Need? Three months ago Roberta wouldn’t even have had to ask.
“I’m sorry about all this, Roberta.” He winced at the inadequacy of the statement.
She crossed her arms, scuffed at the scarred floor with her shoe, then looked at him. “I know you are. I’m sorry, too. There are a lot of things I should have done differently.”
“You mean when we were married?”
She blinked. “No. I mean since you left.”
“I was wrong to do that, Roberta.” He snorted softly. “Oh, not because Cookie turned out to be...” He glanced at her. God, her eyes were so green. And clear. Not hidden and devious like Cookie’s. “Not because she was using me.”
Roberta said nothing. The low murmur of indistinguishable voices drifted through the glass in the sheriff’s door.
Warren dragged in a breath and plunged on. “I was searching for something. I thought seeing her again would get her out of my system, would allow me to put the past where it belonged.”
“You wanted her to tell you it wasn’t your fault. That she didn’t leave you because you were a bad guy. You wanted her to see what a success you’d made of your life, what a great guy you were. You never wanted closure, Warren.” She spoke with the wisdom of having looked death in the face. Or maybe she’d known that all along.
His eyes roved her face, familiar yet so foreign. “I wish you’d told me that.”
“I did, Warren. You just didn’t listen.”
She was right. “I’m sorry.”
She ran a finger down his cheek. “You’re tired. You need to get some rest.”
He wanted to ask her to come with him. Back home. To San Francisco. To their old life. But he was looking to her for the same thing he’d looked to Cookie. A solution to his problems. Someone to tell him he hadn’t fucked up as badly as he thought. He realized now that he had to find the elusive cure all on his own. “I made a mistake leaving you, Roberta. You’re a good woman. You gave me more than I ever deserved. And you deserved more from me than I ever gave.”
She stepped forward, wrapped her arms around him and held him close. Her warmth, her sweet fragrance, the feel of her in his arms undid him. He almost begged her to come back to him.
Then she stood firmly on her feet again, and the moment passed. “Thank you, Warren. I hope someday you find what you’re looking for. Are you going back to San Francisco?”
“No. I think I’ll stay here.”
“It’s going to be hard, after everything that’s happened. People might not want you to do their taxes.”
“I think maybe I’m tired of doing taxes. I’d like to look for something else.”
“What do you want to do?”
He sighed, tipped his head back and contemplated the florescent lights. Once, long ago, he’d wanted to build sport cars. And sometimes, working late into the night on his Healey, he’d dreamed about restoring cars for other people. “I’m not sure.”
“We both had the same problem, Warren, living a life we didn’t want. We just never knew what we really wanted.”
She put them together in the same boat. A gracious thing to do under the circumstances. “What about you, Roberta?”
She smiled. For the first time, he didn’t see a cloud behind it. “You know, I’ve discovered it doesn’t matter. Being a waitress isn’t so bad. But who knows?” She touched his arm. “I’ll be around if you need me.”
He didn’t ask about Nick Angel. He didn’t want to know.
* * * * *
“You okay?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” But Nick knew Brax was talking about Kent. Somehow, what Kent had done didn’t seem to matter anymore. His significance had faded. Even the rage that had gripped him had ratcheted down to mere disgust. “Bobbie’s alive. That’s all that’s important.”
“Bobbie’s alive, but a good man is dead,” Brax said, then sat silent in his ancient leather chair, his expression unreadable. He recrossed his booted feet on the desktop, and when he finally spoke, Kent and Jimbo were no longer the issue. “Think she’ll go back to her husband?”
Elbow on the filing cabinet, Nick shoved a hand through his hair. He didn’t have an answer to Brax’s question. Bobbie’s shadow played on the glass door. He wanted to yank it open, pick her up, and carry her home. His home.
“You can never tell with women,” he said.
“So, why didn’t you tell me about Cookie’s little story?”
“That Jimbo beat her?”
“Might have saved us a lot of trouble if you had.”
“I thought it was a bid for sympathy. I didn’t think she was going to use it as an excuse to kill her husband.”
“The story would have had a different ending if Warren Spivey had been another kind of man.”
“You mean if he’d had more spine?” He used Bobbie’s word.
“Less integrity, I was thinking.”
Nick gaped. “Integrity? He dumped his wife. He was having an affair.”
Brax raised one brow and left it at that.
Nick went on the defensive. “I never said I had a whole helluva lot of integrity either.”
“And that’s why I took Jimbo’s side.” The words lay between them.
Being pissed as hell at Brax made it easier to gloss over the fact that he had done a pretty goddamn scummy thing to Jimbo. He’d had all the excuses, that Cookie came on to him, that he hadn’t known she was Jimbo’s wife, that he’d thrown her out as soon as he’d learned. But, just as with Bobbie that first day in his yard, when Cookie approached him in the bar, he’d seen that telltale band of white skin, and he’d decided not to ask why she’d removed the ring. He hadn’t cared whether it was divorce, widowhood, or poaching. He’d only wanted to get laid. Christ.
“You were always the one that was right, Brax. That’s why you’ve always pissed me off.” Brax would see it for the apology it was. They wouldn’t talk about Mary Alice. That was done, too. “Thanks for backing me up tonight.”
“Couldn’t let you get yourself killed.” Brax toyed with a pen from the desk. “You shouldn’t have gone in there alone.”
The only thing he’d been thinking was that Bobbie would surely die if he didn’t. ”What would you have done?”
Brax didn’t need to answer. He’d have done exactly the same thing under equal circumstances. Instead he said, “You better treat her right, or you’ll have to deal with me.”
Nick would treat her better than anyone ever had. If he got the chance. She’d walked into his life such a short time ago, yet he felt he’d known her a lifetime. Facing death together speeded up the getting-to-know-you stage. He didn’t want to imagine his life without her, an inescapable truth he couldn’t put into words for Brax. He hid his emotion behind banter. “I don’t think she needs you to take care of her.”
“Nope. Probably not. She does a damn fine job of taking care of everyone, herself included.”
Nick glanced to the door. The shadows beyond it merged. Nick’s head started to pound. He forced his eyes back to Brax.
“Not just him,” Brax said with a nod of his head toward the door. “You, too. Heard the latest rumor?”
Nick shook his head, still trying to digest Brax’s comment.
“Seems she gave you an alibi for Tuesday night.”
“Tuesday night?” Jimbo had been killed on Monday. What the hell was Tuesday?
“Yeah. Tuesday. You know, that girl that disappeared up in Saskatoon County?”
“Hadn’t heard a thing about it.”
“Seems a few of our eloquent female citizens were looking at you as the culprit. Being the local serial killer and all.”
“Jesus.”
“But Bobbie got up there in front of God, Eugenia, Patsy, good old Marjorie Holmes, and the whole damn Hair Ball, and told them you were with her Tuesday night. All night.”
The air seemed to squeeze from his lungs.
“The story’s all over town,” Brax went on as if he couldn’t see the stun
ned effect his speech was having. “On the way back from Jimbo’s autopsy up in Red Cliff this afternoon”—he glanced down at his watch—“make that yesterday afternoon. I made a stop by the Saskatoon County Sheriff. Seems the little girl ran away from home. They found her in San Francisco.”
“So, that’s where you were when they took Bobbie.” Nick shuddered to think if Brax hadn’t come right back.
“Yeah.” Brax’s eyes glittered. “So, you’re off the hook in more ways than one. But mostly because of Bobbie.”
Bobbie, who’d told Eugenia she’d spent the night with the serial killer.
“Why would Bobbie do that?” He could only hope it was because...
Brax just looked at him. “Maybe you have your head up your ass where Bobbie Jones is concerned.” Brax stood, shook his pant legs down. “She’s not going back to him, you know.”
Nick didn’t say a thing.
“Are you in love with her?”
Before Nick could formulate a good answer, a knock rattled the glass. Bobbie stuck her head inside. “Can we go home now?”
Her husband stood in the hall behind her.
“I’ll need you in again tomorrow,” Brax answered, then glanced at the calendar on his desk. “Or today. How about I drop Spivey off? And you’ll have to go with Nick since we’ll need your car for a while longer. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to take you home.” He flicked a glance at Nick. “Since you live across the street.
Nick found he was holding his breath waiting for her answer.
“That sounds fine.” Then she looked at him and smiled.
Hell, yes, he was in love with her.
But who would she choose?
* * * * *
The engine rumbled through her for long moments after Nick shut off the car. Her body still hadn’t recovered from watching Kent English hold a gun on Nick. Bobbie wasn’t sure it ever would. She also didn’t know how long she could keep on faking that she was okay.
Something had to give way soon.
She closed her eyes, let the warm night air and the darkness gather round her in the close confines of the car. The faint scent of Nick’s remaining musky cologne teased her nostrils. She didn’t want to move. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.
“I’m over it.”
Sure he was. “He really didn’t deserve you.”
“But maybe I deserved him.”
She rolled her head on the seat to look at him. He was nothing more than a dark shape. Nick deserved a lot more than backstabbing, but she didn’t think he’d accept that fact no matter what she said. “Thank you for coming for me.”
“It was my fau—”
“Don’t say it”—she cut through his blame—“it was them. All them.”
She heard him swallow. “How are you feeling?” He spoke in a hushed tone befitting the near dawn hour.
“Fine,” she lied, hiding once more behind her closed lids. Her head still ached.
In those few moments with Warren, she knew she could have said the word and they’d have returned to their old life. But you couldn’t regain the past, whether it had been twenty years or three months.
Warren had left her searching for answers. He had yet to find them. She had yet to find her own. She only knew she didn’t want to be lonely anymore. If you were with a man, you darn well better not be lonely. Being by yourself was better.
She wondered if Nick could ease the loneliness. If he’d want to. The fear she’d experienced in Jimbo’s lodge lingered. What would she have done if she’d lost him? It didn’t seem possible that she could feel this way about a man she’d met only a few days ago.
“Did he beg your forgiveness and ask you to go back to San Francisco?”
A tightrope of tension stretched between them. She felt Nick’s eyes on her and seethed with the need to ask if he wanted her to stay here.
“It’s where you belong,” he said, slowly, as if searching for every word. “You were happy before all this shit went down.”
She hadn’t been happy in a long, long time.
She turned then, and looked at him. Nick faced the faded head-high wood fence as he spoke. “He’s probably regretting his midlife crisis.”
“It wasn’t a midlife crisis. He’s always been this way.” She hoped Warren could change that, but she wasn’t so sure.
Nick wrapped the fingers of one hand around the wheel. His knuckles stretched, whitened, then he eased his grip and stroked the leather cover.
Bobbie was suddenly sick to death of the little white lies she told everyone to make them feel comfortable, especially the ones she’d told herself. She was tired of choosing each word to keep the peace, making decisions based on what others wanted her to do. She’d left the biggest thing out of her confession to Nick. If Warren hadn’t left her, she would have gone on trying to make him want her until the day she died. Because starting over, possibly failing at anything, or everything, terrified her. That, not Warren, was the reason she’d never had children. That’s why she would have go on with her life the way it was if Warren had never found Cookie. It was easier to stick with what she had, what she knew. Familiarity was safety, even if she’d been drowning in loneliness.
She hated that weak woman. Roberta. What she craved was Bobbie, the woman who stood up in The Hair Ball and told the truth no one wanted to hear. The woman who wouldn’t tread lightly with Nick.
She sat up, her head swimming with the movement. Swallow it, I’m busy. The thought gave her courage. “I don’t want to go back to Warren. I don’t want to be an accountant. I’m staying here. In Cottonmouth. I belong here.”
Nick rubbed his hands on his pant legs.
“I’m going to open a coffee shop, like Starbucks, but better.” The idea had always been there, but fear stood in her way. Now she let her dreams blossom. “Mine will be different. I’m going to rent out classic movies, too, just classics, so everyone can enjoy them the way I do. And I’ve got all sorts of ideas for how everyone in Cottonmouth can steal back all the business from that darn old minimall. We’ll make Cottonmouth special again, with a hometown feel those big chains can’t offer.”
Her excitement mounted, and the nausea receded.
She stuck her neck out further. “And you wanna know something else?” She didn’t care if he didn’t, she’d tell him anyway. “I belong with you.”
“I...” His profile rigid, he put both hands on the wheel this time. “I was going to remind you that you’ve only known me a week.” He laid his head on his hands and looked at her. “But fuck the week. I know what I want. I knew it when I got that note and thought you were going to die. You belong with me.”
“What about Mary Alice?”
“Who?” His eyes dropped. He knew exactly who.
Bobbie’s stomach plunged. But she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut about it. She couldn’t, not after Warren and Cookie. Not after spending fifteen years feeling like she was treading on burning coals, hopping around Warren’s feelings as if they had the power to scorch her soles or her very soul.
“You were in love with her in high school.”
“Oh.” He rolled his eyes. “That Mary Alice. I wasn’t in love with her. I had a crush on her. That’s a long time ago.”
“I shouldn’t have to remind you that Cookie was a long time ago, too. But that didn’t matter to Warren.”
“You’re right.” His gaze caressed her face. “I’m sorry. For me, it was a long time ago. And it did end.”
“Did you get her pregnant and make her have an abortion?” She held her breath.
He let his breath out with a whoosh. “You’re the only one I’ll answer that question for. No, I didn’t get her pregnant. I don’t know who got her pregnant. At the time, I thought it was Brax. But twenty years have shown me I was probably wrong about that. She wanted to get an abortion. I gave her the money. I didn’t have any right to tell her she shouldn’t do it. So I went with her.”
“But everyone found out anyway. And they
thought it was you. Why didn’t you tell them?”
“If I’d made it clear I wasn’t the one, her parents never would have left her alone about who the father was. It was just easier for her that way. And I didn’t care what they thought.”
But he had cared. And that had been the beginning of his fuck-you attitude that Brax talked about. He’d wanted them to believe he wouldn’t have done that to Mary Alice.
But no one had.
She cupped his chin. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You just wanted to make sure it wasn’t Warren all over again.”
God, he actually understood. “I don’t want to live with ghosts anymore.”
He turned his lips into her hand and kissed her palm. “No ghosts, I swear.”
She wriggled across the seat, leaned over the gear shift. “Do you really think it’s possible to fall in love in a week?”
“Yeah. I do.” He stroked a hand down her cheek to the crook of her neck and let it rest there. “I have never felt this way about any other woman. Tonight, I would have done anything to save you. And when I thought I might not be able to—”
She put her fingertips to his lips, then closed her eyes until she’d stuffed down the memory of that gun poised to shoot him. “I don’t want to think about that anymore.”
His fingers twitched at her throat. “Marry me, Bobbie.”
She thought of all the things that stood in the way. Not the least of which was a healthy dose of fear about making a mistake. Again. She stuffed the fear down, too, and simply enumerated the problems. She refused to ignore them this time.
“I think I’m past the stage of wanting to have children.”
Nick caressed her shoulder. “I’d probably end up raising serial killers, so it’s better that way.”
“I’m forty.”
“I like older women.”
“I’m not divorced yet.”
“You will be.” The corner of his mouth rose with a surety she knew he hadn’t felt until that moment. “Any more objections?”
She’d hit all the highlights, though there must be a million more. All of them fear-based. Roberta Jones Spivey had made all her life decisions based on fear. And they hadn’t turned out worth a darn. Why not, just this once, make a decision based on gut instinct?
She's Gotta Be Mine (A sexy, funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 1) (Cottonmouth Series) Page 29
