“And that’s when you told me how you felt about me,” Meredith said.
“I thought you’d understand, that I was your destiny, that I was the man you were supposed to be with forever, but you didn’t understand.” It was obvious he was getting agitated. He began to pace in front of the doorway, his hand touching the butt of his gun.
Meredith’s heart jumped into her throat. Had she played the game too hard? Had she pushed him into remembering something that might cause her harm?
He stopped pacing and stared at her with accusation. “You laughed at me. You laughed and said I was being foolish, that you were Red’s destiny and you would be with him through eternity. I just wanted you to shut up. I didn’t want to hear it so I grabbed you and you screamed. Why did you scream?” His face grew red as he grabbed hold of the bars. “Why in the hell did you scream?”
She didn’t answer, but rather remained perfectly still, afraid that by doing anything, by saying anything she’d push him over the edge.
He raked a hand through his thinning gray hair and drew a deep, audible breath. “Fate has given me a second chance. You’re here with me now and I’m never going to let you go. You are my destiny.”
She decided to risk it. She moved closer to the bars. “Jim, why don’t you open the door so we can talk face-to-face instead of with these bars between us.” If she could just get him to open the door she’d at least have a fighting chance.
A shrewd light shone from his eyes. “Do you think I’m a fool? I know it’s going to take time for you to fully understand that we belong together. I have all the time in the world. Nobody will ever find us here. Eventually I’ll open the door, but we have years together.”
With these words he turned and left, leaving behind a cold wind of desolation blowing through her. She returned to the bed and sat, fighting a feeling of hopelessness, of helplessness.
We have years together.
She tried to imagine being here in this room for one year…two years…ten years. She’d go mad. Eventually she’d break. Somehow, someway she had to get out of here.
A deep sob welled up inside her and tears seeped down her cheeks. At that moment all hell broke loose. She jumped off the bed as it sounded as if the house was coming down.
She heard a shout. A wonderfully familiar voice. “Chase! I’m in here!” She ran to the bars and clung to them, trying to see what was happening.
A shot rang out followed by a deep silence. Her heart seemed to stop beating. Then Chase was in front of her, fumbling with a set of keys to unlock the door. As the door opened she fell into his arms, sobbing his name over and over again.
It took her a moment to realize he was crying, too. He clung to her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. “Thank God,” he murmured. “Thank God you’re all right.”
“How did you find me?” she asked as she molded herself to him.
“It’s a long story.” He kissed her lips, her cheeks and her forehead, then finally released her. “Come on, let’s get you the hell out of here.” He took her by the hand, turned to leave and fell unconscious to the floor.
Meredith sat in the chair next to the hospital bed where Chase lay asleep. She no longer wore the blue dress but rather had on her comfortable pair of jeans and one of her flannel shirts.
It had been three hours ago that Chase and her brothers had stormed the fishing cabin where Sheriff Ramsey had taken her.
She’d gotten the story in bits and pieces on the way to the hospital, how they had frantically searched the town. How they had finally realized Ramsey might be responsible. After going to his house and not finding her there, they had checked property records and discovered that Ramsey owned the cabin forty miles outside of Cotter Creek.
Ramsey would live to spend the rest of his life in prison. It had been Red who had shot him in the leg and Chase who had tackled him to the floor, further ripping his wound in the process. After twenty-five years the mystery of her mother’s murder was finally solved.
“You looked unbelievable in that blue dress, but flannel suits you better.”
She leaned forward as his eyes opened and he smiled at her. “Chase.” His name trembled out of her as she reached for his hand.
His smile faded and his gaze held hers intently as his fingers squeezed hers. “Did he hurt you, Meredith?”
“No, no, he didn’t hurt me. He didn’t touch me at all,” she assured him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, relief relaxing his features. “I was so afraid we wouldn’t find you.” He looked at her again. “I was so afraid we’d be too late.”
“He thought I was my mother. He thought he was getting a second chance to spend eternity with her. He was sick, he thought he was in love with her, but what he felt had nothing to do with love.”
He closed his eyes again and was silent for so long she thought he’d fallen asleep. His hand still held hers, and the warmth of his touch wound a band of heat around her heart.
He’d saved her life. He was her hero. But more, he was the man who had made her believe in herself as a woman. He was who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, the man she loved as she knew she’d love no other. And all too soon he was going to walk out of her life without a backward glance.
He looked at her then, as if he had picked up her thoughts out of the air. His gorgeous blue eyes stared at her for a long moment. “I thought I’d lost you. Those were the longest hours in my life, when I couldn’t find you.”
“I was afraid nobody would ever find me again,” she said.
“For a smart man, Ramsey was stupid. That cabin was in his name. He should have known eventually we’d find it.”
“I think he had every intention of acting normal, returning each day to Cotter Creek and playing sheriff until his retirement. He never intended for any suspicion to fall on him.”
“Thank God for Sam Rhenquist,” Chase said. “Thank God he’s as nosy as a bad neighbor and saw you go into the sheriff’s office but never saw you leave.”
“And thank goodness you’re going to live to fight another day,” she replied. She moved to pull her hand from his, finding even that simple connection too painful to endure, but he tightened his grip and held fast.
“I’ve been thinking. I learned about abusive love from my dad. Now I’ve learned about obsessive love from Ramsey. I’m thinking maybe it’s time I let myself know about good, healthy love.”
She stared at him wordlessly, her heart stepping up its rhythm. She wasn’t sure exactly what he meant and she was so afraid of jumping to conclusions.
“You were right when you told me I’m not my father. As filled with rage as I was when we burst through the door to Ramsey’s cabin, I didn’t kill him. When I wrestled him to the floor to get his gun away from him, I didn’t beat him to death. I don’t remember ever in my life being as angry as I was then. In the important things, I’m not my father’s son.”
“So now that you realize that, do you intend to do anything about it?” Her heart thundered in her chest as she waited for his reply.
He smiled then, that gorgeous sexy grin that made her want to laugh and weep at the same time. “I definitely intend to do something about it. There’s this woman I’m in love with. She’s bright, she’s beautiful and she’s more of a real woman than any I’ve ever met. I’m hoping she’d consider marrying me and going to Kansas City with me.”
For a moment her heart was so full she couldn’t speak. She finally found her voice and smiled. “I can be packed and ready to go in fifteen minutes. After all, I only have some jeans and flannel shirts and three pairs of shoes to pack.”
He pulled her up from her chair then, up and into the hospital bed next to him. “You wouldn’t mind leaving your family to come with me? We could visit as often as you want. I’d never want to keep you from your family.”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “My mother left behind everything she knew to come here with my father. I like to think that if she hadn’t been killed they
would have lived out their dream, a life filled with love and passion and family. I want all that with you, Chase. I want to show you how good love can be, I want you to finally know the joy of love, real love.”
He leaned forward and captured her mouth with his in a tender kiss. She was careful not to get too close to him to hurt him, aware that he was healing from the exertion that had opened up his wound again.
Still even a soft, sweet kiss from him had the ability to make her toes tingle, to flutter warmth into her heart. It was she who ended the kiss, not wanting to get anything started that they couldn’t finish.
He grinned at her, that familiar sexy smile that thrilled her. “Can we talk about sex now?”
She laughed. “You have a hole in your side, you’re in a hospital bed and you want to talk about sex? You’re such a man, Chase.”
Love poured from his eyes. “And you’re quite a woman, Meredith West. My woman.”
Her heart swelled with happiness, and she knew that somewhere Elizabeth West was smiling because she knew her only daughter had found the special kind of love that lasted a lifetime.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0141-9
SAFETY IN NUMBERS
Copyright © 2007 by Carla Bracale
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