Eternal

by V. K. Forrest

  “He does need me. He doesn’t have anyone. You have no idea what kind of life he’s had.” She sniffed. “His mother committed suicide when he was six. In the bathtub in their house. Can you believe that? And Derek was the one who found her in a tub of blood.”

  “That’s very sad,” Fia agreed. “But how about a father?” She didn’t want to sound heartless. She did feel sorry for the kid, for any kid who had gone through something like that. But a tragic childhood didn’t mean the boy wasn’t trying to get in Kaleigh’s jeans. “Surely he has a father.”

  “Sort of. If you could call him that. He works like eighty hours a week. He never went to Derek’s soccer games or anything. He pretends like Derek doesn’t exist, except when he wants to yell at him.” The teen perched her hand on her slender, jutted hip. “It’s like he thinks it’s Derek’s fault his mom committed suicide.” She lifted her hand and let it fall. “Like that makes any sense. A six-year-old kid.”

  Fia hesitated for a moment. Her intention really wasn’t to anger Kaleigh or to hurt her. She wasn’t so naïve as to not understand that these feelings Kaleigh had for this human, no matter how misguided or doomed they were, were real. All she wanted was to keep Kaleigh, to keep everyone in the sept safe.

  In the end, Fia decided that she’d probably chastised Kaleigh enough for one night; from what she had heard, the other women had done the same with Katy and Maria. She let the subject drop. “Let’s take care of the fire and then we’ll take you girls back to town,” Fia said, scuffing dirt toward the center of the campfire.

  “Sure,” Kaleigh responded sarcastically. “Whatever you say, Agent Kahill.”

  Tuesday evening, Fia was back on Dr. Kettleman’s leather couch. They’d bumped her sessions back up to once a week, “just until some of the stress was alleviated.”

  “So would you say it was a good weekend?”

  Fia thought for a moment and caught herself smiling, remembering sitting on Sorcha’s front porch in the old, battered, Adirondack chairs, listening to the crash of the incoming tide and toasting to each other with apple martinis. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “It was.”

  “Old friendships renewed? Fences mended?”

  Fia shifted her gaze to Dr. Kettleman’s. “Something like that.”

  “Did it feel good to be home as a member of the community rather than as a law-enforcement agent?”

  “I think so,” Fia said slowly. “Sunday I went to Mass and then had breakfast with my mom. It wasn’t even that painful.”

  “And your father?”

  “He never misses Mass.” Looking down, Fia fiddled with her signet ring. “But then he had his coffee with the newspaper on the front porch. I didn’t really see him after that.”

  “You can’t change how he feels, Fia, you know that,” Dr. Kettleman offered, following one of her long moments of silence. “Only how you react to his behavior. How you feel about it.”

  Fia dropped her hands to her lap. “I know.”

  The psychiatrist shifted in her chair. “So while we’re on the subject of your men, what’s happening on the Joseph front?”

  “Not sure.”

  Dr. Kettleman waited.

  Fia allowed her gaze to drift to the diplomas on the wall behind Kettleman’s desk, then back. “I met him last week. He admitted he’d gotten in to a “little problem” in California and that’s why he’s decided to relocate. At least part of the reason.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “How do I feel? It pisses me off. We had an agreement. And…it scares me a little.”

  “Because you still have feelings for him?” Kettleman prodded.

  Fia took her time before answering. There was no sense shelling out big bucks each week if she wasn’t going to at least attempt to do more than go through the motions. “No. I’m not in love with him anymore, if that’s what you mean. But do I feel guilty? Sure. Do I not want him around to make me feel guilty? Of course.” That’s only human, she thought, ironically. Hesitated. “The thing is, Dr. Kettleman, with our history, Joseph’s and mine, we wouldn’t be good for each other. Maybe we’d even be dangerous.”

  The psychiatrist let the word hang in the air for a moment. “And Joseph disagrees?”

  “I don’t know what he thinks.” She groaned. “He’s hard to read. A real player. Then he’s got this little problem. Addiction, of course. I actually suggested he should come talk to you. Maybe you could help.”

  “Maybe the two of you might benefit from a joint session.”

  Fia scowled. “That’s what he said.”

  Yet again, the shrink silence. The clock on the end table beside the couch ticked.

  “I’ll consider it,” Fia finally conceded.

  “I think that’s wise, because what we’ve hit on today, yet again, is your guilt for what happened between you and Joseph. I don’t think you realized until he came back just how heavy that guilt weighs on you still, after all this time.” Silence. “You know, eventually you’re going to have to figure out a way to forgive yourself,” Dr. Kettleman said gently.

  Fia looked down at her signet ring and spun it. Guilt, was it? Well, she certainly had plenty of that. Guilt over Ian. Over Joseph. The chains were pretty heavy around her neck…

  Fia glanced at the clock. “Guess our time is up.”

  Dr. Kettleman didn’t look at the clock, but continued to watch Fia. “It is. So you’ll think about bringing Joseph in with you?”

  Fia rose, smoothing the wrinkles of her suit jacket. “I’ll think about it.”

  Fia knew when she left Kettleman’s office that she was going out tonight. Not to look for Joseph. Not even to stalk. She just didn’t want to go home. Not by herself, with all the thoughts and emotions bouncing around inside her. Tonight, she needed the comfort, the anonymity, of a loud, crowded bar.

  But instead of going home to change first as she usually did, she walked a couple of blocks and entered an upscale pub. It was only eight-thirty, early by bar standards, but the place was crowded with suits. Suits and sling-back heels. Lawyers, CPAs, corporate executives.

  Fia strode along the bar, taking the only empty seat on the far end.

  “Help you?” a waiter in a wool cap asked.

  “Probably not,” Fia quipped. “But how about a tonic and lime?”

  “Stout’s good here,” said the guy in the dark suit on the barstool next to her.

  Fia felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

  “But the best stout I’ve had was in a little dive in Delaware. Place called the Hill. You know it?”

  Fia spun on the bar stool. “Glen?”

  He grinned and raised his glass in toast.

  Chapter 17

  One glimpse of her smile and all the drama Glen had suffered through in the last week was worth it. Stacy’s runny nose, her sobbing tears. Her begging him to reconsider. The frantic calls from her mother, her sister, her aunt, even the stern calling out from her father on the steps of his apartment building. All worth it, just to be here at this moment, on this bar stool, sitting beside the tall, sexy, smolderingly sensitive Fia Kahill.

  Glen had never done anything this impulsive in his life. Hell, he never did anything impulsively. A lesson learned from dear old Dad. It was his father’s impulsiveness that had gotten him killed, from what Glen had been able to glean from the account of the incident, read years after the fact. It was a personality trait he had chosen a long time ago not to inherit. Over the years, the decision had served him well. Until Fia Kahill had come along.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Fia was so surprised to see him that for once, her response was utterly spontaneous. There was nothing planned about the lilt in her voice, her smile, or the dimples he hadn’t realized were there. And he liked her this way. Slightly ruffled. Suit wrinkled. Her hair not quite so smooth and perfect.

  “I’m having a beer.” Glen demonstrated by taking a drink. “What are you doing?” He looked at the glass the bartender
slid across the bar toward her. “Tonic and lime hardly seems worth the effort.”

  She was still smiling, and the memory of the red-faced, snotty-nosed Stacy was receding from his mind. The guilt was fading faster.

  At this point Glen didn’t care that he’d made no arrangements to sublet his apartment. Or that he didn’t have a place in Philadelphia yet and was staying with his elderly great-aunt Emma. Glen didn’t believe in fate or predestination or any of that happy horseshit, but the job opening in the Philadelphia Field Office where Fia worked had come up so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it was eerie.

  Another agent in the Baltimore Field Office had wanted to keep his family in Baltimore so that his special-needs child could remain in the school she was attending. Everyone in the office had thought Glen was being some kind of magnanimous, standup guy for volunteering for the position expected to be filled immediately. None of them had suspected his motives had been purely selfish. That they’d been all about a redhead with blue eyes and a killer attitude.

  It was crazy. Glen knew it was crazy. He knew he didn’t have a chance in hell with Fia. Women like her didn’t go for guys like him. But he had to try. As much as it went against his nature, just once in his life he had to take a risk. He just hoped he wouldn’t end up like his father, splattered all over the sidewalk.

  “I’m serious.” Fia turned on her bar stool until her knees brushed against his. “You have business in the office here?”

  He sipped his beer. “Transferred, effective immediately. I’ll continue working the Clare Point cases with you, but I’m supposed to be a part of some new antiterrorist task force.” He rolled his eyes. “How many does that make for this administration?”

  “At least nine hundred and eleven,” she quipped. “But this is a new new antiterrorist task force, right?”

  He raised his beer glass. “Don’t get me started. Not tonight.”

  They were both quiet for a minute, sipping their drinks. But she was still watching him.

  “So…what’s Stacy have to say about your transfer?” Fia asked after a moment. “She ready for cheesesteaks and the Liberty Bell?”

  “Stacy’s not coming.” He sort of said it into his beer glass.

  “Not coming? As in not coming now, or never coming as in no “until death do us part” not coming?”

  “Both, I guess. Neither.”

  “You guess?” Fia pulled back a little, slipping the paper cocktail napkin around her damp glass. “Not that it’s my business or anything, but this is a case where guessing isn’t really a good idea. In this particular instance, you should know what’s going on. Are you marrying her or aren’t you?”

  “I’m not.” He took a chance—the second in a week—and met her gaze over the rim of his glass. She was interested. Definitely.

  “Why not?”

  She said it so softly that he wasn’t absolutely sure that was what he had heard.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. This had been the hardest part with Stacy. The telling her why. Every time he tried to explain himself, she’d started apologizing for everything she’d ever done wrong or perceived she’d done wrong, from choosing the wrong color napkins for their wedding reception to drinking the last cup of coffee in the morning when she slept over. She hadn’t wanted to listen to him. Hadn’t wanted to know the truth, really.

  “Because it wasn’t right,” Glen heard himself say to Fia. It was weird, but it suddenly seemed more important to him that Fia understand than Stacy.

  What was it about this woman that drew him to her? That made him go against everything he knew, everything that was easy and comfortable?

  “It was too easy,” he said slowly, thinking his way through the words, trying hard not to get dragged down by the emotion that accompanied them. “Too comfortable. Too…boring, I suppose. I loved her, but I didn’t love her. Not deeply. Not madly, insanely, like I couldn’t get enough of her.” He paused. “It sounds…sappy. But you know what I mean?”

  The corner of Fia’s sensual mouth turned up. “I know what you mean.”

  “Do you?”

  She looked down, then back up at him. The ice clinked in her glass. “I do.”

  “That experience talking?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve been in both seats, yours and hers.”

  She spoke slowly, her voice husky. He sensed this wasn’t easy for her, talking about personal things. But the fact that she was willing to share that tiny bit of private information only strengthened his conviction. He’d done the right thing leaving Baltimore and Stacy. Coming here. Even if things didn’t work out between him and Fia.

  “So…” she said.

  “So…”

  She made him smile. Made him think. Made him feel. And that was why he’d come to Philly, really. That was it in a nutshell. She made him step outside his carefully constructed box.

  “Hey,” he said on impulse. What was that old saying, in for a penny, in for a pound? “You want to have dinner?” He motioned over his shoulder to the tables behind them.

  She looked in the direction of the restaurant area beyond the bar and back at him. “Dinner?”

  It almost seemed as if it were a foreign idea to her.

  “Yeah. You know. Sit down. Have something to eat. Converse.”

  She hesitated, but it was a good hesitation. As if she was surprised he would ask her. Again, the genuine smile. “Dinner would be good.”

  Fia stayed at the pub with Glen far longer than she’d intended. They had dinner. Dessert. He had another beer. They’d lingered long after he’d taken the bill out from under her hand and paid for it. They talked about Stacy. About his new job and the government’s war against terrorism. About the office and the guys he’d be working with. They talked a little about the cases in Clare Point.

  Before Fia realized it, it was after eleven and the restaurant was closing. Their waiter offered to find them a seat at the bar. Fia thought that if she’d agreed, Glen would have gone along with it.

  He was definitely interested in her. And it wasn’t a post-breakup interest. In fact, although he didn’t come out and say so, she got the distinct impression that she had something to do with the breakup. Or at least his realization that he didn’t want to marry Stacy.

  But afraid that too much of a good thing might somehow curse their relationship before it ever really got started, Fia said good night at the table. Glen walked her back to her car and she said good night again. No good-night kiss, but there was definite curbside chemistry going on.

  All the way home Fia thought about Glen, about how nice it had been to just sit and talk, have dinner, laugh. Not just meaningless chat on a bar stool. Meaningless sex afterward. Or worse, meaningless bloodletting in a seedy alley. It had been a real date. That was what it had been.

  And it wasn’t until Fia was greeting her purring cat that she realized this was the first night in a very long time that she had not gone out stalking, or at least wanted to. Tonight she’d come home without taking human blood, but instead of being filled with the longing emptiness she often returned with, she found herself content.

  Later in the week, humming to herself, Fia stood in line at the Starbucks a block from the office. She and Glen had agreed to meet this morning in the conference room on her floor, just to touch base on the Clare Point cases. There was nothing new in either case and both knew it. It was just an excuse to see each other and the idea that he thought he needed an excuse to see her made her foolishly happy.

  She was picking up coffee and tea for them. She knew what kind of coffee Glen liked because the morning after dinner together, his first day at the office, he’d brought her tea from Starbucks and had been drinking black coffee with caramel syrup in it. She’d played it cool yesterday, fighting the urge to bring him a coffee, but this was it, this was the morning.

  The line crawled as men and women in suits ordered drinks Fia couldn’t even identify. She glanced at her wristwatch. The coffee was a good idea. Being late to meet G
len wouldn’t be.

  “Ah, I’ll have a double latte with a shot of hemoglobin.”

  Joseph’s voice in her ear startled her, and she jerked around to see him standing behind her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you.” He nodded toward the counter. “Waiting in line.” He frowned. “Since when did you start drinking coffee?”

  “Since when did you start frequenting the Arch Street Starbucks? What do you want?”

  “Line’s moving.” He pointed at the space ahead of her.

  She walked forward. “I’m serious. What are you doing here? You can’t be here,” she said under her breath.

  “What? I can’t be at Starbucks now? You’re the gatekeeper of the city and Starbucks?” He chuckled. “I’m just getting coffee, Fee. Quit being so suspicious. I’m meeting a realtor a block from here in fifteen minutes. Checking out some office space.”

  Fia groaned, seriously considering just walking out of the shop. There were still at least six people ahead of her in line.

  “So, how’s business?” he asked congenially.

  He was dressed in a sharp navy blue suit and brown wing tips. Only Joseph could get away with brown wing tips.

  “Mafia, terrorists, bank robbers, and pedophiles keeping you busy?” he asked.

  “Please lower your voice.”

  The scowl that followed somehow made him even better looking. “No one’s listening to us. Everyone’s too wrapped up in their own lives, their own mochaccinos, to care what we’re saying.”

  The line inched forward a centimeter and Fia wished she was anywhere on the planet but here. And the day had started out so nicely. Warm sun on a cool September morning. A pleasant shower filled with fantasies involving a particular human in the shower with her. An easy, traffic-jam-free drive to work. A great parking space. And now here was Joseph, raining on her parade.

  “Hey. You see that article in the paper about that girl who was murdered in Lansdowne? Same street where we used to go to that little bar all the time. The one with the purple bar stools and the weird chrome sinks in the bathrooms. Remember it?”