A Safe Place

by Margaret Watson

  “If you want something, you should always ask.”

  Not when I know it’s something you aren’t willing to give. “I wanted you to stay last night, too. I’m sorry I kicked you out.”

  “Making me do the walk of shame. I felt so cheap.” He leaned back and grinned down at her. “I don’t know how you’ll make it up to me.”

  The serious conversation was over. So instead of getting sloppy and emotional, she began to unbutton his shirt. “You have any suggestions?”

  “Oh, honey, I have a ton of them.” With his shirt hanging open, he pulled her T-shirt over her head. His grin faded when he saw the bright pink bra with the ribbons at the front clasp. “That’s a good start.”

  She took his hand and led him toward her bedroom. “It gets better.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AFTER THEIR BREATHING SLOWED, Cal gathered her close on the rumpled bed. As he stroked her back, they talked about the bakery, the kids at the center, his rehab session that morning.

  Like a real couple, Frankie thought uneasily. But they weren’t. The intimacy was a facade. She had less than three weeks left with him.

  He pressed a kiss to her hair and sat up, leaning back against the pillows. She snuggled in and rested her head on his chest. “Tell me about your brothers,” he murmured.

  “You want to talk about my family?” She twisted to look at his face. “Really?”

  “They’re important to you. So I want to know about them.”

  Her throat swelled at the same time as she warned herself not to give his question too much weight. He was sorry he hadn’t gone to help her family. He was making up for it by asking about them now.

  “There’s three of them, right?” he prompted.

  “Nathan, Patrick and Marco. Patrick is an FBI agent in Detroit. Nathan and Marco run the restaurant, Mama’s Place. It’s in the northwest corner of the city, in the Wildwood neighborhood.”

  “Is that where you learned to bake?”

  “Mostly.” Memories flooded back. Of her mother patiently showing her twelve-year-old daughter how to make a pie, knead bread, bake a cake. Frankie had loved those afternoons in the kitchen with her mom. The cooks would be chopping, shouting at each other. Her father, supervising them, shouting right back. She and her mom had been a little island in the middle of the madness. “My mother taught me a lot. I picked up more by working in bakeries and restaurants.”

  “Did your parents work in the restaurant, too?”

  “Yes.” She tugged the sheet up to cover her breasts. “After they were killed, Nathan dropped out of college to raise us. He kept the restaurant going.”

  “That’s tough.” Cal twined his fingers with hers. “I’m sorry.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to smile. “It was a long time ago. It’s easier now to focus on the good memories. To remember how it was when they were alive.”

  “Sounds like a great family,” he said, and his tone was wistful.

  “What about your family?”

  “Later,” he said, peeling the sheet away. “Dinner was ages ago. I want dessert.” He kissed her until she gave in and wrapped her arms around him.

  “Me, too,” she whispered.

  MUCH LATER, Cal scooped her off the bed and carried her into the bathroom. It reminded him of the one in his father’s house—the same white bathtub surrounded by the same green tiles, the same dull silver fixtures. But Frankie’s bathroom was bright and quirky, from the shower curtain that was a colored map of the world, to the seashells in glass jars on the vanity and the back of the toilet.

  His father’s bathroom had been nothing but a place for necessities. The shower curtain had been dull brown and mildewed along the seams. The mirror on the medicine cabinet had a long, diagonal crack, and the only decoration was a box of tissues.

  Cal turned on the water, waited for it to warm, then stepped into the small tub with Frankie. He’d never showered with the women he slept with. But he was doing a lot of things with Frankie he’d never done before.

  She turned to face him and smiled, making his chest tighten. She looked like a water goddess. Rivulets ran down her shoulders, her chest, her legs, plastered her hair against her head. “This is cozy.”

  The tub was too small for both of them. But he didn’t care. “I like cozy.”

  She relaxed against him. “Me, too,” she murmured.

  She leaned around him, grabbed a bar of soap and lathered it over his chest. It bubbled and foamed and slid down his body.

  “I should be washing you,” he said, taking the soap away from her. “You’re going to make me smell girlie.”

  She smiled again. “I think you’re man enough to carry off a little cucumber-scented soap.”

  “The bathroom in the house where I grew up looked just like this. Didn’t have any fancy soap, though. Or fancy decorations.”

  “Yeah?” She took the bar and turned him to scrub his back. “Tell me more.”

  He should have kept his mouth shut. The water, the warmth, the cocoon of the tiny tub had loosened his tongue. He wished he could toss off a joke and change the subject.

  He never talked about his father. Cal’s memories were buried in a deep pit, and he wanted to keep them there. He searched for a quick line about his old man, something easy and funny, until he could distract her. With some shower sex, if he was lucky.

  But she’d shared something private about her family. Her pain at her parents’ deaths. If he wanted the intimacy he’d thrown away, he needed to reciprocate.

  He placed his palms against the slippery tile and focused on her hands, which were drawing circles on his back. “My mom died when I was a baby. It was just my father and me.” He cleared his throat. “He signed me up for peewee-league football when I was six or seven, and as soon as he saw that I was pretty good, football was it. All he ever talked about.”

  “Is that what you wanted?”

  A question his father had never asked him. “Who knows? A kid wants to make his dad happy. Make him proud. And having a football star for a son was everything to my old man.”

  Frankie turned him to face her. “I’m so sorry, Cal.”

  “Hey, I love being a football player. And I make a good living at it.”

  “Sounds as if you didn’t get a chance to figure out anything else you’d like to do. Anything else you were good at.”

  “I told my father once that I wanted to teach math. But I was just a kid.” His dad had made fun of him for weeks. What kind of idiot wanted to teach losers how to add and subtract when he could be playing football?

  Cal had been careful not to make that mistake again.

  “But hey, I had all the glory. I was the quarterback on my high-school team. All the girls chasing me. Every guy’s wet dream.”

  Frankie held his face in her hands. “Cal, you know that’s not what families are really like, don’t you?” She searched his eyes, as though she felt sorry for him. Jeez.

  “It worked out fine. I don’t have strings and I like it that way.” Frankie was tangled in strings. Every kid who walked into FreeZone became woven into her life.

  Maybe part of him wanted that, too—to come home from practice, tell Frankie what the coach had said, the stupid things the guys had done, how his knee felt.

  But it wasn’t going to happen. His time at FreeZone was almost finished. Once camp started, he and Frankie were finished, too.

  He needed to focus all his energy on making the team. It was going to be tough enough without any distractions.

  And Frankie was a huge one.

  She said softly, “Alone is a sad way to go through life. My brothers drive me crazy, but I know they always have my back.”

  Cal wouldn’t be alone. He had th
e team. They were all the family he needed. “That’s why I like football. If you’re pissed off or upset about something, you work it out on the field. You hit a guy a few times, take a few hits yourself. Clears your head.”

  She leaned against the wall, steam billowing around her. “You don’t need football for that,” she said. “There are other ways to clear your head.”

  She was talking about relationships again. About exposing your soul to someone else.

  Enough of this. He grabbed the soap and rubbed it over her chest, leaving suds behind. “You’re right, Francesca. There are many better ways. Let me show you one of my favorites.”

  Frankie’s eyes reflected the internal debate he knew she was having—continue the conversation or let it go. Allow him to retreat and regroup.

  Finally, she smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in it. “I love to learn new things,” she said as she pressed her soapy body against his.

  “I ADMIRE YOU FOR BEING willing to tell your story, Ms. Devereux.” The reporter turned off her tape recorder and studied Frankie’s office at FreeZone. Lisa Halliday was a serious-looking woman, with dark hair pulled into a low ponytail. She was casually dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweater.

  It had taken a week for Frankie to connect with her and set up an interview.

  “I should have told it a long time ago.” Frankie’s hands were still shaking and she shoved them between her thighs. Telling Lisa what had happened, even without the graphic details, brought it all back. “But I wanted to forget about it. And I almost had until I saw the article in the paper.”

  Lisa touched her arm. “You’d be surprised how often that happens—that someone’s able to suppress their memories until an unexpected reminder jolts them loose.”

  “So what’s our next step?” Frankie asked.

  “I’m going to do some research. Talk to some people. Ideally, I’ll find someone else with a similar story. But even if I can’t, I’m going to write the article. You deserve to have your story told. And maybe it will help another victim come forward.”

  “Will you, um, use my name?” Maybe she could escape without Bascombe knowing for sure she was the one who’d outed him.

  Maybe that was the coward’s way.

  “That depends. I will if you’re comfortable with that and if you give me permission. If not, I can just identify you as a woman who runs a center for at-risk kids.”

  “Thanks, Lisa.” Frankie stood and held out her hand. “Keep me posted.”

  She walked the reporter out, then picked up her cell phone. She pushed a button, and a few minutes later, Patrick said, “Hey, Frankie. What’s going on?”

  She heard voices in the background. “Have you found anything?”

  A door closed, cutting off the noise. “Not yet, but I’m still working on it. I’m going to ask another agent to help me. He’s done a lot of work on pedophiles.”

  “I just talked to the investigative reporter. She’d like to find someone else who had a similar experience.”

  “Yeah, that would be good. I’ll do my best. Okay, Bunny?”

  “Thanks, Paddy. Love you.” She snapped her phone closed.

  That night, as she and Cal walked into her apartment, she forced all thoughts of Bascombe from her head. She’d taken the next step. It was okay to let it drop for now. Okay to concentrate on Cal and their remaining time together.

  Although they’d never discussed it, they’d fallen into a routine. After FreeZone closed, they picked up food, went to her place and fell into bed. She knew the routine wouldn’t last. Knew she had less than two weeks. She was determined to savor every minute.

  Tonight, though, she didn’t want to fall into bed. She was still edgy from her interview with the reporter. Telling Lisa what had happened years ago had left her shaky. Frankie set the pizza on the table and pulled a beer and an iced tea out of the fridge. “Eat first?”

  “SURE.” Cal settled into a kitchen chair and opened the beer. “What’s up?”

  “Just hungry. I didn’t have lunch today.”

  She twirled her iced-tea bottle on the table and flipped up the lid of the pizza box. But instead of taking a piece, she picked at the crust. “How’s the rehab going?”

  “The knee is improving.” It still hurt, but he didn’t mention that. It would lead to talking about training camp. And he didn’t want to think about that right now.

  “That’s good.”

  She tried to smile, but her expression was almost sad. As if she suspected that he was lying, but wouldn’t dig any deeper. That she didn’t want to talk about training camp, either. That she wanted to live in the moment. Store up memories.

  He needed to store them up, too. They had less than two weeks left. Ten days before he finished his community service and reported to training camp.

  Too little time before he said goodbye to Frankie.

  Thank God he’d set up that benefit. It was in a week and a half, and it was his parting gift to her. She’d see how important she’d been to him.

  He was keeping it a secret because he wanted to surprise her. But he wasn’t sure how to get her to the hotel.

  “We’re doing this backward,” he blurted.

  “Doing what backward?” She gave him a puzzled look.

  “This whole dating thing.”

  “We’re dating? Really?” She picked up a piece of pizza and nibbled on it.

  “See, that’s what I mean. Usually, a guy gets to know a woman before they sleep together. They meet for coffee. Go out for dinner a few times. Exchange long, soulful looks into each other’s eyes.”

  “I think we’ve got the soulful looks down pat.” She finally smiled as she fluttered her eyelashes at him.

  No wonder he couldn’t keep his hands off her. That siren’s smile of hers turned his heart inside out. He couldn’t concentrate when she looked at him as if he were the only thing in her universe.

  “And I know you pretty well,” she added.

  A shadow of sadness crossed her face. It was gone so quickly that Cal told himself he’d imagined it. “I mean it, Frankie. I want to go on a date with you.”

  She frowned in puzzlement. “You do?”

  “Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, but he didn’t think she realized it. “Because I’m not the kind of woman you normally date,” she said quietly.

  “That’s bull,” he said, but uneasiness slithered through him. Frankie wasn’t his usual type. And he felt things for her that he’d never felt for another woman.

  “I’m not a supermodel or an actress. I’m not famous. Or rich.”

  “You’re so much more than any of those other women.” She was real. Genuine. Passionate about everything. Not afraid to say what she thought. None of the women he’d dated had ever treated him the way Frankie did—like a normal, everyday guy.

  She snorted, killing the moment.

  “That’s it. I’m taking you someplace nice. Someplace fancy, where everyone can see you and be jealous of me.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Cal.” She set her pizza down. “We can call this a date. See? We’re talking and eating. Our food isn’t even cold.”

  “We’ll go to a restaurant,” he insisted. “We’ll work our way up to the big show.”

  “There doesn’t have to be a big show.”

  “Oh, yes, there does. Ten days. I’ll be done with my community service, and we’ll go someplace fancy. A night on the town. See and be seen.”

  “‘See and be seen’?” She shook her head. “I’m not interested in that, Cal. I just want to spend time with you.”

  She left the words before we’re done unsaid, but he heard them, anyway. He didn’t want to be done with Frankie, either
, but he didn’t have a choice.

  “Well, you can spend time with me at a fancy place.” The team had booked the Palmer House for the benefit. “Maybe at one of those big-deal downtown hotels.”

  “Can I say no?”

  “You can try.” He reached across the table for her hand. Kissed it. “But I know how to make you say yes.”

  THAT WEEKEND, Frankie had just pulled up to Annie’s house when the door opened and Martha ran down the stairs. The teen barely resembled the young woman they’d dropped off here almost a month ago. Frankie and Cal had been here to see her several times, and the transformation had been gradual, but her appearance today was still a surprise.

  Her shiny blond hair fell in soft curls down her back. She’d gained a little weight and lost the gaunt, haunted expression. She was even smiling.

  “Hey, Frankie,” she said as she got into the car.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Martha?” The car sputtered at the curb as Frankie waited, certain Martha would change her mind.

  “I love to go shopping,” the girl said happily. “Even if it’s not for me.”

  “You’re a freak,” Frankie muttered.

  Martha grinned. “I’m not changing my mind. Because if I did, you wouldn’t get a dress. You’d go on your fancy date in those cargo pants and a ratty tank top. And that would make you the freak.”

  “I had no idea you were such a smart-ass,” Frankie said as she put the car in gear. “Annie’s a bad influence on you.”

  The girl’s smile softened. “Annie saved my life. I adore her.”

  “Annie certainly helped. But you saved yourself, Martha. You survived on the street and you looked for help.” Martha still had problems to solve. But right now, she was just a normal kid, happy to go shopping.

  When they pulled up in front of the Second Time Around consignment shop, Martha frowned. “What are we doing here? I thought we were going to a mall.”

  Frankie shuddered. “I always buy my clothes at places like these. It’s like a treasure hunt. And the clothes are a lot cheaper.”