Private Vows

by Sally C. Berneathy

  She’d lain awake the rest of the night wondering if she had already done exactly that, if she had stabbed someone.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been a stranger. Anybody bigger and stronger than you could have taken the knife as fast as I did.”

  That wasn’t what she needed to hear. It didn’t help in her struggle to gain confidence, to battle back the terrors that remained just out of sight in her mind. “Then get me a gun.”

  His startled gaze darted from the road to her then back again. “A gun?”

  “To protect myself. An attacker couldn’t get a gun from me if I shot him before he got too close.”

  Cole whipped around a corner. “What do you know about using a gun?”

  “Well, I know you can be a lot farther away from someone when you shoot him than when you stab him.”

  “Have you ever shot a gun?”

  “I don’t know.” She folded her hands in her lap and sighed. The fading bruises on her wrists mocked her notion that she could somehow defend herself. “I don’t remember. Probably not.”

  “Then you don’t need to have one.”

  It was just as well. If she had stabbed someone, she certainly didn’t need to have a gun.

  On the other hand, if she’d seen someone stabbed, if she’d witnessed a murder, she needed to have some way to protect herself.

  Cole drove in silence for the next few minutes, until he pulled up in front of a ramshackle house where Mary would have sworn nobody could possibly live.

  “He’s home,” Cole said. “That’s his car.”

  Mary reached for her door handle, but Cole stopped her. “Stay here.”

  “How am I supposed to see him if I do that?”

  “I’ll bring him out on the porch. That’s as close as you need to be, about the same distance as from your window to the woods. You can see him but he doesn’t need to see you.” He opened the door and started to get out, but then hesitated with one foot on the asphalt and looked at her. “I’ll show you some self-defense techniques tonight,” he said. “A few basics you can use to protect yourself in case you should ever need to.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.” He hadn’t admitted she’d really seen somebody last night, but he had admitted she might need to protect herself.

  She watched him as he strode up the cracked walk and across the wooden porch. Every line of his body, every movement spoke confidence. He was going into a house to confront a man who was certainly unbalanced and might be dangerously unstable, yet he showed no signs of fear. She envied him that courage. No matter how hard she tried, how many self-defense techniques he could show her, even if she had a gun, she doubted that she would ever be that brave.

  Maybe it was necessary to be tempered in whatever fire had scorched Cole’s life. Of course, it was likely she’d experienced horror in her life, too, but the difference was that he’d faced his demons even though it was obvious they still tormented him. She’d run away, both mentally and physically. She hadn’t possessed his internal fortitude. Nevertheless, she was resolved that she would, in the future, confront her demons no matter how terrified she might be while doing it.

  Cole had only been in the house a few minutes when he came out again, his expression grim as he strode down the walk toward the car. He looked at her once as he opened the door, then looked away.

  “Wasn’t he there?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the glove box, retrieved his cell phone and punched in a number.

  “Pete Townley…Then find him, damn it! This is an emergency.”

  A chill darted down her spine. “Cole, what’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  “Sam’s dead.”

  “Dead? How?”

  “Looks like a suicide.”

  “Now we’ll never know for sure if that was him last night.”

  Cole didn’t reply and didn’t meet her eyes. About that time Pete apparently came to the phone, and Cole related the facts of the incident to him.

  No response to her last comment and no eye contact so she could see what he was thinking. Mary sensed that Cole was hiding something from her, something that indicated he knew Sam Maynard hadn’t been the man outside her window last night.

  If it wasn’t Sam, then who?

  Chapter Nine

  It was early evening before they started back home, and Mary’s self-defense education had risen to the top of Cole’s priority list. The circumstances of Sam Maynard’s death, along with the possibility that they could discover who’d purchased the dress tomorrow and she’d be gone from his life, lent urgency to the need to teach her to defend herself.

  Even if they didn’t find the purchaser of the wedding gown, Cole had no doubt Mary would soon recover her memory. The fact that she’d reminded him of his offer to teach her self-defense, that she felt capable of defending herself, told him how far she’d come.

  He hadn’t answered her question about knowing whether Sam had been outside her window last night, electing to let her find whatever feeling of safety she could from the possibility that her tormentor was dead. However, though he was no expert, he’d seen enough bodies to make an educated guess as to how long Sam Maynard had been dead, and that guess would be at least twenty-four hours. Whoever Mary had or hadn’t seen from her window last night, Sam Maynard had already been dead at the time.

  The circumstances of his death muddied the waters even more. On the surface, it looked like a suicide. Cole had found him sitting on one end of the ratty sofa in his living room, a half-empty water glass of cheap red wine, a single pill and a suicide note on the floor next to him. The note had been typed on an old typewriter left in the house by Sam’s mother.

  If I can’t have Mary, I don’t want to live anymore.

  Open and shut.

  Except it wasn’t that simple. Sam had never been known to be suicidal nor had he ever been involved in drugs. Still, those issues probably wouldn’t have raised any red flags if not for the note. The correct spelling and punctuation and the lack of typos, even for such a short, simple sentence, were beyond Sam’s capabilities, but the major problem with the note was Sam’s reference to Mary. He’d been adamant the day before that her name was Grace.

  However, Cole wasn’t about to tell Mary that the man had most likely been murdered. She’d complied with his request to wait in the car while he talked to Pete and the other officers in the house, so at the moment she knew none of the details except what he’d told her.

  If Sam Maynard had been murdered, the fact that Mary’s name had been mentioned in the suicide note indicated the incident somehow involved her. Further evidence in that direction was the fact that all her pictures had vanished from his house.

  Though Pete wasn’t convinced that Sam’s death was linked to Mary, that it was anything other than the suicide it seemed to be, Cole’s gut told him it was.

  If he’d followed his gut reaction that cold, foggy night three years ago, Angela and Billy might not have died.

  He pulled into his garage and, as he and Mary walked to the front door, he found himself scrutinizing the area carefully for signs of an intruder. He was becoming as paranoid as Mary. But perhaps with reason. He made a mental note to replace the burned-out bulb in the porch light.

  Once they were inside, she watched him quietly as he reset the alarm. The drapes in the living room were open, and he noticed that she glanced in that direction as if she’d like to close them, hesitated then moved on into the room. She hadn’t overcome her fears, but she was fighting them.

  He’d been attracted to her since that first evening, an attraction he had a tough time fighting with her here in his house. Her strong will and determination to overcome a faceless, nameless terror only increased that attraction.

  She sank into one corner of the sofa, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She looked so fragile and vulnerable and so incredibly beautiful, he wanted to go to her, pull her into his arms and comfort her.

/>   Instead, he sat on the other end.

  “It’s okay to be upset,” he said, trying to reassure her. “The first time I ever saw a dead body, I had nightmares for weeks.”

  She hugged her knees tightly. “I guess you got used to that sort of thing when you were a police officer.”

  He ached to move down the sofa, pull her to him and soothe away her pain.

  And if that was all he wanted to do, he’d do it. The truth was, he wanted to feel her body next to his, her lips on his, her skin beneath his hands. He wanted to soothe her pain, drown it, along with his, in the velvety depths of passion.

  “You don’t really get used to it,” he said in answer to her question. “You just learn how to shut it out.”

  She considered that for a moment. “In a way, you’ve done the same thing I’ve done.”

  “Well, yeah. I never thought of it like that before, but I guess it is sort of similar, just not to the same extreme.”

  She gave him a faint smile. “I suppose total amnesia is carrying it to extremes. Apparently that was the only way I could deal with it. I’m not as strong as you. I know it’s kind of trendy to complain about having a dysfunctional childhood, but I think mine must have been too good. It didn’t prepare me for real life.”

  “Too good? I didn’t know that was possible.”

  She shifted a little, getting more comfortable, more relaxed, and a sad smile tilted her lips. “My parents were wonderful. I still can only recall glimpses of that part of my life, but I think it was so wonderful, I never wanted to leave, never completely left, in fact. My dad helped me make all decisions, everything from choosing an apartment or buying a car to making friends. He was a very wise man, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing anything without talking to him. My mother always encouraged me in everything I did, always on my side, always there for me. I guess I never really learned how to be strong, to stand on my own. When I lost them, I lost my entire support system.”

  “But you had a job, teaching school, and apparently you enjoyed your work.”

  “Yes, I did. I loved working with the children, and I had friends. It’s just that I’d always leaned on my parents. My father told me what to do, and my mother gave her approval. A pretty good system. If they’d been around, I don’t think—” She shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know. I still can’t quite see what happened.”

  “Somewhere along the line you met the man you’re engaged to,” he encouraged.

  She frowned. “He sat down next to me at a concert.”

  Cole felt a jolt to his entire system. The man Mary planned to spend the rest of her life with had suddenly become real. “So you met your fiancé at a concert.”

  She looked confused for a moment. “My fiancé? I don’t know. I just had an image of a man coming up to sit next to me at a concert, but that’s not where I met him. He was at that restaurant I mentioned, the first time I went out after my parents’ death. He brought me a glass of wine.”

  “What did this guy look like?”

  “Tall, blond hair, tan, well-dressed.”

  “The type who’d buy you that gaudy diamond?”

  Mary glanced up sharply, and Cole realized his tone had betrayed what he was feeling…jealousy. He resented this unknown man in Mary’s past for going to the concert with her, for holding and kissing her when he presented her with the diamond engagement ring.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “But thinking about him makes me feel suffocated. I get the feeling he’s very confident, the salesman type who doesn’t let up until he gets what he wants. Perhaps that’s why I ran away. Maybe I let him push me into agreeing to marry him and then didn’t have the strength to tell him I’d changed my mind.”

  Cole cringed at the sense of relief that comment brought. He was getting pretty damn proprietary over a woman he didn’t really know, a woman who was engaged, a woman who needed all kinds of things, including someone strong and competent to take care of her. She’d just admitted as much in talking about her father. Without someone to guide her, she was lost, and he didn’t do so hot in the field of helping people.

  He needed to get control of his hormones. So what if they’d kissed? He’d kissed a lot of women.

  But he couldn’t recall a single detail of the lips of any of those women, while he could recall every detail of Mary’s lips, of the full, sensuous way they looked, of the warm, soft feel of them, the way they’d moved against his. He could recall, in far too vivid detail, how the curves of her body had fit in his arms.

  Suddenly even the far end of the sofa was too near Mary. He got up, distancing himself from her, and went to lean on the fireplace mantel.

  “Maybe you needed somebody like that man when you were feeling so vulnerable after your parents’ death, somebody you could lean on.”

  Or someone she thought she could lean on. Where was her fiancé when that gown got bloody? Where was he when she ran away from whatever caused her amnesia? Cole had been berating himself for not being able to take care of Mary, but this guy hadn’t done such a great job of it, either.

  Which had nothing to do with anything, Cole reminded himself irritably. Who Mary chose to marry was none of his business. Once he tracked down the purchaser of her wedding dress, his role in her life was over. He’d be off the hook, no longer responsible for her.

  To his consternation, that thought brought a sense of loss, not one of relief. He’d become accustomed to seeing her around his house, to her scent in his car, to the accidental touches when they passed in the hall or as he helped her clean up the kitchen…to the heated desire she sparked in him just by her nearness.

  Damn! He really needed to get his head on straight!

  “I always wanted a marriage like my parents had,” Mary said. “They were so close, they were like one person. I don’t recall them ever fighting about anything.”

  He folded his arms and gazed into the distance, into another time. “Mine fought, but mostly over Dad’s job. Mom worried about him, and with good reason. But when she wasn’t worrying, she was always laughing and happy until he died. All that laughter died along with my dad. She just lost the will to live. She wasn’t strong enough to go on without him.” And Cole hadn’t been competent enough to help her.

  Mary had to resist the urge to go to Cole, to wrap her arms around him and comfort him even though she knew the urge was ridiculous. He looked so big and powerful and sturdy leaning against the fireplace, one blue-jeaned leg positioned on the hearth, his arms crossed over his wide chest. He was the last man in the world who needed comforting.

  Or at least he was the last one who’d accept it.

  But she was beginning to understand him better. Now she knew where some of the sadness and torment in his eyes came from. Even as a teenager, he’d probably had that same concern for others, that same determination to care for people that he’d shown with her. He’d undoubtedly taken seriously his obligation to care for his family and been distressed that he couldn’t help his mother. Then the double loss of Angela and Billy had compounded his devastation.

  “You can’t save people from themselves,” she said, swinging her legs off the sofa and sitting upright, facing him squarely.

  His eyes darkened, all traces of green disappearing, and he seemed to be retreating into himself again.

  “Where are your sisters now?” she asked hastily in an effort to divert him from whatever she’d said wrong, to keep him with her.

  “Tammy’s married with one kid and living in Chicago. Glenda and Alyse, the twins, are both still here in Dallas. They’re starting their own business, a gift shop. They’re all doing good.”

  “Do you see them often?”

  He stooped to pick up a piece of lint from the carpet then tossed it into the fireplace. “They have their own lives and so do I. But, yeah, we stay in touch, get together for holidays. I hear every time that niece of mine spits up or cuts a tooth. And every time one of the twins falls in love again, which is pretty often, I have
to meet the guy.”

  As he spoke of his sisters and niece, Cole’s rugged features actually relaxed into something approaching a smile. Perhaps this was the right time to bring up the people Mary had wondered about since she’d walked into Cole’s house.

  “How did your sisters get along with Angela and Billy?”

  That question took care of the smile. He was back to being Mr. Inscrutable. “They got along fine.”

  Obviously this was going to take a more direct question. “Tell me about Angela and Billy. I feel strange, staying in Billy’s room with all his possessions when I never even knew him.”

  “Billy was a good kid. He was a little shy, but he was coming out of it. A pretty typical kid, I guess. He liked football and baseball, wanted a dog, hated homework.”

  “I saw the baseball things. Did he play on a team?”

  “He played at school. He wanted to play football, too. He was a little short for his age. His mother was short, but his father was tall. He’d probably have grown.”

  “Angela was short?”

  “Barely five feet tall.”

  “Dark hair?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know that?”

  “I saw the picture in the master bedroom.”

  “Of course.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Shy. Billy got that from her.”

  He must have loved Angela very much, Mary thought, her heart clenching. Must still love her very much that he could barely talk about her three years after her death. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up something painful.”

  He shrugged. “It’s in the past. Over and done.”

  It wasn’t. She could see that in the determined jut of his jaw, in the hollow emptiness behind his eyes, in his inability to talk about her. But at least his losses hadn’t shattered him. He was dealing with it. He hadn’t broken into a thousand pieces, then shoved the painful pieces completely out of himself. He was a whole person.