In Confidence

by Karen Young

  “Yeah, first thing.”

  Rachel quietly closed the door to Kendall’s bedroom, peeked in on Nick and walked to the den, where Cam waited. “Both are all tucked in and sleeping, if you can believe that.”

  He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Since it’ll be daylight in another couple of hours, yes, I can believe it.” He’d been standing at the window looking out, waiting for her to reassure herself that her children were safe and that all was nearly right in her world. Now he held out his arms and she walked into them as easily and naturally as if they’d been lovers forever.

  “This has been the longest, worst night of my life,” she whispered, “and, thank God, it has a happy ending.”

  For a few blissful moments, Cam held her close, sharing in her elation. It still surprised him how right it was knowing Rachel and her children were in his life. How vital they were to his happiness now. It had been just a couple of weeks ago that he’d toyed with the idea of asking her to move in with him. Which would have been a nonstarter, anyway. Rachel wasn’t a live-in lover kind of woman. She was the marrying kind. “I had a few bad moments myself,” he told her, holding her close to his heart.

  “It’s scary that he was so callous and calculating in taking Nick and Kendy from me. Doesn’t he have any concept of how people are devastated by a threat to their children? Didn’t he see your anguish when you lost Jack?” Her hands tightened at his waist and she buried her face in his shirt. “For them to come so close—”

  “They’re okay now, sweetheart.” His hands stroked her back, giving her a moment to banish the fear of what might have been.

  After a moment, she reached up and kissed him on the side of his mouth. “I know this has been hard for you, Cam. My children have been returned safely and I can only begin to imagine how it must have been for you when it didn’t…have a happy ending.”

  “There’s some consolation in knowing that Tyson will be punished for taking Jack’s life. But there’s not much consolation for me knowing I wasn’t there for Jack when he needed me. There are times,” he said, still holding her close, “when I wish with everything in me that I could have just that one moment to live over again. That night, when he called, if I’d been listening instead of giving my son half an ear when he needed his dad, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he would have revealed enough that I would have sensed danger and could have intervened. Maybe—”

  Rachel touched his lips to stop him. “You can never know that, Cam. You’re traveling a road to nowhere. You loved Jack. Accept in your heart that he knows that—that he knew that—and you’ll keep his memory alive forever. That will be the best tribute to his life. And it’s not too late for that.”

  He said nothing for a long moment, then he gave her an affectionate squeeze. “You’re right, sweetheart. In fact, you were right when you tried to give me that advice five years ago when I was ranting and raving at you in your office.”

  She smiled. “Yes, well, we won’t travel down that memory lane again, either, okay?”

  “Lucky me.” He simply held her for a minute, swaying back and forth. Then, “You were the real hero tonight, Rachel. If Jason had pulled that trigger, we would have had another tragedy to add to Monk’s long list. And in spite of you thinking Jason probably wouldn’t have done it, we don’t know that. But you talked him down, good little shrink that you are,” he said, kissing her nose. “I don’t know when I first realized I was in love with you, but I knew it for certain when you were working your magic with that boy tonight.”

  She put a hand on his cheek, searching his face. “Oh, Cam. What are you saying?”

  He smiled, his hands now at her waist. “I thought I said it. I love you. Is that such a bulletin?”

  She was simply staring at him in stunned surprise.

  “I’ve been falling in love with you since the day you moved in next door, sugar.”

  “Oh, come on. You were barely civil.”

  “Purely a defensive strategy.”

  She gave him a suspicious look. “We’re not talking about an affair here, are we?”

  “Would you consider it?” Then as her eyes lit dangerously, he laughed and kissed her eyebrow. “I know your opinion about affairs. And I’ll be honest, since we can’t get married yet, but if I thought I could talk you into that, I would.”

  “You certainly can’t,” she said primly.

  His smiled faded then. “Here’s another thing I learned tonight, Rachel. When it looked as if Nick and Kendy might be in real danger, I couldn’t have been more afraid than if they’d been my own. And close on that thought was my fear that you might suffer the way I did when I lost Jack.” He brought her hands up and kissed them. “It doesn’t take much to figure out that what I was feeling was love—not just for you, but for Nick and Kendy, too.”

  Joy and hope were now filling up her heart and showing in her eyes. “Cam—”

  “Wait.” He couldn’t say everything until everything was on the table. “Ted’s come to his senses, I think. He might want to try to rebuild his life. Win back what he lost. Nick and Kendy need him, I won’t deny that. Some would say it’s the right thing for you and Ted to be together again. If you—”

  She put her fingers to his lips again. “Haven’t we gone through all this once? I will never be able to trust Ted again, which in itself kills any possibility of a reconciliation, if that’s what you’re getting at. But more important than that, I don’t love him. I haven’t for a long time. I don’t want a reconciliation, even for the sake of Nick and Kendy.” Then she framed his face with her hands. “Besides, I’ve been so dazzled by you that I can’t even think about going back to the life I used to have.”

  “Dazzled?” He smiled and dropped his forehead to hers, breathing deep in relief. From the moment he’d realized that her children were gone, his insides had been in a knot. “Then how would you feel about spending a lot more time with me, like say, the next fifty or so years?”

  “Cam—”

  “I know I’m no prize. You said yourself I’m moody and I tend to close up when I’m on deadline. I’m opinionated. I’m—”

  “Intelligent, interesting and sexy.”

  He grinned and reached out to push a strand of her hair back from her cheek. Then his face gentled and he gathered her close, just held her for a minute. A wave of peacefulness rolled through him and settled. She had found herself on her own with two kids and a mountain of debt and difficulty to overcome and she’d accepted it with grace, style and sheer grit. It would be his pleasure to see that nothing like that ever happened to her again. She probably wouldn’t like it that he felt protective about her, but that’s the way it was. She was his now and he protected his own.

  She tucked her head beneath his chin and let him hold her. “Say it again, Cam.”

  He smiled. “I love you, Rachel.”

  Epilogue

  “I hope nobody has a heart attack,” Marta said, casting a wary eye over at Cam’s driveway where a raucous basketball game was in play. Kendy, her camera busy, was on the sidelines recording the event. “They’re trying to keep up with those kids. First thing you know, we’ll have to call the paramedics.”

  Rachel set a bowl of salsa on the table and ripped open a huge bag of tortilla chips. “I don’t think they’re quite that out of shape,” she said dryly. She could speak from personal experience that Cam was in great shape. He would not be physically challenged by a few rounds of backyard basketball with Nick and Ward.

  “Pete didn’t get to bed until midnight last night.” Marta pulled paper plates out of a plastic bag. “He’s been working long hours with the D.A.’s office putting together the indictments for Tyson and those two creeps, Ziegler and Dunne.”

  “How is the case shaping up?” Rachel’s gaze wandered across the way to the game, going hot and heavy. Cam and Pete had been challenged by Nick and Ward. Pete looked reasonably neat, although out of breath. Cam wore a T-shirt with no sleeves and cutoffs that must have been in hi
s closet since high school. He was sweating and breathing hard, blocking Nick and laughing, waving his arms as if he were no older than the boys. He looked hot and male and, to Rachel, utterly irresistible.

  She glanced over and found Marta looking at her.

  “Cam hasn’t talked about it?”

  “He’s working on a new book, and not, to Kendy’s dismay, about the family ghost. I think that now the question of Jack’s death has been resolved and he knows he didn’t commit suicide, he’s at peace in a place inside that might never have known peace.” Her hands on the bag of chips were still. “It’s as if he’s done this for Jack and now he’s content to turn over to Pete the job of bringing those responsible to justice.”

  “I’m just so glad that another tragedy was averted when Jason didn’t kill him.” Marta shoved an empty bowl for the chips across to Rachel. “Dying instantly would have been too quick and humane. After what Monk Tyson did, he deserves to suffer more.”

  “Without a doubt.” She thought of the anguish in Jason as he’d talked about Tyson’s abuse. And the awful moment when he almost pulled the trigger. There were so many boys damaged. Ward had appeared in her office at school the day after and she’d been able to refer him and Jason to a good therapy program.

  It was the weekend now, and five days since Tyson’s arrest. The furor was still ongoing. Understandably, the town had been shocked and horrified. Parents were still reeling, questioning how such a predator could have moved about so freely in their midst for so long and nobody knew. But those who knew—the boys themselves—had been diabolically manipulated, aided and abetted by a town intoxicated by a coach’s incredible successes. In the end it had not been the victims who brought Tyson down, but his own arrogance.

  Loud whoops from Cam’s driveway stirred the two women into action. “Oops,” Marta said, doling out plastic forks. “Get the food ready. Here they come.”

  Rachel opened the door to the kitchen where her mother was mixing dressing for coleslaw. “The brisket’s in that big pan,” Dinah said, pointing with a whisk. “It’s ready and so is this as soon as I toss it together.”

  Rachel gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Mom. There are going to be four hungry guys out there in just about half a minute.” Lifting the pan, she went to the door and bumped it open with her hip. “Come on out as soon as you’re done, okay?”

  “Hey, gals, what’s for dinner?” Pete said, wiping himself down with a towel and dropping into a lawn chair to catch his breath. Cam, rummaging in an ice chest, tossed him a beer.

  “Brisket and the trimmings,” Marta said, giving him a stern once-over. “You’re too hot. Cool off first.”

  Pete popped the top on the beer. “Yes, ma’am, that’s just what I was thinking.” He tilted the can and swigged nearly half of it down. “Aah, only one thing better than cold beer on a hot day.” He winked at her.

  Marta gave him a scalding look and tipped her head toward Nick and Ward, who stood drinking soda and grinning.

  “I’m having water,” Cam said virtuously.

  “Water?” Everybody looked at him.

  He grinned and poured it over one foot. “Nick spilled Gatorade on my foot and it’s sticky. I need to clean it off.”

  Pete tossed him the towel. “Great game, you guys,” he said to Nick and Ward. “And the next time you think you can take us old-timers, we play for money.”

  Marta stared. “You won?”

  Pete shrugged modestly. “I don’t like to brag.”

  Nick sputtered and choked on his root beer. “Next time, old-timer. And we don’t spot you guys nothing.”

  Marta winced. “Please, not in my hearing. I’m an English teacher.”

  Cam came up behind Rachel and kissed her on the side of her neck. “How’s it goin’, sugar?”

  “Good. Very good.” She tilted her head to expose more skin to him and glanced up to see Kendy and her camera pointed at them. “Kendy, must you?”

  “I’m making a family album,” Kendy said. “For when I get old.”

  It warmed her heart that Kendall had accepted so naturally her relationship with Cam. And Nick, too. Cam, himself, had laid the foundation. Their lives would have been much different had he not been next door and simply there for them. Of course, there would be rocky times ahead, she expected that. Divorce was never an easy thing, and Ted had much to do to make amends to their children, but he seemed sincere about trying and Nick and Kendy would be forgiving as long as he proved to do just that.

  When Cam’s arms slipped around her waist, she let herself lean back against him for a moment, feeling lucky and loved. She glanced up, met Marta’s eyes and smiled in tacit wonder at how things sometimes work out. Marta and Pete had set the date for their long-delayed marriage. And as soon as Rachel felt Nick and Kendy were truly accepting and ready, she and Cam would take their vows. They would be a family again, and it would be a joy living in the house Cam had restored with his own hands.

  “Speaking of family,” Marta said, rising from the table, “I’ve got something for you, Cam.” She reached for a folder she’d tucked between two of Dinah’s potted begonias. “I knew I had put this away for safekeeping years ago, but I couldn’t remember where. I don’t keep everything my students write, even when I see real talent. As a writer yourself, you’ll see what I mean when you read it.” Slipping a clip from the folder, she handed it to Cam. “Once in a while, there’ll be a student whose work just takes your breath away.” She smiled. “This boy was one of them.”

  Cam turned the folder up to read the label on the tab. Jack Ford. Pain bloomed in his chest, blade-sharp. His hand was unsteady and the letters of his son’s name blurred as a great wave of regret and grief rolled over and in him. He’d never known of Jack’s talent and it was a bittersweet gift to know it now. But still a gift. He somehow managed a smile of thanks and gently set the folder aside to be savored later.

  Rachel, guessing the mix of emotion in him, slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers, tight and warm. Across the way, Kendy’s camera was focused on them. She wondered, when she looked at the “family album” years from now, what would show on their faces only five days after such a telling moment in their lives. Then, turning back to the table, she picked up a plate and handed it to Cam, smiling into his eyes. Nick, watching, gave them a thumbs-up. This was not a day for regrets, but for new beginnings. When Kendy next pointed her camera, there were smiles all around.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-6305-8

  IN CONFIDENCE

  Copyright © 2004 by Karen Stone.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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