by Rachel Lee
No one in the house. Maybe she could arrange to be in bed before her dad got home. Then she got mad at herself for wanting to avoid him. Darn it, she was a grown woman now. She had nothing to fear from that man that couldn’t be settled by packing her bags and living somewhere else.
And now with a job at the library, she could probably afford to rent a room somewhere. Real freedom.
But freedom had lost some of its appeal following the attack.
The phone rang, almost as if someone had seen her come home. It had to be her dad, she thought, and unfortunately she was proved right.
“Where you been, girl? I been looking for you all day! I needed you here.”
“I’m not well enough to work there. I visited a friend, and then I got a job at the library.”
“How can you work at the library if you can’t work here? Don’t make no sense.”
“I can work there sitting down, and at my own pace.” Nora felt her spine stiffening. “Dad, I’m still sick. So I took a job I can handle. Live with it.”
He started demanding to know who she had visited, but she hung up before he finished the question.
She had to get out of this house. Had to. It was like being sixteen again, dependent, questioned about every little thing, criticized if she didn’t do exactly the right thing...or at least the thing that Fred Loftis wanted.
No independent thinking or action had ever been tolerated in this house.
Sitting at the table, she ignored the phone when it started ringing again, sure her father wanted to holler at her for being rude, and tried to decide what to do.
She couldn’t go back to living under her father’s thumb again. It had seemed better than staying in Minneapolis until the trial, but now that she was here, she wondered if she shouldn’t have stuck it out.
Fear was driving her entirely too much. Somehow she had to get a handle on it. Yes, it would take time to get her strength back, but that didn’t mean she had to be browbeaten by Fred Loftis.
No, she had to find another way. Once again the phone rang, and once again she ignored it.
* * *
Jake was going nuts. Nora wasn’t answering the phone. He knew Loftis was still at the pharmacy until he closed up around nine. So where the hell was Nora?
Sleeping, he told himself. He’d seen how weak she still was, so she was probably sleeping. Or maybe she’d gone out for a walk. He drove up and down the streets in his cruiser, hoping for a sight of her, but the length and chill of the approaching winter’s nights had cut down on pedestrian traffic except right on Main Street.
He waited another twenty minutes, then called again. Still no answer. Enough was enough. Three unanswered calls when she was home alone. At least he thought she was. She could have gone to visit someone.
But he couldn’t let it go. He drove over to the Loftis house, determined to settle his mind, paramount after what Gage had told him today. There was surely no real reason to think the Langdon creep would or could follow her here, but as long as there was even a remote possibility, it seemed he wasn’t going to rest easy.
With the streets so quiet with the deepening chill at night, it would be a perfect time for someone to slip unnoticed into town. Few enough folks were out without purpose right now, unlike summer, when everyone seemed to be out and about on the long evenings.
He parked in front of her house and called her again. Still no answer, but he could see that a lot of lights were on. Concern crawled along his nerve endings, propelling him out of the car and up to her door. He was in uniform, and he had already gathered she had a problem with that, but too bad. All she had to do was open the door and then he could rest easy.
It seemed to take forever after he knocked before at last a curtain twitched. Then the door opened and Nora stood before him. She almost looked as if she had been crying.
“Why don’t you just leave me alone?” she asked.
That smarted after the progress he had thought they’d made that day. “I was worried when you didn’t answer the phone.”
“That was you? I thought it was my dad again.” She hesitated, biting her lip. “Jake, you don’t owe me a damn thing. I feel bad about the position I put you in about the prom. I get that you probably feel bad, too. So...” She trailed off. “I can’t ask you in.”
“Why?”
“Dad.”
She spoke the word with enough bitterness that he didn’t need much explanation. “House rules?”
“Plenty.”
“Dammit, Nora, you’re grown up.”
“Tell me about it. First of all, I’m not feeling very grown up at the moment, and second, I’m living under his roof. At least for now.”
He paused, seeking a way around old impasses and new ones. He wasn’t quite sure why it was so important to him, except possibly that he still felt guilty. But then he remembered something else.
“Get your jacket. If you can stand five minutes in my patrol car, we’re going to go somewhere and talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“Anything. Everything. Twelve years ago or earlier this afternoon.”
She bit her lip. “Jake, what’s going on?”
“Maybe I give a damn. Someone should. Will you get your jacket?”
Her hesitation was so palpable he almost turned away, but then she stunned him by saying, “All right.”
Why that relieved him so much he couldn’t have said. Yes, the incident all those years ago still had the power to keep him awake with shame some nights, but it was something else. Something about remembering Nora at eighteen, prettier than she had probably ever imagined, so vulnerable and so innocent and reaching for something so ordinary and normal that her entire life had denied her.
Maybe it was that image, overlaid by the shrunken, frightened woman some lunatic had turned her into, that was getting to him.
Something sure as hell was, and it wasn’t only today’s unpleasant news.
When he’d gone to pick her up in Denver, he’d done so out of a sense of old debt. A small way to make up for the hurt he’d inflicted so long ago. But now...now he wasn’t so sure. He’d felt protective of her during their youth, but he’d been raised that way. Now he was feeling protective again, and the reason behind it was totally different. Even he was self-aware enough to realize that.
This wasn’t just something he was doing because it was right. At that moment, he wondered if it really had ever been that simple.
She took only a moment to get her jacket, then stepped out into the chilling night and locked the door. As she turned, he saw her breath like a puff of steam on the night air. That cold already?
She hesitated again as she looked at the police car.
“Is it about being arrested?”
“Partly. I was stunned. Completely stunned by that.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen here, I promise you. I’m astonished it happened in the first place. Some idiot wasn’t doing his job right.”
He opened the door for her, careful not to touch her, and was relieved when she made it inside.
Maude’s, he decided. There’d be enough people around to make her feel like she wasn’t alone with him, but not so many at this hour to cause her other problems, like the feeling she was being stared at or whispered about. In fact, after her unusual reception by Maude yesterday, he suspected that Maude herself would step in if anyone was rude.
He switched on the ignition and turned up the heat a bit. She didn’t have enough meat on her to keep warm, he figured. He’d save her some energy.
“What did you mean about it only being part of your problem that you were arrested?”
He waited, and finally she said quietly, “I don’t talk about it, but I’m extremely sensitive to odors. They’re evocative to me. I can smell sweat, fear, anger and alcohol in this car.”
“Ouch. I guess I need to get it thoroughly cleaned.” Then he said, “So that’s why you mentioned that cologne I used to wear.”
“Yes.�
� She paused. “You smelled better when you forgot it.”
“I forgot it as often as I could.”
A tiny laugh escaped her. “I noticed. I probably wouldn’t have, except I’m so sensitive to that stuff.”
“How do you stand crowds?”
“I got used to it, the constant swirling of all kinds of smells. You have to get used to things, start tuning them out. I do, most of the time. But this car smells exactly like the police car that took me away. Except I smelled more gun oil in the Minneapolis car. Like it had gotten smeared on something besides the officer’s pistol.”
“Maybe he had just cleaned his weapon.”
“Maybe.”
Maude’s proved to be nearly empty, and soon they were faced with coffee.
“I need to eat,” Nora said shyly. “I’m supposed to eat six times a day until my appetite improves. But I can’t eat much at once.” Mainly because they’d had to sew her stomach back together, along with a few other parts.
“Anything that looks good,” Jake said, passing her the menu. “My treat.”
“That’s not necessary. I got a job today.”
“Still my treat. I asked you out. So tell me about the job? And please tell me it’s not with your father.”
“I don’t think I’m up to that kind of work yet.” She looked away for a few seconds, staring at the black window glass, beyond which the lighted street was dimly visible. “I don’t talk about it that much, Jake. I don’t. But I needed seven operations. I’m a mess of scars. And it’ll be a few months or so before I get my strength back. So I can’t stock shelves or stand at a cash register at the pharmacy.”
He nodded. “So what are you doing?”
“Miss Emma offered me a job. I guess I’m an archivist. I stopped by today, because the library was one of my favorite places. Always. And the next thing I knew she put me to work on the county history, cataloging all the stuff people have donated.” She turned her face back to him. “It’s fascinating, and I don’t have to work any more or any faster than I can.”
“Well, that’s great!” He wondered if Gage had talked to Emma about that or if it had been Emma’s idea. Not that it really mattered.
“My dad won’t think so,” she said. But she closed the subject by picking up the menu. “Something not too heavy,” she murmured.
“In this place? Good luck.”
That caused another smile to dance across her face, and he was happy to see it. She finally settled on half a steak sandwich. Maude objected.
“Girl, you got to eat more than that!”
“I can’t, Maude, I’m sorry. Right now I just couldn’t. I’ll be lucky to eat even half a one. Don’t take it as an insult.”
Maude put her hands on her hips. A stocky woman, she could be quite imposing. Jake tensed for the typical confrontation, but it never came.
“All right,” Maude said finally. “We’ll get you fattened up eventually.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Just as long as you ain’t being one of them girls that wants to look like a boy.”
“Just recovering. Little by little.”
Maude nodded, took Jake’s order then stomped back to her kitchen. At this time of night, she did everything from waiting the tables to cooking. Or one of her daughters did—both of them were Maude clones.
“God, she’s mellowing,” Jake remarked with a half smile. “For you anyway. I wondered if it would ever happen.”
Nora surprised him with one of those smiles he remembered from high school. It was almost shy, and yet it lit up her entire face. For an instant it was possible to see the woman she had been becoming, not the one shrunken by horror and hardship. His chest tightened unexpectedly.
Opportunities lost and wasted. He’d had plenty of time to reflect on them, especially after his marriage fell apart. With a sense of surprise, he wondered if Nora had been one of those missed opportunities. He sure as hell knew he regretted the way he had treated her that last time.
God, he’d thrown everything but the kitchen sink at her, and there she’d been, as vulnerable as a girl could possibly be. What the hell had he been thinking?
He’d been asking himself that for a long time. He knew she was attracted to him, but a lot of girls had been attracted to him in high school. He’d been one of the lucky guys that way. He hadn’t paid it much attention once his own interest had settled on Beth. And he’d totally forgotten about it two years after graduation, when he’d been working to save up for an engagement ring so he could ask Beth to marry him.
Twenty years old, focused on one goal apart from working the ranch, and then a very vulnerable young woman had asked him to take her to the prom. All she wanted was to go to a prom. And she’d even felt herself so unwanted that she had offered to have sex with him as an inducement.
God, it killed him to think she had valued herself so poorly, and then he had added to it by blowing up at her and throwing out all those insults she had heard growing up, and a few more besides.
What the hell had been going on in his mind?
Maude slammed their plates down in front of them, Nora’s meal a half sandwich as promised, although Maude had included fries and a salad. Trying to fatten her.
Jake looked down at his plate and tried to pull himself out of memory. Either that or pull out an answer for his behavior. Not that he’d managed yet.
“Are you all right?” Nora asked.
He looked up, realizing he’d been ignoring her. “I’m fine. Just thinking about something. Let’s eat.” He offered a smile and picked up his burger, biting into it as an excuse for continued silence.
The question of why he had reacted so unkindly to Nora seemed to be taking center stage in his mind. He needed a moment to put it off and find safer territory to discuss. But danged if he knew what that was. He couldn’t bring up her attack, or much of what happened. He couldn’t discuss the past. What did that leave? He hardly knew her now. Then a thought occurred to him.
“Do you ever think you’ll go back to counseling?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. She was picking at her sandwich, taking tiny nibbles interspersed with an occasional small mouthful of salad. “I’ve got my own head to sort out first.”
“Are you getting counseling to help with this?”
“I did, briefly, but when I was asked to resign, I lost my insurance. But I know all the techniques. I should be able to put them into practice.”
He nodded, and didn’t mention that there was a reason most doctors didn’t treat themselves. “And your dad. He hasn’t changed much from what I can see. Has he?”
“Not a bit. I’m going to have to get out of there.” She frowned faintly. “He’s going to be mad that I got a job. He was trying to get hold of me all day because he needed me at the pharmacy. It makes me wonder if that’s the only reason he told me to come home.”
He was wondering about that himself, and his conclusions weren’t any prettier than hers. Even so, he still had questions. “Why did he ask you to come here?”
“He said it was the least a father could do. I’m getting the feeling that didn’t come from the heart but rather because of how it would look. Not that I really expected otherwise.” She sighed. “I was panicking, Jake. That guy had called me again. I’m not sure if I was foolish enough to hope that Dad gave a damn, or if I just needed to get the hell out of there.”
He shook his head a little. “You’d be a very unusual daughter if you didn’t cherish some small hope. Well, I can see why you didn’t want to stay in Minneapolis, but wasn’t there somewhere else?”
“Not immediately. I needed to get out of there. And I was foolish enough to seize on his offer like a lifeline.”
He nodded and took another bite of his burger. “Understandable,” he said after he swallowed. “You haven’t seen him in a long time, have you?”
“Not since my mother’s funeral.”
“He could have changed.”
Nora’s mo
uth traced a bitterly humorous curve. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“It must have been hard growing up with him. Harder than any of us guessed.”
“Let’s just say his public face isn’t as harsh as his private one.”
Jake swore silently, beginning to imagine the full extent of her childhood. Ugly clothes, ugly glasses, scoliosis, merciless classmates and a father even more merciless. Now this. He didn’t often think of life in terms of fairness, but Nora had certainly met more than her share of unfairness.
Her eyes averted a little and he studied her, thinking that she looked almost ethereal right now, a mere wisp of a woman who had been on her way to beauty but now looked as if she might blow away in a strong wind. Her face, however, was already less pinched than when he had picked her up in Denver. Maybe getting that job today had been the best possible thing for her.
“So what hours are you working?” he asked. “Because I promised Daisy you’d be back for another ride.”
Her head turned toward him, her eyebrows lifting. “You promised Daisy?”
“Of course. She liked you.”
He was delighted when she giggled. “I’m sure she hardly noticed me.”
“On the contrary, she noticed you a lot. Horses are very sensitive creatures. It’s been a while since a woman has ridden her, and she always preferred my mother over every other rider. You filled a gap for her.”
Nora looked as if she didn’t quite believe it, but was at least considering it. “Miss Emma told me to work whatever hours I like. She was awfully kind about it.”
Why wouldn’t she be? Jake thought. Emmaline Conard Dalton had been through this particular hell herself, and was probably better equipped than anyone in this town to help Nora. In fact, he ought to try to talk to her himself to see if there were any guidelines he should follow, anything he should avoid like the plague. This was like walking on eggshells he couldn’t see.
Finally he decided to take the bull by the horns, at least a bit. For a fact, they were never going to get even so far as friendship if they couldn’t discuss important things.
