After that, it was all about the work. The rush seemed to go on forever, turnover after turnover. By two, Clara’s breasts were hurting. It was past time to go home and feed her baby.
She went to her office and called Dalton.
He said, “You left your cell. Do you want me to run it over to you?”
She ached with the longing to have him there, beside her, right then, so she could grab him and hug him. He was always taking care of her in a thousand little ways. She needed to be more appreciative of that, not be so prickly and insistent that she could do everything herself. They were a team, after all. They helped each other.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t need it right now. I know I’m late for Kiera’s feeding. And I probably won’t get back to the house until four or so. It’s crazy busy here. Can you give her the frozen?” She regularly pumped and froze her milk.
“I’ll do that.”
Clara could hear the baby crying. “She’s still fussing?”
“She’s been fine. She just woke up.” He said it flatly, distantly. Because she’d hurt him. Because she wouldn’t let him give her what he needed to give her: everything. His heart, his hand and his name.
Clara swallowed down the tears that tightened her throat. “So...see you around four?”
“All right.” And he was gone.
She stood there in the short hall that led to the restrooms, thinking, I need to say yes. We need me to say yes...
The sound of shattering crockery snapped Clara back to reality. Someone out in the kitchen must have dropped a plate. And she had a restaurant to run.
So she rushed to the ladies’ room and washed her hands, then returned to her office and got out the breast pump she kept there for days when she didn’t have time to go home. Ten minutes later, she was back out on the floor.
It was a little after three when things finally settled down. Clara cleared out the cash drawer, grabbed the day’s credit receipts and returned to her office, where she locked the door, opened the safe and pulled the bank deposit together.
The bank was just down the block. And a walk would clear her head after the frantic workday. Maybe she could steal a few minutes on her favorite bench in Library Park, give herself a little pep talk about Dalton, about that all-important next step she really needed to quit waffling over and take.
She still hadn’t gotten the SUV unloaded, but that could wait. She put the bank drop in a shoulder bag so that no casual observer would guess she was carrying a large amount of cash and she left the café by the front door.
* * *
Dalton, upstairs at his desk in the office room, heard sirens in the distance and wondered at the sound.
A house on fire? A high-speed chase? A medical emergency? You didn’t hear a lot of sirens in Justice Creek.
The sirens faded off toward the southeast.
A few minutes later, the house line rang.
He grabbed it on the first ring, expecting it to be Clara, still hung up at work. “Hello?”
“Hi.” A woman’s voice, but not Clara’s. “This is Renée. Renée Beauchamp, from Clara’s café?” Dalton remembered the pretty, petite brunette. He eyed the baby monitor, which was blessedly quiet, as Renée, her voice oddly strained sounding, asked, “It’s Dalton, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Dalton, is Clara there? I can’t seem to reach her on her cell.”
He felt it then: that first distinct stab of anxiety. “She left her phone here this morning. And no, she’s not home yet.” He stared at the time display in the corner of his laptop screen. Four-twenty. “She should be home any minute, though.” There was a small, shaky exhalation from the woman on the other end of the line. Anxiety crept up the scale toward full-blown alarm. “Renée, what is it?”
“She left the café to make the bank drop at least forty-five minutes ago and she hasn’t come back.”
“Maybe she ran another errand.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Did you call the bank?”
“Just now, yes. She’s not there. I...” And finally, she came out with it. “Five minutes ago, I got a call from Archie Sims, one of the policemen who eats here regularly? He recognized her SUV. He said it’s on fire.”
Chapter Thirteen
Impossible. Not happening. No freaking way.
Stupidly, he parroted, “On fire?”
“Yeah. Archie said her car is straddling the railroad tracks southeast of town, you know, where they cross Arrowhead Drive?”
“My God. Is she...?” He couldn’t quite ask it. And he was thinking of all those damn paper goods. Had she unloaded them? If they were still in there, they would burn hot and high.
“Archie didn’t know if there was anyone inside. When he called, they were just trying to put out the fire...”
He remembered the sirens. For Clara? The sirens were for Clara...?
No. Not possible. He wasn’t even going to think it.
“I’m calling the police,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Yes. All right. I’m—”
“I have to go.” He disconnected the call and started to dial 911, but then realized he wouldn’t be able to explain his emergency. He didn’t have one, not really. Clara had one. But how to explain that?
No. Not going to work.
So he looked up the police department’s main number and tried that.
Two minutes into that call, he knew it was hopeless. They weren’t set up to randomly pass out information about burning cars and what—or who—might be inside them. He thanked the woman on the other end of the line and hung up, chillingly aware that soon enough the police would be calling him.
In the meantime, what the hell to do? He paced the floor, swearing.
Clara. My God.
If she was in that car...
No. No jumping to conclusions.
Think, damn it.
Arrowhead Drive, Renée had said. The railroad tracks at Arrowhead Drive...
He knew the spot. It was a short drive away.
He headed for the stairs. Halfway down them, he remembered Kiera. What to do with Kiera? Not a good idea to take her with him to the scene of the...whatever the hell it was. Uh-uh. He couldn’t take her, and he couldn’t leave her there. Mrs. Scruggs had gone home half an hour before. He whipped out his cell and autodialed her number.
Thank God, she answered. He babbled out something semi-incoherent, about an emergency, about Clara’s car on fire.
“I’ll be right over,” the housekeeper said.
“God bless you, Mrs. Scruggs.”
“Five minutes.”
“Yes. Hurry.”
As he hung up, Kiera started crying. He stuck the phone in his pocket and went to her, scooping her out of her bassinette and putting her on his shoulder, his eyes blurring with sudden moisture at the warmth of her tiny body, at the sweet baby smell of her.
He walked her, rocking her gently from side to side, whispering, “It’s okay. She’s going to be okay.”
Kiera seemed to hear him. She gave a little sigh and stopped crying, stopped squirming. She snuggled against his shoulder.
He kept walking, kept up the gentle rocking, back and forth across the bedroom floor, as the recent weeks rose up before him, reproving him.
He’d been...cool. Cool to Clara. Cool in the interest of pressuring her to give in, to give him what he wanted, to say yes and marry him. Cool and getting cooler.
That morning, he’d picked a fight with her over nothing. He’d acted like an ass, making her late for work. He hadn’t even kissed her when she left.
And later, when she called to say she wouldn’t be home till four, he’d had no tender words for her, no warm and loving See you soon. Just a flat All right, after which he’d disconnected the call.
All right. That was what he’d have to remember, if worse came to worst. All right, the last dull and distant words he’d said to her.
&n
bsp; Bad. It was bad, the way he’d been behaving.
He closed his eyes, rocked his daughter, whispered a broken, sorry prayer, “Just bring her back to us. Bring her back safe. Please let her be safe...”
The house phone rang. Kiera startled, but then only made a little cooing sound and settled against him again. He strode to the bedside extension and grabbed it up. “Yes, hello?”
“Dalton, it’s Renée. Clara asked me to call you.”
Hope exploded through him. His heart felt as if it were going to sledgehammer its way free of his chest. “Clara? Where is she? Is she—?”
“She just left here. She’s okay. She only went to the bank, then took a little walk through Library Park. She didn’t even know the SUV had been stolen.”
His throat had locked up tight. He coughed to clear it. “So, the car. She wasn’t in it?”
“No. She’s fine. She came in a few minutes ago. She’s running home right now.”
“Running home? I don’t...”
“She should be there any minute. She said she needed to get to you. And she just wanted you to know that it’s all right, that she’s safe.”
He heard the front door open, then Clara, calling him. “Dalton?”
“In here!” He spoke into the phone again. “She’s here. I have to go.” He hung up and turned to the hall doorway as swift footsteps approached.
And there she was. Safe. A little breathless. But whole and well. Standing in the doorway, her big eyes full of love and worry. “There you are. Renée said she’d called you about the car. You must have been scared to death...” Those eyes brimmed. “I went to the park, to think. I had no idea that someone stole my car. I had no idea of what was happening...”
“Clara.” He couldn’t cross the distance fast enough. Three long strides and he had her in his arms.
She trembled, “Oh, Dalton...” She tipped that beautiful face up to him.
“Shh.” He kissed her forehead, her eyebrow, the tip of her nose. “It’s okay. You’re here. You’re okay. We’re okay.”
“I love you, Dalton.”
There was nothing to do but to give it back to her. And he did, with all the feeling he’d tried to deny, with all the yearning that welled in his racing heart. “And I love you, Clara. I love you more than I can say.”
Her sweet face seemed to light up from within. She whispered, “Listen to you. Listen to what you said.”
He used his thumb to brush the tear tracks from her soft cheeks. And he said it again, just to be perfectly clear. “I love you.” And then he pulled her closer and stroked her hair. She wrapped her arms around him—around both of them—as on his shoulder, their daughter sighed and made another of those soft little cooing sounds. He had it all, the world, everything, right there in his arms.
Clara. Kiera. With him.
Safe.
* * *
A few minutes later, Mrs. Scruggs arrived.
Dalton and Clara explained what had happened as best they could with the limited information they had so far, thanked her and sent her home again.
The police came next. They’d already caught the car thieves—four teenage boys from Boulder, the same boys, it turned out, that Clara had confronted in the café parking lot that morning. They’d come back, hot-wired her SUV because she’d “pissed them off,” one of them said, and gone for a joyride. When they were done, they’d torched the car on the railroad tracks.
Two witnesses had seen them setting the fire and both had called 911. The boys were caught within five minutes of lighting the match. Parents had been called. The boys would not be getting off easy.
Clara knew the two officers who came to talk to them. She made the men coffee and thanked them for everything.
As soon as they left, family and friends started calling. Word got around in a small town and everyone wanted to know what, exactly, had happened, and to be reassured that Clara was all right. Dalton and Clara took turns answering the phone and telling the story.
Dalton wasn’t the least surprised when Ryan showed up to see for himself that everything was all right. Clara’s great-aunt Agnes came, too.
It was dinnertime by then. Clara set two extra places and served them all Mrs. Scruggs’s stellar pot roast.
Aunt Agnes made a lot of veiled references to wedding bells and the necessity that a child should have married parents. Clara gave her patient looks.
Dalton said gently, “Clara needs time, Agnes. I want her to have what she needs.”
Clara gazed at him across the table, her mouth so soft, her eyes shining bright. “I’m getting there,” she said. “I’m getting there fast.”
“Well, I should hope so,” declared Aunt Agnes, and then went on to mutter the usual timeworn platitudes, which included phrases like the cornerstone of the family. And the imperative for a true and binding commitment in the sight of God and man.
“Give it a rest,” Ryan said to Agnes. “Look at them. They’re doing fine.”
It was after eight when Rye and Agnes left.
The door closed behind them—and Kiera, with her customary perfect timing, started crying.
Dalton volunteered, “I’ll get her. I’ll change her if she needs it, and then bring her to you.”
“I’ll clear off the dishes.” She looked much too tempting, in snug jeans and a fitted red top.
And he couldn’t leave the room without at least touching her. “Come here.”
Smiling, she came to him. He reached for her, wrapped his hand around the nape of her neck, under the silky, warm fall of her hair. Her skin was cool and velvet-smooth. She tipped her head up for a kiss. He made it a slow one, nipping her lower lip a little before settling his mouth on hers. She sighed and her lips parted. He drank in the taste of her. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck.
Kiera kept crying.
Reluctantly, he let go of Clara and went to get the baby.
An hour later, Kiera was fed, diapered and thoroughly cuddled. Dalton put her to bed. He straightened from the bassinette—and there was Clara.
In a white satin sleep shirt that buttoned down the front and came to midthigh, her hair curling loose and thick on her shoulders.
“You are so beautiful.” The simple words seared his throat as he said them. She grabbed the baby monitor off the edge of the dresser and held out her other hand. He took her outstretched fingers, felt that hot, sweet bolt of longing shooting up his arm from the point of contact, headed straight for his heart.
“Upstairs,” she whispered. He didn’t argue, just followed along after her, satisfied to be wherever she might take him.
In the upstairs bedroom, she set down the monitor on the nightstand. He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes and socks. “Sit beside me,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
She gazed down at him, trust and light in her eyes. “Dalton...”
“Come on.” He caught her hand.
She sat beside him and cleared her throat, a nervous sound. He tugged on her arm. She followed his lead, swinging her legs up onto the mattress, turning to face him.
For a moment, they just sat there, staring at each other.
The right words were there within him. He only had to let them out. “I love you, Clara Bravo. You’re everything to me. I love you and I want to be with you. I want...our family. You, me and Kiera. I want it all with you. I want forever with you.”
She made a soft sound, a tender sound, a little hum in her throat.
He reached for her, because he had to touch her. He traced the shape of her eyebrows, followed the line of her hair where it fell along her cheek. “And today, I learned something. Something important.”
“Yes?” So sweetly, on a sharp, indrawn breath.
“Today I finally figured out that I’m more scared of losing you than I am of not being married to you. I will always want you to marry me. But if you don’t want to do that, okay. As long as you’ll stay with me and we can be a family, anyway, I�
��ll learn to be happy with things the way you need them to be.”
Her eyes shone diamond-bright then. “You mean that? You would do that, live with me, be not quite married to me? You would do that and not have to be distant, not have to hold yourself away, not have to pick fights over paper goods?”
“That was wrong, the way I behaved this morning. It was wrong that I pulled away from you. I won’t do that anymore. Life’s too short. You never know what might happen. I don’t want to waste a moment I could have with you. I want to be with you. Really with you, Clara, for every day, every hour, every second that we have together.”
She put her hand to her chest. “Oh, Dalton. I do love you. I love you so.”
“And I love you. And I will say it. With feeling. Every chance I get.”
“You really mean that.” It wasn’t a question.
He answered anyway. “Absolutely. I do.”
She canted toward him. “A kiss to seal it...”
“I love you.” He leaned in to meet her.
“I love you,” she said. Their lips met in a kiss that started out tender—and quickly burned hot.
“Clara...” He had to hold her, to touch her, to feel her body pressed to his, so he pulled her closer, turning her and settling her across his lap.
Those dark eyes gazed up at him, full of trust in him, in what they shared together. “It means a lot that you would do that, that you would put aside what you want so much, what you believe to the core of you is the right thing, in order to make it good between you and me. But you know what?”
He stroked the back of his finger down the side of her throat. By then, he was kind of through talking. He unbuttoned the top button of her silky, sexy white shirt.
She caught his hand. “Are you listening?”
He bent close, pressed a hard kiss on those lips he would never tire of kissing. “Of course.”
“Good. I sat on a bench in Library Park today, when I really should have been here, with you.”
Not Quite Married Page 18