by Anna Adams
Hope was asleep before they got home. Cassie carried her up to bed and changed her into pajamas. Leo tucked her in, bringing a glass of water to leave at her bedside.
“She’ll be up early to see what Santa brought,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it myself.” He hugged Cassie. “For the first time in I don’t know when.”
“Me, too.” She pressed her forehead to his. “Let’s go down and plant some cookies and a glass of milk. You hungry?”
“Enough to do the cookie-and-milk ritual.”
They set a half-eaten cookie and an empty milk glass on the hearth and then Leo put all the presents under their tree.
“I’m pretty tired,” he said. “I might go to bed, too.”
“Okay. I’m a little keyed.” She eyed snow fluttering past the windows in the darkness. “I might take a walk down to the lake.”
“You think? We still have the boathouse. I never dropped the rent on it.” He rubbed her back, the way he used to. “Your mom loved that place.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, don’t be long.”
“Okay. Night, Dad.” She kissed him. “I think Santa may be good to you, too.”
“He’s already been the best. I have you and Hope and a tree all decorated for once—even if it looks as if it’s dying to plunge through the window. How could I ask for more?”
She laughed. “I’m glad you love Hope.”
“I wish I’d loved you better, honey.”
Her throat tried to shut. She swallowed, hard. “You’re doing okay.”
With a grin very like Hope’s, he started up to bed.
Cassie put her coat back on and grabbed a flashlight from the closet shelf. She eased through the front door, locked it and slipped the keys into her pocket.
At the end of her own driveway, she could see Beth’s lodge across the lake. Lit up like a Christmas tree itself, it looked more festive than the house behind her. She glanced back.
She’d been wrong. The tree in the window glowed red and green and orange and white and blue. Not the most fashionable, themed or white-lit tree, but it looked like home. And two of the people she loved were in there behind that glow.
She looked toward Beth’s house again. Was Van in there? He probably spent Christmas Eve with his sister and her family.
Times that once she would have shared, too.
She wandered across the road. In the darkness, the terrain had changed over the past few years. She searched among pointy branches and high weeds for the path to the boathouse.
A neighbor on the lake owned most of them, as well as the docks. He rented them and kept them up. Thank goodness, she thought as she stepped onto the dock. If her father had been responsible for upkeep, she might have gone straight through the decking.
It was as sturdy as ever, and Cassie walked out over the lake, blinking snow from her eyelashes. Ice had begun to form, a see-through layer about ten feet away from shore. The air washing over it made her shiver. She went on to the boathouse.
It meant so much to her, this place.
They’d given up the boat a long time ago, right after her mother’s death. She tiptoed to look through the window. Deck chairs and cushions lined the slip.
The same cushions? The ones she and Van had used that first time…
It might be Christmas Eve. The night was freezing cold, and snow stung her face, but old memories, filled with the warmth of living, had brought her down here.
She tried the door. It wouldn’t open and she tried it again, feeling shut out, remembering Van’s arms around her, his voice whispering that they could stop, they didn’t have to…
She’d never wanted anything more than making love with him. And she thought maybe, if she could see the place where they’d first loved each other, she’d find the courage to trust him, to share her body with him again.
A combination padlock held the door shut, but a piece of paper in a plastic bag was hooked to the lock’s hasp. She took out the paper and unfolded it, holding it beneath her flashlight.
“Leo, I locked the door because we’ve had some vandalism on the lake. Call me if you want the combination. Van.”
“I was trying to stay away like he asked.”
She whirled, skidding so that Van hurried to her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“You startled me.”
“I saw that. You shouldn’t be out here in the snow. Your hands are like ice.”
“Yours, too.”
“Let’s go inside.”
“Let’s go into the boathouse.”
He hesitated, confused. “What are you doing out here?”
“Walking. What about you?”
“I was at Beth’s. We exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. When I was leaving, I saw your flashlight over here. Some kids have been breaking into the empty boathouses, so I thought I’d check.”
“You sound serious.” She didn’t want to be serious, and she wouldn’t mind if he swept her away from everything that frightened her.
“Why are you out here, Cass?”
“I was thinking of you. I feel unsettled. I didn’t want to go to bed.” Alone. “Take your pick.”
He didn’t answer, but she could hear him breathing in the darkness.
“He never asked you for the combination?”
“No. This place means your mom to him. He doesn’t want to remember. I remember the combination, though. Do you really want to go inside?”
“I don’t know.” Her nerve evaporated. “It must be dusty. I’ll bet all that stuff is rotting.”
“No.” He moved around her and opened the lock. His body’s warmth seemed to envelop her. She kept her distance. “I clean it every so often.”
She stopped on the threshold. “Why do you do that?”
“I’ve asked myself many times.” He turned the door handle. “The first time, I saw the door open so I added the padlock and I oiled this. It was almost frozen. As I said, your dad had already asked me to stay away.” His grimace implied that meeting had been ugly and mean. “So I left the note.”
“I don’t understand.” She walked inside, only realizing how cold it was when they left the blowing snow outside.
“Maybe seeing me was painful when he couldn’t be with you.” He shut the door behind them. “I felt that way, too.”
“How, Van?”
“How?”
She took a deep breath. “How did you keep feeling that way? I tried to put you behind me.”
His smile was a balm, teasing, kind. “Don’t think I mooned around for five years, pining for you. I thought I’d moved on.” He switched on the lights. Water, licking at the sides of the slip, looked dark green and thick. “But you’re everywhere for me in Honesty. Beth said many times I either needed to find you and start over or stop thinking about you and learn to love someone else.”
She lifted her hand to the front of her coat. “Funny how much that hurts. I didn’t leave because I wanted to make you suffer. There were days when I wished you’d ignored everything I said.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “Sometimes when I was alone, staring out my window into the darkness because I needed to make sure no one else was staring back at me, I thought—”
“I hate thinking of you being afraid.”
“I thought,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “that you might come, and if you did, I could believe you really loved me.”
He slid his hand between the lapels of his jacket and the snaps popped open, revealing a navy sweater. “Would it have been that easy? If you wanted to test me, why not just tell me what you needed?”
“I didn’t know. I was all feelings, and no feeling at all. Eventually, I focused on Hope and told myself keeping her safe was all that mattered.”
“We’ve both been asleep,” he said. “Five years of unconsciousness, but you and I were meant for each other. We had no one else to turn to.”
“Do you feel that way?” If only she could believe. If only she could
close her eyes and…No, he needed her with her eyes wide open.
“Nothing’s changed since the other night, Cass. I still don’t want you back because you think I’m the only one you’d feel safe with.” He flung the door open. “Not that it matters, since you don’t even feel safe with me.”
Footsteps echoed on the dock outside. Cassie moved to the door. “Hope,” she said. “Or Dad.”
Sheriff Tom Drake, his hand on the holstered pistol at his side, appeared in the doorway.
Cassie fought an illogical compulsion to laugh. “Hi, Tom.”
“What are you two doing here? McCauley, down the lake, said someone was vandalizing your father’s boathouse again.”
“We weren’t vandalizing.” Cassie felt like a teenager, caught making out in a car.
“Do you know it’s snowing? Santa’s on his way. Go home, the pair of you, and don’t drag me out in this weather again.”
“We’re on our way,” Van said. “Sorry, Tom.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. I gave my deputies the night off because they all have kids. I’m feeling left out myself. If I had a boathouse, I might go wallow with a little Christmas spirit and mull over the state of my life.”
Cassie shot him a sharp look, her mouth open to deny doing anything of the sort, but Sheriff Drake was right.
She’d become a parent to her father.
She’d brought her daughter to a place where adult gossip made her think she needed to kick the crap out of a kid because her mommy had stopped a “bad man” that way. Cassie was going to have to help Hope find a better way to face that challenge during her time in Honesty.
She glanced back at Van—the man she loved, still. Always.
Tom waited for him, and Van waited for Cassie to walk out of the boathouse. She hit the light switch, to keep Van from seeing the truth in her eyes.
Tom’s flashlight was more a beacon, no doubt visible from the International Space Station. He lit the way up the slight rise to the road, but Cassie had left her own flashlight in the boathouse, and she climbed in total darkness.
She knew what she had to do. She’d seen a rape counselor and a psychologist for three years, but his training hadn’t taken as well as her martial arts instructor’s.
Her body had the right instincts. That night at the shelter, she hadn’t thought. She’d simply responded to the danger to her and her child and her charges. Her body hadn’t needed any input from her mind or her heart.
Her heart, her mind—they’d had equally intense training, but no one could break down the fear that held her immobile, unable to trust.
At the top of the hill, Van turned toward his car. “Night, Tom. Cass, I’ll stop by tomorrow to see Leo and Hope, if you don’t mind.”
Now or never. Take her own battering ram to the doors she’d shut on trusting any man ever again, or just live behind them.
The thing was, there’d been someone to knock down—someone to stop in the attack on the shelter. How did she stop herself?
How could she wake herself from five years of stupor and start living again?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SILENCE FILLED his house like a poisonous fog absorbing every molecule of oxygen. He roamed from room to room, lost and alone.
He should have followed Cassie to Washington. He should have planted himself on her doorstep so that she had to tire of stepping over him or invite him in.
Five years later, she could hardly be clearer about being through with him. The worst part was that he hated to think of her alone for the rest of her life.
Who was he kidding? She’d meet someone. She was a good, loving woman, still capable of great happiness, of laughing with her daughter and her father. Somewhere inside, she still had the capacity to love and trust.
She just couldn’t find love and trust enough to be with him again.
Just past midnight, he went to bed. A little after one in the morning, he gave up and climbed out of the twisted sheets. Downstairs, he started a blaze in the living room fireplace and made a pot of coffee. Then he sat in front of the TV, watching Santa progress reports and a snooker tournament taped in Liverpool last spring.
When the doorbell rang, he discovered how it felt to jump out of his skin.
His thoughts went to Beth and her family as he hurried to the door. The woman outside, shivering in jeans and a sweater too light for the weather, had once been his wife, but the fear in her eyes made her a stranger.
“Don’t send me away, Van.”
“Are you nuts? Come to the fire.”
He led her, vibrating like the strings of a violin, to the hearth, sat her down and wrapped an afghan around her shoulders.
“What are you doing here? Who’s looking after Hope?”
“My dad. He’s alert when he’s with her, and I left my cell number on his door with a note that he should call me if she woke up.”
She huddled into the blanket, her teeth chattering. “This wasn’t part of my plan.”
“Your plan?”
“I meant to walk in, drag you to the bedroom and show you I can be a wife again.”
He stared at her. It wasn’t that she’d never dragged him to the bedroom before.
“But the house has changed so much, I stood out there staring at it and I realized I don’t know where the bedroom is.”
“Same place it always was. I wish you’d been here that night. Who’d make his way into the woods to find anyone here?”
He smiled, sort of. “I’ll always be sorry for being away when you needed me.”
“What would you have done?” She eyed him, and there was more of his Cassie in her gaze. “He had a knife. I was grateful you weren’t here. He might have killed you. He might have—and this is my worst nightmare about that night—he might have made you watch. When I dream about it, you are here, and he makes you watch and then he kills you in front of me.” Tears slipped down her cheeks, streaking her cold, dry skin. “I’m humiliated, and I know how it feels to have no control over your body, but the worst thing would have been to lose you, too.”
“Are you blind, Cassie? You did lose me. You threw me out. You threw me away.”
A sob escaped her—as if she didn’t know she was crying.
“I’m sorry.” He knelt in front of her. “Please, I’m sorry. But I’m angry, too. I love you. I always have. I tried to make you believe, and you didn’t want me. I have no right to be angry because you were raped, but I am. You ran away from me.”
“I feel as though it just happened yesterday.” She dropped the afghan and it puddled on the hearth. With her arms around him, she planted her chin on his shoulder. “I thought I had to deal with the rape so I’d love Hope, but I just learned to love her. The rape—I never dealt with it. I can parrot the facts—rape is violence. But I was vulnerable, and I am vulnerable with you. You can hurt me, Van. You can destroy me.”
“I won’t.” He kissed her cheek.
“No—I can’t look at you. Let me finish. I love you. I came here to make love with you, to see if I can be your wife again because I’m asking you to take me back.”
“I hear a condition in your voice.”
“I’m not sure I can do it,” she said. “Be a woman again, and you deserve a woman who can love you in every way.”
“I deserve you. I love you. If you love me at all, we’ll make the rest happen. Eventually.” He pulled back and pressed his hands to either side of her face. “You don’t have to prove anything.”
“Yes, I do.” She stood and pulled a packet from her back pocket. “Show me the bedroom.”
“Cassie.” He stared at her. With red, wet cheeks, her hair in clotted strands around her face and a runny nose, she was still the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. “As attractive as your offer is, I’m not sure you’re setting the right mood for a seduction.”
“Mood?” She mopped her face and tried to smooth her hair. As if she could see herself, she dropped her hands to her sides. “We’ll have to do without mood.
Are you willing to try with me?”
He caught up and held her close. “I’m willing to seduce you.” He kissed her, and her mouth met his, her eagerness not feigned. He knew her that well. His breathing was harsh as he lifted his head. “Or to hold you, if that’s what you want in the end.”
She walked to the stairs, her hand holding his. “What did you do to the bedroom?”
Renovations weren’t terribly seductive, either. “I made it bigger and we have a bathroom whose windows will never steam up. We’d need a lot bigger water heater.”
She laughed with tear-sodden reluctance, but his pulse hammered. She could laugh when she was offering herself like a sacrifice. Maybe they still stood a slight chance.
“We,” she said. “I like that.”
“Me, too.”
At the top of the stairs, she hesitated. He waited, not breathing. At last she started down the hall, and he followed.
“One thing we’re not counting on,” he said.
She turned, flight already in her eyes.
“What if I can’t make love to a woman who’s forcing herself? Wait—this isn’t hypothetical. It’s totally personal. What if I can’t make love to you because you’re forcing yourself? This is a road map back to our old problem. I don’t want to hurt you, but I sure as hell don’t want you to assume I don’t want you.”
She shook her head. “I’ll know if I can—” She broke off. “Talking so much is embarrassing.”
“I can help you with that.” They reached his room. His clothes on the floor and his bunched up sheets weren’t any more inviting than Cassie’s I’m-not-sure approach to a scene he’d rather have set with romance. “Sorry it’s such a mess.”
“Shut up.” She pulled her sweater over her head, and her hair fell to her thin shoulders. With her heart beating so hard, her full, bare breasts trembled. He swallowed.
Maybe he couldn’t do this.
“I can’t undress you,” she said. “Maybe next time.”
The silence between them suggested, if we have a next time.
He took off his T-shirt. She backed up as if he’d suddenly grown taller.
“I’ll stay right here,” he said.
“For pity’s sake.” She took two steps that brought her nose level with his chest. “I’m going to need some help. Nothing fancy. Just remind me how it all goes.”