Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12)

by Jenna Bennett

  “Thank you, darling.”

  There was no reason at all for her to thank me. And very weird that she did, considering her feelings for Rafe up until that meeting with the serial killer back in June. Before that, she would have applauded any sign of friction between us, and done whatever she could to add to it.

  Now she was pushing me to go after him and make up.

  I headed out of the parlor with the feeling that I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and my world was upside down, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

  By the time I got back downstairs, overnight bag in hand, things had returned to normal in the parlor. I heard laughter and the murmur of voices, and best as I could figure out, they weren’t murmuring about, or laughing at, my husband.

  Mother saw me step off the stairs and start to cross the foyer, but she didn’t come out to wave me off, just gave me a nod. I nodded back and kept going.

  I had closed the front door behind me and was on my way down the wide steps to the driveway and my car when the door to the house opened again.

  “Savannah.”

  I had been a little concerned that Todd might come after me. A year ago, he would have.

  This time he didn’t. It was Darcy coming down the steps behind me. “Going home?”

  I nodded. “Mother seemed to think it was best.” I opened the door to the blue Volvo I drive—the only thing left from my first marriage to Bradley Ferguson—and tossed the overnight bag into the back seat before straightening to face her.

  She looked worried, sort of wringing her hands as she stood there, twisting a gold ring around and around on her finger. “I hope it wasn’t something I said.”

  “Not at all,” I told her. “It was all me. All of it. I put my foot in my mouth all on my own.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “I’m sure he is.” At least I hoped so. He’s used to it, after all. Just not from me. Or not anymore. There was a time when I’d look at Rafe like he’d crawled out from under a flat rock, just like everyone else, but that was a long time ago. I’d thought I was over it. So, I’m sure, had he.

  Please let him be all right. Please don’t let him hate me.

  “I’ll have to grovel,” I added.

  Darcy nodded. “Good luck. Do you know when you’ll be back?”

  “In Sweetwater?” I’d planned to stay until tomorrow, but of course that was out now. “I’m sure I’ll be back down in a week or two. It’s just over an hour’s drive. I’m down here all the time.”

  “Give me a call next time you’re in town,” Darcy said. “If you don’t mind. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “We can talk now.” I was here, after all. And while I knew I had to go after Rafe and set things straight, part of me wasn’t looking forward to it. Not to the groveling. He had every right to be angry with me, and probably was.

  Darcy shook her head. “This is going to take some time. And I’d like some privacy. It’s a personal matter.”

  Uh-oh.

  I didn’t say anything, though, just nodded. “I’ll get in touch next time I’m in town. If you can wait that long. Or we can talk on the phone, if you want.”

  She shook her head again. “It isn’t urgent. Next time you’re in Sweetwater will be fine.” She smiled. “Drive carefully.”

  “Sure,” I said, and watched until she had gone back up the stairs and closed the door behind her before I got in the car and turned the key in the ignition.

  Rafe and I live in a three-story brick Victorian in what can most kindly be called a ‘transitional’ neighborhood. It’s full of old, decrepit houses nobody has the money to take care of, interspersed with a handful of recently renovated homes like ours, where someone with more optimism than sense has decided that the house is worth the inconvenience of dodging bullets and drug dealers. Mixed in amongst those is the occasional historic-looking infill, where an intrepid builder has scored a cheap lot and decided to see how far he can push the envelope on the price.

  The first time I came here, a year earlier, I’d felt like I was taking my life in my hands. Now it was just home: a little rougher around the edges than I’d been brought up to expect, maybe, but not too bad for all that. The criminal element tended to give our house a wide berth, since word had gotten out that Rafe worked for the TBI in addition to being, not to put too fine a point on it, a bad-ass. The law-abiding neighbors were happy to have us, since the area around our house had become a little oasis, free from some of the crime that plagued the rest of the neighborhood. I knew most of them, liked them—the feeling seemed mutual—and felt reasonably safe.

  That didn’t mean my heart wasn’t thudding a little extra hard in my chest when I turned off Potsdam Street and into the graveled driveway that led up to the front door. The house loomed in front of me, dark and a bit scary, like the house in Psycho, but with a round tower on one corner instead of a square tower in the middle. Rafe’s Harley was parked at the foot of the stairs, so at least he was here. Part of me had been worried that he wouldn’t be.

  I cut the engine and opened the door, taking a moment to get used to the wall of moist, hot air outside the car before swinging my legs out. The gravel crunched under my feet as I hauled my overnight bag out of the backseat and made my way to the stairs. My heels clicked against the porch floor.

  The house was dark, except for a single light in the kitchen, at the back of the house. The situation was eerily reminiscent of a night last fall. I’d had dinner with Todd Satterfield at the Wayside Inn in Sweetwater, and he had proposed marriage. I had expected him to propose. I had wanted him to propose. I had worn a special red dress and silver sandals, in an effort to get him to propose. And when he’d proposed, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to say yes. I had hoped that doing the ‘right’ thing, and getting engaged to Todd, would take away the desire to throw myself at Rafe, but it hadn’t worked that way. Instead, I’d said I needed time to think about it, and had driven through the night here. To Rafe’s house.

  And ended up in his bed.

  And now I was back, standing on the porch in my party dress and heels, after driving here from Sweetwater.

  Although this time I had my own key. My own way into the house. His ring on my finger and his baby inside me.

  He loved me.

  That wouldn’t make it any easier to apologize, but would make it more likely that he’d forgive me.

  I dropped the bag in the foyer and, after locking the door behind me, took a deep breath and headed down the hallway toward the light in the kitchen.

  Two

  He must have heard me coming, but he made no move to meet me halfway. When I got to the door, he was sitting at the kitchen table turning a bottle of beer around in his hands. It was mostly full, so unless he’d already polished off another, he hadn’t had much to drink.

  Not that he ever drinks much. He’s too aware of the need to be alert to risk getting impaired.

  The tangle of dreadlocks down his back gave me a jolt even though I knew they’d be there. And the look in his eyes, when he turned to face me, cut deep.

  His eyes are black, or so deep a brown it can be hard to see where the iris ends and the pupil begins. They go hot and liquid when he’s turned on, and flat as a cobra’s when he’s angry. In this instance, I should probably be grateful that he let me see what he was feeling at all, since it would have been an easy task for him not to.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as I took a step into the kitchen, and then another. “I’m really sorry. I hurt your feelings.”

  He didn’t say anything. Wouldn’t admit it, but wasn’t going to tell me I hadn’t, either.

  I stopped next to the table. And I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I didn’t dare. “I feel awful. You drove all the way to Sweetwater for my mother’s birthday, and you brought a gift, and you don’t even like my mother—”

  “I like your mother just fine.”

  His tone of voice said that at the moment, it was me he didn’t li
ke.

  “I don’t blame you,” I said wretchedly. “She was nicer to you than I was. She’s the one who told me I needed to go after you. I thought she’d want me to stay for the party, but she didn’t. She wanted me to follow you. I can’t believe my mother is nicer than me!”

  That got a quirk at the corner of his mouth, if nothing else.

  I twisted my fingers together on top of my stomach. “It’s just... it was such a shock to see you looking like that. After all the time we’ve spent trying to convince everyone in Sweetwater that you aren’t the way they’ve always imagined...”

  “I never spent no time trying to convince nobody,” Rafe said.

  And shut me up.

  Because he was right. He hadn’t. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him. That had been me, fretting over everyone’s reaction to the fact that Margaret Anne Martin’s perfect little girl was marrying the town black sheep.

  God, would I never learn?

  “I’ve told you before, darlin’. I am what I am. If you or your mama or anybody else has a problem with it...”

  “I don’t.” It was the same thing I’d said back then. The other time he’d told me. I’d meant it then. I meant it now, too. “I love you. I have no problem with who you are.”

  “Except when I show up to your mama’s birthday party looking like a gang banger.”

  He had me there.

  “I love you,” I said again. “I don’t care what you look like.”

  Not entirely true. “I mean... I like the way you look. Usually. And I don’t like this... costume as much as I like the way you look without it. But I still love you.”

  He quirked a brow.

  “I just don’t want everyone else to look at you and think... things.”

  “Things?”

  “You know what I mean. It’s taken my family a while to get on board with us being together. My mother likes you now, but there’s no telling how long that’ll last, especially if you show up in Sweetwater looking like that. And I’m sure Todd was snickering.”

  There was a beat, just long enough for me to realize what I’d said. Much too late to take it back.

  “You care what Satterfield thinks?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Coulda fooled me.”

  Um. “I’m not sure what to say,” I told him, wringing my hands. “I’m sorry. I hurt your feelings, and I know it. I wish I hadn’t. I don’t want to care what people think, but I can’t seem to stop.”

  He was watching me impassively.

  “I want them to look at you and see what I see. Past all that.” I waved a hand over the dreadlocks, the saggy pants, and the gold teeth. And for that matter over the six feet, three inches of smooth skin and hard muscles that could bring a woman to her knees—and had, frequently. Because while he was nice to look at, he was a lot more than that. “You’re incredible. Amazing. A hero. But when you show up looking like their worst nightmare, then that’s all they see. And that makes me feel bad.”

  “I don’t care what people think.”

  I knew that. He did the job he had to do, played the part he had to play, took the insults and the lumps he had to take because of what people thought they knew about him based on the way he looked and acted... and if it bothered him, he never let on. All the times I had thought the worst, he’d never bothered to set me straight. He might have given me a little help in reasoning out that he wasn’t the criminal I thought he was, but he hadn’t told me outright. He hadn’t admitted it until I’d figured it out mostly on my own.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, for the... fourth? fifth? ...time. “I don’t know what else to say. I’d take it back if I could. Do you want to go back to Sweetwater for the rest of the party?”

  His lips quirked. “No.”

  “It would probably be over by the time we got there, anyway. Maybe we could go somewhere else. Together. And I could prove that I’m not ashamed of being seen with you.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Maybe the FinBar? Or Beckett’s?” Two rather nice local sports bars, frequented by a lot of upwardly mobile young executives and artist types. I’d never seen anyone who looked like Rafe did at the moment in either establishment. “Or how about Fidelio’s?” A very upscale restaurant we’d been to a couple of times. My ex-husband Bradley had taken me there, and so had Todd. Rafe had, too—I guess in an effort to prove that he could give me the same things Bradley and Todd could. Until—unlike both of them—he realized that I didn’t actually like going to Fidelio’s. It had been eight months or more since either of us had set foot there. But I was willing to go back if it would help.

  He shook his head. “That ain’t necessary.”

  “Are you sure? I’d be happy to do it.”

  “They prob’ly wouldn’t gimme a table anyway, looking like this.” He glanced at me. “You hungry?”

  I wasn’t. I had nibbled on food at Mother’s party, before he got there. And while I’m almost six months pregnant and can pretty much always eat, I wouldn’t say I was hungry. My stomach felt too twisted for that.

  “Tired?”

  “I could lie down,” I said, since I’m pretty much always happy to get off my feet. Especially right now, since I had put on high heels with my fancy party dress, and my feet were screaming bloody murder.

  “You could show me how sorry you are.”

  I blinked. “I could do that.” If he wanted. And it seemed he did. “I thought you’d be angry.” And wouldn’t want anything to do with me. Not until I’d groveled considerably more than this.

  He shrugged. “I expected to get some blowback, showing up looking like that.”

  Yes, but surely he had expected better from his wife?

  He shrugged again when I said so. And didn’t respond. So maybe he hadn’t expected better from me.

  I wasn’t entirely sure how that made me feel. Happy, I guess, that he wasn’t as upset with me as I’d been afraid he was. But disappointed that he didn’t think more of me than that. Even if he’d been right not to expect more.

  My bottom lip started quivering.

  He got to his feet. “C’mon, darlin’. Let’s go upstairs.”

  “I feel bad,” I said, eyeing the hand he was holding out to me. “I don’t understand why you’re being nice to me.”

  The hand didn’t waver. “’Cause I love you.”

  “I was horrible to you.” My eyes filled with tears. Pregnancy hormones mixed with guilt.

  His voice didn’t change. “I love you anyway.”

  “I don’t deserve you,” I told him, as the tears spilled over and rolled down my cheeks.

  “That’s OK.” He reached out and put an arm around my shoulders. “C’mere.”

  He pulled me in, where I could rub my cheek against his shoulder and leak onto his shirt. His arms were warm and comforting around my body, and the scent of him was familiar, even if he looked different than I was used to. The beat of his heart was steady in my ear.

  “I’m a terrible wife,” I sniffed.

  “You can make it up to me upstairs.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Sure it is.” He moved toward the stairs. Perforce, I moved too, out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

  We’d done this once before, and by the time we got to the foyer, someone shot out the front window and we’d had to hit the floorboards. Our trip upstairs had been postponed until the police had arrived and taken statements, and until I had swept up the broken glass and Rafe had pasted a piece of cardboard over the shattered window.

  That didn’t happen this time. We made it through the foyer and up the stairs to the second floor with no interruptions, across the landing and into the bedroom.

  I hadn’t been home for over twenty-four hours, and Rafe obviously hadn’t bothered to make the bed when he rolled out of it this morning. That was a case of déjà vu, as well. When he’d brought me up here after the window incident last fall, the bed had been invitingly rumpled then too. And it had
n’t taken him long to get me into it.

  It didn’t this time, either.

  He pulled me into his arms and kissed me, and about thirty seconds later, my back hit the mattress.

  “Careful,” I managed when he followed me down.

  “I know.” He twisted, and ended up next to me instead of on top. “Don’t worry.” His hand smoothed over the roundness of my stomach before skimming south, over my hip toward the hem of the dress.

  Neither of us said a lot after that, or at least nothing very coherent. One thing led to another, as the saying goes, and when it was all said and done, I don’t think he was in any doubt that I still found him as attractive as ever, dreadlocks and gold teeth notwithstanding.

  I guess he’d needed that, maybe more than the verbal apology.

  Sometimes I can be really stupid.

  “Huh?”

  I glanced at him. “Nothing.” No need to spell out just how much of an idiot I am.

  And anyway, I’m sure he knew.

  He twisted the end of a strand of my hair around his finger. “I’m glad you came home tonight.”

  Me, too.

  “But tomorrow you’re gonna have to go back to Sweetwater.”

  “What? Why?”

  “’Cause I don’t want you staying here alone.”

  “Why would I be alone?”

  “I gotta be somewhere else for a couple days, until this is done.”

  I opened my mouth to ask why again, but closed it before I said anything. The answer was obvious. He couldn’t stay here because everyone in the neighborhood knew who he was and that he worked for the TBI. A few of them even knew he’d almost singlehandedly taken down the biggest South American Theft Gang in the Southeast last year. And that was something that probably shouldn’t get back to Jamal’s associates. If it did, they’d smell something off.

  And apart from that, if he was involving himself even on the periphery of a gang war, he wouldn’t want me anywhere near him. So he’d spend the next few days somewhere else, and he’d pack me off to Sweetwater, where I’d be safe.

  I wanted to argue, but I really couldn’t. It made sense.