It had seemed essential to eradicate him from her bedroom to make a point to herself: her life was now her own. No man had a right to question her taste. This room, at least, was entirely hers.
So how could she, so quickly, be tempted to invite any man at all into her bedroom and her life?
And most especially, a man like Jack Murray?
Beyond her cubicle, Beth heard Jennifer’s voice and winced.
“Gee, I don’t know. I guess I could find out,” she said doubtfully.
The customer murmured something; a moment later, Beth heard the front door close.
She should have gotten up and gone out to see what Jennifer didn’t know, but she just flat-out didn’t feel like it.
Beth lifted her cup, sipped and made a face at the cold coffee. Getting a fresh cup seemed like too much effort.
Flipping the pages of a catalog without interest, she reverted to her brooding.
Jack had lulled some of her fears. But a scene like last night’s reawakened every one of them. She’d seen his expression when he saw the living room. He hadn’t been shocked by the destruction the way she was. Angry on her behalf, but not aghast. How could he be? she admitted. He’d seen worse. Which was what scared her. She didn’t even want to think about what he had seen.
But she knew. She read the newspaper. Jack was worried for her because he had seen firsthand what angry ex-husbands sometimes did to women. Murder and rape and multiple-fatality car accidents were part of his job. His very existence made a lie of the tales she and Ray had told themselves and each other when they moved to Elk Springs.
This was a safe community. The kids could walk to school. The pace was slower. Neighbors cared. Heck, probably nobody even locked their doors, they’d declared. Crime just wasn’t an issue, they thought, because they wanted it to be true.
Now she knew that no place was safe, that no one was immune. But she sensed that she could recover her illusions if life went back to normal and she could again believe the people she knew were good.
In Jack’s world, people were not all good. Too many were selfish, venal, remorseless or vicious. The good guys in his world were cops who slammed people against walls to cuff them.
What would he say about her porcelain dolls and floral wallpaper and lacy pillows? She saw him again, standing in her bedroom door looking around. He didn’t belong.
And why was she even wondering these things? It seemed so soon to feel these confusing desires and fears and tugs toward and away from Jack. She hardly knew him.
Yet he had slept on her couch last night so that she and the girls would feel safe. Because of him, she had not lain awake listening for the shatter of glass, the creak of a footstep, the whisper of someone pushing through shrubbery.
Ray had formed her fears about men.
Jack protected her from Ray.
It was a simple equation. In more primitive times, that would have been reason enough to let Jack Murray claim her as his woman.
But she’d learned already that a man could be lover and enemy both. She had adored Ray, once upon a time. That he had chosen her seemed a miracle, when she was seventeen. How could she know that someday she would dread him coming home? Or that he was capable of terrorizing her and his own daughters?
Mightn’t Jack Murray have the same potential for anger and violence? Ray had been tender in the early days, too. He had always been gentle with the girls. Now he felt wronged. What would happen when Jack lost his temper?
Was she crazy to hang around to find out?
If she had to be tempted by a man, why not that nice pharmacist who’d suggested dinner sometime?
“Ms. Sommers?” Jennifer called. “The copy machine says it’s jammed, and I’m not sure how to open it.”
Beth rubbed her aching temples and wearily rose to her feet. Coming out of her tiny office, she smiled at the customer waiting for copies.
“The latches are right here,” she said patiently.
DESPITE THE IBUPROFEN she’d taken earlier, Beth still had a headache that evening. She’d succumbed to temptation and had a pizza delivered for dinner, which pleased the girls. Usually they had to help clean the kitchen, but tonight she said, “There’s not much of a mess. You two go do your homework.”
“Okay.” Lauren scrambled up.
“Can I call Roslyn?” asked Steph, heading for the phone. “She wanted help with the math.”
“Sure.” Beth piled dirty plates. “Just use the phone upstairs, okay?”
The girls raced up the stairs, their feet thundering. Beth carried the dirty dishes to the sink and bent to unload the dishwasher.
A knock on the kitchen door rattled the glass pane. Heartbeat leaping, Beth whirled.
Framed in the glass was Ray’s face. When he saw that he had her attention, he gestured peremptorily.
Why was he here? And why at the back door?
How could she not let him in?
She unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. “What do you want, Ray?” If she didn’t sound friendly, she didn’t care.
“To talk. Come on,” he said impatiently. “Let me in.”
“Have you been standing out there watching us?”
He was clean-shaven, but the smell of beer wafted on his breath and his eyes were bloodshot. “I waited a minute until Steph and Lauren left. So what? This is between you and me.”
“All right.” She backed up and let him pass, hating to have him even that close. Pretending a calm she didn’t feel, Beth went back to putting dishes away in cupboards. “What is it you think we need to talk about?”
Ray leaned against the cabinet and crossed his arms. “Are you seeing that sheriff?”
She didn’t look at him. “If you’re asking whether I’m dating him, I don’t think that’s your concern.”
“Not my concern?” He gave an incredulous laugh. “Damn it, Beth, I love you! I figured you needed some time to figure out we belonged together, and that was okay. Everybody gets their head screwed on wrong sometimes. I mean, we shouldn’t have moved over here or bought that business. With you always working, we were bound to have problems. But, okay. You’ve had time. So, what? Now you’re sleeping with some other guy?”
Old habits die hard. Without thinking, she shot back, “What would make you think I’m sleeping with him?”
His expression became crafty. “Let’s just say, personal observation.”
She breathed hard. “You’re watching me. Stop!”
Ray straightened and leaned toward her, his anger as rank as the beer fumes. “All I want to know is, are you sleeping with this guy?”
“It’s none of your business, but no!” After a moment fraught with tension, the two staring at each other, she was the one to break eye contact. Turning back to the cupboard, she carefully took a glass from where she’d set it with the bowls and moved it to where it belonged. Just as carefully, she stripped all emotion from her voice. “Ray, we are divorced. Not because I worked long hours, but because you didn’t like who I’ve become and I’m not so sure I like who you’ve become, either. You can’t tell me you enjoyed fighting all the time.”
“We don’t have to fight.” His tone became wheedling and he reached across the open dishwasher and grabbed her hand. “Remember the good times, Beth? We were happy. Back before…”
When he stopped, Beth finished for him. “Before I dreamed up all that nonsense about going to college and getting a job? Before I discovered what I wanted to do with my life?”
“So sell the store and get a job.” He was begging now. “Something you can leave behind at five o’clock. I know we could be happy again. You know we could. Think about the girls. This has been hard on them.”
His shifting mood alarmed her as much as his anger had. How drunk was he? She yanked her hand from his and backed up a step. “You’ve made it harder than it had to be. What’s all this been about, Ray? Keeping them late and challenging me constantly?”
His voice rose. “They’re my kids, too.�
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“So it’s okay to scare them?”
Was it her imagination, or did his expression become wary?
“Whaddaya mean, scare them?”
Hands on her hips, she said flatly, “You know exactly what I mean. Ringing the doorbell, phoning at all hours and then not saying anything. I’m not the one who was scared, Ray. It was Stephanie and Lauren. Your daughters.”
His jaw worked. “Why can’t you need me?”
Oh, she was getting mad now. “I was supposed to come running to you because I was being stalked? Is that it?”
“Stalked?” He made a dismissive sound. “Blow it up into some big deal, why don’t you.”
“Oh, and what about last night?” She slammed the dishwasher door shut to vent some of her fury. Her voice was rising, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. “That wasn’t a big deal? Do you know how close Lauren came to being badly hurt?”
“It was just a warning!” he shouted.
She sucked in a breath and stared at this stocky, strong man she had once loved. “You admit it,” she whispered. “You threw a rock and a cherry bomb through our front window.”
“I was getting desperate.” He cleared his throat. “Desperate for you, I mean. Damn it, Beth. Missing you has made me crazy! A man does stupid things sometimes when he’s in love.” He grabbed at her clumsily.
Beth shoved with all her might and he staggered back. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” she said with loathing.
He stared at her in bafflement. “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. Especially not sweet Lauren.” His voice slurred on his daughter’s name. “You know she’s the apple of my eye. I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“You almost did.” Beth went to the back door and opened it. “Now get out.”
She saw the moment comprehension entered his eyes. “I’m not done saying what I got to say. You’re just mad. Okay. I screwed up big time. But what do you want me to do? Crawl on my belly?”
“Leave. That’s what I want you to do. I’m done listening.” Her hand was locked in a death grip on the knob.
“I’m not going anywhere!” he shouted. He looked twice as wide suddenly, a looming frightening presence in her small kitchen. He was crazy.
Scared for the first time, she waited white-faced. “Please go. The girls are going to hear you.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn! Let ’em hear!” He shouted at the ceiling, “Steph and Lauren, are you listening? You want us to be a family, don’t you? Come tell Mom. Come say, ‘I want my daddy home.”’ He slammed a fist against a cupboard door and snarled at Beth, “The truth is, sweetheart, they’re going to wonder, just like I do, whether Mom didn’t kick Dad out because she’s got an itch in her pants for some other man.” He made an ugly sound. “Next time you try threatening me with losing visitation, think how that’ll play to the judge. He’ll want to hear all about who is creeping out of here in the morning.”
In a harsh whisper, Beth said, “For your information, Jack Murray spent the night on the couch so that we could sleep soundly after you—Lauren and Stephanie’s devoted father—nearly killed your own child.”
He loomed over her, bloodshot eyes glittering with rage. “You think I’ll go quietly, you’re wrong! If this is my fault, it’s only because I let you have your way too often. A woman who doesn’t want to be a wife isn’t…isn’t any kind of woman at all! What are you teaching my girls? You’re no kind of mother. You shouldn’t have them.”
Shaking now, she repeated, “Get out! Before I call the police!”
His face darkened. “Don’t threaten me, bitch!”
Standing up to him was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she didn’t waver. “Now.”
He lashed out so fast she didn’t see it coming. His hand cracked across her cheekbone and she fell back against the stove. His hand lifted once more, and she tried to regain her footing, get her hands up to shield her face.
In a blur someone else was there. Ray was bodily lifted and flung cursing back against the cabinets.
In a voice she’d never heard before, Jack Murray said, “What kind of scum hurts a woman?”
On a stream of obscenities, Ray fought back. Beth cringed in the corner of the kitchen and watched the sheriff slam her ex-husband against the refrigerator so hard blood poured from his nose, splattering the white surface and dripping to the floor. In a moment, Jack had wrestled him to the floor. A knee shoved in the small of his back, Jack cuffed him, yanking Ray’s arms back until he screamed with pain.
Both men were cursing, sweating, straining. To her horrified eyes, their rage and blood-engorged faces looked alike. She was nothing to them now; their battle was too primal for her to matter.
Vision blurry, hand pressed to her mouth, she looked across the big man grinding Ray’s face against the floor and into her daughter’s shocked eyes.
Stephanie looked at the men and then back at her mother. “Mommy?”
“You have the right to remain silent.” Voice brutal in its matter-of-factness, Jack wrenched Stephanie’s father to his feet and shoved him up against the bloody refrigerator. “You have the right to an attorney.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. Beth didn’t hear the rest. Back pressed to the counter, she inched by, staying as far from the two men as she could get. Only when safely past did she fly to her daughter and snatch Stephanie into her arms, turning her away from the horrific sight of Ray with swollen eye and blood-smeared face.
And from the sight of their noble protector, so casually hurting and humiliating a drunk man who had lost his family.
“I called him,” Stephanie mumbled against her shoulder. “I got scared and called Jack.”
“It’s all right,” Beth whispered. “It’s all right.”
But it wasn’t, and they both knew it.
CHAPTER NINE
ADRENALINE HAD roared through his body from the moment he heard the girl’s voice on the phone. She sounded unbearably young.
“Mr. Murray…I mean, Sheriff…” She quavered to a stop. Swallowed. “This is…this is Stephanie Sommers. My…my dad is here, and he’s yelling at Mom, and Lauren and me, we’re scared.”
“I’m on my way,” he promised her, and hit the street at a run. Two blocks took him no more than a minute. He didn’t give a damn that one neighbor had to slam on his brakes backing out of a driveway, or that another who was mowing turned to stare.
Outside Beth’s place, Jack listened for raised voices. Nothing. Had the bastard already knocked her out? Fresh fear had him taking the steps two at a time.
Before he could knock, the front door swung open. Stephanie had been waiting for him. Face pinched, she stood back and said in a low, frightened voice, “They’re in the kitchen.”
“You were smart to call,” he told her with an approving nod.
Muffled by walls came a drunken bellow. “I don’t give a good goddamn!”
The girl flinched. “He used to yell like that all the time. Why does he get so mad?” she asked in sad bewilderment.
“I don’t know.” Jack didn’t like the tone of what he was hearing. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go up to your bedroom? I’ll talk to your father.”
He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed. Stepping quietly, he passed the dining room just as Ray Sommers’s snarl rattled pictures on the wall. “Don’t threaten me, bitch!”
Jack entered the kitchen unseen. Sommers had his back turned. Beth stood with one hand on the open back door, facing Jack, but with her entire being focused on her ex-husband.
“Now,” she ordered, her face pale but set, fear in her eyes but her chin held as defiantly as ever.
Jack had never admired her more. Her very determination made him hesitate. Would she thank him for interfering?
Sommers was clearly drunk; his broad stance didn’t disguise a momentary weave. He might just go without ever having to know his daughter had been so scared of him, she’d called Jack.
Things happened so damned fast, Jack was still flat-foote
d. With lightning speed, Sommers backhanded Beth, sending her staggering back against the stove. Jack moved then, with the despairing knowledge that he was too late to keep her from being hurt. As he grabbed the son of a bitch and flung him away from Beth, all Jack could think was, I shouldn’t have hesitated. Damn it, I shouldn’t have hesitated!
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her face, swelling, turning purple. Sick anger gave him the strength to easily counter her drunken ex-husband’s blind punches. Blood splattered when Sommers’s nose met the refrigerator. Let the bastard learn what it felt like. He wrestled Ray Sommers to the floor and yanked handcuffs from his back pocket.
He started reading him his rights without thinking. Halfway through Jack stopped, realizing this wasn’t his arrest. He looked up to see that Beth had scooted past and she and her gutsy daughter now stood clutching each other and staring with equal horror.
“Call the Elk Springs P.D.,” Jack said from between gritted teeth. “This is their turf.”
Sommers tried to flip himself over, grunting obscenities.
Jack applied his knee. “You don’t want your daughter hearing that kind of language.”
Ray Sommers lifted his head awkwardly and saw Stephanie with her mother. On a groan, he let his forehead drop with a clunk onto the hard floor.
Jack met Beth’s eyes. “Take her out of here,” he ordered, with a nod toward the door.
She gave him a last look so full of shock and something painfully like hate, he could tell she was still as focused on her ex-husband as ever. Gratitude was going to be slow coming.
He heard her make the call. Sommers had quit fighting. When Jack looked down, he saw tears track the blood on the man’s cheeks.
Jack Murray, Sheriff Page 12
