“Jolie?”
Her muscles stiffened and soon she was pushing at his shoulders. Dusty resisted, needing to touch the area that had caused them both so much pain.
Then he realized it hadn’t been him who’d said her name. Rather someone else had. Someone who had come in through the front door. A woman. It dawned on him that Jolie wasn’t trying to twist away from him because he was touching her burn scar. She was trying to save them both from a potentially very embarrassing moment.
Cursing under his breath, Dusty pulled away from her. The silence in the house was deceptive, and they both knew not to trust it. They’d lived in the town too long for that. They scrambled for the cover of the laundry room just off the kitchen with what Dusty hoped was all their clothes. While he hadn’t taken anything off, Jolie was stripped of every last scrap of clothing. It took Herculean effort not to watch her as she struggled into her panties and jeans, then bra and sweater.
“Jolie?” came the woman’s voice again.
Damn small towns, Dusty thought. He couldn’t remember a time when they’d locked their doors. Everyone’s house was open to everyone else. And while midnight visits weren’t considered proper protocol, early evening drop-bys were perfectly acceptable. And one of their neighbors had definitely just dropped in for a visit.
“Wait.”
Dusty grasped Jolie’s wrist where she’d been about to leave the tiny laundry room. He caught his breath at the traces of passion still visible in her deep blue eyes, along with a boatload of confusion. He ignored both and reached up to smooth the thick tangle of her light brown hair. She caught on and managed to complete the finger-combing and shape it neatly into place. Then she reached out and ran her fingers along his upper lip, where his mustache used to be.
Dusty tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, then swallowed thickly. “Jolie, I…”
He what? What could he possibly say at a time like this? We’ll continue this later? I had a great time, but I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean for that to happen? Or how about, Bad habits are hard to break?
It turned out he didn’t have to say anything, for Jolie must have been thinking the same thing. That the rip in time they’d just created out there on the kitchen chair was a mistake. He saw it there on her flushed face. In the wrinkle between her brows.
“I know,” she said quietly, then pulled gently away from him and went into the kitchen.
Jolie tried to brace herself for seeing the unexpected visitor. Used whatever strength hadn’t been drained out of her to rein in the emotions pulsing thickly through her veins with every beat of her heart. Attempted to arrange her face into some sort of neutral mask that would hide what had just happened between her and Dusty. But the moment she spotted her sister-in-law, Darby Conrad, standing in the kitchen doorway taking in the abandoned dinner dishes and two place settings on the table, all she wanted to do was throw herself into her best friend’s arms and sob out all her troubles.
If Dusty wasn’t a few feet away, she might have done just that. If Darby didn’t have a whole host of troubles of her own, she definitely would have. But since neither was the case, she took in a quiet breath and smiled.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in.”
Darby raised her gaze and returned her smile. “If that’s a comment on what I look like, I take offense. I’d like to think that since today is the first time I’ve put on makeup in…well, months, that I look a little better than a soggy play toy. Or worse, a dead field mouse.”
Jolie tightly hugged the pretty brunette, then laughed nervously and avoided Darby’s gaze as she pulled away. “You always look great.”
Which was exactly the wrong thing to say and she knew it the instant the words were out. Ever since Erick died, she seemed inexplicably sensitive about her appearance.
But being the trouper she was, Darby easily glossed over the gaffe and began chatting about everything and nothing while Jolie collected the dinner dishes and put them in the sink. All the while she quaked inside, her sex swollen and throbbing from Dusty’s possessive attention, her lips raw and sensitive from his kisses, and her mind swirling alternately with questions and answers.
Why? was the one that emerged most frequently.
Why had Dusty come home?
Why had Dusty kissed her?
Why had Dusty made love to her?
Why hadn’t he come out of the laundry room yet?
“What’s this?”
Not much got past Darby. And now wasn’t going to prove the exception. Jolie looked over her shoulder to where Darby was picking up a sheaf of papers from the floor. The divorce papers. Her pulse leaping, she nearly sprinted the short distance between them and impolitely snatched the papers from her soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law’s hands. “Oh, nothing. Just some things concerning the house that the Realtor wanted. Boring stuff.”
Darby’s frown was all-too-telling. And the shift from frown to grin was head-spinning as Darby’s attention moved beyond probing Jolie’s face for answers to an undetermined spot somewhere over her shoulder.
“Dusty!” Darby cried, practically catapulting herself into his arms.
Jolie glanced away from his questioning gaze and his more-than-a-little gob-smacked expression.
“Oh, God! When did you get in? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to town when we spoke the other day? It’s been forever.”
Darby’s rapid-fire, enthusiastic questions filled the silence that loomed between Jolie and Dusty. Jolie was almost glad for it. Almost.
Dusty had called Darby? The other day? Had he kept in touch with his brother’s widow? Apparently he had. And a part of her was glad that he’d stayed connected to some part of his family. Still, that didn’t stop the knife-sharp pain that sliced through her chest at the knowledge that he hadn’t called her once in the past six months. All communication had come through his attorney. Initially, she had talked directly to his lawyer. Then she’d decided the task was too painful and had hired old Tom Handland in town to handle the communications.
She hadn’t even known where Dusty was, beyond the city. Didn’t even have his phone number should she have needed to contact him. Wanted to hear his voice. Ask him the question that stole sleep from her at night.
Yet he’d been in touch with Darby.
Darby linked her arm through Dusty’s and led him toward the table. Jolie realized she had the divorce papers twisted tightly in her hands and smoothed them out and dropped them facedown onto an empty chair.
“Jolie, why didn’t you tell me he was coming?” Darby asked.
Because I didn’t know. But she didn’t say the words. Instead, she smiled. “Do you want some coffee?”
Darby hummed. “I’d love some.”
Jolie didn’t ask Dusty if he’d like a cup. She automatically pulled three cups out of the cabinet and poured the fresh-brewed coffee into each.
“My mom’s watching the kids,” Darby was telling Dusty as Jolie put the cups on the table and moved theirs to sit in front of them. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to bring them into town to go shopping for Halloween costumes. You know kids. They’re adamant about being ghosts…until they see the pumpkin costumes.” She looked at where Jolie sat across from them. “Oh, and I can’t thank you enough for bringing by that game of Candyland yesterday, Jolie. The twins love it. Oh, excuse me. They’ve informed me that they don’t like to be referred to as ‘the twins.’ Anyway, it was all I could do to get Erin and Lindy into bed last night. And even then they insisted on sleeping with the game on the floor between their beds. Don’t let on, but I know they snuck in a couple plays after lights out.”
Jolie waved her away, trying to pretend she was following the conversation, even participating in it, though she felt as if she were viewing the table from ten feet above it. “I’m glad they like it.”
She blinked her gaze up from her coffee, realizing she hadn’t heard Dusty say anything since coming out of the laundry room. She thought maybe he was as confuse
d as she by what had happened between them and needed a few minutes to gather his thoughts. Instead, she was surprised to see his face pale, his hands tight against his cup though he had yet to drink from it, and his eyes wide and unseeing.
It occurred to her that this was the first time he’d seen his sister-in-law since his brother Erick had died six months ago.
Her stomach twisted into a tight knot.
Darby took a long pull from the coffee. “Oh, you don’t know what a treat this is. I think giving up coffee was one of the hardest things to do when I was pregnant. And, well, of course now I wouldn’t dare drink it regularly. Erin and Lindy try my nerves enough.”
Slowly, Darby’s voice began to fade and she, too, stared down into her coffee cup as though looking for answers in the murky depths.
Jolie told herself her sister-in-law had it much worse than she did. After six years of marriage, two beautiful twin girls, and building up a ranch together, Darby had lost her husband. Permanently. No father for her children. No husband for her. He hadn’t just moved to another town hours away. He’d…died.
With her and Dusty…Well, given what had just happened between them at this very kitchen table, she wondered if things would ever really be over between them. There remained a link between them that no divorce papers could hope to sever.
Was that how she was destined to live out her life? Waiting for Dusty to walk back through that door? Hope for a few stolen moments here and there when their paths crossed? Is that all there was?
No. She’d asked herself those same questions weeks ago and had come to the conclusion that she couldn’t do that. Couldn’t live that way. She had to forge a path for herself alone. Without Dusty. And that included the selling of this house.
Jolie looked up to find Darby watching both her and Dusty curiously. “So…” she said slowly. “What was going on between the two of you when I came in, anyway? Did I interrupt something?”
Dusty pushed from the table so abruptly, that same panicky expression on his face, that Jolie started and Darby’s brows furrowed in concern.
“I’m…sorry. I just remembered something I have to do,” he said.
He started for the door then hesitated, his gaze raking Jolie’s burning face, then falling on Darby. Jolie could have sworn she saw guilt in the depths of his brown eyes. But there wasn’t anything for him to feel guilty about. Was there?
“It was good to see you, Darby. I’m glad you and the girls are doing so well.”
With that, he stalked from the room, the closing of the door moments later announcing that he’d left the house entirely.
Silence reigned for long minutes as the two women considered his hasty departure. Jolie stared after the empty space that had been filled with Dusty’s considerable presence, pondering his odd behavior. He had looked as if it had been torture being in the same room with Darby. But why? He and his sister-in-law had always gotten along well.
“Well,” Darby said, finally breaking the silence. “What was that about? Is…is something happening between the two of you?”
Too much…yet so little, Jolie thought, shivering as she remembered his probing, skillful touch, and the distance in his eyes when she’d first seen him standing in the doorway. “Sorry,” she said quietly, turning her gaze on Darby. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I think I do,” Darby said. “He just did what he does on the phone when he calls once a week. He asks me how the girls and I are, asks whether we need any money, then he hangs up with hardly a goodbye.”
Jolie shook her head, still not understanding.
“Don’t you see? He thinks he’s the one responsible for Erick’s death. It took me a while to figure it out. Survivor’s guilt. I read up on it once, you know, for myself. Anyway, his avoidance of anyone connected to Erick is a classic sign.”
Jolie felt as if she’d been run over by a bulldozer going full speed.
She’d never looked at the situation quite like that. Yes, Dusty had understandably been overwhelmed by the loss of his brother. But the anguish in his eyes just now was even deeper than it had been the day Erick had died. Had she been so concentrated on their own problems she hadn’t been able to look beyond them to him? To what motivated him? To what had wormed its way deep into his heart, making him do what he had?
Her heart contracted painfully and it took everything she had not to get up and go after him.
The following morning, Dusty pounded away at installing new subflooring in the master bath, his muscles aching, his mind mercifully devoid of thought.
This trip back home—back to Old Orchard—wasn’t turning out to be anything like he’d hoped it would be. First there had been his hot reaction to seeing Jolie again after he’d thought he’d chased her out of his heart. A reaction that had led to them making love on the kitchen chair. Then he had seen Darby again after so long.
What did a man say to a woman whose husband was dead…because of him?
His muscles bunched and he pounded harder, determined to stop the thought in its tracks.
Six months had passed since he’d lost Erick in that fire. Six long, torturous months in which he’d wake up in the middle of the night covered in a cold sweat, imagining flames licking around the edges of his bedroom and calling out his brother’s name.
From the word go Dusty had felt something wasn’t right that night. An odd sort of foreboding had shadowed him throughout dinner at the station, and an emergency run out to the Clemens place, where one of their boys had managed to feed a toe to the lawnmower. He’d tried to shake it off, debated whether or not to share his thoughts with Erick, but ultimately kept quiet about them, seeing as there was only an hour to go on their shift.
“Pop quiz, hotshot,” Erick had called out, leading the way up the emergency exit steps in the ten-story medical office building perched on the edge of town. “If paper’s flash point is 451 degrees, how hot does it need to be for a sock to burn?”
Dusty remembered the sound of their quick, booted footsteps echoing through the stairwell as he pulled the attack hose behind him. The fire was called in by the night watchman and was said to be isolated on the sixth floor, though no site inspection had been made. “Let me guess. You’ve been assigned to another stint at the academy, huh?”
Erick had made a sound like a buzzer, indicating a wrong answer. “Six hundred degrees Fahrenheit.” He stopped outside the door to the sixth floor, checking the metal for heat, then opened it. “And yeah, I’m scheduled for the next set of rookies in two weeks.”
With each step Dusty took down the stylishly decorated hall, the sense of danger he’d experienced all day spiked even higher. He looked sharply around, feeling as if someone was following him. The situation was proving to be one of those where you knew there was a fire, you could smell the fire, you just couldn’t see the damn fire.
Erick continued on ahead, checking, then opening doors on either side of the hall as he went. “Question number two,” he said, peeking inside another office, then crossing the hall. “What do you get when—”
He reached for the door handle without checking the exterior for heat and Dusty’s heart had surged up into his throat. “Back draft!” he shouted the instant Erick turned the handle. The door bowed ominously inward, then before Erick could turn his head toward the barrier, it exploded outward, slamming into his brother head-on, a rolling cloud of flame completely engulfing him.
Dusty’s vision slowly returned to the here and now, to the silent and secure bathroom surrounding him. He’d never forget that night for as long as he lived. The night the fire had roared from behind that door, wild, hungry, out of control, and claimed his brother’s life. He’d grown up knowing the ferociousness of that living, breathing animal called fire. Had been humbled by it as others were burned. Had been excited with the prospect of facing it when the call came in. But he’d never expected to sacrifice his brother to the red monster.
In one horrifying moment, Erick was gone, an
d Dusty was at risk of losing Jolie, as well, as she hovered on the other side of the fire on the perimeter of the building and fell victim to the same explosion. He’d experienced a fear so acute he’d thought his heart might explode. What he’d believed had been courage, bravery, he’d discovered was nothing but foolish ignorance.
So he’d quit the department and begged Jolie to resign, as well.
But she’d not only stubbornly rejected the idea, she refused to even consider it. To weigh how important it was to him that she stop putting herself at risk every single hour of every day. Instead, as she’d lain in the hospital bed, she had looked at him as though he was crazy, even though half her back was covered with third-degree burns. Her face was unnaturally pale against the white linen, and her blue eyes threw flames not unlike the ones that had burned her. And threatened to burn him.
Dusty let the hammer fall to his side, then dropped his chin to his chest. His eyes were full of grit from where he’d been so concentrated on the task of installing the flooring.
He couldn’t do it again. Attend the funeral of another loved one. Especially when that loved one made a point of repeatedly placing her life in danger. He didn’t think he could survive it. Not this time.
Angry at his own weakness, he pushed from the floor and made his way back downstairs. When he’d left Darby and Jolie alone last night, he’d spent hours walking the town streets, then when he couldn’t take even one more hearty welcome-back, when he had no intention of staying, he headed out of town, on the old town road, walking until he couldn’t walk anymore. He’d hitched a ride back with one of the Jansen brothers somewhere around midnight.
Jolie had been fast asleep. Or so she would have had him think. A wish he had decided to support. He hadn’t wanted to talk to her just then. Didn’t want to see that smear of pained confusion in her eyes that had been there after they’d made love earlier…and when he’d left her and Darby, feeling as though he might burst with the guilt that filled him.
The Woman for Dusty Conrad Page 7