouth open as she watched the late-model GMC disappear into a pair of distant taillights. It had no rear license plate, or even a plate frame.

  “Are you all right?” Mitchell asked, running a hand through his hair and pulling at his tie.

  “Yes, I think so.” Her fingers still gripped the wheel in a spasm of fear. “God, Mitchell, what happened? Was that road rage? I wasn’t driving like some old granny out for a Sunday ride.”

  “Not road rage. I don’t know who it was, but they knew you. Or us.”

  She looked at him. “You mean we were singled out?”

  “It seems like it. We’ve pissed off some people lately.”

  He was right. They had. “You mean your brothers?”

  He unbuttoned his shirt collar. “Maybe, but there might be one or two others.”

  “Who? Really, Mitchell, don’t they have anything else to do?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but he answered it. “You’d think so. We sure do.” He unfastened his seatbelt.

  “They could have killed us!”

  “Come on, trade places.” He motioned for her to get out. “I’ll drive us the rest of the way.”

  Ordinarily, Julianne would have refused, unwilling to reveal weakness or show any face but a brave one. Now, though, she was glad to lean on Mitchell for a moment. He was with her in this situation; she’d grown so accustomed to facing trouble alone, with others looking to her to solve problems and avert disaster. To be able to surrender the responsibility for a while was a relief, and her sizzled nerves appreciated it, too. She climbed out of the truck and walked around to the other side where he waited for her. Shaken to the marrow of her bones, she leaned against him, and his arms closed around her. It felt good, familiar, to be sheltered by him. She exhaled.

  “We’re okay,” he comforted her. “We’re okay.” He said it as if to reassure himself as much as her. He put his hand on the back of her head and pressed it against his shoulder.

  When she was in her seat, he closed the door and took over.

  “You sure you’re all right?” he asked again.

  She took a couple of deep breaths and nodded.

  He squeezed her wrist, then put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the highway. “What’s Malbec, anyway? Some kind of Australian beer?”

  “Wine. From South America.”

  “Have you got anything else?”

  “A bottle of whiskey.”

  “Better. That’s what we need—snake-bite medicine.”

  Back in Julianne’s apartment, Mitchell watched her arm the security system, still spooked by their near miss on the highway. He flopped on the sofa, pulled off his tie, and opened the top two buttons on his shirt. Julianne had called the police about what had happened, although she didn’t think it would do any good and told him so. It wasn’t a secret that she was seeing Mitchell, even if just on a work-related level, and he figured that had probably cost her any credibility she had with the sheriff’s department. She brought out a tray with the whiskey and two glasses, only one with ice, and a bottle of water.

  Mitchell reviewed a mental list of people who might be angry enough, or crazy enough, to pull a dangerous stunt like the one they had just gone through, and really, he could only come up with Darcy. He said as much to her as she settled beside him.

  “I guess that doesn’t surprise me, but I don’t know why he’d bother.” She poured his drink and handed it to him. “Is he willing to go far enough to put his own neck on the block just to get even? Even for what? I’m sick of it.” She took a sip of her own “snake-bite medicine.” “And where did he get a fancy truck like that?”

  “He either borrowed it or stole it. I’m just not sure who would trust him with an expensive rig like that.” He took her free hand for a moment as he recalled scenes from the old days, lots of yelling, swearing, and threats carried out. “Earl was hardest on Darcy—when he came home, anyway. I wasn’t sure why, except Darcy had a smart mouth and never knew when to keep it shut. He still doesn’t, really. James isn’t nearly as bad, but sometimes he goes along with Darcy, maybe just to get along. We all got our share of the belt and Earl’s ridicule, and once my mother was gone, he cranked up his temper to ‘high.’ But Darcy got more than his share, and the strange thing is, the worse Earl treated him, the more Darcy became like him. He’s not a kid anymore. He could have left home years ago to get away from that. But he stayed and took it until Earl’s imprint was forged in his brain.” Absently, he rubbed at a small scar on her wrist, then looked up at her. “It’s strange—in some ways he’s even meaner than Earl was at his worst.”

  She set the tray on the end table. “He hit on me once.”

  “Darcy did?” he asked, horrified.

  “Yep.” She told him about how she’d run into Darcy at the Shoppeteria after Mitchell had gone to prison, and Darcy had suggested they get together. “I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Wow.” It was all he could think of to say. Though Mitchell didn’t tell her, he suspected that Darcy hated women.

  She poured two fingers of whiskey for herself—neat, he noticed—then kicked off her sandals. “I hope he never has kids of his own. To pass on that cruel treatment to innocent children? What would he produce besides cringing, broken people or, worse, some kind of Super Earl?”

  The bare-bones concept of that wasn’t funny, not at al
l. But fried nerves and a little alcohol made Mitchell picture a King Kong sort of monster in his mind’s eye, stepping on FedEx delivery trucks and kicking overpasses out of the way like cobwebs. He chuckled, then started laughing. “Super Earl! The thing that came from the arroyo.”

  Julianne gave him a serious look, then said, “In a world of evil relatives and bitchy in-laws, one stands out among them all: Super Earl, the spawn of an unholy alliance between Darcy, the Dark Brute, and She-Beast, a female Gorgon from the Chihuahuan Desert.”

  Mitchell had a sip of whiskey in his mouth and let it drain back into the glass to keep from choking on it when he laughed his head off. She started laughing, too, and the two of them rolled around on the sofa, tears streaming, whooping with a kind of crazy, hysterical howling. Just when they’d start to settle down, one of them would get going again, and they went on like that for a good five minutes.

  At last Julianne flopped back against the upholstery, gasping and exhausted. “I think we’ve lost our minds.” She dragged her fingertips under her eyes to wipe away the tears, and sniffled.

  “Not yet,” he replied, still chuckling. “God, I forgot how good it feels to really laugh like that. I can’t remember the last time I did.”

  “Me, too—or me neither.” She took a careful taste of whiskey, as if afraid of slobbering it down her white top in case she got the giggles again. “We used to laugh a lot, the two of us.”

  Her fit, long-legged teenage body flashed through his memory. She hadn’t changed. If anything, she had ripened into a more lushly tempting woman. He lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “Yeah, when we weren’t busy with other things. You always brought out the need in me, Juli. No matter what was going on in my life, you were there in my mind, making me want you. True, I got sidetracked with the baseball thing, but my plans always included you.”

  She leaned into him on the sofa and put her hand on his jaw. Her touch sparked a flame in him that was familiar and urgent, an echo calling from the past that had appeared right beside him. He pulled her onto his lap and kissed her. She tasted of whiskey and smelled faintly of a spicy, floral fragrance—not the heavy kind of scent that burned off a person’s eyelashes and saturated his lungs like a toxic gas. That was Cherry’s style, not Juli’s.

  The kiss deepened, and despite all the things that had happened in the intervening years and the toll exacted by those experiences, he felt seventeen again, kissing the hog farmer’s blonde daughter behind a live oak on her daddy’s place. But now they didn’t have to worry about getting caught. She fitted into his embrace perfectly, her breath coming fast, stoking the candle flame into a blaze. It was as if only a week instead of nearly a decade had passed.

  When the kiss broke, she surprised him by pushing him down on the sofa and climbing over him to settle her body on top of his. She gathered her hair in one hand, then let it fall like a curtain around their faces. He groaned and automatically pushed his hips against hers. No other woman felt as comfortable in his arms or as welcoming to his touch as she did.

  He worked a hand up between them and managed to unbutton his shirt and inch down the elastic neckline of her blouse until their flesh touched, chest to breast. She drew back for a moment and looked him straight in the eyes. That look pierced his heart as no other had. In it he saw the forgiveness she’d already given him and the promise of something much greater and even truer.

  When he reached up to kiss her again, the fever between them climbed toward a white hotness. He pushed her to her side and looped one leg over hers, but the narrow cushions restricted their movements.

  Frustrated by the constraints, he rolled off to the floor, then grabbed her wrist and caught her in his arms.

  “Oh!” Julianne’s breath hitched when she landed. His lovers’ choreography called to her as he did, wordlessly, with an irresistible pull. Their kisses were urgent, desperate—taken and given by two people who’d felt the burden of so many empty years. She felt as if she’d been holding her breath, waiting for Mitchell to fill the emptiness in her soul.

  Everything about him that felt so right seemed lacking in other men she had known. He’d been her first lover, and she had forgotten until now how utterly male he was compared to Wesley. But she didn’t want to think about Wes now. Nothing had been Wes’s fault, and he was long gone. Mitchell summoned the female in her. Long-buried memories of how they once were—together—came roaring to her. She buried her face against his neck and inhaled the scent of him. His arms, sinewed and scarred, embraced her. Pushing her to her back, he traced a line of leisurely kisses along her shoulders and collarbones that made her nerves hum with anticipation. Like a conjurer, he whisked away her skirt and blouse, and he let his gaze roam over her bare breasts and torso. She would have felt self-conscious with any other man taking in the features of her body. But Mitchell’s expression was introspective.

  “You’re so beautiful, Juli. Even more beautiful than I remembered,” he murmured, and outlined her upper lip with his finger. “I’ve missed this. For years.”

  “Mitchell.” She closed her eyes briefly while a surge of emotion flooded her, washing away the sense of time and place, except for this moment, this room, this man. “I missed you.” There it was. She hadn’t realized it before, but it was true. She’d missed him. The empty space in her heart, the one beside Erin’s memory, belonged to him.

  He lowered his head and closed his lips around her tight nipple. She squirmed beneath his attentions, even as his hand crept up the inside of her thigh. He hadn’t forgotten. He knew exactly where her sensitive places were—the curve of her ear, the tender underside of her breasts, the center of her palm—and he planted soft kisses in each spot. Automatically, she reached for him and closed her hand over the hard length of him. His heat radiated through the fabric of his pants. Impatient, she pushed his shirt off his shoulders and kissed him, nibbling along his collarbone and his jawline.

  Groaning, he stood, pulled her up from the floor, and dropped her on her bed. She bounced into her white comforter and pillows as if they were clouds swelling around her. Then he yanked open his belt, which hit the floor with the clank of its buckle, and shucked his boots and pants.

  There were no delicate pauses or questioning hesitation. She opened her arms. “We’ve been alone too long.”

  Uttering a low, inarticulate sound, he covered her body with his own and pushed a knee between hers. She knew him and had thought she remembered what he felt like inside of her. But this true moment of their joining was new and unexpected. They met and parted and met again in an ancient rhythm that drove them to seek completion.

  Julianne thrust her hips toward Mitchell’s, and the storm brewing within her gained more power than she could contain. Fierce spasms gripped her, and she muffled a sob against his neck as they overtook her.

  “I love you so much,” she said, and clung to him limply.

  She heard Mitchell’s breath rush through his lungs like a sirocco. This was where he belonged—here with her.

  When his own completion shook him, he called her name.

  Julianne rolled over in the darkness, under the hum of the air-conditioning unit, and flung the sheet up over them.

  Mitchell pulled himself up to one elbow and looked at her with only the reflected streetlight to illuminate them. “Did you mean what you said?”

  “Yes.” She turned her head and smiled at him. “Mitchell, I realize I never stopped loving you. That’s only one reason why I was partly responsible for Wes’s death.”

  “Julianne, you don’t really believe that.”

  “I never loved Wes, but I tried hard to be a good wife to him. The night of the fire was his birthday and I’d fixed a special dinner for us. But my pregnancy made me pretty crabby sometimes, and when he told me he had to work on the tractor rather than come in to eat, I got into a huff. He asked me to bring him a thermos of coffee, but I didn’t.” She sighed. “My last words to him were just bitchy. If only I’d taken him the coffee, I mig
ht have seen you, or the fire before it got out of control. I’d have been able to call nine-one-one.” She looked at the ceiling. “Of course, I never should have married him at all. I don’t know what would have happened to me or the baby, but Wes would probably still be alive if I hadn’t crossed his path.”

  “I should have married you,” he said. “You’ve owned my heart for more years than I can count.”

  Now she was up on her elbow. “Mitchell, you never even proposed—everything we talked about back then was always ‘someday’ and ‘maybe.’ You couldn’t decide what you wanted. You wanted to play baseball, you wanted to hang out with your friends—you weren’t ready to grow up. When my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I agreed to that arranged marriage, because I wanted him to die in peace. He was so worried about leaving me alone in the world. And I couldn’t tell him about you.”

  “That’s not exactly how it happened. Baseball scouts were coming here to see me play. I was trying to get things lined up so we could leave Gila Rock behind and start a new life.” She heard a defensive tone in his voice.

  “But I couldn’t just walk away from the farm. It goes back five generations. Wes was willing to take over the responsibility. You wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  “Hell no. What I know about hog farming could be written on the head of a pin.” He flopped back down to the mattress.

  “That didn’t stop you from going to work at Benavente’s,” she observed.

  “I needed the job, and no one else was willing to hire an ex-con. Besides, I wasn’t about to hang around the trailer with my old man, like Darcy does. Anyway, I got fired.”

  “I suppose that was my fault,” Julianne said, sighing.

  “Well, no, honey, how could it be?”

  “I was so mad when I saw you that day at Benavente’s.”

  “Yeah, I probably should have thought twice about how I handled that. I should have found a better way to talk to you.”

  They were squabbling like five-year-olds over who was guiltier, but Julianne couldn’t seem to stop herself, and Mitchell gave as good as he got.