by Jade Kerrion
She shrugged, the gesture so indifferent that panic closed around his throat. “I thought you were different from other men, but you’re not. I can’t trust you.”
With those four words, she broke his heart. Rico stared at her—the woman who had started out merely as an intriguing challenge, and who had become so much more.
He didn’t realize how much more until he had pulled up at his parents’ home that afternoon, with Nicole beside him. He had glanced at the beautiful, confident woman working herself into a nervous ball of energy over the prospect of meeting his parents. In that instant, he realized that the party was a bigger deal than he had allowed himself to admit; he had wanted his family to meet the woman he wanted to make his wife.
And they had been on track—her anxious shuffling of her relationship tarot cards notwithstanding. He sensed it from the way she relaxed around him. He knew it from the way she looked at him.
She had said that she loved him.
Until Phil and Marie.
All Rico had been trying to do was calm Phil down. It was the only way to get past Phil’s now-volatile temper long enough to have a real conversation about Marie. Rico had been making progress. He had been hanging out with Phil earlier that day. They’d sat at a café, exchanging stories, each tale quietly reminding Phil how much he loved Marie, and how much she loved him.
Then Marie had called and told Phil that she had filed a restraining order and that she wanted him out of the apartment.
Marie hadn’t needed to say who put her up to it. Rico had known immediately.
Nicole.
Nicole loved him, and yet she was tearing his family apart. Who was she to think that she knew better how to handle his best friend and his sister than he did?
Then Rico looked into Nicole’s eyes and saw the lingering pain of a girl who had lost her beloved twin sister because a man who should have protected his wife and daughters had, instead, chosen to be violent.
Rico fumbled for the right words, but before he could say anything, his smartphone rang. He glanced at it and his grip tightened around the phone. “It’s Marie,” he said to Nicole before accepting the call.
“Rico,” Marie’s voice sobbed at him. “He’s outside. He’s breaking down the door.”
“I’m on my way. You move away from the door. Go out through the fire escape. Get out of your apartment, you hear me?” Rico rushed to the door. Nicole was right behind him.
“I’m scared, Ric.”
Rico could hear Phil’s curses over the phone. Most of the words were muffled, but what he could hear made him cringe. He fumbled in his pocket for his keys, but Nicole tugged him toward the underground parking. Her dark blue BMW beeped. She got into the driver’s seat, and he had barely gotten his door closed when the car surged forward.
“Listen to me.” He gripped the phone so tightly his knuckles were white. “Get out of there. The fire escape, Marie. Do you hear me? Go to the fire escape.”
Marie shrieked, her scream almost drowning out the sound of snapping wood. “He’s got a gun!”
Rico’s heart clenched.
A split second later, a gunshot deafened his world.
Chapter 8
Nicole hated the smell of hospitals—the blend of antiseptic mixed with unique stench that seemed to linger around the sick and the dying. She tried not to breathe too deeply as she and Rico navigated through the labyrinthine turns of Brooklyn Hospital, trying to track down Marie and Phil.
“There.” Nicole pointed down a corridor adjacent to the emergency room.
“Mom, Dad.” Rico raced up to Lena and Jose. “Where are they?”
Lena swiped at her moist eyes and pointed to the double doors at the end of the corridor. “Phil’s still in there. Marie is with a lady cop, giving a report of what happened.”
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“Mostly a bad scare,” Jose said but he looked grim, even angry.
“And Phil?”
“We don’t know yet. That’s what we’re waiting to find out. We called his parents; they’re on a cruise. They’re trying to get off and get home, but we don’t know when they’ll get here.”
Lena’s gaze flicked past Nicole’s shoulder, and she rose to her feet. Her arms outstretched, she walked forward to embrace her tearful daughter, who was flanked by uniformed police officers. “Are you okay?” She stroked Marie’s hair.
Rico glanced at Marie and then walked up to the male and female police officers. “What’s going to happen now?”
“It depends on what happens in there.” The male officer glanced at the emergency room. “If he makes it out, we’ll take him into custody.”
Rico sucked in a deep breath. “On what charges?”
“Attempted murder. Property damage. Violating the restraining order. Any of the above. All of the above.”
Marie sobbed against Lena’s shoulder. “I didn’t want this to happen. I just wanted him to stop hitting me.”
Lena stroked her back. “The restraining order upset him. All he wanted was to get close to you.”
Jose scowled. “Well, he shouldn’t have done that by breaking down the door and waving a gun in your face. No one threatens my girl.”
Lena glared at Nicole. “But this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t interfered. What right did you have to jump into our personal business?”
Rico stepped between his mother and Nicole. “She’s got the right of any person to stick up for a person who’s being beaten. This isn’t about Nicole, so leave her out of it.”
Marie shook her head. “I shouldn’t have upset him. He didn’t want to shoot me; I know it. He pointed it at me, but the moment the gun went off, something changed in his face. The shock in his eyes. The horror. He knew, and he couldn’t live with knowing that he had shot at me—even though I wasn’t hurt. When he turned the gun on himself…” She shuddered. “I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look, not even after it went off.”
The policeman filled in the story. “The neighbors found her at the end of the hallway, crouched over, unhurt. He was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. They were the ones who called us.”
“He didn’t mean to shoot me,” Marie sobbed. “I know he fired the gun, but he didn’t hurt me. He never meant to.”
“Of course not, baby.” Lena soothed her daughter by stroking her back. “He loves you. He would never intentionally hurt you.”
Nicole bit her tongue and turned away. Tension gnawed her shoulders as she paced the corridors alone, but a few minutes later, Rico came to her. His voice was pitched low. “Thank you for letting my mom and sister deal with the shock in their own way.”
“Rationalization.” Nicole’s eyes stung with unshed tears. “I did it too. It was the only way to convince myself that my world wasn’t completely crazy.”
“I know Phil loves Marie.”
“And that makes it okay?” she asked, acid in her tone.
“That’s not what I mean. Phil was upset. He wasn’t thinking straight. You heard her. He was shocked. Devastated. He turned the gun on himself when he realized what he had…could have…done.”
Nicole sagged against the wall and hugged herself. Marie’s near miss could have been a murder-suicide. Instead of Phil in the emergency room, it could have been Phil and Marie in the morgue.
Doubt chewed at Nicole. Had she done the right thing convincing Marie to get a restraining order? What if Marie and Lena were right? What if the restraining order had pushed Phil over the edge? Wasn’t it better to be beaten than shot?
The memory of her sister’s bloody, broken body flashed before her. Nicole ground her teeth, and her fingers curled into fists. No, it wasn’t okay to be beaten or shot.
Rico sighed. “I know that look in your eyes. It’s the ‘get out of my way or prepared to be eaten’ look. I’m asking you to give my family some space. They’re not…ready for someone like you.”
She stiffened. “Someone like me?”
“We’re a traditional family
. Mom stays at home and keeps the house; Dad works and brings home the bacon. I was surrounded by working women for many years, but until I met you, I thought I wanted what my parents had. The fact is, they’re not ready for a woman with a strong personality and an opinion of her own. They’re most definitely not ready for someone who would jump straight into their family’s messy, crazy situation and fix it her way.”
She stared at Rico. Even leaving aside his inexplicable defense of Phil, her love for Rico was simply never meant to be. He wasn’t ready either for a woman with a strong personality. She had been crazy to imagine that she had finally found someone who understood her and accepted her.
“They just need some time.” Rico was looking at her with an expression on his face that she had once taken for bemused affection—as if he couldn’t believe who he had fallen in love with.
Now, she realized he was right. He couldn’t believe it. Neither could she.
Later that night, Nicole adjusted the slight weight of her tote bag as she let herself into her condominium. Her shoulders ached although she did not know how much of it was from stress versus exhaustion. Guilt—although she didn’t know whether it was justified or not—gnawed at her. Surely she was at least partly responsible for what happened. It kept getting harder to convince herself that she had done the right thing when she saw the raw pain on Marie’s face. Marie loved Phil, and Phil loved Marie.
Why couldn’t they get it right?
Her chest ached. And why couldn’t Rico and I get it right?
A soft woof drew her attention down to the dark, furry shape by her side. “Hey, Big Guy.” Nicole’s voice cracked.
The dog nudged his head against her thigh.
Nicole tossed her bag aside and slid down to the floor. She wrapped her arms around the Belgian Malinois and buried her face in his thick fur. “Don’t get into any more accidents, okay?” she murmured. The dog’s ears twitched. “You’re out of a vet until we can find a new one. As it turns out, Rico wasn’t the right one for us after all. Not for you, and not for me.”
Chapter 9
Rico shut his office door and slumped in his chair. The seven days since the shooting had been filled with phone calls to his family, to Phil’s family, with police officers, and with attorneys.
It hardly mattered that Marie didn’t want to bring charges against her husband. A gun had been fired. Someone—even if it had been the person holding the weapon—had been seriously injured. The state had no choice but to act.
Besides, the neighbors stepped forward with lurid reports of the constant shouting and crying from Marie’s apartment. It wasn’t happening once a month; neither was it once a week. It was apparently happening every day.
And his sister had said nothing to him.
She had called him once or twice a month and asked him to come by to talk to Phil and calm him down. Rico had always gone over with snacks and a six-pack of beer, and hung out for several hours with Phil. He hadn’t seen Marie at that time; she had retreated to her bedroom and refused to emerge. When he tapped on the door and asked if she was all right, she always said that she was, although now, he wondered if she had retreated to hide her physical injuries from him.
Every day…
Damn it. Rico leaned over his desk and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. If only the pressure would stem his migraine. The tension knotted in his shoulders made it hard to raise his head. He’d hardly spoken to Nicole all week. In fact, he hadn’t spoken to her at all. He’d called a few times, but it went straight to voicemail. He’d sent several text messages, but she hadn’t responded to them either.
Only now, in the silence of his office, mercifully shut off from all temporary interruptions, he realized he hadn’t heard back from her.
He swallowed the curse word. He had been so busy handling all the urgent issues in his life, he’d neglected the one person who had become so unexpectedly important to him—the person who was so self-sufficient he hadn’t thought to put her on his “watch” list in the midst of all the craziness.
His phone rang. So much for the few moments of peace and quiet. He sighed before accepting the call. “What is it, Mom?”
“The hospital called,” Lena said. “They said the DA’s office okayed visitors for Phil, as long as a cop is in the room.”
“Where do they think he is going?” Rico demanded, irritation snapping through his voice. “He’s lucky to be alive, let alone conscious. That he can say anything at all is a miracle.” The bullet, as the doctors had pointed out, had pierced Phil’s skull, but luckily for Phil, his hands must have been trembling, for his aim was terrible. Most of the damage had been to the periphery, affecting fine and gross motor movements and resulting in slow, slurred speech. Otherwise, Phil’s cognitive ability appeared unscathed, although only time would tell once the drugs wore off.
“We should all go to see him,” Lena continued.
“I’ll be there tomorrow. I want to stop by Nicole’s tonight.”
“That interfering woman.”
“Mom!”
“If she hadn’t interfered, none of this would have happened.”
“No, but Phil would have gone on beating Marie. Is that what you want?”
“Maria said it wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
“Even if you discount half of what the neighbors reported, it was bad. She didn’t tell any of us. Why?”
“I…” his mother stammered.
“You think good and hard about why she didn’t tell us. Could it be because she thought we would behave exactly the way you are now? Making her feel like it was her fault, that she brought it on herself by something she did or didn’t do?”
“It’s not Marie’s fault. It’s Nicole’s.”
“Nicole was the only one with the guts to shine a light on the situation.”
“She had no right.”
“She had every right as a normal, decent person realizing that someone else was being abused. And even if you discount that, she had a right as my girlfriend. She had a right to know if I ever turned on her the way Phil turned on Marie, whether she would have a place to retreat, an ear that would listen. The answer, I guess, was no.”
“That’s crazy. You know it’s not true. You know how much you and Marie mean to your dad and me.”
Rico snorted. His father, at least, appeared to be handling the situation in a much more appropriate way; he was furious with Phil, and did not appear to blame Marie for anything that had transpired. Phil’s parents, however, didn’t feel quite the same way. They were convinced that Marie must have done something to ignite Phil’s temper. And as for the interfering woman, Nicole Lefton, it was all her fault. All Phil wanted was to go home and see his wife. What right had Nicole to decide that Phil didn’t deserve to be around Marie?
“I’ll see Phil tomorrow,” Rico said. “Tonight, I need to be with Nicole.”
“She’s bad news, Rico. She’s too strong-willed; she can’t be guided.”
Rico’s eyes narrowed. “Just as well I’m not planning on guiding her.”
“She’s not the right girl for you, Rico.”
“And the ones you’ve introduced to me are? The ones that look at me like puppy dogs expecting a pat on the head for doing the right thing? The ones whose egos seem to depend on my approval of them? No thanks. I know you think a submissive wife is the key to a happy marriage—”
“It’s in the Bible. I taught Marie right. She was submissive to her husband.”
“Marie was an idiot,” Rico said. “Nowhere in the Bible does it say ‘do not complain when your husband beats you.’ Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to spend some time with a real woman who has a mind of her own and whose life aspiration isn’t to be an unthinking mirror of only the best, shiny parts of me.”
“Rico!” His mother’s voice cracked. “How dare you—”
“Tell me, Mom. Did you ever aspire to be anything more than Dad’s wife?”
Silence answered him.
&
nbsp; “Did you?” he challenged.
The silence grew until it seemed to fill all the space between Manhattan and Long Island.
Rico released his breath; the sound was a heavy sigh. “I didn’t think so.” Not that there was anything wrong with merely wanting to be someone’s wife. It was just that there was nothing wrong either with wanting to be far more than that.
And he knew what he wanted. He wanted the woman who wanted more—the woman who didn’t need him but who chose to be with him anyway.
He wanted Nicole.
Rico left his office and headed over to Nicole’s condominium. Along the way, his calls went unanswered. He frowned; shouldn’t they have at least bounced into voicemail?
His heart clenched. She’s blocking me.
The doorman at her building was apologetic. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you in, Dr. Vargas. She filled out the paperwork indicating that you weren’t to be admitted.”
“Look, I’ve had a personal emergency all week, and it’s the first time I’ve had enough of a breather to realize how much I’ve ignored her. She’s pissed with me; I get it, but can’t you at least buzz her apartment and let her know I’m here?”
“There’s no point doing that. She’s not here.”
Rico glanced at his watch. “Is she out with Big Guy?”
“No, she’s just out.”
“Does she still have the dog?”
The doorman nodded.
At least that was something. Rico gritted his teeth. He looked helplessly around the lobby. Where was Nicole and how was he supposed to track her down if she had blocked him? Camping out in her lobby wasn’t high on his list of things to do, but if it was the only way—
His smartphone rang. His mother’s agitated voice snapped out at him. “You have to come to the hospital. Hurry.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“The police officer just told us. She’s coming here. That woman.”
“Who?”
“That horrible woman, Nicole.”
Seeing Rico Vargas and any member of his family wasn’t on Nicole’s agenda—ever again—but she had been surprised late that afternoon with a phone call from Lieutenant Kendra Johnson, the police officer who had taken Marie’s statement that day at the hospital. “Phil McKay asked if you’d be willing to see him.”