Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good Man\Promises Under the Peach Tree\Husband by Choice (79 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

T
HE
HOUSE
WAS
...
NICE
. One floor, marble tile throughout, except for the bedrooms that had newish carpet, plush in a neutral tone.

The walls were soft beige with accents in appropriate places. A dark red wall in the living room alcove. One deep gold wall in the master.

There were two other bedrooms. One painted a light purple and one painted light green. Her favorite color and one of his.

Out back he'd put in a swimming pool, kidney shaped, with a Pebble Tec bottom and waterfall. There was also a built-in gas grill and kiva fireplace.

All of the things she loved.

“I told you I know you,” Steve said, grinning like a kid as he followed her from room to room. “And wait until you get to the kitchen....”

He'd installed a double wall oven, glass top stove, and convection microwave. The countertops were granite and the island was big enough for a couple of bar stools.

“And look.” He opened the cupboards. All of them. And she recognized everything in them.

Her pans. The dishes she'd chosen when they'd moved from the apartment to their house in a nice desert community outside of Las Vegas.

She stood there and stared. All thoughts of a plan, of abuse and life and even death...just stood still. “You kept it all.”

“Of course I did!” Steve came into her peripheral vision. He opened a couple of drawers. “Here are your favorite black utensils,” he said, “right next to the stove where you like them. And over here are all of the others.” The drawer was twice the size of the drawer she'd had in Vegas.

He'd paid attention to the finest detail.

And knew her far better than she'd ever realized.

Or maybe she had known and hadn't been able to accept the disturbing ramifications, the fact that his intimate knowledge gave him power over her. “I did good, didn't I?” He was a little boy in a grown man's body.

“Yeah.” The word was drawn out of her. “You did good.”

“Now do you believe how much I love you?”

He came closer, walking that walk. The one where his hips swaggered a bit and he was going to grab her by the hips and press himself against her.

“I never doubted your love, Steve.” Turning, she dug into the cupboards. Buying herself time. Doing her desperate best to keep control of her mind.

And take control of his at the same time.

The task was much harder than she'd imagined. She wasn't even positive she'd be able to handle her own thoughts.

He was a bad man. A very bad man.

“Look, here's my baby cup!” Someone had given it to her when they'd cleaned out her folks' house. It was sterling and had her name on it.

She'd thought she'd lost it.

“And my set of Corelle.” They'd quit making the pattern she'd liked best.

“I brought your clothes, too,” he said. “Everything's in the closet and drawers just like you like it.”

“You plan to have us live here?”

“It's where you want to be, isn't it? Since this is where you came. You love the ocean. I could tell when I saw you there all those Sundays.”

Her stomach cramped again as an eerie sense of death washed over her. He'd been watching her with Max and Caleb.

For a long time.

Probably since before the baby was born. The whole time she'd been pregnant....

Oh, Max, I need you! The cry tore from her heart and reverberated through every pore in her body.

Please! Be here! Remind me that I belong to you, not him. That you are real.

But she didn't belong to him anymore.

She'd left him.

* * *

M
AX
PRACTICALLY
BROKE
the chair he'd been sitting in as he raced to grab his cell phone from the counter Sunday afternoon. Caleb was still at the shelter. They planned to keep him for the night because Max needed to be ready to leave the house on a second's notice.

“Have you found her?” he asked, as soon as he saw Chantel's number come up.

“No, Max. And it's not good news.”

His chest caved. “What?”

“The house isn't Smith's, Max. The owner just got home. It's a guy from LA who got divorced a couple of years ago and comes up here to use his metal detector on the beach. The business, Pepper, Inc., was a venture he and his wife started together. They spent their weekends up here in that little house experimenting with making different foods out of peppers. Pepper jelly, etcetera. The business went under before it took off because of the divorce.”

“So we have nothing?” He'd spoken louder than he'd intended. And knocked his hand against the counter. Over and over. What was he going to do? How was he going to find Meri now?

“We have an APB out for her, Max. And they're going to run his photo on the evening news. Hers, too, if you'll allow it.”

He'd given a photo of Meri to Chantel, who'd given it to Wayne in the very beginning.

“Of course I'll allow it,” he said. Meri needed all the help he could give her. And the evening news was an hour away. That gave him sixty minutes to call his folks and anyone else he could think of who would be traumatized to see the news on TV.

“In the meantime, we need you there, in case she shows up. Keep your phone charged. Your computer on. We don't know how she might try to contact you.”

Or
if
she'd contact him. He could hear the doubt in Chantel's voice.

“And I'll be out with Bailey, canvasing every beach neighborhood we can find for any sign of a green car, or any other distinguishing characteristics. We're checking on more of the homes purchased in the last four years and have others on that task, as well. We're going to find her, Max. I promise you.”

“We don't know for certain that she's with him.” He had to put it out there. To remind everyone not to assume the worst. Not to write her off yet. “Meri's resourceful and damned good at keeping herself safe.”

He wasn't sure if the reminder was for her or for him. But he took it to heart.

And kept it there while he made some very difficult phone calls.

* * *

M
EREDITH
HAD
TO
get Steve to talk to her. Had to take him back to the boy who'd wet his bed. She had to be methodical. Cruel.

A vision of Max came to her mind. His eyes filled with that hint of moisture they took on whenever he was emotionally aroused. He'd be devastated by her death.

She couldn't kid herself into thinking otherwise.

And looking through the bottom cupboards of that kitchen, reconnecting with things she'd forgotten, things she'd loved, things she'd have gotten rid of given the chance, an old colander, a loaf pan that had made perfect bread, she had to be honest about something else.

This might be it. She might be reaching the end of her life. And she couldn't go lying to herself.

She'd left Max because when she'd received Steve's note, she'd known Max would go to his cop friends and put them all in danger. But she'd also secretly feared that he'd leave her. He'd been so adamant that he couldn't go through losing a second wife.

She'd had her issues. He'd had his.

A very weak part of her had feared that when he found out that Steve wasn't a thing of her past, but a very real threat in their present, he'd have lost it. Freaked out about losing her. About the dangers.

And he'd have left her.

So she'd left him first. To protect him from having to face the threat of Steve in his life. And to protect Caleb.

But in a sense, it was to protect her, too. She'd known, as soon as she knew Steve was back, that she was going to lose Max one way or the other.

And somehow she'd known she'd never survive him leaving her. She had to be the one who left.

She hadn't expected it to be that day two and a half weeks ago after taking Caleb to day care. But she'd known she was living on borrowed time.

Subconsciously, she'd been ready.

She heard Steve behind her, going into the bathroom. Heard him relieving himself. With the door open.

He'd been a big one on spouses not closing doors between them. Ever. He'd said intimacy was important and shouldn't be given to anyone but a spouse. And at the same time, no intimacy should ever be withheld from a spouse....

Meredith hadn't agreed. Until the time he'd broken down the door that she'd locked behind herself.

She'd learned to hold her bodily functions until he was away from the house after that. Or use the spare bathroom when Steve was in the shower. Or out mowing the lawn. Or on the phone. Or asleep in his chair.

A woman living with a madman learned to be resourceful.

And the memory of that particular resourcefulness was the catalyst she needed.

When Steve came back into the room, she took his hand, led him to the table and sat down.

“Steve, we have to talk.”

* * *

“T
HE
CAR
COMPANY
pulled up all the files for the days that the agent who recognized Steve had worked the week he was in,” Chantel told Max when she called after the story of Meredith's disappearance ran on the evening news. “In California, license plates stay with the cars, so we should be able to get a list of plates,” she said. “Police are contacting all the people who bought those green vehicles. We should at least find out what name he's using through the process of elimination,” she continued without letting him get a word in edgewise.

“You're getting worried,” Max finally said, interrupting her.

“We need to stay positive, Max.”

Sitting alone on his couch, seeing his wife's still image on the television screen, Max was beyond being even remotely capable of keeping the panic at bay. He was now one big mass of panic. Of grief and fear and anger and frustration. Of determination and hope. “Just find her,” he said into the phone.

And tried to believe when Chantel's soft “I will,” came back at him.

* * *

“Y
OU
ARE
NOT
trying to disobey me, are you, Meredith?”

The words were new to Steve's repertoire. Meredith swallowed. Maybe the intimacy of sitting at the kitchen table hadn't been a good idea.

“Of course not,” she said. “You know I know better than that.” Hearing the words, feeling them coming up from inside her, she recognized her return to playing it safe with him at the first sign that he was going to get aggressive with her. Attempting to placate him to avoid the pain.

She'd promised herself she wouldn't do that ever again.

He nodded, clearly appeased. “So what's all this nonsense about things being different from now on?”

She'd been telling him that she realized how much they needed each other. How being with Max, who hadn't known her when she was a vulnerable teenager, who didn't really know about her years in foster care, who'd grown up with two loving parents who were still alive, had been so different from being with Steve.

She hadn't mentioned how much better life had been with Max. The truth would defeat her purpose entirely.

The idea was to get him to a place where he was actually feeling their connection. Where he could feel how much
he
needed
her.

She had to get him where he was vulnerable. Where his weaknesses hid.

She needed them in the open.

“I've grown up, Steve. And you're right. A part of me will always belong to you. Nothing is going to break that connection.”

Her strength was born from the horrible things he'd done to her.

“I'm hoping that this time around we're going to be able to meet each other on more honest ground,” she continued, surprised at how clear and confident she sounded. She was actually pulling this off.

“I'm hoping we'll be able to acknowledge what we need from each other. To trust each other as the only possessors of our deepest secrets.”

“Did you tell your doctor that you were an outcast? Does he know how socially inept you were as a kid?” His need to point out her own fallibilities to take the spotlight off his, told her she'd hit home.

So far so good.

She'd learned about mental manipulation from the master.

The afternoon was still young enough. But the sun had gone behind some clouds, leaving the kitchen in an eerie gray light that she knew would fade to darkness as the day wore on.

Meredith gave herself over to it. Letting what would come, come.

“No, I didn't tell him any of our secrets,” she said, looking Steve straight in the eye without blinking. By sheer force of will. He knew that she blinked when she lied if she had to look at the person she was lying to.

She hadn't told Max about the bedwetting. But it wouldn't have been a big deal to Max. A boy with urination issues was all in a day's work to him.

“I need things from you, Steve,” she said. “And you need me. Because I know your secrets. And I love you. All of you. I've never thought any less of you because of those secrets. To the contrary, I love you more because of the way you rose above them.”

She took a deep breath. Thought of Max and Caleb. And teared up. Just as she'd planned. “My heart breaks when I think of the boy you were and then I think of the man who grew out of that and I couldn't love you more,” she said. “You shouldn't have had to struggle so hard to earn the respect you deserved.”

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and took one of her hands in his, rubbing it gently. Adoringly.

“You've got a good heart, Steve.”

A long time ago, she'd believed that about him.

“You're a caring, giving man who wants to right wrongs.” He had been that man once, and in some ways, still was.