Meg frowned. “Matchmaking?”
He crossed his arms. “Come now. Don’t tell me you didn’t figure it out? All the times you had to sit next to each other at Sunday dinners or arrived at the same time to events the whole family was going to?”
“I guess I didn’t think about it.” Meg answered.
“I wondered.” Bret didn’t take his eyes off Bill.
Her sigh was heavy with irritation and exasperation. “I’ll get coffee. The two of you sit.”
She used her best teacher’s voice and Bret did what she asked without thinking. The two men sat on opposite sides of the table. Bret eyed the other man like he would a bull waiting to charge and watched Meg out of the corner of his eye.
She prepared two fresh mugs of coffee. The silence in the kitchen grated, making him grind his teeth. She retrieved her mug and freshened the coffee and carried the three mugs to the table, setting one in front of each man. “I admit, Dad, I forgot to tell Bret you came to the hospital and wanted to talk to him. That’s my fault, not his.”
Bill sat ramrod straight in the chair, his hands folded in front of him, his face blank, his mouth stern, his best lawyer-in-court pose. “My first question is what the hell do you mean by getting her involved in all this?”
Bret cleared his throat. “I—”
She interrupted. “I was asked by Mr. Marsh to assist the police department by using my knowledge of the high school and its students. It wasn’t Bret’s choice.”
“I know that.” Her father pushed his hands through his hair. “But surely there was someone else.”
“She did an excellent job. She gave us our best leads.” Bret’s praised her. “Without her, events could have been so much more tragic.”
Her father audibly ground his teeth. “She was put in danger.”
Bret leaned forward in his chair. “The entire high school population was in danger and it had nothing to do with her work for us. It was three angry, out of control teenagers bent on violence. Meg didn’t start it, cause it, or do anything in the course of her work that made her any more vulnerable than anyone else.”
Bill stayed silent for a moment as if not convinced, but willing to let it drop. His coffee steamed in front of him, untouched. Finally, he spoke again. “This is a small town.”
“I know.” Bret answered before she could this time. He felt her temper rising. Evidently her father read her fury just as accurately as he did because he raised his finger at her, asking for silence. She squirmed in her chair, rebellion imminent. Bret settled a hand on her knee and squeezed, silencing her.
“What are your intentions?”
Bret’s stomach twisted into a knot. He could hear the clang of a cage closing around him. His chest tightened, his breath backed up in his lungs. He studied Bill Applegate’s face, but the hard lines were uncompromising. Do right by my daughter screamed at him. Defensive, he fell back on an old argument. “Your daughter and I have an adult relationship. Whatever was started between us stays between us and is not fodder for small town gossip. Whenever we decide it’s over, we’ll go our separate ways with no hard feelings and that is no one’s business but our own.”
He glanced at Meg, but her expression was blank, her hands twisted in her lap. She’d ceased squirming, anger draining out of her like helium from a day-old balloon.
Bill raked him over with a hard stare. His eyes were like lasers, his face grim. “So you have no honorable intentions?”
“I think honorable should be defined by Meg and me, not by you, sir. And not by this town. That’s all I’m saying.”
She stiffened in her chair. Her fingers touched his, lifting his hand from her knee.
Meg rose, tightening the belt on her robe. “I think we’re done with this discussion.”
Her father started to speak. She spoke over him in strident tones. “No! We’re finished. Bret’s right. This is our concern, not anyone else’s.”
Bill’s lips tightened, his knuckles white around his coffee mug. Several seconds ticked by. “Fine. I’ll leave it to you.” He didn’t offer to shake Bret’s hand, instead walked out of the room. His footsteps were measured and heavy on the floor.
They both listened to the door slam shut. The silence in the kitchen was rife with tension—as if the other shoe had yet to drop. His stomach felt like a volcano ready to erupt. Had the man really wanted him to say he’d marry her?
“Meg, I’m sorry about that. What else could I say?”
“What else indeed?” She dropped her coffee mug in the sink and unplugged the waffle iron. “I’m going to get dressed.”
He watched her walk out of the room and scrubbed his head with his knuckles till it hurt.
“Evidently, I screwed that up.” His words echoed through the empty kitchen.
What did her father expect him to say? We’re getting married with your permission. Bret snorted, then sobered. He hadn’t really thought that far ahead. He knew he cared about her, maybe loved her even, but tying himself up in a marriage?
“I don’t think so,” he muttered under his breath, thoughts of his parent’s marriage making him reject that idea outright. He adjusted his chair at the kitchen table. He put his coffee mug in the sink. He put her father’s coffee mug in the sink, rinsed them, and waited for Meg. The clock in the kitchen had an annoying tick and the coffee pot gurgled. He put the bacon back in the refrigerator and dumped the waffle mix in the garbage.
“Dammit.” He headed back down the hall on the pretext of gathering his socks and shoes, knowing where this was heading and wanting to avoid it with everything in him.
Things were good. They were friends.
The sex was better than anything he could describe with mere words.
He cared about her. Why did it have to be more complicated than that?
He slowed when he reached the doorway and eased into her room. The bed was made. His socks and shoes were on the end of the bed transmitting a ‘don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out’ message. At her closet, she searched for shoes, her jean-clad bottom in the air, reminding him of how that particular body part felt against him last night. She straightened and turned, tennis shoes in hand, her gold EFHS Mustang shirt cupping her breasts, drawing his eyes.
She hesitated a moment when she saw him. But then she continued and went to the chair in the corner, sat, and began putting on her shoes. “Thanks for being straight with my father.”
Her tone, her facial expression, her body language were all in agreement—sincere gratitude, friendliness. It would seem she really meant it, but he didn’t believe her. She wouldn’t look at him.
“I think we should talk,” he said.
She shook her head. “Not much to say. I do have something I forgot to tell you.”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for tears, recriminations, screaming. “What?”
She dropped her shoe-clad foot to the floor. “I’m going to be gone most of the summer.”
His breath stalled in his chest, and he shook his head, feeling like he’d taken a two by four in the back of the head again. “What?”
She raised the other shoe, fitted it to her foot. “Sorry. I have been so busy. As soon as school is out, I’m helping Alessia move to Houston. After that, I’m going to Dallas for school for five weeks. Continuing education for my teaching credentials and my master’s degree. First part of August, Alessia and I are going to the Padre Islands for two weeks on the beach. I won’t be back until almost time for school to start the third week of August.” She finished tying her shoes and stood up. “So I’m glad you didn’t give my dad any false ideas about us since we’ll be going our separate ways.”
He felt his heart crack. He couldn’t think, couldn’t utter anything past the constriction in his throat, couldn’t conceive that this was over.
He wasn’t ready for it to be over!
He’d planned many, many more nights of loving her. A summer filled with him and her, twilight nights, movies, talking, spending time together. Ti
me to apologize for being such an ass about his mother, to explain his family. An opportunity to tell her he loved her without having to make a commitment. “How about when you get back?”
She looked him in the eye, her gaze solemn and direct. “I promised you I wouldn’t ask you to change. It wasn’t a promise I made lightly. You said no commitment. I accepted that.”
She was silent for a long moment, waiting. What was he supposed to do? Refute the original arrangement? He wasn’t getting married. Couldn’t see that for himself.
She sighed, hurt there and gone in her eyes. “I want a loving husband, a strong marriage, and lots of babies. I want the full package with forever.” She shrugged, her quiet words and commitment to her ideal chilling him to the marrow. “So when I get back, I’ll be dating again, trying to find that. Not that I don’t care about you. I wish you nothing but good things and I hope we can be friends.”
The word friends congealed in his stomach and he dropped to the end of the bed, every moment he had with her flashing through his head. He’d expected to have to walk away, expected he’d leave her heartbroken, not the other way around.
“I’ve got to go to a meeting at school in preparation for Monday. We’ve got counselors coming in. Can you lock up before you go?” She put some lotion on her hands, blasting him with the citrus smell on her skin that he’d basked in last night.
His gut tightened and he felt like he was teetering on the verge of a cliff, his arms wind milling to keep from falling. He searched for words, but none came. Marriage and babies! Anxiety exploded, choking him into immobilization.
“Bret? Can you lock up?”
He looked up. She put silver earrings in both her ears and waited for him to answer.
“You have plans tonight?” He couldn’t help asking, had to know how soon he’d not be able to look on her in his bed again.
“Yes. Sorry. Grandma.” She picked up her purse. “I’ll see you at Grandma’s for dinner tomorrow, though. Right? Like usual.”
“Like usual,” he muttered. “Ah, yeah. I’ll lock up. I’ll be right behind you.”
She looked at him, her eyes gentle and sweet. “Thank you for everything. I loved the time I had with you.”
Then she was gone. He heard her keys jingle and the front door clicked shut as she left the house.
The silence nearly killed him.
~~CHAPTER THIRTEEN~~
Meg started her engine and gunned it to get out of the driveway and away before she embarrassed herself. Her chest hurt so bad from controlling her feelings, she thought she was having a heart attack.
But she’d done it.
Even though her father’s hostile features made her nearly vomit.
Even though Bret’s adult relationship, whatever the hell that meant, dashed her dreams.
Even though in her hurt and panic, her entire ‘being gone for the summer’ scenario was dreamed up in the twist of a moment.
For one insane second this morning, she believed Bret wanted to give her the fantasy future of her dreams. She’d almost opened her mouth, forgotten her promise, and done the one thing she’d sworn she wouldn’t do. She would have lost Bret’s trust plus destroyed any possibility that he might love her. Although, did it really matter?
She reached for the tissues in the pocket of her door and clutched one in her hand. Her insides were shredded and bleeding. She drove with unsteady hands, taking her time because the world seemed to be spinning. Finally she turned into her grandmother’s neighborhood and parked in front of the house.
She kept it together until she walked around the wrap-around porch to the back of the house, until she opened the door and walked into the homey yellow kitchen, until she saw her grandmother at the sink washing potatoes and carrots.
“Meg, dear. What’s wrong?” Her grandmother wiped her hands on a towel and walked straight to her, pulling her into a tight, familiar embrace. She let the pain loose, her sobs no longer willing to be contained.
Week two.
She’d been gone for two weeks.
Bret picked up a rag and wiped the frame of his gun, the pieces broken down in front of him on the coffee table. It was an exercise to try to keep his hands and mind occupied. He felt like someone had stuck a knife in him and kept twisting and twisting.
The first two weeks after the shooting attempt he’d barely seen Meg. Her time had been gobbled up. First, she’d helped Helen organize a town meeting about the incident at the high school. She’d also had parent-teacher conferences with all her students’ families to reassure them and spent copious amounts of time with her kids—in and out of school—to help them get over the terror. It felt at times like she purposely avoided him, but he couldn’t put his desires above that healing time.
Then, whether by design or accident, his mother had fallen and broken her leg, necessitating his presence in California. The staff could take care of his mother and the house. But they couldn’t take care of the many details of the family import-export business that needed attention with both his father and his mother absent. His mother ruled the business with an iron fist and left little decision making powers to the organizational staff. It put him in a bind because he was the only other one with authorization for the many company decisions.
He hated the damn business. That’s why he was a cop and lived nowhere near his parents. Two weeks with his mother had him spitting mad and wishing for Meg’s sweet, calming presence.
Except by the time he’d set up temporary operational authorizations with a vice president, extracted himself from his mother’s claws and returned home, she was gone. He attended one family dinner without her. The entire family seemed disappointed in him. Even the twins pouted. Tom took pity and engaged him in conversation, but he wished for Meg next to him. Bill had been outright hostile.
Before he left, Olivia hugged him tightly and whispered for him not to miss their lunches. He hadn’t missed one in two weeks, lunching with her four times. She didn’t talk about Meg, though, and that was one subject that had him near to bursting.
What was he supposed to do? She was the one who called it quits. He hadn’t been ready for that, could have sworn she loved him and would stick it out, waiting for him to figure it out. She gave everyone lots of chances and included a helping hand. But not this time. This time she walked away.
He tried to talk to her once, right before he left. He’d gotten much the same as the night she’d told him she was leaving. Friendliness mixed with formality, a quick kiss on the cheek, and a see you around.
Bret dropped the rag and set down his gun. He collapsed back against the sofa and for the first time in ten years examined his attitudes. They’d been formed by years of watching his parents war with each other and a college relationship that had gone bad. Every time he thought about being trapped in a relationship like his parents, he gagged. Every time he thought about how close he’d come to marrying Heather—a clone of his mother—he got the sweats.
But he’d never felt trapped with Meg. He closed his eyes and remembered every moment, every word, sorting through his feelings. He opened his mind for once and thought about marriage. Olivia talked about Thomas all the time. All he had to do was look at her and he could see the proof of their love shining in her eyes. Helen and Bill were rock solid, loving and respectful. Rick and Tara argued and made up with passionate regularity. And Chad and Robin adored each other. What about those examples? Didn’t they outweigh his mother and father?
Love existed. Love worked. Could it work for him? Could he carry this love he felt for Meg into a solid, binding marriage? The thought of seeing Meg’s face as she walked down the aisle toward him rushed through him. He imagined waking with her every morning and felt renewed, whole. She’d given him the greatest gift. She’d accepted his convictions and let him go. She’d listened to what he said and let him go. Was it possible she loved him so much that she would put his needs ahead of hers?
He sat forward, his heart nearly pounding out of his chest. “Of
course she would,” he uttered out loud. “That’s just Meg.”
The question was could he be what she deserved, a devoted husband and a father?
Acid rose in the back of his throat, burning and bitter. Restless, he rose to pace. It wasn’t that the thought of being a husband had never occurred to him in all his twenty-nine years. It was that he dismissed the idea after college as not even plausible. To change now, to even allow himself to think about the notion felt like plowing a new road with a garden shovel and no gloves.
She deserved a strong marriage, a steadfast husband, and lots of children. No matter how much he loved her, he was sure all he could deliver was a warped marriage like his parents. It would require exposing layers of himself he’d never shown before, wasn’t sure he even could. If he couldn’t be certain he could promise her all of himself, every effort in full confidence, he had nothing to offer but heartache.
Week four.
She’d been gone for four weeks.
Two months since he’d last held her, talked to her, kissed her, loved her. Learning to breathe around the ache in his chest was getting old. Four more weeks until she would be back and he still didn’t know what to do. His brain was stalled, stuck between wanting forever and fear of failure.
Off shift, Bret used his foot to pull a chair over near his work desk in the day room and propped his feet up, not able to muster much energy to write his shift reports. The summer heat was beating on everyone, the hottest summer on record already. He clicked his pen and contemplated changing into his civilian clothes.
Tom entered the room, already changed into civvies and looking cool and refreshed. Bret pulled at his sticky shirt. The station air conditioning was having trouble keeping up with the hundred degree afternoon temperature.
Tom pulled up a chair next to him, popped the top on his cola, and handed him a message.
He took it, saw his mother’s name, and balled the message.
Echo Falls, Texas Boxed Set Page 38