Except Matt didn’t have a son, not anymore. And he didn’t want his daughter. Or his wife.
Wrestling the negativity out of her mind, she set the tray on a worktable and called out to them. It was a bright, sunny day. The awful reminder that all was not well with the world had been painted over, and Hailey had laughed at Caroline’s armadillo hand puppet this morning.
Life was good.
Matt reached around her. He smelled like pine lumber and hard work. She breathed deep as her husband put one glass of tea in Jeb’s hands and raised the other to his own lips. Man and boy drank long and deep, then wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands in identical gestures. She wondered how Jeb knew Matt did that.
“Jeb, go inside and pick up your Power Rangers, okay? Your mom will be here soon,” she said.
“I don’t wanna go—”
“Jeb,” Matt interrupted. “I’m quitting for the day. We’ll finish tomorrow.”
Jeb’s head swiveled from Caroline to Matt, clearly undecided. “You won’t start before I get here?”
“I’ll wait. I promise. Can’t get started without my chief assistant.”
The boy kicked the toe of his sneaker against the floor. “You said I could play with Alf this afternoon.”
“When your toys are all picked up, we’ll play until your mom gets here.”
Jeb went to the house, but he dragged his feet all the way.
“Thank you,” Caroline told Matt when the door shut behind Jeb. She figured her husband knew the thanks were for more than getting Jeb to pick up his toys. “For letting him help you and for teaching him how to handle Alf safely.”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t have the kid running around half terrified of me, could I? And he’s still only allowed to play with Alf if I’m there.”
“I don’t think he’s ever had a male role model.”
“Seems to me his mother’s taught him all he needs to know.”
“Except how to trust a man.”
“Yeah, well…some lessons take a little longer than others.”
“Savannah’s been working at this one quite a while.”
Matt propped his hips against the table, seemingly lost in thought. Caroline sat on a workbench. “Earth to Matt.”
He lifted his gaze to hers. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
“About anything in particular?”
“Savannah’s ex—she keep tabs on him?”
“Why?” Caroline asked dryly. “Thinking about giving him a few parenting lessons?”
Matt took another sip of tea. “Any chance he could be our midnight visitor?”
Caroline frowned. “I thought you were convinced that was Gem or her new boyfriend.”
“I’m convinced something’s going on with her. But she doesn’t have the resources to stay out of sight this long, and I doubt some kid she just hooked up with would, either. They’d need money and a place to stay. And they’d get bored soon. Now a man like Justiss, a man on a mission, who needs something from Gem—”
“What could Gem possibly have that he would want?”
“Information. About Savannah and Jeb’s routine. You. Me. This house.”
Caroline rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. All she had to do was think of Jeb, walking with his hands extended in front of him, to know what kind of violence Savannah’s ex-husband was capable of. The thought of that man in her house, near her child and Jeb, dropped her body temperature another degree. “But why would he come here? Why not go after Savannah?”
Matt shrugged. “That’s why I ruled him out at first, too, but…” He looked toward the door where Jeb had disappeared just moments ago.
Suddenly she understood. “Because Jeb was here.”
Her husband looked at her through a mask of pain. “I can’t imagine anything a man wouldn’t do to get his son back.”
She lurched to her feet. “I’ve got to warn Savannah.”
Matt rose, too. “Take it easy. We don’t want to panic her. I could be way off base.”
“Or you could be right on.”
“She’ll be here in a few minutes to pick him up, right?” She nodded. He set his empty glass on the tray and stood before her, close. “You want me to talk to her?”
“No, I’ll do it.” She lifted her gaze from the shoulders straining the seams of his shirt. “But isn’t there someone you could call, too?”
He waved his hand ineffectually. “I tried already. His parole officer is on vacation. Two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Fear choked her words off. “In two weeks he could—”
Matt’s big, firm, warm hands clamped on her shoulders. His gray eyes met hers, pools of swirling silver. “Nothing is going to happen. Not to Jeb or anyone else in this house,” he said. “Not while I’m here.”
Full beyond comfort, Caroline walked Savannah to the front door in silence. Through the screen, she saw Matt sitting on the porch swing, nearly hidden in the twilight shadows. At the bottom of the steps, Jeb threw a stick yet again for a panting Alf.
Savannah rolled her head around her shoulders.
“Long day, hmm?” Caroline asked.
“Mmm. Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday.” She smiled wearily as they stepped onto the porch. “Thanks again for supper, Matt.”
Pushing back on his heels, he rocked the swing. The chains creaked with each movement. “My pleasure.”
“Mmm. A man who takes pleasure in cooking. What a treat you are.”
Matt chuckled. In the yard, Alf fetched the stick and charged up to Jeb as if he might bowl the boy over, but skidded to a halt at the boy’s toes and dangled the prize in front of him politely.
“Jeb,” Savannah called. “You get your things now. We’re going home.”
“But, Mom—”
“I said now, Jebediah.”
“Aw, Ma…” Jeb complained, but he trudged away, kicking up clouds of dust with every step. Caroline smiled, glad to see her little rebel back to normal.
“Savannah,” she said. “When you drop Jeb off tomorrow, why don’t you bring a bag? Then you can join us after work and stay here, with Matt and me.” She smiled so hard her cheeks ached, and cast Matt a warning glare that said he’d best not disagree. “Just for the weekend.”
Savannah took Caroline’s hand and patted the back. “No, thank you. I don’t want to be any imposition.”
Matt gave her a knowing look. “No imposition,” he said lazily, playing along.
But Savannah wouldn’t have any of it. A moment later she and Jeb were inside gathering the boy’s belongings. Matt got up and strode away. Caroline had asked Savannah to listen for Hailey, and she followed him down the path to the pond.
“She’s scared, Matt.”
“I know.”
It seemed only natural that, as they walked hip to hip, he picked up her hand and linked his fingers through hers.
“Then why won’t she let us help her? She’d be so much safer here with us.” Her face pinched. “With you.”
“I think this time she wants to help herself.” He led Caroline to the old weeping willow on the bank of the pond, parted the whispy boughs like a curtain and nudged her inside to their old spot. Their private spot. “She’s afraid she’ll bring trouble here.”
“Trouble’s already been here.”
With both of them leaning against the trunk of the tree, he stretched his arm behind her shoulders and squeezed. “We tried, Caro.”
She sighed. “I know.”
All around them, the cicadas sang a summer chorus and a bullfrog added bass. Matt’s warm, blunt fingers brushed up and down her shoulder, relaxing her. Everything felt so right that it only seemed natural to lean her head back to rest on Matt’s arm.
“It’s been a long time since we came out here like this,” she said.
“Yeah.” He looked down at her, his face soft. Open. He must have forgotten that impenetrable mask of his tonight, she mused.
“I got my first kiss right here.”
“I’m th
e one that gave it to you.”
“You were so polite. You didn’t even open your mouth.”
He laughed, though a bit sardonically. “You did.”
“I was fifteen.”
“Way too young for French kissing.”
“It didn’t feel like it at the time.”
“Did to me.”
“Didn’t matter. I was in love.”
“You had a crush.”
“Terribly.” She smiled up at him, then burrowed into the crook of his neck. “You kissed me again in this spot when you came back from the army.”
“I did more than kiss you.”
“And then we had Brad,” she said quietly. She held her breath, cautious, as if she’d just poked a stick into a rattlesnake pit. Any second, the venom of Matt’s pain would poison them both. But the strike never came. Matt just kept stroking her slowly, gently as a summer breeze.
Hope flowed thick and warm through Caroline’s chest. She laid one hand flat on the front of his shirt, reveling in the slow, steady thump of his heart. “Everything seemed simple then,” she said.
“Wasn’t much complicated about you, me and this old tree.”
“Or about you kissing me,” she teased.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Not so long.”
Her scent cloaked him in a shroud of vanilla and honey memories. He’d just come home from the army, honorably discharged. The first thing he’d done was to look for Caroline. Find out whom she’d married. How many kids she had.
He’d found her living in this old house, single and struggling to work full-time and finish a teaching degree. Her aunt Ginger had passed away, and she’d had no other family. She’d been so alone, so lonely and yet too proud to admit it. He’d vowed right then that she’d never be alone again.
But he’d broken that vow. He’d left her long before she’d left him, he realized. Left her for the numbing routine of work. For long nights dredging the scum off the streets of Port Kingston. For the quick rush of anesthetic that deadened the pain even further on the rare occasions when he actually got to help somebody, do some good for someone else even when he couldn’t help himself.
Or his child.
Meanwhile Caroline had slowly faded away in the background.
Matt was glad she’d finally left. Not for himself, but for her. He was glad she’d gotten out before she lost herself completely. In a spark of insight that both warmed and terrified him, he realized he was glad she wasn’t alone, too.
He was glad she had Hailey.
“You’re not alone anymore,” he said.
“You don’t have to be alone, either,” she said.
“Just start over?” he asked.
“Start again. Not trying to erase what came before, but building on it. Learning from it. We did it once.”
“We were young.”
“And now we’re old?”
When she turned her face up to his, he almost believed time had rolled backward. The near darkness smoothed the care lines away from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes sparkled the way they had when she was fifteen, and she’d looked up at him the same way. Adoringly. Lovingly.
His body reacted much in the same way it had then. For a sweet, brief moment, he believed her. Believed he didn’t have to be alone any longer.
Then the pain flared, hot and bloody, and he realized that was just another reason he had to stay away from her. Another reason he couldn’t take what she offered him tonight.
He wanted to be alone. Needed to be alone.
Deserved to be alone.
He pulled his arm from around her back, straightened until she wasn’t leaning on him any longer.
“Old enough to know better,” he said.
The rough words washed the illusion of youth from her face. The lines reappeared beside her mouth and eyes, etched deeper than ever into her tanned, glowing skin. Laugh lines, some people called them. But Caroline hadn’t had much to laugh about these last years. He hadn’t given her much to laugh about.
Apparently sadness caused wrinkles, too.
She’d had more than her share of sadness, with the passing of her parents, and later the aunt who had raised her and, finally, Brad. She’d earned a few wrinkles. They were her history. Her legacy.
The hell of it was, the gentle signs of aging he saw in her didn’t make her less appealing—on the contrary, they made him want her more. He and Caroline had grown up together.
They ought to be growing old together, too.
The wounds inside him opened again and he bled for the loss. He should never have come here. He should have mailed Caroline the divorce papers.
Old? Hell, yes he was old. Much older than he had been the last time he and Caroline had been together beneath this tree.
Older. But not, apparently, any wiser.
Chapter 7
Matt pounded the last nail into the last piece of floor molding, stood and looked around with satisfaction at Caroline’s new solarium. The roofers were coming Monday. Carpet layers on Wednesday. Once the carpet was in, all the room would lack would be a few finishing touches—some paint, light switches screwed in place, weather-stripping laid along the threshold to the outside door—and it would be done, and well before the end-of-the-month deadline and Caroline’s licensing inspection, too.
She’d been taking phone calls all week from the ad she’d run in the Sweet Gum Press, and had six students signed up already. She’d also interviewed two experienced day-care providers as part-time help. Soon the place would be filled with little bodies, laughter and maybe a few tears, quickly dried.
A noise pulled him away from the mental image of Caroline surrounded by children. Jeb stood solemnly at the doorway between the kitchen and the solarium, Alf at his side.
“You all finished?” the child asked.
“All but the cleaning up,” he said, returning the hammer to a toolbox. “You want to help with that?”
“Well…”
“Come on,” he said, laughing. “Cleaning up is part of the job.”
Jeb reached out, albeit reluctantly, to open the screened door before him. Alf took a step forward, holding the door open with his shoulder while Jeb passed through. Matt cocked his head, an idea coming to mind. Not a new idea. One he’d been mulling for some time.
“Hold it a sec, Jeb,” he said.
Jeb obeyed, but asked, “Why?”
“I want to try something.”
“What?”
Matt looked around him. The room was a mess, but nothing dangerous—a roll of plastic sheeting on the bare floor, a toolbox, closed and locked, a few steps from it. A workbench across the room, with his wire strippers on top and assorted sizes and shapes of lumber stacked in knee-high piles.
“I left my wire strippers on a bench over to your left. I want you to walk slowly over there to get them and then bring them to me. But I want you to hold on to Alf’s collar the whole time. Kind of let him guide you.”
“I can do it by myself.”
“I know you can,” Matt assured the boy. “But just try this for me, okay?” Alf wasn’t trained as a service dog, but Jeb trusted his new pal. Matt wanted to know if he trusted the dog enough—if he’d be able to trust any animal enough—to lead him. “I want you to bring me the strippers without holding your arms in front of you, or feeling your way with your feet, okay? Just follow Alf.”
Jeb looked dubious, but took a stiff step or two, his arms at his sides.
“Whoa, buddy.” Jeb stopped. Matt smiled. “Your other left, okay?”
Jeb turned and started out again. Hardly breathing, Matt watched in silence as boy and dog walked straight to the workbench. A step away, Alf stopped and sat. Still holding the dog’s collar, Jeb stopped.
“They’re right in front of you. Reach down and pick them up.” Jeb did. “Good. Now bring them to me.”
Jeb turned and Alf walked him across the room. At the toolbox, Matt almost cried out for Jeb to be careful, but just in
time, Alf leaned a shoulder against the boy’s knee and pushed him around the obstacle, circumventing sure disaster. The same at the roll of plastic sheeting and around each stack of lumber. With Alf’s help, Jeb safely navigated the cluttered room.
“I did it,” the boy said when he reached Matt’s side. “I didn’t trip or nothing.”
He scuffed the boy’s head. “You sure did.”
Jeb wrapped his arms around Alf’s neck and squeezed—not too tight this time. He was learning. “I won’t never fall down again with Alf.”
Realizing his mistake, Matt bent down and searched for a way to minimize the damage. “Alf can’t go everywhere with you, Jeb. But there are other dogs specially trained—”
“But I want Alf!” Jeb wailed.
“I know you do, buddy.” Matt gentled his voice, though the sight of Jeb’s crumpled face called him cruel and heartless more than the boy’s words ever could. “But I need Alf to help me.”
“Because he’s a police dog?”
“Uh-huh. I couldn’t catch the bad guys without him.”
Jeb pulled his face out of Alf’s fur, sniffed. “Why don’t you just shoot them with your gun?”
Matt’s heart startled like a jackrabbit flushed from its hutch. He thought Jeb had forgotten about the gun. “I told you, Jeb. Guns are just for defending people.”
Jeb thought a moment, chewing on his lower lip. Then he spoke softly, “My momma has a gun.”
Matt’s knees hit the unfinished floor. He pulled Jeb into his arms, smoothed his palm over the boy’s shuddering back.
“Sometimes she carries it in her purse. Or sometimes she hides it in a box under her bed,” he added, breathless.
Matt pushed the boy back, held him by his frail shoulders. “You know guns are very dangerous, don’t you? Very scary. You shouldn’t ever touch one.”
Jeb nodded.
“Good,” Matt said, surprised to find himself too choked up to say more. He let the boy go and got to his feet.
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