Megan’s heart gave a triple beat. He had at least four other children in front of him but the image of him, with his hand out offering something to Daisy didn’t set well with her. She was filled with the urge to go over and guide the girl away, but suppressed it. Instead, she walked to Dorothy who was laughing at something one of the others had said but was keeping her eye on her daughter.
“Oh, hi!” Dorothy greeted her. “Megan, I’d like you to meet two of my dearest friends in the world.”
She made the introductions and Megan was pretty sure she made the appropriate responses, but her gaze was glued to Don McCain and Daisy.
The four of them chatted a bit and then the two women excused themselves, wishing Dorothy and Megan a good day in order to collect their own children and head home to fix dinner.
“What do you know about him?” Megan asked once they were alone.
“Who, Mr. McCain?” She waved a hand. “He’s harmless. He sometimes plays the organ for the church and is an elementary-school teacher. He loves kids.”
Megan tried to force herself to relax. To explain that all this was new to her. It was one thing to look at somebody objectively, another through the lens of a protective adult.
Or in her case, overprotective adult.
“Daisy?” Dorothy called. “Say goodbye to Mr. McCain. We’ve got to be going now.”
Daisy did as asked, giving Mr. McCain a big hug and a kiss on the cheek before skipping back to them.
Megan felt much better when she was near and was barely able to return the wave McCain offered before they all got into the car.
15
MEGAN RETURNED TO the motel to find Dari playing cards with the guys in the command center. She declined their invitation to join them, went out on a lunch run where she picked herself up some good stir-fry, and then went to her room to enjoy a bit of quiet while she could. Tomorrow and the renewed search would come soon enough.
The impending talk with Dari the same.
She had to appreciate that the imposed delay had provided her with a sense of gravity. Once she’d accepted she needed to tell him, she’d found a bit of peace within herself. Come what may, the truth had to come out. Even if it meant hurting him. Even if it meant losing him.
She still didn’t know what she would or wouldn’t say about Jason. Could he be right? Would the first question Dari asked be who she’d had sex with?
She figured she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
Now as she lay across the bed with the latest book from one of her favorite mystery authors, she found herself drifting more than reading. She put the book aside and rolled over, allowing recent events to slide through her mind unchecked. From Dari’s alarmed reaction to her crying to holding Daisy in her lap earlier in the chapel.
Having served overseas, she understood that traveling had a way of taking you outside yourself. It forced you to step outside the box of your reality and look at life from a different angle. Sometimes you didn’t much like what you saw. Other times, the fresh view served to strengthen your values and your beliefs.
This assignment was a strange mixture of both.
If not for the ceaseless pain in her chest, it might end up being positive in many ways.
She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging tightly, as if to ward off the bad. What she was to face she had to face.
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Just past six. The card game could go on for only Lord knew how long. She wondered if Jason had joined them. She hadn’t had a chance to speak to him since their words the other day. Did he think she’d already told Dari? She hadn’t seen him around earlier, so she couldn’t say.
She lifted herself into a sitting position and then crossed her legs before reaching for her cell phone. Scrolling through her phone book for a number she hadn’t dialed in a while, she found it and then pressed the call button.
Within two rings her father picked up.
“Dad? Hi, it’s Megan.”
A brief pause and then, “You don’t have to tell me your name, darling. If you’re calling me Dad, then it is you.”
She smiled and leaned back against the pillows, enjoying the sound of his voice for the first time in what seemed like a long time. Not because she hadn’t spoken to him. She tried to call at least once a week. No, she usually didn’t enjoy her conversations with him because his saying words like darling and baby used to upset her.
But holding Daisy earlier, and thinking of the words in connection to her…well, she had a moment of understanding.
And she also experienced a pinprick of hope that she and her father might finally find that patch of common ground that seemed to have eluded them for so long. Ground that they could tentatively start to build on.
DARI WAS DOWN thirty-five dollars, but he figured, in the scheme of things, the amount was paltry compared to what he could have lost. At least two of the guys were down four times that. At any rate, as the day wore on and more of the team members returned to the motel and joined them in the command center, the table and number of players had lengthened and multiplied. There were eight of them playing now, with another four sitting nearby keeping up a lively commentary and the rest well-supplied with beer.
Dari wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. The air-conditioning was on but the door was open, the stifling, liquid heat of the day crowding the room. Jason had yet to return, and Dari found himself constantly on the lookout for him. No one knew where he’d gone and a phone call to his cell had gone right to voice mail.
He lost another hand and tossed his cards down in mock upset.
“Lucky in love,” Dominic said.
“Unlucky in cards,” one of the other guys said.
A string of profanity sounded from the direction of the doorway and they all looked to find Jason coming inside, looking the worse for wear.
“Hey, Savage. Strike out at the bar?” someone called out.
Jason told him to do something that was physically impossible. Dari knocked back the last of his beer, watching his friend. Then he said, “Okay, guys, I’m out.”
There was the requisite moaning and groaning, but nothing that stopped Dari from pushing his chair from the table and getting up, the three beers he’d consumed over the past five hours having little impact on him.
Jason, on the other hand, looked as if he had lain with his mouth open under a keg.
“Hey, buddy,” Dari said, advancing on his friend. “What’s say we get you to your room and into the shower.”
Jason stared at him. Dari wondered how many of him he was seeing.
“Did you drive in this condition?”
Linc came inside and jangled the keys. He’d left about an hour or so into the game, destination unknown. Apparently he’d caught up with Jason at whatever bar Dominic had been referring to and had driven him back.
“You all are like a bunch of old hens. Peck, peck, peck,” Jason mumbled, going for the minirefrigerator and the beer stocked inside.
Dari closed the door before Jason could get one out. “Looks like you’ve already had your quota. Come on. Let’s go.”
“I’m warning you, buster, come between me and my beer one more time and you’re going to see just how angry this cock can get…”
Buster? Dari half grinned. The only time Jason used that word was when he was two sheets in.
Dari supposed he should count himself lucky his friend wasn’t using anything stronger.
Dari took his arm and tried to lead him away from the refrigerator.
“Hey, man, I said let me go…”
Jason jerked his arm back so erratically he nearly fell straight on his ass, and would have had Dari not helped right him.
“Room,” Linc said quietly.
Dari nodded, glad at the offer of help.
Without another word, Dari grabbed Jason’s left arm while Linc took his right and they quickly maneuvered him outside.
“Where in the hell are you taking me? What
I need is back there.”
“What you need is a cold shower and a good night’s rest,” Dari told him.
Within moments, they were outside Jason’s room. Linc took Jason’s key from his back pocket and opened the door, but Jason had one good attempt at autonomy left in him and Linc’s distraction allowed him to make it. He shook free from them both and stumbled down the curb into the parking lot, where a car was pulling up, headlights cutting duo cones through the heavy rain. Dari reached out and yanked him back out of the way before the car hit him.
“Whoa, buddy. That was close.”
“Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” Jason railed at the driver.
Dari grabbed the back of his shirt and forced him toward the motel-room door, not stopping until he pushed him into the upright shower stall, where he slipped and fell on his ass.
Linc stood in the doorway. “Got this?”
“Yeah. Thanks, man.”
He disappeared and a moment later Dari heard the door close. He reached and turned on the faucet full blast before Jason could regain his footing and make a beeline for the door. He watched as his friend sputtered and cursed, more concerned with trying to get the spray out of his eyes than going anywhere.
Dari couldn’t remember a time when he’d seen Jason this deep into a bottle.
“Okay, okay. Enough already,” Jason protested.
Dari reached in and switched off the faucet, then handed Jason a towel. He snatched it and dried his face, making no attempt at getting up. He was soaked from head to boot.
“When’s the last time you ate?” Dari asked.
Jason blinked at him. “What the hell do you care?”
That’s the second time he appeared to question his interest.
Dari helped him to his feet. “Well, then, maybe you should start by telling me what’s going on.”
Jason nearly slipped getting out of the shower, but shrugged off Dari’s attempt to help him. “You already know what’s going on.”
Dari leaned against the doorjamb, partly to keep his friend from trying to make another run on the beer, mostly because he wanted to hear whatever it was that needed to be said but hadn’t been yet. “If I knew, would I be asking?”
Jason stripped out of his T-shirt and awkwardly removed his boots while hopping on one foot.
“Is it what went down at the sheriff’s office this morning?” Dari asked.
“The sheriff’s… What in the hell are you talking about?”
Dari hadn’t thought that was behind whatever was eating his buddy. Rather, whatever was going through Jason’s head was to blame for what had happened this morning, as well.
“Then what is it?”
Jason threw his right boot against the wall so hard one of the tiles cracked. “What? Megan told you already, didn’t she? So why in the hell are you pretending everything is business as usual?”
Dari felt as if he’d been sucker punched in the stomach. He straightened, bracing himself for something he was no longer sure he wanted to hear.
Jason turned to stare at him. “God, I haven’t given you enough credit. You have a great poker face.”
“What did Megan tell me?”
For the first time since he’d shown up in the command center, Jason looked semisober.
And none too happy with himself.
He looked away. “Shit…”
16
MEGAN MUST HAVE dropped off to sleep. She woke with a start and jerked to an upright position where she was still dressed on the bed. She realized it must have been the door slamming that had jarred her awake. Dari stood just inside, looking angry and hurt and as if he wanted to hit something.
Her throat tightened.
He knows…
She scooted to the edge of the bed, the book falling to the floor half noticed as she stood to face him.
“Dari…”
“You slept with him? You slept with Jason Savage?”
Oh, God. This was so not the way she saw this conversation happening.
Jason had told him? She couldn’t imagine him doing that. Yet here Dari stood, proof that he had.
“We…had…sex. Yes. Once.”
He advanced on her, coming to stand mere inches away. “Explain it to me.”
“Tell me what Jason told you.”
“Why? So you can get your stories straight?”
She winced, recognizing his mistrust as one of the first casualties of his awareness of her sin. “No. So I don’t have to repeat what you’ve already heard.”
“To save you from having to say it?”
“No, Dari. To save you from having to hear it.”
He looked at her long and hard. She fought to hold his gaze and not look away even though she wanted to dive under the covers and pull a pillow over her head, not to reemerge until the world started making sense again.
Which might be never.
“Dari, I…”
He waited silently.
“I’m sorry.” She bit on her bottom lip.
“Who initiated it?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“Why? It was one time. Over. It didn’t mean anything.”
She cringed inwardly at the words.
“I’m sorry. Period. I’m not going to try to justify myself. Truth is, there is no justifying it. I know that now.”
“Damn it, Megan! How could you do this to me?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I didn’t do it to you, Dari. I did it to myself. I thought I was doing it for myself. I missed you so much. Missed touching you, holding you…”
“Screwing me…”
She swallowed hard. “If it makes any difference at all, there was no intimacy between us. We didn’t kiss. We didn’t even face each other…”
He winced and looked away, realizing she’d given him a visual she would prefer he not have had. An image she wished she didn’t possess.
In that one moment, Megan knew there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say, that would make this easier for him. All she could do was suffer the consequences.
“Trust me, if I could take it back, undo it all, I’d do it in a blink. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you. To hurt us. I know that doesn’t mean much now…”
“Why didn’t you tell me straight off?” he asked.
Her heart skipped a beat. What did she say? She decided that from here on out the truth was the only element that held worth.
“I didn’t tell you because I agreed I wouldn’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “Agreed you wouldn’t. Agreed with whom? With Savage?”
“That sounds worse than it is, but yes.”
He began to turn away from her.
She laid her hand on his arm and he stopped.
“As hard as it may be to believe now, we agreed not to say anything because there was no point in it.”
“You were unfaithful.”
“With my body? Yes. Not with my heart. Not with my soul.”
His gaze could have bored a hole straight through her.
“I needed…something. You were out on patrol. Our last phone conversation was cut off. I was alone…”
“So you screwed my best friend.”
If she could jump out of her skin just then, she would have gladly done so. It felt two sizes too small. Uncomfortable. Suffocating.
“Yes.”
His expression darkened.
“Look, I told myself I wasn’t going to try to justify this. There is no justification. No excuse. I told myself it was just sex, a physical release at a time when so much was going wrong. Nothing more. Nothing less. Jason…”
His hands formed into fists at the use of his friend’s name and she knew a moment of fear.
“We, um, decided not to say anything. To ride it out. Treat it like the nonevent it really was.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
Of all the questions he could have asked, she would never have
expected that one.
She had no answer for him. She couldn’t tell him that, yes, she had enjoyed it. Needed it. On a strictly physical level that had nothing to do with her heart.
Instead, she said, “I’m sorry, Dari. Please know…I love you.”
“You love me?” He snorted. “You love me? You shared your body with another man. My best friend. How does that in any way demonstrate your love for me?”
He turned.
“Where are you going?” She bit her bottom lip, wanting to reach out for him but not daring to.
He didn’t answer. He merely grabbed his duffel, which was always packed, and left, slamming the door behind him.
DARI WISHED HE WERE anywhere but here. He’d trade the most hellacious, dangerous battle zone on God’s green earth over having to feel what he was experiencing just then.
He stood outside the motel-room door, his hand raised, then knocked against the hollow metal. Linc opened up as if he’d been standing just on the other side.
He took one look at Dari and stepped aside so he could enter.
Dari did, thanking him.
“Pick either bed. I bunk on the floor.”
Dari tossed his duffel on the second one.
“I was just going out. Be back later,” Linc said.
Dari sat down on the bed he’d chosen. “Thanks, man.”
Linc nodded and then disappeared through the door, leaving him alone with his swirling thoughts. Wondering if he’d ever be able to forgive the woman he’d spent the past two and a half years loving. Forget a face that had seen him through four months of hell on earth.
Forgive a best friend who had committed the worst of all sins….
MEGAN COULDN’T BE SURE how much time had passed as she sat in the middle of the bed, her knees pulled to her chest, rocking. It could have been minutes. It could have been days. She had never cried so much in her life. Had never felt so broken.
She’d never looked out at the future and felt so utterly hopeless, not knowing what came next or if she even cared enough to find out.
She’d known Dari would take the news hard. But somehow she thought it must have been worse coming from Jason.
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