“This is your new life, Isabelle. Everything is different for you now. The world is your oyster and all that. But!” She pointed at Isabelle with a stern look. “That doesn’t mean you get to leave Jackson. We already lost Sophie. I’m putting a moratorium on anyone moving.”
Isabelle agreed, trying not to get teary-eyed again. Lauren was right. This was a new life. She could travel if she wanted to. She hadn’t been able to do that before. She could call attention to herself. Live in town.
No. That sounded awful.
“Are you sure you don’t want another drink?” Lauren offered.
“No, I have to drive home.”
“I could make Jake drive you again.”
“If you make Jake drive me one more time, he’s going to personally stage an intervention. He probably thinks I’m drunk every night.”
“No, just on Sundays and a few special Tuesdays like today.”
Isabelle gave them both sincere hugs, but when she got to her car, she breathed a sigh of relief. She needed to be alone. Maybe for a few months. She just needed to shut off the world and her feelings and paint.
April evenings weren’t exactly warm, but it wasn’t freezing, either, so she drove home with the window open and the fresh air on her face.
It was spring, and that was something to be thankful for. It was spring, and she had a new life and maybe that could be enough. Because it didn’t matter how brave she pretended to be; she couldn’t call Tom. She never would. She’d move on and pretend that she’d never really wanted him. For once, she’d make that choice, instead of being the one standing there, begging, crying.
Her hands were sore from clutching the steering wheel by the time she passed Jill’s house. She noticed the black SUV in Jill’s drive, but she was too upset to be curious. The evening was lovely, but her mind was a mess. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her house. Her hiding place.
Then she saw the box on the doorstep, just at the edge of the circle of porch light.
She hit the brakes so hard that the seat belt caught her. Just a UPS package, maybe. Except she hadn’t ordered anything.
So it was probably a bomb. Great.
She got out and pulled open the garage door, pretending for a moment that the package wasn’t there.
She couldn’t call 911 to say that someone had left a mysterious package on her doorstep until she determined that it was mysterious, so she pulled calmly into her garage, turned off the engine and got out.
Halfway to her porch, it occurred to her that the box could be a ploy to get her to walk to her porch in the dark. She hesitated for a moment and waited, but when she heard nothing, she headed for the steps, unwilling to cower in the night. The box wasn’t from UPS. There was a letter attached.
With another glance around to be sure no one was sneaking up on her, she reached slowly out to grab the edge of the envelope. It wasn’t taped to the box. It didn’t trigger an explosion. And no powdery substance sifted out when she opened it.
“Dear Isabelle,” it started, and then she began to cry.
I was really hoping to see you today. I’m not sure how to say this in a letter, because I meant to say it in person.
I’m sorry...
She didn’t read the rest of it. She dropped the letter and started running. The black SUV in Jill’s driveway. It had to be Tom. It had to.
She’d gone to dinner only two hours before. He wouldn’t have left without stopping in to see Jill.
The heels she’d worn to dinner were making running downhill treacherous, so she stopped to take them off and then kept running, hoping she didn’t turn an ankle on her rough driveway.
When she hit the road, it was much smoother. She was so caught up in the triumph of that that she hardly noticed the shadow walking up the hill toward her.
Isabelle gasped and slowed her frantic run until she could stop without pitching forward onto her face. The figure was still fifty feet away.
“Isabelle?” he said.
It was Tom. And all her fear was back, twisted into a fear for her heart instead of her safety. “Hi,” she whispered. He kept walking, and she was afraid he hadn’t heard her. “Hi,” she tried again.
“I’m sorry if I scared you. I left something for you. I saw you drive past Jill’s. I didn’t know...”
He stopped. He was ten feet away. She couldn’t quite see him. She wanted to see him, but he didn’t come closer.
“Did you just get here?” she asked.
“Yes. An hour ago.”
Her only comfort was that he sounded as unnatural as she did. “For work?”
“No.”
That was all he said. “Oh,” she managed to say.
He stepped closer, and she could finally see him in the light of the new moon. He looked so tall and handsome, and for some reason she felt more herself. It was just Tom, after all, and she knew him.
“My feet are freezing,” she said. “Do you want to come inside? Have a drink?”
He glanced down at her feet with a smile. “Yes. I’d love that.”
When they reached the porch, Tom picked up the box he’d left as she unlocked the door.
“What is it?”
He shook his head.
She turned the light on and shut the door, and it felt so oddly comfortable to be inside with him that she smiled. It felt just like it had the first time she’d let him in. “It’s not the gun, is it? Because I really don’t want it back.”
“Ha,” he said. He smiled, then laughed. “No. It’s not the gun.”
Oh, God, he looked so handsome, and so different, wearing jeans and a button-down shirt already rolled up at the sleeves. She suddenly realized that it was a Tuesday night. And he was here. Her happiness fell away.
“Tom. Oh, my God, you weren’t fired, were you?”
He laughed again, thank God. “I wasn’t fired.” He winked. “But I did get a few days off whether I wanted them or not. It’s lucky, really, because I wanted to bring you this.”
She took the box he handed to her, ready for it to be heavy, but it felt nearly empty.
Her birthday wasn’t until July. She couldn’t guess what else it could be. “I’m glad you weren’t fired,” she finally said, making him laugh again, and somehow that made her want to cry. She liked him laughing. She liked him here in her house.
“Should I open it?” she asked. “Do you want a drink?”
“A drink sounds good,” he answered, and Isabelle agreed. She handed him the box and went to get a couple of beers. He was waiting on the couch when she returned.
For a moment, she wondered if she should take the chair, but that was stupid. So stupid when she could be close to him for a moment.
He set the box on the table. “It’s from Ecuador,” he said, and she finally understood that this wasn’t about her and Tom.
She went stiff and stared at the box. “More evidence?”
“No! Christ, Isabelle, I wouldn’t do that to you. I just wanted to bring you something of your dad’s. They told you he’d died, but I didn’t know how much else you knew about his life.”
“His life?” She shook her head in confusion. “You mean in Ecuador? Nothing.”
Tom nodded and drew his keys from his pocket. “He had a small apartment.” He drew the key over the tape that sealed the box. “No wife. No family. He arrived fourteen years ago and never left. He went for coffee every afternoon at 3:00 p.m. after siesta.” He opened the flaps of the box and handed it to her.
“He was quiet,” Tom said. “His life was quiet. He died of a heart attack five years ago. There’s not much else to tell.”
Isabelle looked into the box, still in shock. She lifted out the crushed paper and drew out a plastic evidence bag. There was a black wallet inside.
“I’m sorry. They took his driver’s license, so there’s no photo of him. But there are some old pictures inside.”
“Can I open it?” she whispered. When he nodded, she drew the wallet out and spread it ope
n, amazed that the smell of leather still wafted up. And just beneath it, the faint scent of the cheap cologne her father had always favored. “Oh,” she breathed, even before she pulled the photos from the wallet.
There was one of her as a baby. A pose she recognized. Then another of her as a teenager. She’d never seen that one before. It was her, smiling and cheerful and open and waving at the camera. The last picture was of Isabelle’s mother. It was a tiny square, cut from another photo. Her mother in their kitchen, a hand held up to shoo the camera away.
“It’s not much,” Tom said. “They kept his passport. It was a counterfeit. But his wedding ring is supposed to be in there. And a watch.”
She nodded.
“He was at church when he collapsed. An ambulance took him to the hospital. He died a few hours later.”
She nodded again, as if she knew, but no one had told her anything.
“That’s all,” he said. “I wanted to be sure you knew, and that his things got to you.”
She was still staring into the mess of paper and plastic in the box when Tom stood.
Bear, disturbed from his sleep beneath the side table, hissed at Tom then took off across the room to disappear down the hall.
“The cat missed you,” she said.
“He just ran away.”
“He does that.”
“Isabelle—”
She cut him off before he could say goodbye. “I missed you, too,” she said, the words running together in her rush to force them out.
Tom was just standing there, staring at her, and now she wanted to follow Bear from the room. Isabelle had let her friends get to her, and what did they know about any of this? She was all screwed up in a million ways, and she wasn’t sure about anything except that Tom must hate her. And she should hate him, shouldn’t she?
She stood and backed a few steps away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that. Thank you for bringing my dad’s things.”
He shook his head. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“You were being nice, and I’ve made this weird.”
“Isabelle...” He looked so confused. As if he were dealing with a crazy person, and he couldn’t even grasp what she might mean. “You said you never wanted to see me again.”
“I know.”
“I would’ve called if I’d thought... I didn’t want to leave it that way. I just... I didn’t know we were saying goodbye. That’s not the way I would’ve said goodbye.”
She nodded, her chin bouncing up and down way too many times before she finally made herself be still. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t being rational. I was trying to hurt you. Or hurt us both. So this will be better. Saying goodbye like this.”
His forehead crumpled in a frown. Isabelle had no idea what her own face must look like. A little manic. A lot freaked out. She couldn’t tell him how much she still wanted him. She couldn’t watch him squirm and try to extricate himself from her inappropriate affections. She was a criminal. A fugitive. A liar. The kind of person he locked up every day.
“I wanted to call you,” he said. “Every day. Would you have talked to me if I had?”
“Not at first. At first I hated you.”
“And now?” He took a step toward her. She locked her legs so she wouldn’t turn and run.
“Now I think...” She had to swallow the emotion that clogged her throat. “I think I was just terrified. And I think I wanted you to find out about me.”
“What?” Another step closer.
Isabelle clasped her hands together and held tight. “You asked me why I slept with you, knowing you were a marshal. I asked myself the same question a thousand times, and the only thing that makes sense is that I wanted it over. I wanted out of the lie. And for some reason, I trusted you.”
He shook his head. “But you had a life. A good life. I screwed that up.”
“I know. But I wasn’t really free, was I? I couldn’t let myself fall in love. I couldn’t trust anyone.”
“And now?”
He’d gotten closer. She could reach out and touch him, but she wouldn’t. Her heart raced at the thought of it, but her hands gripped tighter together. She kept them snug against her stomach, protecting herself.
“I can’t trust anyone,” she repeated.
“You said you could trust me.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know you.” She didn’t realize she was shaking her head until Tom reached out, and his fingers gently stopped the movement.
She sighed at the touch. Tears stung her eyes. She didn’t want him to see that. She ducked her head, and his hand slid to the back of her neck, and then she was pressed to his chest, his arms warm around her.
“You can trust me,” he murmured.
“I don’t trust anyone,” she managed to say past her tears.
“I know that. Why would you? Everyone has let you down.”
“You haven’t,” she whispered, but then she was crying too hard to speak. To say that Patrick had dumped her for his reputation, and Tom had risked his career for her. To say that her father had run to save his own life, and Tom had stayed right there and protected her. That even after she’d been cruel to him, he’d been kind. She couldn’t say any of it. She could only cry harder when his arms tightened around her as if he’d never let her go.
“I missed you, too, Isabelle,” he said, the words warm against her temple. “I thought about you every day. I called Jill once. I even looked up Veronica’s column on the off chance that you’d written in to say, ‘A man I was dating arrested me, and I can’t stop thinking about him.’”
She laughed. An embarrassing, coughing sort of laugh that made her aware of how wet she’d gotten his shirt. “I actually presented her with that problem tonight. Really.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said I was being really stupid. She said I should call. I told her you probably never wanted to see me again.”
“Not true. I always want to see you. In fact, even if you’d kicked me out, I was going to try to buy that painting from you.”
“What painting?” she asked. Then said, “Oh,” when he drew back to frown down at her. “My boobs.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
She buried her wet face back in his shirt, and they laughed. They just laughed, as though everything was okay again. As though they could just pick up where they’d left off. As if they fit together easily and trusted each other, so everything would be fine. Why could she feel that way with him even when everything else was so scary?
“I could have mailed that box to you,” he said quietly. “But I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing you again. Even if you were just going to tell me to go to hell, I wanted to see you while you did it.”
“Is that all you wanted?”
“No,” he said, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “No, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was for lying. And I wanted you to say that we might have a chance.”
Her chest ached. The pain was awful. Hope hurt a lot worse than fear.
“I’m sorry for lying to you,” he said.
Isabelle fisted her hands in his shirt and held on for dear life. “We might have a chance,” she whispered.
She felt some of the tension leave his body, his muscles softening around her. She finally realized how good he smelled, how much she’d missed his skin. She didn’t want to let him go. “You must be tired,” she said. “Did you stop for dinner or anything?”
“Jill fed me.”
She nodded. “Do you...do you want to stay? Here?”
He stood straight, pulling away from her. “I thought maybe we’d take it slow this time.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure. Really?”
His sincere frown bloomed slowly into a smile. “No, not really.”
She made a little noise of relief, and then he kissed her. She’d forgotten his taste in the past few months, but she remembered it now. Every nerve in her body woke up and asked for more. But for once, she showed
a little restraint. Isabelle pulled back and looked up into his eyes.
“If you stay,” she said, “it only means there’s a chance. I might not be able to do it. Trust...that’s not easy for me.”
“I know. I’m relieved that you’d even consider it. And I have my own issues. I have trouble letting things be. I want to fix them. And you don’t need fixing, Isabelle.”
She smiled at him. “That’s a generous assessment. But I’ll take it.”
“So I can stay? Just tonight? Just to see?”
In answer, she took his hand and led him toward her bedroom. She’d bought a new comforter and pillows, trying to turn it into a new bed, a bed he hadn’t been in, but now he’d be in this one, too. And maybe he’d stay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FOR ONCE, ISABELLE ignored the dessert that sat in front of her. She was a big fan of Jill’s chocolate torte, but what was making her happy tonight wasn’t the food; it was the company.
Lauren sat with her boyfriend, Jake, the very hot fire captain who was a little too good-natured to be hanging around this group. And Jill had set her hand on Mary’s arm as she leaned toward her in laughter. The two women hadn’t declared themselves a couple yet, but they sure looked comfortable together.
And there was Tom, of course, his hand on Isabelle’s knee under the table. She was very aware every time he moved, his fingers sliding over her skin. Two months into their new start, and her breath still caught every time he touched her. She wanted him more now than ever. A frightening thought.
His thumb brushed against her thigh. “Are you okay?” he asked, leaning closer. “You’re not eating your cake.”
She smiled at him and picked up her fork. “I guess I’m full of wine.” And sticky, scary love.
This was his third trip back to Jackson, and she’d gone to see him once for a long weekend that had somehow turned into five days. Next time she was having dinner at his sister’s, though he’d warned her that his sister was an even worse cook than he was. Thank God for Jill, or they’d starve to death out here in the forest.
It was starting to feel like a real relationship. A normal relationship with a future instead of a looming end date. Still, when she looked at his hand on her leg, she wanted to paint the image a hundred times so she could remember it when he was gone.
Flirting with Disaster & Fanning the Flames Page 24