by Anna Adams
“Let him stay,” Bryony said behind her. “He’s been worried about you, and Leila’s in this now, too.”
Maria’s rigid stance wavered. She glanced toward Leila, then back at her sister.
“Clowns,” she said, and left the room.
“Where’s she going?” Jake asked.
Within seconds, a crash from the kitchen answered his question.
“We needed to wash some dishes,” Bryony said with a quick grin at Leila. “I guess breaking them all is another way to empty the sink. I’ll see if I can help her.”
“Bryony, we’re only investigating the other guy. His visit to town might be a coincidence. Maria still needs to be wary of Griff.”
Bryony nodded.
After she left, Jake risked one more rejection, moving to his daughter’s side on the couch. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know why you had to talk to the Hammonds.”
“I’m not surprised you think I was wrong.”
“You know what, Dad? An acquittal didn’t help that kid. He needs another therapist, or an anger management program, or something to smooth the rough edges of his out-of-body experiences. For once, I’d have thought telling his aunt and uncle what you discovered was right, except your visit to their house made him angrier, and he’s frightened Maria.”
“She doesn’t seem to have your common sense, honey. She’s not afraid.”
“She should be when she stops being mad at you.” Leila put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a little shove. “Go see her.”
“You don’t mind?”
“She’s my friend, too, and I don’t want to lose her because you’re a jerk.”
“Am I, Leila?”
“Kind of,” she said. “But don’t let that weigh on your conscience. You never have before.”
“I do feel bad about the past,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been trying to see you since I found out Maria was your psychologist.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ve run a courtroom for nearly ten years, but I can’t find an appeal that reaches two stubborn women.”
“That is correct.”
“I didn’t expect to feel this uncertain at my age.”
“MARIA?”
She nearly dropped the plate she was handing to Bryony when Jake spoke from the kitchen door. Bryony, ever subtle, set plate and tea towel on the counter and bounded for the hall.
“Thanks,” Jake said as she neared him. She nodded, muttered something unintelligible and stepped on his feet on her way past.
Maria laughed at his flinch. “Imagine if she was wearing her big work shoes,” she said.
“I don’t want to share clown jokes.” He crossed the room and touched a dollop of soap bubbles locked into a wave of her hair. She pulled back.
“You don’t know what it means to me that you’ve tried to clear my name. I thought having you believe in me would make everything right. But then you made it all worse. Maybe you can’t see that interfering—”
“I see.”
“Oh. That lets the air out of me.” She turned back to the sink. He picked up Bryony’s tea towel. She eyed it, her hands deep in soapy water. “What if I asked you to go back out there?”
“I’d go. Leila’s having such a good time snubbing me.”
“I don’t feel bad for you,” Maria said, but the hours since she’d left his house had doused the angry flame in her green eyes.
She was soft again, and he wanted to hold her. He wanted to hold her every time he was near enough to wrap his arms around her subtle curves.
“You have empathy, though,” he said. “You’ve been an outcast. You know how lonely I am without you and Leila.”
She ignored his opening. “I’m surprised you didn’t force your way into Sheriff Drake’s car.”
“Angela Hammond is about one confrontation away from shooting you and me down on the courthouse square, and they won’t persuade Griff to consider explaining what happened at his parents’ home, if his aunt is banging around him in a rage.”
“They probably won’t get him to talk. She’s reinforced his anger. Her support has probably convinced him he’s been right all along.” Without thinking, she rinsed a plate and passed it on. “You should talk to Leila.”
“She won’t talk, but she is bending. She sent me in here.”
“She was afraid when she came to warn me about Griff. She needs you.”
“I need both of you.”
With a soapy hand, Maria plucked the towel from him. “That’s not going to happen.”
He held on to the towel’s hem as if it were a connection that bound them. “Don’t avoid the subject of us. What kind of psychologist pretends nothing is happening when something most definitely is? Are you afraid to get involved with me? Because I’m not afraid, Maria.”
“I don’t care if this means I’m bad at my job.” She tugged until he wasn’t holding the terry cloth anymore. “I want to be good at life, too. I want to believe in you and trust that you won’t override what I’m thinking and feeling, that you won’t run with what’s best in your mind, instead of what matters most to me.”
“So we live a relationship your way or no way at all?” He started for the door. “I’ve had experience with that approach.”
“No. You can’t dismiss me with some barb about your past. The problem is, when you decide what you think is best, considering what I want doesn’t even occur to you.”
He stood at the door, suddenly tired of being completely at fault. “We jumped into a relationship before we knew anything about each other. I had a picture of you in my mind, and I thought it was you.”
“I still think you are the picture you gave me.”
Jake didn’t know what to say. He gave up. “I’m not asking you to be someone else,” he finally said. “I’ll wait in the other room. Tom and the others should be back soon, no matter what happens at the Hammonds.”
But then he couldn’t walk away. He went to her, sliding his arms around her, bending though she had to stand on tiptoes as he looked into her eyes. “I thought you’d fight for what you want,” he said. “I’d fight for you.”
“I’ve tried. But deep down neither of us understands what the other needs.”
He kissed her again until they were both breathing hard, both too deep in their need for each other to be sensible. So he thought.
“I don’t care about Griff Butler. I don’t care what comes next. When you touch me I want you, and yet I can’t let myself be a woman who lets a man obliterate everything else that matters to her.”
His heart broke a little. Wasn’t she talking about how love felt?
“I won’t promise everything will be okay,” he said. And after a few seconds, he left.
“DAD, I HATE TO SEE you like this.” Leila dropped onto the couch beside him, and the whole floor seemed to echo with her thud. He smiled, grateful because she helped ease his sense of emptiness.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“You’re such a liar.” She leaned against his shoulder. “And I’m getting sleepy. I have early class in the morning.”
“Do you need to study?”
“Don’t break the mood, okay?”
Within a few minutes, her head drooped onto his shoulder again, and then her breathing grew even.
He tried to release his arm to put it around her, but her sleepy complaint kept him where he was.
It wasn’t that hard to let well enough alone.
Time must have passed. Bryony never showed up again. Maria stayed busy in the kitchen. The familiar sounds of dishes and silver clattering should have been comforting. Instead, every move Maria made in there was a pointed reminder that he wouldn’t be here again. He couldn’t depend on Griff Butler and Angela Hammond to pry open a door at Maria’s for him every evening.
Finally, the doorbell rang. Jake eased away from Leila. He reached the hall to find Maria and Bryony halfway down the stairs. He put
out his hand.
“Stay there.”
Oddly, they did. He leaned to the right for a glimpse of the crowd on Maria’s porch. Griff Butler waited in front of Tom, as if Tom were holding him between fatherly hands. Jake sought Maria’s gaze.
“It’s Griff.”
“What?” She came down.
“Bryony, get Leila and take her upstairs,” Jake said.
“Okay.” She hurried into the living room. Jake maintained his spot by the door, between that kid and the women. Tom rang the bell again. Leila appeared in the hall.
“Dad, he’s here? Did his aunt come, too?”
“Please go with Bryony,” he said, tucking his hand beneath her chin. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I really don’t want Griff seeing you.”
“Maria, come with us,” she said.
Maria shook her head. “I have to face him. We have to stop the threats and anger, or he’ll never get healthy.”
Jake finally understood her frustration with his inability to veer from his sense of duty. He wished he had the right to insist she go with her sister and his daughter. Again, the bell rang. Jake ignored it until Bryony and Leila were out of sight.
When he opened the door, Tom looked as if he might like to make arrests all around. “Where were you?”
“Here,” Jake said. “Griff, what are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” Tom said. “Griff has some things he wants to tell Dr. Keaton.”
Maria came to Jake’s side. He barely managed to keep from stepping in front of her. Griff didn’t cut an intimidating figure, but he’d hurt Maria in long-lasting ways already.
“Come in,” she said. “Can I get anyone a coffee? Anything?”
“No,” Jake said, unable to stop himself.
Tom looked amused as he urged Griff inside and nodded some unspoken command to the patrol officers behind them.
In the living room, Jake sat beside Maria. He took her hand with the intent of leaving Griff in no doubt about whom he’d face if he threatened her again.
Maria didn’t even notice. “Are you all right?” she asked the kid. “Have you been seeing someone else?” She glanced at Tom. “A therapist, I mean?”
“Why do you care?” Griff asked.
“Because you and I know what happened between us. I always wanted you to be well, and that’s all I wanted.”
“I told him the truth,” Griff said, jutting a shoulder toward the sheriff.
“And now he wants to explain to you so that we can end all the drama in this town,” Tom said. “It’s time everyone got back to a normal life, and I find the person or people who killed this boy’s family.”
“I’m not a boy,” Griff said, apparently missing the important points of Tom’s speech.
Maria did not. “I never believed you did it,” she said. “That’s why I gave you time to take it back.”
“I loved you,” the boy said in a broken voice that almost appealed to Jake’s sympathy. Crazy or not, kid or not, it hurt a guy to love a woman who didn’t love him in return.
“You didn’t,” Maria said. “You mistook gratitude for something more intense. But what happened to your parents?”
“I don’t know. I found them—” he stopped for a jaw-clenching moment, while his eyes grew red and he breathed too hard “—like I told the sheriff all along. But you were nicer to me afterward, and I thought you might be falling for me, too. When you told me to stop talking about the way I felt, I thought I had to get your attention again. So I made up that story. I thought you couldn’t tell anyone what I said at your office.”
“Even after I warned you I had to tell the police?”
“I didn’t think you would. You liked me.”
“I cared about you the same way I cared about all my clients. Maybe I felt sorry for you because of your parents, but I told you I had to report crimes.”
“I couldn’t let you think I was a liar.”
“Griff.” She covered her face with her hands. “Your parents’ murderer may be long gone.”
“I know,” he said, a sob shaking his shoulders so that even Jake wanted to give the boy a comforting pat. Which hadn’t happened that often in his years on the bench. “But Sheriff Drake said they’re looking for another guy.”
“You got in so much trouble,” Maria said. “I may lose my job. Even Judge Sloane is in trouble around here because you and your aunt have lied about us both.”
“Aunt Angela is so angry with me she won’t have time to talk to anyone else about anything for a couple of months.”
Maria cracked a hint of a smile. Jake wanted to yank her close. The kid might be harmless, but he saw no reason for her to get near Griff again.
“Are you seeing another therapist?”
“I have the names you sent my aunt.”
Jake turned his head. Maria had no right to talk about foolish interference.
“Call those guys and see if one of them can help you.” She offered her hand to Tom. “Thanks. I needed this.”
He nodded. “You both did. We’re going on to the station to take a statement and continue working on the Butlers’ case. Jake, I’d like to get those files back.”
Jake nodded. “I’ll drop them off in the morning.”
“Good enough.” Tom directed Griff back toward the hall. “Night, folks.”
“Good night,” Maria said. At least she made no offer of solace to the boy.
They walked to the door. After Tom and Griff left with uncomfortable nods and more abrupt good-nights, Maria caught the doorknob.
“Why don’t you go up and get Leila? Unless she’s asleep in a guest room, you should walk her to her door.”
“You won’t talk to me, Maria?”
She barely looked at him. “I told you, I thought this was the most important thing between us, but we still look at the world differently. Nothing’s changed.”
“I don’t see it that way. That trial has finally ended. You’re bound to get your license back after the board hears about Griff’s confession.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Don’t even think of approaching that board, Jake.”
He turned away. His first thought had been hope that she’d get her career back, and that maybe they’d work out a way to be together when life returned to normal. Her first thought had been horror that he’d try to help her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MARIA WENT BACK to her odd jobs, but they couldn’t keep her from thinking about Jake. She loved him. She loved him not.
Who was she kidding? She loved him. When her resolve to stay away threatened to weaken, she repeated all her reasons for refusing to see him.
Each night, in long hours of loneliness, she dialed Jake’s number more than once. If she wasn’t careful, she’d hit the button that connected the call.
“Do you like living in limbo?”
Startled by Bryony’s voice, Maria jabbed the lamp she’d been dusting, but caught it just before it landed on the floor. “I thought you had a party this afternoon.”
“Nope. What’s the deal with you and Jake? Are you trying to salvage your pride? Can you be this upset because a man loves you?”
“You saw him. He marched in here and started ordering us around.”
“Because his daughter was here. They don’t know for sure the other guy is guilty. If you and the sheriff had been wrong about Griff, Leila might have been in danger. Maybe you really regret sleeping with Jake before you got a contract that spelled out the terms of your mutual commitment.”
A quick ambush by sensual memories made her sit down. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be safe.”
“Jake would agree with you. He’d go one further. He wanted you to be safe, and he wanted his daughter to be safe, too. That’s why he interfered.”
“You’re on his side because you and Mom don’t mind if some guy shows up with all the answers. You want a man to step in and run your lives. I don’t. I need one who respects my feelings even more when he doesn’t
agree with them. I don’t want to disappear inside someone else’s decisions.” The moment she finished speaking, she dropped her dusting cloth, horrified at her outburst.
“That’s not fair, Maria. I’m not like that now. I’m not even sure Mom is.”
Maria wiped her hands on her jeans. “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. I’m frightened because I keep trying to find reasons to give in.”
“I am living proof that people can change.”
“Lasting change is rare, and I’m not sure Jake sees a problem with managing my life.”
“I don’t know.” Bryony pounded a sofa cushion into submission. “I can remember…Anyway, you usually take me at my word.”
“You won’t break my heart.”
“Don’t fool yourself. Sisters can do that.”
“I’m so ashamed of all the disapproving I did, Bryony.”
“Well, when we do break each other’s hearts, what do we do?”
“We talk. We work it out.”
“I don’t know how you feel about taking advice from a clown, but do you love Jake less than you love me? You’re both private people, and maybe you’re stinging from all the publicity. He’s made himself a spectacle, trying to help you. You love each other enough to change. You both already have.”
Outside, the letter box by the door clattered. Maria put down her polish and opened the front door. The mail carrier, already on his way next door, waved. Maria waved back and yanked her mail out of the box.
She came back inside, shivering. “It’s freezing. I think we’re up for more snow.”
“Bottom line, Maria, you won’t have to become someone like Mom to live with Jake.”
Maria hated that being her worst fear. “How do you know?”
“I know you, and if you think this over, instead of being afraid, you’ll realize you know him, and nothing will be perfect, but being with him will be worth making it work.”
“That sounds good,” Maria said, turning over her letters. She clenched one from the Psychology Review Board. “Bryony?”