In a Heartbeat

by Tina Wainscott

  “That night she came home so distraught she couldn’t even stand up. I told her to go inside. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I just knew I had to do something. Becky had left through the front door of the Elliot house, and it was still unlocked. I walked inside and looked around, saw all that money thrown in my face. I hated Tom a thousand times over. I wanted to show him he wasn’t any better than me, than my Becky. I found Tom’s room. I was just going to scare him. I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed a knife from the kitchen.

  “All I knew was I hated this man for destroying my daughter, and I wanted him to pay for it. And then I was plunging the knife into his chest, again and again. And when she woke up, that snotty wife of his, I stabbed her, too before she could scream.”

  Mitch had gone perfectly still, but his face was a mask of hatred. At that moment he had the same kind of barrier she’d carried with her so long, that wall of anger that kept everyone away.

  “Why did you frame Paul?” Mitch asked in a soft, low voice.

  Alan was still on his knees, hands cuffed behind him. “That was Becky’s idea. She got worried and followed me back to the house. I don’t even remember this, but she says I walked out the front door with the bloody knife in my hand. She took control — she was a good daughter, such a good girl — and told me to get home right away, that she would take care of everything. When she returned to the trailer with Paul, she said she’d put the knife in his hand and made him think he’d killed his parents. All we had to do was give him an alibi and nobody would have to pay for it. And it worked, too. Except that Paul disappeared and Becky was left alone and heartbroken again.

  “A couple of years later, I got really sick. But I didn’t have insurance, and the hospital wouldn’t schedule the operation until I gave them a deposit. That’s when Becky came up with the idea of finding Paul and making him part with some of that money he’d inherited. She’d hidden the jewelry and knife, and since he still thought he had murdered his parents, she threatened to turn it over to the police if he didn’t give her money. Then she wanted more, and more. It became her way of punishing him for leaving. Even the last time, when he told her enough was enough, she still didn’t want to let him go.”

  “All right, Alan, on your feet.” Kruger pulled the man up by his arms, then looked at Mitch, who was pulling the wires off his chest. “We’re going to need to talk to you both.”

  “Later,” Mitch said, handing Kruger the wires and leading Jenna by the hand to the bike. “We’ll stop by later.”

  Kruger opened his mouth to argue, but let it close again. “All right. But later today, got it?”

  Mitch didn’t answer, just got onto the bike and helped her on. After they put on their helmets, Mitch turned the bike around and headed back to Bluebonnet Manor. He turned toward the stables, past the ring where the elves had left a smiley face for Scotty. Some of the employees looked up and waved, but Mitch just kept heading straight into a thick forest of pines. They followed a horse trail down a winding path that led to a clearing right in the middle of the pines.

  When he cut the engine, she got off the bike, removed her helmet and took in her surroundings. The sun slanted across the bright green grass, casting the small area in an almost mystical glow. Tiny purple wildflowers covered one area, and hundreds of tiny insects hovered over them.

  Mitch dropped his helmet on the ground and walked up behind her. “I’ve come here a thousand times, laid out on the grass and looked up at the sky, wondering what had happened that night, wondering if Paul had murdered our parents. I wanted to come here now that I know the answers.” He turned her around, leaving his hands on her waist. “But I don’t know all the answers.”

  All the answers. Was she ready to look within herself to see if she could give him the answer they both sought. “It’s beautiful here.” She hadn’t taken her gaze off him. Most of that cold intensity had left his eyes, but some of it still lingered. She looked at him, at the hair that didn’t fall over his forehead and curl over his collar, at the planes of his cheeks, the fullness of his mouth.

  “You told me that love and hate are the strongest emotions. Alan more than proved that, especially the results of having both eating you up inside.” She reached out and smoothed her fingers through his hair. “Why did you make yourself look like Paul?”

  “I thought I’d freak Alan out, see if that would push him over the edge.”

  “And did you wonder if it would freak me out, too?”

  He nodded, without even hesitating. “Did it?”

  “You do look like him. In some ways, anyway. For a second, yeah, I guess you did freak me out. Partly because since last night, I can feel him.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I have never felt such peace. Put your hand here, see if you can feel it.”

  Mitch pressed his hand over hers and closed his eyes. “Yeah, I can feel it.” Even his expression relaxed as he kept his hand there for a few more seconds. He opened his eyes. “It’s fading.”

  She nodded, feeling that, too. A beautiful warm feeling swirled inside her, and then slowly departed. Each exhale seemed to release it until Paul was gone. For a moment, she felt an emptiness inside her. “I never got to say goodbye to my parents or to Paul.” She looked up into the rays of sunshine and whispered, “Goodbye, Paul.” For once, she felt not love, not anger, only peace where Paul was concerned.

  She looked at Mitch, and that emptiness evaporated. “You were also right about the truth setting us free. All of us. You don’t have the genes of a killer.”

  For a moment, his body relaxed as that realization set in. But then it tensed up again. “I could kill Alan for what he did to my parents. And for what he and Becky did to Paul.”

  “They both paid a price for what they did. Becky died, and Alan … look at him. He’s lived with guilt for a long time, I think. Besides, you couldn’t kill anyone any more than Paul could. Let’s put the hate aside and focus on the other emotion.”

  The pain in Mitch’s face evaporated as her words sunk in. She lifted her hands, and Mitch automatically slid his fingers through hers. She took a deep breath, feeling everything she had always felt with Mitch — the connection that bound them. It was still there, with no trace of Paul.

  “When I looked beyond my anger, I didn’t see the emptiness or loneliness I thought I’d see. I didn’t see Paul or my parents. I saw … you. Only you.” She pulled one of their entwined hands to her mouth, kissing the back of his hand. “Do you feel it?”

  His fingers tightened on hers. “The connection? Oh, yeah.”

  She pulled their other set of interlocked hands close and planted another kiss on his hand. “I love you, Mitch. And now I can say, I love you with all of my heart. No doubts, one hundred percent.”

  He pulled her close, kissing her until she was dizzy and her knees went weak. Their hands were still locked together, held down at their sides now. His kiss was hungry, as though he’d been waiting a long, long time for it. And then he said the three words that meant more than even the three words she’d said: “That’s my girl.” After another long, soul-searing kiss, he said three more words that would be added to the new shelf of precious memories she was building: “Welcome home, Jenna.”

  Epilogue

  One year later

  “Look, Sean, the elves came last night!” Scotty tugged on the baby’s jumper as soon as Jenna approached the ring.

  Sean burped in response, then smiled. Scotty grinned back, more entranced by the baby boy than by the elves anymore. “Shoot, Jenna, when you gonna teach him to say ‘scuse me? Mama always makes me say it.”

  “Well, first he has to start talking. But that’ll be on the list of the first words we’ll teach him, okay?”

  “Oh, okay.” He reached down and pet Harvey, who’d accompanied Jenna from the house.

  “Hey there, gorgeous,” Mitch said, capturing her mouth in a long kiss that elicited whistles and applause.

  Even now, he was breathtaking, the only man to make her hear
t beat faster by just smiling at her. “Hi, handsome,” she whispered, a little self-conscious of the attention. She reached out and ran her fingers through his waves. She’d made him promise never to cut it short again.

  “You’re not supposed to do that in front of everyone!” Scotty admonished. Then he turned to catch his mom kissing the newest employee of Bluebonnet Manor. “Aw, mom! Dad! You’re embarassin’ me!”

  Mitch had offered to pay for Tawny’s ex-husband’s therapy and give him a job if he got cleaned up and straightened out. So far, it was working splendidly. Scotty stomped off toward the stables mumbling, “At least the horses won’t be smooching.”

  “They might be doing a lot more than that,” Mitch said with a chuckle. “Wait until he realizes what the mares are really doing when they wink at the stallions.”

  Sean reached up and wrapped his tiny fingers around one of hers. He had Mitch’s brown eyes and her hair, what little he had. Most important, though, he was healthy. “What are they doing?”

  “They lift their tail and contract their vulva. You know, I always thought how handy that would be if women were so easy to read.”

  She nudged him through the fence with her knee. “Like you ever have to wonder!”

  “Yeah, well.” The wind ruffled his hair, and along with his tilted head, he looked like a little boy. He touched Sean’s tiny nose, looking even more like a boy with the expression of awe on his face. “I can’t wait to teach you to ride, little man.”

  “I can’t wait for you to teach me how to ride,” she said. Since Paul’s spirit had left her heart, she’d lost her trepidation around horses. But soon after that, she’d learned she was pregnant and couldn’t ride.

  “Anytime, babe. Anything you want, anytime. You’re the Queen of Bluebonnet Manor. But most importantly, you’re the queen of my heart.”

  “Mitch!” Dave called out, still waiting by the group of kids and horses.

  “Coming, mother,” he muttered, giving her another long kiss and a peck on Sean’s forehead. “Why don’t we start your lessons when we return from New Hampshire?” he called as he headed back.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Last summer they spent a few weeks at their home in Oceanside. Jenna had painted horse borders in the office and colts in the baby’s room. Sean hadn’t yet seen his New Hampshire nursery, but he would soon.

  She and Mitch had redecorated the house, and everywhere he had stamped his touch. But in the living room on the mantel sat a picture of the twins. Mitch’s idea, because he knew he had nothing to worry about where Paul was concerned. All he had to do was look in her eyes and see that there wasn’t room for anyone else in her heart but him and Sean.

  To prove that, to herself and to him, she had tied a helium balloon to her old wedding ring and sent it floating over the ocean. Not a goodbye, but a hello. Not an ending, but a beginning.

  Her new ring had clusters of diamonds and emeralds that glittered in the sun. As did the four other rings he’d bought her, until she’d finally convinced him that just the wedding ring would suffice. Although she did like the Parmigiani watch he’d bought her to match his own. Jenna watched Mitch work with the kids, falling in love with him a little more. She turned back to the house. They’d remodeled that, too, taking out all the gaudy furniture and turning the old master bedroom into a room where Sean could play with his friends when he got older. They almost needed to add another house for all of Sean’s toys. Between Betzi, Tawny, Etta and Mitch, the toddler was probably the most spoiled kid in Texas.

  Bluebonnet Manor was her home now, the place where she would spend the rest of her days, would watch Sean grow up, where once she got her education, she’d help with the horses and paint furniture in whatever spare time she could find. Betzi, Etta, Tawny, Scotty and all the others were the family she’d never really had.

  “Sean, they say that home is where the heart is.” Jenna looked at Mitch again, who’d been watching her with a wistful smile. “But my heart is where the home is. Right here with you and your daddy.”

  Thank you so much for reading In a Heartbeat. If you enjoyed it, please consider posting a review on BookBub.com, Goodreads.com, and/or wherever you buy books.

  Find links to more stories in the Love & Light collection and other series by Tina at www.WrittenMusings.com/TinaWainscott and www.TinaWainscott.com.

  Sneak Peek

  HEAVENLY STRANGER

  “This baby is going to kick some serious butt.” Wayne Schaeffer scrambled from the engine to the cockpit of the sleek red boat with the fancy name Maddie had forgotten.

  “Hey, I thought I was your baby.” She gave him a faux pout.

  In return, he gave her the smile that had captured her heart in high school and hadn’t let go, even after six years of marriage. “You’re the Baby. This is a generic baby. Come for a test drive with me. The guy I bought it from says it roars like a lion.”

  She cursed her fine, shoulder-length hair that whipped into her face for the gazillionth time. It didn’t have the decency to be blonde or brown, so it hovered somewhere between. “Nah. It’s too choppy today.”

  Wayne’s thick, black hair danced in the warm breeze blowing off Sugar Bay. The Sugar Bay Marina hugged the curve of the half-moon bay. Three rows of docks snaked out into a bay where a maze of sandbars and oyster beds lurked. Her uncle Barnie said someday the dangers of the bay would chew up a boat and its passengers, that it was just a matter of time. So far, so good though.

  Wayne made another adjustment. “How could I have married a girl who gets seasick?”

  “I don’t get seasick, just queasy.”

  “I keep telling you, that is seasickness.”

  She didn’t much like going fast either, but she kept that to herself. It was Wayne who loved careening through the black night on the Gulf of Mexico, hugging her against his chest as she squeezed her eyes shut in abject terror.

  “Should I go faster?” he’d call out next to her ear. She wanted to say no but always said yes because she didn’t want to seem lame.

  What she enjoyed was taking out the dinghy—the Dinky Wayne called it—and skirting the little islands looking for shells and driftwood. She also knew it bored him to death, going slow and leisurely. She did not want to bore Wayne.

  He came from money, if there was such a thing in Sugar Bay. The real distinction was whether you lived on the water, had a pool, and owned the place where you worked. Back in the thirties, Wayne’s family bought up acres of land on the water and built the marina that had recently been bequeathed to Wayne. The Schaeffers envisioned Sugar Bay as a resort town for the northern coast of Florida.

  Unfortunately, they forgot one tiny requirement for resort towns: beaches. Oh, they’d tried to bring in the beach. They’d dredged and pumped and trucked it in and dumped it onto the rocks. Mother Nature laughed in their faces and washed it all away with every storm.

  The sudden roar of the boat’s engine made Maddie jump. The green piling she brushed against sent a sliver of wood into her thumb. Wayne cut the engine and hopped onto the dock.

  “What’s a’matter, Baby?”

  “Splinter,” she muttered, thumb jammed against her teeth as she tried to extract it.

  “Here, let me see.” He squeezed it out and kissed the pad of her thumb. “Okay?”

  She nodded. Everything was okay since Wayne had rescued her from terminal wallflower-dom all those years ago. The rest of the boys in town saw her as the scrawny girl who was sick through most of her school years. Besides all of them picking up her family’s nickname for her, “Baby,” the boys said those dreaded words whenever she even thought about kissing them: You’re just like a sister to me.

  Well, heck, she could have told them having a sister wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. But she didn’t, because she was quiet, nice Maddie Danbury who didn’t cause any trouble, no how, no way.

  Then Wayne’s dad, God bless him, had moved back to Sugar Bay. He took over the old marina and turned it into something
new and full of life. And Wayne walked into her English class and did the same for her.

  “You gonna come for a ride, or what?”

  “Well…”

  “Come on, you never say no to the one who loves you. Besides, this is your place, too. It’s your duty to get a feel for the boats we sell.” He kissed her on the forehead and, before she could even kiss him back, hopped onto the boat. “Selling used speedboats is much more exciting than just taking care of other people’s boats. Look at this Mystic Powerboat. This baby’ll go over a hundred miles per hour; you’ll pee your pants.”

  She pulled an impressed face. “Ooh yeah, that convinces me.” A twinge lit her stomach when she felt herself giving in like she always did. No, she wasn’t feeling it. At all. And she did need to put her foot down and say no sometimes, even to the one she loved. “Not today. Besides, it’s my day to walk the dogs at the Society.”

  “You’d put dogs before your own husband?”

  “Those dogs are homeless and you’re not, so today I would. Plus, don’t really feel like peeing my pants.”

  He chuckled. “All right, I won’t twist your arm. Maybe we’ll make our date taking the Dinky out and catching the sunset.”

  She didn’t miss his disappointment and tried to make up for it with her enthusiasm. “Kewl. I’ll grab some subs and a six-pack from Homer’s. Did you fix the gas gauge yet?”

  “Nah. Got to be some excitement on that thing, never knowing if we’ll be stranded out there.” She must have let her apprehension show, because he added, “You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, don’t you?”

  She smiled. “Nobody takes care of me like you do.”