Keeping Caroline

by Vickie Taylor

  “No, you’re afraid of living, just like I’ve been. You’re afraid of loving. Losing too much does that to you, too. Guilt does it. It makes you think you don’t deserve to live. And you definitely don’t deserve to be loved.” Matt shook his head. “I know that’s what you’re feeling, J.J. It’s the same thing your father felt. The same thing I felt when my boy died. But it doesn’t have to lead to more death.”

  J.J.’s hand shook. Was it her imagination, or had he eased the press of the muzzle into her neck?

  “She— Momma won’t want nothing to do with me now.”

  “Maybe. If the love inside her has really died.” Matt might be talking to J.J., but he was looking at Caroline. The words were as much for her as for the boy. A final message, in case all didn’t end well. “But I don’t think her love is gone, J.J. All you have to do is look at her, and you can see it in her eyes. But she’s hurt, too. And she’s afraid.”

  A tear squeezed out of Caroline’s eye, and it wasn’t because J.J. was hurting her.

  J.J.’s gun hand eased another millimeter away from her neck. “W-what do I do?”

  “You tell her you’re sorry. And you tell her that you love her. That you’ve always loved her. You always will love her, no matter what happens. And if you’re really, really lucky—like I think you will be—she’ll tell you she loves you back.”

  Caroline closed her eyes. I love you back. She tried to send the message with her heart.

  A tremor rippled through J.J.’s thin frame. His elbow lifted, momentarily pressing the gun deeper into the flesh of Caroline’s neck. She tensed, then with a simple click, the hammer was released. The gun was gone, and she was in Matt’s arms. His big body surrounded her, filled her senses. Filled her soul.

  It was a long time before they lifted their heads, but when they did they both blinked owlishly at the purple and orange rays of sun slipping over the horizon.

  Somehow from the darkest hour of night, morning had dawned.

  Chapter 17

  Home. Funny how one word could represent so much, Caroline thought as she parked her car in the drive. How so many memories and so many dreams could reside inside a collection of weathered siding and scarred floors. Ramshackle and half-burned as it was, the house still held her past and her future.

  But did that future include Matt?

  Last night he told J.J. there was a time he believed he didn’t have a future. Did he believe that still?

  God, how could he believe that? And how could she not have known? She was his wife. She—

  The thought that followed coiled itself around her heart and squeezed. Her pulse thrummed against the pressure.

  She loved him.

  Yet she hadn’t seen the depth of his grief. Perhaps because she’d been lost in her own.

  Eyes burning and muscles quivering with fatigue, she climbed out of the car. Noon had come and gone, and she had yet to eat or sleep, but she couldn’t rest. Not until she found Matt.

  Other than those too brief moments in each other’s arms at dawn, when words had been beyond either one of them, they hadn’t had much chance to talk. After the standoff, Jeb had needed reassuring. Then the Johnsons were almost as bad. Endless statements had to be made, and police reports written.

  Matt had secured a good lawyer for J.J, and called in a few debts from people he’d worked with in the juvenile justice system to insure the troubled boy would get the care he needed.

  Gem had agreed not to press charges, but the kidnapping of the twins from Child Protective Services couldn’t be ignored, and the state charges for the standoff were out of even Matt’s hands. Finally, when the ordeal seemed to be almost over, a call had come in from the county hospital.

  Savannah had regained consciousness.

  Caroline had taken Jeb to see his mother and had filled Savannah in on the details as the boy had told her about his adventure in one breathless, action-packed, run-on sentence. Savannah had taken the recount in stride, expressing concern not only for her son’s well-being, but for Matt’s and Caroline’s, and even J.J.’s. Relief at seeing Savannah not only awake and alert, but as compassionate as ever had sapped another measure of Caroline’s strength, though in a good way.

  Jeb scampered ahead of her as she walked to the house, chattering to anyone who would listen that his momma was going to be just fine and how brave she thought he was. A tall man carrying a hammer and wearing a tool belt scooped him up just before he tripped over a stack of roof shingles. Jeb stiffened, but Riley Townsend’s hands and voice were gentle as he settled Jeb next to his daughter, Alyssa. Bit by bit, Jeb was learning that not all men were going to hurt him. Apparently, last night’s scare hadn’t set him back too far.

  Caroline smiled appreciatively at Riley Townsend, one of Matt’s Port Kingston K-9 squad officers, just as Gem walked out of the house with one twin attached to each leg and carrying a tray of cookies. She settled herself down on the porch steps, gathered all the children around her and began to read.

  Caroline smiled at the girl she hoped to have live with her, and the twins, in the near future. Figuring Gem had all things munchkin well in hand, she went in search of Matt. While she didn’t find her husband, she did find dozens of other people she didn’t know, as well as virtually every other member of the Port Kingston Police Department, including Paige and Marco.

  “Just tell me two things,” Caroline said, watching the scurry of activity. “Who are all these people and what are they doing to my house?”

  “You’re big news, sis-in-law,” Paige said. “It didn’t take long after your little escapade with Junior for word to get out about what you’re trying to do here, the center you’re opening for special needs kids. Before we’d even cleared the crime scene, people started showing up to help.”

  “Help what?” Maybe she was dense. Maybe she was just tired. Or maybe the clog of emotion at seeing all these people turn out for her kids was interfering with her higher brain function.

  “To get you back in business. We’re gonna make that licensing inspection yet.”

  Marco shrugged and with a hand rag wiped grease off some odd-shaped tool Caroline didn’t recognize. “Not that the inspection matters. There’ve already been enough phone calls to the local TV station pledging cash donations to carry you through the summer and then some.”

  “Cash?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  She shook her head. It was all a bit overwhelming. “What about you two? Aren’t you supposed to be in Aruba?”

  “We got word about the hostage situation at the airport and came to see what we could do,” Paige explained. “Some things are more important than honeymoons.”

  Marco, a blue bandana tied around his forehead and a hammer now in hand, grinned. “Not too many things, though.” Smiling devilishly, he curved his hand possessively around his wife’s posterior. When she slapped his hand away, his face became all innocence and he held up the nail he’d retrieved from her pocket.

  Paige’s don’t-mess-with-me-buddy glare dissolved into a giggle, and Caroline paused only long enough to ask if either of them had seen Matt before leaving them to their privacy.

  Behind her, the giggles succumbed to a murmur of pleasure, and Caroline didn’t have to turn around to know how the wrestling match had ended.

  Sheesh. Newlyweds.

  She found Matt at the pond. How long she stood at the edge of the trail, soaking up the sight, she had no idea. She only knew she could have stayed there forever.

  Beneath their weeping willow, Matt lay atop a red-and-black-checked blanket spread in the soft spring grass. Sunlight broke through the fronds of the circular curtain in narrow rays, dancing across his golden hair and the bronze skin of his chest and sturdy feet. One of his arms swept back to pillow his head and the other curved beneath Hailey’s diapered bottom, protectively securing his daughter to his chest. A breeze rustled through the tree’s supple boughs, whispering lullabies to them both as they slept.

  It was an image she would
cherish—the two of them together. Father and daughter. An image she’d dreamed of, hoped for and now that she’d seen it for real, realized that dreams, no matter how powerful, couldn’t live up to the real thing. She would have been content to just watch them all afternoon, but she must have given herself away. Matt opened his eyes.

  For a long while they simply looked at each other. For the first time in an even longer while, she thought maybe they really saw each other.

  A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth and held. “Savannah?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Thanks for taking care of Hailey while I went to town.”

  “No problem.”

  She broke her gaze away, unable to stand the intensity. All the emotions rushing through the connection between them. She looked at the dirty toes of her once-white tennis shoes instead. She waited for him to say something else, to move, but he waited, too. Waited for her to look at him again, which she did. Couldn’t resist. He was just too damned sexy—too damned appealing in every way—lying there with nothing but worn denim hugging his powerful body, his hair mussed, a sleepy look in his eye and a sleeping baby on his chest.

  His own smile widened a fraction. His pale eyes darkened a shade. Or maybe the sun just caught them. “You look tired. Why don’t you join us?”

  He held out his hand.

  Suddenly frightened, she wanted to say no. They needed to talk, but maybe she wasn’t ready for what she would find out about him. What she would find out about herself.

  Pushing herself beyond her fears, she lowered herself to the blanket, next to him. He took his arm from beneath his own head to pillow hers and his fingers combed through her hair slowly, silently. She lay stiffly at first, but became more supple as the afternoon heat and the warmth of Matt’s body chased away the last of the night’s chill. With warmth came courage.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. Above her, the weeping willow wands swayed to and fro in front of the sun. Light then dark. Shadow and then light again. “What you were going through.”

  “I tried. I wanted to.”

  “But?”

  Matt sighed, his fingers slowed in her hair. “You had lost as much as I had. I didn’t want to weigh you down with it.”

  She rolled her head so that she could see him. This time, he was the one to look away. “Weigh me down? Matt, I was your wife.”

  “And I was your husband. I thought—”

  She felt his tension in the hard bicep beneath her head.

  “Ah, hell, I thought I had to keep it all inside. Keep it together. For you.”

  “For me?” she said incredulously. “You thought putting a wall around your emotions, practically becoming a stranger in your own home would help me?” She shook her head. “You never even cried for him.”

  His gaze snapped back to hers, and she saw fury. “Just because you never saw it doesn’t mean I never cried.”

  “And after I left. Did you still think you had to be strong? Is that why you let me go? Is that why you were going to divorce me?”

  “You were better off without me.”

  “Jeez, Matt. You sound like J.J.”

  “I am J.J. And his father.”

  His next breath shuddered on the way in. His fingers left her hair and clenched in a fist beside her head. Then Hailey gurgled and Matt released his breath in a slow, steady stream as he patted Hailey’s bottom gently.

  “No. I was J.J. Blaming myself. I didn’t think I had any right to your love, or a right to love you back.” His body relaxed further as he rubbed his palm up and down Hailey’s frail spine, petting her back to sleep. He almost smiled as she snuggled closer to him. “I sure as hell didn’t think I had a right to this.”

  “There’s a name for those feelings, Matt. It’s called depression. You know that. You’ve seen it on the force. Why didn’t you get help?”

  “I didn’t want help, Caro. That’s the hell of it. When you’re there, when you’re in it, you don’t necessarily want to feel better. You just want…it to stop.”

  Caroline was quiet a moment, absorbing his meaning. Before she spoke, she rolled onto her side to face him and cradled his jaw in her palm so that he couldn’t turn away. She wanted—needed—to see the truth in his eyes. “Did you ever try? To make it stop.”

  His eyes, all sea green seriousness, held hers steadily. “Did I go so far as to get out the gun?”

  She nodded. Too many cops’ lives ended that way. The thought that Matt could have been one of them made her shiver.

  He covered her hand with his. “No.”

  Relief poured through her, washed into her eyes and down her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For not giving up.”

  He pulled her hand away from his face, cradled it between them, fingers linked. “Thank yourself.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I had some really bad days, Caro. I was lost. But I could only go so far down that road before I’d start thinking about you. I guess I never really gave up hope that someday I’d find my way back to you.”

  “And now that you’re here?”

  “I’m okay, Caro. Really okay. I have been for a while, I think. I’m just like a dog that won’t put weight on a broken leg even long after it’s healed because he’s afraid it will still hurt. I just didn’t realize I was okay, until I got to Sweet Gum, and worked on that run-down old house, and faced you. And Hailey.”

  He grazed the rough pad of his thumb across her lower lip. Every nerve between her face and the center of her body jumped to life. She shivered again, but this time it was a good shiver.

  Matt laughed. It scared her at first, that he could move from the tombs of despair to the heights of elation so quickly, but the good honest sound of him laughing soon dispersed her doubts. She chuckled along with him.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You thinking that I wanted to take care of you because you were my responsibility. Like it was just a duty, a chore or something.”

  She started to object, but he shushed her with a surprising brush of his lips across hers. “You don’t still believe that, do you?”

  “No.” Maybe she had ascribed too much importance to the fact that she’d been pregnant when he’d married her, and not enough to the fact that he had married her. He’d stayed with her, through better and worse, and loved her the best way he knew how.

  “Good.” He laughed again. “And me, thinking I had to protect you all the time. You never needed my protecting, Caro. You’re the strongest person I know.”

  Gently lowering Hailey to the blanket behind him, Matt rolled to his side until they lay chest to chest. His left arm still pillowed her head. His right cupped the back of her neck, messaging, pulling her so close she could smell the sweet tea on his breath, feel the depth of the passion in his words.

  “I love you, Caro. I’ve always loved you. Not because of responsibility or duty or just because I thought I was supposed to, but because of you. You’re my reason to get out of bed every morning, to make sure I come home from work in one piece.”

  “Matt—”

  “Wait. I’m not done.”

  She had to smile at his impatience. When her husband decided to unload his feelings, he certainly did it with conviction. “Sorry,” she said, allowing him to finish. She wanted to hear every word. She’d treasure those words for a long time to come.

  “You’re the best reason I can think of to keep on living,” he said. “You and Hailey. And whatever life I have left—and I hope it’s a lot—I want to spend it with you. Here.”

  That last word surprised her. “Here?”

  “You’ve created something special here, Caro. Something really worthwhile, for you and the kids you’ll be taking care of. I wouldn’t ask you to give that up.”

  A feeling of fullness, of warmth, filled her chest, and she realize
d it was the final piece of her that had been missing, settling into place. Her dreams. Not of being a wife, or even a mother. But for herself. What she could achieve with her center.

  “What about your work?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Actually I’ve been thinking about that one for a while. There aren’t enough cops in Texas trained to do what I do.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “I’ve been talking to some of the guys at the Department of Public Safety—”

  “The state police?”

  He nodded. “They’re interested in setting up a statewide training course. Guess who they want to be their instructor?”

  “You? Matt that’s great!”

  “I wouldn’t be totally out of the action. I’d still be on call for major cases, but most days I’d be in a classroom, not on the street. And they’ve given me a lot of leeway on where I set up shop. I’m thinking Sweet Gum might be as good a place as any.”

  She hugged him tight and bit back a flood of emotion.

  “You’re sure this is where you want to be?”

  He pulled back and brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “Where better than where it all began?”

  His gaze traveled over the blue sky, the slate-gray pond, the bright green willow wands, and landed on the rough carving in the trunk of the old tree:

  M.B. Loves C.E.

  But no. Fresh white wood showed through the gray bark where the carving had been changed. The last initial had been changed from an “E” to a “B.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “Matt Burkett loves Caroline…Burkett?”

  “You got it.” He smiled.

  She looked back at the rough letters in the tree. The changed letter wasn’t the only difference. He’d added, “FOREVER” in big bold letters beneath the original proclamation.

  Caroline twined her arms around his neck and pulled him tight. “Oh Matt, I love you forever, too.”

  He kissed her chin, her cheeks, her eyes, but it wasn’t enough. Caroline wanted more. All of him. But he pulled away, framing her face with both hands to keep her from pursuing. “Then you’ll stay married to me? And help me make a decent home for Hailey and the twins and Gem and…whoever else might come along?”