His expression lightened a fraction as he slid her a sideways smile. “I’ll write you a list.”
HAPPILY FILLED WITH hot fudge and ice cream, Brianna and Kayleigh greeted their mother without any indication they were concerned by their unusual day. As Claire watched her sister hug the girls and calmly ask them about what they had done this afternoon, she started to shake. She walked casually out the back door, hoping no one would notice her crazy reaction.
As she braced her hands on the white plastic patio table, trying to control the tremors, Tim’s warm body pressed against her back, his arms encircling her.
“They’re fine,” he said. “You brought them home safely.”
“We brought them home safely.” She turned into him and buried her face in his shirt, giving in to all the fears that she’d held at bay while she needed to, letting silent sobs rack her. “I was so scared he’d taken them somewhere we wouldn’t be able to find them or that he was drunk and violent toward them. I never realized how heartbreaking it can be to love a child.”
Her eyes were closed, but she could feel the soft flannel of his shirt against her cheek and smell the comforting scent of warm male overlaid with a slight tang of antiseptic soap from the veterinary clinic. She burrowed into him, letting herself rest against his solidity. The sound of his heartbeat against her ear calmed her.
“We’ll do everything we can to keep Frank away from them,” Tim said, his voice seeming to resonate all the way through her. “That’s one thing about a small town. It’s hard to hide.”
Claire’s trembling slowly eased, and she lifted her face away from his now soggy shirt. “Sorry, I got you all wet.”
“I’ve had worse at work.”
She tilted her head back to look into his strong face and reached up to brush at the lock of hair that fell onto his forehead. “You dropped everything and came to help, no questions asked,” she said. “You’re my hero.”
She felt his muscles clench as though he had been struck by a physical blow, but his voice maintained its slow, even drawl. “You’re the one who went toe-to-toe with Frank. That scared the hell out of me.”
“I wasn’t worried because I knew you were there.” She scanned his face, seeing the shadows in his eyes. “Why did it bother you when I said you were my hero?”
He bent to kiss her forehead, so she could no longer see his expression. “Someone said that to me a long time ago, and things didn’t work out well afterward.”
It must have involved his wife, so Claire let it go. She took a step away, out of his embrace. “Thanks for the chest to cry on. I couldn’t reach your shoulder.” Her weak joke banished a few of the shadows from his eyes. “You must have left a lot of patients sitting in your waiting room. You should get back.”
He didn’t respond instantly, locking his gaze on her face. Whatever he saw there must have satisfied him, because he nodded and said, “Call me when you’re ready to leave, and I’ll swing by here to pick you up.”
“I don’t need a ride. My car is here.”
“I’m taking you to my house. Frank knows where you live.”
Claire’s spirits lifted at the thought of spending the night with Tim before another thought sank them again. “I think I should stay with Holly, in case Frank shows up here.”
“I’m going to take care of that possibility with Chief McClung. There will be a cop here all night, I promise you.”
“Which is better protection than I would be.”
“I don’t know about that. Frank looked pretty worried.”
His teasing warmed her. She cupped her hand against his cheek. “I’m looking forward to seeing the house you’re building.”
He turned his head and kissed her palm, then took her hand and folded her fingers inward. “Hold on to that,” he said, “until I can add to it.”
He pivoted and strode around the corner of the house before she could force any words past the lump in her throat. She stood there until she heard an engine rumble to life and knew he was gone.
Just as she turned to go back in the house, the back door opened.
“Claire? Is everything okay?” Holly came out onto the cement patio. “Tim left?”
“He had to go back to work.” Claire hoped her face didn’t look as swollen and tear streaked as it felt. She kept talking to distract her sister. “You were great when the girls came home. So calm and normal, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I nearly blew it when I first saw them.”
“It took all my willpower,” Holly said. She crossed her arms and looked straight at Claire. “You were as scared as I was that Frank was going to hide them somewhere far away.”
“Okay, yes, I admit it.”
“Let’s go sit in the gazebo for a minute,” Holly said, waving toward the little six-sided wooden structure at the back of the yard. Surrounded by azaleas and mountain laurel, it offered a cool spot to sit and supervise when the girls were playing outdoors.
Puzzled, Claire walked across the neatly mown grass beside her sister, passing the children’s pink swing set and yellow plastic playhouse. For some reason, the empty toys made her teary again, so she swiped the back of her hand across her eyes as they settled into the cushion-padded wicker chairs.
“I was scared of something else too,” Holly said without preamble. She made eye contact with Claire and then dropped her gaze to her lap, where her hands lay twisted together. “I was afraid Frank might hurt the girls.”
Claire sucked in a sharp breath.
“He’s never touched them before,” Holly hurried to say, “but after the other night, I wasn’t sure what he’d do.” She lifted her eyes to Claire’s. “You were right. He’s hit me before this.”
Although she’d suspected this, hearing her fears confirmed made Claire feel like Frank had just punched her. “Oh dear God!”
Holly turned her face toward the peaceful yard, but Claire got the sense she wasn’t seeing anything in it. “The first time, we’d been to the Black Bear, and Frank had too much to drink. When we got home, he accused me of flirting with one of his friends and called me some ugly names. When I denied it, he backhanded me across the face.”
Claire flinched at the image.
“I was wearing those tight-fitting black jeans that night. That’s why I never wore them again,” Holly continued. She looked at Claire with an almost pleading expression in her eyes. “He cried the next day and begged me to forgive him. So I did.”
“I understand,” Claire said soothingly, even though she didn’t. How could her sister have lost her sense of identity to the point that she stayed with a man who treated her with such emotional and physical violence?
“No, you don’t understand,” Holly said. “I could put up with Frank as long as he was good to the girls and good to me in front of the girls. I did it to keep our family together.” As Holly spoke, her posture changed. She sat up, and a fierce light shone in her eyes.
Claire began to see that her sister had drawn on every ounce of her strength in trying to do what she thought was best for her two daughters. “I understand now, but you shouldn’t have endured it all alone.”
“Sometimes no one can help you,” Holly said. “If you put it into words, you won’t be able to handle it. You just get through one day at a time.”
“The bruises on your wrists?” Claire asked, her fingers curling into fists as she thought of her sister suffering without anyone to support her.
Holly lifted one hand to glance at the livid marks around its base. “When he told me he wanted the divorce, I lost it. After all he’d put me through, he dared to tell me it was my fault he wanted out. I started screaming at him. He squeezed my wrists to get me to stop.”
Claire dropped her face into her hands as the terrible situation seared itself into her brain.
“Now you know all of the whole ugly truth,” Holly continued. “I pushed you away to try and keep Frank from getting angry. I was stupid to think that anything I did would stop the violence.”
“You’re not stupid. You’re one of the bravest people I know,” Claire said, lifting her head and taking her sister’s hands. “We’re going to make damn sure Frank never has the chance to lay hands on you again.”
Holly entwined her fingers with Claire’s. “I don’t want Brianna and Kayleigh to know. No matter what he did to me, Frank’s their father. I don’t want to turn him into a monster in their eyes. That’s why I didn’t want the police involved.”
“That’s going to be really difficult.”
“We have to find a way, for the children’s sake.”
Claire nodded a silent promise, but she wasn’t sure how to carry it out.
“Will you be with me when I tell the girls about the divorce?”
“I thought you wanted to—”
Holly interrupted by shaking her head. “They’re going to need your love to help them deal with it. I saw how strong that was this afternoon.”
Claire couldn’t untangle the ball of emotions inside her enough to speak. She nodded again. Then she and Holly were in each other’s arms, crying and saying how they’d missed each other.
“When do you want to tell them?” Claire said, as they sat back and wiped their eyes.
“Tomorrow. I can’t handle any more drama today.”
TIM WAS RELIEVED to find patients still waiting for him at the veterinary hospital. The ever-efficient Estelle had rescheduled some and shuffled around others, so for a couple of hours, he was too busy to think about Claire and how he’d felt when Frank grabbed her. Finally, the last patient padded through the exit, and he shrugged out of his soiled white lab jacket and tossed it in the hamper.
“Everything up front is shut down,” Estelle said, appearing in the door to his office. “I’m glad the little girls got home safely.”
“So am I. Thanks for handling the crisis here.”
“Children should not be taken out of school without a very strong reason,” Estelle said.
Tim chuckled at her teacher’s disapproval of playing hooky. “You’re a treasure.”
“Pffft!” she said, giving him a dismissive wave as she pivoted on her heel and left.
He scraped a hand through his hair and realized he was both too tired and too wound up to attempt doing paperwork. However, he judged Claire wouldn’t be done with her duties at her sister’s house for another couple of hours.
That left too much time to remember how he had screwed up and left Claire to face Frank alone. While he was being polite to Judy McElhenny, that slimy bastard had manhandled Claire.
He kicked at the trash can by his desk, making it clatter on the tile floor.
He almost wished Frank had refused to let her go. It would have justified smashing his fist into the man’s face, feeling the crunch of bone as he broke his nose. Of course, the person he was angriest with was himself for putting Claire in danger.
“I’m just going around in circles here.”
He forced himself to sit down at his desk, swiveling the chair around to face the computer. The door to the bathroom caught his eye, reminding him of the shower Dr. Messer had installed there. Evidently, Messer’s wife complained when he came home covered in farm dirt, so the vet had built a roomy stall with a rain showerhead. Tim had never used it since the smellier he was, the more interesting Sprocket found him when he walked in the door.
Right now, a hot shower sounded like just what the doctor would order for himself.
He stripped down to his boxers, draping his shirt and jeans neatly over the desk chair. Then he headed for the bathroom, where he hung his underwear on the back of the door and cranked up the shower as hot as he could stand it. When the steaming water hit his skin, he groaned out loud at the sheer luxury of it, dropping his head forward so the jets pounded the tired, tense muscles in his neck and shoulders.
Once the initial shock of pleasure wore off, his mind wandered. Nothing he did could keep it away from Claire. When he remembered coming out of the barn to see Frank’s fist clamped around her arm, fear slugged him in the gut again. If Frank had hauled off and hit her, she wouldn’t have been able to avoid the blow. She was like a mother bear, drawing the attacker away from her cubs.
Then Claire had called him her hero. He braced his arm against the tile wall as he felt the kick in the gut all over again.
How many times had Anais said that to him?
Yet she hadn’t trusted him to live up to it. He had told her they could win the battle against the disease. He had offered his strength, his medical expertise, and his love, but she had chosen to die instead.
He threw his head back and let the water smash into his face so it would wash away the tears coursing down his cheeks. He’d been battling this anger at his dead wife for so long it felt good to give in to it, to be pissed off that she didn’t believe in him enough to stand and fight. He had been there beside her, and she had chosen to give up without a fight. Not like Claire, who stood and looked fear in the face.
He slammed his fist into the wall, making the glass doors rattle in their stainless steel track. “God damn it, Anais! We could have beaten it!” he shouted. “You should have had more faith in me. I was there!”
As the anger drained away, he slumped against the wet tile. Exhaustion swept over him, and yet he felt lighter. Some pain inside him seemed to loosen its talons.
He grabbed a bar of soap and gave himself a quick wash.
As he was rinsing, the bathroom door opened a crack. “Tim? Are you in there?” Claire’s voice came through the opening. “Holly and the girls went to bed early. You didn’t answer your cell, so I figured I’d just drive over here.”
His exhaustion lifted. He felt a smile tug at the corners of his lips. “Come on in.”
He heard Claire laugh, and then the door opened wide and he saw her wavering outline through the frosted shower doors. “Oh, darn, the view isn’t as good as I hoped,” she said.
“I can fix that.” He slid open the shower door and reached for the towel he’d hung on the nearby hook. It wasn’t there.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” Claire dangled the towel from her fingertip. She had changed out of her riding clothes and was wearing a denim skirt, a white T-shirt, and little flat sandals. Her face was bare of makeup, and her hair was pulled up into a simple ponytail that swung down her back. She looked different. Younger. Happier. Sexy as hell.
She dropped her gaze to his feet and let it travel upward with a long stop at about groin level.
“I guess you’re glad to see me,” she said.
He stepped out of the shower and walked toward her, dripping a trail of water as he went.
“You’ll get me all wet,” she said, backing up until she bumped against the wall.
“You read my mind.”
She thrust the towel out in front of her, her face alight with disbelieving laughter. He closed his fingers around her wrist and moved her arm out of the way so he could sandwich her between his wet skin and the plasterboard.
She gasped as his erection came in contact with her stomach. He bit back a groan as the water soaked through the cotton of her shirt and bra so he could feel her nipples harden against his bare chest.
When she dropped the towel and slid her hands over his buttocks, her palms warm and slick with the droplets from his shower, her nails feathering over his taut muscles, he gave up on self-control and moaned her name out loud.
Claire couldn’t believe it when Tim came stalking out of the shower stark naked, streaming water all over the floor. Whatever dark mood had possessed him the night before seemed to have been burned away by the light of day. Now he looked like some elemental mer-god, his body glistening, his hair slicked back over his skull. She thought he was coming to take the towel from her, but it got so much better than that.
As he pressed against her, she felt the water soak through her clothes to her skin, transferring his heat to her. She ran her hands over his buttocks, up his back, across his shoulders, and down again, gliding along the g
orgeous arcs and angles of his muscles and tendons.
Where drops of water beaded on his skin, she licked them off, savoring the taste of clean male. As her tongue touched his nipple, his hips rocked against her and he groaned.
“This was supposed to be your punishment, not mine,” he rasped.
“You consider this punishment?” She licked his other nipple.
He took her head in both hands and tilted it up and away from his chest. “How wet are you?” he asked with a wicked undertone.
“Soaking,” she purred back.
He kissed her, teasing her lips with his tongue. Then, without warning, he scooped her up and carried her out of the bathroom and into his office. It was the second time he’d picked her up, and she was starting to enjoy these casual demonstrations of his strength.
He rounded the metal desk and sank into the leather executive chair behind it, cradling her on his lap. Her skirt had hiked up, so all that separated her from his erection was the sheer cotton of her panties. The contact sent a shock of electric pleasure sizzling through her body. She arched backward in his arms, gasping.
He slid one hand up the inside of her thigh and pushed aside her panty with his thumb, slipping one finger inside her. She opened her thighs and pushed against his hand, needing motion and pressure. “More!”
“Whatever you say.” He withdrew and then thrust two fingers inside her, while finding her most sensitive spot with his thumb.
She sprawled across his thighs, bucking with the motion of his fingers, feeling the delicious heat building deep inside her. She let her gaze travel up the beautiful contours of his torso to revel in his expression of total focus. He changed the angle of his hand, and suddenly, the pleasure tightened and exploded. “Oh yes! Yes! Yes!” she gasped with each contraction, her muscles clenching so hard her back bowed upward off his lap.
Take Me Home Page 17