Timing

by Mary Calmes

  “Don’t worry,” he said as he advanced on me. “I’m not going to make it your fault. Cole’s going to be the one who pressured you. I have a great story about how you guys were in love, but he actually used you, and then you ended up killing him and then killing yourself. I even wrote a note.”

  “Nobody who knows me at all is gonna believe you.” I was many things, but tragic was not one of them.

  “It’s romantic, in a sick, twisted sort of way.” He shrugged. “They’ll believe it.”

  I didn’t think, I just bolted for the archway. I wasn’t going to stand there and get shot. How sane was that? I ran into the kitchen, came careening around the corner, and grabbed onto the doorframe so I wouldn’t fall. When I turned, I was faced with two doors. The first one was locked, so I tried the second one. It led up to the second floor.

  “Stef!”

  There was a pop, and a chunk of the door was gone. In my body, the hole would have been bigger. I charged up the stairs and he screamed behind me.

  “I don’t want to hurt you!”

  No, he just wanted to kill me. Obviously as the psychosis had set in, the man’s logic had flown right out the window.

  I ran down the hall on the second floor, hearing pops behind me, and dived inside of the first room. There was nothing to grab and hit him with. It looked like a spare bedroom, all done in rosebuds. It was so surreal to be running for my life and to find myself standing in a room that looked like it belonged to a nine-year-old girl.

  “Stefan!”

  I ran to the window and looked out to see how far down the fall would be if I threw myself out, and the blue lights flashed on my face. My head snapped up, and I saw the four sheriff cars and Rand’s big, scary pickup. Two men were holding onto him, keeping him from running into the house. I banged on the glass, and his face lifted as he yelled. I couldn’t hear it, but I saw all the rage and force, even from a distance.

  “Stef!”

  The drop from the second floor was straight down. If it didn’t kill me, it would hurt me really badly. I darted from the room. There was a “pop,” and my shoulder felt like it was on fire along with the house. I ran, even as the throb made it feel like my arm had fallen off, and leaped sideways into another room. That one had another door, and when I went through that, I discovered that the bedrooms were connected like a dorm room. When I peeked out into the hall from the second bedroom, I saw Knox go into the first. Neither one of us knew the house at all, which was working to my benefit. I took the stairs back down to the first floor, hearing him running around above me, roaring my name.

  It was like walking into a sauna. Smoke was everywhere, and I wished that Mrs. Freeman’s house was laid out like Rand’s. I would never again take for granted the back door that led outside from his kitchen to the enclosed porch. But there had to be a second way out, I just had to find it. The front door, engulfed in huge flames, was not an option.

  “Stef!” he screamed, and then I heard his footsteps on the stairs.

  There was no way out. Everything was too heavy for me to pick up and launch at the only remaining possibility, the enormous bay window.

  “Stef!”

  I turned, clutching at my shoulder, the blood oozing between my fingers. “You can’t get out either, Knox.”

  “I will, Stef! Watch me!” he shrieked at me, lifting the gun.

  I braced for the impact; any way I dove, he had me.

  He screamed as blood exploded from his shoulder, arm, and collarbone. I turned to the window in time to see Sheriff Colter wave me out of the way. The chairs Mrs. Freeman and I had sat in just days ago flew through the window, shattering the glass in a downpour of shards.

  The third deputy grabbed me through the gaping hole where the window had once been. He dragged me outside as the others went in after Knox. I was spun around and shoved hard only to find myself crushed against a wall of solid muscle. Looking up, I saw that the usually bright blue eyes were almost black.

  “I just wanted to save him, Rand.”

  He nodded and tucked me against his side before bending fast and sliding an arm under my knees, scooping me up. He walked me away from the house toward his truck.

  “He shot me.”

  “I know. I heard it.”

  “Why’re you mad?” I asked, reaching up, touching the clenched jaw.

  “Oh, I dunno, the man I love finally tells me he loves me and then goes on and gets himself shot.”

  He was adorable.

  “What should I say?”

  “What should you say? You’re askin’ me what you should fuckin’ say?”

  It had actually been somewhat rhetorical.

  “Goddammit, Stefan!” he roared, squeezing me so tight I made a very unmanly squeak. “How ’bout ‘I’m sorry as shit, Rand, for taking ten goddamn years off your life’?”

  I lifted my head and kissed under his jaw.

  “All that bullshit about not workin’ on the ranch, you know that’s off the table now, don’t you?” he muttered angrily. “You’ll be lucky if you get to leave the ranch to do your goddamn Christmas shopping!”

  The bluster was kind of cute, because it was obvious he had been worried, scared to death, and it was there in his voice, in the way he was clutching me, and in the chin rubbing against my hair. I wanted to hear him rant and rave at me, but suddenly I was more tired than I had ever been in my life. I could not keep my eyes open, even when Rand threatened me.

  Chapter 11

  IT WAS different from how I thought it would be. The fallout from Knox’s crime tore Chaney Putnam apart. Apparently there was more scandal than I knew about, and the FBI came and took people and files away. As soon as I was cleared to travel, I had to return to Chicago to help put things in order so that the office could be closed. There was no time to return to the ranch and spend time with Rand. I simply had to go from being in a hospital for two days to the airport. I could have refused to go, but the company had been good to me, and I felt that I needed to do as much as I could. Rand did not understand.

  “You need to stay,” he said on my last night in the hospital.

  “I need to go help, Rand,” I said, still coughing from smoke inhalation. My lungs were recovering, but it was slow progress.

  “You need to stay here with me.”

  It was a good fight, but in the end, it was one he lost. He was more upset than I felt he should have been.

  “I’m coming back. I told you I was. What more do you want?”

  “I want you now.”

  “You got me.”

  “You’re going away.”

  “For two weeks, tops.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said flat out. “You’ll get back there, there’ll be exciting job offers, and you won’t come back. You’re easily taken in by smoke an’ mirrors.”

  “Well, it’s nice to hear you think so highly of me.”

  His hands went to my face. “There’s no one I think more of. Just stay here.”

  “I told you I love you, and since I’ve only ever said it to my own mother, Charlotte, and your mother, never to a man, you need to accept it as the gift it is.”

  “Stef—”

  “I will come back because you’re going to be my home.”

  “Stef—”

  “Do you wanna be my home?”

  “It’s all I want.”

  “Well, then, I don’t see the problem.”

  Rand’s mother and Uncle Tyler came to visit me at that moment and interrupted him. They were both very concerned, even as I made them swear not to call Charlotte on her honeymoon and tell her. It took some convincing—they were afraid of what she’d do to them when she found out the truth—but in the end, my charm prevailed.

  Saying good-bye to Rand at the airport was harder than I thought it was going to be. Funny, but now that I knew whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I was ready for my life to start. Back in Chicago, back at work, I would have flashes of Rand. I would think of him standing in
the breeze, hair tousled by the wind, or looking down at me with his molten eyes, or feel again his hands on my skin. I wondered how he could ever think that I would not go home.

  “Stef?”

  Looking up, I saw my assistant, Christina Wu, standing in the doorway, looking at me oddly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you all right? You look weird.”

  What could I tell her? That I missed my boyfriend? “I always look weird.”

  She gave me a smug smile. “It’s true, and it’s nice that you’re admitting it. That’s the first step to getting help.”

  “You’re hysterical.”

  “I’m aware.”

  I crossed the room to her, grabbing her hard, hugging her tight. “What are you going to do now? Where are you going to go?”

  Her brows furrowed. “Stef, you’re the one that got me a job working for your friend Dave Barron. I start next Monday.”

  David Barron had been more than a friend. I had slept with him and only him for six months before he decided he wanted to keep me and I disappeared. I had felt weird calling, even more so when he had so obviously thought that the reason for the contact was romantic and not the business that it was. It had been nice that he wanted my assistant, needing a good one. I had given him a great one.

  “Sorry,” I said, letting her go. “And sorry about that…. I know you don’t like to be touched a whole lot.”

  “Make me sound like a basket case, why don’t you. I simply don’t like to be touched by people who aren’t family or friends. I don’t discourage all human contact.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And besides,” she said, surprising me by wrapping her arms around me, “you’re the exception to the rule, Joss. I’m crazy about you—everyone is.”

  “Knox used to say that.”

  She nodded. “Well, Knox will have a lot of time to think about it while he’s serving time for his double-homicide and fraud. Or is it theft? What is it?”

  “I have no idea.” I sighed. “I wonder how long he’ll be in for?”

  “My guess is a very long time,” she said. “But don’t worry about that. He’s gone, he can’t hurt you, and everyone knows what he tried to do to you. If we actually had a company anymore, you could write your own ticket.”

  “Weird that we’re closing.”

  “I’m just glad that I work for you, one of the good guys, and not one of the bad ones. Some of the other assistants have to testify against their bosses and go through and give dates and times of meetings and all kinds of stuff.”

  “Lucky for you I am one of the good guys,” I teased her. “’Cause trying to remember what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis would be a pain in the ass.”

  “Yes, Mr. Scattered, it would be.”

  It was nice that some of the things in my life didn’t change.

  I WAS into my third week in Chicago before I realized that time had gotten away from me. Rand had been right, the job offers came flooding in, but as I felt disjointed and not myself, it was hard even to call people back and politely decline. I sent e-mails instead.

  My conversations with Rand were short and sometimes terse. He had moved quickly from understanding to sullen to silent. When he stopped answering his phone, I checked in with May. She informed me that he had taken a trip to hire the men for winter grazing and was not expected back for at least a couple of weeks. Before I could get off the phone, she wanted to know why I myself was not returning Charlotte’s calls.

  “I’m just not ready to rehash everything and explain about Rand.”

  “Well, you best get ready before you have a very hurt and angry girl on your hands.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said solemnly, hanging up minutes later after telling her I loved her too.

  How was I going to explain being madly in love with her brother to Charlotte? She had missed the beginning, and now I was supposed to catch her up? It was daunting just thinking about. She would be pissed that I had hidden things from her even in the midst of all the wedding craziness. Walking home from work that night, I realized that for the first time in ages I did not have my best friend to reach out to. Normally Charlotte was my touchstone, but as it was, I didn’t have her to turn to. When my phone rang, I didn’t even check the caller ID, I just answered.

  “Are you out of your mind not answering my phone calls?” she yelled at me.

  “Sorry.”

  She growled.

  “I am.”

  “Oooh, I should beat you!”

  “Come see me and you can.”

  “Okay—poof, here I am!”

  Looking up the street to my brownstone, I saw her waving from the steps. I flew down the sidewalk and up the stoop into her waiting arms. I hugged the life out of her, and she giggled.

  “If Mohammad won’t drink from the stream—wait—” She stopped herself. “That’s not right—how does that go again?”

  I just laughed into her shoulder as she clung to me. When she finally stepped back, her face lifted to mine, I watched her eyebrow slowly arch.

  “Crap.”

  She grunted.

  “I had no idea, Char,” I told her. “I mean one minute I think he hates me only to find out that he never did? It’s still surreal, you know?”

  “Yeah, that’s great, but first I wanna hear about your boss.”

  “You do?”

  “Well yeah,” she said, like it was understood. “I heard there was shooting.”

  “You’re like a rubbernecker on the road.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  I made a noise in the back of my throat, but the pouty lip made me spill. Who could resist the boo-boo face and the Bambi eyes?

  “And then what?” She pressed me for more details, still riveted an hour later as I recounted my experience with Knox Bishop and the fire.

  We talked and ate, talked and had dessert, talked and went out for second dessert, and the whole time, she was careful to tiptoe around all reference to her brother. She told me all about her honeymoon and how she had locked herself in the hotel bathroom for three hours when the doorknob fell off. She cackled evilly as she recounted how Ben had managed to get stung by three jellyfish in one day and how sick she was of having sex. She just wanted to play video games instead.

  Finally, at two in the morning as we walked back to my apartment, when I could not trade snappy banter with her a second longer, I grabbed her and looked into her face.

  “God, what?” She laughed at me.

  “Jesus, Char, don’t you want to know all about Rand?”

  “Aww, honey, I already know all about Rand.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “But how? Have you talked to him?”

  “I don’t need to talk to him to know what’s going on.” She smiled widely.

  “You don’t?”

  “No, honey, I don’t. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. It’s just timing.” She sighed deeply, her hands on my face. “I knew someday Rand was going to grow a pair and tell you how he felt. I just always hoped you guys would both be in the same place at the same time.”

  I was absolutely stunned.

  “Close your mouth, Stefan. You look like a fish.”

  I snapped it shut.

  “Please, I never saw so much sexual tension between two people in my life. You could cut it with a knife,” she assured me. “I mean the way Rand always looked at you like he wanted to eat you and kill you at the same time, and the way you always had to find an excuse to pick a fight with him? C’mon, what am I, stupid?”

  “I… I thought he hated me.”

  She cackled evilly. “Oh, my poor, dumb baby, were you dropped on your head when you were little?”

  “Charlotte!”

  She dissolved into laughter.

  “Char!”

  “Stefan Joss, my brother is crazy, head-over-heels in love with you! He has been since he was twenty-one and he walked into that room and saw the most beautiful eight
een-year-old boy that he’d ever seen in his life.”

  “I—”

  “He’s thirty-one now, and you’re still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. But it’s lucky for you, huh?”

  “What is?”

  “It’s lucky that you’re pretty, ’cause wow—really not bright.”

  “Char!”

  She cackled again.

  “You better fly home to your husband; he’s probably pissed at me for taking you away from him already.”

  “Are you kidding? That was the longest goddamn honeymoon in recorded history. He’s so glad I came to see you he can barely stand it. I said, ‘I’m gonna go see Stef,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, go visit your boyfriend’.”

  “You guys are like an old married couple already.”

  “Yeah, super.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders as we closed in on my apartment. “Hey, did you meet your mom’s lover?”

  “Eww, you just said ‘lover’ to gross me out. That’s mean.”

  My turn to cackle. “His son Tristan hit on me.”

  “Did Rand hurt him?”

  “No, Rand doesn’t know.”

  “Oooh good, lemme tell him. I like to see that vein pop out in his neck.”

  “God, you’re horrible.”

  “And you’re actually okay.” She sighed. “And I’m so glad. I was so worried. I thought maybe this thing with Knox had made you nuts or something.”

  “No.”

  “Well, it makes sense. I mean, hello—were you answering my calls?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You see, do those sound like the actions of a sane person to you?”

  I squeezed her tight. “No, they don’t.”

  “I rest my case.”

  “I will always pick up the phone from now on.”

  “See that you do.”

  She was very bossy, and I loved her like mad.

  “So when are you leaving?”

  Her head turned, and her gaze captured mine. “The better question is when are you leaving?”

  It really was the better question.

  “What are you still doing here, Stef?”