The Woman for Dusty Conrad

by Tori Carrington

  She turned to face him, and nearly tripped over Spot for the second time that day. She looked down to make sure the cat was okay, wondering just what exactly was going on in her little feline brain. She received an irritated twitch of a black tail for her effort as the cat scampered off into the station.

  Jolie flicked her gaze back to Dusty. His expectant expression tightened the vise around her heart. For a second she’d forgotten where they were, where she was, thinking he’d be on her heels, rushing for the nearest engine right along with her.

  But he wasn’t. And probably never would be again.

  She dug her fingers into her front jeans pocket. “Here,” she said, tossing him her house keys. “Stay at the house. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow morning.”

  Chapter 2

  Jolie gazed wistfully at the autumn sun hovering on the horizon. She wished the weak rays could chase away the cold that seemed to chill the marrow of her bones. It had been an especially grueling twenty-four-hour shift. Only she wasn’t convinced her work schedule was the cause of her reluctance to walk the six blocks home. No, she knew it wasn’t. The dragging of her feet had more to do with the man who was waiting at the end of her walk. Her husband. The man who had walked out on her and their marriage without a second glance. A man who had returned. For whatever reasons.

  Jolie felt…well, strange, was the best way she could describe it. For so long now, she had grown accustomed to being on her own. Living a compartmentalized existence. At work she was still part of a team, a family, really, where there was little time to ponder her marriage, her life, and what, if anything, she could do to change either.

  When she attended town events, or went shopping, she was the same person she’d always been. Or so she tried to convince everyone. And, just being around others made her feel that maybe in some ways she was.

  It wasn’t until she went home after her regular twenty-four-hour shift, then spent the next two days there waiting for her next shift, or returned from grocery shopping or lunch with her best friend and sister-in-law, Darby, that she became aware all over again of the void that was her life. A void that had gaped open the instant Dusty had told her he couldn’t live with her anymore.

  Petition for Divorce.

  Shivering, Jolie worked her hand through a too-long denim coat sleeve, then tucked her hair behind her ear.

  She didn’t know what hurt her more. The fact that Dusty was seeking a divorce. Or that he had personally come back to compel her to agree to it.

  The brisk morning air burned her eyes. At least that’s what she told herself as she blinked back tears and picked up her pace. She decided that Dusty’s seeking a divorce bothered her more than his being back, however temporarily. Their marriage, their life together, had been more real than anything to her. Being with him had filled her with a hope, a hunger for living, a sheer happiness that she couldn’t remember feeling before. Not since her parents were ripped from her life when she was six. He’d made her feel loved. Needed. As if she belonged.

  Which left her wondering what she was supposed to be feeling now.

  Of course, she and Dusty had been unable to have children….

  Jolie bit solidly on her bottom lip, emotionally incapable of probing that raw wound. Not on top of everything else swirling inside her right now.

  The one person she had shared part of her ordeal with was Pastor Adams. He had asked if she’d like him to intervene on her behalf. Contact Dusty and try to talk things out with him. She’d not only declined his offer, she’d taken his suggestion as almost an insult. It was bad enough that she hadn’t been woman enough to keep her man. Now she needed a clergyman to intercede on her behalf? Go after her missing husband and beg for him to come back? She let the pastor know in so many words that she’d rather eat a bucket full of earthworms first, a feeling that hadn’t changed even after crying for two days straight after her conversation with him. And not even after his sermon on pride.

  Pride. Now there was a word. What was a woman to do when it seemed that pride was all that made her get up in the morning? That saw her through living in a house still chock-full of her husband’s presence? Injected the very fire she fought into her veins whenever she caught one of the townsfolk looking at her in that long, pitying way?

  She rounded the corner and the small two-story renovated farmhouse came into view. In the driveway parked behind her Jeep was Dusty’s pickup. Of course she’d known he’d be there. But actually seeing him there was another matter entirely.

  Mrs. Noonan across the street opened her screen door with a telling squeak. Jolie fought the urge to roll her eyes. Awfully coincidental that the town’s busiest busybody chose this moment to collect a morning paper delivered two hours ago.

  “’Morning, Jolie!” she called out.

  Jolie waved a hand and returned the greeting.

  “I see you’ve sold the house.”

  Sold…the…house…

  Jolie’s gaze edged the neat front lawn, then traveled to where only a hole indicated that there was once a Realtor’s sign posted. Her stomach tightened. Dusty must have taken it down when he’d come home last night.

  Home. She’d have to stop referring to it as such. The house they’d spent five years in together was no longer home. Not to him. Not to her.

  “I’m sure it’s a mistake, Mrs. Noonan. The house hasn’t been sold.” Yet.

  Collecting the morning paper, she instinctively reached for her keys, only then remembering that she’d given them to Dusty the night before. Resting her palm against the smooth wood door, she thought she’d rather break a window than have to knock to get into a place that had been hers alone for the past few months. She curved her fingers around the doorknob. It turned easily in her grasp. She gave a faint gasp of relief and pushed it inward.

  As she closed the door behind her, she instantly became aware of the proof that someone other than herself was in the house. The aroma of coffee wafting from the kitchen. Hiking boots abandoned in the hall. Papers strewn across the coffee table while the television mutely flickered the morning news.

  Jolie caught herself tiptoeing and censured herself. What was she afraid of?

  “Dusty?” she called out, dropping the paper and her purse on the hall table and craning her neck to peek through the kitchen doorway. He didn’t answer. She forced herself to walk into the room, feeling as if something were different. The yellow walls seemed…brighter, somehow. Refusing to explore the reasons for that, and especially not daring to think Dusty’s presence the cause, she took a mug from the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee from the half-full carafe. She eyed the dark sludge. Not exactly fresh. Shrugging out of the coat she had on, she draped it on the back of a slatted wood chair, then lingered over it, running her fingers down the well-worn denim. She absently plucked a couple of Spot’s white hairs from the material. Since the mornings had turned brisk a couple of weeks ago, she’d taken to wearing the wool-lined jacket Dusty had left behind. She supposed he’d be taking it along with the divorce papers and the rest of his stuff when he left again.

  Thrusting the thought from her mind, she turned toward the counter and set about making a fresh pot of coffee. She filled the water reservoir then scooped in the grounds. A loud banging noise from upstairs startled her. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared warily at the ceiling. What was he doing?

  The coffee couldn’t brew fast enough for her. Halfway through the cycle, she quickly poured two cups, then headed for the stairs. A splash of white on the gleaming oak kitchen table slowed her steps, then drew her to a stop. Dusty had laid out their divorce papers.

  She didn’t have to ask how he’d found them. She had a habit of shoving everything into a desk drawer as she received the items, planning to get to them later. Only in this case “later” hadn’t come soon enough for him.

  The banging upstairs started up again. Her heart beating an uneven rhythm in her chest, she climbed the stairs and followed the sounds through the second-floor
hall. Her palms grew instantly damp as she realized he was working on the master bath. Correction, the half of a master bath. Dusty had begun the addition about a year ago and had left it unfinished, much as he’d left their relationship unfinished.

  Her knees as firm as an empty fire hose, she stepped into the bedroom, her bedroom, and stood frozen before the rumpled four-poster bed. A bed she had slept in alone for the past six months. A bed Dusty had obviously slept in last night.

  She tightened her fingers on the coffee mugs, afraid she might drop them. There were at least two other places he could have chosen to sleep. One a comfortable guest bedroom, two, the oversize couch downstairs. Why had he chosen her bed?

  The sound of hammering resumed and she forced herself to the half-open door that led off to the left. From a discarded leather tool belt, to a greasy rag, then a piece of floor molding, her gaze wandered until it settled on the back of Dusty’s jeans. The faded material hugged his athletic thighs and legs to perfection.

  Despite everything, Jolie found herself awkwardly attracted to her husband.

  “You read my mind.”

  Her gaze flickered to Dusty’s wryly smiling face, then to the tipping cups she still held. She quickly righted them, nearly causing the liquid to spill out the other way.

  She shakily handed him his cup.

  He took a hefty sip. “Just as I like it. Heavy on the coffee.”

  Grasping her own cup in both hands, she looked at him. Really looked at him for the first time since she’d spotted him at the firehouse yesterday. God, but he looked better than any one man had the right to. His light brown hair was as closely cropped as ever, making her palms itch with the need to run them slowly over the spiky strands. His rich Irish-cream brown eyes were just as watchful, making her feel as though he looked straight through the wall of her chest and into her heart. His body was just as defined, the six-pack ripple of his stomach muscles clearly visible under his chest-hugging white T-shirt, his hips just as trim beneath his close-fitting jeans.

  “What…what are you doing?” she asked, surprised by the gravelly sound of her voice.

  He put his cup aside, then wiped his mouth with a slow, long sweep of his wrist. He gestured toward the Jacuzzi. “I, um, woke up early and thought I’d have a go at finishing this.”

  Jolie swallowed hard. This was all too comfortable…too normal, when everything between them was everything but. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know.”

  Before she could stop herself, she asked the question that had been burning on her tongue ever since he’d voluntarily placed himself within shouting distance. Drawing a shaky breath, she asked, “Dusty, where have you been?”

  Dusty sat back on his heels as though pushed back. The inside of his eyelids felt peppered with sand, reminding him how very little he’d slept last night. Looking at the smudges under Jolie’s eyes, he guessed she hadn’t fared any better. But while she’d had the firehouse to keep her busy, he’d been stuck at the house with little more to do than think about everything that had come before. Everything that would come after.

  He glanced around the half-finished room, the only place in the entire house that hadn’t been there since the beginning of time. He knew every inch of this place. Just which floorboards would creak when you stepped on them. Which windows you could jimmy open with a couple of jostled tries even when locked. The slight incline of the kitchen floor from where the house had settled. Not perceptible to the human eye, but obvious when you spilled something and the liquid pooled near the back door as if seeking a way out.

  Somewhere around 4:00 a.m., after he’d found the divorce papers crammed at the very bottom of the desk drawer, then watched TV until he’d overdosed on infomercials, he’d drifted off to sleep on the couch only to awaken with a start a little while later. Without thinking, he’d dragged himself upstairs and dropped into the bed they had once shared. It wasn’t until after he was surrounded by Jolie’s sweet lemony scent, and after he’d had an especially steamy dream that left him drenched in sweat, that he’d given up on catching any quality shut-eye, fixed himself some coffee, then headed back upstairs to check out what she had done with the master bath. It didn’t take long to figure out that she’d done nothing. The door had been tightly closed, his tools were still out exactly where he’d left them. It was almost as if he’d stopped working a day or two ago and had returned to finish the job. Never left.

  But he had left. And though some things hadn’t changed, many other things had.

  Deciding to avoid her question, he asked one of his own. “When did you put the house up for sale?”

  Her gaze flitted away from his to settle on the cup she held. She gave a casual shrug of her shoulders, but the straight way she held herself told him she felt anything but casual. “Last month.”

  He cocked a brow. “Don’t you think it would have been a good idea to ask me first?”

  “I did ask you. When your attorney called a couple months back I asked him what you wanted me to do with the house. He told me that you wanted me to have it.”

  “I meant that you should stay here.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment before answering. “Why?” she asked quietly. “This is your family’s house, not mine. I wasn’t raised here, Dusty. If you didn’t care about…what happens with it, why should I?” She leaned against the jamb. “Where’d you put the sign?”

  He hooked a thumb toward the window. “Out back. I chopped it for kindling.”

  Her eyes widened. “You didn’t.”

  “I most certainly did. Though I doubt the Realtor will be very happy with my actions, it sure as hell made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.”

  The sound of strangled laughter surprised him. And inspired a grin of his own. He’d thought she’d be upset. Although judging by her own expression, she was just as shocked as he was by her reaction.

  “You know, I really shouldn’t be amused by this,” she said. “I should be absolutely livid that you’ve come back and taken over just like you’d never…”

  He scanned her features, noticing the way her lips were slightly parted, as if she were ready to breathe the last word but didn’t dare. “Like I never left?”

  Jolie stood completely silent for a couple of heartbeats, the amusement shifting from her face. She abruptly turned, pretending to take a sip of her coffee, though he suspected her throat was as open to liquids as his was, and that was not at all.

  “You didn’t have to come back for the papers, you know,” she finally said, placing her mug on the unfinished sink and turning to face him. “You could have just had your attorney call my attorney and remind him.” She hugged herself, the unconscious action making his own arms ache to hold her. “Remind me.”

  As Dusty watched her shut herself off from him, he reminded himself that her emotional distance wasn’t a result of his leaving. It was one of the things that had propelled him to leave.

  He mindlessly gathered his tools together and pushed to his feet. “I suppose I could have done that.” He faced her. “If I thought calling would have had a chance in hell of working, I would have.” He stepped closer to her. “Admit it, Jolie. When you stuck those papers into the drawer, you did so with no intention of signing them.”

  The way she blinked told him he was right. Jolie had never been very good at bluffing. Once upon a time, everything she felt, everything she thought, had been all right there on her lovely face for all to see. And right now he saw a woman bursting with a pain felt so deeply it reached out and enveloped him in its dark fingers. The emotion was the first honest one he’d seen from her in so long that it nearly knocked his knees out from under him.

  “Oh, Jolie, the last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you.”

  Her brows drew together and her voice was low when she spoke. “How did you think I would feel when you left, Dusty? Filed for a…divorce? Did you think I’d be happy?”

  He grimaced. She’d likely felt the same way he h
ad after he’d lost his brother, Erick, six months ago to the same kind of fire she fought nearly every day. A loss that had changed his life. Made him realize the importance of life period. “Of course I didn’t—”

  “Please explain it to me, because right now I’m not understanding a whole lot. If you didn’t want to hurt me, then why did you leave? If you didn’t want to hurt me, then why did you send me divorce papers? If you didn’t want to hurt me, then why—” her voice caught “—why did you come back?”

  “Aw, Jolie…”

  Dusty wasn’t sure of the logistics, but suddenly his arms were full of Jolie. Sweet, soft, wonderful Jolie. Her fresh-smelling hair tickled his nose. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her back was as rigid as all get out, and he was the only one doing all the holding, but right that minute it didn’t matter.

  Given the way things had been between them in the end, he’d had no idea his leaving had hurt Jolie so deeply. So irreparably. She had always been so strong. Taken everything in stride. He’d thought she’d be relieved when he left. For the first time in five years of marriage she could lead her life the way she wanted without someone questioning what she was doing. All she was putting at risk every time she walked out that door and went to the fire station.

  Hadn’t she grown tired of their arguments? Hadn’t she had enough of their going nose-to-nose at the dinner table until every last bit of their appetites left them?

  “Aw, hell, Jolie,” he said, burrowing his nose into her hair and whispering into her ear. “I’ve never stopped wanting you.”

  She drew back, her blue, blue eyes nearly swallowed by tears. It was all he could do not to kiss her then. To claim her trembling lips with his. To mold her compact little body to his. To show her with actions how very much he wanted her even now.

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth and he nearly groaned, immediately pegging the gesture for what it was. She wanted to be kissed as much as he wanted to kiss her. And he knew in that instant that he was going to do it, consequences be damned.