But she knew that she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right for so many reasons, not the least of which was that she just couldn’t allow herself to get used to this. In her heart she knew that being with Aaron this way, wonderful though it was, had an incredibly short life expectancy. It was destined to end.
Oh, maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but soon, and the more often she gave in to this desire, the harder it was going to be on her when the time came that she would have to do without him.
Tiptoeing into the living room and making her way to the stairs, Felicia stopped for a moment just to absorb everything, thinking how normal it felt to be part of this family, if only for a little while.
And wishing with all her heart that it could go on forever.
But she didn’t believe in forever, she reminded herself. She had once, but not anymore. Greg had taught her that. Felicia now believed that she had to pay a price for every bit of happiness that came her way, knowing full well that when it did, it wouldn’t last.
But for however long this did last, she thought as she took a breath, Felicia was determined to enjoy it, because even a little bit was better than the alternative—which was nothing at all.
With a sad smile playing on her lips, she made her way up to her room.
* * *
When she finally went to bed, Felicia had had absolutely no intentions of sleeping in; it just somehow seemed to happen. If she were to make a guess, it was because she had enjoyed herself so much last night. For the first time in a very long time, she had actually felt content and yes, even a little relaxed.
So when she woke up and saw that it was after seven, Felicia sat bolt upright in her bed. This was late for her. Her feet hit the floor before she was even aware of swinging them over the side of the bed.
She needed to get ready, she told herself sternly. Nicole’s physical therapy class was set for eight. She knew the woman would insist that she have breakfast before they got started so that would eat up more time, and time was a very precious commodity not to be wasted.
Upbraiding herself, Felicia hurried into the bathroom, where she took what was probably a five-minute shower. Drying off quickly, she hurried into her clothes and got dressed.
She didn’t bother with her hair, leaving it damp and curling around her face like someone who had been caught in a sudden rainfall. But she could worry about drying it properly and styling it after she and Nicole had finished with the physical therapy program for the morning.
Felicia was particularly anxious to get to it since they had skipped the second part of that program yesterday because of the dinner that Nicole had prepared for everyone.
Making her way downstairs quickly, Felicia called out a greeting before she even saw Nicole.
“Hi, Nicole. Are you down here?” she asked. Since it was morning, she just assumed that the woman would be moving around the kitchen and waiting for her to join her.
And then she stopped dead before she reached the last step.
Her mouth dropped open.
It looked as if a hurricane had passed through the lower rooms. Everything appeared as if it had been ransacked.
Panicking, Felicia ran down the rest of the way. “Nicole!” she called, her voice rising as she tried not to panic. “Are you here?”
“Yes, I’m here,” the woman answered. Her voice was oddly bewildered as she stepped out of the kitchen and into the small foyer. Her face was the picture of disbelief.
Felicia was quick to join the woman and put her arm around Nicole’s shoulders. She still couldn’t believe what she was looking at. “Nicole, what happened here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” the older woman answered honestly, looking around again as if she expected everything to go back to normal and that this was just a bad, momentary hallucination.
But it wasn’t. It was real.
“When I got up to make coffee this morning, I found it like this.” Nicole looked quizzically at the young woman beside her. “When you came in last night, Felicia, did you—”
“I came in a little after midnight,” she told Nicole, trying to be precise. “And it certainly wasn’t like this. Everything was neat and tidy, the way it always is,” Felicia reported. Whoever was responsible for this had to have made some sort of noise. This hadn’t happened in a vacuum. “Did you hear anything? Any kind of noise that sounded as if something was falling or being thrown?” she asked the woman.
But Nicole shook her head. “No.” And then she reconsidered her response. “You know, I did think I heard something around one or so, but I thought it was part of my dream, so I went back to sleep.” Her hands were on her hips as she looked around again, completely stunned at the chaos she saw. “I guess it wasn’t a dream,” she concluded in a resigned tone.
She didn’t like this, Felicia thought as she surveyed the damage. She didn’t like this one little bit. Someone had deliberately broken in and ransacked Nicole’s place. But why? What were they looking for?
A cold chill ran down her spine.
“Can you tell if anything was taken?” she asked the woman.
Nicole moved her head from side to side. “Not that I can see.” None of this made any sense to her. “Who would do something like this?” she asked, stunned and overwhelmed.
Felicia could feel her stomach tightening. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, she thought she had an answer to that.
Greg.
Somehow, Greg had found her and was now attempting to upend her life. There was no logical reason for what had happened here, but Greg never needed a logical reason. He just created havoc for its own sake, to throw her life into complete turmoil.
The next moment, she realized that the very fact that she was here could very well put Nicole’s life in danger. She could feel nerves eating away at her stomach.
Felicia was doing her best not to let her imagination run away with her. But she found it really hard not to panic. Logically, she knew that it didn’t have to be Greg. Houses were broken into all the time, and there could still be another explanation for what had happened here. But in her heart, she knew there was no other explanation.
This was all Greg’s work.
He couldn’t be allowed to do this, Felicia thought angrily. With that, she began to head toward the rear of the house.
Moving toward her, Nicole blocked her. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m going to see if whoever is responsible for this is still in the house,” Felicia answered, her feisty spirit returning.
“No, you will not,” Nicole told her sharply. “You will stay right here and wait until Aaron arrives.”
“Aaron’s coming?” she asked. Had Nicole called him? When had that happened?
“Just as soon as he gets this call,” Nicole told her, reaching into her pocket for the cell phone she religiously carried around with her. It hadn’t been out of her sight since that morning when she had broken her hip.
Felicia was leery about pulling Aaron into this. Leery about what he would have to say about the situation. “Maybe you should call Rick,” she suggested to his mother. When Nicole looked at her quizzically for an explanation, Felicia said, “You know Aaron. He’ll immediately think the worst and maybe there might be some sort a logical explanation for this. I just thought you might want to consider everything before you called him.”
The look on Nicole’s face told Felicia that she thought that was crazy. “What sort of logical explanation could there be for a break-in?” Nicole asked.
Felicia sighed. “You’re right. There isn’t one.” She nodded her head. “Call Aaron. If he hears your voice, at least he’ll know that you’re all right.”
Nicole began pressing the keys on her phone. When Aaron picked up, she put it on speakerphone so Felicia could hear what her son said, as well.
“Honey, could you come over?
” Nicole asked.
Aaron’s mother was trying to sound as calm as she could but she sensed that she wasn’t really fooling her son. As she spoke, she watched Felicia methodically going through the various piles that had been tossed around the room. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the mess. It was as if someone was attempting to create chaos and stir up fear for its own sake through their actions.
“I was going to swing by later today,” Aaron told her. And then his tone changed as suspicion took over. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
“There’s nothing wrong, exactly,” she told him, hedging. She was trying to find the best way to word this for her son and failing badly.
“Mom—” There was a warning note in his voice. It indicated that Aaron was not in the mood for games; he just needed straightforward answers.
As she listened to the exchange, Felicia decided that it was time for her to speak up. Rather than raise her voice, she took the phone from Nicole to level with Aaron before he started interrogating his mother.
“Aaron, it’s Felicia. There’s been a break-in,” she told him matter-of-factly, trying to divorce herself from what had taken place.
“A break-in?” Aaron echoed. “What do you mean there’s been a break-in?” He couldn’t believe he was actually saying the words.
Felicia pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, before she pushed on. “I mean someone broke into your mother’s house sometime after midnight.”
She could almost feel his anger telegraphing itself through the air. “Did you see him—or her?” he finally questioned.
“No, I did not. But it was sometime after you dropped me off early this morning and before seven a.m.,” she told him.
If he was furious, he was containing the emotion well. “What was taken?” he asked.
“That’s just it. We don’t know if anything was taken,” she answered. “Everything in the area looks like it was haphazardly tossed, like whoever did this was looking for something. But so far, we can’t determine what that was.”
“And you’re sure that Mom wasn’t hurt?” he questioned, his tone indicating that he wouldn’t appreciate any attempt at covering up the truth.
“No, thank heavens. She’s just a bit shaken up,” Felicia said with sincerity. “But she’s totally unharmed. Trust me.”
She heard him blow out a sigh of relief. “And you?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
She dismissed any concern or attention shifted in her direction. “Don’t worry about me,” she told him. “I’m fine. But I think your mother would really appreciate it if you got here.”
“I’m on my way,” Aaron said just before the connection terminated.
Felicia handed the cell phone back to Nicole. In case the woman had missed that, she told her, “Aaron said he’d be right over.”
Nicole nodded. Now that Aaron was en route, she was having second thoughts about having him come. The woman frowned.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have called him,” she said. “I know Aaron. He’s just going to start worrying about me again. I just got him to calm down that I wasn’t going to have another accident and hurt my hip again. This is going to set us back to square one.”
Felicia had continued going through the mess, trying to figure out just what the person—if it wasn’t Greg—had been looking for.
However, if it was Greg, then he didn’t need an excuse and he wasn’t necessarily looking for something. He was just trying to create havoc for its own sake and frighten away anyone who might have befriended her. Just like he had done before, he was out to isolate her.
“You had to tell him,” she told Nicole, trying to alleviate any guilt the woman might have been feeling. “You know he would never forgive you if you didn’t call him and he wound up finding out about it accidentally,” Felicia told her.
Nicole nodded her head. “You’re right.”
* * *
Nicole had just finished drinking her cup of coffee when Aaron came all but barreling in. “Mom!” he called out, worry stamped into his handsome features. “Mom!”
“We’re in the kitchen, dear,” Nicole called out.
Her voice sounded infinitely calmer to Felicia than it had less than a few minutes ago. She was right, Felicia thought. Cooking really did relax Aaron’s mother.
Aaron entered the kitchen like a man struggling to keep his heart from leaping into his throat and choking him.
“Mom!” he cried, embracing his mother. He was the personification of immense concern. Holding her at arm’s length for a moment, he searched every inch of his mother’s face. “You’re absolutely certain that you’re all right?”
“Yes, dear, I’m absolutely certain. For all I know, someone broke in looking for food,” she said, trying to calm Aaron down. “You know how my reputation is getting around.” She was doing her best to reassure her son and make him laugh.
“Then he’s a mental midget because he certainly doesn’t know what food looks like,” Aaron said, looking around at the mess. And then he looked at Felicia. “How about you?” he asked. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
He was concerned about her, as well, but somehow, he felt confident that Felicia was far more able to take care of herself than his mother was, even though he had seen how very self-sufficient his mother could be. Still, this was his mother, and he couldn’t help being inordinately concerned about her reaction to all this.
Felicia waved away his question. Her guilt was increasing by leaps and bounds. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that Greg was responsible for all this somehow.
“I’m fine,” she replied stoically.
“And nothing was taken?” Aaron asked, turning toward his mother.
“Not as far as I can see,” she answered. “It almost looks like whoever did this was playing ‘one-two-three, pick up,’ that old children’s game I used to play with you, before your brothers came to live with us.” Nicole allowed herself a fond memory for a moment.
“Well, this isn’t a children’s game,” Aaron told his mother, frowning intently as he looked around. “This is really serious. Someone’s trying to frighten you, or send a message, or—”
Aaron abruptly stopped talking. When he had turned toward the two women, he had caught a glimpse of the expression that crossed Felicia’s face.
Something he had just said had sparked something in kind in her head. He could see it in her face.
“Felicia,” Aaron said sharply, calling for her attention.
Her stomach tightened. Oh, Lord, here it comes, she thought, bracing herself. She had every intention of telling Aaron about Greg and the role he had played in her life, even if they never got together. But on her own time, not now.
She pressed her lips together. “Yes?” The word came out almost breathlessly.
Aaron drew closer to her, looking into her eyes as he searched them for some sort of an answer. “What is it you know, Felicia?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“Aaron, what are you accusing her of?” Nicole asked, coming to Felicia’s defense just as she had the first time he had met her.
He continued looking pointedly at Felicia. “I think Felicia knows. I’m accusing her of holding something back. Something I think she should have told us about.”
Chapter 22
The look on Nicole’s face told Aaron she knew where he was coming from, but she still wanted him to back off a little. It was obvious that she felt for the young woman, just as she had the first time Aaron questioned Felicia’s ability to administer her physical therapy sessions. Granted this was more serious, but she still felt just as protective as she had then.
“I think Felicia will tell us when she’s ready to share, Aaron.”
Aaron was frowning as he shook his head. Ordinarily, he would agree with his mother and just back off. But what had happened could have v
ery well endangered his mother’s safety—as a matter of fact, it still could—and he could damn well be adamant about it.
“Not good enough,” he told his mother. “Felicia?” he asked expectantly. “Do you know who broke into my mother’s house?”
“How could she know that?” Nicole asked defensively. She thought of Felicia as a daughter now and she was determined to protect her. Why was her son accusing her like this?
Felicia refused to have the two people she had come to care about a great deal get into an argument because of her.
“Because I think I do,” she answered in a small voice that seemed almost devoid of emotion.
The next moment, she looked at Nicole, distraught over the very idea that she might have actually put the woman she had come to think of as a second mother in harm’s way.
Stunned, Nicole looked at her. “How could you know that?”
He knew it! “Who was it, Felicia?” Aaron demanded sharply.
“I think the person who did all this might have been my ex,” Felicia told Aaron and his mother. Every word cost her.
“Your ex? Your ex what?” Nicole asked, stunned. And then it seemed to hit her. “Felicia, you were married? Honey, why didn’t you say anything?” she asked. Rather than feel betrayed, Nicole was clearly concerned about Felicia. It was evident from her tone that the woman was convinced Felicia was afraid of someone and needed protecting.
“It’s not something I’m proud of.” Felicia pressed her lips together.
She caught a glimpse of the way Aaron was looking at her in her peripheral vision, like he didn’t even know who she was. Wounded, she tried to avoid making eye contact with him.
“How long were you married?” Nicole asked, her tone compassionate.
“Four years,” Felicia answered. “The first two years were everything I had always imagined a good marriage would be like.” Sadness entered her eyes. “And then he began to change. He became angrier and more and more abusive. The slightest thing would set him off.”
Colton 911: Secret Defender Page 19