Baby, I'll Find You

by Jennifer Skully

  “It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.” She wasn’t going to run out on it.

  She wasn’t going to away from Cole either.

  She pulled her cell phone from her purse and punched in Frank’s number. “Where are you?” she asked the moment she heard his habitual yo.

  “Cole’s house.”

  Jami closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. “Okay, bye.” She ended the call before Frank could get in another word.

  The frown lines deepened on Leo’s forehead. “Who was that?”

  “My boss. I have to talk to him.” What she had to do was fight for what she wanted.

  Finally, an emotion about Leo hit her. Putting a hand on his arm, she squeezed. “I’m sorry, Leo. I never fought for you. Maybe if I had, right from the beginning, we wouldn’t have gotten so...” What was the right word? “Complacent.” And downright boring.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t explain it any better, Leo.” She tapped his shoulder, sidestepped him to kiss her mom’s cheek, and announced, “I have to go.”

  “Sweetheart—”

  She put her hand up. “I know what I want, Mom, and I am good enough to get it. I’ll even risk jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire for it.”

  Her mom’s eyes clouded. “Sweetie, I’ve never thought you weren’t good enough.”

  “I know. I’m beginning to realize I was the one that thought I wasn’t.” She sucked in a breath. “But that’s over.” She leaned in for one more kiss against her mother’s powdered cheek. “I love you.” She smiled at her sisters. “All of you. Now wish me luck, okay?”

  There wasn’t a bit of luck about it. This time she was going to fight. She wouldn’t hope and pray that Cole would one day come around; she was going to drag him back into the land of the living. The land she lived in.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Frank tucked away his cell phone.

  “Who was that?” Cole asked.

  “Kelly. Wanted to know where we were.” Frank concentrated on a speck of old paint on the arm of his chair. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” Hell if he was. He never wanted to face it, which is why he hadn’t done it in all the time since Stephie’d been gone. But Jami made him see that while he couldn’t have a happy life—he’d already screwed any chance of ever deserving that—he did have to clear out the old one. It wasn’t fair to Stephie to leave her things in limbo. Her memory deserved better than a closed door.

  Cole had found two old folding chairs in the garage and set them out on the back stoop. It might be nearing eleven in the morning, but they’d sat for a few minutes to chew the fat over a beer, while Cole readied himself. CT wound his way around Cole’s feet, then flopped over the edge of the porch in the dirt. Ruby, upon seeing CT, had turned tail to play in the yard, probably because the cat was damn near bigger than she was.

  “Where you want to take it all?”

  “Salvation Army or Goodwill.” He sure as hell wasn’t going to throw anything in the trash. There was clearing out, and then there was total destruction and devastation.

  They watched Ruby prancing through the backyard chasing butterflies. “You don’t need all those reminders,” Frank mused. “What are you going to do with the room?”

  “Don’t know yet.” He had no plans for it, which was why he’d been able to leave it alone for so long. He hadn’t needed it before and didn’t know what he needed it for now. “Maybe I’ll rent it to some forestry trainee or something.”

  Frank looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You’d hate having some kid in the house taking up space.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” Maybe he’d sell the damn house and get an apartment close to Easy Cheesy. He took a slug and realized he’d reached the bottom of the beer can. “I’m done.”

  “Me, too,” Frank said.

  Neither of them moved.

  A car door slammed out on the street. And still they sat.

  “That your doorbell?” Frank asked, then he clucked at Ruby who’d somehow gotten into a spin chasing her tail.

  Cole cocked his head. Couldn’t be his doorbell. Nobody’d rung his bell since that first night Jami showed up accusing him of being Colton Amory. Yet there was a sound from the depths of the house, an off-key ding and no dong.

  What he wouldn’t give...

  “I’m pretty sure that’s your front door.” Frank didn’t rise to answer it, though.

  Cole did. He rose, trudged along the side of the house to the front. Rounding the corner of the garage, he clutched the stucco wall. Jami stood on his front porch, crisp blue jeans, sandals, and a tight sweater that made him salivate.

  “I was fine before she came,” he whispered. Correction. He was dead before she came, but he’d been fine with that. With Jami, he wasn’t fine anymore. She made everything harder, his emotions more acute. She made him want again. He remembered telling her at some point that if you didn’t ask for too much, you didn’t get disappointed. He hadn’t asked, but he sure as hell wanted. Now he was paying the price.

  A breeze blew strands of hair across her face, her lipstick catching them, and when she put a finger up to pull them, she saw him standing by the garage.

  Stepping down off the porch, she crossed the driveway. “I came to say good-bye.”

  His heart stopped. He swore it didn’t beat for five seconds. When it finally picked up the pace again, it was worse than an ache but less than a heart attack. He’d survive. God meant him to survive so that Stephie would never be forgotten.

  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Frank’s out back. You wanna let him know you’re leaving?”

  She was so close, he could smell her vanilla shampoo. “You didn’t let me finish,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “I originally came to say good-bye, but I changed my mind.”

  There she went stopping his heart again. “Oh?”

  “Remember when you told me that you didn’t hear music anymore?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t want to know where this was going.

  “Well, I hear it. I can help you hear it again if you let me.” When he didn’t say anything, she pursed her lips, then went on. “We made music together the other night, Cole. We can do it again. And one day, you’ll be able to hear it all on your own.”

  “Jami, we already went through this. You know why it won’t ever work. And—”

  She put two fingers to his lips. “God help me how I miss,” she sang, “Your completely electric kiss. Our fate is written on the air. Baby, I’ll find you out there.”

  She didn’t have a perfect voice; she didn’t even have a good voice. She didn’t get the tempo right, and she hit the notes all wrong. Yet she mesmerized him.

  She ended with a butchered, “Promise me you’ll find me, too.”

  His heart hurt. His brain throbbed. His eyeballs threatened to explode inside his head.

  “I fell in love with you when I heard those words, Colton Amory. I came to find you. And rescue you. And make everything right for you.” She cupped his cheek in her palm. “Make it right for me. Find me, Cole, please, because I’m lost, too, and I know we can help each other.”

  Christ, he wanted. He wanted so badly that if he’d had one less micron of willpower, he’d have given in to her.

  “I will never be the man you need.”

  She opened her mouth to contradict him.

  This time he short-circuited her with his fingers against her mouth. “You want to be a mother. I will never be a father. You want a man in your bed. I’m just a shadow.”

  She didn’t say a word, simply stared at him, her gaze flitting from one eye to the other, then down to his lips.

  “I want, Jami, but I can never have.”

  She was silent so long, he thought she’d finally figured out it was better if she walked away, right now, this minute. He should have known she wouldn’t go without getting in the
last word.

  “You’re a coward,” she whispered. “You might actually enjoy your misery. You’ve made it your way of life, and you no longer have the ability to do it any other way. You don’t even want to try.”

  Her words wrenched an emotion from him. Stark and utter anger, raging through him like a flash fire in a grove of dead pine. Enjoy losing Stephie? Enjoy watching her die? Enjoy all the nightmares he’d had since? For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Yet the fire raged so hot, it burned itself out in seconds, and he could see clearly again. Jami had the right to her own beliefs about him. Making love to her had been unforgivable, when he had no intention of having a relationship with her. Her anger was justified.

  “Yeah.” He could only agree. “I’m sorry.”

  She backed away, two steps, three.

  “I really am sorry,” he said as gently as possible. “If I could, it would be you.”

  “And that’s supposed to fix everything?”

  “No.” He wanted to touch her, yet he kept his hands to himself. “But it’s the truth.”

  With two more steps back, Jami’s hip brushed the bumper of his truck in the drive.

  There was a scuffle and a yip, then a series of sharp little barks, and Ruby came hurtling around the garage corner to barrel right into Jami’s legs.

  Frank bounded round the corner, too, and stopped, feet planted and spread, arms out. “Ruby, honey, sweetie, baby, come back here.” Then he saw Jami and gave his signature bared-teeth grin. “Jami, honey, you here to help us clean out”—Cole shot him a glare straight to the heart—“the room...” He trailed off, then added, “Oops. I didn’t mean to say that.”

  Right. Frank never said anything he didn’t mean to say. He’d probably been eavesdropping the entire time.

  Cole nodded rudely with his chin. “Jami just dropped by to tell us she’s leaving.”

  “Leaving? Masterson?” Genuine surprise and shock furrowed Frank’s brow. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t been eavesdropping the whole time. “But what about Cheesy’s books?”

  Jami bent to pick up Ruby. “The books are fine, Frank. They weren’t all that messed up. There was catching up on the inputting and switching expenses around to the proper account, but everything’s in order now. You can take it from there.”

  “But what about Andrea? She’s counting on you to help her get into art school.”

  “She’s depending on you”—she pointed—“to give her enough hours at Easy Cheesy so she can save some money. And her dad’s helping her get a scholarship.”

  “But...” He faded away and shuddered, as if he couldn’t bear to contemplate another thing Jami wasn’t going to do for them.

  Ruby licked her cheek.

  “Who will take Ruby to the dog park while I’m working?” So Frank could think of something else.

  “Cole can take her.” She glanced at him. “He’s done it before.”

  Yeah, the day Jami played “Baby, I’ll Find You.” Frank gave her a look; yeah, that was once in a lifetime.

  “Or Andrea.” She nuzzled Ruby’s nose, then resorted to doggie talk. “Or your daddy could take a break. Yes, he could.”

  “Why? I don’t understand. Don’t you like it here?”

  “Frank.” She glanced at Cole.

  Suddenly he felt like total crap. She was leaving because of him. Frank didn’t want her to go. Andrea would be devastated to lose her. Ruby...well, Ruby was a dog, and as long as she got a treat, she didn’t care who it came from.

  Yet Cole couldn’t stand being around her every day. He’d go nuts. As it was, his damn house smelled like her. Her scent seemed to linger in his head. Call him a selfish pig, but seeing her day in and day out, no way. He’d give in to his baser instincts. He’d seduce her into bed again. He’d feel again, he’d hurt again, he’d hurt her, and when she was gone, he’d die inside all over again. He’d never survive the pain. Even for Frank and Andrea’s sake, he couldn’t go through that.

  “Cole?”

  Lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t heard Frank’s words. “What?”

  “Ask her to stay,” Frank pleaded.

  “She doesn’t want to stay.” No, not after he’d made love to her, then trashed her feelings.

  Jami’s face reddened. Anger that they were talking over her rather than to her? Embarrassment that Frank was assuming her feelings for Cole were enough to make her stay? Or just plain horror that not more than five minutes ago, she’d bared her soul to a man who basically spit on it.

  He was a total shit.

  “We need her, Cole, you know we do.”

  For what, he wanted to ask, but dammit, he knew the answer. Because she made a dark world a little brighter. Because she laughed and made everyone else smile. She didn’t patronize Andrea, she actually cared. She loved his music; she wanted him to hear it again, music he hadn’t heard since Stephie.

  Jesus, oh God. Why did it feel like letting Jami in was letting Stephie go? Why did it hurt so damn much?

  “He’s going to have a heart attack,” Frank gasped. “Look at his face, all beet red and everything.”

  He wanted to say he was fine, but he couldn’t get the words out. He wasn’t fine. He’d suddenly hit on the notion that hanging onto his guilt had kept him from ever getting hurt again. It wasn’t about Stephie’s memory; it was just one more selfish thing.

  “Maybe he’s choking,” Jami said, setting Ruby on the driveway. The little dog pranced to his feet.

  “Should we call 911?”

  He held up his hand before Frank got totally out of control. He could clean out Stephie’s room, give her things away, but she would always be a ghost that haunted him. How could he have let his little girl haunt him as if she were the nightmare?

  “You would have liked Stephie,” he said so low that he couldn’t be sure they heard.

  Frank backed off three steps, but Jami moved in. “I would have loved her.”

  “She was a real good kid,” Frank agreed.

  She had been, the best. In trying to forget those last two weeks, he’d buried so many of the wonderful memories of her, too. He didn’t even have a single picture of her on display. His guilt had caused a travesty.

  “Frank?” He paused, caught his breath. “In the top drawer of the desk in the music room, there’s some pictures. Would you get them for me? Maybe put them in the living room?”

  Frank’s eyes clouded with a sheen of moisture. “Sure thing, Cole.” Scooping up Ruby, tossing her high as if she were a little kid, then catching her, Frank bounded onto the front porch and threw the door wide, the stomp of his boots echoing down the hall.

  Cole was alone with Jami. He didn’t know what to say, how to explain. “Don’t leave me.”

  She lifted her hand to his cheek. “I don’t want to go. But you know what I need, Cole.”

  He closed his eyes. “A child,” he whispered, and he was swamped with memories of the day Stephie was born. She was so tiny he could almost hold her in the palm of his hand. At least that’s how it felt. The awesome responsibility. The fear that he was so big and she was so small, he could accidentally break her.

  “A family, Cole. That’s what I want. I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

  “No. I’m not.” Yet he opened his eyes, seeing her almost for the first time, losing himself in the utter sweetness of her gaze. “It scares me to death.”

  “Me, too.”

  He could smell her vanilla scent, the warmth of her hand flowing through his body, melting him on the inside.

  “But we can’t compromise on that, Cole. We can’t have a part-time baby.” She traced his lip with her thumb. “No matter how much I care about you,” she whispered, “if you don’t want that, too, I can’t wait around hoping you’re going to change your mind someday. I just can’t. Been there, done that.”

  His heart burned in his chest.

  He saw her round with his child, and he was flooded with a mixture of sheer joy and vast terror. “I lost the most important person
in the world. I’m not sure I could go through that again.” But with the heat of her touch, the smooth glide of skin against skin, the tender butterfly brush of her fingers through his hair, he could almost begin to hope.

  Her gaze followed the path of her hand, then dropped back down to meet his. “Do you love me, Cole?”

  He hadn’t said those words to a living soul in seven years. They held such awesome power. They could bring such joy and wield such destruction. He could lie and shut her down, toss her away like lawn clippings from the yard, if the grass hadn’t already died. It wouldn’t stop the fact that he’d already fallen. It wouldn’t save him the heartache.

  “Yeah.”

  “Say it, Cole.”

  Something inside him broke loose. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. And we can work it out.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her off her toes against him, burying his face against her neck. “I might not be good at it, but I promise to try again,” he murmured into her sweet-smelling hair. “Frank was going to help me clean out her room.”

  Her body shimmied against his as she wrapped him tight in her arms.

  “But I need you to help me, too.” He was pretty sure he felt moisture as he nuzzled her cheek.

  When she pulled back, her eyes glistened. “I won’t make you forget her, Cole. I want to help you to remember her with all the love in your heart.” Then she rubbed her nose to his. “And yeah, I’ll help you pack up her stuff.”

  He had no words, so he simply hugged her harder.

  “Letting go of the guilt,” she murmured with a kiss to his ear, “never meant you had to let her go, too.”

  By holding onto the blame, he’d almost lost every good memory he had of the nine years Stephie was his. He felt like crying, but he figured his little girl would be happy. She’d always wanted a mom like Jami.

  When his lips finally touched Jami’s, the kiss was completely electric.

  Epilogue

  “Is it my imagination or does your mother have a stick up her hiney?” Isadora whispered at Jami’s shoulder. Isadora would have whispered in her ear, but she couldn’t reach.