by Dana Nussio
“Am I right? Or had you been planning a career in law enforcement since you played cops and robbers as a kid?”
“You’re right. I did decide to enter law enforcement...after. But not immediately after. I spent most of that time in an alcohol-induced stupor, though before Mark died I didn’t drink.”
“You were mourning. And angry. And acting out.”
“My parents must have thought so, too. I was getting ready to graduate, and they forced me to delay college for a year, while I worked through intense grief counseling.”
“Looks like you made it through okay.”
“I guess. It was during that time I decided to study criminal justice instead of engineering. I also had this idea of starting an organization to help troubled kids like Mark. That idea hasn’t gotten off the ground yet, but I hope I’ll be able to do it someday.”
“You will.”
Jamie could only stare at her. She barely knew him, and yet she seemed to believe in him without any proof. Did he even believe that much in himself?
Sarah wasn’t looking at him when she spoke again, but she was smiling. “Yep, it all makes sense now. I think Mark would be proud of you.”
Would he? A knot formed in Jamie’s throat, and his eyes burned. He hadn’t let anyone see him cry in years, and yet he was tempted to release his stranglehold on his emotions right in front of her. That was enough to propel him from his seat, though he pretended he was only taking a closer look at Aiden, who waved from the bouncing bridge. Jamie couldn’t allow himself to be that vulnerable, and he couldn’t let anyone get close to him. He would never risk losing someone he cared about again.
“Ever thought you might have missed your calling as a psychologist?” He looked back at her from over his shoulder. “I feel like I should lie down on your couch or something.”
“You’ve met my son. Do you really think you’d get to lie back on my couch and tell me all your problems?”
Images of other, much more pleasant activities he could share with her on a sofa sneaked into his thoughts then, shaming him. How could he go from sharing his deepest secrets about Mark with her one minute to imagining her smooth skin, soft feminine curves, and hair that would feel like silk beneath his cherishing hands, the next?
Even if this was Sarah, and these images were vanilla ice cream compared to the crème brûlée of his usual fantasies about her, there still was no excuse. Those private daydreams had been almost acceptable when she was out of his reach, not sitting next to him on a bench, close enough that he could brush her arm if he found the guts to do it. Aneled if he stretched to reach her over the food pile. She hadn’t given any signals that she would welcome his touch, either. So why did he get the sense that her touch might heal his wounds, and his might salve hers, as well?
“Now you’ve heard my sad story,” he began. “I was hoping that maybe you would tell me yours.”
“I suppose I could—”
He could only guess what she’d been about to say, as she cut off her words and jerked her head to watch Aiden racing toward them from the playground. Oddly, she shifted away from Jamie as if caught doing something she shouldn’t have been.
He gripped the edge of the bench, trying not to show his frustration. He’d practically gutted himself to get Sarah to trust him enough to speak, and she still hadn’t shared a single thing with him. Now the opportunity to learn anything about her had passed. His heart sank with the realization that he might have missed his only opportunity to truly know Sarah Cline.
Chapter 7
“Aiden, stop!”
Sarah leaped up from the bench and reached out to catch her son’s arm before he could launch himself at Jamie just like he had the other day at the diner. But the child had too much momentum going to even slow. As her hands came up empty, Sarah regretted feeling relieved that Aiden had chosen this moment to show up and interrupt their conversation. It was too risky for her to even thinking about sharing those things in the first place.
At least this time Jamie caught Aiden in his arms.
“Whoa, buddy. What’s the rush?” He lowered the boy to the ground.
“I’m hungry.”
Jamie grinned. “You said that earlier. Then you went off to play, and we wondered if you’d ever come back.”
Aiden wasn’t listening, as he’d already caught sight of junk food on the bench.
“Snacks,” he called out with glee, and then turned to Sarah. “Mom, can I have some? Please!”
“Yes, but just for today,” she said, as she sat again.
“Can I have two?”
“You can even have three, if your mom says it’s okay,” Jamie said.
Her son looked to her for confirmation. When she nodded, he came to her for a hug. “Thanks, Mom.”
As soon as Sarah released him, he plowed through the pile, choosing a package of snack cakes and two bags of chips. He wisely skipped one of the remaining sandwiches.
Once Aiden sat on the end of the bench near Jamie and ripped open the first package, Sarah started scooping up the leftovers.
“Let’s get rid of these, so none of us are tempted to have more.”
Sarah lifted Jamie’s backpack and shoveled the tiny bags inside. When she reached the sandwiches, she paused and looked to Jamie, who shook his head.
“Doubt those will get better with age.”
“Probably not.”
He dumped them in the trash can near the playground entrance. By the time he returned, she was zipping the final compartment closed. She left the wet wipes out for Aiden to use when he was finished.
She rested the backpack on the ground. “I need to get those things out of sight. If I keep eating them, my waitress uniform’s going to stop fitting.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. If there’s someone who can make even a pink dress with an apron look fantastic...”
Jamie stopped himself and looked away. Sarah shot a glance at Aiden, who was blessedly oblivious, before turning back to Jamie, whose neck was ruddier than it had been, even from the chilly breeze. He clearly regretted saying those words, but she wasn’t as sorry as she should have been to hear them. In fact, tingles spread over her arms and the tops of her thighs.
What was wrong with her? First, that tiny brush of his hand, which still made her tummy feel weightless when she thought about it, and now this? Over the past few years, she’d forgotten she even had hormones, and she couldn’t afford for them to peek their ugly faces out today. Not with him.
Because her cheeks burned, and she couldn’t look at Jamie, she peeked at Aiden, who was busy shoving the chocolate snack cake in his mouth.
“I don’t know why Ted and the other owner swear by those silly uniforms,” she said, to fill the awkward silence and let Jamie off the hook at the same time. “They’re like wearing a starched pink tent.”
“I feel like that about my dress uniform, though it’s blue instead of pink and all straight instead of tent-like.”
“So, in other words, it’s completely different.” She hated that she could imagine him in one of those crisp blue state police uniforms and that the word fantastic easily came to mind. Since when had she started to find men in uniform attractive?
“Well. Yeah,” he said with a low chuckle.
This time when he smiled at her, she felt it all the way to her toes. Where earlier they’d been sitting in companionable silence with their junk food buffer, now there was a sudden intimacy between them and no barrier to ease it. She needed to scoot farther from him, or at least put Aiden between them, but she found those were the last things she wanted to do.
Jamie did it instead, clearing his throat and sliding closer to Aiden. He ruffled the boy’s already messy hair. “Guess I should be getting the two of you home.”
Aiden’s expression turned from contentment to agony in a nanosecond. “No. Not
yet. Please! We still need to see the, uh...the sloths.” He grinned as he finally came up with an animal they hadn’t visited that day.
Jamie shook his head as he stood and zipped his jacket. “We can see the, uh...sloths the next time.”
“Next time? When?” He was bouncing again as he gripped his hero’s hand.
Jamie turned to Sarah for support, and she held her hands wide, but couldn’t stop the grin pulling at her lips.
“Haven’t you learned yet not to make empty promises to a kid?”
“Oh. It wasn’t empty.”
“What do you mean?” The guess already playing in her thoughts had shivers shimmying up her spine.
“We can come again. If it’s okay with you. I know I want to.”
He’d been looking down at Aiden, who still clung to his hand, but as Sarah came to stand on his opposite side, he turned her way. His gaze was warm without being intimidating. He continued to watch her, and she was surprised to find that she didn’t want to look away, either.
“I know some people go away, but I’m a stick-around kind of guy. I stay. I can be a good friend, too.” Then he gave a firm nod. “I’ll be here if you...if either of you...need me.”
Michael slammed his fist on the tabletop so hard that the teenager with blue-striped hair and cutoff straws in her ears gaped at him from behind that shrieking espresso machine.
“Damn technology,” he said with a shrug.
“Don’t I know it. The Wi-Fi’s been messing up all day.”
No matter what she’d said, the barista didn’t know the half of it. Even with the old tablet Larry had lent him, the one with a faulty on/off button and an allergy to the internet half the time, Michael hadn’t found a bit of usable information on Maria’s whereabouts. Even when he’d managed to get past his own technical ineptitude, he hadn’t been able to come up with anything more than a few websites for personal records and criminal background checks. Those charged tidy fees, all requiring credit cards, which he no longer had to because of them.
If his so-called friends had been doing their jobs and using their extensive resources to locate Maria, he wouldn’t have to be there on a Saturday, wasting money he didn’t have on overpriced cups of coffee just to get the free Wi-Fi. His other contacts on the outside, the ones Larry and Clint didn’t know about, hadn’t done any better.
Between the hours he would squander at the corrugated cardboard plant, where ex-cons worked for slave wages, and the concrete barriers he’d already smacked into on the information superhighway, he was never going to find her.
Or his son.
Or his money.
Not necessarily in that order.
If only he’d listened when Maria had talked about her parents. They’d banished her from their country club lives the minute she’d chosen him over them. Sure, her dad was dead now, but had her mom opened her arms and wallet to Maria once she’d pulled her vanishing act? She had produced a grandchild, after all. He bristled at the thought of that woman cooing to his kid. She had no right. Andy was his.
Just like Maria was.
“So, whatcha looking for online?”
Michael startled, shocked that Striped Hair had slipped around the counter to stand behind his shoulder without his notice. If he’d lost his edge like that when he was still on the inside, he would have ended up as an inmate’s plaything or with a shiv in his back.
“Because I might be able to help,” she continued. “Generation Z and all.”
Her smile promised that she would help him out, all right, no matter what generation she was part of. He took a moment to admire all that high, tight ripeness. He was already well aware that tapping some of that jailbait could take the edge off. He’d had his share of offers—and mutually satisfying deals—during his gig visiting high schools. Right now, though, the kid wasn’t worth the headache. Or the risk.
“Thanks. But I’ve got it.”
“Whatever. Just like my parents. Too proud to admit they don’t know something.”
She rolled her eyes and swished away to let him know that what he’d missed had nothing to do with helping an old fart with technology. He shrugged and adjusted himself to relieve the pressure. He’d waited this long, and he could hold out a little longer.
Only one woman could satisfy this jones, anyway. Oh, yeah, Maria would satisfy, too. He would possess her just as he had that first time, when she was about the same age as Striped Hair and the rest of the nubile caffeine dealers he’d crossed the past few days at different coffee shops. When they were back together, he would remind his wife just what she’d missed.
But he had to find her first. Apparently, he would have to do it alone. He propped the tablet on its stand, tapped to wake it again and typed in the names Paul and Amy Norris. He hoped he wouldn’t need his former in-laws’ middle initials, since he had no clue what those were. But only one search result included both names. He clicked on it and found Maria listed, as well, under the name she’d carried before he made her his. The address was familiar, too, the same house where he’d helped Maria to climb out the window so many times.
Just as those gated walls of their exclusive subdivision had failed to keep the Norrises’ daughter inside then, they had no chance of keeping him out now. Either “Mom” would tell him everything she knew about where Maria had disappeared to, or he would beat it out of her.
This was almost too easy. He smiled at the tablet just as a low-battery message appeared, but the screen went black before he could plug it into the outlet. He managed to avoid throwing the piece of crap against the wall, especially with several new customers coming in to fill up the empty tables around him.
Still, Striped Hair’s words replayed in his thoughts. Too proud... Maria’s parents were definitely that. She wouldn’t have been invited back into their Christmas card photo, at least without years of groveling.
Besides, her mother was the first person who police would have questioned when Maria had blown off her court date. Even his duo of Barney Fife investigators could have figured that much out. And if Her Majesty had known anything about Maria, she already would have shared it with investigators. No way she would have lied for her daughter and risked any of her beautiful money.
Michael fisted and unfisted his hands on the table. It had already been four days since his release, and he was no closer to finding his wife. With that godawful apartment, all he’d done was trade one cell for another, this one without bars. If he had to stay there much longer, counting flies on the wall, he would go mad.
He had to keep it together. Hadn’t he spent six years planning for this moment, this meeting? He couldn’t give up yet.
So, if her Mommy Dearest wasn’t the one who’d helped Maria to vanish, he had to figure out who could have done it. Maria didn’t have the brains to do it all on her own. She wouldn’t have left her parents at all if he hadn’t shown her that they were just trying to control her. But who else? She was an only child, just like her parents, so she had no aunts and uncles. Well, one great-aunt, but a little old lady couldn’t really help. Maria didn’t have any friends, either. He stopped as the image of her one childhood friend appeared in his thoughts. The chick with frizzy hair and big glasses he’d once seen leaving their apartment when he’d returned home from work. His blood threatened to boil over again at the memory of Maria’s hiding things from him like that, but he had to recall the woman’s name. Tammy or Tina or something. The name began with a T. She’d shown up again at the hospital after that argument Maria had started had resulted in an accident. Terri? Tori? Had Maria stayed in contact with her, even after he’d explained that she should cut ties to the past if she wanted to prove she loved him?
Just the thought that she might have gone behind his back to stay in touch with some ugly friend had his nostrils flaring. His jaws ached from gritting his teeth. Just another way she’d betrayed him. Another way she’d
failed to love, honor and obey. Something else she would answer for when—
Wait. Tonya. That sounded right. He didn’t know the woman’s last name, either, but it couldn’t be that hard to find, with an unusual name like that. Easier, anyway, than tracking down a woman who’d vanished like smoke in a fan.
Tapping the screen and spreading his thumb and forefinger to enlarge the text the way Larry had taught him in that ten-minute tutorial, Michael launched another internet search. This time, he would check out some of those yearbook websites that kept popping up. This might not be the answer he needed, but at least it was something. He would locate this Tonya and force her to give up what she knew. For her sake, she’d better know something.
He grinned at the kid behind the counter, the one ignoring him now. Striped Hair would have to find some other dude to satisfy her daddy complex because he wasn’t interested in any strange. He needed to save his strength, anyway. It was only a matter of time now until he had a night to remember with his own little wife.
Chapter 8
I’ll be here... Jamie’s words played in Sarah’s thoughts like a music stream on repeat for most of the half hour drive from Royal Oak to Brighton. Aiden barely made it from the zoo to nearby Interstate 696 before passing out in the backseat of Jamie’s midsize SUV as they headed west into the remaining pinks and oranges of a spectacular sunset.
“That’s amazing.” Jamie lowered the visor so that he could see to drive. “The whole day was amazing.”
“It was,” she managed to reply, because it had been.
Jamie tried a few more times to start a conversation, but he must have given up as he flipped on the radio to an alternative rock station out of nearby Windsor, Ontario. Even the music provided Sarah no escape from her troubled thoughts as Lisa Loeb’s voice crowded the car, crooning about a lover asking her to stay. Without knowing their story, Jamie had offered to be a constant in their lives, as well. The idea was unsettling and yet somehow comforting. If she had any sense at all, she would focus on the first emotion and banish the second.