Her Perfect Life

by Hinze, Vicki

  At least the judge now understood her smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Slater, it would trouble me to see you in my courtroom today if I didn’t know more about this case than is in these documents. Because I do, I feel confident that granting this divorce is the right thing to do. The couples filing through here don’t realize how heavily that decision weighs on their judge, particularly when there are children involved. But it does.”

  “Yes, your honor,” Katie said. How could it not? His decisions irrevocably changed lives. True, the decision to do that came from the couples, but the judge’s signature on the dotted line was the knife that severed.

  He folded his hands atop the bench. “Most people have no idea what service to this country really costs those who serve. I want you to know,” he said, then glanced at Sam, “and you, too, Mr. Slater, that I’m aware of the specific costs to both of you and your children.” He lifted his glasses and tapped them on the blotter in front of him, then gave Katie a look laced with misery that only the two of them could fully understand. “I was a P.O.W. in Vietnam, Katie. I really do know and I understand…” He choked up, looked down and cleared his throat. “I’m grateful for your service and sacrifices. Your divorce is granted.”

  Katie smiled at C.D., at Sam and Blair, who kissed, and then at the judge. She walked up to the bench and extended a hand. He clasped it, and she whispered, “Thank you for your service and sacrifices, too.” Tears blurred her eyes.

  He nodded. Swallowed hard. “You go on. I’ll stay here another ten minutes to give you time to escape the press.” He frowned. “I’m sorry to say there are a lot of them out there.”

  “It’s okay, Judge. I’m going to talk to them,” she said. “I didn’t know they’d been haunting Sam and Blair. They’ve been protecting me from it. I can’t stand by and allow that to continue.”

  “I understand.”

  He really did; it shone in his eyes. “Thank you for the restraining order to keep them away from our kids.”

  “You’re welcome.” He frowned. “It’s a shame one was needed, but that’s part of the price of freedom.”

  “It’s worth it.” She nodded, then pointed to a door on the opposite side of the courtroom from which they’d entered. “That door?”

  He nodded. “Katie, have a good life. It’s the best revenge.”

  “I figured that out.” She smiled. “But thanks for sharing.”

  “Do you want us to come with you?” Sam asked.

  “No, you’ve been aggravated enough. Go celebrate.” She smiled. “C.D. will be there to hold me up.”

  C.D. ventured, “More likely, to keep her from punching somebody’s lights out.”

  Sam nodded his agreement. “I’ll help, if you want backup.”

  “I can handle her.” C.D. smiled. “I think.”

  “Oh, hush, you two.” Blair swatted at Sam. “She’s going to charm them, not beat them up.”

  Sam grunted his thoughts on that. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  “I would.” Blair looked Katie in the eyes. “The kids will be watching.”

  Katie wasn’t so sure what she’d do, but that nixed any violence. “I’ll do my best to behave.”

  “Just don’t be nervous,” Blair said, then smiled. “You’ll dazzle them.”

  “Right.” Katie rolled her eyes back in her head, but Blair had pulled her magic. She made Katie want to be charming because she believed Katie would be. How did she do that?

  “It’s a real pain when she tags those higher angels, isn’t it?” C.D. opened the door.

  That was it exactly. “Yeah. It’s like blackmail—a hotline straight to your conscience.”

  “That’s why it works, Angel.”

  It did. Katie walked outside and then up to a podium. Thirty or so microphones were attached to its edges. “I’m Katie Slater,” she said, looking out on the crowd. “I’ll talk to you and you can take pictures, but no flashes. Turn them off now—please.” Katie took a shaky breath and repeated a scaled-down version of last night’s dream. A dream she knew now, standing before these cameras, to be true. It was real. It happened. “They tied me to a chair in a closed room and flashed lights on me nonstop for three days straight. I—I can’t see a flash without reliving it.”

  Should she have said that? Oh, God. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d opened her mouth and it’d just poured out. She glanced at C.D., a single step away from her.

  When he gave her a reassuring nod, she turned back to the reporters and issued her terms. “Please do not crowd me or push me to answer questions I don’t want to answer, or this dialogue will be over before it starts.” Inside, she felt like a quivering mass, but her voice sounded strong. Calm and strong and sure. “And no screaming, please. I—I haven’t yet adjusted to swarming voices not being accompanied by torture.”

  Where had that come from? She had no idea, but she knew it, too, was true. She stiffened, drew in a low deep breath and let it out. She could do this. She really could do this. Thank you, God. Hiking her chin, she went on. “If you have a question, please just raise your hand.”

  Hands shot up and a hush fell over the knot of reporters. To Katie’s utter amazement, they had heard her and wanted to make talking to them easy for her.

  And so, for the next hour, she talked, and took their questions, and no one pushed too hard or too deep or broke her rules. The quivers stopped, the shaking stopped, and her fear of them faded. She even smiled once or twice, and when she did, she heard the clicks of their cameras, but not one flashed. The clicks reminded her of the guards circling her, their guns clicking as they cocked their triggers, but she braced for that and endured it, controlling the memory by reminding herself that she wasn’t there in the tribal prison. She was here, in Willow Creek, standing in the sunshine and rebuilding her life. The real one. Her perfect life.

  Then a blond TV reporter about thirty with a sunny smile, perfect teeth, and apparently a lot of ambition asked a thorny question that went too far. “Were you raped, Katie?”

  Katie stared at the woman, outraged and seething. She held her stare, giving herself a minute to leash her temper and bury it before answering the woman. Of course they wanted to know. Of course they all speculated that she had been raped. Likely by the entire population over there. But Katie had no obligation to feed their curiosity. What did she want to tell them? Yes, repeatedly? That would just give them their sensationalism, they’d use it, and that would be that. No good would come from it. It’s none of your business? That would just lead to more speculation and they’d use that speculation to sensationalize. Nothing positive there, either. What could she tell them that would make a difference?

  She glanced at C.D. He looked ready to commit murder. She smiled to let him know she was okay, though she wasn’t at all sure she was. Fingering the edge of the podium, she decided what she wanted to do and exactly what she wanted to say.

  She looked at the woman who’d asked the question, walked out from behind the podium, and right up to her. Stopping three feet from her face, Katie looked deeply into her eyes. She saw the woman’s fear, smelled it in the light perspiration filming her skin. “That which is endured is conquered.”

  Perplexed, the woman laughed nervously. “Excuse me?”

  “No, I won’t excuse you. We’re all responsible for our every action, and that includes you.” Katie paused, and then added. “You asked me if I was raped. My answer to you is this: You endure what I’ve endured. Then you stand behind that podium where I stood. I’ll ask you the same question in this same public forum, where your children and America’s children are listening and watching and learning. And then you tell me how you feel about answering it. Under those circumstances, would you excuse me?”

  The woman paled, stood completely still, as if she feared moving would incite Katie to do her bodily injury.

  Katie didn’t expect that reaction, but she understood it. Scream and yell and the woman was prepared to cope, but reversing their shoes tossed the starch right out of her j
ournalistic, “the people have the right to know.”

  Actually, they didn’t. “Being a journalist gives you great power, but also great responsibility. Judging by your lack of sensitivity, you have far greater things to fear than me,” Katie said softly. “You have yourself.”

  Katie turned to C.D. “I’m ready to leave now.”

  He walked down, and the reporters parted, clearing them a path and making no attempt to detain them. Clasping his arm, Katie smiled.

  “What’s next, Katie?” a man asked as she passed.

  “I’m opening a garden center,” she said back over her shoulder without breaking stride. “Here in Willow Creek—at the corner of Harbinger and Cherokee Lane.”

  “But you’re a pilot,” someone said.

  “I’m also a master gardener,” she threw back. “It gives me something flying planes can’t.”

  “What’s that, Katie?” Yet another voice rang out.

  She stopped and looked at the man who owned it. At his thin face, the razor burn marring his throat, and then into his eyes, obscured by his thick glasses. Wise eyes. Kind eyes. He wasn’t smiling, and neither did she. “Peace.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’m proud of you, Katie.”

  “I did okay, then?” She couldn’t remember half of it.

  “Better than okay.” He smiled. “You found your faith. I felt it.”

  She had. She really had.

  In the front seat of the Lotus, she slipped on her sunglasses and looked at C.D. “I could have pulverized that woman for asking about rape. Molly and Jake heard that.”

  “I was afraid for a second, you might.”

  “It was Blair and her higher angels. If she hadn’t said what she did, I might have.” The temptation had been strong. “But maybe not.” Katie sorted through it. “I wanted her—all of them to think, C.D. When they ask questions like that, it doesn’t do a thing for anyone else, but it hurts a victim and others even more.”

  “I think you made your point, Angel.” He reached over and clasped her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “But that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

  “Oh?” She saw a McDonald’s sign. “Hey, pull in there, will you? I need an iced tea. My throat’s as dry as dust.”

  He veered over and hit the drive-thru, ordered her tea, ice-water, and a burger, and then pulled around.

  “You’re so good to me.”

  “I hear your stomach growling from over here.”

  It was, so she just grinned.

  When he passed her the tea, she asked, “Why are you proud of me?” It wasn’t vanity, she told herself. Okay, maybe it was, but she really wanted to know.

  “Everything.” He gave her that slow, sexy smile that drove her pulse up forty notches and wiped all thoughts from her mind.

  “Hmmm.” What did she say to that?

  He chuckled. “I know you’re curious. You might as well ask and get it over with.”

  “Well, it’s just that that’s not very precise,” she said, unwilling to humiliate herself any more than that.

  He drove out toward the gulf. “The way you were with Sam this morning. It was beautiful, Katie. And how you are with the kids and Blair and me.” He spared her a glance, braked at a red light. “You say Blair has this way of making people want to be better, and you’re right, she does do that. But so do you.”

  She finished off the burger. “I think you’re a little less than objective.”

  “I love you. I’m as opinionated as a heart attack,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t make me blind or stupid.”

  “Thank you.” Touched, she rubbed his hand with the back of hers, slid over and nuzzled his shoulder. “I adore you, too.”

  “You do.” He said, then pulled into a parking slot at The Summer House, an elegant restaurant on the water with a grassy shore; no sand in sight. “And you love me.”

  “Of course.” She stuffed the burger wrapper back into the bag and smiled at him. “Now feed me. I’m starved.”

  “Your treat.” He reached into his jacket’s inner pocket and passed her a small brown book. “This is just the little bank stuff. Barbie has the rest,” he said, sticking with their pet term for Samantha. “There’s some limit on insurance the banks have, she says. I don’t know. I let her mess with anything to do with money.”

  Katie and C.D.’s names were printed on the outside of the book. She took it, and then cracked it open. Seeing the sum written there, she gasped. “Are you insane?” She stared at C.D. “There are at least a dozen account numbers here, and every one of them is FDIC maxed.”

  “Oh, you know about that, then. Good. You can worry about it.”

  “C.D., I can’t take this.” She still couldn’t believe her eyes, and there was no way her brain would work enough to calculate the math.

  “You’re not taking anything. It’s yours.” He got out of the car, walked around and opened the door. “Katie, if I’d known all it took to daze you was money, I’d have shown you that book a long time ago.”

  She got out and shoved the book into his chest. “I’m not taking this. It’s yours.”

  He didn’t argue, just put the book back inside his jacket pocket. “Whatever. Let’s eat. You’re starved, remember.”

  “I mean it, C.D.” She warned him. “I don’t want your money.”

  “I know, Angel.” He smiled at her. “You never did.”

  And others had. A realization hit and she snagged a sharp breath. He must have been rich to begin with. “You’ve always had money, haven’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you knew.” He shrugged. “Everyone else did. Then, when I figured out you didn’t know, I saw no reason to tell you. I mean, what’s the difference?”

  “There isn’t any.” She had a flash of insight. “But that’s not why you didn’t tell me. You were scared it would make a difference.”

  “Okay,” he confessed. “At first I was. But then when you and I got close, I knew you cared about me—well, I’m not sure why, but I knew money had nothing to do with it. So it really didn’t matter, then.”

  She pulled him aside on the porch that led into the restaurant. “C.D.,” she said, dead serious. “I don’t want your money now, but I do want you.” She glanced away, then pulled her gaze back to his. “I meant what I said this morning. I can endure anything but a life without you in it.”

  “I’m here, Angel.” He straightened his jacket on his shoulders. “I promised.”

  “I know you did. But I need to know you’re here because you want to be with me, not because you know I’ll be nuts without you. There’s a difference.”

  “I’m right where I want to be.” He frowned. “I think I told you that, too. Weren’t you listening to me?”

  “A lot’s been happening. You might have changed your mind, or I might have forgotten, okay?”

  “Well,” he wrapped an arm around her and led her to the door. “I guess I’ll just have to remind you more often.”

  She sniffed. “That wouldn’t hurt.”

  He snickered. “You’re a bigger ham than Molly.”

  “Mmm, ham. Ham sounds good.” She smiled. “Feed me, hotshot. I’m getting weak in the knees.”

  “I like you weak in the knees.”

  She grunted. “When have you seen me weak in the knees?” Crazy question. The man had seen her at her weakest and worst.

  He grinned. “Every time I kiss you.”

  And that’s what he remembered. “I do so love you, C.D. Quade.”

  Over lunch, they talked about the garden center. The contractor was neck-deep into the project and the goal was to have everything ready to go by the middle of March. From all signs, they were going to make it.

  Barbie had taken care of getting all the permits and licenses and someone on her staff did the research and set up suppliers and contacts, including the listing of Katie’s old favorites. Molly was pushing for Kat
ie to have a proper flower shop, too, and Katie was considering it, but until a few days ago, no one suitable had applied to run it. Then, to Katie’s delight, Ashley had come in, resume in hand. She’d had all of nursing she could handle and was ready for a change.

  Katie had hired her on the spot—and enrolled her in a course where she’d learn to arrange flowers. Ashley was happy, Katie was thrilled, and C.D. watched with shining eyes and a closed mouth. She’d even asked for his advice, and he’d refused to give it, telling her, “When women band together, a man saves himself misery by staying out of the way and minding his own business.”

  Blair had found a great deal of humor in that, and had confided to Katie that Sam had said something similar to her not long ago. “Must be something they teach them at man school,” she’d said. Katie had wistfully sighed. “I wish they’d teach them to put the toilet tissue on the roller and not park it on top of it.” Blair had laughed herself silly. “No school, man or otherwise, seems able to teach them that.”

  Over dessert—a slice of chocolate fudge cake that was so huge it was probably illegal in thirty states—Katie looked across the table at C.D. “Sam and Blair are going to get married again as soon as the papers are filed.”

  “In two weeks, according to Jake.” C.D. took a sip from his steaming coffee cup. “He wants me to make sure you don’t have a meltdown. His friend Mark says that’s a very vulnerable time.”

  “Did you reassure him?”

  “I tried,” C.D. said. “But Mark’s right. It is a vulnerable time.”

  “I won’t be having a meltdown.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.” She swallowed a bite of cake, letting the chocolate roll around on her tongue. “I guess Sam was right about the kids needing to know his marrying Blair is okay with me.”

  “Is it?”