Facing It (24 page)

“No. I don’t want you with me under those circumstances.” She slipped from the chair, gathered the popcorn bowl and the remnants of Ben & Jerry’s, and took them through to the kitchen.

He followed to hover in the doorway, tension screaming from him. “What do you want from me?”

She slanted a disgusted look at him over her shoulder while she dumped the stale popcorn and rinsed the bowl. “I don’t want anything
from
you. I just want you.” She turned to face him, clutching the plastic bowl with silly dancing popcorn kernels on it until her hands ached. “Would I like to have you with me when I go home? Of course. It would be nice to sit at my mother’s boring dinner parties with you so I didn’t have to listen to Allison’s husband tell any more of those godawful dentist stories, to dance with you at Trisha’s precious ball, to—”

“Is that what I am, Jen? A way for you to compete with your sisters?”

Any fight she had left was gone, completely drained away. She felt like a sickly puddle of goo, like the melted mess of Ben & Jerry’s she’d just tossed. “At least my family knows about you.”

“Goddamn it, I knew sooner or later we’d get to that.” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “This is never going to work.”

“Because you don’t want it to. You and your self-fulfilling prophecies.” She shook her head on a quiet, sad laugh. God, she was exhausted. “You probably told yourself all the way over here we were going to end up fighting about your not telling your mom about me.”

His expression gave him away. She held the bowl tighter against her midriff, which felt curiously hollow and achy despite the amount of junk food she’d eaten earlier.

“What will you do when I’m tired of fighting for us, Harrell?”

He gave a rigid shrug but said nothing.

Poignant sorrow filtered through her. “Then you’ll be able to tell yourself you were right all along, won’t you?”

He glanced away. “Jen—”

“I love you.”

The color drained from his face. “Please don’t say that.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

His brows lowered in a fierce frown. “It matters too much.”

A spurt of inappropriate humor washed through her. “You’re an odd duck, Beecham. It matters too much? So, what, you don’t want me to say it, because you’d rather not have me love you at all, so you don’t risk losing it? I don’t get you.”

He closed his eyes. “Jennifer—”

“I’m tired.” She set the bowl aside and reached to turn off the lights. “You should go.”

“If that’s what you want.” He picked up his tie from the counter where he’d tossed it earlier. He wrapped the red-patterned silk around his hand in a nervous, repetitive motion. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Then he was gone, the front door closing quietly behind him. Jennifer covered her eyes with one hand, refusing to give in to the threatening tears. Maybe in the morning she’d know what to do next.

Chris paused in the open doorway to Tori Calvert’s office at the women’s crisis center. He wasn’t sure exactly why he was here, beyond the fact he owed her an apology. And he needed the name of a freaking therapist. A really good one, who he could trust enough to help him get this crap out of his mind.

Her dark head bent over what looked like a budget spreadsheet, Tori tapped a pencil on her desk in a soft, repetitive
thunk
. Hooking his thumbs in the back pockets of his faded jeans, Chris cleared his throat. “Tori?”

She looked up, a quick, genuine smile lighting her face, and set the pencil and paperwork aside. “Hey, Chris. Come on in.”

He took a single nervous step forward. Hell, he felt like a kid summoned to the principal’s office. Or a rookie called on the carpet for some stupid infraction. He cleared his throat again. “I owe you an apology for the other night. I was completely out of line.”

She tilted her head to one side and gave an easy shrug. “It’s okay.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“You want to sit down?” She indicated the plush chairs sitting before her desk. He took another step forward, darted a glance back at the empty hallway. She smiled, a winsome expression that reminded him of Ruthie. “You can close the door if that makes you more comfortable.”

He did so, the lock catching with a quiet click. The small room seemed to grow smaller and he took a seat, his body tense and uncomfortable. She didn’t speak but regarded him with that calm smile.

With a hard swallow, he met her gaze head on. “I was wondering if you could recommend a local counselor. I’m on desk duty until I can get a psych clearance.”

“Sure.” With a nod, she reached for a brochure from a small stack on the credenza behind her desk. “This is a list of local psychologists and therapists. If you can give me an idea of the type of person you’d be comfortable with, I could make some suggestions. A couple of them specialize in law-enforcement issues—”

“It’s not exactly a work-related problem.” He shifted in the chair and coughed into his cupped hand. “I know it probably seemed that way the other night, but…”

His voice trailed away. This was Tick’s sister.
Ruthie’s
sister. How the hell was he supposed to explain this to her, let alone a complete stranger?

She tucked a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear. “You realize anything you tell me is privileged. It never leaves this room.”

He darted a look at her, finding her gaze steady on him. “I don’t…know where to start.”

“Maybe with why you were so upset at the Stinsons’ the other night?”

He grimaced. “I was an ass. I overreacted.”

“You’ve seen stabbing victims before.” It wasn’t a question, but merely a quiet statement of fact.

“It could have been me.” He blew out a harsh breath and looked away, the intensity of the admission too much to bear while facing another person.

“How so?”

The next inhale and exhale shuddered through him. “When I was at the Tifton PD, there was a woman, my fiancée. Her name was Kimberly. Kim. We were living together.”

“You were pretty young.”

“Twenty-four, twenty-five. I met her while I was in the police academy. She was one of the instructor’s daughters. Her granddaddy was on the county commission over there.”

“You didn’t marry her, then?”

He gave a humorless chuckle. “No. It was good the first year. It took me a while to realize what she was doing. First, it was I spent too much time with the guys, not enough with her, and somehow my buddies disappeared from the picture. She wanted me to herself, she said, and I was young and stupid enough to be flattered I meant that much to her. Then I shouldn’t spend so much time training. I needed to be with her.”

“She isolated you.”

He darted a quick look at Tori. “Yeah.”

“And she got angry when you didn’t comply?”

“That’s one way of putting it.” When Tori didn’t prod, he rubbed both hands down his thighs, a shudder working over him. “It started with yelling and screaming. She’d throw things, but hell, my partner’s wife did that too. I didn’t think a lot about it, you know? My dad raised me by himself, so it’s not like I knew how a couple was supposed to be.”

She fiddled with her engagement ring. “I can understand that.”

“She threw a book at me one night when I was walking out of the room after I told her I’d heard enough, I was going to bed. Caught me in the middle of the back. Left a hell of a bruise.”

“The first bruise.”

“Yeah.” A harsh sigh shook him. “The first bruise.”

“And it didn’t stop there.”

“No.” He shook his head, the memories scraping over him with crushing intensity. “I could handle the hitting and slapping. I think she knew I wasn’t going to hurt her and she knew I couldn’t very well call the cops. She’d have ruined me. But then the crazy stuff started. I’d come in from a shift, and it would be screaming and fighting all night long. She’d hide my damn keys or mess up my uniform so I’d have to start all over getting it ready.”

“Controlling behaviors.”

“I guess. Insane behavior, if you ask me. But the physical stuff escalated too. She ended up breaking my arm with a skillet. I was lucky, though, because I really think her aim was to break my skull.”

“I’m so sorry, Chris. Truly I am. No one should have to deal with any of that.”

He dropped his head with a rueful smile. “Hey, I survived.”

“So how did you get out?”

“I was already looking for another job. Figured I’d leave law enforcement if I had to. If I didn’t leave her, I was going to end up dead. Packed my stuff. I’d planned to get out while she was gone to classes—she was going to nursing school—but she came home early while I was packing my truck.”

Tori made a small encouraging sound. He closed his eyes, the memories beating at the backs of his eyelids, flashes of Kimberly’s enraged face.

“She was royally pissed off when she realized what was going on.” He lifted his gaze and met Tori’s dead-on, his pride demanding that for some reason. He shrugged, an edgy movement. “She came after me with a knife. Got my arm.” He ran his index finger down the scar, hidden by his T-shirt. “Slashed into my back at my shoulder blade. And she got my calf as I was trying to get her out of my truck.”

A flare of disgust—one he knew not meant for him—flashed in her eyes. “You lied about what happened at the emergency room, didn’t you?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “With my sergeant and partner standing there? Hell, yeah. But I didn’t go back and a couple of months later, I came here.”

“To put your life together again.”

“Yeah.” Another shrug, his back hurting from how freaking tense he was. “Heard from an old buddy a few months ago that she’d married a guy I used to work the same shift with.”

“So at the Stinsons’…”

“I saw what Maggie’d done to Jed—whether he’d hurt her or not, whether he deserved it or not—and thought that could have been me, if Kim…if I hadn’t managed to get out that night.” He looked away, his jaw tight. “And I turned on you.”

“That’s understandable.”

His head jerked around. “I lost control.”

“It happens, Chris.”

“Not to me. Not that way.” His inability to hold it together had put him on desk-jockey status indefinitely. Even if no one really knew why, the questioning looks, the whispers still lingered.

With one finger, she traced an intricate design on her desk blotter. “It’s kind of like a soda bottle that gets shaken up. It can only take so much internalized pressure before it spills over when someone takes the cap off.”

“Yeah.”

She turned back to the brochure she’d pulled earlier. “So you need a therapist, one who deals extensively with domestic-violence issues—”

“I don’t suppose that would be you?” The quiet question surprised even him. Instead of withdrawing the inquiry, however, he waited for her reply.

“It could be, if that’s what you wanted, if you’re comfortable with that.”

He flicked a glance at the small framed snapshot of Cookie by her computer. “What I tell you is private, right?”

“Of course.”

He nodded, some of the strain leaving his body on a sharp exhale. “I think I’d rather talk to you than a stranger.”

“All right. I tell you what…” She swiveled to snag a thin leather planner from the credenza. “Let’s block you out some time. Today’s Tuesday. I have some time Thursday morning, around nine?”

“Sounds great.” He jerked a thumb toward the door and rose. “I’ll get out of here and let you get back to work.”

She smiled and her pencil scratched across the calendar. “See you Thursday.”

At the door, hand on the knob, he paused and looked back at her. “Tori? I really am sorry for how I treated you the other night.”

“I know.” Her smiled widened, softened a little. “And it really is okay.”

He pulled the door open, a little of the dark weight sloughing away. “See you Thursday morning.”

Lunch with his mother and her fiancé was an ordeal. In other circumstances, his mother might have been correct about his liking Barry Kelsey. But not when the man was in line to be ex-stepfather number eight. Inevitably, his mother’s relationships ended, and as Harrell had heard once too often, he was the one constant male in her life, the one she could count on.

When Barry was long gone, Harrell would be helping his mother gather the shattered pieces all over again.

He picked at his chicken pasta, not even the spicy allure of his favorite Italian place lifting his mood or piquing his appetite. His mother’s happy and excited chatter filled the empty pauses in the conversation, and she sprinkled her words with easy affectionate touches she split between him and Barry.

She laid a gentle palm on his knee. “I wish you’d brought Jennifer with you. She is a lovely girl, Harrell.”

The reminder only served to darken his mood. “She was working this afternoon, Mom. And we’re partners, not joined at the hip.”

She blinked big blue eyes at him. “I simply don’t want you to be alone. Is that too much to ask, for a mother to see her son settled and happy?”

At the word “settled”, he choked on a sip of water. He wasn’t aware it was even in her vocabulary. As for “happy”…

Was there such a thing?

She shook her head and gathered her purse. “I’m going to visit the little girls’ room. You boys have a nice chat while I’m gone.”

He reserved all comment. Once she was out of sight, he feigned renewed interest in his food.

“You’re very important to her,” Barry said suddenly in his rich baritone. “She loves you very much.”

Harrell laid aside his fork. “I feel the same way about her.”

“You’re not happy about this marriage, are you, son?”

He bristled at the easygoing endearment. “No, I’m not. I don’t want to see her make another mistake, but I’m well aware she’s going to do exactly as she wishes. And right now, she wishes to marry you. I can’t change that.”

“I have every intention of making this her last wedding.”

Why, exactly, was the older man declaring his intentions to Harrell? He shifted in his chair, unwilling to prevaricate any further. “Well, that’s been her every intention the last eight times. And considering she’s only been divorced a couple of months, I don’t see how this marriage is going to last any longer than the others.”

Barry’s odd expression puzzled him. “You think we’ve only known one another a few months.”

Harrell reached for his water glass. “What else am I supposed to think?”

“I’ve known Julia since before you were born.” The quiet statement stunned him. Harrell darted a quick glance at the other man. Barry nodded. “Your mother and I were high school sweethearts. We drifted apart when I went away to college, but I never forgot her, even after I married. When I moved back to Florida last year after my wife died, I looked her up. She was married, of course, so I resigned myself to being merely her friend.”

Harrell studied him, trying to gauge his veracity.

“We’ll have that renewed friendship as a basis for this marriage. I’m certain we’ll succeed. I’m very sorry, Harrell, that you don’t share that certainty. As I’m sure you’re aware, your doubts are hurtful to your mother, however well-founded they might be.”

Harrell cleared his throat, the chastisement making him uncomfortable.

“So.” Barry’s tone turned brisk. “Are you going to come to Vegas and give your mother away?”