Exhaling deeply, she finished simply. “So I left him.”
* * *
Four words to describe an experience for Kyle that must have been the worst nightmare he’d ever lived through. At least, Daniel’s jilting had been his own worst nightmare—and he hadn’t been standing at the front of the church when she rejected him. Kyle had had that humiliation to add to the heartache.
No, Daniel had just been surrounded by every person he called family or friend, everyone who was important in his life. And in one of those strange twists, every single one of them had seen Stacia come into the room alone. They’d watched her make a beeline for him, had seen the distress on her face and every single one of them had gone utterly still. They’d known. Maybe even before he had.
Honesty forced him to acknowledge that none of her breakups had been easy for Natasha. She was a good person, kind and generous and compassionate. There was no meanness in her; she never set out to deliberately hurt someone. Marriage was a big deal to her, as it was to him, as he thought it should be to everyone considering it. She wasn’t the sort of person who would leap into it with the assumption that if it didn’t work, divorce was always an option. It was a commitment to be with one person for the whole rest of her life. Divorce was an option only in the worst-case scenario.
He stared into the distance, his fingers loosely gripped together. In the end, breaking up with Kyle had been the right decision for both of them. It had taken a while, but they’d kept their friendship. He’d fallen in love with someone else, and so had she.
And done the same thing to him. And then to Daniel. To Zach.
And it had obviously been the right decision with Eric and with Zach, but damn it, he was different. He had loved her more than anything. He’d wanted exactly the things she’d wanted, and he’d wanted them with her, forever. But she had run from him, too.
She was silent, unhappiness etched in the lines of her face. There was a defeated look about her, enough guilt for a jail full of convicted felons. She deserved the guilt. She’d wrecked enough lives to earn it.
Though the wreckage of Kyle’s life had been temporary. Probably, so had Eric’s and Zach’s. Daniel appeared to be the only one who hadn’t gotten over it. Though he’d convinced himself he had, he still hurt so damned much. Still cared so damned much. Still missed her and dreamed about her and wanted her...
Oh, God.
The rain fell harder, a steady drum on the building, the streets, but in the stillness of the room, they were dry, even cozy. Untouched by it. He’d grabbed his slicker when he left the house. It still lay on the passenger seat, one sleeve and hood hanging over the floorboard. A lot of good it would do him there.
He let his head fall back against the wall with a small thud—maybe it would knock some sense into him—and closed his eyes. He wished he could turn back the clock, just a week. Life had been easier then. He’d been living in the present, satisfied with his work, his friends, his dating status. There’d been no constant reminders of Natasha, no threats to his heart or mind or life, no fears for her life. All things considered, he’d been good.
But if he was going to magically turn back time, why not go further? Maybe he could have prevented the breakup. Maybe he could have talked to her, acknowledged her insecurities, convinced her that they were strong enough together to survive anything. A tendency to take relationships lightly wasn’t genetic; a lack of positive role models didn’t guarantee failure. They could have overcome whatever life chose to throw at them.
“You really are crazy-making, you know?” He opened his eyes as he spoke and saw a great shudder ripple through her.
“You know my mother’s motto.” Her tone was dry and cautious.
He knew. Libby Spencer had spouted it off often enough. “‘If you’re not stirring things up, you’re not doing it right.’”
“I asked her once how she could stand having things stirred up all the time. She said she was living, that the boredom of my life would drive her to violence. She felt sorry for me, and I felt frustrated for her, and we never discussed it again.”
Some of the stiffness left her body, relaxing her spine, loosening the muscles in her neck and jaw. The worst of the conversation was over. Her responses hadn’t been as black-and-white as he would have liked, but in a world with fifty-six million colors, he’d learned to accept that things rarely were.
He had one more question to ask before he let the subject drop. “What could I have done differently, Natasha?”
Sadness flitted across her face. “Nothing. You were perfect, Daniel. You were everything I wanted. The failing was mine, not yours.”
He’d blamed her all along, though not entirely. There was still the fact that he’d proposed to a woman who had jilted two fiancés hours—and minutes—before the weddings. He’d had the arrogance to believe that he was the one who could change her. He was the one who would live happily-ever-after where the others had failed.
But mostly he’d blamed her. Bitterly. Hearing her say, It was me, not you... Sure, it was a cliché, but clichés existed for a reason. It tempered his bitterness. It made him feel...
He didn’t want to examine what it made him feel. If he could say goodbye, walk out and never see her again, it would be a relief. Closure.
But he couldn’t walk out. He couldn’t avoid seeing her. He couldn’t leave her to cope with RememberMe on her own. He could forgive but not forget. He had a duty here, an official one and a personal one. The official one was easy. He could do his job with his eyes closed and one hand cuffed behind his back.
The personal one was going to get him into trouble. Because there had never been a time, from the very first time Natasha had spoken to him, that being with her hadn’t given him a sense of completion. That talking to her hadn’t made him want to touch her, that touching her hadn’t made him want to kiss her, that kissing her hadn’t made him want to do everything.
There wasn’t a moment in his life that he hadn’t wanted her. Needed her. That he hadn’t somewhere, deep inside, loved her.
Like it was meant to be. Like they were meant to be.
He took a breath, bringing fresh smells into his lungs, blowing out the old ones of memory. Perfume, shampoo, toothpaste, laundry soap—all had their memories. Flowers, cooking aromas, cooking burns, smoke, salt, ocean, sand—they did, too. Everything about her had been so bright, high-definition, sharp and vibrant and intense, in his memories that in bad times, they’d cut him to shreds. It was a wonder he hadn’t gone stalker-crazy himself.
Time had rubbed off some of the vibrancy, and these past few moments—her conversation, his self-admissions—had taken off some of the sharpness. He didn’t feel so much like a bitter walking wound but more like a person who’d just discovered he’d survived what he’d thought would kill him. He wasn’t whole, but he could foresee the day when he would be. He still didn’t understand, but he could appreciate it without understanding it.
Some things, Archer said, were meant to be taken on faith, or not taken on faith. Acceptance or rejection. No dissection, no microscopic probing.
“I honestly can’t remember if I said it during this conversation,” Natasha began, “but I’ve said it to so many people so many times that I can’t keep count.” She blew out her breath. “I’m sorry, Daniel. And you weren’t wrong. You were different, and you made me different. We were so different and so right that I thought not even I could screw it up. But my dedication to my insecurities turned out to be a lot stronger than I’d expected.”
He looked at her a long time, needing to remember every detail about the way she looked right that moment. Her face was fuller, her eyes were bluer and her smile had lost some of its energy. She was five years older, another heartbreak older, full of regrets and apologies and still the most beautiful woman in his world. Still the woman who knew him best, but who somehow hadn’t known that he would have done anything
to protect her, not just physically but emotionally and mentally, from real dangers to imagined fears.
He would have died for her.
But he hadn’t even fought for her. He hadn’t demanded that she talk to him. He hadn’t insisted on answers and plans and resolutions. She’d wanted to get away from him? Fine. Instead of standing his ground, instead of fighting to protect them, he’d quit his job, packed his stuff and run fifteen hundred miles to nurse his hurt feelings.
But he was five years older, too. Five years wiser. He would still protect her.
Would still die for her.
He would kill for her.
He suspected he would still do anything for her.
Even trust her.
Chapter 7
If the sun were visible, it would be setting when Natasha peeked at the western sky through the narrow space between window frame and blinds. All she saw was dark clouds in the near distance and darker ones farther away. As the afternoon had passed, the temperature had fallen. For the first time since checking into the hotel, she turned the heat on, grateful that the elegant old building boasted not too terribly old central heating. Warm air blew through the vent against the outer wall, fluttering the curtains, perfuming the air with an unused sort of scent for the first few minutes.
Instead of returning to the straight-backed chair at the table, she went to the bed, kicked off her shoes and plumped the pillows against the headboard. “Are Archer and Jeffrey considering it?”
It had been a difficult afternoon that had somehow turned into a comfortable evening. The conversation had slowly shifted from her fickleness to safer, everyday subjects that didn’t trigger either one’s more volatile emotions. They’d even laughed about a few things together. One of the few things Natasha and her mom agreed on: laughter was good for the soul. Hers felt lighter. Safer.
Daniel adjusted his chair to better see her before answering her question about him asking his parents to consider Cedar Creek when they retired. “They are. They come to visit at least twice a year, and sometimes Jeffrey stops in when he’s traveling on business. They’ve charmed Mrs. Little Bear and Mila’s gramma Jessica, and Archer makes a point of running with Morwenna’s mum when he’s here.”
Natasha smiled at the thought. Both older Harpers—okay, all three of them—were in excellent shape, but none of them were dedicated to working out. She was lazy, and it showed. They were, ah, less active, but when they needed strength or stamina, it was there to draw on. Supermen, she’d called them.
“It’s kind of hard to imagine them in small-town middle America,” she remarked. “Or retired, for that matter. They have so much going on in their lives. Then again, it was kind of hard to imagine you here, but you’ve fit right in.” Hesitating, she drew her finger over a line of stitches on the embroidered pillow case. “So, you don’t miss LA?”
“On occasion. But planes fly that way, too.”
“But not enough to go back there.”
“No.” Like her, he fidgeted a bit, crossing one ankle over his other knee and fiddling with his boot lace. “When I came here, I figured it would be temporary. I mean, Detective Daniel Harper, LAPD, spending the rest of his life in Cedar Creek, Oklahoma? I wasn’t coming here. I was just running away from LA, and this is the first place I stopped. I figured a year, maybe two, then I’d head south to Dallas or east to New York. Maybe even just a little bit northeast to Tulsa. But...”
“You liked it.” She was genuinely glad for him. God knows, he’d deserved whatever satisfaction he could get after her.
“The work is interesting enough. I haven’t died of boredom. Anything I want is within reasonable traveling distance. No rush hour. No traffic jams. No ten million people wanting to be exactly where I am. The people are good, the weather changes and I like it.”
He’d found his home.
She was still looking for hers. She’d thought her home was with Kyle, then Eric and the others. She’d been willing to live where they lived, willing to change her life so she could fit in instead of asking for a compromise.
Daniel’s home hadn’t been a person but a place, maybe even a state of mind. When her life was back to normal, when RememberMe was gone one way or the other, she would think about that.
“What about you?” Daniel asked. “You still a Cali girl through and through?”
She smiled sunnily and would have tossed her hair if it was long enough. “Don’t I look it?”
He didn’t answer, or ask another question, or do anything but look at her with his waiting-for-an-answer attitude. Her smile became a tad rueful. “Am I going to live and die in sunny California? Not if RememberMe gets his way. Maybe not even if you get your way and stop him. It doesn’t have the happiest memories.”
“Hey, you fell in love four times there. It can’t be all bad.”
It warmed her immeasurably that he said the words without a hint of bitterness. She was so very lucky to hear that. “My happiest memories were there, of course. It’s just that the last few years have kind of overshadowed them.”
He stretched, paced to the door and looked out the peephole, paced back to the window and nudged the blinds apart. He stood motionless there a long time. Looking for the best vantage points? The places where RememberMe could hide and watch them?
“I wonder if his apartment in LA is creepy,” she remarked, and Daniel’s shoulders stiffened. It didn’t stop her from going on. “You know, if he ever has anyone over, if he’s got a room padlocked and says, ‘Never go in there,’ or if he’s one of those strange guys whose neighbors would say, ‘He lived all alone. He was such a quiet guy.’ If he has a hidden room or a basement or a closet that’s plastered with pictures of me. I wonder if he’s taken anything of mine—maybe a napkin I used in a restaurant or a coffee cup I walked off and left on the table at Starbucks.”
“You don’t leave empty cups sitting on tables.”
He was right. Not leaving messes for other people to tidy was a trait they shared in common. Though she’d certainly brought a big enough mess to his door this time. “I might have been in a hurry.”
“You’re morbid.”
“Stacia says as long as you can joke about it, it isn’t a complete and total tragedy. Besides, isn’t that what stalkers do? Surround themselves with reminders of the object of their psychoticness?” Another thought occurred to her. “I wonder if I’m the first one.”
Finally Daniel let the blind slats fall back into place and faced her. “You’re also ghoulish.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I admit, I don’t know a lot about stalkers, other than they’re delusional and dangerous. I guess if he can obsess over you, he might have obsessed over someone else in the past.”
“If he did, what would have made him abandon her for me?”
“I don’t know. The moon entered a new phase. The tides changed. Your smile was prettier or he liked your hair better or—”
“Or he killed her because he couldn’t have her.” A shiver washed over her. “Great, now I’m channeling Stacia. Did I tell you she’s done three slasher films in the past few years? She always plays the too-stupid-to-live girl who goes to investigate creepy serial killer noises by herself. Those movies terrified her as a kid, so she finds it a hoot that she’s doing them now.”
“She’s certainly got the scream for it. When she’s excited, her shrieks can burst eardrums. I can’t imagine the magnitude of her terror-induced scream.”
There was a hint of fondness in his voice. It had been one of Natasha’s greatest reliefs that her sister and her boyfriend liked each other. Stacia hadn’t been fond of Kyle, thought Natasha could do better than Eric and had been pretty much bewildered by Zach. His world starts at the surf shop and ends beyond the breaking waves. It’s all he talks about, all he does, all he wants to do. He calls you “dude.” Offer him serious hot sex when the waves are crankin’, and he’ll take
the waves every time. The guy’s taken too many boards to the head, Tash.
Natasha figured Stacia understood exactly what Zach’s appeal was to her, though they’d never discussed it: he was so very different from Daniel. Breaking up with Daniel had been hard, getting over him had been even harder, and she’d sworn the next guy she spoke to would be his complete opposite.
Thus Zach. Their engagement had lasted less than a week. He’d casually asked, she’d casually said yes, and six days later she’d less than casually changed her mind. He’d been cool with it. No problem, dude. My buds say the only leash a man needs is the one on his board.
“She hardly spoke to me for two months after she returned your ring.” Natasha was rubbing the embroidery pattern again. “Made it kind of tough since we were sharing an apartment at the time. She would crawl in bed with me and let me cry on her shoulder, but she wouldn’t say, ‘Poor baby,’ or ‘It’ll be all right.’”
He cocked his head to one side. “Did you cry a lot?”
“Enough to solve the state’s water shortage for a year.”
“Good.”
She raised her brows in his direction.
“You break my heart, you don’t get to go out and be all happy the next day. If you’re going to make me suffer, you need to suffer, too.”
She flippantly saluted. “I’ll remember that—” She’d been about to say next time, but she caught herself. Daniel was the most loyal person she’d met. Because of that, when he trusted someone, it was wholehearted but not easy. She didn’t know what kind of treatment he gave someone who betrayed him because she didn’t know anyone besides herself who had.
They fell silent for a time, him thinking heaven knew what, her thinking about all her shortcomings and yet how easily it was to rate them from minor to major to worst to absolutely worst. Jilting Daniel definitely took that title, hands down.
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