Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good ManPromises Under the Peach TreeHusband by Choice

by Janice Kay Johnson

  And she was going to honor, with her life, her promise to love and care for and protect him.

  Yvonne was crying again. Harder this time. Grabbing a tissue, Jenna dabbed at her eyes and nose when necessary. She tried to make out what words she could and just be there for the other woman.

  “He egged e ot to ell.” He’d begged her not to tell?

  “Tell what?”

  “at he it e.”

  “That he hit you?”

  Yvonne’s head moved in the affirmative. Once.

  “And when you stood up to him and told him it was wrong and you weren’t going to keep it quiet, he did this to you,” she said, understanding.

  Another affirmative half nod.

  “I coun ell hi I o hi.” The last word ended on a nasal sound.

  “You couldn’t tell him you love him?”

  Yvonne blinked her good eye.

  Doing what she had to do to help her friend, Jenna remembered back, put herself right in that bed with Yvonne, and said, “Because your heart is too bruised. You couldn’t just open up and take him back wholeheartedly after what he’d done. Because you couldn’t give him that power over you,” she guessed.

  Yvonne’s nod was bigger this time.

  “And that’s why he hit you?”

  A smaller nod. Accompanied by a wince. The asshole had obviously hurt his wife’s neck, among other things.

  “I o he ees I o.” I know he needs—love? The nasally grunts preceded more tears. And Jenna knew how badly it was hurting Yvonne to speak. Recognized, also, that she needed to talk or she wouldn’t be putting herself through the agony. Other than the top of the one hand Jenna was touching, most of Yvonne’s visible skin was bandaged. It looked as if fingers on both her hands were broken. There was no other way for the woman to express thoughts that she clearly needed to get out.

  So she guessed what Yvonne was trying to say. Made a wrong guess and tried again. Yvonne turned her head just an inch to the side, indicating another wrong guess. And waited.

  “You know he needs your love?”

  Yvonne nodded.

  “Yvonne, you are not in any way to blame for this.” Jenna was standing now, not to tower over her friend, but to lean in closer than the chair beside the bed would allow. “Look at me,” she said and waited for Yvonne to do so.

  “This is me talking. I’ve been right where you are. Inside and out,” she reminded her. And knew that Yvonne knew that she had. Which was why Yvonne was talking to her.

  Counseling was good. Great. Necessary. And sometimes, it just wasn’t enough.

  Sometimes going where it hurt most was the only way to heal the hurt.

  “Steve was the younger brother of my last foster mother.” She told the woman something she’d never told anyone. Not any of the counselors. Not Max.

  Because telling hadn’t seemed necessary then.

  Yvonne’s good eye opened wider and her look focused.

  Jenna swallowed. Longed for a glass of water. And said, “I was sixteen when I was placed with her. I’d been through a couple of different homes, I was withdrawn and they kept changing my home thinking that would somehow help.”

  At the time she’d thought they were all forgetting that she’d lost her entire family and would never be happy again.

  With the clarity of passed time and some more years of life experience, she understood that no one knew what to do with her. There was absolutely no way anyone was going to be able to fix what ailed her. Or to somehow change her back into a normal girl.

  And doing something was better than doing nothing.

  “I met Steve at the party his sister threw for my high school graduation party. He was a beat cop then, but he’d already won a commendation for preventing a robbery and saving the old couple inside the store from being hurt. His sister had practically threatened him that if he didn’t come to my party she was going to disown him,” Jenna remembered aloud.

  “I think she was afraid there wasn’t going to be anyone there. I didn’t have any friends. And obviously, no family. She’d been widowed young and had a son in college. He and his girlfriend were coming and she’d sent out invitations to other people in town, but...”

  She stopped, realizing that she’d been going on about something that had nothing to do with what Yvonne needed to hear.

  “Go o,” Yvonne said. Her eyes told Jenna how intently she was listening.

  “Steve was one of the first ones there. His place was about an hour away and he practically lived for his job, volunteering to work holidays because he didn’t have a spouse or kids like most of the officers in his squad, which is why I hadn’t met him before.”

  She wasn’t getting the timing right on this, but was telling it as it came to her. It had been so long ago. So long since she’d remembered....

  “He took one look at me and I was a goner. The weird thing was, he was, too. Even weirder, he needn’t have come at all. Turns out while I didn’t have any friends, there was a community full of people who knew of me and came to that party to show me that I wasn’t alone. To cheer me on in my success since my parents weren’t able to be there to congratulate me themselves.”

  She paused, waiting for the choked-up feeling to pass. And then said, “I didn’t know a lot of them, but the gesture meant the world to me.”

  A light came to Yvonne’s eye. Jenna smiled at her friend and in the midst of the pain, they shared a few seconds of joy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “IT TURNS OUT that my foster mother and Steve were half brother and sister.” Jenna was sitting now, with a cold glass of water, provided by the nurse who’d come to check on Yvonne and administer another round of meds in her IV drip. “They shared a mother, who died when Steve was little. My foster mother was already in college by then. He was brought up by his father who, as it turns out, wasn’t a kind man. He didn’t ever hit Steve, nothing overtly abusive, but he belittled him every chance he got. Steve wet the bed until he was ten and any time he had an accident, his dad would rub his nose in the sheet and make him wear a diaper to school. He’d take it off the second he got the chance, of course, but sometimes that wasn’t until he got to school. He used to die thinking about someone finding out.”

  The question in Yvonne’s eye had Jenna shaking her head. “No one did. But I guess as he got older, and bigger, his father would threaten to tell someone about the diapers if Steve acted out. That was his worst nightmare, the thought of other people finding out. He was so humiliated, and afraid of what people would think. Steve didn’t play sports. He didn’t even like to watch football. He wasn’t into fast cars. His father was hugely disappointed in him and never failed to point that out to him....”

  “...lane i...” Blame him. The nasal attached to the words gave Jenna their meaning.

  “He blamed Steve for his mother’s death,” Jenna said and watched for Yvonne’s affirmative, which came now in a blink of the eye. Her friend was growing sleepy. Probably due to the meds, but she also looked much more relaxed.

  “Which wasn’t fair because she died of breast cancer and that didn’t have anything to do with him, but she’d breast fed Steve and his father had somehow attached everything bad to that act. Steve’s lack of being man enough, and his wife’s death, too.”

  “elau....”

  “Jealous?” She waited for confirmation. “Yeah, that’s what I told Steve,” she said.

  She tensed. She’d forgotten how much she’d cared about Steve in the beginning. Because her heart had ached for him.

  “I not only found him attractive, but I admired him so much,” she said out loud. “He’d come through all of that, gone to college, gotten a degree in criminal justice and was far more of a man than his father would ever be.

  “We had a lot in common, too,” she continued,
almost to herself as Yvonne closed her eye. “We’d both lost our mothers young and grown up feeling isolated. We had a lot of talks about how alike we were before he told me his secret. I was the only person he’d ever told. As far as I know, I still am. I think that’s part of the reason he can’t let me go.”

  Yvonne opened her eye at that.

  “It wasn’t until after we were married that I found out that in some ways he wasn’t man enough at all. Even to himself. He was constantly having to prove his manhood. On the job. And with women....

  “I tried to understand. He was my life. And I loved his sister,” she added. She’d had a family again. A mother figure. A husband.... “I finally tried to tell her what Steve was doing to me, one time after he’d beaten me unconscious. But he’d gotten to her first. Told her about one of his affairs.” She wasn’t even sure Yvonne could still hear her, but the words kept tumbling out. “He made it sound like the girl was the only one and that it had only been once. He’d been so upset with himself. So contrite. He told her he’d come to me immediately and begged for my forgiveness, but that he was afraid I was going to do something horrible to get back at him. I didn’t know this, of course, so you can imagine how I felt when I finally worked up the courage to tell her everything and she not only didn’t believe me, she accused me of trying to ruin his career and said she’d do whatever it took to protect him, which included testifying against me, including my inability to fit in socially during high school, if I ever told anyone else what I’d told her.”

  Yvonne opened her eye and was clearly drowsy. “Ga i ana....” Gave him another... She broke off, then winced as she forced out, “Ance...chan....”

  “I gave him another chance,” Jenna said, and when Yvonne closed her eye again she added softly, “Too many of them.” She’d actually lost count of the number of times she’d given Steve another chance. Because she’d loved him. And he’d been a good man in so many ways, had helped so many people.

  Yvonne’s breathing deepened and Jenna watched her body struggling to gain air, to heal.

  And she saw herself. Had she really stayed because she’d loved a man who’d done that to her?

  Or had she stayed because she’d been afraid to face life without him? Because it meant she’d be alone in the world?

  And then another thought occurred to her. Steve had known her deepest fear. He’d known how desperately afraid she’d been back then to be alone.

  And he’d used the fear to keep her with him. Every time. He’d reminded her that if she left him, if she even tried to turn him in, he’d have everyone in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department defending him, from the commissioner on down, and she’d have no one.

  He used her fear because he’d known it would work. He’d known it was the one way to control her.

  But she wasn’t afraid to be alone anymore. She’d married Max because she was in love with him. And loved him enough to leave him, too.

  Yvonne breathed. Her machines beeped. And Jenna knew how she was going to beat Steve at his own game.

  Hearing her story out loud for the first time, the beginning part of it, she’d remembered so much. Remembered the man he was, someplace inside of the twisted, evil human being he’d become.

  Steve’s biggest fear was losing Meri. He, like her, feared being alone and unloved. And he needed her, in particular, because she was the only one who knew the whole truth about him. Not even his sister knew about the bedwetting. If anyone had known, Steve would have been rescued from the cruel man who’d fathered him. If anyone had known, Steve’s father would have lost his power over him. So Steve’s father had made sure his son was too humiliated to tell anyone.

  Sitting in the safety of a hospital room filled with monitors, with medical professionals available at the push of a button, Jenna could let the thoughts just flow. The thoughts weren’t a threat to her there.

  Steve had told her after one of his affairs that she’d never have to worry about other women. That they meant nothing to him. That she was the only one who’d ever loved him for who he really was.

  He’d seemed to think that the words would somehow heal the chasm he’d slashed in her heart. Or at least appease her.

  She’d hated him that night.

  He’d told her another time that he would go to any lengths to keep her with him.

  When she’d lived with him he’d had his professional reputation to worry about, too. That had carried almost as much weight as her acceptance had.

  But he was no longer on the force. Which left only her....

  He was a hunter. His need to look good to the outside world mattered to him. All the things she’d learned, everything she’d figured out—it was all coming together.

  And she knew what she was going to do.

  * * *

  MAX TOOK CALEB to day care on Friday. Then he went to work. Chantel and another off-duty officer were going to hang out in neighborhood establishments around the beach house, and spend some time on the beach, as well. Chantel had brought her swimsuit with her and left with one of his and Meri’s beach towels under her arm.

  Armed with a photo of Steve Smith courtesy of the LVMPD, they were hoping for any glimpse of a man who resembled him. Diane, in the meantime, had been granted the warrant to exhume the body of the woman Steve had been seeing who’d wrapped her car around a tree.

  Unmarked cars were keeping an eye on wherever Meredith was living. Funny, he’d had no idea that she’d known anyone well enough to have another place to stay in town.

  None of their friends or associates knew she was even missing. Not knowing where Meri was sleeping at night was slowly killing him.

  So he worked. Picked up his son from day care. And went home.

  He made dinner.

  He bathed his son. Put him to bed. Was cordial to Chantel, listened as she told him that they’d had another sighting in a restaurant a short distance from the little house.

  A more recent sighting.

  And he tried to stay calm.

  * * *

  “YOU SEEM...DIFFERENT.” Lila spoke softly, as she stood off to the side of the food table at the pool-party-slash-baby-shower on Saturday, replenishing snacks and drinks as necessary.

  Everything was pink, in honor of the fact that Maddie had just found out she was having a girl. Lynn, a certified midwife, was going to be delivering the baby right there at The Lemonade Stand.

  So they now had pink popcorn. Watermelon. Ham. Pink bread to make sandwiches. Strawberry Jell-O. And someone had even managed to sneak some food coloring into the au-gratin potatoes. They might look kind of gross, but everyone said they tasted good.

  And they were drinking pink lemonade, of course. It was The Lemonade Stand; there had to be lemonade.

  “You look different, too. Must be the swim attire.” Jenna came up with a response to Lila’s statement. The two of them were the only two women not in the pool where all the games were going on. Right now everyone else was involved in pinning the disposable diaper on the noodle. There were eight floating six-foot-long swimming noodles in the water. The participants were blindfolded after they got in the pool, all the noodles had been dropped in the water and the women had to try to pin their diaper on the pink ribbon drawn on the pink noodle. “I don’t think it’s the attire,” Lila said, like Jenna, watching the residents enjoying themselves. More than half the women living at The Lemonade Stand were there.

  “You look good in a swimsuit,” Jenna told the managing director who was technically off duty that afternoon.

  “Thank you.”

  “You ought to take off that cover-up and get some sun on your arms and back,” Jenna added.

  Lila glanced at her, and the look she gave her wasn’t directorish. For a second, Jenna was reminded of Renee—who was currently busy running the games portion of the afternoon’s
event.

  “You didn’t seem the least bit surprised when I told you that your ex-husband had been spotted in Santa Raquel on more than one occasion.”

  The managing director had told her that she’d had a visit from the police. They were doing a follow-up on their earlier visit regarding Meredith, they’d said, due to a restraining order against Meredith’s first husband that was still in effect. The Santa Raquel police were extra protective of The Lemonade Stand residents and had wanted to make sure that Steve Smith had not violated his restraining order.

  Jenna had asked how or why they’d known Steve was in town to begin with. Lila had wondered the same. She’d said that a friend of Max’s, a cop from Las Sendas, had done some follow-up research on Max’s behalf.

  Chantel was still in the picture. That had been on Thursday afternoon, when Jenna had returned from visiting Yvonne in the hospital. Almost forty-eight hours ago.

  Jenna knew because she was counting the hours.

  She’d thanked Lila for the information, told her that she didn’t need any protection and walked away.

  “I wasn’t surprised to hear Steve had been around,” she told Lila now.

  Lila had clearly already assumed as much.

  “He’s why you’re here.”

  She nodded because it was the expected response.

  “You’re sure you don’t need police intervention or protection? They tell me your ex was a police detective.”

  “He was, and I’m sure.” The courts had done what they could—granted a restraining order. And that had done nothing at all.

  Steve was smart. He knew how to keep himself out of trouble. Or knew who to contact to make certain that whatever evidence there might be against him would disappear. He was a master manipulator.

  “What are your plans?”